I should have chased him. Apologised. Instead, I blinked back stinging tears.
I kicked at the bowl of herbs. Stupid things were supposed to make him talk, not me.
6
A wet smack hit my face, and I waved at it with one hand. “Ugh.” Hot air fluttered across my skin, followed by another swipe of warm stickiness.
My head throbbed, the dream… it had… there weren’t words to explain it. I opened my eyes, wincing when they stung like I hadn’t slept in a week. I glanced at Phil looming over my bed. Next to her, with two giant paws pressed into my chest, winding the air out of my lungs, was a giant dog.
“What is that?” I attempted to shift from under the canine’s weight, but it wasn’t to be budged. With a groan, I gave up trying and waited to be rescued—hopefully before I stopped breathing. “And why on earth is it in my room?” The remnants of sleep and the intense, absorbing dream were still chasing away, but I could tell by the chill against my skin I was in room thirteen of Fire Stone. For a moment, an ache for the familiarity of Queens surged through me. People would be on the street, sirens would be wailing, it would all be comfortably familiar.
Here, there was silence, rain—and excessively large dogs.
“It’s Buster, he says you’re missing the party.” Phil had no worries about breezing into my room and waking me up. It was as if it were the most natural thing in the world to her, but to me it was alien. Foster homes were neutral spaces, with each care kid carving out their own niche of space which wasn’t to be violated.
I stared up into the face of the dog. Even his whiskers were huge and splattered with giant drops of dribble. “Hey, Buster? Any chance you can move?” Breathing was becoming an issue. Not that I was bothered about breathing right now as dog breath fanned over my face with meaty undertones. I tried not to gag.
With a broad sweeping wag of his tail he jumped, spring-boarding off my chest. I cried and struggled to sit up before he could attack me again.
I blinked and struggled to get my bearings. As the chill had assured me, it was room thirteen all right, but the draughty space was hazy with shadows. Was it morning already? No, it couldn’t be. I’d only been reading a few moments before.
“What time is it? How can the party still be going on?” I flung my hand out patting for my watch. Not having a cell phone sucked. It was like going back generations by having to do something as banal as checking a watch for the time.
“Seven thirty?” I blinked at the watch again, but the hands didn’t change. “I haven’t been asleep that long?” Although… that dream, it seemed to go on for days.
Phil nodded, her curls shaking like petals caught in the wind. Moving to the window she pulled at the handle, yanking it back into its frame. “How the hell did you get that open?”
I shrugged and flung my feet over the edge of the bed, although the stone floor was so cold I wished I hadn’t bothered pretty damn quick. “I didn’t.” Buster sat and watched with large expectant eyes. “I don’t have any treats,” I told him. “They only serve cabbage here.”
Phil snorted and turned from the window, reaching down to scratch Buster behind the ear. “He’s used to cabbage, he’s adapted.”
I shook my head and tried to find a low gear I could crank myself awake from. Everything was muddled. That dream, those dark eyes. No amount of head shaking was going to erase them from my memory. Yawning, I stretched high, my body creaking from where I’d slept so soundly, not moving. “It feels like I’ve been asleep for ages.”
“Are you going to keep falling asleep instead of getting ready for our social extravaganzas?” She quirked an eyebrow at my dishevelled appearance. “Look at you!”
I glanced down. My uniform was rumpled and dirty, like I’d been running through trees. “What? How the hell did that happen?”
Phil grinned. “Welcome to Fire Stone. Weird shit always happens here.”
My blood chilled. “What do you mean by weird shit?”
Buster licked my hand, and I scratched his glossy black fur. I didn’t know what breed he was, but his fur was silky, and he was fricking enormous.
Phil shrugged and perched on the end of my bed, waving her fingers towards the dark wood wardrobe. I shuffled over and pulled out a tank and some skinny jeans. They felt oddly comforting and familiar in my hands after wearing the strange uniform. I shucked out of the skirt and draped it across the back of the wooden chair, unbuttoning the stiff white shirt and flinging it in the corner. “Nice housekeeping, I like your style.” Phil nodded at my laundry pile of underwear.
“I try hard.” I grinned at her, the sleepy fog easing from my mind. As I blinked, I still caught a hint of those jet edged eyes, as if they were imprinted on the inside of my own eyelids, but the fogginess I’d woken with was lifting. “What happens at these parties?”
“One of the boys has contraband goods.” Phil studied her fingers, picking something out from under a nail and flicking it onto my bedroom floor. It was gross on so many levels.
“What sort of contraband?”
She shrugged but I could see an irrepressible smile curving her lips. “Booze, fags, that kind of thing.”
I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes until she giggled. “Booze, and cigarettes.”
“Yuck.” I’d only got drunk once before, not that I was some well-behaved prissy princess, but alcohol did nasty things to my stomach.
