“But that hardly applies to me. You saw it yourself. I work in the shop.”
“All right.” Duluth keeps his tone to a mutter. “Sharkey knows where the fires will be. Before they happen. That’s how come he’s lived so long. Sometimes he’s just normal violent, when he’s got cause. Like for killing offenses. But when he just don’t like a guy, a swiller or somebody, Sharkey sends him into a fire. Damns him, is what people say. Because even if you miss the first one, he’ll make sure another one gets you later.”
“Do you mean to tell me that Sharkey actually causes fires? He’s an arsonist?”
“Nah, nothing like that. These are drake fires I’m talking about.”
“Then what does Sharkey have to do with it?”
Duluth hesitates. “He…knows how to use them.”
“So his knowledge frightens you?”
“Not just me. Everybody.”
Swanny runs her finger around the rim of her glass. “Does he have any friends? Any peers?”
“Mr. Sharkey don’t socialize much.”
“How terrifically lonely he must be.” She downs the last of her drink and reaches for the bottle. After pouring herself another shot, she offers it to Duluth, but he holds up a hand in refusal.
“Never touch the stuff.”
When Duluth drops Swanny off back at the Chaw Shop, she finds the front door unlocked and a note stuck up on the wall inside with a pushpin:
I got tired and went to bed. There’s a plate for you in the fridge. Be in the shop tomorrow & early. ES
It’s typewritten, like the contract and the labels. Sharkey must be concealing truly atrocious handwriting.
After a cold repast of antipasto—ham, cheese, smoked chicken, and yes, a few delectable olives (though no martini)—Swanny retires to the attic. Once in her pajamas, though, the day’s events continue to churn through her mind. She searches the room until she finds the one thing that can give her relief: a writing set, unused and intact, still in its marbled gift box, with a daybook, dip pen, and sealed bottle of ink, along with sheets of stationery and a calendar for the year 302001 AF. She needs to set her thoughts in order.
Dear Diary,
In the past it has been my habit to introduce myself when beginning a new journal, to state my name and rank and the most notable of my recent accomplishments. But this evening, I am at a loss for such formalities. Am I a Dahlberg or a Ripple, or even still a baroness? What do such appellations even mean in a wonderland such as this? Will I find comfort and happiness here for a time? Or will I perish—falling prey to the brutality I witnessed in the streets tonight, undistinguished and unloved, or burning away to nothing, mere fuel for the flames? I am afraid I cannot bear to set about answering these few simple questions. And there are many others that I dare not even contemplate, questions that, like my wretched affliction, gnaw me from within.
Instead, I will enumerate my goals, for though they are also many and daunting, they give me cause to soldier on.
Before the month is out, I will:
1. Locate Mother’s murderers.
2. Torture them at some length for information, until I can rest certain knowing no co-conspirators remain.
3. Kill them in a manner commensurate with how they dispatched Mother (so preferably by shooting them in the face).
4. Have their bodies disposed of discreetly and hygienically (perhaps I shall ask Mr. Scharkee for his advice w/r/t this).
5.
Swanny’s pen, which has been scratching across the paper rapidly, abruptly pauses, and her finger slides in her mouth, unbidden, to prod her newest tooth. What comes after that? She hasn’t yet thought so far in advance—though of course it may take more time to proceed through steps 1–4 than she’s permitting herself to believe—more time, indeed, than she even has.
She dips the pen in the inkwell and continues:
5. Duncan Ripple? Punish him? Win him back?
But she hates the appearance of those question marks, so girlish and juvenile, each the shape of half a broken heart. To think of him, when so much else is at stake—well. She dips the pen again and scribbles out the words.
20
A CALLING
The next evening, after his first day fighting fires with Trank, Ripple is back, showered, and studying in the Hall of Ultimate Sacrifice, sitting on one of the grief benches across from the Wall of Remembrance. This is the wall where the names of the fallen firemen from the first twelve years of the dragon attacks shimmer on engraved brass plaques. Years thirteen and fourteen are rendered in initials only; below those, there’s one more that reads, simply, ETC.
Ripple is flipping through a heavily illustrated primer—over his shoulder, Abby sees cautionary images of wildly spurting hoses, disobedient Dalmatians, dangerously positioned ladders, all circled and crossed out—and writing answers in the blanks. “Wench. Stop playing with my hair.”
But Abby loves the way his hair feels against her fingers: wet and soft with conditioner, slick as the breast feathers of a vulture. She reluctantly withdraws her hand.
“I need to concentrate,” Ripple continues. “I’ve got to finish this homework.”
“What’s homework?” He isn’t home. Neither is she. But Ripple sighs heavily, as if he can’t believe she doesn’t know.
“I have to do these stupid worksheets if I want the Special Officer certification, OK?”
“Why do you have to do them if they’re stupid?”
“It’s required by the Metropolitan Police Department.”
“They require you to be stupid?”
“You wouldn’t understand. You don’t do anything.”
“Yes, I do.”
He scrubs at the page with his eraser. “No you don’t.”
“I do.”
“Uh, no.”
“Last night I got the BeanReader to tell me my name.”
“What?” He stops erasing, his puzzled expression reflected in the golden wall of inscriptions. She has his attention now. For a second at least.
“Last night I…”
“I heard you, I just—we already tried it. It didn’t work.”
“I made it work.”
“How?”
“I listened to it. I snuck inside.”
“OK, I get it. You’re making this up to distract me.”
“No, I’m not!”
“So what’s your name, then?”
“The same one I’ve always had.”
“Abracadabra?”
“That’s not my real name.”
“I seriously do not have time for this.”
She takes the pencil out of his hand, writes the cipher in the margin of the page. The characters are large and shaky, but she makes sure he can read them. KL5-0216. “What’s that?” she asks.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
“Dunno. The BeanReader said it.”
“Nice try, but it’s not long enough to be a PRL.”
“Pearl?”
“Personal Record Locator. Those are eight digits. This is, uhh…seven.” He squints. “Where’d you get it? Seriously?”
“I told you.”
“The BeanReader.”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I broke it.”
“You broke Trank’s BeanReader?! He’s going to fucking kill you, Abby!”