Ablaze assumes control over her feelings after a jerky little shiver. "They do, they do. The seraphim have flaming swords sometimes. Sometimes they're fully engulfed. I'm wondering if it's an early depiction of pyrokinesis."

Here she goes with pyrokinesis again, like a dog with the bone. Miss, the beings who could ignite fire with their minds or angels don't need trip-wires. It's the human sinners who do.

He can't say it, though, since it's not a general public knowledge, so he just scoffs. "You really believe in this nonsense, don't you?"

Jitters give way to a smile so patient that it gives her pretty face an angelic cast. "The world is bigger than Milwaukee, Harris. It has wonders to behold."

"Here's a tip on fire prevention for you," he says gravely. "People burn. They're not great at doing it, though, because of fatty tissues."

Blood drains from her cheeks. Terror reflects in her eyes, but this time it's not sudden. It's pensive. For a second, Harris thinks she'll excuse herself to dash to the bathroom, but she swallows hard and stands on her feet.

Sam films the tense pause stretching between them. Gee, he hopes it's not a life stream, or people would drop off like flies. But what's boring for viewers is intense when one is on the inside of it. The pressure of the camera builds until Harris snaps. His explanation comes out at a bullet-train speed, garbled. "What is a danger for ignition are oily rags, piles of hot laundry, hay bales, large compost heaps... things like that. It's not a laughing matter."

"Thank you for this helpful tip, firefighter Sarkisian," Ablaze fights to speak breezily—and succeeds by the time she reaches his name. All of its syllables are very, very airy. "I always sort my laundry right away."

A vision of the black lace hugging her buttocks swims up in his mind. Her fingers are folding the thong, a crimson nail running along the inner part.... He pinches the bridge of his nose in dismay. It's such an inopportune moment to work on a boner!

And, dammit, people should take self-ignition seriously!

"It... it happens more often than you think. In your home, in your garage, on your acreage..."

The hard-won blaze attitude melts off of her. "I do, I swear!" Her lips pucker up, tremble in a maddening, tempting way.

For a guy who's just chided her for being a ditz, Harris' drifts even further into fantasies all too readily. He's a hypocrite... he shifts his feet in place, fighting the mental porn.

Luckily, her attention is on the camera, so she doesn't spit her discomfort. She turns to face Sam. "And, guys! Guys, I'll throw in some links for you about self-combustion."

Another shiver undulates her shoulders, then her long, supple waistline. It's like she can't move just one part of her body. It's all or none... Her voice pitches to a tragic crescendo. "Don't let fire destroy your life!"

The mood swing is so sudden and his arousal in response to the high notes is so abrupt, Harris feels dizzy.

Her next words come to him as if from a distance, despite her almond-scented proximity. "How time flies!"

It does... the clock is at 5 P.M. The end of a workday for people with office jobs. Hence, the end of his day.

"Thank you again, Harris. See you tomorrow."

He mumbles his goodbyes and she flies out of the parking lot like a sparrow chased by a hawk. Somewhere along the sidewalk is her car. If he has to guess, it's the Tesla by the corner.

He made her uncomfortable, duh! Well, she made him uncomfortable too, so they're even.

Sam comes to shake hands. "A beer, mate?" He can't sound more Australian than that to Harris' ears.

Involuntary, he imitates the twang. "A rain check, okay? Dad waits for me to run some chores."

It's not much of a lie. Just a stretch... Dad's probably cooking something for his unusually early return, and with this new schedule, he has to fix the retaining wall in the evenings instead of having a whole, unrushed day to spend on it.

***

It's strange coming home in the afternoon. As if he's a teenager again, cutting school and a hook-up didn't work out. He's sneaking in and hoping neither Mom nor Dad would find him out... He shakes the apprehension. It's his home. He did nothing wrong. Mom is long gone, and, at any rate, he outgrew his parents catching him at mischief years ago. Still, his back is tense.

A frustrated sigh filters through his lips. He'll take Sam up on his offer to have a couple of beers tomorrow. People unwind like that. Regular people. Normal guys...

Only he's not normal. He feels more exhausted from his eight hours than he would have been from a full shift. No breaks, nor the adrenaline rushes of the calls to jolt him... Every dispatch call for Company Twelve misfires his neurons, sapping energy in an unsatisfactory resolution instead of pumping him up.

The smell of flatbread stuffed with unripened cheese almost fixes his sulk. Dad's always on the hunt for a perfect cheese for the old-country recipe. The house used to smell just like that when Dad came home from one of his trips...

The chop of the chief's knife on the board overtakes the pungency of cilantro and tarragon by only a moment. He'll bet that marinated, smoky eggplant with tomatoes and garlic are sitting in a bowl, ready to be sprinkled with herbs, then loaded on the flat-bread.

"Sorry," Sarkisian Senior calls from the kitchen. "No proteins tonight. The time ran away on me."

"It's okay," Harris says, kicking off his sneakers, walking into the kitchen barefoot. "It takes me back."

Back when Harris was a teen. Before Edik Sarkisian was grounded to live vicariously through him, Live Crime TV and Tinder. "Happy times..."

The music that was playing on Dad's laptop fades out to a white noise level. "Hi there!" a woman's voice says.

Am I losing my mind?

"Today I'll be talking about blue dogs. Yes, you've heard it right. No, it's not Blue's Clues!"

Harris practically spun the laptop around—and felt like he's losing his mind even more. The voice, trembling with righteous outrage of the dyeing factory in India releasing the toxic stuff into a local river is Ablaze's. The woman on the screen is not.

He presses mute, because yes, if it can dye cotton, it can turn dogs' fur blue. No mystery there. But the animated character on the screen with Ablaze's voice... that's something. The cast of her features is recognizable, if she were reborn as an elf from outer space, with skin the color and luster of obsidian and a trailing tongue of flames for her hair.

"What the hell is that, Dad?"

"So you don't deny it? The mystery girl from work was Ablaze?" Sarkisian Senior wags his finger. "You were trying to pull wool over my eyes, Harris. What's Sarkisian's first commandment?"

"Doth not BS thy Sire," Harris says automatically. Just as automatically he leaves out 'for this right belongs to thy mother.' He omits it, but a pang of nostalgia gets him anyway. How could their family come to this? It was perfect.

"I'm not going to chew your ear out over the lies. You're an adult now." For once oblivious to his distress, Sarkisian Senior grins. "And I'm sufficiently impressed! And proud. You don't just aim high, you shoot for the stars! It'll be hard for Milwaukee to compete, but I think Desiree—"

"Dad! Lets leave Desiree out of it." Funny thing, before Chief Villarreal mixed all the cards, Harris thought Desiree might stand a chance. Her pictures looked as photoshop perfect and fake as all the profiles, but her reply to his text was smart. It gave out energy and didn't seem like a baited trap. Yes, it was pretty funny. He was going to respond to her too, except he couldn't, while babysitting Ablaze.

And speaking of Ablaze...

"Why is Ablaze like this? It is her, right?" It feels stupid to ask for confirmation, but he pauses the video and the obsidian girl topped with flames stares at him with anime-sized eyes. They implore him to care about blue dogs in India. He can't bring himself to do it. He's too tired for that. He wants someone like Desiree who doesn't place demands, doesn't keep him on his toes... but that means, Dad won their game. Or does it?

Harris gives his head a bit of a shake—stop going there. As if he doesn't have enough problems!

Meanwhile, his Dad stops transferring the eggplant and sundry from the baking pan into a bowl with cherry tomatoes and his special dressing. He wipes his groomed hands on a towel and wheels over to squint at the screen.

"Ah, the avatar? She's doing V-tubing. They call it virtual-tubers and it is quite trendy. I thought about creating my own—"

Harris gawks. Not only is he being explained social media quirks by his dad, something already unnatural, he also can see the attraction of the idea to Sarkisian Senior.

V-tubing means nobody will see the wheelchair and the paralyzed part of his body.

He could be as lively as he used to be. Dance while cooking, like he used to... nobody would even guess at the truth. It would still be an escape from reality. Hiding it behind a screen so conveniently provided by the internet.

But on the other hand, another source of income, from a revived show—

No. The therapist said, the longer you hide from reality, the more you try to dodge it, the harder it would hit you in the face. Maybe she didn't quite put it in those words, but that's how Harris understood it.

He looked closer at Ablaze's face, still frozen in mid-word. "I wonder what she has to cover up. She's perfect..."

His dad cleared his throat. "Harris, I know you're infatuated—"

"I'm not."

"Please, recite Sarkisian's first commandment for me again."

"Fine. I like her a little... maybe."

"Then you didn't talk to her enough. Her parents died in a plane crash. It was caught on camera... an expanding fireball. A terrible thing."

Crap. Everything she'd said starts rerolling in his head, taking on new shades of meaning. Fire prevention is close to my heart. Are there cases of pyrokinesis in Milwaukee? Don't let fire destroy your life...

His father adds softly, "She was a teen back then and struggled with mental health since. She doesn't make it a secret."

Harris sits down hard on the closest stool. 'Well, that explains angels and other weirdness.' And another part of him wants to vomit at the condescending, crude assessment. It's only realistic, the cynic in him argues. But the argument crumbles before shame.

Plus, nothing he learned as of yet, explains the wire in her hotel's bathroom. 

AN: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for answering the chapter questions. It helps me so, so much!

Question:

Do you feel that there's hope for Harris yet?