Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two (25 page)

Sure enough, a tattooed young man appeared from around the corner. He carried a gun in plain sight and circled her car once, looking around before he climbed into the passenger seat.

“You crazy bitch,” he said. “You can’t park here. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Yes, but if I park here, I know you’ll come faster because you want to protect me from danger. You’re a good man, Carlos. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Drive.”

She pulled back onto the street. Carlos kept looking around, holding his gun. His other hand hovered in Thea’s direction, as if he prepared to grab her and push her out of the way of gunfire.

“Man, your car smells like peach pie. It’s disgusting,” he said.

“I’m surprised you can smell it at all, because you smell terrible.”

“It’s hot out there, woman. What, your men don’t sweat in the heat?” He lowered his gun and adjusted the air conditioner vents to hit him in the face. “You haven’t found your little girl yet?” he asked tenderly.

“No.”

“I can give you a potion to dull the pain. And I’ve got the Mundane shit too, if you prefer to go classic.”

She spared one glance away from the road to glare at him.

“I know, I know,” he said. “You have a different weakness, right?”

“If you consider love for my family weakness, then yes, watch me crumble at your feet.”

Carlos made a gagging noise.

“You know I can pay.”

“Drive us at least past Lark Street.”

She did as he asked, and pulled in the parking lot of an abandoned building covered in graffiti.

“I’ll take your money if you want,” Carlos said. “But I take my work seriously. I’m not going to fill your ears with all kinds of shit just for something to say. And I’m not just going to tell you what you want to hear.”

“I know. That’s why I come to you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if anything has changed. Your prophecy about the Vandergraffs. Has it changed?”

He took her hand and closed his eyes. She looked at the tattoos on his arms while he searched the future. From far away, his tattoos made him look frightening, but they were lovely up close. He had branches that spread up his neck and down his arms. She assumed they sprouted from a tree on his back. On his muscled forearm, he had the names “Isabella,” and “Elena”. On his other forearm it said, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” Acts 1:7.

He released her hand. “No. If anything, the prophecy has grown stronger. And more complex. I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “When you said a Vandergraff would murder a Prescott. Did you envision it would be through magic? Or in a more traditional sense?”

“I see blood. Much blood will be spilled.”

“And you still do not know which Vandergraff will kill which Prescott?”

“When I have my visions, they come to me in symbols. It’s hard to explain, but I do not see earthly things like names, faces, locations, or dates. I only see the symbols.”

“What symbols do you see exactly?”

“The demon slaying the deity. Spilling blood. With great anger. Perhaps in vengeance.”

She nodded. He hadn’t mentioned vengeance before. And that might mean she had found a way to turn the fates.

“And from that you know it’s a Vandergraff killing a Prescott?”

“I’m sorry Miss Thea, it’s hard to describe in words. I make it sound simpler than it is. Something happened recently that has made it messier, more confusing, than the first time I gave you the prophecy. What has happened?”

“Many things. Our families are more intertwined than when we spoke before.”

“That fits.”

“I no longer believe I can cancel out the prophecy. It’s too late for that. I just hope to alter it.”

“You may shine brighter than the rest, but you are not one of God’s angels. And fate is not yours to bend.”

“I never said I was one of God’s angels. But if God wants my babies to suffer and die, I don’t accept that. If that’s God’s plan, you better believe I’ll defy Him. I’d burn in Hell for eternity for the chance to save any one of them.”

“I hope you find your little girl,” he said. “Both of them. They are together.”

Thea expelled a long pained breath, as he answered the question she hadn’t asked. The question she hadn’t dared ask.

“No charge today, Miss Thea.” Carlos stole the half-drunk bottle of water in the cup holder and jumped out of the car, leaving Thea staring at her steering wheel, feeling frozen.

neaking out of the hotel was easier than sneaking out of the house. So easy, Emmy could do it during the day. The two tiny rooms drove all of them crazy, and everyone but Mom kept leaving on random errands…vending machine, ice, coffee, fitness room, pool, parking lot, it didn’t matter. They didn’t announce where they went or why anymore, they just wandered. So, Emmy took the truck keys off the T.V. stand and walked out. She drove to what remained of their home.

The fire department had come fast enough that the whole house didn’t go up in flame. But the summer wizards had done their best. Gasoline drenched the outside walls and brush, with special attention paid to the wooden doors and window frames.

This house had never felt like home, but seeing it destroyed made Emmy’s stomach hurt. It reminded her of looking at the version of her mom with cancer. Something so familiar had gone so wrong. The house was a blackened shell, surrounded by charred and barren brush and trees. It looked odd set among all the normal, non-burned houses. One cancerous cell in a healthy host. Now the whole house didn’t belong in the normal, Mundane neighborhood, as the family inside hadn’t.

She could smell the wet ash from the sidewalk. She feared everything had burned, but Dad had assured them they hadn’t lost everything. The outside looked bad, but the fire never took the house. “Only skin-deep,” he had explained. However, smoke and water from the firemen had damaged everything that hadn’t burned.

She looked around carefully as she walked down the driveway. The police had put yellow tape over the door and warning signs against entering. However, she had already prepared some good sob stories in case she got caught. She wanted her teddy bear. She wanted a picture of her mom from before she got cancer. She wanted her kidnapped sister’s pillow to see if it still had any of her smell. Yeah, she doubted anyone would put her in handcuffs. Especially, because she
did
want all those things, so she wouldn’t have to lie. However, she had come for something else.

To avoid disturbing the crime scene seal, Emmy entered at a spot where the wall had burned away…in her room. When Xavier had first grabbed her in her bed, she had to admit, she freaked. But only for a second. He just had to look at her and she knew what to do. She remembered seeing her bedside lamp reflected in his gray eyes, and thinking the lamp looked like fire, and just knew. They ran out—not one word spoken between them until they got outside.

Emmy had realized they were alone outside and went to run back in. Xavier held her back, and said, “They’re coming.” Emmy knew right away something was wrong about the fire. It leapt up the walls with unnatural vigor, and spread out in lines in the yard that formed a triangle, the ancient symbol for fire, and one of the charms on Julie’s bracelet. It was magic.

Later, the police asked them asked several times if they had seen anyone outside. Emmy hadn’t looked. She hated herself for this now. They must have set the fire minutes before. But Emmy didn’t remember turning around at all. She just looked at the house. And Xavier had been distracted keeping her from running back inside. The arsonist could have stood right behind them.

The fire had blackened Emmy’s bed. The sight of her bed made her throat fill with bile. She pictured her own blackened skeleton there. The fire didn’t get Evangeline’s bed as bad. Her story about wanting to find something with Evangeline’s smell now seemed stupid. Ash and water stains covered Evangeline’s bed. And the smell of fire overwhelmed everything. Nothing here smelled like Evangeline anymore, and maybe nothing ever would again. The thought made her throat tighten with constricted sobs.

The living room looked better. Emmy’s flip-flops were still where she left them by the TV, but the room looked odd. The electricity was off, and the room was dark, with bright patches of sunlight poking through holes where the fire made it through the wall. The sunlight caught ash and dust floating in the air. It didn’t look anything like home anymore.

In Mom and Dad’s room, the carpet had caught fire and the room had a sickening burned plastic smell. She went straight to the closet. The fire hadn’t made it inside.

Mom sold a few of her guns when they had to move, but still had some in a locked chest in the closet. This was a fireproof chest, and way more high-tech than the lockbox she had kept a handgun in at their house before. That one had a key Emmy could find. This one had a combination. Emmy had no idea how to break into this lock, or any lock, so she would have to use a mixture of magic and guessing.

She put her hand on the wheel of the lock and cleared her mind. She waited for numbers to pop into her mind. For some reason, she could only think of Jude. She had this super random memory of playing this vicious—but crazy fun—game of air hockey with Jude at Party Station Pizza. But when the puck flew off the table and nailed Patrick in the face and made him bleed, Mom made them stop. Emmy had been angry that Mom made her sit in a corner behind the crane game for five minutes. And Jude got to go back to his friends because it was…

“Oh,” she said aloud.

She entered the numbers 4596, Jude’s birthday—April 5, 1996. The lock clicked open. She took a moment to scrunch up her nose and feel angry Mom had chosen Jude’s birthday of all the birthdays she could have picked.

Emmy let it go, and she looked through her choices. Two hunting rifles and two handguns. She took a handgun and a box of bullets, checked the safety, and put it in her purse.

Emmy took several deep breaths before she called Nathan. She had to admit she feared him, and that made her feel weak. She was the wicked witch—he should fear
her
. But he was the kind of monster she didn’t understand. She didn’t know how to outwit him. But she wouldn’t let the fear dampen her resolve. She let the fear soak through and turn to anger, because she knew anger would make this easier.