Embers (11 page)

“Yeah. I want to see who’s walking by.”

Brian stepped onto the hood of the car, reaching up toward the top of the door. Like a malevolent black canary, the camera stared down at the ground with an obsidian eye. It was unobtrusive enough to be mistaken for a piece of rubble, the black housing blending in with the char. Unlike most webcams Anya had seen, this one displayed no lights to show that it was online. Brian opened his laptop on the hood of the car, then turned it around to show Anya. “Does this work for you?”

In shades of green night vision, Anya could see herself and Brian huddled over the laptop. The angle of view stretched from one edge of the building to the other.

“Nice,” she said. “But how long will the batteries last?” Electric and gas had not been restored to the site and might not ever be.

“About forty-eight hours, give or take. The transmitter has a solar backup, so it should recharge during the day. But if you have a cloudy day, it’s going to be dead by the next nightfall.”

“I didn’t know they made those,” Anya remarked.

Brian grinned. “I’m considering this to be a field test.”

She leaned against the car, watching him fiddle with the screen resolution. “I get the feeling that you ‘field test’ a lot of gadgets with DAGR.”

“Sure. It’s a chance to work on surveillance in a wide variety of conditions. . . and the things we measure are very subtle. Gives me the chance to test-drive the equipment before I put together final prototypes.”

“You got another one of those birdies for the basement?”

“I like that. . . you just gave me a code name for these little guys. Blackbirds.” Brian pulled another one out of his bag. “Where do you want this one to perch?”

“Follow me.” Anya stepped around the corner of the building, to the window she knew the arsonist had entered through. The camera at the main entrance would catch him if he was casually walking by; the camera in the basement would capture his image if he decided to come play some more.

Anya pulled back a piece of plywood covering the window. Forensics had taken the grating and the glass in their unsuccessful attempt to lift prints. All that remained was a gaping black hole, leading to darkness. Gripping the edge of the window frame, she lowered herself down into the basement. Landing in a puddle, she reached up for Brian’s bag. Brian followed, clambering down beside her.

Anya’s flashlight beam swept the basement. She saw no sign of the handyman spirit.

“You might catch some ghost footage on camera, too.” She told him about the repairman with the vacuum cleaner who’d witnessed the arson.

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up too much with this camera,” Brian told her, affixing the camera to a blackened beam facing the window. “Since sunlight won’t penetrate down here, you’re likely to get twelve hours on batteries, max, before it needs to be switched out.”

Anya felt the collar around her neck warm, felt Sparky’s head lift from her shoulder and look backward.

“That’s a pretty fancy gadget.”

Anya turned, seeing the outline of the repairman’s ghost standing over Brian, peering up at the camera perched in the support beam.

“Brian,” she said, “our ghost is here.” She doubted that Brian would be able to see or hear him, but she didn’t want him to think that she’d gone off the beam, talking to the walls.

Anya addressed the ghost. “Hello, again.”

“Hello, miss. May I ask what that geegaw is?”
He held his hands behind his back, looking into the fish-eye lens. She wondered if he could see his own reflection in it.

“It’s a camera. We’re hoping that the man who set fire to the warehouse will come back, and we want to try to identify him.”

“Son of a gun.”
The spirit passed his hand back and forth over the lens, fascinated.

“That’s neat.”
He looked back at Anya.
“The only people who have been down here
have been the firemen. I talked to them, but I was pretty sure they didn’t hear me, like you
do.”

A good sign. That suggested that the firebug hadn’t been back to the scene yet.

“Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions about the other night?” Anya asked, treading carefully with the ghost. She didn’t want to frighten him off. But, for now, he was her best witness. “I’m Anya, by the way. And this is Brian.” She gestured to Brian, who had discreetly backed into a corner, fiddling with a digital recorder. Christ, she thought. Did he have a utility belt full of surveillance equipment, too?

The repairman tipped his hat.
“I’m Virgil. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Anya felt Sparky twining down her arm. After taking shape on the floor, he walked up to Virgil and sniffed his pant leg. Virgil knelt before him and offered his hand for Sparky to smell.
“And who is this?”

“This is Sparky.”

“I’ve never seen a dog like that. Is he named after Sparky Anderson?”

“Yeah, I’m a baseball fan. He’s, um, sort of a mutt.”

Anya left it alone. She didn’t want to get into a discussion about elemental familiars and what she did for a part-time job. The spirit would be less inclined to talk if he knew she could eat him as easily as if he were a cookie. She unfolded the printouts of her suspect’s image from the news tape and shone her flashlight on them. “Could you please tell me if this is the man who came in here the other night?”

Virgil peered at the pieces of paper. He brushed them with his fingertips, and his hand passed through.
“Yes. That was the man.”

“He came alone?”

“Yes. But I didn’t talk to him.”

“Why not?”

Virgil paused.
“I was afraid that he would eat me.”

Anya’s brow wrinkled. “Why were you afraid of that?”

“He seemed very hungry. Like you, but not like you.”
He cocked his head
. “I don’t
believe that you’d eat a spirit without good reason, Miss Anya.”

Anya’s thoughts churned. Had another Lantern been here? Or was the old spirit just fooling with her? Spirits, especially if left to rot for decades, could be unreliable pranksters. Still. . .

She gestured to the symbol on the floor, the mark of the Horned Viper. “Did you see him do that?”

Virgil nodded.
“Damndest thing. He drew on the floor with his finger, and it glowed,
bright as coke in a steel mill.”

Now she knew the spirit was bullshitting her. She crossed her arms over her chest. “He didn’t have a torch or welding equipment?”

“No, ma’am. He came in here with empty hands. He set that mark on the floor, and then.

. . this wave of fire rolled up from the floor. It was like looking at the ocean, only red, the
way it moved. . .”
Virgil made curving shapes with his hands.
“It was beautiful,”
he admitted.

Anya frowned. The spirit was messing with her, or he’d lost his grip on reality over the years, or. . . her logical mind refused to contemplate what the alternative meant, if he was telling the truth. “Did he get out?”

“Right back the way you came in. The fire didn’t seem to bother him much.”

“Thank you, Virgil. I appreciate your help.”

Virgil tipped his hat and melted into the wall.
“It’s a pleasure, Miss Anya. Good luck.”

Anya turned to look at Brian, who was staring intently into a fistful of gadgets. “Did you get any of that?”

Brian showed her a voice recorder. “We’ll see. I take it from your end of the conversation that he positively ID’d your suspect?”

“Yeah. But it’s not exactly the kind of evidence that will stand up in court. I can’t put a ghost up on the stand.”

Brian surveyed the wreckage of the basement. “Somehow, I think that’s going to be the least of your problems.”

“Did you pass your exam?”

Anya sat in the showroom of the used-car dealership across the street from the warehouse. A fully restored 1969 Ford Mach 1 sat in the floor, gray and white paint gleaming under years of wax. Anya had to restrain herself from asking if she could sit in it. Beside her, Brian had set up the laptop on a salesman’s desk, fiddling with the video feed. The place had a snack machine and bathrooms; it was warm and quiet. . . best location for a stakeout Anya had ever had.

John Sandoval sat at a conference table, books stacked around him. The young security guard grinned and gave Anya a fist-bump. “Ninety-six percent. I rocked that test.”

“What are you studying?”

“Premed.”

“No kidding?” Anya stared over her coffee cup at him. She’d decided to avail herself of the coffee John had brewed in the salesmen’s lounge; she couldn’t quite look at a pop machine yet without wincing. “What area do you want to go into?”

“Epidemiology.” The kid put his chin in his hand, and Anya could very nearly see the shapes of his daydreams. “If I go to work for CDC in Atlanta, they have some great research programs. . . and some sweet loan forgiveness.”

It was a shame that a bright kid like that dreamed of fleeing the city. But Anya couldn’t really blame him. Unemployment was over 25 percent in the city, and the crime. . . a government research fellowship looked undeniably better than an inner-city life guarding a rich man’s Mach 1. Anya wished him well, but also wished that there was something in the city to keep good kids like him around. But Detroit had nothing to offer him.

She lifted her cup. “To the future doctor. Salut.”

“Cheers.”

From the next desk, Brian called out, “Hey, you might want to take a look at this.”

Her heart quickened, and she rose to bend over his shoulder. Brian pointed out a twinge of movement on the periphery of the dark screen. “I think we have a visitor.”

Anya sprinted past the Mach 1 and out the door. The fluorescent brightness of the showroom receded into the darkness of the street. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and she scanned the ruined façade of the warehouse. Around her neck, she felt Sparky churn to life. He slithered over her hip, landing on the sidewalk in full hellbender shape. His feathery gills strained forward, tail lashing in agitation. He was in full agreement with Brian’s instruments that something was out there, but she couldn’t see where. . .

There. She spied movement behind the fence, around the corner of the building where the firebug had entered. Her heart hammered in her chest and she reached into her jacket for her gun and flashlight. In all the time she’d been an arson investigator, she’d never had cause to draw the little .38 revolver. More than anything, it had been just an extra piece of heavy junk to lug around, like a watch or cell phone, that she carried only because she was expected to. Now, in the pursuit of this criminal, she was glad to have it. The metal felt cool and foreign in her hand.

She jogged across the street, her steps light and nearly soundless on the cracked macadam. Sparky surged soundlessly beside her. She paused at the fence line, listening. Hearing nothing, she ducked under the open edge of the fence, then crept through the rubble to the basement window. She could see a light moving in the basement, pale yellow as a firefly. It bobbed and weaved from one edge of the basement to the other, as if searching. But the light was not bright enough to be a flashlight; it was pale as Sparky’s Gloworm. She kept to the right of the window, knowing if she stood directly before it, the intruder would see her shadow against the paler blackness of night.

She aimed her gun into the dark, then clicked her flashlight on in the other fist. “Come out with your hands up.” It sounded like a line from an old movie, but she couldn’t come up with any clearer instructions.

The light in the basement stilled, then extinguished itself. From the darkness below, she heard Virgil’s voice:
“Be careful, Miss Anya. He’s got a. . .”

She heard a crash of something metallic being kicked over. She sensed Virgil’s cold, ghostly presence beyond the wall. Then. . . he simply fizzled away in an amber flash, as if he’d been sucked into a black hole. That rushing of strange gravity felt so familiar to Anya that she rocked back on her heels. It felt like when she devoured a spirit.

“Virgil?” she whispered.

No one answered. She couldn’t sense him beyond the charred black of the wall. In the sick pit of her stomach, she knew that he was gone.

A brilliant red light erupted from the basement window. Anya flung her arm up to shield her eyes. The shape of a man burst from the window frame, climbing up to the ground level as easily as fire driven by wind. She smelled a whiff of sulfur and her stomach churned.

Sparky lunged at him. The salamander tackled him, growling. Instead of passing right through him, Sparky made contact, rolling with the flaming man on the ground. Anya stood over him with her gun trained on the figure’s head. Sparky did his best impression of a pit bull, snarling and biting at the man in flames. The heat roared up, driving Anya back. Somewhere in the back of her mind it registered: for Sparky to be able to get his jaws around him, this flaming man must be magick.

The flaming figure’s head turned, looked at her. The fire dimmed for an instant and she could make out his face. It was the same face from the videotape, but in person his eyes burned with such terrible heat that Anya nearly gasped.

“Freeze,” she snarled at him, though it seemed a useless order.

The arsonist rolled over, flinging Sparky away. The salamander skidded across the narrow alleyway on his back, legs churning. The man climbed to his feet and made to run.

“I said, ‘Freeze.’” She squeezed off a round from the short-barreled revolver that flung her arms up over her head with the recoil. The shot struck him in the shoulder. The flaming man spun around, gazing at her with burning wrath. He lowered his head and she had the sense of a bull getting ready to charge her. Where the bullet had struck, the fire seemed to drain away. Over his body, the fire guttered, twitching. She’d broken his concentration, and she’d break a hell of a lot more if he didn’t stand down. He limped two running steps forward, flaming hands reaching toward her. She felt her hair crack and sizzle, turned her chin away, and flexed her finger on the trigger.