Embers (4 page)

A whine emanated from the side of Anya’s bed.

Anya opened one eye. Sparky’s head peered over the mountain of covers. Anya groaned. She was too tired to try to Ferberize the salamander tonight.

She climbed out of bed, grabbed the Gloworm, and tossed it into her bed. Sparky climbed in with her and rooted under the blankets. He made himself comfortable, draped over one of Anya’s hips. He cradled the Gloworm between his feet. Anya idly stroked his loose speckled skin and Sparky began to purr, a low vibration in the back of his ribs.

Sometimes, Anya wondered what it would have been like to have had Brian’s warmth next to her. She’d seriously contemplated it in the past. But she didn’t know how to explain sharing a bed with a familiar elemental spirit. While it was true that humans couldn’t see Sparky, his presence could be sensed: fluctuations in temperature, static electricity, a sense of being watched. When Anya had taken lovers before, Sparky had not taken well to them. It was distracting to be in the act of making love to a man with a fivefoot salamander sitting at the foot of the bed, head cocked, slapping his tail on the blankets. Sparky manifested at will, unpredictably. But he could always be trusted to make an appearance whenever Anya was in the presence of spirits. . . or when the possibility for intimacy with a man presented itself.

The copper salamander collar had been her mother’s. Though her mother had never spoken of it, Anya assumed that Sparky had been bound to the collar as long as it had existed. . . however long that had been. When her mother had recognized Anya’s budding gift of mediumship, she had given her Sparky for protection. Anya had never known her father, but Anya’s mother had obviously managed—at least once—to surmount the obstacle of romance with an elemental chaperone. But Anya’s mother was gone, and there was no one else to ask how to train a salamander to sleep in his own bed.

But then again, maybe sex was overrated. Sparky’s warm tail coiled around her ankles and he snored softly. At least Sparky had good manners: he didn’t fart, scratch himself, or have morning breath. He was rather like sleeping with an electric blanket. . . which was probably the best Anya could hope for at the present.

Curled in the warm embrace of the salamander cuddling his toy, Anya drifted to sleep.

She dreamed of ice.

Anya turned on her heel in a vaulted chamber, ice crunching under her feet and covering the walls in a wet sheen of gray and glitter. The only illumination emanated from Sparky, incandescing as he wound about her heels. The ceiling stretched stories above her, beyond the limits of her sight. Chill radiated from the walls. Striations of earth striped the ice in broad brushstrokes, as if this place had been carved from centuries of glacial sediment.

Large as a canyon, the chamber yawned into darkness ahead. Sparky’s light couldn’t penetrate it; it was too far. But something shifted and moved in that black distance. Sparky’s tongue flicked in and out, tasting the darkness. She could sense it, too. . . something massive turning over in its sleep.

Beside her stood the child from the pop machine: a little girl dressed in a yellow dress, white pinafore, and white sneakers. Plastic multicolored barrettes tied her hair back in neatly braided cornrows. She looked up at Anya with beautiful brown eyes framed with thick eyelashes.

Sparky cocked his head at the girl, then bent down to nibble at one of her untied shoelaces. The girl made no move to discourage him.

Anya’s eyes stung with tears, seeing this child as whole as she had been in life. She knelt before the little girl. She couldn’t imagine what the weight of time had done to the child to warp her into the malevolent spirit she’d met in the pickle lady’s basement. “Sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were in there.”

The girl regarded her with her solemn, unblinking eyes. She pointed into the pitch-black nothingness:
“Sirrush is coming.”

Like a marionette on a string, Anya was drawn toward the darkness. She walked farther into the ice cathedral. The walls now glistened with dampness and she could feel warmth on her skin. Heat shimmered, casting glimmering illusions from Sparky’s luminescence on the walls, like a candle behind an ice cube.

Something was there. She could hear it breathing. She smelled something burning, could taste carbon and ozone in the air. She inhaled the warmth deep in her lungs, and it seemed that breath filled up the cold void, the bottomless black hole that devoured the spirits she touched.

For the first time, that hole in her chest was full. Warm.

The thing in the cave bellowed with a roar that shook ice fragments from the ceiling and cracked the ice underfoot. Anya clamped her hands over her ears to block the terrible howl that sounded like the end of the world. . .

. . . and the howl dissipated into the ringing of a phone.

Anya rolled over, disentangling herself from Sparky’s webbed foot in her mouth, and snatched the phone on her nightstand.

“Hello.”

“Lieutenant Kalinczyk? It’s Captain Marsh.”

Anya stared blearily at her clock. It was still an hour before she had to get up. It was not a good thing for Marsh to be calling her at home.

“What’s up?”

“We’ve got another burn site for you to look at. We’re cooling it down now.”

“How bad is it?” She cradled the phone on her shoulder, scrabbled for a pen. Sparky snagged the phone cord and gnawed on it. Anya shoved him away and he retreated under the covers, sulking. The Gloworm blinked under the covers like a neon sign in the red light district.

Marsh paused. “One of our guys got hurt. Beam fell on him.”

“Who is it?” Her heart thumped under her ribs. It might be someone she knew.

“It was Neuman from Ladder Company Eight. He’s at the burn unit at Detroit Receiving Hospital now.”

Anya blew out her breath. It was no one she knew personally. But now that the fire had taken blood, blood from the Department, all resources would be brought to bear on the offender. “Got any firebugs in custody?”

“We’re holding a security guard for you to question.”

Anya scribbled down the address. The address was a warehouse a few blocks from the river, south of Vernor Avenue. The area was industrial, likely to be deserted in the early hours of the morning—a perfect target.

She hung up and flipped the covers back.

“Sparky. Up.”

Sparky yawned, plodded up her arm, and dangled around her neck like a sloth before he shrank and melted into her collar.

Anya pulled on a pair of black dress pants and a black turtleneck. As an arson investigator, she was rarely required to wear a uniform, but there was no point in owning dry-clean-only clothes or clothes that showed stains in her profession. Her closet had dwindled to a sea of black, brown, and gray pants, sweaters, and jackets. It suited her well; she disliked being the center of attention.

Anya tied up her long hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, then checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She swiped on a bit of copper-colored lipstick—the only concession to a professional appearance she had time for—snatched her coat, and bolted out the door into the cold gray dawn, dreading what she might find at the scene.

The damage had been worse than she’d thought.

The entire block had been cordoned off with police tape. Wending her green 1972 Dodge Dart through the clotted fire trucks, police cars, and utility company vehicles to the scene was like attempting to find parking for a tank at a theme park on a summer weekend. The street was wet from leaking fire hoses and the smell of chemical foam and char was sharp in the air.

Under the pink light of dawn, Anya rounded the corner to the target building. It had formerly been a warehouse, probably constructed just after the turn of the century, blackened brick pierced with sixteen-pane windows. Decades of ever-widening roads had encroached upon the property; the facade sat nearly on the sidewalk, the front door only steps from the street. Anya noted that there should have been four high stories, but the top two had collapsed in. The mass of blackened cinders that had been a roof hung suspended like dark feathers in a nest. The street-level windows had been boarded up with plywood, and those had burned quickly. The tentacles of fire hoses reached in and out of the building. The firefighters were, no doubt, trying to keep the ash down and keep the building from flaring again, never mind what other particulates were likely to be in the air: asbestos, burnt plastic, rubber.

Anya shut off the ignition and opened the trunk of the Dart with her keys. The Dart had no fancy features, except for power steering and a radio. Even the transmission was manual. For Anya, the lower tech, the better. Once upon a time, she’d owned a compact car with a power sunroof and door locks, automatic transmission, even a back window wiper blade. That had lasted all of three months with Sparky’s poking and prodding of the gadgets. She’d bought the Dart, a low-mileage cream puff without a spot of rust, for next to nothing at an auction from a collector who was going bankrupt—not an uncommon occurrence in Detroit these days. With the Dart, Sparky found very little to tear up inside such a battleship of a car. She still had to replace the battery more often than she thought she should, but she rarely caught him under the hood, gnawing at the terminals like a dog with a rawhide. As a bonus, the leather seats wiped clean of fire scene carbon and other nasty debris from her investigations. The only drawback was the gas mileage. That, and the two-door model was called the Swinger, a fact which random car enthusiasts would tell her when she was minding her own business loading groceries in the parking lot.

Her tools were neatly arranged in a pair of heavy duffel bags in the trunk. She pulled off her coat and shoes, donned protective coveralls, then, balancing against the car bumper, stepped into a white hazmat suit. No matter what size she ordered, the suits were always too big and made her feel like a walking marshmallow. She slipped her firefighters’ boots on over the plastic feet of the hazmat suit, then shrugged into her yellow firefighters’

coat. The white letters of her name reached from armpit to armpit. For good measure, she slipped a respirator mask over her neck. Parking her firefighter’s helmet on her head, she grabbed her bags and made for the incident command post.

It had been three years since Anya had ridden on fire trucks in full uniform, feeling the adrenaline jolt of the sirens. That part of the job had its allure, as well as its challenges. There were fewer women in the Department than men and she had worked hard to distinguish herself as a capable and reliable firefighter. She’d been promoted quickly and her superiors relied upon her to work quietly, efficiently, and without drama.

That lack of drama handicapped her at times with her colleagues. Firefighters were, by nature, a close-knit family. If she was honest with herself, that was part of the reason why Anya had joined—she wanted to feel some of that sense of belonging. In earlier years, she’d spent her share of twenty-four-hour shifts at the station house. Anya had found it difficult to live in a fishbowl. Though she’d had many opportunities, she’d turned down the men who’d tried to date her. She was usually the only woman on shift and had the good fortune to be able to sleep in a room alone, where no one would sense Sparky kicking the covers.

Sparky had loved the firehouses. There were always things to get into, to root about in, things that smelled of delicious fire. In one firehouse, Sparky had developed an interest in licking the light switches and electrical panels. The captain there had been convinced the station was wired badly enough to warrant entirely new wiring. When Sparky had developed a taste for one of the firemen’s neon beer signs, he’d nearly burned the station down. A bored salamander with nothing to do was a dangerous thing.

When the investigator position opened, Anya was ready to transfer to a position that would allow her to sleep in her own bed and keep Sparky from tasting the machinery. Anya had found the investigative work to be more satisfying. Working behind the scenes, she unraveled the puzzles of forensic and behavioral science that pointed to a myriad of reasons for setting fires: to cover up crimes, for insurance money, for revenge, for pathological pleasure. . . the exact reason for each fire was unique, just as unique as the patterns of flame and smoke damage.

But transferring to the investigative division took her out of the fishbowl; now she was on the outside looking in. Investigators worked regular shifts, then went home to be with their families. There was little of the camaraderie that existed at the firehouse. Anya’s isolation from her colleagues widened as time passed.

Anya clomped to the command post for the scene, identifiable by a knot of firefighters and utility personnel poking at blueprints. She spied a familiar bear of a figure in a hazmat suit and helmet scribbling on a clipboard: Captain Marsh. He towered over the utility workers, his respirator dangling from his neck. The hazmat suit was a bit too short in the sleeves for him. His chestnut brow gleamed with sweat, his graying hair clipped closely to his skull. He wore the scar creasing his forehead as a badge of honor, making no attempt to hide the wound he’d received years ago when he’d been on a ladder truck and a building exploded. Marsh was matter-of-fact and didn’t believe in sugarcoating the truth.

“Captain,” she greeted him. “What’s the story?”

Marsh looked up from his clipboard. “Kalinczyk. What we’ve got is a warehouse partitioned up for storage. It’s been sliced and diced up with all manner of walls that weren’t up to code.” It annoyed Marsh when people didn’t follow code and something bad happened.

“Any luck contacting the owner?”

“Not yet. So we don’t know what was in there. So far, we’ve got furniture, office supplies, document storage, what looks like personal storage. . . who knows what else. All of it was highly flammable, crammed into small spaces.” Marsh flipped pages in his clipboard. “Fire was reported at oh-four-twenty by a security guard at the car lot a half block away.” He stabbed his thumb at a man sitting in the back of a patrol car. “That’s him.”

“Does he have a record?”