Fire Starter (The Sentinels)

by David J Normoyle

  “I haven’t. Is it to do with something supernatural?” I made a point of tuning out anything to do with magic. I knew enough to stay away from that.

  “It’s a Twitter handle,” Jo said. “At RedWhiteandTrue55.”

  “And?”

  “Whoever is behind the account has made allegations that both the Whites and Reds are run by supernaturals, by shades,” Alex said.

  The Whites and the Reds were the two big criminal gangs in Lusteer, and I could see why the reveals of that Twitter handle would get Alex riled up. Ten months ago, Alex and Jo’s father, John Collier, had written an article called “Crime Gangs Making Use of Supernatural Enforcers”. John and his wife had died in a fire just before the article was published.

  “People on Twitter are usually full of it, what’s the big deal?” I asked.

  “He knows things that make people think he’s an insider in one of the gangs. Probably the Reds.”

  “Sounds like whoever owns that Twitter handle is opening himself up for a world of danger.”

  “He’s anonymous,” Alex said. “Not even Jo could hack the account to figure out who he is.”

  Jo was tucked against the corner of her bed with her pillow behind her back.

  “If Jo can’t, then no one can.” I smiled across at her, and got a weak smile in return. I worked with computers for my job, and I was better than 99.9% of the population, yet compared to her, I was still learning chopsticks and she was Mozart. “Wait a minute, why was Jo trying to hack this account? I thought we agreed to be sensible.”

  Alex strode across the room to stand in front of me. “We agreed to delete our father’s article about shades. Do you think I can just forget? Forgive the person who caused Dad and Mom to burn alive?” He clenched his fists by his sides.

  I should have stayed tossing and turning in my bed. Better to endure the tension than having to look at Alex’s pain-filled face and hear Jo’s muttering as she rocked gently back and forth.

  “We know who did it and he’s in jail,” I said. “Sammy Williams was sent to your parents’ house that night. He was arrested.”

  “Yeah. What happened to his trial?”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure it will happen.”

  “Do you know what RedWhiteandTrue said about him?”

  The note of accusation in his voice made me feel defensive. “How would I know? I never heard of that Twitter handle until you mentioned it a few moments ago.”

  “So you would be surprised to hear he was a shade?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, and nothing came out. I realized I should act surprised, but the moment’s hesitation meant it wouldn’t be believable. So I said nothing.

  Alex was watching me closely. “I knew it.” He glared at Jo. “Didn’t I tell you he knew more than he was telling us?” He walked closer and pounded a fist down on my desk. The motherboard I had been working on hopped, and several components rolled onto the floor.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  “Do you know how frustrating it is to be trying to investigate your parents’ murder, hit brick wall after brick wall and know that there’s an eye witness living with you who is hiding information?” Alex shouted. “Do you?”

  Normally when Alex and I argued, I shouted back as loud as him. This time I replied softly, “I don’t know what that’s like.” I had my own pain but it couldn’t match Alex’s and Jo’s. They had seen their house burn down in front of their eyes with their parents inside.

  “Then why don’t you tell the truth?”

  That I couldn’t do. I had to tell him something though. “I saw a beast that night. I wasn’t sure it was Williams.” I shrugged. “How do you reveal something like that without seeming crazy?”

  The night of the fire had been just before I’d found out about Ten-two. At the time, I’d been homeless and using a treehouse on the Collier grounds for shelter.

  “So you told no one?” Alex asked. “Not the cop who was first on the scene? What was his name again?”

  Clearly Alex knew the cop’s name and was fishing, trying to catch me out again. “Duffy,” I said. “Connor Duffy. Why?”

  “The Twitter handle has something to say about him too.”

  “He’s well known to be bent as a pile of right angles. What does this RedWhiteandTrue have to say about him?”

  “Just that,” Alex said. “He’s apparently on the payroll of the gangs and has been for years.”

  Duffy was one of the few who knew what really happened that night. I didn’t want Alex asking him too many questions. “He’s a dangerous man, I’ve been told.”

  “What did it look like?” Jo asked.

  “What did what look like?” I asked.

  “The beast?” she asked.

  “It was dark.”

  “Can’t you answer anything straight?” Alex’s voice rose.

  “I’m getting to it, give me a second. It’s a memory I usually shy away from. The beast had a large snout, thick chest and long arms and legs. Hair and torn scraps of clothing covered its body. It could move fast. Too fast.”

  Jo shivered. “What are we dealing with?”

  “According to the Twitter handle, shades are coming more into the open,” Alex said. “Most people want to pretend they don’t exist, but that will soon be impossible. Some shades are shifters, others can do magic.”

  Magic. It was my turn to shiver. “I don’t want anything to do with all that. If you were wise, you two would do the same.”

  “I don’t want your damn wisdom,” Alex said. “I want to know what happened that night. A wolf shifter, a bent cop, the fire. There’s more to the story, I know it. And you were up in the treehouse, watching it all.”

  “I told you what I know. Fat tights.” I went to the door, threw it open and stormed out. In the hallway, I paused to calm down, then descended the two flights of stairs to ground level.

  Ten months of happiness was about to be blown by that Twitter handle, whoever owned it. But more than that, Alex’s investigations could put us all in serious danger. And I had no idea how to convince him to stop.

  If it had been my parents, would I stop searching for the truth?

  Fire Sorcerer – Chapter 2

  Monday 22:50

  I walked into the living room where half a dozen pizza boxes were strewn about, most of them with several slices left uneaten. Pete was watching the first Harry Potter movie.

  He turned when I entered, then returned his attention to the big screen TV. “Dude. Is this not the best movie ever?”

  “That or Citizen Kane.” I hadn’t watched Citizen Kane, but knew it was a movie that old fogies thought was good.

  “Haven’t seen it. That’s the movie where Hugh Jackman slays zillions of demons, right?”

  “Something like that.” The star of Solomon Kane wasn’t even Jackman. I glanced around the room, noticing that someone I didn’t recognize was asleep in an armchair. I took a seat on the couch. “Where’s Tyler?”

  Tyler and Pete were the ones who ran Ten-two, which in their case meant they smoked pot and watched movies while the place disintegrated around them.

  “Tyler?” Pete looked around and seemed surprised Tyler wasn’t there. “He’s around somewhere.”

  Some people had trouble telling Pete and Tyler apart as they both had long brown hair and straggly beards, continually smoked pot and loved conspiracy theories. But after several months living in Ten-two, I had stopped having that problem. Tyler was the one who always wore purple crocs, and Pete was the one who had whole conversations in movie quotations.

  “Someone was looking for you.” Pete didn’t take his eyes off the screen.

  “Who?” I had few friends, and even fewer people knew where I lived.

  “Some guy on a motorcycle. Actually, it might have been a woman. He didn’t take off his helmet, and he had a soft voice.”

  “When was this? What did you tell them?”

  “Last week. You were at work so I told him you weren’t here.”
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  “So by telling them I wasn’t here, you confirmed that I live here?”

  Pete shrugged. “You never said you were in hiding.”

  “You don’t have to be in hiding not to want to be found.” I didn’t have any clue who it could be, but, to my mind, the less attention the better.

  We lapsed into silence for a few moments. I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet. On screen, Hogwarts letters were flying around the living room at Number Four, Privet Drive. “The Dursleys get an undeserved rap,” I said. “They weren’t so bad.” The best way to have a conversation with Pete was to talk about a movie.

  “Dude,” he said.

  I wasn’t fluent in dude, but had learned to speak it a bit. This particular “dude” meant “don’t be ridiculous”.

  “Putting him in the closet wasn’t the best parenting, I’ll admit,” I said. “But trying to keep him out of Hogwarts had merit. Think about it, an old dude wants to take eleven year olds to a creepy dangerous castle so he can make them try to defeat a monstrous villain. Surely the Dursleys aren’t the only parents who wouldn’t want that.”

  “They weren’t Harry’s parents,” Pete said.

  “It was up to them to take care of Harry. Mr. Dursley rowed his whole family to an island to try and save Harry from going to a school where Harry nearly gets killed a bajillion times. That’s dedicated parenting if you ask me.”

  Being only seventeen, I should have been too young to have learned that parenting was a bitch. My pseudo-children were only a few years younger than me, and I tried to be as little like a real parent as possible, with soccer ball dents and stolen signs decorating the walls, but ultimately I was responsible for them. Ten months ago I had had no idea how much having to be responsible for others could change a person. Stomach acid burned new pathways through me every time I worried.

  “You’re missing the point,” Pete said. “Good parenting will never involve restraining potential. Children have to grow up. Remember when Hagrid arrives and says, ‘You’re a wizard, Harry.’ Still gives me chills.”

  I used to feel the same way. Until I found out what it meant. “It’s a children’s series. It’s dark at times, but the magic is fundamentally fun. I bet that in real life, if magic exists, it’s better to stay well away from it.” I knew that for a fact.

  “Real life, dude. Who said anything about real life.” He shivered. “Real life is all about responsibility and boredom. Listen to someone who knows. Stay away from that shit.”

  “If only I could,” I said. “How do you manage? Teach me your secrets, oh wise one.”

  “The key is to stay young.”

  “Doesn’t the beard get in the way when you are applying the Oil of Olay?”

  “Not look young. Be young. What do they teach you guys in school these days?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “The trick is to keep the number of responsibilities to a minimum. The more responsibilities one has, the older one gets. It’s simple math.”

  It was hard to argue with that. Taking care of Alex and Jo was likely to age me twenty years, if it hadn’t already. “What responsibilities do you have?”

  “Exactly, dude.” He raised his thumb and pointed his forefinger at me like it was a gun, made a clicking sound with the side of his mouth, and winked. “Exactly.”

  “Your full name wouldn’t be Peter Pan, would it?”

  He winked again, then pointed at the screen. “Hagrid’s arriving with the birthday cake. He’s about to say the line.”

  I stood and made for the door, not wanting to watch any more. “Poor Harry. Little does he know what he’s in for.”

  “Dude.”

  Fire Sorcerer – Chapter 3

  Tuesday 07:50

  “You’re a wizard, Rune,” Hagrid said.

  “You were supposed to come when I was eleven,” I complained.

  “I couldn’t come earlier,” Hagrid said. “I was busy.”

  “Busy for six years? With what?”

  Hagrid’s eyes glowed red. “I was burning things.” He raised his hands and flames shot out from them. He spun around, fire spouting from his whirling arms until the roof and walls were on fire.

  “No!” I shouted as the flames came for me. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. This isn’t—”

  I shot forward into a sitting position, my blanket sliding to the floor.

  Jo sat on her bed, watching me with an expression of concern. “Nightmare?”

  I nodded. “Hopefully, Hagrid will stick to my dreams and not actually come to collect me.”

  “Hagrid?”

  “Forget about it.” I glanced across at Alex’s side of the room, where the bed was made. “Is he already gone?”

  Jo nodded.

  “Leaving early for school again. I never knew Alex was so studious.”

  Jo didn’t reply. Instead she pulled her laptop onto her lap but didn’t open it. I sensed she wanted to tell me something.

  I swung my legs into a sitting position.

  Jo shielded her eyes with her arm. “Rune, we’ve talked about this. Just because we live together doesn’t mean I have to see your white spindly legs.”

  I pulled on my jeans and picked up my T-shirt, gave it a sniff, then threw it over toward Jo. “Still good?”

  She caught it and threw it back. “I’m not smelling your shirt, Rune. I’m sure it’s perfectly rank, but when has that stopped you before? Isn’t that the same T-shirt you’ve worn for the last ten months?”

  “You wound me. Just because most of my T-shirts are black.”

  “There are other colors, you know?”

  “It’s my style.” Black jeans, black T-shirt, black leather jacket.

  She sighed. “A color isn’t a style.”

  “You can talk. With your grungy sweaters and tattered jeans.”

  “Grunge is a style.” She shook her head and clicked open the laptop.

  I pulled on my T-shirt, then went to the corner and picked up the soccer ball. “Catch.” I threw it to her. She looked up from the computer in time to get two hands up and grab it.

  She threw it back to me. “What are you doing?”

  I grabbed it out of the air, spun around and threw it back at her with a behind-the-back toss.

  Jo protected the laptop with her arms, but the ball went wide of her, rebounded off a bedpost and hit a shelf. A plate fell and smashed to smithereens on the floor.

  Jo gave a long-suffering sigh. “Aren’t you supposed to be the grown-up here?”

  I shrugged. “We are living the dream. A family without grown-ups to tell us what to do.” I went to get the brush and began to sweep up the pieces of plate.

  “If this is a dream, we’ll need to wake up.”

  “I’m afraid that process is already starting.”

  Jo took the brush from me. “Leave this to me. Go to work.”

  “I can’t go yet. You still haven’t told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m still waiting to find out.”

  Jo paused her cleaning, but she didn’t look up. “Alex shouldn’t have pushed you so much last night. It’s not your fight.”

  “If you two are fighting, then I’m in your corner.”

  “You’ve already done more than we can ever repay,” Jo said. “Helping us escape the orphanage. Taking us in.”

  Her gratitude made me feel terrible. Whatever I did for them would never be enough. “Just tell me,” I said. “There mightn’t be any grownups in it, but it’s still a family. If there’s a way I can help, you have to tell me.”

  Jo resumed sweeping. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

  “Then no harm done in me knowing about it.”

  She leaned the brush against the wall and tapped her fingers on the front of her leg. She clearly wanted to tell me, but Alex must have made her promise not to. Finally, she went over to my desk and picked up a pen and my notepad. “Ever see those shows where a detective is abl
e to see what was written on earlier sheets of paper?” she asked.

  I nodded. “A bit elaborate, isn’t it?”

  She bent down and wrote something on the pad, then tore the sheet off and put the page in her pocket. “Humor me. If nothing goes wrong, it would be best if you aren’t seen. Now get to work before you are fired.”

  I laughed. “Being at work is where I usually do the stuff that’s likely to get me fired.”

  “Findley can’t be as bad as you’ve made out.”

  I put the notepad in my pocket. “He’s worse. Words can’t do justice to the thing that is Findley.”

  Fire Sorcerer – Chapter 4

  Tuesday 08:45

  If I had to choose between function or style, I’ll go style every day of the week. Maybe that made me shallow, but heck, everyone’s ultimately shallow in some way or another, and we might as well look good while sailing through this sea of making-things-up-as-we-go-along we call life.

  Unfortunately, style is usually more expensive than function. Which left me riding a Vespa, an underpowered scooter, to work, and trying to pretend it didn’t make me look like a tool. Reaching the offices of Transkey Incorporated, I pulled in close to reception, kicked out the side stand and got off.

  Being able to dodge through traffic, not needing to worry about parking, and being able to leave the scooter right next to reception meant functional points of the Vespa were ten. Of course, being close to the building meant that everyone looking out the window saw me arriving on it. Style points, zero.

  I lifted the seat and put my helmet into the space underneath. I didn’t bother chaining it to anything. If anyone went to the trouble of robbing my old scooter, they were clearly much more desperate than me and needed it more.

  Inside Transkey, the carpets and cubicle walls were gray, designed to deaden noise and reduce distraction. The thermostat was set slightly below room temperature, at a level scientifically proven to keep concentration at its highest. The partition walls were at chest height so when anything happened, heads tended to poke up to look around, meerkat-like.

  I reached my desk without running into Findley, which was a nice start to the day. I sat down and switched on the computer monitor, then swung the office chair around in circles a few times. I had to pretend to be a grownup, but I wasn’t really one yet, so whenever no one was looking, I loved unleashing my inner child. I was unprepared for the responsibilities of parenting, and no one was prepared for the passive horrors of cubicle life.