Burning in a Memory by Constance Sharper

in but they had at least dried overnight. She tucked her necklace pendant beneath her top and stuffed the Nokia back into her pocket.
                  The bedroom door slammed open. Everything on her mind suddenly forgotten, Adelaide spun to face the hall. Artificial light spilled inside and momentarily blinded her. Muscles painfully tight, she backed against the bed until she saw him. Tony stood in the doorway.
                  “Hi, Adelaide,” he said.
                  Her heart thundered as she sized him up. His shoulders seemed lax, body unwound, but a frown still marred his face.
                  “Hi, Tony,” she answered.
                  “I’m glad you’re awake. I wanted to talk to you.”
                  She didn’t answer immediately but eyed the small confines of the room. As to appease her, he backed up enough to let her outside. Finding any option better than this option, she obediently walked into the hall with him and led the way down the stairs.
                  “What’s up?” she asked him when she reached the bottom flight of stairs. Her new vantage point allowed her to scan the entire place, but found it empty and quiet.
                  “No one else is here. Adam had to leave. I volunteered to give you a ride home,” he said. Fetching keys from his pocket, he jingled them in the air.
                  “Adam left to go where?” she asked, but as she did, she noticed the living room. Stacked on top of each other waited multicolored luggage, packed to the brim and bulging from its sides. “You guys are moving already? He told me about it, but I didn’t think it’d be this soon…”
                  At a loss for words to follow, she stopped talking. Tony made a gesture to the door, so she reluctantly obeyed. His Toyota waited. Once they were locked inside the car together, Tony must have thought it prudent to emphasize.
                  “There’s no better weekend to leave than on a holiday weekend. People won’t even be curious as to why you’re packing up the cars—they’ll think it’s a nice little family road trip.”
                  “It makes sense, I guess. I just thought Adam would tell me,” she said, voicing her ill feelings on the issue. “Why wouldn’t he drive me home? Or say goodbye?”
                  Tony snorted.
                  “You two hardly know each other. Despite Adam’s propensity to pick up strays and take them home, I’d like to remind both of you there is far too much of a gap of culture to work out. He is a mage and you are a human. You cannot be in his life.”
                  She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He sounded just like his mother, Charlotte. Then Tony went on.
                  “Besides, I don’t like you,” he said.
                  She stiffened and made a point to look sideways at him. His attention stayed glued on the road as he accelerated onto the highway.
                  “You don’t know me,” she said.
                  “I don’t and that’s why. I don’t like people from the outside. I don’t like how you came into our lives. I don’t like the coincidences that brought you here, though for the life of me, I can’t find anything malicious behind them. I think you’ll find my feelings are not personal, but despite how Adam continues to forget this, I have a coven to protect. Go home, go live your human life, and forget about what you have learned here. You won’t see us again.”
                  “I’m no danger to you,” she protested, “but if you won’t even get to know me, then you’ll never know that.”
                  “Don’t push your luck. This is my call, and I’m going to see it through. You may not be my enemy, Adelaide, but I will have no