Pacific Fire

by Greg Van Eekhout

  Mason King emerged from a pink alcove carrying a stiff-bristled brush and a gallon of paint. His face was red, his eyes bloodshot, his wispy white hair splattered with paint.

  He looked at Sam with distaste, and then his gaze lingered over Em. He nodded approvingly.

  “It is better to plant your seed in the belly of a whore than to let it spill on the ground. I’ve got work to do, Blackland. Don’t smear my walls on your way out.”

  Em blinked. “What did you just call me?”

  “Mason, I need your help,” Sam said with haste before a fight broke out.

  “Well, I don’t need yours, Blackland. You’re an antenna, and the only thing you pick up is radio station pain-in-my-ass. You and your dad both.”

  “He’s not my dad.”

  “I keep forgetting. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth the little ones against the stones.”

  “I’ll dasheth his little stones,” Em muttered.

  “Mason, I have money.”

  Sam ostentatiously unfolded a five-tusk note. Mason snatched it from him and held it to the light. A war of disgust and desire played on his face, his eyes burning with rage and liquor. Sam knew he’d take the money. Paint wasn’t free.

  “My office.”

  Sam and Em followed him into another adobe chamber. An entire palo verde tree hung from the ceiling, the upper branches plastered in place, the root ball hanging down and spreading across the floor. The room was furnished with a few barstools, a bathroom sink and medicine cabinet, and paint cans containing light bulbs, washers and bolts, baby-doll heads, cotton swabs, paintbrushes, and actual paint. Everything, the tree included, was done in canary yellow and mint green. Sam felt like he’d been swallowed by an Easter egg.

  Mason picked up one of the cans of paint strewn about the floor and dabbed at flaws on the wall apparently only he could see. “What are you in the market for?”

  Em ticked off items on her fingers. “Sint holo, salamander fire, and something that can penetrate substances harder than steel.”

  “Oh, is that all? What about flight? What about griffin?” He waggled his hairy, old-man eyebrows with sarcasm.

  “Sure, if you have it,” Em said.

  There probably wasn’t an osteomantic weapon on earth capable of destroying a Pacific firedrake. Once on Catalina, their best hope would be to foul the machinery the project depended on. They already had osteomancy from Daniel’s kit, and all Sam wanted from Mason was a little more to handle anything that got in their way.

  “We just need some defense and offense, Mason.”

  Mason sorted through some more buckets of empty toothpaste tubes and cotton swabs and yet more paintbrushes. He uncovered a bucket full of small bones. Some still had bits of earth clinging to them.

  Daniel was meticulous in the way he handled and stored bone. Mason’s paint cans would have given him fits.

  The old man picked out a white pebble of something, held it up, and sniffed. “Not him,” he said, dropping the bone back in the bucket. He picked up another, performed the same hasty analysis, rejected it. “Ah, here she is,” he said after some more sorting. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a yellowish bone the size of a pencil eraser.

  Sam moved in closer to sniff it.

  “Well?” Em asked.

  “Some essences of salamander and diluted seps serpent. Very diluted. Maybe a few other useful things, I’m not sure.”

  “Her name was Dolores Shenandoah,” Mason said. “Lovely woman. Very powerful.”

  “Mason’s a grave robber,” Sam explained.

  “Oh, great.”

  “How much you want for her?” Sam asked Mason.

  “Wait,” Em said, astonished. “You won’t eat chicken eggs, but you’re okay with eating human remains?”

  “It’s not like I had her custom-killed for me. Mason, when did she die?”

  Mason peered at the bone with his moist, red eyes. “It was 1956. Natural causes. I mean, she got hit by a tomato truck. But in a natural way. She wasn’t murdered for her bones.”

  “See?” Sam said. “Eating her isn’t morally suspect.”

  Em pondered that for a while, while Mason looked on in anxious silence. He really did need to make a sale.

  “How do we know he’s not lying?” Em said.

  “I’m an honest businessman.” He dug under some boxes and produced a newspaper clipping, preserved in a plastic sheet. He handed the clipping to Em. It was an obituary.

  “Dolores Shenandoah, prominent osteomancer,” Em read. “Struck and killed by a tomato truck … Bakersfield … served in Ministry security forces … yeah.”

  Mason snatched the obituary back.

  “Okay?” Sam said.

  Em relented, and Mason betrayed a relieved breath.

  He wanted five thousand tusks.

  Em talked him down to six hundred.

  * * *

  Steam billowed from the engine.

  A mile outside Mecca, the truck’s temperature needle had swept into the red faster than the second hand on a wristwatch. They caught some luck by breaking down less than a mile from a travel center on an otherwise lonely stretch of highway, and Sam had managed to limp into the gas station parking lot without the engine seizing up.

  Sam joined Em, peering into the dissipating steam under the hood.

  “Radiator hose,” Em said. “If we can’t fix it in ten minutes, we steal another car, yes?”

  “Right. You get things started here. I’ll see if I can buy a hose inside.”

  Em nodded and went around to the back of the truck to fetch the tool kit.

  Sam liked the way they worked together even having known each other just a few hours. There was something about Em that made him think of high school hallways and solving mysteries. Also, he liked her nose. It was graceful. Was it weird to like a nose? Em had a sexy nose.

  Inside the shop, Sam found the auto-supply aisle. No hoses for sale, but he scooped up a patch kit, a roll of black tape, and two gallons of coolant. He considered stealing all of it. The more cash they saved for the job, the better. He located the antitheft fish-eye mirrors up near the ceiling and assessed the vigilance of the middle-aged woman behind the counter. From where Sam stood, the cashier seemed friendly and distracted. She chatted with customers buying road snacks and cigarettes, complimented a girl on her cute haircut, and never once did she lift her gaze to the mirrors.

  Sam decided not to steal the items. He might start having to make people pay for their friendliness later in the journey, but not yet.

  He was about to head to the register when a woman entered the store. She stopped all conversation at the counter, and Sam hunched down and watched her in the mirror. Her head was bald, with pharaoh eyes tattooed in glossy black ink on her temples. Built tall and thin, like a greyhound, she turned her head slowly from side to side, as if detecting odors with her tattooed eyes.

  Hound.

  Sam left the patch kit and tape and coolant where they were and moved to the beverage cases at the back of the store, as far away from the hound as he could get.

  He reached into his osteomantic cells for sense memories, for the dark brine of kraken, for the crushing pressure of magma and the heavy, pungent smell of griffin. Without more time and preparation, he couldn’t use those essences to defend himself, but he just needed a hint of electric tingle in his fingers. Some heat rising from his lungs. A nervous energy in his legs, just the barest suggestion that he could spring across open savannah and take flight. He just needed a little magic from the vast wells buried deep and inaccessible in his bones.

  In full view of a mom trying to convince her kid he wanted orange juice instead of cola, Sam coughed up a magically redolent wad of mucus and hacked it to the floor.

  The kid gaped bewilderment, and the mom gaped in disgust, and Sam winked at them both.

  He looked up to the fish-eye mirror. The hound stiffened and started making her way down the jerky aisle toward the drink cases.

 
; Sam hurried to the front of the store down an aisle parallel to the hound. Waving at the cashier, he gave a glance over his shoulder before exiting. The last thing he saw was the hound closing in on his spit wad.

  He sprinted over to Em and the truck.

  “You’re empty handed,” she observed.

  “Hound’s on our trail,” Sam said, breathless. “How fast can you hotwire a car?”

  “My record’s two minutes ten seconds.”

  “I’m faster. That white van by the air compressor. Go.”

  “No need.” She pointed at an empty blue La Jolla sedan at the pumps with the nozzle in the tank. “That guy left his keys in the car.”

  Em snatched their bags out of the pickup while Sam went to the La Jolla. He yanked out the nozzle and let himself into the driver’s seat. Em threw herself in after him. An air freshener in the shape of a marijuana leaf hung from the rearview mirror. Gas, ass, or grass. No one rides for free, read the jaunty cursive printed on it. The seats and floor mats smelled much more of grass than gas or ass. The odor could be a problem, making it harder for Sam to detect and conjure osteomancy. But that was a worry for another time.

  The hound rushed out of the store, scanning the air with her tattooed eyes. Her head snapped toward the gas pumps.

  Sam turned the key. He shoved the shifter to reverse, just as a hatchback pulled up to the pump behind him.

  “Hold on to your paint,” he said, shifting to drive. He hit the gas, squeezing through the seam between the SUV in front of him and the cars pumping gas at the next island.

  The hound broke into a full-speed run.

  Sam steered toward the driveway and within seconds was back on the road, accelerating away. He didn’t look back.

  “I was going to buy snacks,” he said. “Do we have any more snacks?”

  Em looked around. “Afraid not. Is the hound with the same crew that took down Daniel?”

  “Could be. I didn’t see her then. There’s probably more than one crew after me.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because there’s always more than one crew after me. I’m the treasure of Los Angeles, remember?”

  And now he didn’t have Daniel protecting him.

  “So you don’t recognize the hound?”

  “No. But I almost never see a hound more than once. One chance is usually all they get before Daniel kills them.”

  “Well, this one lives another day.”

  Sam drove with his eyes on the rearview and side mirrors more than on the road ahead. They were nearing populated ground and sharing the road with more cars. Since they didn’t know what the hound was driving, all vehicles were suspect. There was also the matter of cops looking for their freshly stolen car.

  After speeding down the road for a few more dozen miles, Sam slowed and pulled to a stop at the side of the road.

  “Really terrible time for a pee break, Sam.”

  Ignoring her, he reached into the backseat and dug out Daniel’s osteomancy kit, then opened his door.

  Em followed him out of the car.

  Clutching one of the vials from Daniel’s kit, Sam cocked back his arm and let the vial fly into the desert. The glass barely made a tinkle when it shattered against a rock.

  “You just shot a rock with five thousand tusks’ worth of osteomancy,” Em said.

  “It’s kolowisi essence. From a sea serpent. We can spare it.”

  “Catalina Island is twenty-two miles off the coast. You don’t think sea serpent essence might be useful if we have to swim?”

  “It’s not enough to last us twenty-two miles. Anyway, we have to sacrifice something if we’re going to shake off that hound.”

  He chucked three more bottles of magic, then ran across the highway and shot another three in the opposite direction.

  “Can we go now?” Em said, impatient. The highway traffic was sparse, but a few cars whizzed past, enough to make them both nervous.

  “I need to try something first.”

  He knelt by the rear bumper.

  It was a small thing, something Daniel was able to do when he was only twelve, under circumstances even worse than having a hound on his trail. If Sam couldn’t manage this now, then he’d never be able to do it. And if he couldn’t actually use his osteomancy, then the Emmas were right: he had no business going to Catalina.

  He thought of visual distortions, of funhouse mirrors and frosted glass. He thought of confusion and photons refusing to ride orderly waves. The smell of sint holo serpent rose from his hand, a creature whose essence granted properties of invisibility.

  He smeared his palm over the license plate.

  “Come here and read the plate,” he told Em.

  She stared at it for a few seconds, frowning.

  “LEF439. No, wait. PEF … wait … LE … Huh.”

  “What color’s the car?”

  She stared intently at the car, shut her eyes, blinked a few times. “Okay, you’re good. I have no idea.”

  “Just a little sint holo magic.”

  “Sexy,” she said. She smiled at him and got back inside the car.

  Sam’s brain felt like it had become untethered and was swimming around inside his skull. His face felt hot. He didn’t think it was an effect of his own magic.

  Sexy?

  Trying not to smile too much, he returned to the driver’s seat and sped down the highway.

  SEVEN

  The Bautistas lived in a white clapboard house among fields of alfalfa. A tire swing hung from a single oak tree surrounded by a scattering of toy trucks, a wagon, a faded red tricycle, and some partially clothed dolls.

  “I didn’t know the Bautistas had kids,” Sam said.

  Em went to the front door by way of a tidy path bordered by gladiolas.

  “They’re good kids. They don’t blab.”

  Responding to Em’s knock, a woman opened the door and stood behind the screen. Midthirties, a bit worn and harried, she kept one hand in the pocket of her apron. Her posture relaxed when she recognized Em.

  “You and your friend by yourselves? Where are your sisters?”

  “Not here. Just me and Sam. He’s Daniel Blackland’s … He travels with Daniel Blackland.”

  The wooden grip of a handgun peeked from her apron pocket.

  She opened the screen door. “Dinner first, then we can talk business.”

  Dinner was spaghetti and green beans with the whole family—Sofía Bautista, her husband, Fernando, and their son and two daughters. Sam supposed they were as cute as any children. The table conversation focused on chores to be done around the farm and house, and drilling the older daughter, eight, on her multiplication tables. The house was small and cluttered with the detritus of small children, and there were crayon drawings stuck to the refrigerator with magnets, and the smell of tomato sauce lingering in the kitchen, and Sam loved it here and wished the meal would never end.

  After dinner, there was coffee, and then dishes, and then the kids were put to bed, which took both parents another hour.

  Finally, the Bautistas returned to the table. Fernando, a pudgy man with a quiet manner, a soft face, and calloused hands, unfolded a map of the Southern California realm.

  “Where is it you need to get to?”

  Em tapped Catalina Island with her finger. “Here.”

  “That’s far.” Sofía pressed her lips together.

  Fernando nodded. “What’s the cargo?”

  “Us,” Sam said, indicating himself and Em.

  Sofía gave them an appraising look, as if she were estimating their weight and value. “So this isn’t for-profit. What kind of trouble are you kids in?”

  Sam gave her an honest answer. “I don’t want to say too specifically, but it could be a lot of trouble.”

  “If Sofía’s going up, you will have to be very specific,” Fernando said. “That’s the way it works. You make a proposal, you tell us everything, and then we decide if it’s worth it.” There was a bit of gentle admonis
hment in his tone, as if Sam were one of his kids and was getting a lecture on the importance of brushing his teeth. Sam didn’t mind. He found it oddly comforting.

  “The Emmas trust the Bautistas,” Em said to Sam. “Daniel did, too. He would have told them everything.”

  Sam didn’t know if that was true, but then, how much choice did he have? They needed a flight to the island, and the Bautistas had a plane.

  So Sam told them things. But not everything. He told them why he needed to get to Catalina, and what Daniel had intended to do once he got there. He told them he was an osteomancer, but not how rare he was. No need for them to know how much money they could get by selling him to a rich Angelino.

  When Sam was done talking, Fernando stroked his mustache and looked over the map. “That explains what you need us for. Hounds aren’t much of a threat when you’re a couple thousand feet up. And we can get you from the desert to the island without ever having to touch ground. You’ll need a pickup, too?”

  “Once we’re on the beach, you’ll take off again,” Em said. “When we’re done, we’ll signal you.”

  Nobody needed to say that this arrangement doubled the risk. One undetected landing was optimistic enough. Two would be pushing it. And while Sam and Em were running around the facility, Sofía would be circling in enemy airspace.

  Sam looked up at the drawings on the refrigerator. They were nonsense scribbles, nothing recognizable in them, but they moved him all the same. He’d never drawn a picture that ended up on a refrigerator.

  Fernando brought up the subject of money.

  Sam opened the diplomatic pouch and placed all their remaining cash on the table. “This is 24,400. It’s all we have.”

  Em gave him a look, but he ignored it. He wasn’t just paying for a round-trip flight. He was paying for the chance to orphan three kids.

  * * *

  The tire swing swayed from the oak branch, the ropes creaking softly against the sounds of crickets and frogs in the irrigation ditches. Alone in the yard, Sam sat on the swing and looked up beyond the sharp edge of the roofline. The black sky was punctured with stars. He wanted to go back in the house and tell the Bautistas he’d changed his mind. Better yet, just grab Em and drive away, be miles distant before anyone noticed they’d left.