Fire Raiser

by Melanie Rawn

  And we’re off to the races, Evan thought.

  “The Tribulation’s purpose is to punish Israel for rejecting Jesus Christ as the Messiah,” Lexie went on. “When the Jews finally recognize Him, Israel will be regenerated, restored—”

  He thought about all the Jews he knew, and couldn’t see any of them making the sign of the cross. “We’re a stubborn people,” his old buddy Pete Wasserman had once told him. “We’ve had to be, in order to survive.”

  “—The Rapture is the glorious event we should all be longing for. We will finally be free from sin and in God’s presence forever.”

  Lexie was looking directly at Lachlan now. He smiled, said, “Mazel tov,” and slid past her little group, telling himself irreverently that his definition of “rapture” had more to do with Holly and a bed than Jesus and Judgment Day.

  Maneuvering himself and the vodka along the outskirts of the ballroom, he kept a pleasant smile on his face—and kept out of all the conversations.

  “—well, being Irish or Welsh or Scots is mostly about being not English.”

  “If the Democrats win in November, Nancy Pelosi’s gonna be Speaker of the House. Think of it! A woman, two heartbeats away from the Presidency!”

  “You mean one heartbeat and a pacemaker.”

  “—so the Dunns’ rabidly anti-abortion stance is psychologically interesting, if pathetic. Her son’s not just a pathological liar and a deadbeat with a criminal record, he’s an alcoholic. That’s probably about one step up from being gay on their religion’s scale of damnation. He was born out of wedlock long before she met her husband. Considering the way he turned out, they both feel hideously guilty that in their secret hearts they wish she’d had an abortion. It’s classic overcompensation—and they don’t realize it, of course.”

  “—recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Can you really see him ignoring a blue-ribbon group like that?”

  “I would think that as a Catholic, you would join the outcry against abortion in this country—this holocaust of—”

  “You know, Reverend, I find that unbelievably offensive.”

  Now, how had she migrated around behind him without his knowing it? he wondered, turning to find himself confronted with his wife’s back, and over her shoulder the Reverend Wilkens.

  “There was only one Holocaust—so we must all hope, anyway—and it involved the state-policy, state-organized, state-run extermination of an entire people, simply because they were Jewish.” Though Holly’s tone was quiet, conversational, even mild—for her, anyway—Evan heard the danger. Too bad the man she’d spoken to did not.

  Reverend Wilkens was the salt-of-the-earth type, the solid backbone and tough sinew of the country. He was a good man, and a good citizen, and his church did good works under his compassionate direction. Six generations of Wilkenses in Pocahontas County had eyed the Papist contingent askance—but on this issue they had united. The Reverend just couldn’t understand how anyone from a Catholic family could disobey the Pope. Lachlan wondered how Wilkens would react if he knew he was talking to a Roman Catholic Witch.

  The Witch was saying, “To use the term in reference to anything else is an abominable insult to the millions who died. I would be vastly obliged if you didn’t use it again.”

  “It’s an accurate reference,” Wilkens insisted. “And I use it deliberately. What else is Roe but state policy that allows—”

  “You’re absolutely right. It ‘allows’—not demands, not mandates, not dictates. It allows for a choice.”

  “ ‘Choice’? Mrs. Lachlan, we’re talking about children! The pre-born! Human life!”

  “Again, I absolutely agree with you—human lives are exactly what we’re talking about.” Her tone was still pleasant, but the serrated edges were beginning to sharpen. “The lives of the already breathing. Even this proposed law in South Dakota this coming election, the one that would make physicians into criminals by forbidding abortion—it has an exception. The life of the mother. The already breathing take precedence over—”

  “All life is God-given, and to kill it in the womb is simple murder. Those of us who are pro-life—”

  “Y’know, Reverend, I’ve been meaning to ask somebody who says he’s ‘pro-life’ about that term. If I believe in a woman’s right to choose, does that make me ‘pro-death’?”

  “Mrs. Lachlan!”

  “Everyone is pro-life. We just differ on which lives are more important. There’s common ground here, you know.”

  “Common ground, or compromise? The epidemic of promiscuity—”

  “You see? We’re in agreement on that, too. I don’t approve of promiscuity, either. It’s not just heart-numbing, it’s potentially suicidal.”

  “You are a mother yourself. How can you countenance the murder in the womb of—”

  “I chose to be a mother. And that’s the second time you’ve used the word ‘murder,’ so here’s a thought for you. Overturning Roe won’t stop abortions. It will only stop safe abortions. Women will die. Is that murder, too?”

  Evan knew every inflection of his wife’s voice, and the earnest, spuriously innocent I’m-just-asking-for-information tone was one of her most dangerous. He took a step forward, intending to tap her shoulder and end the conversation.

  Somebody beat him to it.

  “Holly!” exclaimed Gib Ayala. “I’ve been looking all over for you—I wasn’t sure what you drink, so I got you a glass of white wine—oh, excuse me, Reverend, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Of course you did, Lachlan thought. As Ayala caught sight of him, standing there like an idiot holding Holly’s vodka, a strange smile flickered over the man’s handsome face. Evan nodded and smiled back, and as Holly accepted the wine with a smile of thanks, he thought, At least the guy’s good for somethin’ besides keepin’ the bench press from gettin’ rusty.

  “Sh-sheriff Lachlan?”

  He turned and smiled down at Ben Poulter. The vampire smiled back. He wasn’t the nasty kind of vampire: he couldn’t fly, or change himself into a bat, or move at lightning speed, or not be reflected in mirrors. He just had to drink a couple of pints of blood every so often in order to stay alive. He was looking well tonight, relaxed and genial, and Lachlan wondered which of the local farmers had recently slaughtered a cow; Ben and his family had an arrangement with them about things like that.

  “How’re you doin’, Ben? How’s the book comin’ along?”

  One thing he did have in common with the more celebrated type of vampire was exquisite night vision. Ben was, in fact, an astronomer, and he was writing a children’s book about the planets.

  “Very well, thanks. I sh-should have something ready by the time Bella and Kirby can read.” His eyes were a deep golden-green, like sunlight through pond water, and they could move at times with an eerie darting swiftness. They did so now, evaluating the crowd, and came to rest on Holly and Gib. The pair had moved away from Reverend Wilkens, and were strolling slowly toward the verandah doors. “I remember that guy from when he lived here before. He looks a little like the Latino who was on West Wing.”

  “Don’t say those two words around Holly,” Evan pleaded with a grin. “She went into mourning for weeks after the final episode in May.”

  “I can lend her the DVDs,” Ben offered, his strange eyes glinting. “Or I could be bribed not to.”

  “Be nice, Ben, or I’ll go back to the bar and order you a Bloody Mary.”

  “Oldest joke in the book, Sh-sheriff!”

  Lachlan grinned and took a swallow of vodka, figuring it was his now, and turned suddenly as a voice behind him spoke his name. He greeted Erika Ayala with a smile, and nodded at her eldest son. Erika was sleek and fashionable tonight in white skirt and a pink tank top under a flowered blouse, but Helmet Hair would always defeat any attempt at elegance. The elaborate pink crystal chandeliers hanging from her earlobes to her shoulders didn’t help. After some small talk about Troy’s prospects for the football team this coming semester, Erika plac
ed a languid hand on the boy’s arm.

  “Troy,” she said, “go get me something to drink, won’t you, darling?”

  He moved off obediently. Lachlan had noted that Erika’s gaze had never left the sight of her husband and Holly in conversation over by a potted palm. Something rather evil inside made him say, “Bet they were a cute couple in high school.”

  Erika’s brown eyes flickered toward him. “Haven’t you seen the pictures?”

  “Are there pictures? Holly doesn’t have any that I’m aware of.”

  She was too polite to say aloud that she didn’t believe him. Evan repressed a sigh. What she said next confirmed that tweaking her had not been a good idea.

  “I hear that she’s as fanatical about her writing as he is about his flying. How do you deal with it?”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Erika slanted a sideways glance at him, then blurted, “I asked him once which he loved more—me or flying.”

  And—wild guess here—you didn’t much like the answer? If you didn’t already know the answer, you shouldn’t have asked the question. And of all the stupid things to ask—Evan tried very hard not to shrug. “It’s like that with the creative types.”

  “Since when is flying an airplane—”

  He knew it was rude to interrupt, but he did it anyway. “When he’s flying he’s off in his own world, right? Doing something that takes him away from everything else? Makes him feel like nothing else can? Sounds to me like it’s pretty much the same. When they’re into their thing, whatever it is, they don’t think about anything else. And God help anybody who tries to get between them and their work.” He smiled suddenly, remembering what Holly was like in the throes of a writing binge. He hadn’t seen that aspect of her in a long time, though. Now that the twins were out of babyhood and able to entertain themselves for at least part of each day, maybe she’d find another book to write. He hoped so; there were times when her lack of a focus for her intellect and creativity made her a pain to live with.

  “No,” Erika was saying bitterly, “he doesn’t think about anybody but himself when he’s flying. Are you saying that Holly is the same way?”

  “Pretty much.” He really didn’t feel like explaining to this woman that the way Holly loved her work was a goodly chunk of what made her Holly, and if she wasn’t the way she was he wouldn’t love her half as much.

  Erika shook her head. “I don’t understand how anything can be more important than the people you love.”

  “It’s important in a different way.”

  “But if they love other things more than they love us—”

  “Think what he’d be like if he didn’t have the plane. What would he do?”

  “He could go back to running a business—”

  Evan restrained a snort. “Look, it’s not just what they want. It’s what they need. You have to stand back and let them do their thing, and be there when they come back from wherever it is they go that we can’t follow.”

  “What if they don’t come back?”

  It had never even occurred to him that Holly wouldn’t return to him. He thought about it for a moment, then all at once realized what this woman’s problem really was. She hated giving her husband up to anything for even a fraction of a second. When he flew, he belonged to the plane and the sky—not to her. And if she didn’t own him every instant of every day, then how could she be sure of him? No wonder she was jealous. Suspicious. Controlling. She could never be certain that her husband really loved her, because her definition of love was total possession.

  Evan actually enjoyed seeing that absent, abstracted look on Holly’s face, the one that meant she was chasing down an idea inside her head. It meant she was doing what she’d been born to do. Her eyes would darken, and her brows would tense, and sometimes she’d bite both lips between her teeth for a second before seizing the nearest pen and piece of paper. When she finished, and came back to him, she was—what was the word? Fulfilled? Satisfied? More than that. Reassured. Convinced that she was worth the space she occupied on the planet, that she was using what she knew and what she felt and what she intuited and what she was to justify her existence.

  He simply didn’t understand how anyone could resent that. How anyone could not watch it happen, and smile, and enjoy the creation and the happiness and the peace it gave.

  This woman wanted her husband’s only happiness, his only satisfaction and reassurance and sense of worth, to come from her. It was bewildering, Lachlan reflected, how some people were bound and determined to make themselves unhappy by wanting something impossible to have.

  What a misery her life must be, he thought, then practically sang aloud with gratitude as Troy approached with soft drinks. Evan ended the conversation with, “Well, the thing of it is that when she does come back, she’s all mellowed out. They’re her books, after all. She gets to win all the arguments. ’Scuse me, Erika, I should go rescue her from an argument she can’t win—she’s over there talking to Reverend Wilkens again.”

  Six

  “I DON’T KNOW why you do that to yourself.”

  Holly gave Lachlan exactly the look he’d expected: narrow-eyed, sidelong, and one spark away from furious. She was, at times—not often, but at times—comfortingly predictable.

  He’d removed her from Reverend Wilkens’s vicinity and guided her toward the bar, and now told Laura, “Two vodkas on ice, one with a twist, one with olives,” before propping his elbows on polished oak and regarding his fulminating wife sidelong with an amusement he knew better than to show.

  “What, exactly, is it that I do?” Holly asked through gritted teeth. “Stand up for what I believe?”

  “Argue with people whose minds are never gonna change.” He accepted the vodkas from Laura, gave her a generous tip and a wink, and handed Holly her drink. “You stand up, yeah—but against somebody who isn’t playing by the same rules you are. You’re on completely different battlefields, lobbing shots at each other that will never hit anything.”

  Nudging her with an elbow, he coaxed her toward a side door near a grand piano. A faraway crack of thunder echoed off the hills and hollows, and the wind had picked up in the last hour; he hoped the noise wouldn’t wake the twins, and that he’d managed to nail down that loose shutter at Lulah’s.

  “I feel just as passionately about it as the Reverend does,” Holly said.

  “But you get there by a completely different process. He hears ‘abortion’ and sees a dead fetus. You hear ‘abortion’ and see a living woman. He takes the side of—what do they call it? Oh, yeah—the ‘pre-born.’ You’re on the side of the already alive. The individual matters to both of you, but with him it’s an abstract concept and with you it’s the reality of a living, breathing person.”

  “He wouldn’t call it an abstract concept.”

  “He can’t look it in the eyes, can he? I think it’s a whole lot easier to care about a human zygote than it is to care about a human being who can actually look you in the eye when she’s talking about how her own father messed with her since she was ten, or that she’s had six kids and her body can’t survive another one, or when her boyfriend found out she was pregnant he disappeared into the wild blue yonder, or—” He broke off. “I see you get my drift.”

  “You say you don’t know why I always argue with people like him—I don’t understand why you never argue with people like him!” She sipped vodka and crunched an ice cube, then said, “And ‘zygote’ is a pretty fancy word, Sheriff.”

  “Intellectual snob,” he accused, grinning down at her. “You want the truth?”

  “I’m assuming this truth will have about the same relationship to the real truth as every story you’ve ever told me about those cowboy boots—but go ahead.”

  “You’re lucky I like you,” Lachlan teased. “Truth is, last week I took up reading the dictionary.” Pause. “Backwards.”

  Holly choked on giggles and almost dropped her drink. Evan rubbed her back until she stopped
coughing. “Christ, Lachlan—don’t do that!” she said when she could breathe again.

  “Teach you to insult my boots, lady. Now, to get back to what I was sayin’ before—”

  “You mean about how I should keep my mouth politely shut when the discussion turns to politics?”

  He laughed aloud, genuinely amused. “Holly, you couldn’t possibly keep your mouth shut, and I wouldn’t want you to. I love it that you’re passionate about what you believe in—because one of the things you believe in is me.”

  Her mouth twisted and her forehead scrunched up and she told him, “I wish you’d warn me before you say things like that. It makes me want to do things to you that would be illegal in several states if we weren’t married.”

  “Now, that sounds promising!” A tall, lanky, redheaded man Evan didn’t know sidled up behind Holly and snaked his arms around her waist. Her violent start of surprise ended the instant he said, “Hey, Freckles!”

  “Peaches!” she cried, delighted.

  “Don’t call me that.” He squeezed tight and let go. As she turned, he went on, “You gonna call me that?”

  “Whenever I feel like it, and definitely while I knock you silly for not coming to the wedding!” She smacked him a good one on the shoulder, and he yelped. “Why didn’t you come to the wedding?”

  “Because I was in Lithuania?” he offered as he rubbed his abused shoulder.

  “Lame,” she scoffed and with a glance at Lachlan went on, “This is my sorry-ass excuse for a favorite first cousin. Evan, meet Peaches.”

  “Don’t call me that! And I’m only your favorite first cousin because I’m your only first cousin.” Extending his hand, he added, “Please tell her to stop calling me that or I’ll stuff ballot boxes for your opponent in November. I’m Cam Griffen. Glad to meet you.”

  “Same here.” The pair shook hands, and Evan told Holly, “Don’t call him that.”

  “That happened fast!” she shot back. “The masculine solidarity thing, I mean. Doesn’t the bonding process usually require a televised sporting event and a six-pack? Maybe a manly belch or two?”