Easy.

His burning stare locked on her—with no recognition whatsoever.

It wasn’t going to be a piece of cake.

“Dante!” She said his name, louder, harder. “Stop the flames!”

He didn’t stop them. So much for that siren power.

“You’re going to kill us!”

No response. Despite the blistering heat, her skin was chilled.

Cassie crept toward Charles and Jamie. Charles had gotten the boy off the table and was trying to shield Jamie with his body. Cassie lightly touched Charles on the shoulder.

The flames seemed to surge higher.

He doesn’t remember me.

Which meant she had to be very, very careful.

“I’m going to distract him,” Cassie whispered to Charles. “When I do, you and Jamie run like hell to the tunnel. Don’t stop until you have fresh air in your lungs. And then . . . suck in that air and keep running.”

Charles grabbed her hand. “Are you crazy?”

The flames definitely surged higher again. Dante’s fire-filled stare centered solely on Cassie.

“Quite possibly,” she confessed. “Get out of here, head to Vaughn’s father in New Orleans. We’ll meet you there at midnight.” The same thing she’d told to Eve. “Tell him . . . tell him that I think Jamie is the cure.”

Charles’s fingers clenched around hers. “And tell me that you’ll be right behind us.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” she whispered.

His eyes were sad. “Cassie, you always were such a terrible liar.”

She stepped in front of Charles and Jamie. “Dante!”

No flicker of recognition.

But he’d told her that a siren could soothe a phoenix’s beast. She was supposed to be a siren, so she could do this, right?

She moved toward Dante. Fire was eating at the walls of her lab, and the smoke was going to choke her if she wasn’t careful. But she had to get Dante away from the exit.

Then she could focus on living and breathing.

“Dante, come to me.” She raised her hand. Tried to tamper down her fear and just project—hell—she wasn’t even sure what she was projecting. But she was scared and most definitely stressed, and he’d told her that he thought her power came out at times like that.

He was advancing toward her.

Charles and Jamie began to edge to the side. Yes, yes. Keep going.

“Your fire will burn me,” Cassie said, locking her gaze on Dante. “Do you want that? Do you want to hurt me?”

An expression of confusion crossed his face.

“Do you know me at all?” She eased a bit to the right.

He followed her.

Cassie took another two cautious steps to the right, then back.

Again, he followed . . . and opened up the escape path for Charles and Jamie.

They ran for the doors.

Dante never looked their way.

“Please remember me,” Cassie said as she stood there, trapped by the fire and by him. “Dante, tell me that you know I’m—”

“Mine,” he growled as he reached for her.

She tensed up, expecting to feel the scorch of the fire, but she just felt his warm, strong fingers curl around her shoulders.

She stared into his eyes. The beast he carried was right there, glaring back at her. She wanted to see the man he was—the man that his rising had made him forget.

She’d never asked him what it was like each time he died. She’d heard the whispers at Genesis. The stories that said a phoenix actually went to hell, that it was the hellfire itself that brought him back.

The fire had to come from somewhere, didn’t it?

Just what did Dante see when he died?

“Mine,” he said again, as if claiming her. His hold tightened.

When they’d talked before . . . when she’d told him that she wished there was a way for him to always remember her, he’d said that a siren could lure and control with her voice—and her kiss.

Just kiss me, he’d said, but no smile had lifted his lips.

Yeah, right, I’ll just go through the flames and put my mouth on yours. She’d been mocking at the time.

Cassie swallowed. She wasn’t exactly flush with options. “Remember me,” she whispered, then she closed the distance between them. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rose onto her tiptoes. Her lips pressed to his.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She tasted of sweetness and sin. Her lips were soft and open beneath his, and her tongue pushed lightly into his mouth.

Mine. It was the thought he’d had when he’d first seen her, surrounded by his flames.