“Instead I heard some girls singing. They were singing really nice, in sweet, clear voices. I—I was so out of it, I thought maybe it was my sisters, calling to me. I found my way out of the trees and into Monument Park and saw it wasn’t my sisters at all. It was Allie and Carol and Sarah Storey and the Fireman and a few others. They were singing a real old song, that one where the guy says he doesn’t know much about history. Sam Cooke, I think? They were singing and they were all lit up, soft and blue and peaceful. They looked at me like they had been waiting all day for me to get there. I sat down to watch and listen and at some point Carol sat beside me with a wet towel and began wiping the grime off my face. She said, ‘Oh, look! There’s a boy under there!’ And I started crying and she just laughed at me and said, ‘That’s another way to get the dirt off.’ I had been walking barefoot and she got down and wiped the blood and the dirt off my feet. It would kill me to do anything to hurt her. I thought I’d never be loved like my mom and my sisters loved me and then I found my way here.”
He paused, fidgeting, and then sighed, and when he spoke again, it was in a lower voice. “But that stuff Carol said about taking your baby away from you: I don’t know why she’d even think something like that. We can’t do that. And then there’s the way she treats Allie. Seems like Allie has a stone in her mouth all day, every day, and she won’t ever spit it out, because that would be like admitting defeat. Allie would rather starve first. You know how she is. And then . . . and then sometimes after chapel, after we’ve been singing our hardest, I come back to myself, and my head is ringing like after I tried to kill myself in the garage. Sometimes I think the way we give ourselves over to the Bright now, those are also like little suicides.” He sniffled and Harper realized he was close to tears. “It used to be better. It used to be really good here. Anyway. Like Allie said in her letter. You aren’t all alone. You’ve got us. Allie ’n’ me.”
“Thank you, Michael.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes. There is. But if it’s too much, you must say no. Don’t feel you have to do anything that would put you at more risk than is safe.”
“Uh-oh,” he said. “I was thinking maybe you’d want me to sneak you some creamers for your coffee. I guess you’re thinking bigger.”
“Is there any way I can get out of here for an hour to see the Fireman? And if I did, could you keep a close eye on Father Storey while I’m gone?”
He blanched.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No,” he said. “It’s okay. I could cover for you if Mr. Patchett showed up, I guess. I could pull the curtain across your bed, put some pillows under your sheets, and tell him you’re napping. Just—if I sneak you out—if I get you together with him . . . do you promise you’ll come back? You aren’t going to jump in a car with the Fireman and take off tonight, are you?”
Of all the things he could’ve said or asked, she had not seen that one coming.
“Oh, Michael, of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t abandon Father Storey in his condition.”
“Good. Because you can’t leave camp,” he said and sat forward and gripped her wrist. “Not without taking Allie and me.”
12
Harper descended the hill through a bitter cold that stung her nostrils and hurt her lungs. Her breath smoked, as if she were going full dragon, burning from the inside out.
It was coldest on the shale, alongside the water, numbing the exposed parts of her face. A thread of smoke rose from the tin chimney on the Fireman’s shed, the only sign of life in the entire ice-locked world. She hated walking out on the dock, felt exposed, half expected someone to shout. But no one saw her, and the dock itself was hidden from the church steeple by a band of tall evergreens. She lowered herself into the rowboat and cast off the line. Once she was on the water she might be visible (the eye in the steeple sees all the people) but it was moonless and starless and she thought in the deep dark she might go unobserved.
This time she was able to walk to the shed without losing her boots in the mud. The muck was frozen to the hardness of tile. Harper knocked on the doorframe. When no one replied, she knocked again. From within she smelled woodsmoke and sickness.
“’S’unlocked,” the Fireman said.
She eased into the little room, into stifling heat and golden light from the open furnace.
He was in bed, with the sheet snarled around his waist and legs, arm in his filthy sling. The room had an odor of phlegm and his breathing was strenuous.
She dragged a chair to the side of his bed and sat down. Then she leaned forward and put her cheek to his bare chest. His skin blazed and smelled of sandalwood and sweat. The Dragonscale decorated his breast in patterns that brought to mind Persian carpets.
“Breathe normally,” she said. “I didn’t bring a stethoscope.”
“I was getting better.”
“Shut up. I’m listening.”
His inhalations crackled faintly, like someone rolling up plastic wrap.
“Shit,” she said. “You’ve developed an atelectasis. I don’t have a thermometer, but I can tell you’re feverish. Shit, shit. I don’t understand.”
“I think Atelectasis was an early album by Genesis. One of the ones they recorded before Phil Collins took over singing and they turned to middlebrow MTV crap.”
“It’s a smarty-pants word for a certain kind of pneumonia. You see this as a complication with fractured ribs, but I wouldn’t expect it in a man your age. Have you been smoking?”
“No. You know I don’t have cigarettes.”
“Have you had any fresh air?”
“A great deal.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How long is a great deal?”
“Er, eighteen hours? Give or take a couple?”
“Why were you outside for eighteen hours?”
“I didn’t mean to be. I passed out. I always pass out when I send a Phoenix somewhere.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “I was too weak, I think. Not ready to create one. It took too much out of me. Although it’s a good thing I sent one. As if their machine gun wasn’t bad enough, that plow your ex is driving around is as bad as a Panzer—”
“Wait a minute. Go back. How do you know my ex showed up at Verdun Avenue? Who told you?”
“No one told me. I was there with you.”
“What do you mean you were there with me?”
He sighed, winced, pressed his good hand to his bad side. “You hid behind Ben’s police cruiser when the shooting started. Nelson was the first one to die—he was torn apart in the street. Then the town truck hit the ambulance and Mindy Skilling was mashed beneath it. After, you tore out of there like one of your American NASCAR blokes. I recall everything right up to the moment your ex smashed the van and nearly crushed me flat. Nearly crushed the Phoenix flat, I mean.”
Harper couldn’t wrap her head around it. Up until now she had assumed the Phoenix was a glorious pyrotechnic display that could somehow be operated from a distance, rather like a remote-control airplane. A puppet of flame, with John Rookwood tugging the strings from here on his island.
Yet he could recount the confrontation with Jakob and the Marlboro Man as if he had fought it out with them in person, a concept Harper found perplexing and also irritating, because John so clearly loved being impressive and mysterious.
“That’s impossible. You can’t have seen all that.”
“Oh, let’s not get carried away. It’s only improbable. And besides. I didn’t say I saw it. I didn’t see it. But I remember it.” He saw her getting ready to interrupt and held a hand up, palm out, to forestall questions. “You know that the Dragonscale, over time, saturates the human brain. It listens in to your thoughts and feelings and reacts to them. It’s dendritic in nature and it bonds with the mind.”
“Yes. That’s why people catch fire when they’re afraid or under stress. Panic releases cortisol. The Dragonscale reacts to cortisol by assuming the host is no longer safe. It erupts into flame, producing lots of ash, enabling it to depart for better real estate.”
He looked at her with admiration. “Yes. That’s the mechanism exactly. Who have you been talking to?”
“Harold Cross,” Harper said, pleased to surprise him for once.
The Fireman took this in, then lifted one corner of his mouth in a smile. “You found his notebook. I’d love to see it sometime.”