chapter Eight
The former fire chief lived in a tidy house in a pleasant suburb, and as Bliss walked up the driveway she was struck by a feeling of homesickness so deep that she had to stop and catch her breath for a moment. The house was just an ordinary one-story home, a little cottage with pretty Christmas lights. She had grown up in a sprawling, elegant mansion in Houston and then a three-story penthouse in New York, but after traveling and then going on the road, she found something appealing about a home that was so orderly and neatly kept. Home. Where is home now? Bliss did not belong anywhere. She no longer had a home.
"It's all right," Jane said, squeezing her forearm. Her aunt always seemed to know what Bliss was thinking.
Bliss sighed as she rang the doorbell, steeling herself for what lay ahead. "He knows we're coming, right?" she asked.
"I spoke to him just this morning," Jane said. "He didn't seem to want to meet with us, but I can be very persuasive when I want to be."
Bliss smiled. She knew that without Jane she would have given up long before. As she rang the doorbell again, Bliss wondered what would happen if she did end up finding the hounds. Would they even give her a chance to speak? Would she have to strike a bargain of her own? Why had her mother sent her to them? And how would she ever get them to join their cause?
"Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hand," Jane murmured.
Bliss frowned. "Shakespeare?"
"No, just something I read on the Internet the other day." Her aunt laughed. "A reminder to remain vigilant against our enemies."
Finally, a friendly older woman in a white apron opened the door. "So sorry - we were out back and didn't hear the bell. Come on in."
The former chief of the fire department had retired only a few weeks earlier. He was a tall, handsome older gentleman, deeply suntanned and courteous. His wife, the woman who'd let them inside, offered them cookies and tea, led them to a cozy room where they sat on flowered cushions. "So you guys are from New York, huh?" he asked, settling into his lounger. "Writers, they tell me." He sounded skeptical.
"Yes," Jane said brightly. "But don't worry; we don't work for the insurance company. We're writing a book about spontaneous combustion." It was the cover story they'd agreed on: they were researchers, writing a book about fire disasters. They hoped that knowing they were in the presence of academics, of writers, would put people at ease and would loosen their tongues. Everyone liked feeling important.
"We're here to ask about the fire out in Hunting Valley the other week," Bliss said.
He nodded. "Yep, that one. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. We couldn't put it out - not until every last bit of that place was burned to the ground, except the door, of course. When we got there, the walls were still standing but the door was locked from the inside, which happens, but when we hit it with the ram, it just wouldn't budge. The thing was wood, but it felt like steel. We couldn't break it. We couldn't get inside at all."
"Can you tell us again how the fire was started?"
"From the burn trailer it looked as if it had sprung around the house, all at once." He took a bite from a cookie and looked pensive. "Talk about spontaneous combustion. Water seemed to feed the flames instead of putting them out, and the smoke had a different odor. Weird."
"Like what?" Bliss asked.
"Pungent and strong, as if hell itself was burning." He frowned.
"There were eyewitness reports that they heard screaming ... but you found no survivors?" Bliss asked.
He shook his head. "None."
"But the howling - " Bliss argued.
"Coyotes, most likely, there are some around the area," he said gruffly.
"Coyotes who walk upright? Right here it says someone saw great 'wolflike' silhouettes in the windows ..." She held the printout in front of him but he dismissed it.
"People have vivid imaginations," he said, looking uncomfortable.
Bliss was disappointed; other than the Heart of Stone, she had been hoping to discover something more about the fire, something that could be a real clue to the hounds' whereabouts. She and Jane began to gather their things when the fire chief coughed and looked guiltily at them.
"Well, there was something," he said finally. He lit his pipe and the room filled with the sweet smell of tobacco.
Bliss and Jane exchanged looks, but neither of them said anything.
"We found something." He squirmed in his seat. "It's ... difficult to talk about."
Bliss sat back down and leaned forward. "Tell us. You can tell us."
"Actually, not something ... but someone. A girl." He closed his eyes, wincing at the memory. "The house burned right to the ground, piles of ashes everywhere - great mounds of it - you saw. It was a few days after the fire was out - me and my boys were doing cleanup when we saw her ... a girl, buried under the ashes. Naked, covered in blood and dust. We thought she was dead."
"But she's not?" Bliss asked, hope thrumming in her chest. This was something - a beginning - a clue at last.
He shook his head. "Nope. She was breathing."
"Who was she?"
"Don't know. We had her checked out at the hospital ... and it was the oddest thing ... they said she was completely unharmed. No signs of physical injury, not one bruise, not one cut, not one burn. Just - covered in ashes. Ashes and blood." He took a puff from his pipe.
He hitched his pants, put down his pipe in the ashtray, stood, and left the room. When he came back after a few minutes, he was holding a notebook. It was covered in soot. "We also found this." He handed it to Bliss. "Will you take it? I don't like having it around." He seemed glad to be relieved of the burden.
"What happened to her? The girl you found?" The girl covered in ashes and blood.
"Mental hospital."
"Do you have the address?" asked Jane, ready with her pen.
He nodded. "I can get it."
This is it, Bliss thought, her excitement bubbling as she tucked the journal into her bag. Find the girl, Bliss knew, and she would find the hounds.