House of Korba: The Ghost Bird Series: #7 (The Academy) (23 page)

Luke turned off the car, opened the door and then looked at me. “Okay,” he said, and he pointed a finger at me and then at his seat. “I want you to sit right here.”

My eyes widened. “Why?”

“I’m going to run around this lot,” he said. “Gabriel can circle the block. We’ll check out who’s here. If someone approaches the car that isn’t me or Gabriel, I want you to drive off.”

“Uh, no,” Gabriel said. He got up, shoving Luke out the door and taking his seat behind the wheel. “We’re not really supposed to split up. Either we all go, or I have to stay here with her.”

Luke put his hands on his hips, and smirked, looking in at us. “Theo isn’t the only one we have to watch out for. There might be a few people who will check out to see if there’s anything valuable hanging around. Scavengers. Or hobos.”

“Which is why someone has to stay here with her,” Gabriel said.

Luke sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut. “Okay, maybe we should all take a walk around the thing. But if we’re chased by a hobo, I’m leaving you behind while Sang and I run for the car.”

“I’ll kick his fucking ass. I’m not running shit tonight. I hate running.” His voice was a little more gravelly and deeper than usual. Gabriel shoved Luke in the chest. Luke backed up a few steps while Gabriel eased himself out of the car. “Let’s just get Theo.”

I opened my door and got out. The air, heavy with the smell of burned wood filled my throat and nose then, making me sneeze a couple of times into my elbow. I swallowed and kept my eyes closed to try to keep from doing it again.

“Oh my god, what the fuck. She even sneezes cute?” Gabriel was looking at me over the top of the car when I lifted my head. His mouth was hanging open and part of the blond lock of hair fell away from the russet brown. Some strands flew into his mouth and he spit the hair back out and raked his fingers through to fix it. “Come on, Trouble. Let’s go before you start farting bunnies and rainbows or some shit.”

Luke started laughing hard, and clamped his hand over his stomach, squeezing his brown eyes almost shut.

Even with the crisp bite to the air as it became evening, my cheeks flushed warmly.

As the boys started walking, I sped up to walk super close between them. They must have been cold, too. Gabriel grabbed my arm and held mine over his. He was in his tank shirt and his arms were bare. Luke was walking really close, keeping me between them so we were sharing body heat.

We took a wide circle around the entire churchyard. There were parts where the ground was a little soggy. Luke eventually had me get up on his back and hang on to him to get over a super muddy patch we found ourselves in front of. I climbed back off when we got back to the edge of the parking lot.

“Okay,” Gabriel said as we came back around and toward where the old doors of the church used to be. He had his flashlight out and was shining it into bushes. “I don’t see anyone. Let’s go scope out the next church.”

“Maybe we should check the inside?” Luke asked, pointing to the doorway. “Just be careful. We don’t want—”

“Hey!” A voice cried out behind us.

We all turned at the same time, although Luke and Gabriel jumped in front of me. They remained elbow to elbow. I was tiptoeing to peer over Luke’s shoulder.

A cop car had stopped at the corner. The door was open, the lights on inside. A cop was walking toward us, alone. He had his hands up in a cautious way. From the light of his car and some street lights, I could see his short-cropped hair, and he was tall. He didn’t appear irritated or wary, mostly curious. How had we not noticed it? Then I noticed his headlights weren’t on. He snuck up on us. How did he know we were here?

“Yes?” Luke answered.

“You shouldn’t be hanging around here,” the cop said. “And don’t go inside. The floorboards might break, and those walls could come down at any time.” He stopped midway into the parking lot and then made a gesture that we should approach him.

Luke and Gabriel did, slowly at first. “Sorry,” Luke said. “Actually, we were wondering what happened. We heard it on the news.”

The cop waited until we were close enough that he could talk without raising his voice. He put out a hand. “What’s your name?”

“Luke,” he said, and he put out his hand and shook.

The cop nodded. “I’m David. I didn’t mean to spook you, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t making trouble. Do you live around here?” he asked.

He was very casual for a cop. He struck me differently than another one I’d run into before with them. Very informal.

“At an apartment complex nearby,” Luke said, pointing toward where Silas’s apartments were.

“How’d the fire start?” Gabriel asked, although his voice was different. Very curious, like he didn’t know anything at all about what happened and was very stunned to hear there was a fire.

The cop squinted at Gabriel and then turned his attention on me. “From what I’ve heard, it was a slow-burning accelerant. They don’t know what exactly without taking it to the lab, they just followed a timeline. Some sort of chemical. Maybe it was meth-heads cooking or something. Or maybe a homeless guy was living there, started the fire, and didn’t have a way to contain it.”

“When did it start?” Luke asked.

“The fire wasn’t reported until two, after it had already started.” The cop shifted his weight and then nodded toward the church. “Somewhere close to the altar from what I hear. Or where the altar used to be. I wasn’t sure it was there anymore. Someone said it was like the other two that burned, but this one was different from the others.”

I felt Gabriel and Luke shifting, tense. “Could they still be related?” Gabriel asked.

The cop’s face changed then. There was a small smug smile in the corner of his lip. I wasn’t sure if the others caught it, but it was significant to me. He got some information he wanted simply by Gabriel’s question. I realized then he was being open with information, because he was hoping to steer us into seeing how much we knew. Was it because they weren’t surprised to hear about the two additional fires?

“You don’t happen to know someone who would want to do this sort of thing, do you?” David asked. He motioned to the church. “I mean, I know it is run down and all, but that’s not a place to hang out and just start fires. Usually an arsonist works up from something else. They don’t just automatically target a specific building like old churches. I mean, there’s not that many abandoned ones in a town even this size. Eventually you run out of the abandoned ones and work up to property damage.”

“Won’t the police catch whoever it is?” Luke asked. “Aren’t there any suspects or leads?”

The cop shook his head. “Honestly, they would if they ran into some solid evidence. That’s just wishful thinking, though. To spend the resources in really tracing down chemical compounds in the accelerants to find out what it is and to develop a profile, it costs too much money, and they aren’t going to waste time. If it was private property burning down, maybe, but usually insurance teams will do the footwork in those cases and they give us the report we might be able to work from. If people were hurt, that would be different. The police have better things to do, higher priorities. I wish this guy would cut it out, though. I hate having to come out to something like this, when someone who really needs my help might be out there.”

I swallowed, feeling like I was getting a lecture for something I hadn’t done. I didn’t think he was accusing anyone, but I had a feeling he was talking about checking up on us and possibly needing to be somewhere else.

“Sorry, man,” Gabriel said, holding up a hand. “Wish we could help. We were just wondering if the guy was going to start hitting homes or something else.”

“Sometimes when these guys go unchecked, they escalate,” he said. “They start waiting until people are around, so they can show off. That makes it dangerous. Then someone really could get hurt, burned or worse. It’ll be on his head.”

Luke shrugged and then started to turn. “Hopefully he’ll think better of it soon. I mean, that’s a pretty mean thing to do.”

David stood quietly, his hands resting on the handle of the flashlight in his belt, and on the radio piece on the other side. He smiled for a moment, and then reached into his pocket, pulling out a card. “You know, if you hear of anything, any rumors that seem like they might not be just rumors, you can give me a call. My cell phone number is on the back.”

Luke took the card. “You’ve got it.”

The cop waited where he was while we retreated to the car. I kept my mouth shut until we were in the car, down the road a ways, and out of sight from the cop. My heart was beating hard, wondering if the cop would call in about us, and if he somehow knew who we were.

Gabriel had taken the front passenger seat this time, and I sat in the back. “Whew,” he said. He covered his eyes with his palms, pressing at them. “He could have been a real dick and took our names and shit. Or took us in for trespassing or corrupting a crime scene.”

“We got what we wanted to know, though,” Luke said. “They aren’t interested right now, but they will be if this changes to private property.”

“And the slow-burning accelerant,” Gabriel said. He dropped his hands and then fished out his phone. “This is a Victor thing. He should check to see if the fire department ever really identified any details. The accelerant doesn’t just light the fire. Something has to start it.”

“The fact that there is accelerant means someone’s doing this on purpose,” Luke said. “This isn’t coincidence or an accident. This wasn’t meth heads. There would have been meth and junk around that would have made it obvious. The hobo thing...maybe. But it would have been the same thing, it should be obvious not a question.”

“Is it Theo, though?” Gabriel asked. “I mean, he used to burn down sheds and shit, and then the buildings next to them would catch. He wouldn’t go into the actual building.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Did he burn a bunch of sheds in Greece? Is that why Silas and his family were in trouble?”

“It’s more than that,” Luke said. He turned the car onto the main road, and pushed the accelerator on the car. “But let’s drive around the other churches and see if there’s anything within walking distance.”

Gabriel started picking out other churches using his phone, and they never went back to explain what had happened with Theo.

The next church was occupied; there were cars in the parking lot.

We circled around it, but Luke and Gabriel was sure Theo wouldn’t start a fire in an occupied building.

We spent several hours in the car, driving between different churches.

It got darker, and then it got late. I struggled to stay awake after a while, but before long, I was stretching out in the back as Luke made wide sweeps around Silas’s neighborhood.

I was thinking about what to do if we found Theo. I meant to close my eyes for only a minute.

––––––––

I
was woken up by someone lifting me out of the car. I curled into him, smelling vanilla. I was put into a bed, and then was deeply asleep again.

I woke with the jolt of a dream that threatened to take me down. It was a rush, like I’d been holding my breath and I realized at the last minute I’d been doing so. When I started breathing again, I was so focused on the fact that I’d stopped breathing that I forgot what the dream was about. Had I really stopped breathing? Was I just startled? It was hard to focus.

I looked around and recognized I was at Nathan’s house. Nathan was nearby, dead asleep. His clock read four in the morning. It took me a moment to realize Luke and Gabriel must have brought me. They hadn’t stayed, but they might have been out still looking for Theo.

Where was Theo? Did they find him? I hadn’t realized how exhausted I’d been.

I moved slowly, trying not to wake up Nathan. I crawled out of bed. After waking up like that, I wanted to avoid sleep. I found some clothes in the closet and my phone on the nightstand and taking both, tiptoed out of the room.

I stood in the hall for a moment. The bathroom door was open. There were a few boxes of tile on the floor, waiting to be put in.

The shower wasn’t installed yet. The Academy work and school issues were slowing things like home repair down. In a way, I was grateful for things slowing it down, hoping they might change their minds about the tub.

Quietly, I shuffled through the house to the other side, and entered Nathan’s dad’s bedroom.

It was quiet and dark and I turned on the lamp near the bed. On the waterbed was a basket with towels and other bathroom items they’d moved from the destroyed bathroom. I grabbed one of the towels and tiptoed over to the second bathroom, looking in.

I drew a bath. I’d forgotten to collect a razor, and found a men’s disposable in a package. I felt guilty for borrowing it. It made me realize I might need to somehow find a way to get to the store to buy things I needed. Now that I got some money from working at the diner, I could probably get things I didn’t want to have to ask the guys for.

I spent a long time soaking in the tub, almost falling asleep again. I got out, dried off, and drained the tub. I put on a skirt, and a soft T-shirt, and then over top, I put on a thin sweater. I hovered in the bathroom for a long time, knowing it was still early and with no idea what to do.

I ended up sitting on the sofa and tapping at my cell phone. I thought about downloading a free game. I didn’t want to fall asleep again.

“Peanut?”

I sat up straight, rubbing at my eyes. They blurred from staring at the bright phone. I couldn’t exactly see where Nathan was in the darkness while my eyes adjusted, but I turned to where I thought I heard his voice. “Yeah?”

“You okay?” he asked, his voice gruff and deep. He shuffled around the couch and sat next to me. “Can’t sleep?”

“I guess not,” I said, and stretched, putting the phone in my lap.

He reached out, putting a hand on my leg, warming my thigh with his palm. He turned, picking his leg up to face me on the couch. “Come on,” he said.

I shifted a little, and with him guiding me, I ended up curled up next to him on the couch, facing him. His arm was under my head, his legs mixed up with mine. I had to put my hands on his chest. He bent his and kissed the top of my head.