Embers (6 page)

Around her neck, she felt her necklace warm as Sparky shifted in his sleep. She felt a tentative salamander toe on her collarbone.

“Not now,” she whispered.

Sparky withdrew and curled back up, but she heard a growl reverberating through his chest.

“That’ll be fifteen dollars, miss.”

She turned to the source of the thin, whistling voice, tripping in the ashy muck. The ghostly outline of an old man bent over the metal canister of a vacuum cleaner. The hose had melted away, and the shape was barely recognizable under the char. But the old man bent over it with a screwdriver and looked right at her.

“It just needed a new filter. It got gummed up on the filth down here.”

Sparky uncurled, draping himself around her shoulders. She could feel him breathing, but he didn’t seem alarmed enough to rouse himself to greet the spirit or to assume his full, threatening size.

Anya approached the old man cautiously. “Thank you very much.”

He tipped his hat.
“You’re welcome, miss.”
Anya could see that he wore a repairman’s uniform.
“I haven’t gotten much business down here, until lately.”

“I see that.” Anya smiled at him. “How long have you been down here?”

The spirit looked at his watch, rubbing his beard.
“Twenty-three years. Seven more until
retirement.”

“That’s a long time.”

The spirit shrugged.
“I keep busy, tinkering with my junk.”
He gestured around him at the broken parts and gears littering the floor. He began to whistle, and he turned back to his work. “
Soon it’ll be lawnmower season. Business will pick up then.”

“Did you have. . . a customer last night?”

He stopped whistling, and his brow wrinkled.
“Yes. There was a man.”
He continued fussing over the vacuum canister.
“A tall man with eyes like burning coals.”

“Do you know what he wanted?”

The spirit stood up, and rubbed the back of his head.
“No. I laid low. After-hours
customers are always trouble.”

“Are you all alone here?”

“It’s just me. Nice and quiet here.”
He looked around at the devastation.
“Until
recently.”

She edged closer to him. “Why are you all alone? Why haven’t you left?”

His face froze, and a twinge of fear lanced across his leathery face.
“I’m afraid of
elevators.”
The spirit turned away, faded into the wall.

She shivered, wondering if that had been how the repairman had died—in an accident with the rickety elevator.

Anya didn’t like her day job and her night work to intersect. She liked these things to be in two separate boxes in her head, not touching. But the buzzing feeling in her fingertips remained as her camera flashed over and over, illuminating the strangely beautiful shape in the floor, the shape she’d seen at the three other arson sites. She vowed to unravel its meaning, even if it meant crossing that intellectual line into her nocturnal work.

CHAPTER THREE

IN THE FAIRY TALES ANYA had read as a child, witches stuffed screaming children into ovens and ate them without bothering to peel them. In those stories, witches did not run their own bakeries specializing in wedding cakes and novelty pastries. Nor did they advertise the use of organic flours and cruelty-free eggs.

As dawn reddened the horizon, Anya parked in front of Wicked Confections, a bakery tucked in a tidy row of shops in suburban Ferndale. This early in the morning, parking was easy to find; only the delivery trucks were parked at the curbs, parking lights flashing. She fed the meter, then peered inside the front plate-glass window displaying an orgy of cakes. Fondant icing as smooth as skin, sugar leaves, and frosted vines covered tiers of pastry balanced on vintage glass cake stands. The cake featured in the center was a meticulously decorated white vintage Ford Thunderbird, complete with fins. A miniature “Just Married” sign leaned in the back window of the car, and tiny gumdrop cans were tied to the bumper with ribbons of licorice. Inside the car, a marzipan bride and groom made their getaway, the bride waving to an unseen audience like a beauty queen. Anya’s stomach rumbled. She knew that the cakes in the window were merely frosted Styrofoam, for display purposes only, but. . . damn, did they look good enough to try.

When she opened the door to the shop, a bell jingled overhead. Inside, stainless-steel counters were strewn with books of sample cake designs. A glass case behind the counter was full of pirogis, pinwheel pastries, paczkis, and cookies.

Katie came from the back room, her apron dusted with flour. Her hat was primly perched atop her head, no tendrils of blonde hair leaking from it. “Anya. Welcome back to my den of culinary wickedness.” She made a flourish that puffed flour from her apron and nearly knocked the hat from her head. “Can I get you some breakfast?”

Anya grinned as she climbed onto one of the retro red stools before the counter. “I need some chocolate. Hit me.”

Katie pulled a white cardboard box from under the counter. “Just for you.” She pulled the lid aside to reveal a writhing mass of marzipan people, contorted and bent. “They didn’t set up properly. The grooms are all dipped in dark chocolate. The brides are white chocolate.”

Anya peered into the box of tangled bodies. She plucked up a groom and delicately bit his feet off. “Yum. I feel like Godzilla grazing on a mosh pit.”

Katie broke the head off a blonde bride and thoughtfully crunched her skull. “Yeah, this one was a bitch. I’ve had to do them over a half-dozen times because the bride says they don’t look enough like them.”

Anya rolled her eyes. “Did you get them finished?”

“Yeah. I just threw out their engagement photograph and worked from a Disney animation cel of Cinderella and Prince Charming. She thinks it’s perfect now.” Katie smirked. “I did make her butt a bit bigger for revenge, though.”

Anya snorted. “I love your sense of spite.”

“Hey, don’t mess with the woman who’s preparing your food.” Katie put her chin in her hand. “So. . . what brings you here at the ass-crack of dawn?”

Anya looked away. “Work calls. My day job, I mean.” She’d been reluctant to spend time even with Katie, for fear that disentangling herself from DAGR would grow even more complicated. She hadn’t found a good way to explain that while she yearned for a connection with the group, the use of her powers as a Lantern made her feel even more of an outsider. She was a freakish tool in DAGR’s arsenal, something to be used when what Jules considered “conventional methods” failed.

Katie reached out and touched Anya’s sleeve. “Look, I’m worried about you.”

Anya’s eyebrow quirked upward and she savagely twisted an arm from her groom. She set the limb down beside the dismembered figure. “I’m just. . . I’m just a bit burnt out right now.”

Katie nodded sympathetically. “Do you want to come by my house later for some energy work? I could do a Reiki adjustment for you, if you want.”

Anya’s collar twitched under her turtleneck. Sparky loved having his energy realigned. It was the equivalent of a massage for the scrappy little elemental. She smiled, relenting. “I appreciate it. . . and Sparky would, too.”

“I’ll mix up some extra incense for Sparks.” Katie couldn’t see Sparky, but she could usually sense him when he was on the prowl. Sparky loved Katie’s cats. They would race up and down the halls, chasing each other until they wore themselves out.

“But I’m actually here in connection with work. I need your help with something.” Anya pulled a photo out of her pocket and slid it across the counter. The photo showed the symbol on the floor of the ruined warehouse. “I’ve been running across this symbol on a regular basis. Any idea what it means? I thought maybe it could be a rune or something.”

Katie looked at the photo, turned it this way and that. “Hmm. It’s not a Norse rune that I recognize. And it’s not an alchemical symbol. I’d be happy to do some research on it, though, and tell you what I find out.”

“Great, thanks.”

“If I can’t figure it out, do you want me to check with Ciro and see if he knows?”

Anya paused. “Sure.” She would be happy to have Ciro’s advice, but she didn’t want to necessarily get sucked back into DAGR’s activities. The more she was on their radar, the more likely they would be to call her for spiritual garbage duty. And she felt guilty for avoiding them, especially Ciro. He would understand why she was trying to leave and he would let her, but she would feel terrible for leaving when the old man was so frail.

“Why don’t you come by for dinner?” Katie suggested. “Bring Sparky and he can have a playdate with Fay and Vern. We’ll scrub your aura and I’ll have a chance to look up your mysterious symbol. Sound good?”

Anya’s stomach rumbled. “What’re you making?”

Katie grinned. “Matzo ball soup.”

“’Nuff said. I’m there.” Anya slid off the stool, looking longingly into the pastry box.

“Can I have a groom for the road?”

Katie fished one out. “Take him. I got frustrated with the texture and modeled him after Munch’s
The Scream
.”

Anya held the melted figure in her palm. The figure’s hands were pressed to his head, his openmouthed face contorted in an expression of culinary agony. Across his chest, the words “Eat me” were scrawled in icing.

That was something she could do. Anya devoured him in three bites. For once, devouring someone gave her a warm, satisfied feeling.

Certain places were always haunted.

Some locations held a magnetic pull for the dead. It was a good bet that there would be a restless spirit or two hanging around a museum of any substantial size: the spirits of artists could sometimes attach to their creative works, and, of course, there were burial urns and bones of the dead. When she was a child on a field trip, Anya was convinced the spirit of a dinosaur was roaming the halls of the Smithsonian. Jails and prisons were another favorite for spirits: there were always inmates who were murdered or killed themselves, and they tended to linger, imprisoned in death as surely as they were in life. Nursing homes invariably harbored a collection of spirits still attending their daily activities and staring at the television, as if nothing much had changed. Those spirits seemed stuck in a never-ending tape loop—more often than not, living residents played bingo beside the dead. Anya doubted that many of them knew they had died.

Hospitals, though, were the most haunted. Anya avoided them whenever possible. The fluorescent lights burning twenty-four hours a day, the smell of bleach, the hurried movement of the living. . . these things did nothing to scour away the souls of the confused who wandered the corridors in search of a restroom or their rides home.

Anya steeled herself, gripping the steering wheel of her car in the parking garage of Detroit Receiving Hospital. She never took a spirit unless there was no other choice. But in these places, the spirits could behave badly. She would have to ignore the trouble they caused, trying to catch her attention.

She stepped out of the Dart and slammed the door. The solid sound echoed across the cavernous garage like a summons and she swore she could hear rustling somewhere below her. The salamander collar on her throat warmed. She felt Sparky stir, his ear-gills perking up. The familiar spirit would be riding shotgun on this one; there was no way she could imagine Sparky wouldn’t feel compelled to sniff at the strange spirits and gnaw on expensive electronic equipment.

He unfurled from her throat, sliding down her back, and took shape on the floor of the parking garage. He looked up at her, tongue flicking.

“Be good, Sparky,” she murmured. “I’m at work, so keep a low profile.”

Anya turned to walk toward the parking garage elevators. Sparky kept pace with her, his hips swishing side to side as he came to heel. He was trying very hard to be wellbehaved. She’d see how long this would last.

She stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the ground floor. Sparky reached up and licked the grimy button. The light behind the button dimmed.

“Sparky,”
she hissed.

His feathery ear-fronds laid back, Sparky put his head down between his front feet, chastened.

The doors opened to the ER lobby, and Anya groaned inwardly. The lobby was full of living patients perched in chairs and wheelchairs, with doctors and nurses milling calmly around them. A young woman with needle tracks on her arm was retching in a trashcan. A mother yelled at her son for sticking a marble up his nose, threatening to slap it out of him. A man wearing a business suit stared blankly at the soaps on the television in the waiting area. He was restrained to a gurney, and his hands were bound with heavy gauze mittens.

These things didn’t disturb her nearly as much as the translucent spirit of the elderly lady with the bowl of Jell-O on her head. She screamed at Anya from the information desk, shaking her fragile fists in wrath. She wore pink fuzzy socks and a hospital gown open in the back to expose buttocks sliding down toward the backs of her knees.

She pointed her finger at Anya and howled,
“That’s the one! That’s the nurse who stole
my cigarettes!”