The Fire Artist (13 page)

There’s a boy stepping out of the sidewalk vault. A boy with strong cheekbones and dark hair, wearing pressed pants and a white button-down shirt that looks freshly laundered and black
shiny shoes. He hoists himself up onto the sidewalk, and I look around, out of instinct, to see if anyone else notices. The crowds have thinned, and the people far on the other side of the street don’t seem to care. It’s just me and the Chrysler Building and this boy.

The beautiful boy.

Taj readjusts the grate, positioning it back over the vault so the sidewalk is safe for others.

He wipes one hand against the other.

“Do you need help?” I ask, each word coming out as if I’ve never said them before, because I’m not sure what to say or do.

“No, I’m totally fine. But I have a feeling you might need help, Aria.” He gestures to the long stretch of sidewalk in front of us, the ribbon of concrete that lies between us and the tip of Manhattan island. “Ah, but isn’t it freeing to be able to go for an evening stroll?”

There’s envy in his words.

I’m not sure I should go for a walk with him, seeing as he’s emerged—though unscathed—from a grate. But in some weird way I feel as if I know him, even though we only talked that one time in the hall. Besides, he’s not the picture of a boy who’d be scrapping around underground. He’s the picture of the boys in fashion magazines, the ones with sculpted bones, smooth
skin, and smoldering eyes, who wear clothes as if the clothes should be lucky to be so close to their flesh. Boys who have that enigmatic sense of where they’re from—they don’t tell; they’re just not from here.

“Sure.”

We walk, and he lifts his face to the night sky as if he’s soaking in the stars. He takes a deep breath, and when we reach the light at Forty-Second Street, we both stop, waiting for our signal to cross. He shifts his head from side to side like he’s working out the kinks in his neck. “Ah, no one ever tells you that all that time in between gives you one sore neck. It’s been a while.”

“Been a while?”

“Yes. It’s been a while since I’ve been summoned. Well, a few weeks to be precise. You were looking for a granter, weren’t you?” He can read my mind. “It’s okay. You can say yes. I’ve never been wrong before. It’s just kind of … one of those things. That’s how it works with us. You really want us, truly need us, we appear.”

“You’re a granter? Mariska was using a granter?” My jaw hangs open. Mariska is so straitlaced, so by the book. She’s constantly harping on about the need to work harder. I can’t believe she’d use a granter.

Taj shakes his head. “I don’t grant and tell.”

“Like doctor-patient privilege?”

He shrugs evasively but says nothing.

“You weren’t her boyfriend? You were hanging around because she was using you?”

“I love how you just cut straight to the chase. But I’m afraid there’s nothing I can say about the past. So let’s focus on now.”

“Okay,” I say unevenly, because I don’t even know how to process all this information flying at me—the beautiful boy in her pictures is a granter. But then the brilliant truth lands in my lap, bright and shiny. Mariska was using a granter and she’s still in the Leagues. Ergo, both Gem and Xavi are right. You can’t test for granter use.

My luck is changing.

“So you just appear? Like that?” I snap my fingers. The light changes and we cross.

“Did you think we were found in bottles or something?” he asks as if I’m a little kid who believes in fairy tales.

“I wasn’t sure,” I answer quietly.

“Because that whole genie-in-a-bottle thing is a total myth. I don’t know where that came from.”

“I’m pretty sure it came from
1001 Arabian Nights
.”

“Ah, but perhaps all those stories are myths too? The genie and the merchant, the genie and the fisherman, Aladdin and his wonderful lamp? Perhaps the jinni in those stories are all fables too,” he says, and we’re circling each other’s words. Suddenly I’m not so sure it’s a bright idea to be jousting with a granter, especially one who seems so ready to call me out on the slightest inaccuracy. After all, I don’t really know
1001 Arabian Nights
that well. “Now you see them, now you don’t.”

He snaps his fingers and is gone. Like that. Nothing left behind. Here one second, gone the next. My heart speeds wildly, bangs its tiny fists in my chest. I didn’t want him to go, and I have this impulse to hunt for him like a crazed woman who has lost a diamond ring. Because I need him.
I need him
.

And of course, that’s why he appeared. He appeared because
my wish for him was so deep, so potent, so full of raw desire. That’s all it took for him to appear—monstrous need.

They’re
virtually impossible
to find. Unless you absolutely must have one. Maybe I can return him to me with that same canyon of need. I close my eyes and make a wish he’ll show up again.

When I open my eyes I’m still alone on this stretch of Lexington Avenue, and he’s neither behind me nor in front of me; neither perched in a doorway nor hiding around the corner. Then I spot him. He’s across the street, leaning against the streetlight on the corner. He waves at me, a “gotcha” sort of wave.

I cross Lexington. “So you don’t live in a lamp, and you can just come and go as you please?”

He narrows his eyes and purses his lips. They look soft. “I wouldn’t say I can come and go as I please. But the lamp thing”—he waves a hand to dismiss the idea—“ancient history. Would it make you feel better if I told you that not everyone who wants a granter can have one? That you’ve got to be desperate enough to find one?”

Desperate
. That sounds about right. Even so, something doesn’t compute. “But I didn’t find you. I thought granters had to be found,” I say. Because even though he’s telling me how his kind work, I somehow feel the need to point out—with my extraordinarily limited and thirdhand knowledge of granters—that he might be wrong.

He rolls his eyes, then speaks slowly, as if he doesn’t expect me to get it. “We are found. We are found in the wanting, and blah-blah-blah.”

I look him over, this tall, dark, and handsome boy walking
next to me. This magazine model boy, who was found below a grate. This is crazy. This is a freaky dream I should wake myself from. But I’ve had lightning pierce my heart, I’ve made fire from my hands, I’ve touched an ice-cold gator. I’ve been stripped free of the capacity for shock.

That doesn’t mean I’m not doubtful. “So let’s say you’re not just an apparition and that everyone can see you, does that mean nobody cares that you just disappeared and reappeared across the street?”

“Welcome to New York City. Where no one pays attention to anyone else, especially those living in the sidewalk tunnels.”

Taj tips his forehead west. We begin walking across town.

“Where are we going?”

“Much as I simply adore the foundations of New York City’s finest architecture, I find I’m rather partial to the open spaces. I get a bit tired of being underground all the time.”

Underground and tunnels. Xavi wasn’t wrong with the big picture.

“So we’re going where then?” I ask again.

“How does Bryant Park sound to you?”

And so the Girl Prometheus and the granter boy walk a few blocks to Bryant Park in the middle of Manhattan. There’s an ice-cream stand in the park.

“Do you like ice cream?” he asks. “Because I’m really hungry and I could definitely go for one.”

“Of course I like ice cream.”

“What flavor?”

“Cherry.”

Taj asks for a cherry cone for me, and the man behind the
stand hands one to me. Then Taj requests a coconut-chocolate popsicle with those crunchy bits on the outside. He takes a bite. “That is one fine ice-cream cone. Bite? They’re calorie-free, you know,” he says.

“Really?”

He shrugs. “No. But you could wish for that.”

“That seems like a waste of a wish.”

“I’ve yet to meet a wish that isn’t a waste,” he says. His pure brown eyes are shadowed right now, hidden behind things unsaid.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he says dismissively. “Don’t wish for calorie-free ice cream. Don’t wish for anything yet. Just have a bite.”

He’s trying to sound cool, but I can hear the tiniest flick of need.

“If I eat this, does it count as some weird wish in a way? Like the you-get-three-wishes-thing and I used one of my wishes without realizing it? Did I just give up a wish?”

He scoffs. “Three wishes? You wish. It’s
one
wish. One wish at a very high price. Like your life, your soul, your heart, your livelihood, your family. Besides, I’m not some kind of jackass granter who could be tricked into giving up three wishes.”

“What’s a jackass granter?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Where did that question come from?”

“I’m giving you an example of a jackass granter. Play along with me, Aria. Do you have a boyfriend?”

I think of Shortstop, whose name I don’t know, and the long bruising kiss we shared my last night in Wonder. “No.”

Taj raises an eyebrow. “Good. Now let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that you did. And let’s say he wasn’t quite as handsome as you wished.”

I laugh again. “Then why would he be my boyfriend?”

“Ah! See. You only go for the hot ones, don’t you? What about his heart? Don’t you care about his heart?”

“We’re talking about a hypothetical boyfriend I don’t have who isn’t terribly hot and you want to know why I don’t care about his heart?” I toss back, and I finally feel as if I landed a jab. But why does he feel like an opponent? Shouldn’t we be on the same side? My side.

He’s moving though, swimming like a shark, never stopping. “So you meet a jackass granter and you wish for your boyfriend to be totally smoking hot. Then a jackass granter—”

“Would make him literally on fire,” I supply.

Taj nods. “And with jackass granters, the payment is a tad different because the wish itself is often the payment.”

“Ironic, though, that you chose smoking hot. Because, you know, I could make him smoking on my own.” I waggle my hands.

“Ah, you’re a fire girl. As I suspected.”

“Wait. You don’t know everything about me already?”

“I’m not a mind reader. Just a good listener.” He taps the side of his head.

“So you’re not a jackass granter then. What kind are you? What other kind of granters are there?”

“Jackass. Benevolent. Ghoul. Infernal. Sea,” he says so quickly with barely any space between the words. “And then there’s just one more kind. Want to guess what I am?”

“Sure. I’m good in competitions. For starters, I’m pretty sure benevolent doesn’t apply to you.”

“Oh, you don’t think I’m nice?”

“I wouldn’t say so, but niceness isn’t the trait I lead with either, so I don’t see that as a problem. Somehow I doubt you’re infernal, because that would imply you’re the devil.”

“Let’s hope I’m not infernal. I’d look awful with horns, don’t you think?”

“Are you a ghoul?”

“No, they’re creepy. I’m not creepy. Do I remotely seem creepy? I mean, look at this face,” he says, and flashes me a huge faux smile.

“Sea granter seems doubtful, since we’re on land. So you’re obviously the other kind. The
one more kind
. What kind is that?”

“I would be the simplest, the most boring, the standard, average, ordinary granter, who grants the greatest of wishes for the greatest of prices. No more, no less. Otherwise known as a mastered granter.”

He punctuates those words, and it’s clear that his lot is defined solely by the wisher. “You don’t have free will?”

“No. No free will whatsoever. So I hope, Aria, you’ll forgive me for asking you not to wish just yet. It’s the only way I can have a taste of free will at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I guess I’d just like to play master and granter for a few days. Would you oblige me? Would you mind terribly if you waited to wish just a few nights?”

The realization hits me hard—he must have been hanging
out with Mariska as long as he could simply so he could be free for a bit. Waiting hardly seems like much to ask, especially when he is so trapped and when I don’t know yet how to pay for my wish. Maybe with myself somehow? Some kind of trade? And I need to be smart and strategic because this wish is how I will save my family. Still, I don’t trust easily. “Yes. But tell me, are you a good granter or a bad granter?”

He pauses, then curls his lips into a tantalizing smile. “That depends entirely on the wisher,” he says. “Speaking of, I’m required to let you know that there are three preliminary conditions and exceptions to wishing. Because love is a powerful force in its own right, and often transcends the rules of wishing, you need to know that I can’t make someone fall in love with you, I can’t bring someone back from the dead, and I can’t grant you more wishes.”

“Seems pretty standard.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Standard. We’re so standard, aren’t we? And you’re an expert now in the rules of wishing and the granting of wishing?”

“No,” I say in a tough voice, giving it right back to him. “It’s just common sense. Some things are.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that, so I enjoy a small twinge of victory before I ask another question, “And what if I don’t wish at all? What if I decide in a few days to just not wish?”

“Then you don’t.”

“And you just go away?”

He places a hand on his chest. “Would that make you sad? If I went away?”

I feel unmoored again. I can’t tell if he is teasing me or
asking seriously. I stick to the logistics. “Is that what would happen if I didn’t wish in a few days? You’d just go away?”

“If you release me, oh, Master, then I’d be gone.”

“So you’re really saying that if I don’t make my one wish now, tonight, that I can still make it tomorrow, or the next night, or the next?”

“Absolutely. One hundred percent. You have time. As long as you need a wish, I will be your granter and I will be at your service,” he says in a serious tone. He takes a small burnished bronze genie’s lamp from his pocket. It’s miniature and fits in his palm. “Think of this like a phone. You rub it, and I’ll get the message in a lamp I keep with me. Here. Try it.”