Fire in the Sea

by Myke Bartlett

  Vincent’s eyes bulged with new outrage. ‘Looked after me?’

  ‘But that isn’t why. Ask my dog why.’

  ‘Your—’

  Vincent hadn’t seen Kingsley waiting at the door, and didn’t see him cross the floorboards in two bounds and sink his teeth into his calf. The first thing he saw was blood and denim and slobber. Jake’s left leg swept out and knocked Vincent from his feet, landing him heavily on his side. The gun fell from his hand and scudded into the skirting board. Jake tried to dive for it, but the wound in his side checked him. Vincent crawled forward, Kingsley still gripping his leg. His fingers reached for the weapon.

  Sadie was too slow, too shocked. By the time she moved, Vincent had already snatched the gun and was snarling and jabbing the barrel at the dog.

  A shot went off and everyone stopped, holding on to the moment, worried what would come next.

  In the doorway, a policeman with a red moustache had his gun pointed at the ceiling. ‘Okay,’ he grunted. ‘At least one of you is under arrest.’

  Tom’s phone rang in the other room. Lifting it from the dining table, he saw Sadie’s face peering from the screen. He realised that that sick feeling in his gut—he was never sure if it was terror or excitement—had gone. Two days ago he would have been doing nothing but waiting for this call. Today, her face was a surprise. He only felt happy. Comfortable.

  ‘Yeah? It’s been, what, an hour?’

  ‘Tom, it’s Jake.’

  Okay, that troubled his gut. Just a little. Just for a moment. There were voices in the background.

  ‘Sadie’s here, at Ocean Street. She needs you.’

  He took his mum’s keys without asking and drove too fast along the beach road. Sunburned pedestrians jumped clear at the zebra crossing. There was a police car and an ambulance parked out the front of Jake’s place, lights flashing about the veranda.

  Sadie was upstairs, sitting on the edge of a bed. A young paramedic sat beside her, with a hand on her shoulder. Sadie was in shock, she said, it was perfectly natural.

  ‘I’m completely fine,’ Sadie muttered. She was pale, her cheeks waxy. The last few days had caught up with her, all at once. Maybe there wasn’t any need to be strong now. Her gaze kept returning to the blood on the floorboards. There was no sign of Jake.

  ‘Come on.’ Tom held out his hand, and pulled her up. ‘I’m taking you home.’

  ‘Leave me, I’m fine. I’m good. I’m fine. It’s all good.’

  Tom wrapped an arm around her. ‘Shut up Sades.’

  She let him lead her downstairs. Her head pressed against his chest. He helped her into his mother’s car and drove her home in silence.

  It was a lot more than nothing, he thought, to be needed.

  27

  THE NEXT LIFE

  Two nights later, Sadie woke to find Jake, outside under the fig tree. There was no fruit left, just a few green carcasses split open among dry leaves. Kingsley poked among them with his rumpled nose.

  Sadie tucked her nightie into a pair of jeans and pulled on her boots. Opening the back door, she found the night still and warm.

  ‘You’ve made a quick recovery. I’m guessing Agatha’s okay, then?’ she asked, sitting down on her window ledge. She was happy to see him, she knew that, so why didn’t she feel happy?

  Jake nodded, smoothing down the front of his T-shirt. ‘I’m a miracle of medical science.’

  ‘She should open her own clinic. She’d make a mint from the Botox set.’

  ‘I wonder if that might draw unhealthy attention, somehow.’

  They both smiled into a silence that moved in like a sudden cold current.

  ‘The police are still all over the house,’ Jake said. ‘Plastic tape everywhere. I’m keeping out of their way.’

  ‘And I thought you’d come because you wanted to see me.’

  ‘I do want to see you.’

  There was another silence. Sadie traced a figure eight in the soil with the toe of her boot. She wanted to say she missed him. That she woke up needing to talk to him.

  It was strange, this distance between them. Had it been danger that had brought them close? In peace, in quiet, was there nothing to be said?

  ‘I guess the demon is still out there, off the coast somewhere.’

  Jake nodded. ‘It’s gone home.’

  Sadie bit her lip. ‘So you’re good to go.’

  Jake straightened up. ‘You know I’m leaving?’

  ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To break the news gently?’

  Her smirk confused him. ‘Sadie, this always had to happen. I used the demon’s power. The Gods will be furious.’

  ‘But they weren’t! There wasn’t a war. They got rid of that wave, the clouds. You said they’d forgiven us.’

  ‘They’ve forgiven you, not me. I did a deal with a forbidden creature. They’re never going to forgive me for that.’

  ‘What are they going to do to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m not going to hang around and wait.’ He took her hand. ‘You could come with me. We’ll go out into the world, have new adventures. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?’

  In the moonlight, it seemed a pale offer, one neither of them expected her to consider. Leaving was all she had wanted to do for as long as she could remember. Now, closer than ever to the horizon, she knew she wasn’t ready.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘the demon offered me everything I’d always wanted. But in the end, it was easy to turn it down. I used to think there was nothing here for me. But there is. Everything is here. Not always, but for now, yes.’

  Jake understood, taking back his hand. Sadie almost wished he hadn’t. She wanted to reach forward and grab it.

  ‘You’ll have to keep the dog,’ he said, suddenly businesslike. ‘And the house. It’s all in your name, of course. There are other things in that old place, things that will need to be looked after.’ He met her eye. ‘Dangerous things, Sadie, things people will be looking for. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to keep them safe.’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t know. I can’t see Grandpa ever agreeing to that.’

  Jake didn’t argue. He took a step backwards, already halfway gone.

  ‘I’ll find you,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready.’

  Sadie nodded. She watched him ruffle Kingsley’s ears and massage his jowls. Then the only noise he made came from dry leaves beneath his sneakers, as he walked off alone.

  Ida didn’t say anything about the dog, not immediately. Still, she came back from the supermarket with six tins of dog food and a wicker basket. Stan didn’t say anything either—just shook his head and went out into the garden.

  That night, there was a knock on Sadie’s door and Stan came in without waiting. He didn’t say anything, not straightaway, and Sadie worried he was about to start shouting. Instead, he handed her the picture frame he was holding.

  She had seen the photo before, in a different frame. It took her a while to remember where. By then, she had found not one but two faces in the uniformed line-up. There, named in a neat script at the bottom of the photograph, was S. R. Greene. And, there beside him, grinning for the camera, was a young J. L. Freeman.

  ‘You knew Mr Freeman,’ Sadie murmured. ‘During the war.’

  ‘Same squadron,’ Stan nodded. ‘He was a right bastard. Thought we were making a mistake fighting the Germans, thought we should be giving them a helping hand. No fan of the Jews, or the Gypsies. He used to call me Red, not for my hair colour. Then, one day his plane went down. Crashed in some village. We all thought he was dead, but he wasn’t. He came back. Except he came back a different man. A better man. He became the best friend I ever had.’ Stan frowned. ‘But one night, when we were out drinking, towards the end of the war, he told me w
hat he was.’

  Sadie laughed, astonished. ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘It was wartime. I’d seen far stranger things than Gods and monsters.’

  ‘But you didn’t approve? Of what he was, I mean.’

  ‘How could I? Men all over the world were laying down their lives for what they thought was right. He made a mockery of all that, jumping from body to body like some bloody flea. If death meant nothing, life meant nothing either.’ His bottom lip jutted. ‘We fell out. I never spoke to him again.’

  ‘You didn’t know he was here?’

  ‘I’d told him I was planning on emigrating, after the war. Told him about Perth. Somewhere safe, the other side of the world. I never dreamed he’d come. Then I heard that name, right next to yours. And I saw this, in that house. The same picture, up in that study of his.’

  Sadie remembered now—her grandfather’s creased face peering into one of the picture frames that first afternoon at Ocean Street. She felt a brief pang of sadness for Jacob, for her grandpa; these two lost friends, kept apart. Had Jake known?

  ‘I heard you,’ Stan said, ‘in the garden last night.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sadie wondered how embarrassed she should be.

  ‘You want us to move into that old house of his.’

  ‘I think I do, yeah.’

  Stan nodded, saying nothing.

  ‘We saved the world, Grandpa,’ Sadie said. ‘Him and me, the whole world.’ She paused. ‘I just know it’s the right thing to do.’

  Stan’s lips parted, then sealed. He patted her knee, stood up, and left the room.

  On the last night of the school holidays, Sadie, Tom and her cousins ate pizza on the first floor veranda of One Ocean Street, while the sun set behind Rottnest Island. Tired from a day’s packing and unpacking, they argued over a game of Monopoly until Margot called, wondering what had happened to her daughters.

  ‘She’s always calling now,’ Kim grumbled. ‘Seriously, it’s driving me mental.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Tom said, tidying the game away.

  Leaving, he ruffled Sadie’s hair and she slapped at his thigh, not bothering to get up. Soon, she watched his car pull away from the kerb below, then turn right at Marine Parade and drive off into the still night.

  There was no one around. The town was fixed in amber streetlight like an ancient photograph.

  No, Sadie realised, there was someone. A dark figure stood on the bike path, right by the edge of the dunes. For a moment, she thought it was Jake. But as he moved out of the shadows, Sadie realised she was wrong. The tips of the beast’s horns glistened in the streetlight. He was staring straight at her, that much was certain, and, sure that he had been seen, he tossed his head back and bellowed.

  The roar echoed along the town’s empty streets, a sudden, solitary note of excitement. Lights flicked on in darkened windows and faces pressed to the glass, hoping to catch a look. It was too late, the figure had already turned and fled down the dunes, into the black water. Sadie suspected he wouldn’t go far, that cutting his chain had sparked some new loyalty in the beast.

  Stan appeared in the doorway. ‘Sadie?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Grandpa, just the sea.’

  Her grandfather nodded, relieved. He smiled.

  As his footsteps retreated up the hallway, Sadie took herself off to bed. Settling into the mattress, she adjusted the old mug on her bedside table. The perfect rose swung around to look at her, keeping watch as she drifted into sleep.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank everyone at Text Publishing for being so welcoming and encouraging. And for creating the Text Prize, without which this book would never have been written.

  I’d like to thank my editor Jane Pearson for finding all the best bits and the missing parts. I worry I’ll now always be dependent on her insight, guidance, patience, praise and ruthlessness.

  I’d like to thank Natalie Book for her generous notes and valued opinions.

  I’d like to thank Jason Andrews for building, rebuilding and managing my website.

  I’d like to thank everyone who downloaded my podcasts and made me think I might have an audience.

  I’d like to thank my mum for buying me a notebook when I was eight and writing ‘author’ on the cover.

  I’d like to thank my dad for not worrying too much that I never took to finding a real job.

  Mostly, I’d like to thank my wife Milly for not laughing all those years ago when I made plans to be a penniless writer. Or maybe she did laugh. But for supporting me, encouraging me and never trying to stop me, I thank her.