The organizers decided to move half the party outdoors, onto the village green. That way more people could hear the live music in the band shell, and bring kids and blankets to picnic on the grass after fetching their meals from in front of the firehouse, half a block away. The firehouse got cleared of trucks for dancing later, a cash bar throughout, and an auction of donated goods and services.
Almost everyone in town donated something. Besides the gifts and baskets of cheer and tote bags filled with delicacies from the deli, Janie’d given a wash and blow-dry, the bowling alley donated free games for after the repairs, the restaurants provided gift certificates, and I put up naming rights to a lead character in my next book after Susan promised to make a bid on it. That way I wouldn’t be embarrassed when no one wanted the only thing I had to offer except the quick cartoon sketches I volunteered to do for anyone who paid twenty bucks.
We worked all day wiping down tables, laying out dishes and plastic silverware, hanging balloons and streamers. Just before the opening time, I set up an easel on the corner between the firehouse and the grassy area, near where they were selling tickets. I did a quick portrait of Elladaire from memory to show people what I could do. Right after that, she came with her grandmother, but toddled over to me, grinning. I scooped her up and twirled her around before she could call me mama.
“I missed you, pumpkin,” I told her, but she was already gone as soon as her pink mary janes hit the ground, squealing with happiness and shouting, “Pipi! Pipi!”
The man of the hour had arrived.
Janie wanted him to donate a dinner date for the auction, but he couldn’t promise his time. Or else he used that as a damn good excuse.
“How about a dance, then?”
He still held Elladaire. He pulled her closer. “Mine are all promised to my best girl.”
“Hey, you promised me one, too,” Susan reminded him.
Janie added, “And the baby’s going home after dinner. You’ll have plenty of dances left.”
I swear the man blushed. He looked toward me for help. “You can spare one dance, hotshot. I’ll bid ten dollars.”
“Fifteen,” came from someone putting serving spoons in the cole slaw and potato salad, “if it’s a slow dance.”
“Twenty,” from one of the high school girls who’d been with Martin and Barry on the beach. She now wore a hairnet and rubber gloves to ladle out the clam chowder, to her dismay.
With the back of his neck still red, Piet allowed them to put his name on the list of auction items.
I grabbed a piece of fried chicken, swearing to be a vegetarian tomorrow, and hurried out to my easel on the sidewalk to start making money for Mary.
My first customer was Lou. He wanted a picture of my grandmother. She snorted at his nonsense, but smiled and sat on the posing chair. I did not put her in a pointed hat with a wart on her nose since this was a charitable event, after all, but set her in her garden, surrounded with flowers. I even put in that seldom-seen smile.
Lou loved it and shoved an extra twenty in the jar. After that I did kids and couples and whatever anyone else wanted, including a Harley, the nearby library for Mrs. Terwilliger, and a tiny Yorkie a woman had in her pocketbook. Someone handed me another piece of chicken and a paper cup of chowder. Susan brought me a crab cake. I kept sketching, having a great time basking in the compliments that flowed. I got fan mail for my books, but this was more personal and immediate. Maybe if my book ideas dried up, I could start a new career as a street artist, or do kids’ birthday parties. Then a six year old dropped his ice cream cone on my foot. Nix that idea.
My pregnant friend Louisa and her husband Dante came by with their two kids and asked for a group portrait.
“That’ll be extra.”
We all laughed when the dot com genius and real estate magnate said he thought he could afford it and stuffed two hundred dollar bills in the nearly full jar. I switched from the quick-sketch magic markers back to charcoals and tried my best to show the love that enveloped this little family, not just the handsome faces.
Louisa cried. “It’s the hormones, from the baby,” she apologized through tears. “But I love it. It’s better than anything that hangs at the arts center.”
She had one of the finest collections of contemporary American paintings in that gallery, thanks to a bequest from a famous art critic. “That’s bull, but I love you anyway. I’ll do another one next year, with the new baby.”
We hugged and they went home, now that they’d eaten and helped pay Mary’s bills. I put away my supplies. It was too dark to keep drawing and my jar was full. My stomach wasn’t. I wanted to get to the brownies before they were all gone.
Then Piet brought me one on a napkin. “How are you doing?”
“Great.” I showed him the jar. “What about you?”
“Trying to remember half the people I got introduced to. Nice folks. Trying to recover from all the food people kept bringing me. Good food. They took Edie away, so I was defenseless. I needed you by my side.”
Funny, I hadn’t missed him at all.
He carried my easel and paint box while I took the pad and the cash jar.
The PA system announced coffee and the auction, before a dance band took over in the firehouse. Most of the people on the grass either left or went inside.
I handed my earnings to Janie at the ticket table and asked how we were doing. “Fantastic. And the auction will bring in more. I never expected such a turnout, or such generosity. God, I love this place.”
For tonight I did, too. Until I went inside and saw Matt sitting with an older couple I did not know, which meant they were ordinary, nonsensitives. I’d seen how people shared blankets and picnic tables not by age or color or religion, but by talent. That bothered me, but I could understand wanting to be with people who understood your interests, who could not betray you without betraying themselves and their families.
Matt looked good in a long-sleeved, light blue pullover and jeans. His brown hair was curling in the damp night air, making him more boyish, but he seemed serious, keeping apart from the merriment and camaraderie. His demeanor grew cooler when we walked in and the announcer reminded people there’d be no smoking, then everyone looked in Piet’s direction and laughed at the not-so-private joke. A third of the audience didn’t get it.
Damn, I’d felt like an outsider here half my life, but I thought it was because I was a summer resident, not a real local. This struck me as worse.
Nothing could be done about it then, as the bidding started. The restaurant dinners went first and fast, then the baskets and gift certificates for haircuts and gas fill-ups. Piet’s slow dance won a lot of laughs, and fifty dollars.
Susan started the bidding on naming a character in my book at twenty dollars, raised by my uncle, then by the mayor. Piet bid fifty dollars. People nodded. Matt bid five hundred. People gasped. I felt the heat in my cheeks and knew I looked like a tomato from my toes to my nose.
Piet turned to look at him, then me. He smiled but shook his head no. He wouldn’t outbid the veterinarian.
The gavel banged. “Sold for five hundred dollars for Mary’s bills to our good doctor. Make it a good character, Willy. A real hero.”
Everyone laughed and applauded and threw out suggestions for what kind of hero I could name Matt Spenser. I tried to hide behind the coffee urn. That was too short. I fled to the ladies’ room.
Until I heard the screams.
CHAPTER 36
SIX MONTHS AGO I would have run in the opposite direction. No, six months ago I would have cowered in the ladies’ room, behind the stall door, standing on top of the toilet so no one could see my feet and know I was there.
Now the screams and shouts and breaking glass noises got louder. I got braver. These were my people: my relatives, my friends, my neighbors. I crashed out of the bathroom and ran toward the hall.
And came to a screeching halt behind Roy Ruskin, who held a pistol in one hand and two burlap bags in the other,
the kind potatoes used to come in. Potato sacks, in fact. Not Saks.
A sinking feeling in my stomach told me what was in those sacks: the fires my father warned of, my fireflies, in the firehouse, where at least fifty people waited to dance. “Oh, shit.”
I hadn’t meant to screech out loud, but Roy heard me. He spun around, keeping the pistol on the crowd that dropped under tables, ran for the exits, stood still in shock. Two policemen had their hands on their weapons, but I knew they couldn’t shoot with so many innocent bystanders in their way. Roy knew it, too.
“You,” he yelled, pointing one sack at me. “Give me my daughter. She’s mine and I want her. No one can touch me if I’ve got the kid.”
I couldn’t see around him to find Piet or Chief Haversmith. I did get a better look at Roy. His face and shaved head showed burn blisters—yup, he had the fireflies. The hand holding the sacks was bleeding; the one still waving the pistol had a filthy bandage around it. His ripped pant legs were dirty and charred in places. His eyes were way too bright for anyone in his right mind.
Reasoning with a crazed gunman on meth or something didn’t make a lot of sense, but what choice did I have? “I don’t have your baby, Roy. Mary’s mother came up from North Carolina to care for her. I don’t know where they are staying.”
Three voices from the crowd yelled out: “She’s telling the truth, Roy.”
“They left a little while ago.”
“Willow’s not lying.”
“See? So you’re frightening all of us for nothing. Why don’t you put the gun down, and the bags, and then we can find where Elladaire is. You can go visit her to see she is in good hands.”
Everyone knew that was a lie. He was going to jail, no matter what. I heard one truth-seer groan. Uncle Henry belched. Roy knew my words for a lie, too. He wasn’t getting out of here so easily. He kept shifting his glittery eyes from me to the others, moving to keep his back to a wall and the gun a continuous threat.
I tried to find Piet in the crowd again, to make sure he knew what was in the bags and was ready, but I still didn’t see him, only a lot of frightened people and some determined cops.
Roy snarled. “You and this frigging town will keep her away from me. You took everything else. You’ll make her into one of you freaks, besides. First you’ll pay, you especially, bitch.”
He set one of the sacks down and started to swing the other against the wall. “No!” I screamed. They couldn’t start fires, not in Piet’s range, but they’d be hurt and angry. M’ma wouldn’t trust us anymore. “Don’t do it!”
Roy gave me an evil grin, showing a missing tooth and a swollen tongue. “You want me to do this one instead?” He picked up the other bag, which bulged and twitched and barked.
Barked? I recognized that high-pitched yelp. I screamed: “Not my dog!” The bastard had been at my house to gather more fireflies. He’d broken in; that’s why his pants were torn and his hand was bloody. God, what if he’d set it on fire? The old dogs—my mother would kill me!—and Grandma’s house—but Little Red!
“He didn’t do anything to you!”
That same truth-seer groaned again. Oh, yeah, the blood, the likely tooth marks on Roy’s ankle.
“Okay, but he was defending himself. Roy, there’s no reason to hurt the dog.” I held my hands out, begging, trying to make my voice heard over the sob in my throat. “Please, please give him back to me.”
Roy laughed. He started to swing the bag back. He was going to smash my poor little abused dog against the concrete wall. I couldn’t look. I had to look.
What I saw was Matt launching himself over a table and snagging the burlap bag before it hit the wall.
Roy gave a bloodcurdling howl, let go of the sack, and fired wildly at Matt. Everyone screamed. A ceiling light shattered, raining glass down on the crowd. “Get down, get down,” I heard Chief Haversmith order.
I got down, trying to reach the other sack before Roy did. He kicked me in the head, knocking me into Matt, who held Little Red under his body, protecting him.
I felt blood running down my face, into my eyes to mix with the tears, but I still fought to reach the bag of beetles. The bag was smoking. Where the hell was Piet?
Roy grabbed the sack away and ripped it open, then he threw it to the ground and raised one foot to step on it . . . not to put out the flames shooting out.
“No!” I screamed and grabbed his leg before it touched the ground. He aimed the gun at me. I tried to apologize for all my sins and failures in the half second I had left to live, but a shot fired out. Not at me. Roy jerked away and lurched toward the door.
“Don’t let the bastard get away!” the chief bellowed. “But only shoot again if you’ve got a clear target, Shaw.”
I’d forgotten about Robin Shaw, the best marksman or -woman in the county. She’d saved my life. But she kicked the burlap bag out of her way when she raced after Ruskin.
If there was panic before, there was bedlam now. The beetles were hurt and angry and frightened and sending sparks everywhere in the enclosed space. People were trampling each other to get away, batting at their hair and clothes.
“Where the hell is Piet?”
Someone shouted that he’d carried Elladaire to her grandmother’s car.
“Call him!”
Someone else ran for a fire extinguisher. This was the firehouse, after all.
By now the big American flag over the door was in flames. So was a coatrack filled with jackets and sweaters. A small fire burned in the garbage pail, and a tablecloth under the auction items ignited. Women cried, men swore, everyone reached for water to throw at the flames, and for ladles and towels to swat at the bugs. Some got burned.
“No, don’t hurt them!” I cried. “That will make things worse.”
I didn’t know if I shouted to the people or the bugs. It worked both ways. No one listened to me.
Matt handed me the shivering dog. I was shivering, too, too hard to say anything but “You saved my dog.”
“Great. Now what should I do?”
He was right. We weren’t done yet. “Get them to stop trying to hurt the luminaries. Tell the people to be quiet so I can talk to the beetles.”
He whistled—the loudest whistle I’d ever heard. “Stop. Stand still. The fireflies won’t bother you if you leave them alone. Willow needs quiet.”
The Paumanok Harborites who knew what was going on—the sensitives—hushed the others. Healers took the hands of those most hurt or frightened. Aunt Jasmine took Little Red from me.
I closed my eyes. Come to me, guys. Come to Willow. I’ll take you to M’ma. I flashed pictures of him, the way I’d last seen him, then the way I’d first seen his image, like a sky dolphin in lights. I am so sorry one of us hurt you. Come, I won’t let anyone else do so. I held my hands out again, begging again.
Tiny flames started toward me, then went out.
“What the f—” Piet yelled, then went around making sure all the other fires were out.
The firemen and -women started herding the crowd out, setting up a triage station for the EMTs and the healers and the empaths to work in the parking lot. Matt handed me the now empty brownie tray, with three beetles on it. I plucked two more unlighted fireflies from my hair, one off my shoulder. “There you go, guys. Safe. Call your friends.”
Then I called directions to the people who were leaving, those checking on the fires, the few espers who were gingerly trying to gather the bugs, now that they weren’t small torches. “Be careful where you step. Hold them carefully.”
Big firemen, little old ladies, two community-service teenagers, and the blind postman cautiously handed me beetles. They all smiled. Some could see the pretty colors; some could sense the relief and the gratitude. Others were simply glad they got to touch a once-in-a-lifetime creature.
I prayed it was once-in-a-lifetime! I doubted I could live through another encounter.
Susan pressed a wad of napkins against my scalp to stop the bleeding. “You’ve rea
lly gone and done it now,” she said, but she dabbed at my face to wipe the blood and tears away. Janie held a glass of water to my parched lips. Someone else tucked a sweater around my shoulders.
Now I could see that some of the beetles were injured, a few barely moving. All I could do was try to send encouraging thoughts to them. I hoped M’ma could fix them.
No one could fix Roy Ruskin, I heard.
When Piet returned from the parking lot, he had seen Roy running from the firehouse. Officer Shaw shouted at Piet to get down, then fired, but guns were another thing that didn’t work around Piet. So Piet tackled Roy, then the other police piled on, with a plumber and an accountant adding their weight and their fury.
Shaw’s first shot had been aimed to stop Roy, not kill him. It struck a thigh artery, though. The ambulance corps tried to put a tourniquet on the wound, but they were too late. No one mourned his passing except Robin, who fainted.
They covered Roy with one of the singed tablecloths, then stationed cops to guard his body until the medical examiner could be sent out from up island, hours away.
Mayor Applebaum went around talking to nonsensitive villagers, reassuring them that everything was under control and the madman with the matches couldn’t start any more fires.
I waved him away from Matt, who had his vet bag out to examine Little Red. I watched, holding the brownie tray and my breath until he declared the Pom okay but in shock, which is how Matt could handle him at all. Little Red had blood on his ear and his snout, but there was no telling whose blood it was. He might have a broken rib, so Matt was going to take him back to the clinic for X-rays as soon as he knew I’d be all right, too.
The EMTs mopped up the gash on my temple from Roy’s boot and declared it minor, just a scalp wound that bled a lot. No stitches, thank goodness. I might have a headache, they said, so I should go home and rest.
With a tray full of traumatized beetles in my lap? “I promised to take them to M’ma.”
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