Something in my jaw cracked. “I wouldn’t know. She’s not here.”
“She would say this is not like you,” Pastor Keller said, his voice deep and sad, his eyes tired. “She would say you’ve lost your way.”
I threw my hands up. “Oh my god, you nutcase, what are you even talking about? You don’t know my mom or me! You have no idea what she’d say, and you don’t care! None of you do. You called her a witch when she was here, and when she went missing you all decided not to look for her.” I turned to Greta again. “You’re her sister and you didn’t even care. You want to talk to me about making flippant comments? You treated her like garbage—you abandoned her—”
“Now, wait a second—” Buster started in.
Pastor Keller held up an accusing finger. “Young lady, this is—”
Aunt Greta stared at me, silent, as the two men spoke over each other, chastising and berating. She didn’t have to say anything. My mother hung between us, that invisible tether, the one even she wouldn’t dare cut.
“Hey! Hey, break it up!”
Chief Rivera came jogging across the street, her dark bun bouncing with her strides. Her aviators now hung on the breast pocket of her uniform. She planted herself in front of me and faced the three adults. Pastor Keller and Buster finally shut up.
“Is there a problem, Greta?” the Chief asked.
“I was asking why she was here,” Greta said, clearly doing her best to control her anger.
“She was accusing me of setting the fire,” I said. Greta’s nostrils flared. The Chief glanced at me over her shoulder, then turned back.
“You three are threatening a minor. Not only a minor, Greta—your niece. The only person she ever hurt was herself. What’s gotten into you? What would Dasree say?”
“Twice in one day my mom’s name gets invoked,” I said. “You’d think that meant someone here actually liked her.”
Only Pastor Keller and Buster seemed to hear me, because they both shot looks my way. Greta only sniffed at Chief Rivera and pulled herself up a little higher.
“I need all three of you to calm down and step away,” Rivera said.
“Abby, don’t you think—”
“Step away, Greta.”
Aunt Greta’s eyes flashed. For all her bluster, she was scarier when she was silent, and she didn’t say a word as she spun and clip-clopped back to her car. Buster Gates and Pastor Keller followed, Buster with a few choice words to Chief Rivera, Pastor Keller with a too-long look at me and a promise that he would pray for George Masrell.
Chief Rivera let out a weary sigh.
“What are you doing here, Zora?”
I leveled a quick glare at the onlookers nearby, then lowered my voice and said, “What’s anyone else doing here?” I motioned to the tourists. “I wanted to see what was going on.”
“You’re not anyone else,” she said. “With your family’s reputation, you know that. And you’re not a minor anymore, so be glad they didn’t call me out on that. You know how this town gets with rumors. Until we can figure out what happened, I need you to keep your head down. Don’t go causing any more trouble. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Blowing up at Aunt Greta wouldn’t help that sterling Novak reputation. I crossed my arms, tucking my hands into my armpits. “I just don’t want to be blamed for this. Did Jack and Norm tell you about what I said? My alibi? Can’t you—”
“The word already got out that you were the one fixing things. A lot of people are talking about—well . . .” Another pause. “I know your family, and I know you. I don’t believe you’d do something like this, but I’ve got no evidence. You’re a good kid. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure this town doesn’t run away with its rumors. Okay?” She glanced at her watch. “Don’t you have to get to work? Jack’s always talking about those damn sundaes.”
I did need to go home and change clothes. I looked over Chief Rivera’s shoulder, where Greta, Buster, and Pastor Keller now stood by Greta’s Lexus, clearly waiting for the Chief to finish talking to me.
“You let me worry about them,” Chief Rivera said. “Go on now.”
“Fine. Thanks.”
“Thank me by staying out of trouble.”
I stuffed my hands back into my pockets and retreated. I circled around the opposite end of the street to get back to the Chevelle.
Rivera must have seen what I had. Not Masrell’s ghost, but the pristine yard, the way Masrell’s house had burned so completely. She must have drawn the connection between the Firestarter Murders and this one.
But even she couldn’t stand up to the town council if they decided I was the one who’d started the fire. What Greta said was gospel truth, and Pastor Keller and Buster had plenty of pull, too. Buster’s lackeys were the kind of people who’d run you over with their trucks if you had a haircut they didn’t like. Mom had always said the town’s opinion of her wasn’t as important as her responsibility to the dead, but this kind of opinion was going to interfere with hunting. If Greta said I was guilty, Addamsville would believe it, and my job would get a whole lot harder.
But Aunt Greta knew. She knew about Mom, and firestarters, and ghosts. She was one of the Aberdeen Girls—she knew strange things happened in Addamsville. She’d never been overly friendly to me, never stopped by our trailer, never invited us to their house, at least not since I was really little. And she’d only gotten worse since Mom disappeared.
I’d just have to avoid her while I found the firestarter who did this.
I stopped the Chevelle at the corner and looked back one last time at the burned husk of the house. A man in a white shirt stood among the black char.
5
I won’t lie and say I took Chief Rivera’s advice to lay low, because I’m me, and we all know better than that by now.
Happy Hal’s Ice Cream Parlor had risen from the ashes of the old town hall. A bronze statue of Sylvester Hillcroft, the founder of Addamsville, stood at the tip of the jackknife at Valleywine and the Goldmine, the only reminder of the building. All five of the previous Addamsville town council members had died in the old town hall fire, and their spirits were said to wander the premises of Happy Hal’s, searching for the hallways and rooms that no longer existed.
They didn’t wander Happy Hal’s. They stood at the base of the Hillcroft statue, eyeless and glazed red, feeding Bach and Hermit Forester, who had killed them.
From April to October, a red-and-white–striped awning invited customers to come on down and try Hal’s Happy Summer Sundaes. It was a walk-up shop, a semicircle structure with a patio in the front. Customers ate on picnic benches beneath wide striped umbrellas. Four windows looked out along the curving wall of the shop, where employees waited to take orders, the ice cream machines on the countertops behind us. Inside the shop, hanging between the two middle windows, was a bronze bell with a pull string that we called “the Bell of Shame.” It was pulled seldom, and usually by me.
We’d met the end of our season, but tourists are weird about ice cream in cold weather—especially when the ice cream place is supposedly haunted—and business hadn’t slowed yet.
I pulled into the parking lot at 4:58 and yanked on my red polo. The foremost requirement of all Happy Hal’s employees was a striped visor bearing our logo, so I scraped my hair up into a two-toned ponytail and tugged the visor on with a begrudging sigh. I checked that my gloves were securely on, then kicked my way through the employee entrance.
“And she appears—Lady Firestarter herself!”
Hal Haynes III stood at the soft-serve machine, swirling up a large chocolate chip freezie and shooting me a playful grin that said please do not hurt me. As usual, even when I was minutes early, I was still later than everyone else. A short line had formed outside the first window despite the chill in the autumn air, and Madhuri Bakshi was busy taking orders while Hal made the ice cream. Hal turned the freezie upside down to carry it to the window, to show the little boy outside that it wouldn’t
fall. The boy looked stunned.
“Ha ha,” I said, moving past both of them to open the second window. “Sales are either going up or down tonight because I’m here, so either you’re welcome or I’m sorry.”
“So many rumors going around,” Mads said, switching places with Hal so he could take the next customer. Her black ponytail swished over the Velcro clasp of her visor. “A lot of vultures circling.”
I slid my window open. “Which vultures? The ones with cameras or the ones with money?”
“The ones with social media accounts,” Mads replied.
A man moved from the end of the first line over to my window. I put on my customer service voice. “Welcome to Happy Hal’s! What can I get for you?”
His eyes went first to my gloved hands resting on the countertop, then to Mads and Hal.
“Uh—can I get two large cookies ’n’ cream freezies?”
“Sure, no problem.”
I lined up next to Mads at the soft-serve machine.
“What did the vultures say?”
“It hardly matters at this point.” Mads shook her head. “It’s out, so—”
“What did they say?”
“That you totally did it,” Hal chimed in cheerily. “That’ll be eight fifty-two. Yeah, Zo, according to the Harrisburg news, the Novaks are some kind of mobster family and they’re getting back at George Masrell for that stuff your dad did, and for you yelling at him. There’s a video.”
I slammed one of the freezie cups down. “Why would we be getting back at him for the Ponzi scheme? We were the ones stealing his money! What video is this? Someone show me.”
“Get a smartphone,” Mads said.
“Flip phones still work perfectly fine.”
“I can show you, Zora.”
A pale waif of a girl slid from Mads’s shadow. I jumped high enough to drip cookies ’n’ cream up my arm.
“Jesus, Lorelei.”
“Sorry,” Lorelei said. Her pale cheeks flushed with brilliant color. She had a habit of coming out of nowhere, but I don’t think she meant to do it. You probably get pretty good at being quiet and sneaking around when your dad is pig-face-on-a-rampage Buster Gates. Only her ability to talk helped me pick her out from the actual ghosts. She pushed her glasses up her nose. “You c-can borrow my phone, if you want to see what got posted.”
“Yeah, in a minute. Thanks.” I cleaned up the mess and ran the cups back to the man at the window. “Twelve twenty-five, please.”
“You didn’t deliver them upside down,” he said, looking smug. “I get them for free if you don’t deliver them upside down, right?”
“That’s Dairy Queen,” I said. “We just do it for the kids. Twelve twenty-five.”
He scowled but handed over the cash. When he reached for the cups, he brushed my prosthetic fingers. He froze and stared long enough to make anger flush over me. I let it pass right through. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. I let go of my desire to ring the Bell of Shame.
“Is there something wrong with my hand?” I asked, voice flat.
“Oh. No. Sorry.” He hurried away without waiting for his change.
The same stares and mild hesitation happened with the next five customers, until an older woman came up with her granddaughter, an adorably runty little girl who squealed with delight when I leaned out of the window with the freezie upside down. Not a blink from that old lady. Classy as hell.
I didn’t get a chance to take Lorelei up on the video offer until an hour later. The weather shifted from chilly breeze to warm stagnation. In Indiana you learn not to rely on consistency from the weather. As the lines died, we settled into our routines: Mads cleaned up spills around the machines and topping dispensers; Hal sorted through receipts at the counter; Lorelei gathered up a trash bag to take out back.
At different points I caught each one of them glancing at me. I didn’t say anything about it, and neither did they. The three of them were the closest thing I had to friends, so if they believed I had anything to do with the fire, there was no hope for anyone else.
“Here, Zora,” Lorelei said once she’d come back from taking out the trash. She handed me her phone. “Just . . . don’t get mad enough to throw it, okay?”
“I’m not gonna throw your phone.” I took it from her. “I don’t break other people’s property.”
The video was of me and Greta arguing outside George Masrell’s house. The person shooting the video had been nearby, in one of the groups I’d hidden behind. Tourists. The jerks always had their phones out. We hadn’t been yelling, but everything we said came through loud and clear.
It didn’t look good. The only thing that gave me any sympathy was my age—it clearly looked like an older woman accosting a teenage girl. But next to Greta, I looked grungy, and I blew up so fast it looked like I’d done something wrong.
The comments were all accusations. I started counting down from ten. One near the top said I go to school with her! Some had my name. One recounted my family’s highlights from the last ten years: Mom going missing, Dad going to prison, me going to the hospital. Laid out for the Internet to see, forever. Zora did it, Zora’s the worst, Zora sets fires.
The pressure of the day finally snapped my resolve.
“Fu—” I began, then caught Hal’s pointed glance out the shop windows at the customers, and bit off my sweet release. “—dgecakes!”
“The news got ahold of this,” Mads said. “I don’t think it’s going to die down now.”
“Aren’t there laws about showing people being wrongfully accused of things on video?”
Hal shrugged. So did Mads. Lorelei gave me a scared-mouse look and slipped her phone from my clawed hand.
If the Harrisburg news crews had gotten ahold of that video, that meant my name—and probably my image—was past Addamsville’s borders. People would look me up. They’d make connections. Sadie would have to deal with it at work. All I could do about that was pray it brought her more customers, even if it was only the true-crime podcasters.
Almost as soon as I thought of her, Sadie pulled up in the parking lot.
I waited at the window for her, arms hanging out and head poking through. She was wearing the neon orange top and black pants she’d worn to the salon that morning. Her hair was still up and her black-frame glasses still perched on her nose. That was about par for the course; no time to go home and shower or change her clothes. And once she did go back home, she wasn’t leaving again. She looked angry, like she almost always did outside the bluffs—angry and distracted, rubbing at her ears.
Her boyfriend Grim trailed behind her. He wore a dark-blue jumpsuit with the words GATES AUTOMOTIVE SCRAPYARD printed across the breast pocket. Grim didn’t walk anywhere; he loped. Lanky and long, hands in his pockets, his wild tangle of dark hair bouncing with him as he went. He could pass for a stoner, but even the stoners in town thought he was weird.
Sadie’s lips drew into a thin line. Grim looked worried, but he always looked like that.
“Hey,” I said as they drew near. “What’s the matter, Grimmie?”
Grim gave me a sad smile. “You’ve probably had a rough day, huh?”
“Not the best.”
“Hey, Lo,” Grim said through the window. Lorelei appeared behind me, a white shadow, and smiled. Her answering “Hi” was so soft it could have been another breeze. Lorelei and Grim were cousins, though the way they acted, you’d swear Grim was her older brother.
“Hey.” Sadie leaned over the outside counter until I had to back up. “You don’t know what happened to Masrell, do you? Seriously? You have no idea?”
I paused. Even Sadie had to ask twice, because my word wasn’t enough. My own sister, who knew exactly what kind of shape I was in after I lost my fingers. Who knew how I reacted to fire now. Even she couldn’t completely believe I hadn’t killed someone.
I clamped down on the hollow feeling in my chest and said, “He yelled at me for throwing coffee away. I yelled at hi
m for being the cryptkeeper. That was it.”
“Did the cops talk to you this morning?”
“At school. I said I didn’t have anything to do with it. They said they were going to talk to you.”
Sadie rubbed her forehead, looking the picture of the young bedraggled mother. She always looked like a young bedraggled mother after she got off work. She’d been talked at all day and she’d be talked at all night, until sleep finally let her escape, and even that was temporary. I was glad she didn’t know about ghosts or firestarters; it would just be another thing for her to worry about. “All right, well, it’s not like we actually did anything.”
“Hey, Sadie.” Hal slid an orange cream freezie and a tall chocolate swirl cone across the counter between us. “Sorry you guys have to deal with this.”
Grim took the chocolate and sucked contentedly on the top curl of ice cream. Sadie shook her head while she pulled a twenty from her purse. “It’s fine, it’ll pass. I do feel terrible, though. There are plenty of people who didn’t like Masrell, but murder? Who would hate him enough to kill him?”
“Everyone I know thinks it’s Hermit Forester, emerging from the woods after thirty years,” Hal said. “Like the clown from It.”
“Or a copycat,” Mads said. “That’s what the marching band thinks right now. A twenty-something running around with a boner for the Firestarter Murders.”
Except Forester was too far from the coal mine. More likely a new firestarter had opened a gateway—its entrance—in the mines and had retreated there after killing Masrell to build up power until it could possess someone. Much easier to set more fires when you could walk among humans undetected.
Sadie jammed a plastic spoon into her orange cream, brows furrowed and mouth turned down.
“I saw the video,” she said quietly. “One of my regulars showed me. She recognized you from the picture on my counter. Why would you go anywhere near his house? And why would you stick around if you saw Aunt Greta there?”
“I know it was a bad idea. I wanted to—to prove I hadn’t done it, and I needed to know more about the fire. I didn’t see her. I think they pulled up afterward. They were the ones who came up to me—”
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