Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel Page 4

  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 litt
le 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.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  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.

  “Harlan, do you know who Justin Benton is?”

  “Nope,” he answered. He shifted his grip on his rifle and looked up the street. He was getting antsy. Where were the police sirens? It had been more than two minutes since that first shot.

  “He was a little boy who lived in this town. Earlier today, I saw him burn up.”

  Harlan burst into tears. The barrel of his gun wavered, then angled toward the asphalt. “My girls,” he said, his voice small and broken with pain. “My girls.”

  “Is that what happened to them?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. The Monday after Thanksgiving, Lorelei didn’t come home from school. I went nuts looking for her. But… but…”

  “But the people in this town acted as though they’d never heard of her. They acted as though she didn’t exist.”

  “They’re liars!” he shouted, his grief flaring into anger. He didn’t point his gun at me. “And the next week, my little Marie disappeared from her bed. Right in the middle of the night. And…”

  He couldn’t go on. I helped. “And there was a black mark on the floor. A long, scary mark. It led to the door-”

  “The window.” He approached me slowly. There was no threat in the way he moved.

  “And it disappeared into the dirt. Now no one in town remembers either of your girls.”

  “They don’t remember any of the kids! Not even their own!” His face was slack with astonishment. He’d apparently forgotten that he’d just accused the whole town of lying to him. Maybe he’d never really believed it. “Even after they saw it happen with their own two eyes! They still have tricycles sitting in their front yards and Happy Meal wrappers on their dashboards, but it’s like they can’t see them!”

  “You saw it, though, didn’t you? You saw it happen right here in town.”

  “Five times.”

  “Is it always kids? Does it happen to adults, too?”

  “Only kids. Never adults. My God, every single person in this town must have seen it, but I’m the only one who remembers.” His eyes welled up with tears. The rifle hung loose in his hand. “Why am I the only one who remembers? And why do I feel this pressure in my head! It’s been there for months, since before my Lorelei vanished. It’s driving me wild!”

  “Harlan, I’m new in town but I came here to find out what’s happening in Hammer Bay. I can’t promise that I can get your girls back, but I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

  I saw hope in his expression. He was a tired man, with a heavy load of gri
ef. He’d been carrying it for nearly half a year, but he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t recognize a helping hand when it was offered.

  “Can you do that?”

  “Man, I don’t know,” I told him. “But I intend to try. I have some questions for you, and I’m going to want to check out the black mark in your house, but I’m not going to be able to do any of that if you shoot me.”

  Harlan looked down at the gun in his hand and blinked.

  I kept my voice low. “Can I have that gun, please?” That was when we heard the sirens.

  Harlan backed away and lifted the rifle. “I’m not crazy,” he yelled. “I was married. I had two little kids!”

  Goose bumps prickled on my neck. “I know, Harlan. I believe you.”

  “Someone in this town is going to tell me where they are. Someone knows what’s happened to them.”

  “Harlan,” I said. His expression had become hard and distant. “You’re that someone. None of these people can remember. Only you.”

  A police car turned the corner and stopped in the road, lights flashing.

  Harlan looked at it like a man nearing the end of a big job. Suddenly, I understood. He was done. His kids were gone, and he was going to commit suicide by cop.

  “Harlan, don’t do it. There are other kids in town,” I said, thinking of the two kids at the gas station. “You could help me put a stop to this. You might be the only one who-”

  He leveled the gun at my chest. His face was calm. “Why don’t you go back into the diner now,” he said in a resigned voice. “Before something bad happens to you.”

  He was aiming at my chest. Would the tattoos there protect me if he squeezed the trigger?

  I had no idea how to talk him down. I imagine cops and paramedics are trained in that sort of thing, but I was just an ex-car thief.

  I laid my hand against the pocket containing my ghost knife. I could feel it there, thrumming with life. If talking wouldn’t work…

  Harlan turned away from the flashing lights on the patrol car and looked up the street. His eyes narrowed. I followed his gaze.

  A wolf stood in the road. I’d never seen one outside a zoo before, but I recognized it immediately. The fur along its back was tinged with red, and it stared at us, standing sideways as though it wanted to present the largest possible target.