Pyromantic Page 4

  We didn’t bother to sneak in—we weren’t there for that kind of show. My role was to be a bogeyman, which meant I had to go in big, loud, and scary. So I had Sid kick the door down while I walked in bathed in flames, my feet leaving smoking footprints behind me. It turned out even better than I thought and undoubtedly would have been very impressive to all of those involved if they hadn’t been really, truly dead.

  And from the smell of it, they’d been dead for at least twenty-four hours. We’d had a few abnormally warm days, and the warehouse’s only air-conditioning was a handful of small open windows set up high. The whole place smelled like salt, seaweed, and rot, with a baseline of offal. I gagged, dropped my flame, and yanked my shirt up to cover my mouth. I’d left Ikka’s leather jacket on the bike, Sid being uncomfortable with the idea of me setting it on fire.

  Sid must have been having a worse time of it because of his heightened sense of smell, but he wasn’t showing it. He sauntered over with a whistle and examined the bodies. There were more than we thought there would be. From where I was standing, it looked like there were two males and three females. We knew the exact number based on the heads lying on the floor. The men were reasonably intact, though not in the best shape.

  “Those our boys?” I asked through my shirt.

  Sid examined the bodies, pulling wallets off the two men. The women didn’t appear to be wearing much, though I think they’d arrived that way. Maybe they’d come from a club, but I doubted it. My gut said these were escorts, which I didn’t know much about, but even prostitutes carry purses, right? I reluctantly walked over and started searching for them so I could at least look useful.

  “These are definitely our boys,” Sid said. “At least, the photos on their IDs match. Well, would match if their faces weren’t so … puffy.” Elias, the werewolf, had been able to heal some of what had happened to him, but he was still covered in blood and worse. Luke was almost … pulpy … in parts. And the women? They were a puzzle best left for a medical examiner—a puzzle with some pieces missing.

  Sid stood up, wiping his hand on his jeans before pulling out his phone. “Alistair? Yeah. The job was easier than expected. In fact, you might want to get up here.” He nudged one of the corpses over with his boot. It was putrefying already, and I couldn’t help notice the brown goo all over it. Something was helping the corpse along its road to Breakdown City. “And you should probably be quick about it.”

  *

  WE WAITED outside for Alistair. The drive from Boston to Portland takes two hours without traffic, and there was no way I was spending that time hanging out inside the warehouse. There’s not a lot to do while you wait next to an abandoned building. I tried counting all the lobster buoys in the water, but Sid kept shouting out random numbers and messing me up. I really wish I’d brought a book with me.

  When Alistair arrived, I expected him to storm in all red-faced and blustery, yelling about us dragging him up here, but he didn’t. I kept waiting for Alistair to act like Venus, but he hadn’t yet. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t, but strangely his nice demeanor was putting me on edge. Where were the tantrums? The crazy demands? He was ruining my mental picture of how a Coterie despot should act.

  Alistair looked cool and unruffled, as usual. His brown hair was neatly styled, his sunglasses pushed up in such a way that they were more of a fashion accessory than something he actually used. And he was wearing an honest-to-goodness polo shirt. With slacks. I couldn’t tell if Alistair was ruining the Coterie’s image or classin’ it up a bit.

  Bianca drifted in behind him as usual. Everything about her was a study in pale—blond hair that barely qualified as blond it was so light, pale skin, and the lightest gray eyes I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t sure if she darkened her eyebrows or if they were naturally darker. We weren’t friendly enough for me to ask. Most days, we were lucky if we didn’t try to throttle each other.

  To make up for all the pale, Bianca usually wore all black. Today was no exception—black boots, black jeans, black hooded sleeveless T-shirt, eyes thickly ringed with black eyeliner so that the ghostly gray of her irises jumped out at you. I considered buying her a Hawaiian shirt for her birthday. She would love that.

  Alistair and Bianca both examined the bodies, as well as the rest of the warehouse. They didn’t look too pleased that the situation had taken care of itself.

  “I thought you’d be a little happy. Why aren’t we doing cartwheels of joy?” I asked after Alistair had glared at the bodies for a few minutes.

  “Because before, it was a tidy package. Come in, show them who’s boss, leave. Now it’s a mess,” he said, scowling. “I dislike messes.”

  Bianca used a pen to lift the shirt off one of the bodies to peer at the torso. It made a wet sound as it unstuck. She didn’t so much as pause. “Before, we knew the enemy. Now we have to wonder if these deaths are unrelated to us or a play for territory or if it’s another unknown group eliminating competition and sending Alistair a message.”

  “You make it sound like we’ve been dealing with a lot of this,” I said. “We’ve had a fairly light summer, though.”

  She let the shirt drop and moved on. “No,” said Bianca, drawing the word out as she examined what I think was a finger. “You’ve had a fairly light summer.”

  I looked at Alistair for confirmation. He continued to scowl down at the bodies. “We’ve been dealing with a lot of people who saw the change in Coterie leadership as an opportunity to make their own play. I figured I’d get proactive with this one.”

  I knew I wasn’t getting called in for every little thing, but I hadn’t realized they’d been cutting me out to such an extent. How much had everyone been working as I whiled away my days in the bookstore?

  “Instead,” Alistair continued, “I get this muddle. Extra work and a waste of life. Not to mention that no one here will be getting a proper funeral.” Alistair looked at the corpses of the three women with some pity. “I’m afraid their families will never know what happened to them.”

  Bianca eyed one of the tables, which was covered in a dusting of fine white powder. “Something tells me that the families are expecting that kind of fate.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less sad,” he said.

  “And why aren’t the families going to hear?” I asked.

  Alistair held out his arms, shook his fingers like he was limbering up, then spread them wide and concentrated. “Because,” he said, “after we get everything we can from them, you’re going to honor them with a Viking funeral. In the meantime, though, we need to preserve the scene.” Frost crept across the ground, covering the bodies; the temperature in the warehouse dropped several degrees and kept going. Sid found a long pole to close the windows, and then Alistair left us all, including Bianca, to guard the warehouse. I couldn’t tell who was less thrilled, me or her.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, indignant, as he walked toward the door.

  “To find us a necromancer,” he answered without turning around. “We need to ask these corpses some questions.”

  No one wanted to hang out in the warehouse. One, it was so cold, you could see your breath, and two, it smelled like human Popsicles in there. So we took turns walking around the perimeter or sitting by the door. Sid had to prop it back up, since he’d kicked it in so dramatically.

  We ordered pizza, and if the delivery driver thought it was weird to deliver six pies to three people sitting outside a run-down, semi-abandoned warehouse, he didn’t mention it. After two hours of sitting around, Sid decided to try to take a nap while Bianca and I took turns keeping watch. I’ll say this about the caulbearer, she doesn’t slack on the job. If I was sitting, she was walking, and if she sat down, she glared at me until I got up.

  At the next walk/glare rotation, I finally said something. “I get it. You don’t like me. You don’t have to pretend you’re all business. Just say you want me out of your face.” I dusted off the back of my jeans as I stood up.

  Bianca gave a sharp exhal
e of disgust. Her face looked like she smelled something foul. “Believe it or not, Ava, not everything is about you.” She leaned against the warehouse, hands in her pockets. “Alistair left us here as guards. When he shows up, we are going to hand over this warehouse in exactly the same shape as when he left it. Because that’s what he wants and that’s all that matters. Just because you don’t take your job seriously doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t.”

  Ah. I was the disgusting thing she smelled, then. I felt my cheeks burn and I knew if I glanced down, sparks would be slam dancing all around my fingers. “You think I don’t take what I do seriously?”

  She gave a half shrug. “You whine. You bitch and moan and do the woe-is-me thing, and it’s boring. You’re a firebug. So what? Get over it and do your damn job. Nobody is interested in holding your hands as soon as you’re done wringing them.” She looked away, like I was dismissed.

  Oh, that was it. I flicked my hands wide open, enthusiastic flames licking my fingers. Bianca pushed away from the wall, fists at her sides, ready to go.

  Before we could get any further, someone grabbed my wrists.

  “That’s about enough of that, children.” Sid’s warm breath brushed my ear.

  Bianca and I both opened our mouths to argue, but Sid shushed us. When we both opened our mouths again to complain about the shushing, he laughed. I don’t know what he found so funny.

  “While you two are hissing and spitting, someone could be breaking into this nice warehouse we’re guarding. Tell you what—I’ll take a little stroll around the premises. In the meantime, Ava, you go inside and make sure everything is as it should be. Bianca, guard the door.”

  Before I could even get the words out, Sid answered, “You pulled inside duty because you were about to throw fire at our ally here. She’s not the enemy. I don’t care how much you guys want to bicker, but your control should be better than that. You don’t get to spark in public just because you’re pissy.” He dropped my wrists and disappeared around the building.

  My cheeks still burned as I stomped to the door. I wanted to argue and pout, but damn it all, Sid was right. My control should be better. I wasn’t a new bug anymore. Bianca opened the door, smirking, and I stopped so hard my boot heel almost squeaked. As nice as it would be, I couldn’t act like a child, which meant doing things I didn’t want to do. I took a deep breath.

  “Sorry,” I said, not looking at Bianca. “Sid is right. I was being a brat.” Before she could do more than blink at me, I walked past her into the makeshift freezer.

  If Alistair ever got bored of being a crime boss, he had plenty of career options open to him. The warehouse was still cold enough that I could see my breath as I moved. My boots left patterns in the frost as I walked around the edges of the room. Except in the spots where the frost wouldn’t go. A film of sticky goo coated that part of the floor. Now that I had noticed it, it was easier to see. I followed the goo up the wall to one of the windows. Then down by where I was standing, which was currently behind a pile of rotting crates. Something had waited here and left an oozing puddle. I edged around it, not wanting to step in the mess. Nothing good oozes—slugs, businessmen, infected sores. Things like flowers, kittens, and adorable ponies hardly ooze at all. In the natural world, the more dangerous or disgusting something is, the higher its goo factor. Believe it or not, monsters like myself are part of the natural world—the same law applies to us. Which meant that whatever left this mark probably wasn’t friendly, and the likelihood that it would, at one point, try to digest me was pretty high.

  I took out my phone and snapped some photos for later just in case. We might need them to identify the creature, or to figure out what happened here. On a whim, I sent the photos to Cade to see if he could identify the slime trail. I took some plastic sandwich bags out of my pocket and carefully took a sample without touching the goo. My phone vibrated with an immediate reply from Cade, saying he would hit the books to see if he could find anything like the goo, but suggested I send the photos to Alistair as well, since the Coterie had better resources than he did. A few texts from Lock had come in without my noticing. Nothing special. Just Bianca said you were on a job—why didn’t Alistair call me? Followed by Why didn’t you call me? I wondered if he’d noticed that it was the first time he’d texted me since yesterday morning. Next was a text from Ezra: Text Lock back before he implodes.

  I ignored them both.

  *

  I STOPPED counting Alistair’s absence in hours and started going by deliveries. By the time he came back, we’d had Thai, tacos, and sub sandwiches. I was taking advantage of being in a city (Currant had only one stoplight—we did not, at this time, warrant a Thai restaurant), and Bianca was stuck somewhere between awe and disgust at Sid’s and my appetites.

  Alistair wasn’t alone when he returned. His passenger climbed out of the car, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her thin jacket. Without a word, she fished a lighter out of her green cargo pants and lit up. She glanced around, and I could see her eyes assessing us. I bet she didn’t miss a thing, either. Her brown hair was pulled back from her face, and her body was lean, like she was prepared to fight or run, depending on the situation. Her heeled boots added an inch or two to her already impressive height, and her white tank top set off the deep gold of her skin. I wouldn’t call her pretty—something about the way she held herself negated that. Striking, maybe. Or terrifying. Yeah, that was closer to the truth. I could see her being worshipped as an Egyptian goddess, and not a friendly one. She was the kind that you left a sacrifice for and hoped she didn’t notice you too much.

  The woman looked down at the empty food trash and waved her cigarette hand, leaving a trail of smoke. “At least one of them is a were—probably two.”

  Alistair leaned against his car. Whenever he did that, he looked like a TV ad for an upscale cologne. “You haven’t even touched them yet.” He sounded defeated.

  She nodded toward the garbage. “You called me as soon as you locked down the scene. That’s a lot of food for three people.” The cherry end of her cigarette flared as she took a drag, her eyes still moving. “You.” She pointed at Sid. “What do you turn into?”

  “Not telling,” Sid said, his voice flat.

  She grinned, clearly enjoying the game. “I can see three knives from where I’m standing. Only a few weres that I know of bother with weapons. Too scruffy for a mongoose. Not prissy enough to be a swan. Cocky.” Her grin widened and took on a decidedly wolfish quality. “Hare.”

  Sid slumped. The woman moved on to Bianca but continued almost as soon as she took her in. “Obviously your pet caulbearer.” Bianca stiffened, but the woman either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “That just leaves you,” she said to me. She got close to my face, her brown eyes inches from mine. “Not a were, though you obviously eat like one.”

  “Hey!” Just because she was right didn’t mean I couldn’t get huffy about it. “How do you know that food wasn’t Bianca’s?”

  “Mustard on your shirt here, sriracha on your pants there, and you smell like pepperoni.” She jabbed at the offending spots with her cigarette but was careful not to touch me.

  “How do you know that’s sriracha?” Sid asked.

  “Sriracha and I have met. Repeatedly.” She pointed to a faded stain on her cargo pants before she took another quick drag of her cigarette. “You’re not a careful eater, and you have a high metabolism, but you’re not a were.” At my surprise she said, “You’re not twitchy. Weres have a hard time sitting still when being approached by a stranger. They growl, they pace, they posture,” she said, ashing her cigarette in Sid’s direction, “but they don’t just stand there.”

  The air was still as we continued to stare at each other. She stepped back, circled me, made me lift my feet to show her the soles of my boots, but never laid so much as a fingertip on my person. Finally she was back around to my front. With great ceremony she dropped her cigarette and ground it out with her boot. She pulled a fresh one from the pack an
d held it up. “How about you light this one for me?”

  Alistair sighed and I knew that, whatever game we’d been playing, he’d lost. “You didn’t touch her—I watched. How did you know?”

  She winked at me and put her new cigarette away. “She eats like a were but isn’t one. All her buttons are metal. There are scorch marks on the bottoms of her boots from stomping out flames. I can see embroidery peeking out from the inside of her jacket cuffs—my guess is runes, mostly the ones to do with fire and protection. And every time I took a drag, her eyes followed the ember.”

  Had they? I didn’t notice I was doing that. Sloppy. She held out her hand, and I hesitated to take it. I’d heard things about touching necromancers, all of them warnings against it. But then I saw a flicker of disappointment in her eyes and said the hell with it. I shook her hand.

  “Nice to meet you, firebug.”

  “Likewise, necromancer.” Her grip was firm and warm, and I didn’t vomit bees or turn into dust or anything. It was just a handshake, and a good one. With a start, I realized that I liked her. Weren’t necromancers supposed to exude evil and walk around covered in human blood? She was wearing a necklace with a little Eeyore charm on it, for heaven’s sake. “Are we going to keep this all supersecret superhero codenames? Do I have to start calling Bianca ‘the Veil’ or something?”

  The woman laughed.

  “We could do that, sure, or you could just call me June.” She looked at Alistair. “Now how about we get to the dead things?”

  4

  BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

  JUNE WALKED STRAIGHT over to the scene, suddenly all business. She gave the corpses a thoughtful frown before digging some chalk out of her pocket. “All right, little miss, come on out. I’d like you here before I start making circles.”

  Nothing happened. Was there a ghost around that I couldn’t see? Were the bodies supposed to get up and sing us a Greek chorus? June obviously expected something to happen, but the warehouse was quiet and the only thing moving was our breath steaming in and out. She tapped her foot. I didn’t think June sat still very well, either. “I don’t have all day,” she said to the air.