“Nine rivers, huh? Real ones? Or, like, metaphorical ones?”
“Depends on the person. Some people, it’s rivers. Some people, it’s snakes. Some people, it’s all the regrets and mistakes they made in their lives that they can’t take back.”
“I’m in that last category, aren’t I?”
“Do you have a problem with snakes?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then yes, you are. And the sooner you continue the sooner you can finish.”
“You’re like Mister Roarke on Fantasy Island. Where’s your midget?”
“That’s an interesting way to put it,” he says. “I’m a greeter of sorts. A facilitator. We usually don’t explain what’s happening to the dead who come through here. You’re special.”
Maybe that’s my loophole. “If I’m so special why am I going through this?”
“Because you’re here. Alive, dead, mortal, god. Everyone pays their way in pain, here, Eric. Everyone.” He snaps his fingers.
And I fall.
My house is on fire.
I’m standing in the driveway of the home I grew up in, staggering from a sudden wave of nausea. One of the joyous effects of Alex’s teleportation charm. I’m glad he had it. Driving would have taken me an hour even in late night traffic, but I’m still too late.
There is something I’m forgetting. Even through the terror and realization that there’s nothing I can do, there’s the sense of something vital that’s just out of reach. It surfaces briefly like a whale breaching the waves and then just as quickly sinks back down again, disappearing completely at the sight of the house engulfed in flames.
It takes everything I have not to go running into the fire. The entire fa?ade of the building has burned away. The living room, foyer and kitchen are gone. The second floor collapses as I watch crews of firefighters desperately try to put it out.
I can tell already they won’t make a damn bit of difference. I can feel the magic in the air, residue of massive spells. Some of them undoubtedly my parents’. The rest of it is from a thing I catch out of the corner of my eye, dancing in the flames of what used to be my living room.
Then there’s the death. No ghosts, but the sense of death lingers. Not quite a smell, not quite a sound. Just a feeling I get when someone nearby has kicked the bucket.
My parents and Lucy, I’m sure. I can’t see bodies. The untouched garage is still closed. I can’t tell if their cars are in there or not, and much as I hope they took off for some late night errand, I know they’re in the house.
All this devastation has been caused by a fire elemental. Not a big one. I can see it flitting from flame to flame, hiding in the fire, disguising its shape. The firefighters, normals every one of them, won’t see a thing, but I know what to look for.
I catch a glimpse of another one that hasn’t hatched yet in the remains of the living. They start as eggs, tiny things made of fire that grow to about the size and shape of an ostrich egg before cracking open and letting loose a nightmare beast of flame. They’re good for burning things, nothing else. And unless you’re into arson for insurance purposes, and believe me there are better ways to do that, you only use them to kill.
And I know who set them off in my house.
Jean Boudreau. He’s been fucking with mages and lesser talents for months now, and my parents were pushing back. Vivian said something about an aeromancer whose business burned down. I doubt an elemental was used there, too. A can of gasoline and a match would be less indiscriminate.
I’ve moved on from panic, straight through grief and horror and hit the brakes firmly at rage. I know the way I know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west that I will kill this man. I will tear him to pieces. I will make sure he knows I’m the one who’s doing it to him.
And I will make it hurt.
A car pulls up into the driveway, screeches to a stop. I don’t recognize it, don’t know who’s driving. I ready a fire spell of my own in case it’s Boudreau come to gloat. He wants a fight, I’ll give him a goddamn fight.
But it’s Lucy. She jumps out of the passenger side in sweats and sandals, brown hair pulled back with a scrunchie, sleep still in her eyes. She’s running on adrenaline. Relief that she’s safe, horror that she’s going to see this. I run to her and pull her close, turning her away from the flames.
I can’t shake this feeling of déjà vu, as if this has all happened before. It has an almost hazy feeling, like a memory I can’t quite grasp.
Lucy’s with a woman I don’t know, something strange about her. The feeling that this is a memory stops at her. She feels familiar, but I can’t place her. It’s like she doesn’t belong here. Her face is blurry. Smoke in my eyes, I imagine. Who the hell is she?