Embers (30 page)

Anya hoped the fact that Drake’s house was out of DPD’s jurisdiction would work in her favor. Vross and his men couldn’t cross into Oakland County and do surveillance on Drake without an order from a judge. Given that remote possibility, the best that they’d be able to accomplish would be to ask the Lake Angelus Police Department to keep an eye on Drake for them. Given the high price people here paid for their privacy, Anya hoped that the cooperation they displayed would be lip service.

And she was not to be disappointed. The Dart passed a Lake Angelus patrol car pulled off by the side of the road. Inside the car, the patrolman dozed, a newspaper on his chest disturbed by his breath. Anya drove on, counting the number of drives until she found Drake’s.

She didn’t blame him for moving from the city. After what he’d experienced, she could well understand the need to be insulated from the violence, the desire to withdraw to someplace safe. Someplace that could be controlled. But she found it odd for a man who had ducked out of public life to remain living at its fringes. The behavior reminded her of that of a voyeur. . . watching from afar, but not touching.

The property was tastefully overgrown. A wall of trees and shrubs obscured an iron gate. Beyond the gate, she could see nothing but acres of foliage, enough leaves still remaining to obscure the view. Anya pulled into the drive beside the intercom mounted on a gatepost. Above it, she could see the red eye of a video camera. She rolled down the window, reached out to press the buzzer, then hesitated. It was nearly three in the morning. What would she say that would make sense at this hour?
Mr. Ferrer, I have a
favor to ask you, before I lock you up for the rest of your natural life.

She blew out her breath and punched the button. There was a pause of nearly thirty seconds and Anya considered both pressing it again and driving away. She heard a small whir from the video camera above, and she glanced up at her reflection in its black lens as it turned toward her.

Without comment, the iron gates reeled back with the clink of automated chain. Anya pulled the Dart through them and they slid shut behind her with the same clunk that she’d heard in similar gates at the county jail. She felt a bump as she drove over a strip of tire shredders.

Getting in had been easy. Getting out might be a great deal harder.

A gravel lane wound before her, disappearing into the wooded lot. Anya proceeded slowly, hearing the gravel thunk and pop against the inside of the car’s wheel wells. This place must have been beautiful by day, she thought, but in the colorless stillness of night, the shape of the trees against the sky was all she could make out.

The lane widened after a quarter mile, spilling out in a turnaround before an English cottage—though “cottage” seemed too small a word for the structure. The façade was gray stone, pierced with dark windows that reflected the light of the moon in dips and warbles of leaded glass. A slate roof capped the two-story structure. Not a single light burned inside.

Anya shut off the ignition, listening to the engine plink as it cooled. With all the courage she could muster, she pulled open the door. She’d no sooner stepped out into the gravel than two dark shapes hurtled toward her, snarling.

Dogs. She scurried back into the Dart and slammed the door. The dogs lunged against the heavy door, their claws scraping against the Dart’s paint.

She felt Sparky unfurl from her neck, fling himself against the glass. His toes and mouth spread wide, displaying the sharpness of his back teeth. His hissing breath condensed on the glass, and his tongue scraped fog away as he snarled.

The dogs must have been able to see him. They yelped and scrambled back, barking at the creature making faces behind the glass.

“Cerberus, Orthrus. Down, boys.”

The dogs slid obediently to the ground, sitting upright with their tails slapping the gravel. They were gray and black speckled, with ears of foxes; Anya guessed that they were mutts. They would have been cute if they hadn’t been trying to tear her face off moments before.

Drake Ferrer stood before her car. He was dressed in jeans and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, walking barefoot on the gravel. “You can come out now.”

Anya screwed up her courage then popped open the door. Sparky flowed out before her and waddled over to the dogs. His gill-fronds were flared in an impressive display, and he hissed.

“Sparky,” Anya snapped.

The dogs bristled, and the two dogs and salamander circled each other. Anya braced herself for all-out war, but the display merely degenerated to an embarrassing round of butt-sniffing.

Anya looked at Drake. “Sorry about that. . . and for waking you.”

Drake shrugged. Up close, she could see that his clothes were spattered with something. Paint. His hands at his sides were shaded in colors of charcoal and white. “I wasn’t asleep.”

He didn’t ask her what she was doing here. It was as if he already knew, or wanted her to think he knew. He inclined his head. “C’mon back to the studio. I have to finish up a couple of things before the gesso sets.”

And he walked behind the house, as casually as if he was well accustomed to nighttime visitors, and her being here was the most natural thing in the world. That bothered her.

She followed, and Sparky and the dogs fell into line behind her. He led her to what must have been stables in an earlier era, now converted to a garage. A light shone in the upper floor. Drake climbed the stairs to the light and motioned for her to follow him inside.

This must have been the hayloft in an earlier time. Now it had been entirely gutted and covered with spotty, unfinished plaster. Pine boards creaked underfoot, stained and damaged by years of paint and careless use of tools. Drake’s work perched on easels set up throughout the space and tacked to the walls. His tools, paints, pencils, and brushes were scattered on a decrepit farmhouse table. The drop cloths wadded into corners smelled like turpentine. The light came from a system of shop lights strung overhead, casting a broad-spectrum glow with a bluish cast.

As chaotic as the space was, his work was breathtaking. Anya saw none of the precisely lettered blueprints she’d seen at the gallery. These works were abstracts and still lifes, paint sprawling large across canvas, in colors not permitted under the strict rules of architecture. The majority of the abstract works glowed in shades of orange and red, exhalations from corners of darkness. She saw curves of land that suggested deserts with the glisten of glass and sand mixed into the paint.

“These are gorgeous,” she said.

“Thanks. I’m experimenting with adding minerals to the paint for texture.” He crossed to the half-finished canvas he was working on, a broad sweep of reds and pinks. It reminded Anya of a bloody sunset she’d seen on a newsreel after Chernobyl. He dipped a broad brush into a paper cup, and curled a black line across the bottom perimeter. Using his forearm, he smudged the black into the red. The black carbon feathered into the substrate he’d applied to the canvas. “I’m using carbon tonight. It tends to melt right into the medium, so it has to be used up fast.”

Anya examined a piece of watercolor paper at his table. A frosty pattern laced across the page, incredibly intricate and organic, as it laced into the green. “What did you use for this? It’s amazing.”

“That was salt. The salt drives out the color and purifies the tint. Each thing I use has its own chemistry, its own magic.”

“Why didn’t you display any of these?”

Drake didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, he said, “These are personal. Without being able to see in three dimensions, this is all I can do. . . and I just don’t feel like putting that out to the world for critique by some jackass writing columns for the arts section.”

“These are for you.”

“Entirely. And. . . well, now that you’ve seen them, they’re for you, too.”

She paused before a smaller piece of canvas, stretched on a complicated-looking cantilevered frame. It was a one-quarter profile of a woman, only the pale edge of her face visible. Her back was presented to the viewer, dressed in a laced corset, ribbons dripping off into space. Her hair was pinned up, and the luminously pale curve of her neck contrasted sharply with the glow of black behind it. On close inspection, the black was slightly crazed, like the alligator skin effect that Anya had seen on charred wood in fires. When viewed from the right angle, she detected the blush of smoke on the woman’s cheek. The contrast between the seen and unseen was striking.

She swallowed. The painting was unmistakably of her, but to mention it seemed invasive.

“What did you use here?”

He answered her without turning around, focused on his current work. “That’s mica applied to the black paint. The white paint has a sheen of quartz in it. And parts were smoked with a candle.”

“It’s a beautiful effect,” she said.

“I had an inspiring subject. It’s called
Ishtar.
”

She blushed, looking down and away. The dogs were busy showing Sparky the collection of tennis balls they’d squirreled away in a corner. He seemed distracted for the moment.

“What are you calling the painting you’re working on now?” she asked.

Drake stood back from the orange and charcoal, taking its measure. “You won’t like it.”

“I think I already
do
like it.”

“The working title is
Sirrush.
”

Strange how he could do that: how he could make her feel at ease and then turn that off with a single word or glance.

He turned to look at her, one corner of his mouth upturned. “I will refrain from telling you that I told you so.”

Questions rose in her throat, and she gave them voice, awkwardly: “If you summon Sirrush. . . what then? How could you convince a god to leave?” She couldn’t even get rid of a minor demon—how could a mere human like Ferrer hope to control the king of salamanders?

“These creatures have existed since the beginning of time, Anya. In ancient times, in the time of Bel’s temple, sacrifices were made to them. When well fed, Sirrush can be a benevolent god.”

“What sacrifices?” she asked.

“Sacrifices of flesh and spirit.” He dipped his brush into the carbon and began to work it into a new section of paint.

It dawned upon her. “The people you’re killing in these fires. . . the fireman. The people in the apartment complex. You consider them to be sacrifices to Sirrush.”

“Flesh is a potent sacrifice. But there are less visible ones.”

“Virgil. The ghosts in the library.” Anya’s brow knitted. “You devoured them.”

Drake turned to face her. “You don’t wonder what happens to the ghosts you devour?”

She stared down at her hands. “I’ve never known.”

He balanced the paintbrush on the top of his cup. “A spirit that’s devoured by a Lantern, a human that’s killed in a fire. . . these are offerings to Sirrush, and those like him. They are, to put it bluntly, food. Honored food, but still food.”

She shook her head, refusing to believe, her hands balled into fists at her side. She refused to contemplate the idea that the ghosts she’d destroyed, that Neuman, that her mother. . . that all of them had gone to feed Sirrush. Sensing her distress, Sparky left his new dog pals and leaned against her side, casting a dirty look at Drake.

“That’s not true,” she said. “There’s no way you could know that.”

Drake’s good eye burned black and intense. “After I was nearly killed in that armpit of a city that you’re bent on protecting, I did some wandering. I didn’t spend all that time on the shores of a bucolic lake in Oakland County.

“I spent some time trying to make heads or tails of it all. Creation. Destruction. They seemed terribly out of balance and I wanted to learn why. I went to Egypt, to Iran, to Jordan. I met many magickal masters who taught me a great many things: how to manipulate fire, where Sirrush and his kind sleep. I learned how to make glass out of sand with just my hands and my breath.

“But the most valuable lesson I learned was from an old man in Petra. He made me realize that nothing is ever destroyed. Just because you swallow a ghost, doesn’t mean it stops existing. It has to go somewhere.”

“That doesn’t mean they go to feed Sirrush,” she argued. “There could be any number of afterlives—”

“Anya.” He set his cup down on the floor. “Everything must be fed, even things that sleep. In ancient Babylon, Lanterns like us were the priests and priestesses of Sirrush and his siblings. It was up to us to keep them warm, safe, and fed.” He gestured to the salamander winding around Anya’s knees. “Like you do with Sparky.”

“Sirrush isn’t a larger version of Sparky.”

“No, he’s not. But he’s been around since there was fire and he’s required food since then. Every time, since the beginning of time, that man has died in a brush fire, that man built a house or temple that burned. . . Sirrush and his kind have not allowed the sacrifice to go to waste. They’re part of the natural world, and there’s nothing evil about that cycle.”

Anya leaned against the table, her heart churning with the possibilities. She quailed away from them. “No. I choose not to participate in this. . . and I choose not to believe what you’re telling me.” She couldn’t imagine her mother in the belly of a dragon and she would not accept the explanation. She turned away, wrapping her hands around her elbows.

“If you didn’t believe that I know some bits of arcane lore that you don’t, why did you come?”

Her breath froze in her throat. “I came to talk to you.”

She heard his steps behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders, and Sparky growled below her. “You came because you want me to devour that demon that’s chewing a hole in your gut.”

She turned in his arms, startled. “How did you know?”

His mouth curved up, but the smile was rimmed with bitterness. “I can feel it in you. Here.” He touched the hollow of her throat. “And here.” His hand brushed below her sternum, lingered. Anya’s heart hammered and she was certain he could feel it. Under his touch, she could feel Mimi turn over and stretch. Acidity burned between her ribs, and she gasped.

“But I can’t take it from you. Not now.”