Fire Fall

by Bethany Frenette

  After Gram died, we switched to watching the fireworks in Minneapolis. But this year we had been expanded to include Mickey as well as Leon. And even though I reminded Mom of the disaster that had occurred the last time she’d forced me into a double date, she wouldn’t hear of us attending separately.

  “Weren’t you just arguing against clinging to tradition?” I asked. “We’re supposed to be celebrating independence.”

  “From the British, not your mother.”

  I would’ve protested further, but Mom forestalled me.

  “Next year, you can go ahead and give me the finger,” she said. “Until then, unless you sue for emancipation, I still get to order you around.”

  “You never obeyed Gram. She told me all about it.”

  “Fortunately, you’re a much better daughter than I was.”

  Then, before I could come up with a response, she unleashed a mother’s ultimate weapon: guilt. “This is about family,” she said. “You’re the only family I’ve got.”

  There wasn’t really a way out of that one, but I tried anyway. “There’s Aunt Thena,” I pointed out.

  Mom shot me a look. We only heard from her father’s aunt Thena, who lived in Nebraska, once a year—when she sent us Christmas cookies that tasted like Saran Wrap.

  “Well, there is,” I argued.

  “When Aunt Thena agrees to take your place at festivities, you’re free to do what you will.” She paused, narrowing her eyes. “And dressing Gideon up in your clothes won’t work, either.”

  The Christmas we were ten years old, Gideon and I had snuck out of our houses in the middle of the night and swapped places—a stunt which neither of our families had found nearly as funny as we did. But thinking about Gideon led to worrying about Gideon, and I’d been trying not to do that. I’d called him that morning, and he’d assured me he was fine. So all I said was, “He wouldn’t fit anymore, anyway.”

  And then I resigned myself to an evening spent with my mother and her boyfriend—instead of just with my boyfriend.

  Not that I thought the night would’ve been particularly romantic, anyway. I’d put on so much bug spray, it was likely to double as boyfriend repellant. Leon probably wouldn’t want to get within three feet of me, but I wasn’t willing to venture out of doors defenseless. I already had eleven—I’d counted them—tiny red welts from mosquito bites, and every one of them itched.

  “Are you trying to make a statement?” Mom asked when I came downstairs and plunked myself on the couch in the living room to wait for Leon. “Or is this some new form of passive resistance?”

  “Mosquitoes find me very attractive. I’m attempting to discourage them.”

  She snorted. “You’re not going to discourage them. You’re going to vaporize them.”

  When Leon appeared in the room, he just started laughing.

  Mickey arrived a few minutes later. He didn’t have any groceries with him tonight. Instead, when he stepped into the living room he handed me a small paper package, tied with twine.

  “It’s a belated birthday present from my mother,” he said.

  I’d met Mrs. Wyle all of twice, so I thought that was rather nice of her—though I was a little perplexed by the gift, which turned out to be a rose-colored woolen scarf that was taller than I was.

  “She knitted it,” he explained.

  “It looks really…warm,” I replied.

  His eyes crinkled. “She’s going through a phase. Last year it was pottery.”

  “She didn’t knit me anything?” Mom asked, somehow managing to sound both relieved and offended.

  “I believe you’re next.” He leaned down and kissed her.

  Mickey no longer appeared as rumpled and weary as he had when I’d first met him, but he still had a brooding look about him. His gray eyes always seemed slightly sad. I knew he was still troubled by his experience Beneath, and I didn’t blame him. I had been Beneath myself. I could remember the chill that had crept up my skin as I wandered through the void, that sense of something watchful in the emptiness. Something hunting me. Hating me. I had felt its craving. And my own stay had been brief, only a matter of hours. Susannah had kept Mickey Beneath for days. Being held captive by a deranged demon bent on ending the world would be enough to give anyone nightmares—and that was before having been forced to shoot his girlfriend. Mom had spent the past few months trying to convince him that it wasn’t his fault, but it still weighed on him. Maybe it always would.

  He was typically open, easy to read, and though he was smiling, I sensed it in him now. A sort of quiet he carried. The memory of cold.

  Mom must have sensed it, too, because she took his hand and squeezed it before hustling us all out the door.

  The air outside was muggy, but it was at least cooler than it had been, and the sky was clear, with only a few wisps of cloud marking the blue. There was a hint of breeze, which sent clumps of dandelion seeds billowing upward like tufts of cotton. All along the avenue, the twilight had turned the trees black. Leon caught my hand and laced his fingers through mine.

  Powderhorn Park was already crowded by the time we arrived, but we were able to find an open spot near the water with relative ease. I figured it helped that Mickey, while dressed casually in jeans and a black T-shirt, still looked every inch the detective. And even though he was sort of the opposite of scary, some little boy who ran into him let out a squeak of dismay and then scurried away at just under the speed of light.

  “And that’s why I never had kids,” Mickey sighed.

  It was another twenty minutes before the fireworks started, and while Mom and Mickey got into a lengthy discussion of whether or not it was acceptable for her to leave a mugger duct-taped to a tree—she said yes, he said no, and I merely hoped they were speaking in hypotheticals—Leon and I sat back in the grass, watching the city lights hit the water.

  Leon hadn’t been in Minneapolis for the previous Fourth of July. He’d spent most of the month up north in Two Harbors, taking care of his grandfather, who had died of leukemia that August. Though Leon didn’t speak of his grandfather often, he was on his mind now. “He hated fireworks,” Leon told me. “Said they were a waste.”

  I tugged off my sandals and slid my toes into the edge of the water, scattering ripples across the smooth surface. “Too bad he never met Gram. That would’ve been an argument to see.”

  Leon gave me a crooked grin. “Oh, they met. He said he’d never known anyone who spoke so much nonsense.” He ducked away as I smacked him on the shoulder with one of my sandals.

  “Then I bet he was just thrilled to have you guarding her granddaughter,” I said.

  “He was thrilled, actually.”

  “Tell me about him,” I said, watching Leon’s face. The dusk had darkened his eyes, making them appear more black than blue. His smile had softened. “What was he like?” I knew a little about his grandfather already, but I was curious. After Leon’s parents had died, his grandfather had been the one to raise him. I’d never seen any pictures, but I could form an image in my mind, pieced together from bits of Knowing and Leon’s occasional mentions. A tall man, hair touched with silver; a warm smile; a tinge of sadness. When Leon was growing up, his grandfather had brought him to the Cities for a few days each summer, to visit the lake where his parents had exchanged their wedding vows. And to the cemetery, to visit their graves.

  Leon plucked a blade of grass and twisted it between his fingers. “Smart. Stubborn. Always convinced he was right.”

  I arched my eyebrows at him. “Sounds familiar.”

  He grinned again. “He usually was right. He was right to train me.” That was true, I supposed. Leon hadn’t wanted to be a Guardian and had resisted his grandfather’s attempts to prepare him. When he’d been called to protect me, he’d fought against it for months. “I told him that, when I saw him,” Leon added. “I told him about you.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That you were a pain in the ass, but I liked you anyway.”
/>   I rolled my eyes. “You could’ve let me in on that little secret.”

  “Which part?”

  “The liking part. I knew the other half.”

  He laughed, leaning forward and tilting his forehead against mine. “You know what he said to me? He said I told you so. Those were his actual words. He was pretty smug about it, too.” Then he shrugged, looking away. The blade of grass dropped from his hands. “He also said my parents would be glad.”

  Leon’s parents had died when he was only two years old. What memories he had of them were few and foggy. Now and then, I caught a hint of Knowing from him, an impression that was frayed and distorted, as though viewed underwater—the image of a toddler waiting at a door. Wide blue eyes that never learned to stop worrying.

  He’d hated his parents for a long time, he’d told me once. For dying together.

  They had died fighting Verrick.

  I shifted uneasily, drawing away from Leon. That was a topic better avoided. “Well, it’s a good thing you like me, since you’re stuck with me.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked upward, but he didn’t answer.

  The fireworks started then, interrupting our conversation. Light and color exploded overhead, flares of green and gold, vibrant blue, glittering white that left trails smoking in the sky. Their sparks fell to earth in dizzy arrays. I watched the reflection of the light wrinkling on the water, and between the blasts I heard the chatter of the crowd. Most of the stars were hidden, but a few stray gleams pulsed through, shy glimmers against the blaze of colors that split the horizon. Directly above, three were shining now. Bright red. Crimson bleeding into the night around them. Fireworks, I thought—but they didn’t burst into shimmers, and they didn’t fall.

  I blinked, my chest feeling suddenly tight. The air in my lungs seemed to burn.

  Beside me, Mom swore.

  “We have a problem,” she said, turning.

  I felt it a second later, as Leon’s hand closed on mine.

  Somewhere out there in the crowd, there was a sudden shift. A change in the atmosphere. The night came into sharp focus, dividing into separate elements. Within the clamor of murmurs and laughter, a silence formed. Under the scents of sweat and beer and garbage, I smelled blood. There was something else here. A presence I knew.

  Leon and I jumped to our feet. I spun, searching for the Harrower. My eyes caught details—Mom’s bright hair, Mickey standing tense and alert.

  Then the demon came stalking out of the crowd toward us.

  He wore his human disguise, but he was recognizable all the same. And he wasn’t neutral. There was no mistaking the flatness of his eyes, the sinister edge to his expression. It was there in the way his lips curved, the twist to his mouth that suggested nothing of warmth or humor, but of a predator hungry and eager, ready for the kill.

  Mom was in motion before I could even gasp.

  The Harrower saw her. He broke into a run.

  The throng parted around them. The din of the spectators turned into a confusion of cries and shouts, punctuated by the burst of fireworks crackling overhead. Mickey took a step forward, but Leon’s free hand shot out and caught him by the arm.

  It was over in a matter of seconds.

  The Harrower leaped at Mom. His talons flashed out, dark scarlet slicing toward her, but the blow didn’t connect. Almost before I could begin to worry, her right hand caught his arm, bending it backward until it snapped and hung loose and useless. His screech, so loud it drowned out all other noise, was cut off mid-note. Mom’s left hand went for his throat. At her wrist, colors flared out, burning into the twilight around us. There was the sound of a sigh, a sudden crack. The Harrower went limp in her grasp. His skin dissolved into scales as he slid to the ground, lifeless. Where he fell, the grass seemed to hiss. An acrid odor fouled the air. For a moment, the humid July evening had the chill of deep December.

  The Beneath would gather him back into it, I thought. Even now it was collecting him.

  But I didn’t watch.

  A hush fell around me. The cries of the onlookers dimmed and then died, like someone had pressed mute. Above me, the fireworks exploded in silence. I heard only one voice. One word.

  Audrey.

  My eyes skimmed over the crowd. I didn’t see her, but I knew her. Recognition raced through me, up my spine, down my skin. Her voice was clear and strong. It echoed at the edge of my hearing. It wasn’t a threat, I sensed. It was supplication. A plea repeating.

  I closed my eyes, trying to close out my thoughts. But even if I hadn’t heard her, I felt her there. Near. Here. Knowing surged within me, impressions I couldn’t deflect. A girl haloed by rain. The smell of roses at a funeral.

  Iris, my senses screamed. The triple knot shining on a silver chain. The gleam of a ring, too large for the thumb that wore it. The memory of her calling to me across the snowy darkness six months ago. Audrey.

  Blood pounded in my ears. Iris. Iris.

  I opened my eyes.

  This time, I couldn’t deny it. It wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t my imagination. It was real. It was her.

  Iris had come home.

  I stood in silence, searching faces.

  Leon said something to me; I didn’t answer. I felt his hand in the small of my back, but the warmth of his fingers didn’t erase the shiver that crept over me. I turned slowly, moving my gaze inch by inch. The crowd was in chaos, though Mickey had already stepped in to take charge. Everyone was speaking at once, but I wasn’t interested in their words. The voice I listened for had gone quiet. I clenched my fists, watching, seeking something familiar within the strangers that surrounded me. I looked for Iris in the arch of an eyebrow, in the curve of a jaw, along angles of forehead and chin, across mouths that opened and closed. I caught pieces here and there: a wave of black hair, eyes that glittered brown and gold in the half-light. But the features were wrong—the shape of the nose, or the slant of the brow. Iris’s face did not appear.

  She’d slipped away. She’d been there, I was certain. But she was gone again. Beneath.

  For now. Not forever. Or even for long, I suspected. She’d come home—and I was going to have to deal with her.

  Leon’s words finally reached me. “Audrey—are you okay?” he was asking. He’d wrapped both arms around me. “You’re shaking.”

  I made an effort to calm myself before answering. I shrugged. “I’d sort of like to get out of here,” I said, then turned and gave him my best attempt at a smile.

  Unfortunately, it took nearly half an hour before we were able to leave the park. Although the Harrower ability to cloud human senses meant that most of the spectators hadn’t quite seen what occurred—at least not enough that they could give accurate descriptions or identify particulars—there was still an uproar to be quelled. While Mickey dealt with the crowd, Mom called her boss at H&H Security, letting him know the Kin needed to do damage control.

  “Will that work?” I asked, once she’d finished her call. “How are they going to explain away”—I lowered my voice—“demons?”

  “Human minds tend to just fill in the blanks,” Mom said. “What they can’t understand, they simply rationalize away.”

  And if one or two did find monsters in the shadowy depths of their memories, they wouldn’t be believed, I supposed.

  I glanced toward Mickey, still busy handling witnesses. “I guess dating a detective comes in handy, huh?”

  If Mickey was shaken by the night’s events, he didn’t show it. After his last experience with demons, I doubted he was thrilled about encountering more of them—but he managed to placate most of the spectators, and then, instead of fleeing at the first opportunity, he accompanied us back home.

  “That’s one way to make a holiday memorable,” he said, once we’d moved into the living room. “I thought they didn’t like to attack so openly. I’d expect a lot more calls about demonic activity, otherwise.”

  “Do you get calls about demon sightings?” I asked.

  “J
ust the occasional crackpot raving about aliens invading.” He paused a moment, rubbing his chin. “Maybe that’s not so crazy, after all.”

  “They just come from below, not from above?” I suggested. I sank onto the couch, holding one of Gram’s needlepoint pillows, while Leon took up his usual position of leaning against the wall and frowning. Mr. Alvarez called Mom to give her an update on the situation at Powderhorn Park, but after a moment or two of answering his inquiries, she got him off the phone with an impatient, “Later, Ryan.”

  “The Kin are taking care of it,” she told us. She usually liked to keep non-Kin out of Guardian business, so I was a little surprised when she didn’t just shoo Mickey out the door. But I supposed that, having been Beneath, he was as involved in Kin dealings as he possibly could be.

  “Is that how you normally handle this sort of thing?” Mickey asked.

  “Nothing about that was normal,” Mom answered. “You’re right—Harrowers don’t attack openly. They like seclusion. They like dark spaces and easy targets, and they don’t play to an audience. Especially the weaker ones. And this one was about as weak as they come, this side of the Circle. I’m not even sure how he breached it. This attack wasn’t random. This was…something else.”

  I glanced at Leon and found him watching me. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Audrey.”

  My heart thudded. I didn’t answer. He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking about me.

  Mom set a hand on her hip. “What about her?”

  “She was the target.”

  “The demon went after Mom,” I said.

  “Because she went after it,” Leon replied. “A month with almost no Harrower activity, and then two attacks in a single week. And you’re the common denominator, Audrey. You were the target.”

  I bit my lip. I could argue that it was coincidence, but I knew it wasn’t. “Iris,” I said. “It was Iris.”

  There was a beat of silence, broken only by the tick of the hall clock. Mom closed her eyes briefly. “Please clarify,” she said.