Child of Fire (5 page)

But I really hoped she hadn’t killed that sad woman.

Annalise held the scrap wood in her hands, staring at the designs as if they were tea leaves. What ever she could read there, it was pissing her off.

I turned into the business district and pulled into the parking lot of a Thai restaurant. I didn’t know how good it would be, but pad thai wasn’t rocket science and I’d been craving it for months. They didn’t exactly let you order in from a jail cell.

“What are we doing here?” Annalise asked.

“Grub.”

“I don’t eat this. Find a place that serves burgers or steaks.”

I sighed to let her know how disappointed I was and found a diner just a block farther down the road. As we entered, Annalise placed the scrap wood on the door-jamb. As far as I could tell, the designs continued to churn slowly, without any change. We went inside and found a booth.

By the clock above the counter it was nearly eleven. We’d had a busy day.

There were three or four other customers. All of them thought we were worth a good, long look. I couldn’t blame them. Annalise was quite a sight in her oversized firefighter’s jacket, tattoos, and clipped red hair. Standing next to her, I looked almost reputable.

The waitress came to our table. “New in town?” she asked. Annalise grunted.

“Just drove in,” I said. I smiled politely, knowing what some waitstaff do to the food when they don’t like a customer.

“Looking for work at the plant, I guess?”

“They really need people, huh?”

“Sure do,” she said. She took our order. Annalise asked for iced tea and a grilled steak. When she was told they were out, she ordered a cheeseburger with bacon. It sounded so good I ordered the same thing but with a cola. Maybe the sugar would keep me awake.

As the waitress started to turn away, Annalise grabbed her hand. The waitress tried to wrench herself free but couldn’t break Annalise’s grip.

Annalise laid the scrap wood on the woman’s wrist, then let her go. The waitress quickly retreated behind the counter.

Great. I hoped I wouldn’t be eating her spit later.

Annalise stared out the window. She looked distinctly unhappy.

I smiled. “Nice little town, huh?”

“I’ve been to some that were nicer. Smaller, too.”

“So what’s be—”

Annalise abruptly stood and moved toward the counter. The other customers had turned back to their own conversations, but one of the men at the counter tapped his companion. They watched her approach. Both were in their fifties and wore blue overalls smeared with machine oil.

“Excuse me,” she said to them. She laid the wood against the first man’s arm, then the second’s. She moved to a booth in the corner and the last of the diner’s customers: a pair of ladies who must have been in their seventies.

“Excuse me,” Annalise said again. She laid the block against one woman’s shoulder. After a second, she moved to the next.

The second woman flinched. “I don’t—”

“It’s all right,” Annalise said, and laid the wood against the woman’s arm. After a moment, she started back toward our table.

The first mechanic caught her eye as she passed. “If you’re looking for something radioactive, honey, you put your hand on the wrong body part.”

His buddy chuckled. Annalise walked by without comment. As she settled back into her seat, the waitress returned. She didn’t seem terribly happy with us. “If you keep bothering other customers, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Annalise didn’t acknowledge her. “Understood,” I said.

The woman moved away from the table while keeping a wary eye on us. I wondered how long it would take for word about us to spread around town.

“I expected you to keep a lower profile,” I said.

Again Annalise didn’t acknowledge the remark.

“What’s the matter? Turn off your emotion chip?”

She stared at me as though she was imagining me dead.

I’ve seen that look before, but it’s not something I’ve ever gotten used to.

I settled back in my seat and was silent. Annalise didn’t need to talk to me. I was going to be dead soon.

I remembered the way the boy had split apart into a mass of worms and my stomach flip-flopped. Why had I ordered a cheeseburger with the works?

I didn’t have the guts to keep pestering her. The peers of the Twenty Palace Society might have forbidden her to kill me, but I had no idea how or if they would enforce that rule. I knew very little about her society except that, like Annalise, they were sorcerers. Like Annalise, they killed predators and people who toyed with magic. Like Annalise, they hunted for copies of spell books.

One thing I did know: as powerful as Annalise was, she was one of the weaker peers in her society. It was a scary thought.

Our drinks arrived, then our burgers. Despite my queasiness, I tore into my food, my body’s needs taking over. All my concerns about dead children and murderous sorcerers receded just far enough for me to fuel up.

Spit or no spit, the eating was good. I could see that Annalise was enjoying it, too.

“So,” I said between bites, “do you think the Benton family was targeted specifically?”

Annalise looked at me like I was a bug that needed squashing. She took another bite of her burger and kept chewing.

“I found a slip of paper on the floor of their living room,” I said. I took another bite of food, making her wait for the rest. Eventually, I said: “They could remember their kids when they were alone. They could see their kids’ things and remember what happened to them. It was only when they were with other people that the memories were wiped away.”

Annalise took another bite. I set my burger on the plate and leaned toward her.

“Is that what you found in Finklers’ kitchen? A photo of her with her kids? Or maybe her grandkids? Was that why you were so entranced by her? A mother all alone, grieving over her children?”

Annalise became very still. She stared at me with all the warm gentility of a shark.

“I’m not trying to push your buttons,” I lied, “but I can be useful. I want to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” she said.

“If I’m going to be dead soon, it won’t matter if you answer my questions.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“I work for you,” I said. “Your peers in the society, whoever they are and what ever that is, put me here to help you.”

“You agreed to be my wooden man,” she said. Her tone was even and low. “You lied to me and betrayed me. I attacked a peer because of you, and the closest friend I have ever had in my long life is dead. Because of you.”

“I’m sorry about Irena,” I said. “I liked—”

“I don’t want to hear you talk about her. At all. If you say her name to me again, I will splinter every bone in your body, peers or no peers. Am I clear?”

At that moment, before I even realized it was possible, I stopped caring what she would do.

I’d spent the whole day in the van with Annalise, knowing she would eventually kill me. Before that, I’d sat in a jail cell for months waiting for someone in the society to collect my head.

People become accustomed to their circumstances. It was one of the many unpleasant truths I learned in prison. We can’t be afraid all the time; our bodies can’t sustain it.

I was getting used to Annalise’s hatred and to my quite
sensible fear of her. What I was not getting used to was my own ignorance. I didn’t like stumbling around in the dark. I didn’t even know what a “wooden man” was. I was pretty sure it involved more than just driving around.

So, against all common sense, I pressed on. “The way you’ve been frowning at your scrap of wood makes me think the Bentons were not specifically targeted. The design on that scrap moves when magic is nearby, right? And does other stuff when predators are close, right?

“But you’ve been frowning at it wherever we go. I think it’s telling you the whole town is enchanted. It’s picking up a lot of background static but not directing you to the source. Maybe those two mechanics have lost their kids, too. Maybe that waitress cries herself to sleep at night, thinking about the son who never came home from school.”

Annalise sighed. “I usually drive around until the spell registers magic, then I home in on foot.”

“What does it mean that the magic is so spread out?” I tried to keep my voice reasonable and calm. Professionalism breeds professionalism.

Annalise sopped up some ketchup with a fry. “It means I don’t know what to do next.”

The window beside us shattered. I covered my head as shards of glass rained over me. Annalise turned toward the window, her hand reaching under her jacket.

Broken glass covered my half-eaten burger. Ruined.

I turned my attention to Annalise. She was standing beside the broken window, staring into the street.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Him,” she said.

I looked into the dark street. I couldn’t see anyone, but I heard a voice.

“Where are my daughters?” a man shouted. “Who stole my little girls from me?”

Then I saw him. He was tall and stooped, with lank
hair hanging past his shoulders and a bare scalp on top. He was so skinny he looked like his skin had been shrink-wrapped around his bones.

And he was carrying a rifle.

It looked like a bolt-action hunting rifle, but he was all the way across the street just beyond the glow of a streetlight, so I couldn’t be sure.

“Who took my daughters?” he shouted. A man and woman bolted from the cover of a parked car, sprinting for the corner. I clenched my teeth as the tall man noticed them. He aimed the rifle at them but didn’t fire. The couple reached the corner and safety.

“Where are they?” he shouted again. “Who stole my little girls from me?”

“He remembers,” I said to Annalise. “Just like we do. How can he remember his kids?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Go ask him.”

She wasn’t joking. She wasn’t smiling. She just looked at me, waiting to see if I’d flinch.

I did. Hell, who wouldn’t?

But I still made my way toward the front door. When it came down to a choice of facing a gunman or my boss, it would be the gunman every time.

One of the two mechanics had ushered the old ladies out of their booth and led them into the kitchen. The other mechanic and the waitress crouched beside the door, peering out into the street from the dubious cover of a foam-padded wooden bench. The cook left the relative safety of the kitchen and joined them.

The waitress swore under her breath. “Old Harlan has finally gone round the bend.”

The mechanic dared a glance into the street. “I thought Emmett Dubois confiscated his guns.”

The waitress let out a contemptuous grunt. She didn’t think much of Emmett Dubois.

“Whose guns?” I asked as I crouched beside them. We were all keeping our voices low.

“Harlan’s,” the waitress said. I glanced out the window. Harlan sighted along his rifle, slowly turning toward us. I ducked back down before he saw me.

“This Harlan guy,” I said. “I take it he’s local color?”

The mechanic snorted. “You could put it that way.”

The cook came up behind me. “He fell off a ladder in
’97 putting up Christmas lights. Hit his head. He ain’t been right since.”

“He was never a bad guy, though,” the mechanic said.

The cook scowled at him. “Tell that to my window, and these customers he nearly killed.”

“What was he shouting about?” the waitress asked.

“His daughters,” I answered her. “He wants to know who took his daughters away.”

“Why, that’s just crazy,” she said. “He doesn’t have any little girls. He never has.”

“What the hell?” the cook said. His sour breath was right next to my ear. “Your girlfriend is just sitting in her booth like a duck in a shooting range. Don’t she care about her own life?” He scrambled across the dirty floor toward her.

“Care about her own life?” I said. “Where’s the fun in that?” Before anyone could stop me, I opened the front door and bolted into the street.

I didn’t look at Harlan. I looked at the Corolla I was planning to use as cover.

I hit the pavement and rolled behind the wheel. I heard a shot and more glass breaking in the diner behind me. Someone cursed up a storm, which I’m sure was directed as much at me as at old Harlan.

I scuttled across a patch of grass and put my head right against the hubcap. There was a tree beside me, but the trunk was no wider than my hand. I wasn’t counting on it for protection. “Stop shooting!” I shouted. “I’m trying to help you!”

“Can you tell me where my girls are?” There was a dangerous edge to his voice.

“No,” I said. “I’m—”

“Then butt the hell out!”

I heard another rifle shot. The bullet punched a hole
through the car door beside me and tore bark off the skinny tree. I hunkered down lower.

“I can help you,” I shouted. I looked back at the diner and saw Annalise sitting by the window. She stared at me blankly. My situation meant no more to her than a dull television show. I saw the top of the cook’s head as he beckoned her to safety.

“I can help you!” I shouted again, louder this time. If Harlan came toward me, I’d be screwed. My tattoos only protected part of me. I wasn’t sure how well they’d hold up against a rifle.

“How?” he answered.

“Look, let me stand up and talk to you. My name is Ray. I came here to find out what’s happening to the kids in this town.”

“You did?”

“I’m standing up now. Hear me out before you shoot me, okay?”

I stood. Harlan had moved toward me into the street. He aimed his rifle at me.

No matter how hard you try, there’s really no steeling yourself to see a brain-damaged redneck point a gun at your face.

He saw my hands were empty, and he started glancing from side to side as if he suspected I was a decoy.

“Harlan, my name is Ray.”

“You said that already.”

I had, but I hoped he would be reluctant to shoot me if he had a name to go with my face.

Harlan was younger than I expected, barely into his mid-thirties. His face was narrow and gleaming with sweat. His long nose curved over a thin, unhappy mouth. His clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed in weeks. He’d have been scary without a gun.