Fury's Fire (9 page)

“Do you know that guy?” Will asked. Will looked over at the man. Pockmarked face, flashing eyes—it wasn’t anyone he’d seen before.

“No.” Carl’s voice was a whisper as he stepped past Will.

Will stared, and the man stared back. A smile slithered across his face, twisting like the branch of a poison tree. His eyes gleamed golden and then, suddenly, the fire in them disappeared. It was as if he had been lit by a momentary spark that had flared and then died out.

“Okay,” Officer Tejada said at last, frowning at the computer screen. “As long as this is paid off, there shouldn’t be a problem with your uncle’s record. Are you prepared to pay it now?” She looked up at Will with dark eyes.

It took a long moment for her words to fall into place, and for Will to find the meaning in them. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I can pay it.” He cast a furtive glance at the man in the holding cell, but he had turned back to the wall.

Will took care of the ticket, then waited for Gretchen in the hallway. When she came out of Barry’s office, Will hurried to her side.

“Ugh. That was painful,” Gretchen said. “Everything taken care of at your end?”

“Yeah.” Will held her arm gently, making sure to guide her as far away from the holding cell as possible. But there was no sound from the suspect. Will cast a glance over his shoulder as they walked toward the front door. The rain had picked up, and the fat drops hit them as they hurried to the truck.

Carl was waiting for them, seated behind the wheel.

“Thanks again, Carl,” Gretchen said as she climbed inside after Will. “That wasn’t fun; I’m glad I had some company.”

Carl didn’t reply—he just nodded as he turned the key in the ignition and brought the truck to life. The blood seemed to have drained out of him.

“Let’s get out of here,” Will said. They pulled away from the curb, and he watched the police station in the rearview mirror until it was out of sight.

The scene at the station had disquieted him, and now—hours later—he replayed the scene with the dog in an endless loop in his mind. Over and over, he saw the flash of bared teeth, the tense muscles spring forward; he felt his heart drop as the Lab knocked Gretchen to the ground. He’d been consumed by fear, rage and fear, and in the fury that consumed him, he would have killed the animal.

He had seen the dog, seen it attack, but it had reminded Will of a sailboat, invisible wind driving it forward. What had made it go momentarily mad? He looked out his window at the house across the creek. The sky was darkening into gray twilight and Gretchen’s room cast a yellow glow onto the almost-changing leaves of the maple tree that framed her window. She wasn’t in her room, but Will was comforted that he was able to watch her home from his perch on his bed. She was inside the old farmhouse, safe.

He looked down at the flute in his hand. It was lightweight, made of human bone, and the length of his forearm. A sense of foreboding fell over him.

The kiss that afternoon had taken him by storm, but not by surprise. He wondered why they hadn’t done it before. The moment he felt her gentle, hesitant lips against his neck, Will knew that a pass had been reached, and now there was no going back. The kiss he gave her was like a dam opening, unleashing a torrent of pent-up emotion. He could no longer deny that he loved Gretchen with a ferocity that frightened him. The touch of her skin, the sweet smell of her hair—these things were precious to him, and when he’d kissed her again, he hadn’t wanted to let her go. His desire to protect her had only grown more desperate. Love had bound them together and ignited a flickering, warming light within the wreckage of his ruined life.

He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but Gretchen felt she had to explain about the dog attack to her father,
and she wanted to do it alone. So he had kissed her again on the doorstep, feeling the heat of her body pressed against his, and had finally let her go.

Then he’d made his way back to his house.

His mother had been in the kitchen, relaxing with a cup of coffee, when he got back from the police station. She looked up at Will and smiled. It was the kind of smile that he hadn’t seen from her for a long time, as though all of her worries had vanished and she was just happy to see him. Impulsively Will had stepped behind her and kissed the top of her head. She took the hand he had rested on her shoulder and squinted up at his face. “What’s wrong?” she had asked, but her voice was surprised, not worried.

“Nothing,” Will had whispered, squeezing her soft hand.

She’d looked down at her coffee cup. “Dinner’s at six.”

“Dinner’s always at six.”

He’d taken the stairs up to his room and thrown his book bag on the floor. He stepped over to the window and looked out, over at Gretchen’s house. He saw her brush past the window. Then she moved toward the door and disappeared.

He’d turned back to his bureau, and a shiver had rippled through his body. Sitting atop the polished dark wood was a flute that Barry McFarlan had given him. It had been found on board the
Vagabond
after the accident, and Barry had assumed it belonged to Tim. Will later discovered that it was a flute that the Sirens used to call to one another. Asia had told him that.

He usually kept it buried in his bottom drawer. He had no idea how it had appeared on top of his bureau. Reaching out, he’d touched the smooth bone with a tentative finger. Then he lifted the flute in his hands, weighing the delicate heft of it.

I must have put it there
, he mused now.
I must have put it there and forgotten
.

It was a reasonable thought. Unlikely … but more reasonable than the alternative, which was that someone had broken into his room and placed the flute on the bureau for him to find. Although even that wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. His first thought was of Kirk.

But why would he do that?

God, who can explain anything that kid does?
Will argued with himself.

Kirk had stolen the flute once before and used it to call the Sirens. Will wondered if Kirk had done that again, and an ugly feeling of dread crept over him.
But the seekriegers are dead
, he reasoned.
I saw them die in the fire on the bay
.

Still, Will didn’t like what the presence of the flute might mean. He thought back to the word that had been scrawled on his mirror—
FURY
. He’d written it off as a trick of the imagination. But the flute wasn’t imaginary. And the dog was definitely not imaginary.

Little by little, the drops were collecting into a pool. Will had a bad feeling that something evil was on the rise. Something connected with Gretchen.

So he sat down on his bed and watched her house. It looked the same as usual. Will didn’t know what he
had expected—a dark cloud, an evil presence. It was just an old farmhouse, the porch flecked with falling leaves, a few yellow mums blooming in the front flowerbed. The house comforted him with its sense of usualness.

That was why he stayed there, on the bed, watching the house for the next hour. And it was why he came back to his perch after dinner and watched until darkness fell and the moon rose. He watched until Gretchen’s light went out and the night was broken only by a lamp on the first floor—a sign that Johnny was still awake, working on a song.

Will watched, unsure of what he was watching for. He watched the house beneath the cold, beautiful stars and wouldn’t tear his eyes away, not even to sleep.

He stayed that way for a long time. Finally he remembered that he had some reading to do for school. He dug out the novel and scanned the first page, looking up after every paragraph to check on Gretchen’s house. This half-captured attention made it hard to focus on the text in front of him. The letters didn’t want to add up to words. The more he tried to focus, the more their meaning dissolved before him. Even when he took a single word,
agile
. Was that even a word?
Ag. IIe. A. Gile. Agi. Le
. He looked at it, and looked at it, until the alphabet fell apart for him, useless.

Will tossed the book onto his bed and looked out the window, watching the light from Johnny’s window as it lingered, golden, on the small mound of yellow maple leaves beneath the tree outside Gretchen’s window. It was an unfinished pile, one that Johnny must
have started and left in a moment of distraction. It wasn’t hard to remember jumping in a pile like that. Playing with Tim, Guernsey barking madly and rolling onto her back, sending yellow leaves into the air with her wild limbs. Will touched the edge of his ancient quilt, missing his dog with a persistent ache. Guernsey had been thirteen when she died. Will and Tim had gotten her as a puppy when Will was five. Almost all of the life he could remember had Guernsey in it.

He remembered picking her out when she was a wiggly puppy, graceless and curious. A friend’s dog had had puppies, and Tim was in charge of choosing the one they took home. Will got to pick the name. Somehow, it was as if naming the dog had bound Guernsey to Will permanently, and she was his dog ever after that. She slept on his bed and followed him through the house. Tim would complain, but even when he scooped up the sleeping puppy and put her on his own bed, she would eventually wake up, hop off, and clamber onto Will’s bed again.

A soft tinkle, like ice fracturing, broke into Will’s thoughts. Then a crash.
Raccoons are into something
, Will thought, but then he heard a muttered curse. Will looked out the window. A familiar shape was huddled beneath the tree. The shape groaned, then started to sing softly.

Will’s heart gave a sickening lurch, the tune awakening half-remembered images in his mind. Asia’s green, haunting eyes. Kirk’s voice. Yes, Will had heard this song before. Kirk had sung it once. Will had been with Asia then, and they had listened to the mournful tune, sweet and piercing as grief.

But this wasn’t Kirk’s voice. It was a deep, rumbling bass. A familiar, bearlike growl.

He bolted down the hall, his heart hammering. His mother didn’t look up from the television screen as he passed her room, then hurried down the stairs. Out the back door, out into the yard.

The man looked up at him but didn’t speak.

“Uncle Carl?” Will said gently.

Carl peered at him with bleary eyes. “Dropped my bottle,” he said.

Shattered glass shimmered across the flagstones. The label was facedown, the only thing holding together several shards of glass cut by a spiderweb of cracks. But Will didn’t need to see the label to know what the bottle had contained. He walked over to his uncle and knelt beside him. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Carl held up a hand. A bloody cut ran across his palm. “Tried to pick up some of the pieces.”

“We’ll have to get this cleaned up.” Will’s brain burned with ideas—ways he could get Carl into the
house without his parents knowing.
Dad threw a total fit when I got a parking ticket. What will he do if he thinks Carl is drinking again?

“I’m sorry, Will,” Carl said, his words thick and slurred, as if his tongue were now a heavy sponge. “I know I’ve made a mess.” He looked at the broken glass, his face distraught.

“It’s okay,” Will told his uncle, although this was a lie. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t. Will hadn’t seen Carl drink in years. Not even a glass of wine with Thanksgiving dinner.

“Don’t tell your parents.”

“I won’t.”

“They won’t let you ride in the truck with me anymore.”

Carl muttered something unintelligible, then started to sing again. Will cut him off. “What are you even doing here?” he asked as he struggled to help his uncle to his feet.

“Just checking,” was the obscure answer. Carl clearly remembered that they had to be quiet—he was whispering.

Will helped him to the steps that led to the mudroom, which opened into the kitchen. From there, they could get to the downstairs bathroom without passing his parents’ bedroom or his father’s office.

“Checking on what?”

But Carl didn’t answer.

Will trod softly on the wooden steps, but it wasn’t easy when he was half dragging a two-hundred-pound
man with him. He watched carefully where he put his feet, and guided Carl toward the mudroom using the outer edges of the boards, which creaked less.

But in the end, it was wasted effort. Mr. Archer was sitting at the table when they walked into the kitchen. His face was a mask of alarm as he set down the glass he had been drinking from. “You’re bleeding,” he said to Carl.

“He cut his hand,” Will explained.

“I cut my hand,” Carl repeated in his thick voice.

“You’re drunk.” Will’s father’s face betrayed no emotion—not surprise, not anger. He turned to Will, and for a moment Will feared that his father was going to accuse him of letting this happen. Instead Mr. Archer just said, “Make some coffee while I get him cleaned up. And be quiet about it. If your mother hears, we’re in deep.”

Will nodded and transferred Carl’s bulk to his father’s steady shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Bert,” Carl slurred. “I don’t know what happened. I was just buying some things at the store, and I don’t even know what made me grab it—”

“Quiet,” his brother told him.

Clearly chastened, Carl clammed up as Mr. Archer led him to the downstairs bathroom. Will opened the freezer and pulled out the ground coffee, then measured the water and set it to brew. He was more than a little surprised by his father’s reaction—concern but not judgment. Will had expected his father to storm, to scream. That’s what he would have done if Will had
ever come home drunk … and Will wasn’t a recovering alcoholic.

When Will was small, he would tell his mother, “I love you with my whole heart.” And his mother would say, “What about Daddy?”

“I have another heart for Daddy,” Will would reply, in complete ignorance of human anatomy. That response always made his mother laugh.

But maybe, somehow, everyone does have different hearts for different people
, Will mused. The way his father loved Carl was different from the way he loved Will. Just as the way he loved Will was different from the way he had loved Tim.