Embers (12 page)

A black blur rocketed across the alley, knocking the burning man ass over teakettle. In the singe of motion that crashed both figures against a dumpster, Anya yelled.

“Brian!”

The fiery figure peeled away, away from Brian’s prone form on the alley floor. Anya reeled in rage, firing at the receding man. As he ran down the alley, favoring his right leg, the flames flickered, and he melted into the darkness.

Anya knelt over Brian, hands shaking. He smelled like char. She shook him. “Brian!”

Brian struggled to sit up. She could see that the zipper on the front of his jacket was melted. She ran her fingers over his exposed skin, his hands, his face, coming away with just bits of ash. The skin was reddened, but not blistering. He’d been lucky.

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” He repeated it like a mantra as she ran her hands over him. He finally took her hands in his and stilled them.

“What the hell do you think you were doing?”

“Trying to keep you from being barbecue.”

Sparky limped up to her side and put his head in her lap. She stroked the salamander’s back, and he groaned. Sparky rarely got into fights—the only things that he could directly touch were Anya and spirits. . . and that thing, whatever it was. The salamander wasn’t used to being slung around like a sack of potatoes.

She looked back down the alley where the arsonist had disappeared. Whatever he was, he wasn’t going to get far with a gunshot wound. She pulled her radio out of the belt to summon DPD and the squad.

“What the hell was that thing?” Brian muttered.

She peered down into the basement window. What had the burning man wanted down there? This felt like more than simple voyeurism, more than wanting to revisit the scene out of pride. The burning man had gone down there with a purpose.

Something glowed red in the darkness below. Casting a backward glance at Brian and Sparky, she asked, “Will you be okay for a minute?”

Brian waved her on. “I’m good.”

Anya shimmied down the rabbit hole. Shining her light into the black she called, “Virgil?

Virgil, are you here?”

There was no answer. Anya picked her way over to the heap of vacuum cleaner parts, touched the blackened vacuum canister that the repairman’s ghost had been working on. She felt no chill of a spirit within it. She sat back on her heels, feeling sick.

Whatever the burning man-creature was, it had eaten Virgil.

She cast her light over the basement, searching for the source of the red glow. Initially, she’d feared that the arsonist had tried to reset the fire, to destroy what little was left.

But, no. The glow emanated from the floor of the basement, beside the symbol of the Horned Viper. The number
14
had been slashed into the concrete, the number still glowing dull red from the intense heat.

Fourteen. Fourteen
what
? The puzzle rattled in her head. Fourteen fires?

The realization chilled over her slowly.

Fourteen days.

Fourteen days until Devil’s Night.

CHAPTER SIX

THIS WOULD BE A TOUGH room to sell the truth to.

Anya stood beside Captain Marsh in the DFD headquarters conference room, hands laced tightly behind her back. With Neuman’s death in the fire classified as a homicide, the police department would be taking over the lead on the case. DPD had sent over three detectives from their Major Crimes Division, and none of them looked too pleased to be there. The three men sat in the back of the room, lounging back in their chairs. Only one of them had brought a notebook. Their division commander had ordered them to work on an arson task force with DFD, and it was clear they resented not having full authority over the case. One of them had asked Anya to make some coffee. She’d sweetly directed him to the vending machine down the hall.

Detective Vross made faces as he drank his vending-machine brew. Evidently, he’d had some difficulty operating the machine, as creamer dribbled down the side of the cup. He was a short, pudgy, pasty, balding crank of a man. In her occasional dealings with him, Anya had suspected the only reason he hadn’t retired was because he enjoyed being unpleasant. In his current position, he was allowed to be unpleasant to the public at large. If he had to go back to being a civilian, that sort of behavior just wouldn’t be tolerated. Some hapless fast-food worker who was sick of his rants would poke his eye out with a spork.

“So you screwed up your case. And you want the big dogs to bat cleanup.” He slurped his coffee.

“Actually, the term you’re looking for is
collaboration
,” Marsh responded with a glare that would have frozen Vross’s coffee.

“Fine. We’ll use big words. We’ll
collaborate.
” Vross’s mouth twisted around the word, as if it tasted bad. “What do you have for us to
collaborate
on?”

“Four arson sites, all with similar MOs.” Anya handed out photocopies of a map with each location starred. “No common relationship in terms of structure, use, or ownership: two houses, a beauty shop, and a warehouse. The lab’s detected no use of conventional accelerants or explosive residue and the heat damage is far too even for a single ignition point.” She passed out pictures from the scenes.

“And you trust the lab on this?” Vross flipped the picture back. “They need to do this over. They missed something.”

Anya gritted her teeth and continued. “The lab also found that these marks, which were discovered on the concrete floors on the lowest levels of the structures, were caused as a result of high-temperature melting.” She showed a picture of the Horned Viper symbol.

“The arsonist created the first symbol at the time of each arson. It’s an Egyptian hieratic character called the Horned Viper. He returned to the scene of the warehouse fire last night and carved the number 14 beside it.

“My analysis is that the crime is ritualistic in nature and I think the number is a countdown to Devil’s Night. I went back to the previous scenes of the other crimes, and found that similar numbers had been burned into the concrete: 24, 21, 19, 14.” She fanned her photographs on the table. “He seems to return to the scene within two days, after the scene has been released and the site is quiet.”

Vross kicked back in his chair. “I got a report from the patrol bureau that you saw this guy last night.”

The two detectives behind him looked up. Hume she knew to be a yes-man, who would always go along with whatever Vross did. The other one, Millner, was new. He was the one who brought a notebook. He was scribbling furiously, hand pressed to his forehead. Perhaps there was hope for him. If there was, Anya had no doubt that he’d transfer to another area.

“Yeah. I staked out the scene.”

“From what I understand, you got a civilian burned, shot at the guy, and didn’t hit him.”

Anya wouldn’t allow him to bait her. She responded in a cool voice, though one hand was balled behind her back, ready to punch Vross. “I hit him in the shoulder. The local emergency rooms have been alerted. If this guy shows up with a gunshot wound, we’ll know about it.”

“You need to leave the cop stuff to the cops.”

“Lieutenant Kalincyzk is authorized to use force when the situation warrants it.” Marsh leaned over the table. “The use of force investigation by DFD will back me up on that.”

Vross leaned forward. “How exactly did you feel threatened enough to use force, Kalinczyk? Did the guy throw a cigarette at you?”

Anya’s eyes narrowed. “No. He tried to set me on fire. He burned a civilian.”

“With what? A book of matches? A flamethrower?”

“I’m guessing it was some kind of combustible material. He was covered in it.”

“You guess? Aren’t you supposed to be the expert, dragon lady?”

“Enough.” Marsh slapped his hand down on the desk. The blow shook the faux mahogany with the force of a gunshot. When he spoke, it was in a very low voice, barely above the pitch of a growl. “I will not tolerate backbiting. Are we clear?”

Vross stared back at him, nonplussed.

Marsh leaned forward. “If you can’t play nicely with the other kids on the playground, Vross, I have no problem asking your division commander to reassign someone else to the task force. One of ours got killed in the last arson and I want people to get to work.”

Vross glared, but said nothing.

“Lieutenant Kalinczyk has a composite of the arsonist.” Marsh gestured to Anya.

Anya held up a sketch compiled by a police artist from her recollections and two stills from the news broadcast. “The firebug is approximately six foot two, two hundred pounds, medium build. He’s Caucasian, dark brown or black hair, shoulder length, unknown eye color. His prints aren’t in AFIS, so no priors. He’s got a gunshot wound to the right shoulder and walks with a limp.”

Vross glanced at the photo and waved dismissively at it. “If that’s him, we’ll pick him up in hours. You guys can go back to playing with your fire extinguishers.”

“Then,” Marsh said, “I suggest that you put out an APB on him and get started on some of that much-vaunted police work.”

In Vross’s view, police work was a game for the boys. They took Anya’s marbles and went back to their fort to play with her evidence and set their plastic soldiers out on the street to hunt for the villain she’d described to them.

Anya had spent the largest part of the afternoon copying her case files and boxing them up for Vross and his men. . . not that they would bother to open them. Vross would likely order the boxes tossed in the Dumpster, if anyone even bothered to pick them up.

She decided to go where she was wanted, instead.

“Hey, Ciro. How are you feeling?”

Anya sat on the edge of the chenille bedspread and took the old man’s hand. It felt cold under her palm and she rubbed Ciro’s bony fingers. Ciro lay tucked in bed, pillows propping up his frail shoulders. But he smiled when he saw her, and her heart warmed to see it.

At least
someone
was happy to see her today.

“Better, child, better. They’re telling me that my ticker’s a bit temperamental. But that happens to everyone. Take my advice, though: don’t get old.”

Anya smiled at him. “The alternative’s not very good.”

Ciro chuckled, then coughed. She handed him a glass of water, and the old man sipped at it gingerly. “How’s the little salamander?” he asked.

Anya looked down at the foot of his bed, where Sparky lolled. “Keeping you company, by the looks of it.” Her familiar had been quite clingy since last night. He seemed a bit stiff and sore from the experience, but not much worse for wear. She’d let him take a hot shower with her and allowed him to sleep with his Gloworm on the bed.

Ciro stretched his hand out toward Sparky. Sparky’s tongue curled over his fingers. The old man closed his eyes. “Ah. He feels warm.”

Anya smiled. Ciro always tried to interact with Sparky in his limited human way. And she thought that Sparky appreciated the attention. Poor fellow was too used to being ignored. . . no wonder he was so dependent on Anya. Sparky fell over on his side and cuddled up to the old man, like a heating pad.

“I hear that you and Brian ran into some trouble last night.”

Anya frowned. She didn’t want to disturb the old man with the details of her investigation. But things were rapidly moving out of her depth, and there was no one else to ask:
How can a man burn marks in concrete? How can he be consumed in flame and
not scream?

Reluctantly, she told him about the marks on the floor, about the arsonist returning to the scene. She told him about the yellow light bobbing in the darkness of the basement that flowered into a full-bodied apparition of flame.

“The paramedics treated Brian at the scene and released him. . . said the burns were firstdegree,” she told him, guiltily. Brian had gotten hurt and it had been her fault. She looked down at her hands.

Ciro touched her face. She noticed that his fingers shook. “Child. It’s not your fault. He’ll be okay. I saw him just this morning. Boy’s got a bad sunburn, that’s all.”

“But it could have been much worse,” she said in a small, tight voice.

“He cares about you. Don’t push him away.”

Anya stared down at the bedspread, fingering a tuft of yellow chenille. “Ciro, I’ve got a long history of people close to me getting hurt—hurt bad.”

She could feel the weight of Ciro’s gaze upon her. Her words came out stilted, as if she were confessing to a priest. She took a long time to finish, but Ciro waited, listening through all of her blank pauses and trailing words as she took off part of her armor and showed him what roiled beneath her skull.

“My dad wasn’t around, so it was just me and Mom. And Sparky. He’s been with us ever since I can remember. It took me years to realize that no one else could see Sparky but Mom and me. . . my teachers at school insisted I was making up imaginary friends. They sent notes home to Mom about my overactive imagination.” She shook her head. “If they only knew. . . instead of a lamb following me to school, I had a hellbender.

“My mom was very cautious. She was the kind of mom who took all of my Halloween candy to be X-rayed for razor blades, made me wear an extra sweater, and insisted that I take extra vitamin C. My bedtime was seven o’clock until I was in the fifth grade. I remember her always with a worry mark right here.” Anya pointed to the space between her brows. “And I never really knew what she was afraid of. Everything. Nothing. I could never tell. I felt bad that whatever I did, whether it was walking to the park or staying too late at the library. . . I was always scaring her.