Child of Fire (28 page)

Someone shouted, “There he is!”

Cynthia’s Escalade backed toward me. “Get in!” she yelled, and the passenger door swung open.

I looked back at the minivan. The remote sat on the dashboard. I grabbed it and jumped into the open Escalade.

Cynthia gunned the engine. The door swung closed on my ankle. I cursed at the sharp pain and pointed the remote through the windshield. There was only one button. I pressed it.

A gunshot shattered the back window. Cynthia screamed and ducked her head. Out of habit, she slammed on the brakes, but before I could say anything she hit the accelerator. The gate slowly rolled open. The parking lot was long, and whoever was shooting was going to have plenty of time to get a bead on us.

I slid closer to Cynthia and draped my arm over her. With my forearm hanging beside her head and neck, my tattoos would provide her some protection, but not a lot.

A bullet punched through the front of the driver’s side window and snapped a hole in the windshield. Cynthia cried out just a little. The gate slid farther open. I thought it would be wide enough for us to clear, but I wasn’t certain. I saw a woman running toward the opening. Her course put her in line with our bumper. Cynthia eased off the gas pedal, as though she was afraid to hit her. Something struck the back of my chair, passing inches from my ribs.

I slammed my palm on the horn. The blare made the woman look at us with a startled, furious expression, then jump aside.

More glass shattered, and I heard bullets punching holes in the SUV. Cynthia ducked low, barely peeking
over the dashboard. She spit out a stream of curses. I would have cursed, too, if I could have unclenched my teeth. Instead I held on to the dashboard, hating guns, hating Phyllis Henstrick, hating Annalise and everyone who had led me into this mess, including myself.

Just as I thought the barrage had gone on too long, and that our luck couldn’t hold anymore, we were through the gate. Cynthia wrenched the wheel to the side and we skidded along the road. The bullets stopped.

An ambulance with flashing lights and blaring sirens raced at us. Cynthia swerved and slammed on the brakes, and the ambulance roared by. I turned around. Through the shattered back window, I could see a few people running through the open gate.

“Oh my God,” Cynthia said, her voice shaky. “Oh my God.”

I still had the remote in my hand. If I pressed it, the ambulance might have trouble getting the injured people out, but Henstrick’s amateur gunmen might be delayed long enough for me to get away. I didn’t press the button.

“Keep it together,” I said. My voice sounded loud in my ears. “Keep going. People are coming through the gates.”

She turned the car and gunned the engine. We roared up the asphalt road, passing the supermarket. Cynthia bared her teeth. She had tears on her cheeks.

There was a red light up ahead. She wasn’t slowing down. “Light! Light!” I shouted. I leaned over and stomped on the brake pedal. The Escalade skidded to a halt.

A woman in a Volvo station wagon loaded with groceries was waiting to pull out of the supermarket lot. She gaped up at the bullet-ridden SUV.

The light changed, and Cynthia eased into the intersection, carefully turning the wheel with shaking hands.
She checked her speedometer several times. She drove like it was her first time behind the wheel. The car rattled and clanked.

“What should I do?” she asked me.

“Drive to your house.”

She did. We got out of the car and walked around it. There were two holes in the windshield. I hadn’t noticed the second, even though it must have happened right in front of me.

Three of the bullet holes were clustered low on the driver’s door. Those must have passed under our seats. Four more were sprayed across the back panel, two very close to the back left tire. Someone had tried to shoot it out. There were two more bullet holes in the front fender. Judging by the way her engine had sounded on the way home, I suspected her engine block had gone the way of the dodo.

“You’re bleeding!” Cynthia said. She touched my shoulder blade. I felt a tiny sting. I had no idea how I’d gotten hurt. “Come inside.”

She led me toward her front door. I looked up at the round tower room at the top of the house. Cabot had said that Charles spent all his time at the tower now. I wondered if he was up there, and what I would do if I found him.

Cynthia led me up the stairs to a large bathroom in the back. While I sat on the edge of the tub, she took a box of Band-Aids and a squeeze tube of disinfectant from the medicine cabinet. She took off my jacket, felt the weight in one of the pockets, and reached inside.

“You had a gun the whole time? Why didn’t you shoot back?”

“Someone might have gotten killed.”

We started laughing. It was a release for her, I knew, but my own laughter only increased the pressure building inside of me. I thought about Bobby’s tooth, and the
chubby guy lying dead on the floor. I thought about the way Tiffany’s face seemed to
give
when I hit her. I kept laughing, but the sound of it scared me. I was alive. I wanted to shout the word at the tile ceiling just to hear it bounce around me.
Alive
.

I clenched my teeth and forced myself to be quiet. I shouldn’t have been laughing, because what ever I was feeling at the moment, it wasn’t happiness. Hammer Bay was full of people doing terrible things for the best reasons. It made me furious. I made me feel dark and low to the ground and ready to kill. This town was making me into something ugly and dangerous. I had to get away, but I knew I couldn’t. Not without setting things right.

Of course, Annalise and I were here to kill whoever we had to kill to stop the magic and save the kids in Hammer Bay. I was here to do terrible things for the best of reasons, too. I hated this town, but I knew it was a mirror image of myself.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t have to like it. I was here to be vicious, to beat, kill, or humiliate anyone I had to, and I wasn’t going to stop until all the magic had been expunged from this place and things were set right. And God help me, I was finally ready to do it. I was ready to go as far as I had to go to get the job done.

Cynthia told me to take off my shirt. I did. She dabbed at my shoulder blade with a wad of tissues. “This isn’t bad at all. It’s barely a scratch.” I didn’t answer. “They were terrible shots, weren’t they?”

“Most people are.”

“No one has ever … do you think they knew it was me? Do you think they were trying to shoot me?”

I understood. She probably had the only Escalade in town, and most people would recognize it.

“No,” I told her. “If they had realized it was you, I don’t think they would have shot at us. Henstrick is still
loyal to your family. I think they were just all worked up and not thinking straight. In fact, I think you should expect a call and an apology from Henstrick.”

I could feel her rubbing something onto my shoulder blade. It stung. Her hair brushed my shoulder, and goose bumps ran across my back.

“Do you go there often?” I had a hard time keeping the suspicion out of my voice.

“No. After I dropped you off at Uncle Cabot’s office, I didn’t go for a cup of coffee like you said. I didn’t realize how I would feel when I saw you go into that building alone—for me—and I couldn’t just go off and eat a banana muffin or something while you risked your life. So I stayed close just in case. I don’t know what I was going to do, exactly, but I hated feeling like a coward.

“So, I was parked down the street when you came out. I saw those men grab you outside the office, and I recognized Bobby, of course. I followed you to the casino and lost two grand at the blackjack table waiting for you to turn up.”

That made sense, and I was grateful that she’d come for me. “The gun is Cabot’s,” I told her. “He was planning to shoot himself, but I convinced him to get out of town.”

“Thank you,” she said in a quiet voice.

“You saved my life to night.”

“We’re even, then.” She taped a gauze pad onto my shoulder blade. It felt like a big pad, but the scratch didn’t hurt much. I wondered again if her brother was in the house somewhere. She patted my shoulder with a dismissive finality. “All done.”

I stood. She was very close to me, and she seemed so small. Her hands were still trembling. I took her hand and held it in mine. I still felt a sickening rage inside. It took all the self-control I had to touch her gently. “Thank you.”

We held hands for a moment. She felt warm and soft and impossibly fragile. I could have squeezed that hand and broken it to mash. The thought terrified me. I was as gentle as I could be.

She let my hand go, and it fell to my side. She stared up at me. Her brown eyes seemed to have turned black. “What next?” she asked.

“What’s in that round room at the top of the house?”

“That’s my bedroom.”

“Take me there.”

She hesitated for a moment. It was just a moment. She looked up into my eyes, then took my hand and led me to the stairs. I carried my shirt and jacket.

We entered the round room. It was tastefully decorated, I guess, with a lot of muted green pastels. Every surface had at least one candle and, for some reason, a stuffed rabbit.

Charles Hammer wasn’t here. As far as I could tell, he had never been in this room. I was vaguely disappointed as I laid my jacket and shirt on a chair. I was absolutely ready to shoot him dead. I didn’t know if I’d ever find myself feeling so ready to kill someone again.

Cynthia stood a few feet from me. “This is it,” she said, as if waiting to see if I approved of her inner sanctum.

I wasn’t going to kill Charles Hammer today. “Take off your clothes,” I said.

She did. I took mine off at the same time.

I saw what I knew I’d see. She had a tattoo on her shoulder blade right where Cabot had his. She had an iron gate, too.

She knew what had happened to all those kids. What was still happening.

She lunged at me and we kissed. We were wild and desperate. I was still filled with rage, but I tried as hard as I could to keep it from her. I liked her.

Even though she had known all along. She had known. She had known. She had known. She had known. …

We made our way to the bed. It was good to feel alive. It was good to touch someone. It was good to feel like a human animal, to smell and taste and hear and see someone close.

She responded to me more powerfully than any woman ever had before, but I could not stop thinking about those dead children, about the flames, about the pale, gray worms, and that she knew all about it. It made me furious and sick at the same moment that we were grasping at life.

When my own release finally came, my mind was full of images of murder, and there was no pleasure in it at all.

I woke up without realizing I’d fallen asleep. The gray sunlight was shining on my face, and the bed jostled slightly.

Cynthia was sitting on the other side of the bed with her back to me. She was wrapped in the top sheet. I could see the iron gate on her back. The thing that had made me sick with anger last night now seemed like another unfortunate fact of life in Hammer Bay. Who was I to judge Cynthia? Or anyone? I was not exactly pure myself.

I reached out to her and touched her shoulder. She let me, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t seem angry or resentful. She simply didn’t react. I took my hand away.

“Last night was powerful,” she said in a low voice. “It was wild and strange and very powerful, but I don’t think I’m going to want to do that again. Not ever. It was good. It was great, in fact, but it scared me, too. I don’t want to visit that place again.”

“I understand,” I told her.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

She turned toward me. The look on her face made me ashamed. I wished I could start over again, more gently this time, but her expression said it all. Never again. “I’m sure.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

I nodded. She stood and dropped the sheet. I watched her put on pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I couldn’t help
imagining her on the floor, screaming, as black steam jetted from the iron gate on her back. She told me that she would wait for me downstairs and left.

Alone, I covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t see or hear anything. I looked inside myself and didn’t recognize what I saw.

I stood and dressed in the clothes I’d tossed onto the floor. My shirt still smelled of gunpowder, and there was a powder-burned hole in the center.

I followed the smell of coffee downstairs. Cynthia stood by the bubbling coffee machine with her phone to her ear. The clock on the wall said it was just after 11
A.M
.

She hung up the phone. “You were right,” she said. “Phyllis left me a message asking if I was all right and saying she was sorry her people were so stupid. She offered to pay for any damages.”

“I thought as much.”

“What about you? Is she going to come after you? I could call her and tell her to leave you alone.”

“Thanks, but it’s better if you don’t get mixed up in that any more than you already have.”

“God, I nearly got shot last night. It doesn’t seem real.”

“It will when your next car-insurance bill comes.”

She laughed. I was glad to hear it. We stood beside the counter, about three feet from each other. We didn’t touch.

“How do you like your coffee?” she asked.

“I’ll have it however you’re having it. I don’t care.”

“Soy sauce and horseradish, coming up.”

This time we both laughed. She set our cups on the table, and we sat. I took a sip. It was very dark and very sweet. I liked it.

“So,” she said to me. “You never did tell me why you met with Able Katz.”

“Tell me about the seizures,” I said. “Have you ever had them?”

The remnants of her smile faded away. She stirred her coffee. “Is it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Am I supposed to give you dirt on my family? On my own brother?”

“I think you misread me.”

“It’s just a toy company, for Christ’s sake—”

“I don’t give a damn about the toy company. I don’t care about that.”