Free Embers by Laura Bickle Page B

Anya wrapped her hands around her knees. “If my firebug is trying to summon Sirrush through ritual magick, what are the odds that he’ll succeed? How likely is the cranky dragon to show up to the party?”

    Katie spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “No way of knowing. I’d say that the fires he’s setting are definitely getting the spirit world’s attention. Rather than sending Sirrush an invite in the mail, he’s pounding on the door.”

    “If Sirrush takes him up on it, what then?”

    “Then nothing. You can’t stop a hurricane.” She leaned forward. “Your best bet is to keep this idiot from waking Sirrush up. If Sirrush shows up to the party, there’s no bouncer in the world big or bad enough to keep him off the dance floor.”

    The news media ran the arson as the lead story. Neuman’s photo was plastered on the front page of the papers. The little girl found mummified in the pop machine was buried in the back of the metro section and received less than thirty seconds’ attention on the evening news.

    Anya watched the local news broadcasts in half-time on her desk computer. Elbows planted on her scarred desk, she had to remind herself to blink in between frames. Headphones covered her ears, blotting out the sounds of ringing phones and office foot traffic outside her door. The transom above the glass and wood door had jammed open years ago, and sound infiltrated the space as easily as smoke.

    Her office was a hodgepodge of scavenged steel furniture and files stacked neatly in cardboard bankers’ boxes. She’d put in a request when she’d gotten the job for a file cabinet, but none ever materialized. A map of the city was taped to the dingy yellow wall. The locations of the four arson sites were indicated by red pushpins. No discernible geographic tie had emerged: besides the warehouse fire, the arsonist had hit two abandoned houses on opposite ends of town and a beauty salon. But that didn’t keep Anya from scribbling around them with markers, from tying strings around the pins and trying to determine a pattern or common entry and escape route.

    Now she focused her attention on combing the media footage of the crime scenes for suspicious bystanders. An arsonist could rarely stay away from his own work. More often than not, he was compelled to stand back and admire what his hands had wrought, his power. And it was almost always a he. The only female arsonist Anya had ever investigated was a woman who torched the apartment her husband had rented for his mistress. In the majority of cases of arson involving single perpetrators—excluding those that were lit for revenge or monetary gain—the motive was sexual. Anya had caught her fair share of pyromaniacs masturbating at the scene of the crime, but she sensed that the ritualistic motive overshadowed any sexual thrills to be gained from watching buildings burn.

    But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t return to the scene. If the arsonist had any ego at all, he would drive by to see what he’d created. Just seeing it on the evening news wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to be there, touch it, smell it. Who knew? Perhaps the idea of summoning up Sirrush turned his crank.

    And so she watched, head in hand, inching through the footage. She’d asked the news stations for any footage they’d shot on the previous fires. No images had been televised and those fires had only warranted small blurbs in the metro section. They hadn’t even bothered to cover one of the house fires at all. The warehouse fire had gotten a good deal of airtime, owing to the firefighter’s injury, but the previous two fires hadn’t been shown. There had been more than enough bad news to overshadow these events; they’d represented little more than ordinary days in Detroit. Those arsons were like the perfunctory mention of the little girl in the paper—business as usual.

    She ignored the newscasters blathering in the foreground and watched the crowds behind them,