Burned

soft.”
    “Yeah, it is,” Stevie Rae said, totally mesmerized by what was happening in their reflection.
    As slowly as he’d woven their fingers together, without taking his gaze from their reflection, Rephaim reached from his face to hers. His hand touched her skin lightly, gently. He stroked her cheek and let his fingers brush her lips. She smiled, then, and couldn’t help an awkward giggle. “It’s just that you’re so pretty!”
    Rephaim’s human reflection smiled, too. “
You’re
pretty,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him.
    Heart hammering, she said, “You think so? Really?”
    “Really. I just can’t ever tell you. I can’t ever let you know how I really feel.”
    “You are now,” she said.
    “I know. For the first time I feel—”
    Rephaim’s words cut off midsentence. The reflection of the boy wavered and then disappeared. In its place Darkness lifted from the still water, forming the shape of a raven’s wings and the body of a powerful immortal.
    “Father!”
    Rephaim didn’t need to speak the name. Stevie Rae knew what had come between them the moment it had happened. She pulled her hand from his. He resisted for only an instant before letting her go. Then he turned to face her, bringing one dark wing forward to blot out her view of their reflection in the fountain.
    “He’s returned to his body. I can feel it.”
    Stevie Rae didn’t trust herself to speak. She could only nod.
    “He’s not here, though. He’s far away from me. Must still be in Italy.” Rephaim was speaking rapidly. Stevie Rae took a step away from him, still unable to say anything at all. “He feels different. Something has changed.” Then it was like his thoughts were catching up to him, and Rephaim’s eyes met hers. “Stevie Rae? What are we going to—”
    Stevie Rae gasped, cutting off his words. Earth swirled around her, filling her senses with a joyous dance of homecoming. The cold Tulsa landscape shimmered, shifted, and suddenly she was surrounded by amazing trees, all green and shiny-leafed, and a bed made of thick,soft moss. Then the image focused, and Zoey was there, in Stark’s arms, laughing and whole again.
    “Zoey!” Stevie Rae shouted, and the image disappeared, leaving only the joy of it and the certainty that her BFF was whole again and most definitely alive. Grinning, she went to Rephaim and threw her arms around him. “Zoey’s alive!”
    His arms tightened around her, but only for the space of a breath, and then they both remembered the truth, and at the same time, stepped away from each other.
    “My father returns.”
    “So does Zoey.”
    “And for us that means we cannot be together,” he said.
    Stevie Rae felt sick and sad. She shook her head. “No, Rephaim. It only means that if you let it.”
    “Look at me!” he cried. “I’m not the boy in the reflection. I’m a beast. I don’t belong with you.”
    “That’s not what your heart says!” she shouted back at him.
    His shoulders slumped, and he looked away from her. “But, Stevie Rae, my heart has never mattered.”
    She stepped close to him. Automatically, he faced her. Their gazes met, and with a terrible despair she saw that the scarlet was, once again, blazing in his eyes. “Well, when you decide your heart matters as much to you as it does to me, come find me again. It should be easy. Just follow your heart.” Without any hesitation, she put her arms around him and held him tightly. Stevie Rae ignored the fact that he didn’t return her embrace. Instead, she whispered, “I’ll miss you,” before she left him.
    As she started walking down Gilcrease Road, the night wind brought to her Rephaim’s whispered,
I’ll miss you, too . . .
    Zoey
    “It’s really beautiful,” I said, looking up at the tree and the zillions of dangling strips of cloth tied there. “What do you call it again?”
    “A hanging tree,” Stark said.
    “Doesn’t seem a very romantic name for something so cool,” I said.
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought at first, too, but it’s kinda grown on me.”
    “Ooh! Look at that piece. It’s so sparkly.” I pointed up at a thin ribbon of gold that had suddenly appeared. Unlike the rest of the strips of cloth, it wasn’t tied to another. Instead, it floated free down and down until it wafted just above us.
    Stark reached up and snagged it. He held it out to me so that I could touch its bright softness. “It’s what I followed to find you.”
    “Really? It’s like a