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When I went to bed, I thanked them for a great birthday and slept better than I had in a long time.
 
What began as a difficult day ended on a high note, something I never saw coming.
 
Having my parents back, at least in some capacity—even if it was a fragile and fleeting capacity—meant a lot to me.
 
I didn’t know how long I’d have them back, but I’d take what I could and pray for more.
 
If the family broke again, at least I knew now that there was the possibility of finding a way back.
 
A year ago, I never would have believed that.
 
A year ago, I would have laughed at the idea.

Not now.

I turned onto my side, the amulet shifted and with its movement, a thought occurred to me.
 
Maybe I could help my father find a job.
 
All he needed was a break, which I could make happen.
 
And if he got that break, perhaps he’d go back to the way he was—a man who had his share of issues, sure, but only a few which revealed themselves when he was working and contributing to the family.
 
When he was happy and productive, he was another person.
 
I missed that person.
 
I wanted him back.

It was tempting, but was it wrong?
 
My mother found a job on her own.
 
There was no interference by me—and that meant something because I knew she’d done it herself.
 

I looked out my bedroom window at the street lamp glowing across the way.
 
A haze of moths and other flying insects were drawn to its halo of light and colliding dumbly with its source.
 
They spun and whirled, dipped and lifted, disappeared and reappeared.
 
They were a roiling ball of confusion, seemingly immune to the instinct that made them smash against the light.
 

Watching them was hypnotic.
 
My eyes became heavy.
 
I closed them and thought of my father.
 

I couldn’t help him.
 
I couldn’t interfere with everything.
 
If I did, I would create a false world in which nothing was real, a person’s accomplishments meant nothing and all I’d be living was an illusion manufactured by my own imagination.

*
  
*
  
*

It was late when I was awakened by something that sounded like a pop.

My bedroom window was open.
 
The bugs were still unraveling in the street lamp.
 
I listened but couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary.
 
Was I dreaming?
 
Maybe.
 
The pop sounded like one of the guns in ‘Killzone 3.’
 
It was weird.
 
I could smell gasoline, but that wasn’t unusual because my father’s junker of a truck was parked outside my window.
 

I turned onto my back, closed my eyes and started to drift off again, but this time I heard a whoosh and the sound of footsteps hurrying away from the house.

This was no dream.

I sat up in bed and pressed my face against the window screen.
 
I tapped into the amulet and allowed my mind to see through the dark.

I could see shapes backing away from the house and moving toward the road.
 
I focused harder and the shapes revealed themselves to be Jake Tyler, Mike Hastings, Ginny Gibson and five others, many from the very football team my father wanted me to join.
 

All were turning now to take a right onto the street.
 
They started running.
 
Meanwhile, outside, at the far end of the trailer where my parents’ bedroom was located, there was a sudden burst of orange light.

It was fire.
 
They’d set the trailer on fire.

I got out of bed quickly.

Too quickly.
 

I tripped on the sheet wrapped around my leg and smashed my head against the side table, which went down with me.
 

Dazed, I pushed myself up.
 
I could smell smoke.
 
I could feel heat.
 
I went to my door and opened it to a sudden rush of flames that blew into the room and ate the oxygen within it.

Most of the trailer was on fire.
 
They’d just set the trailer ablaze, but because it was so old—or because they’d poured so much gasoline around it—it was going up fast.

Outside, I could hear neighbors rushing toward us.
 
I looked through the door into the living space and saw an inferno twisting toward the ceiling.
 
It reaching across it as if it wanted to pull everything into it.
 
I shouted for my parents but heard nothing.
 

I could stop this.
 
I pressed my hand against the amulet and was about to imagine the fire ceasing when the gas main feeding the stove ignited and blew.

The explosion sent me back and I tripped.
 
A rolling ball of flame entered my bedroom and curled toward the ceiling just long enough to set it on fire.
 
It was roiling, twisting and looked demonic.
 
It spit bits of fire down onto me and the room.

Outside, our neighbors were screaming for us.
 
I heard people shouting to call 911.
 
I heard a man call out my father’s name.
 
The trailer was starting to yawn as the metal warped in the heat.
 

And then I heard my father shouting.
 
I got up and ran to the doorway.
 
What I saw stopped me.

He was trying to throw a bucket of water into the living room.
 
He did so twice with success, but when he came back from the bathroom a third time, the fire reached out, tasted his clothing and turned him into a spinning funnel of flames.
 

There was another small explosion.
 
I could hear people screaming in fear outside.
 
My father fell to his knees and started batting at his head when the ceiling light in my bedroom fell on top of me and scalded me.
 

There was no time to do anything.
 
The room was melting from the heat.
 
The walls were starting to give due to the fire.
 
Choking on the smoke, I ran to my window, kicked out the screen, heard a woman say something and suddenly I was being pulled into the flickering darkness.
 
Hands wrapped around my body.
 
There were too many to count, but they were on me, tugging, groping, yanking me to freedom while my doomed parents were left behind to burn in the man-made storm.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BOOK TWO

REVENGE

My parents had been dead a week when I decided to take an apartment of my own.
 
It was about a mile or so from creepy Jim, which was just close enough for friendly visits, nothing more.
 
I needed time alone, but I wanted to be close enough to somebody I trusted should I need them.

I stayed with Jim since the night our trailer was torched by Jake Tyler, Mike Hastings, Ginny Gibson and a crew of five others, but it was soon obvious—to me, at least—that the living situation wasn’t going to work out.
 

There wasn’t room for me.
 
Given all the junk in Jim’s trailer—not to mention his dozens of cats and the smell of cat urine—it was too claustrophobic and not what I wanted.
 
Besides, I was now eighteen.
 
In the grand eyes of the law, I was considered an adult and didn’t have to go into foster care.
 
I could be on my own, which is what I intended to do.

“We can get a bigger place,” Jim said while I was packing in his spare bedroom.
 
I knew he was worried about me and I appreciated his concern.
 
Right now, he was my closest ally and I didn’t want to hurt or offend him in any way.
 
“We can have anything we want with that amulet.
 
I just always played it safe.
 
Nothing too grand, you know?”

I smiled at him.
 
“You achieved it.”

“It’s about staying under the radar, not letting people get too close and wonder how you got so much when they know damn well you don’t work and that you came from nothing.”

I turned to look at him.
 
“But what if I do want it all?
 
What if I want a nice place?
 
Nice clothes?
 
A nice car and nice things?”

“Then you need to get out of Maine, boy, and move to another state where no one knows you and you can become that person.
 
What do they call it?
 
A trust-fund baby.
 
That’s what you can become, but you can’t do that here because everyone knows otherwise.
 
You need to stick to my story.
 
Your parents had a little money saved.
 
There also was a modest insurance policy.
 
Not much, but it was good—certainly good enough so you can finish the school year without having to worry about where you’re going to sleep and whether you’re going to eat.”

“I’m not leaving here,” I said.
 
“I have things to do.
 
And I’d like to up that insurance amount by at least another hundred grand.
 
I’ve been poor my whole life.
 
I’ve had enough of it.
 
There’s no reason why they couldn’t have purchased an insurance policy that had an extra hundred thousand in it.”

“That’ll give you a quarter mill, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I can live with that.
 
You’ll change your bank numbers?”

“I just did.”
 

He ran his hand through his beard and studied me with frustration.
 
“Suppose you tell me about those things you have to do?”

I started to fold a shirt.
 
“If you think I’m going to let them get away with killing my mother and father, you’re crazy.
 
It’s been a week and still the police know nothing.
 
They’re incompetent.
 
I’m not waiting for them to get their act together and track down who did this when I already know who did it and can handle it myself.”

“I don’t expect you to wait.
 
I don’t expect you to let them get away with what they did to your Mom and Dad—I loved them, too.
 
I miss them.
 
I know you’ll do something and I understand that.
 
But that doesn’t mean I’m also not worried about what you’ll do.
 
I don’t want you to go too far.”

“I plan on going too far, so start worrying.”

“You’re talking death, right?”

“After I play with them for awhile, it’s an option.”

“It’s the wrong option.
 
Seth, there are all sorts of things you can do, some of which won’t be apparent.
 
This Mike Hastings guy you talk about.
 
You could imagine for him a life of squalor.
 
You could imagine for him a life of crime.
 
Say he gets caught holding up a bank.
 
That’s prison time right there, which is what he really deserves for what he did to your parents.
 
Death is the easy way out.
 
You could create an endless loop of bank robberies just for him and he’d be in prison the rest of his life.”
 
He checked himself.
 
“Hell, you could do that for all of them.
 
Death isn’t an option.”

“I’ll think about it, Jim.”

“I know you’re angry.”

“It’s deeper than that.
 
I have a history with these people that, if written down on paper, no one would believe.
 
If any of this had happened to you, you’d understand how I feel.
 
I should have been able to help my parents.
 
I should have been able to stop that fire, but I couldn’t.
 
For some reason, I couldn’t stop it and I don’t know why.”

“It’s because you couldn’t focus,” Jim said.
 
“You were scared and you couldn’t focus.
 
You know that’s how that damned thing works.
 
It’s all about focus.”

“I should have been able to focus.”

“In time, you’ll learn how to control it as if it’s just an extension of you.
 
You won’t even think about it, even in situations as dire as that.”

“A lot of good that does me now.
 
They’re dead.”

He couldn’t respond to that, so he said nothing.
 
He watched me finish packing and zip up my duffle bag when I was finished.
 
I didn’t have much, but I did manage to grab a photograph of my parents before the fire became so intense that I needed to crawl out of my bedroom window.
 

When I was ready to leave, creepy Jim asked me if I wanted a lift, but I thought it was best to start relying on myself, so I called for a cab, which now was outside waiting for me.

I climbed into it and looked over at him.
 
He was standing in the trailer’s open front door.
 
All around him, cats were coming in and going out.
 
Some stopped to rub their scent against him.
 
On his face was a well of concern I’d never seen before.
 
In his eyes was something else.
 
Regret?
 
Did he regret giving me the amulet?
 
“Don’t be a stranger, now.”

“I won’t.
 
Thanks, Jim.
 
I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”

“We’ll talk soon?”

“Couple days?”

“I’d like that.
 
Just remember what I said.”

“I’ll see you.”

I told the driver to take me into town.

*
  
*
  
*

The apartment I chose yesterday was on the first floor of a new building in one of the best parts of the city.
 

It had everything I needed—two bedrooms, an office for schoolwork, a new kitchen with stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, a washer and dryer and, better yet, it was partly furnished and cleaned daily by the service I hired.
 
It was close to my school and had decent access to stores and restaurants.

Never in my life had I lived in anything like this.

The apartment also had a parking spot, which I planned to fill later with the new Audi TT I was buying at noon.
 
I test drove it yesterday.
  
It was black and sleek, fast and perfect.
 

Jim thought it was too much.
 
I thought I could spend my “inheritance” as I saw fit.
 
I was writing them a check for it, so I didn’t expect to be long.
 
The rest of the day would be spent buying towels, a bed, new clothes, groceries and a hundred other things I needed in order to live.

I unzipped my duffel bag and put the photograph of my parents on a side table in the living room.
 
I looked at them and missed them.
 
That final night alone together, we were at some kind of a turning point and then it was stolen from us.
 

Tonight, I’d think hard about all that was coming next.
 
Tomorrow was my first day back at school.
 
It would be stressful for a whole host of reasons, but I was going.

I planned to look those fuckers straight in the face.