Alicia Vickers Flame Here

The next five years were a blur of small towns and big burns. Alicia and Corin became a double act: The Flames , they called themselves. She was the silent one who could light a candle from twenty paces; he was the showman who breathed fire around her like a dragon courting a sun. They slept in motels with scorched bedspreads and ate diner food with hands that never quite cooled to room temperature.

She was not born with the surname Flame. That came later, like a struck match.

"You have it stronger than me," he said. "You have the core fire. The one that doesn't need fuel—just will." alicia vickers flame

Alicia was a quiet girl with loud hair—a cascade of auburn that caught the afternoon light and threw it back in shards. She worked the counter at Vickers & Son Hardware, stacking copper fittings and explaining to retired plumbers the difference between galvanized and brass. Her hands were always clean, her nails short, her smile rare but devastating. People liked her because she listened. But they also kept a distance, because every now and then, when she was frustrated or frightened or suddenly glad, the air around her would shimmer .

"You're dangerous," he said.

She didn't go home. She went to the places fire had already been: forests after wildfires, apartment buildings after electrical faults, barns struck by lightning in the flat Midwest. She wore a firefighter's coat and kept her hair under a hood. She told no one her real name.

And if you ever find yourself in Stillwater on a summer evening, and you see a flash of auburn hair and a heat shimmer rising from the porch of a small stone cottage, do not be afraid. Knock twice. Ask her about the match that burned for seventeen minutes. The next five years were a blur of small towns and big burns

She didn't blame him. She kissed his cheek (warm, always warm now) and left Stillwater on the back of Corin's rust-red motorcycle.