Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel Page 2

  He produced the wallet and Annalise took it. “‘Douglas Benton,’” she read. “‘144 Acorn Road, Hammer Bay, Washington.’”

  “We don’t live there anymore.” Douglas sounded a little frantic. “We’re leaving town.”

  I shook him. “Why?”

  His mouth opened and closed several times. He couldn’t think of an answer.

  “He’s forgotten that, too,” Annalise said. She pulled a card from his wallet. It was white with a magnetic strip across the back. “Hammer Bay Toys,” she read. “This where you work?”

  “Yes,” Douglas said.

  “But you’re not going back.”

  “No. Not planning to.”

  “You didn’t return your security card?”

  “I-I forgot.” Sweat beaded on his lip. He glanced at each of us, trying to think of a phrase that would placate us and let him drive away. He thought we were crazy, and the way I felt at that moment, he wasn’t far wrong.

  “Hmm,” Annalise said, as though she was unsatisfied with his answer. There was a moment of silence. Douglas couldn’t bear to leave it unfilled.

  “Look, I don’t know what the problem is,” he said. “I’m sure we can do something to work all this out. Right? I’m sure it’s just been a misunderstanding or something.”

  Annalise seemed thoughtful. “Maybe you’re right, Douglas.”

  I wondered if this was the moment she would kill them both.

  That made him a little bolder. “Sure, sure, I understand. We’re just a little confused. All of us. The baby didn’t call me Daddy, right, Meg? He’s too young for that.

  “Meg and I have always wanted a son, but we were never blessed until just this winter. See? We’re all just a little mixed up.”

  “One of us is,” Annalise said. “Because you have a front-facing car seat in there.”

  We all looked into the backseat. A plastic car seat was buckled onto the far side of the infant’s seat. A small one. The boy who had just… I wasn’t ready to approach that thought yet, but he was too big to be sitting in such a small car seat.

  Had they lost more than one? Had they forgotten that, too?

  Douglas and Meg looked to each other for an explanation. Silence. Douglas turned to us and said: “We’re bringing it to my sister?” As if he was guessing.

  “There are scorch marks on it,” I said. They were the same sort of marks on the ground where the boy had…

  The Bentons didn’t seem to know what to make of that. The blank confusion on their faces was fascinating. They really were enchanted. My anger was still going strong, but it wasn’t directed at them anymore. I was beginning to pity them.

  Meg went to the backseat, unbuckled the car seat, and heaved it toward the woods. It bounced once on the gravel and disappeared into a patch of nettles.

  Douglas glanced at me nervously. “I don’t know who put that there. Really.” Then he turned toward Annalise. “Do you want money? Is that it?”

  Annalise gave him a sour smile. She took the scrap wood from her pocket and laid it against the station wagon, then against Douglas’s ample belly. The designs twisted, but more slowly than before.

  “Does this hurt?” Annalise asked.

  “No,” Douglas replied.

  “Tell your wife, because I’m going to do this to her, too.”

  She walked around the car and laid the scrap of wood on Meg’s palm. Douglas stared at something fascinating in the gravel at his feet.

  That’s when I noticed his hands. They were red, swollen, and shiny wet. Burned. He didn’t seem to be in pain. If I pointed them out to him the way we had pointed out the car seat, would he suddenly “remember” them? Would he suddenly be in terrible pain?

  Annalise leaned into the Volvo and yanked on the gearshift. Then she walked to the front of the car, laid her tiny hand on the bumper, and shoved it. It rolled out of the ditch onto level ground. She started toward the van. “Ray, let’s go.”

  “Get out of here, Douglas,” I said.

  “Yeah, Douglas,” Annalise said. “Get far away from Hammer Bay, and don’t come back.”

  We didn’t need to tell him twice. Douglas jumped into his car and peeled out of the lot.

  I watched them go, feeling my adrenaline ebb. I couldn’t stop thinking about that little boy, or how fiercely hot the flames had been. I looked down at my own undamaged hands. I felt woozy and sick.

  Annalise called my name again. I turned away, ran to the edge of the lot, and puked into the bushes.

  When that was over, I had tears in my eyes from the strain of it. They were the only tears that little boy was ever going to get. I tried to spit the acid taste out of my mouth, but it wouldn’t go away.

  I wiped my eyes dry. My hands were shaking and my stomach was in knots. That kid had no one to mourn for him except me, and I didn’t have that much longer in this world, either. Something had to be done for him. I didn’t know what it was, but as I wiped at my eyes again, I knew there had to be something.

  I heard footsteps behind me. “Don’t get maudlin,” Annalise said.

  I told her what she could do with herself.

  “Enough with this weepy Girl Scout routine. Drink this.” She shoved a water bottle into my hands.

  I rinsed my mouth and spat. As long as I did what she told me to do, she wasn’t allowed to kill me. I did it again. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said. “I just didn’t want you to stink up the van with your puke breath.”

  We walked toward the van. I wondered how many dead kids Annalise had seen. Maybe the number was so high they barely registered anymore.

  I climbed behind the wheel and buckled in. Annalise never wore her seat belt. She had other, less mundane protections.

  “When the boy burned, he turned into something,” I said. “It was, like, gray maggots or something, and they started burrowing into the ground. What were they?”

  “Start the van.”

  “Why weren’t my hands damaged by the flames? I don’t have tattoos over my fingers. Why wasn’t I hurt like Douglas?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What was that wave I felt? I know you felt it, too. It was like something pushed against my mind.” The words coming out of my mouth sounded ridiculous, but Annalise had just seen me crying like a baby. It’s not like I had any pride left. “And I felt this twinge on my chest-”

  “Start the van,” she interrupted.

  I did. Once we hit the road, Annalise took a cell phone from the glove compartment. She hit speed dial. After a few seconds, she said: “It’s Annalise.” She told the person at the other end of the line Douglas’s name, address, and license number. “Check him out,” she said. “And I’m still waiting for a current report.” She snapped the phone shut without waiting for a response.

  At least I wasn’t the only one she was rude to.

  I focused on the road. The long, slow descent into an overcast northwest night was well under way. I turned on the headlights just in time to light up a sign that said HAMMER BAY 22 MILES. This time, Annalise didn’t protest. Aside from the rumble of the van, it was quiet. Suddenly, I didn’t like the quiet.

  “Who did you call?” She didn’t answer. “Your mom?”

  She shot a deadly look at me. Oops. Sore spot.

  “Why didn’t you kill Douglas?” I asked. “Isn’t that our job? To kill people who have magic?”

  Her response was irritated and defensive. “The Bentons didn’t have magic. Were they carrying a spell book? Had they cast a spell on themselves? Were they hiding a predator?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Someone cast a spell on them. That’s who we want. Those people were no threat. They’re victims.”

  I didn’t say, That’s what I thought, too. I didn’t think the word meant the same thing to her as it did to me.

  We were silent for a couple of minutes. I kept seeing the boy’s face as the flames erupted around it. I kept hearing him say it didn’t hurt. I needed to keep ta
lking, or I was going to start weeping again.

  “Why are we going to Hammer Bay?” I asked. “Not for Douglas. What’s going on there?” She didn’t answer again. “Come on,” I persisted. “We’re supposed to be doing this job and I don’t know anything about it. Tell me what’s going on. Or don’t you know? Flames that don’t hurt. Boys that turn into maggots. People who forget their dead kids. Something that pushed against our minds.” She was silent. “Aren’t you going to explain any of this?”

  “No reason to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll be dead very, very soon.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  We passed over the crest of a hill, and the Pacific Ocean suddenly appeared below us. Then I saw the town of Hammer Bay. We drove down the hill, straight toward the heart of it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Annalise wanted to visit Acorn Road immediately. Rather than drive aimlessly around reading street signs, I insisted we fill the tank and ask directions. The middle-aged clerk behind the counter tried to help, but when he told me to take a right turn where the bowling alley used to be, I snatched a map off the display rack and added it to our bill.

  As I filled the tank, I noticed a young mother pull in next to us, with a little girl and a little boy in the front seat beside her. Her car was full of groceries. “For God’s sake,” she said, exasperated. “Sit still for five minutes! Please? Five minutes?” I finished refueling, trying not to look at the kids. Every time I did I imagined them crowned with flames.

  The streets were sprinkled with potholes and dark from burned-out streetlights. We passed a lot of battered, rundown pickups and rattletrap station wagons.

  We drove by three houses having their roofs repaired and two that were being landscaped. The town looked like it had just started to pull itself out of a long decline.

  It turned out that Annalise was not good with maps. She sent me in the wrong direction twice. We had a lovely but useless tour of Hammer Bay’s downtown. We drove past antique shops and small, family-owned hardware stores. There was a sign above a storefront that read THE MALLET. The newspaper box at the curb had the same name across the front.

  We drove uphill. The waterfront road was on the top of a cliff that grew higher the farther south we went. There were several restaurants: pizza, diner, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, brew pub, and a couple of high-end places that had prime cliffside locations. Sadly, the sports bar was the only place that showed signs of life. A glance through the window at the big screen inside was all I needed to see that the Mariners game was on.

  I had the sudden urge to pull over, but I ignored it. Baseball wasn’t part of my life anymore, and it hadn’t been for a long time. Just thinking about it reminded me of friends I’d lost and times when life seemed much simpler.

  Maybe Annalise was right. Maybe I was being maudlin. What the hell, I was going to die soon, wasn’t I? I had a right.

  By this time my hunger had returned with a vengeance. I slowed as we passed a Thai restaurant.

  “Are you buying dinner?” I asked. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t even have a change of underwear or a toothbrush. If she was going to kill me, she could at least buy me a meal first.

  “Not right now, I’m not.”

  That made me hopeful.

  I took the map from her. It was a cheap tourist map, covered with little icons showing the locations of local landmarks and restaurants that had paid for the privilege. Crude squiggles represented the cliff. Behind us, to the north, was the bay the town was named for. Ahead of us in the dark at the south end of town was some sort of light house, supposedly, although I couldn’t see any lights.

  Acorn Road was at the northeastern end of town. We were at the southwestern end. I made note of the route we needed and started off.

  So far I had not seen a single cop. That struck me as a little strange. Most small towns station at least one car near the bars. I didn’t know if they were busy with an emergency or were kicking back at a doughnut shop somewhere.

  Now that she was not burdened with the map, Annalise picked up the scrap wood again and stared at it. The design churned slowly. It didn’t slow down or speed up. It didn’t change much at all. It just kept moving and moving.

  What ever this meant, Annalise didn’t like it.

  As I drove through the neighborhood, streetlights lit up three more black marks just like the one the gray worms had left in the gravel lot. One started at the top of a bright yellow plastic slide. Another lay across an asphalt driveway beside a skateboard and helmet. The last began next to a pile of windblown, rain-warped schoolbooks.

  Not beside a riding mower. Not a Harley or a pickup. Only kids’ things.

  I found the Bentons’ house and parked on the street. There were only five or six other cars on the block, and Annalise’s Sprinter stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn’t see any lights switch on or any curtains draw back. No one peeked at us. It seemed we had come to a small town where the neighbors were not particularly nosy. In other words, the Twilight Zone.

  Annalise strolled up to the front door and rang the bell. When there was no answer, she rang it again. No answer. She lifted her foot to kick the door down.

  “Wait,” I said. I took the ghost knife from my pocket.

  The ghost knife was nothing more than a small sheet of notepaper covered first by mailing tape, then actual laminate. On one side of the paper was a sigil like the ones on Annalise’s ribbons or our tattoos. This one I had drawn myself.

  It was a spell. My only one.

  The ghost knife slid into the door as if the wood was only smoke. I drew the mark down through the dead-bolt latch and pushed the door open. The dark house lay waiting for me.

  The first time I went to jail, it was a trip to juvie for a handgun accident that had crippled my best friend. There hadn’t been any formal charges over that, but it set a sort of precedent.

  The second time was when I lived in Los Angeles. I’d been working as a car thief, stealing popular models and driving them either to a chop shop or else down to the docks at Long Beach to be shipped and sold overseas. It was fun, sort of. I was in a crew of jack-offs and morons I could almost rely on, and I didn’t have to carry a gun, which was a big plus considering my history. When I was busted for a bar fight, and wouldn’t testify against the jack-offs and morons, the cops made sure I did a couple of years.

  The third time was last year. That didn’t go well, in part because it was how I met and made enemies with Annalise. The cops arrested me following that fiasco, too, but after a couple of months the charges were dropped. I had a lawyer hired by the society to thank for that, along with a lot of forensic evidence that appeared to have been tampered with and/or incompetently handled.

  It hadn’t been, of course, but no one in the legal system was ready to recognize the aftermath of supernatural murder. Even the lawyer the Twenty Palace Society hired thought I was being framed and tried to convince me to sue the Seattle PD.

  I didn’t bother. When I’d walked out of the court house just this afternoon, Annalise was waiting for me. Now I was here in this town, and I wasn’t expecting to see the end of the week. What was the point of filing a bunch of legal papers?

  The point of this digression into the not-so-distant past is that I had a history with cops and jails. I didn’t want to go back. Also, I’d never broken into someone’s house before. Not a stranger’s house, at least.

  So I felt an unfamiliar chill as I pushed the Bentons’ front door open. The house was quiet. I hesitated before entering.

  There’s a feeling of power that comes from invading someone’s space. I’d felt it when I’d stolen cars as part of Arne’s crew. I’d sit behind a steering wheel, beside their fast-food wrappers or what ever, and know I was taking something very personal. A simple action like readjusting the seat-

  “Would you hurry up?” Annalise snapped. “I don’t want to stand here all night.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “
I’ve never done this before.”

  “Well, don’t step in that,” she said, pointing.

  There was a long black streak on the carpet that led to the door. I hopped over it into the living room. The streak led out the door and turned left toward the sea. I was glad I hadn’t stepped in it.

  Annalise shut the door and surveyed the room. She laid the scrap wood against the wall. The design continued to churn.

  I looked around the empty house. Could there be a predator somewhere here?

  “What do we look for?” I asked.

  “Start by following this snail trail to its source. I want to know what happened here and why. Look around. Be thorough. Don’t turn on the lights. And keep your ghost knife handy.”

  That seemed straightforward. Annalise went into the kitchen while I knelt beside the streak.

  An opening in the curtain allowed light from the street-lamps outside to shine on the carpet. I got down on my hands and knees beside it. The carpet fibers appeared to have been scorched, and although I couldn’t smell smoke, I could smell the nasty, sterile tang I’d smelled in the gravel lot.

  The streak went up the stairs. So did I. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom on the upper floor. The streak led to the back room, where it ended in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a heap of scorched blankets.

  There were Kim Possible posters on the wall and little pink ponies on the dresser. A third child for the Bentons. A daughter.

  There was a certificate on the wall that said she’d won her sixth-grade math bee. I didn’t read it. I didn’t want to know her name.

  The room was cluttered and disorganized-she wasn’t a tidy kid-but there were a couple of blank spaces. One was on the wall beside her certificates and awards. Another was a rectangular space in the center of her bureau, among the piled clothes and school papers. Everything had two or three months’ worth of dust on it.

  The nightstand beside her bed was a nest of photos in cheap frames, except for a blank space at the front edge. Four or five more photos lay on the carpet beside the bed. I picked them up, wishing that Annalise had given me gloves.

  Most of them featured a dark-haired girl on the verge of puberty. She was small-boned, like Meg, but she carried a lot of flab, like Douglas. She wasn’t a kid I would have noticed, but standing in her bedroom, knowing that the scorch marks on the floor probably marked the spot where she died, I felt a profound sense of loss.