“We won’t know anything until after the fire department looks at the evidence.”
I know who did it. I’d been warned. It might look like an electrical fire, but that isn’t the real cause. The real cause is something otherworldly, something evil. Abaddon.
“You know, you don’t have to sit with me. I’ll be fine. You should go be with Benjamin.”
“That’s okay. Your mom has it under control.”
“Ben might want you there,” I told him.
My dad looked at me and chuckled. “It’s Ben, Milayna. He wants your mom, trust me. He has her wrapped so tightly around his little finger that he’s probably already weaseled a new video game out of her.”
As soon as we were discharged three hours later, Ben announced that Mom was going to buy him a video game. “I’ve been wanting it for-ev-er,” he said with a smile.
I looked at my dad over Ben’s head and laughed.
With our burns bandaged and Ben stitched up, we drove home. Only there wasn’t a home to drive to. Firefighters were still there, clearing out the last remaining embers. We would have asked to go in and see if anything was salvageable, but there wasn’t a house to go into. It was leveled. Destroyed. Gone.
“Where are we gonna sleep?” Ben asked my mom, his voice small and quivering.
“I don’t know. Grams’ apartment maybe. Don’t worry, we’ll find somewhere cozy.”
“You’ll stay with us,” Muriel’s dad, my Uncle Rory, said. “Grams doesn’t need this around her. Besides, the people in the apartment complex couldn’t deal with anything like this.”
“We don’t want to impose—”
“Who better to impose on than family?” he said with a chuckle. “You’ll stay with us. ‘Nuff said.”
“Thanks,” my dad said, slapping my uncle on the back.
“No problem at all, brother.”
We got settled at Muriel’s house. I shared a bedroom with her, and my parents took the spare room. Benjamin, still scared from the fire, slept on the floor next to their bed. It wasn’t too bad of an arrangement. I liked being with so many people—angels—it made me feel safer, even if it was just an illusion. Abaddon and his demons could get to us at Muriel’s just as easily as he could at my house. If it wasn’t for the protective barriers surrounding our houses, we wouldn’t be safe from the demons anywhere. As it was, we weren’t safe from the lackeys that worked for them on earth. They proved that with my house fire.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine,” I answered Muriel.
“Really? You’re pale, your eyes are bloodshot, and your hands are shaking. You don’t look so great in my opinion,” she said.
“Okay, I’m not so great, but I think that’s normal, don’t you?”
“Yeah. So don’t go around saying your fine. You don’t always have to be the strong one, Milayna. It’s okay to tell people you’re scared.”
I looked down, wrapping my finger around the hem of the T-shirt I was wearing. It wasn’t even mine. I had to borrow one from Muriel. Everything we had was destroyed in the fire. If Abaddon got his way, we’d suffer the same fate as our house.
“You’re right. I’m scared. For Benjamin, my parents, and me. For you and your family since we’re staying here. For Chay, Drew, Xavier, Jen… I’m scared.”
She nodded once. “Good. Facing it is the first step.”
“To what?”
“Fighting him. This isn’t just gonna go away, and just like Azazel, we’re gonna have to end it ourselves.” She kissed me on the cheek and crawled into bed.
***
Sunday morning, the fire investigator stopped by the wreckage of our house to meet with my parents. I tagged along to see if there was anything salvageable in the burnt mess. It was no surprise that there wasn’t. I was wandering across what used to be our family room, not paying attention to what the investigator was saying until I heard one word:
Arson.
I froze and strained my ears to hear the conversation.
“Mr. Jackson, is there anyone who would want to do this? Anyone who would want to hurt you or your family?”
“No, no one,” my dad answered.
I suppose that was partly true. It wasn’t a person that wanted to hurt us. I thought about telling the fire investigator that a bunch of demons wanted to kill us and had probably set the fire, but I decided he probably wouldn’t find it funny. So I bit my lip to hold in my giggles and kept my thoughts to myself.
My mom bit her thumbnail. “You think someone did this on purpose?”
“No. I think it was an electrical malfunction. But I have to ask.” The man smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “It’s on the checklist.”
Sunday afternoon, my parents, Ben, and I went to my grams’ house for dinner.
“You may as well come over for dinner, John. I won’t stop pestering until I get a look at each of you and know you’re okay,” she told my dad.