Ignited by Desni Dantone Read Free Book Online Page B

fluttering in my stomach the look on Gran’s face was causing. She was up to something I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like. She turned to me, her face solemn.
    “Go with Nathan, sweetie,” she said. “He’ll take care of you.”
    Gran wasn’t coming with us? Oh, no. No, no, no.
    “I’m not going anywhere with him!” I jabbed a finger in Nathan’s direction without bothering to look at him. I stared pleadingly at Gran. “Not if you’re not coming.”
    “You can trust Nathan.” Her eyes shot over my shoulder and rested on him. “You’re in good hands with him. You always have been.”
    “Gran?” This time it was Nathan. He entered the small intimate space Gran and I shared and stood beside me, close enough that our shoulders grazed. I resisted the urge to jerk my arm away. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. That and he made me feel...secure, safer just by standing beside me. Why did he have to have that effect on me?
    Why did he have to be such a jerk? 
    Gran turned her eyes, gleaming with stubborn determination, to him. “More will be coming.”
    “I know,” he returned quickly. “That’s why we have to go now.”
    “Oh, Nathan,” she groaned. “I’m retired. I’m old, I’m worn-out. I’ll only slow you down.”
    “No…” He started to protest and, for once, I agreed with him. 
    Gran shut him down with a fierce glare and a sharp shake of her head. The look on her face was a warning I recognized. Next would be a tongue-lashing on not disrespecting your elders if he kept it up. I’d heard that lecture a few times and recognized the signs of it coming. Nathan had apparently learned what that look meant too. He shut his mouth with a reluctant sigh. 
    Gran cupped my face in her hands tenderly, but spoke to Nathan. “She’s important, that much is clear.”
    She couldn’t be talking about me, could she? I glanced behind her and caught Nathan’s gaze as he surveyed me like I was a puzzle he couldn’t solve. Finally, he seemed to have reached some conclusion about me, though I was sure I would never know what it was. He didn’t strike me as the sharing type.
    When he finally released me from the visual hold he had on me to address Gran, I nearly sighed in relief. “Do you have—”
    “Of course I do,” she interrupted, sounding displeased with his uncertainty. Without another word, she turned and descended the steps to the lowest level of the house. For what, only Gran knew. I wondered if Nathan was as confused as I was.
    “You think there are more of those guys coming here?” I asked him in a hushed voice.
    He nodded without looking at me.
    “She has to come with us then. You have to make her come.”
    He turned to me. “You ever try to make her do something she doesn’t want to do?”  
    I refused to let him know he had a good point. “Well, she can’t stay here…” 
    “Of course I can, dear,” Gran called from the bottom of the stairs. 
    Nathan and I watched as Gran ascended with an armful of weapons. The sight of her small frame carrying such a large stack of guns and ammunition—so many that most of her head was obstructed from my view—was almost comical. We stepped back to let her by and she gently set the stack down on the couch. She handed a silver pistol to Nathan. 
    He inspected it, opened the thing where the bullets were kept, and closed it again with a snap of his wrist. He seemed to know what he was doing, like he’d been doing it for a long time. A memory of him, looking exactly as he did now, fourteen years ago, flashed into my head. He has been doing it for a long time. Only I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, aside from rescuing me.
    “I’ve got plenty here,” Gran said to him. “You take that one. It’s got coated bullets.”
    Gran laid a box of ammunition in Nathan’s free hand. Coated bullets. Whatever that meant.
    He surveyed the rest of the arsenal on the couch. “I still think you should come with us.”
    Gran pursed her lips,