Pyromantic

by Lish McBride

  Fitz joined Sylvie at the cupboard, swishing his own hand through the scales of the beast. “That is one of the best illusions I’ve laid eyes on in quite a while. Your witch is quite talented.”

  I looked around, only then remembering that Thomas had taken a powder. “Son of a—”

  “Language,” Fitz barked. “There are ladies present.”

  “You eat people!” I yelled.

  “And some would argue that you are a lady,” Lock said, only smiling when I scowled.

  “I don’t see how diet affects one’s manners,” Fitz said with a superior tone that I didn’t care for.

  I threw my arms wide, leaving trails of sparks in the air as I moved. “Don’t you get it? That stupid witch was our best lead! And now he’s gone.” Bianca and Sid ran off, pelting down the stairs, but I doubted they’d find anything. Thomas had a solid head start and motivation.

  Thunder crackled in the distance as Alistair glowered out the window. “I don’t like this one bit.”

  Ezra put a hand on my shoulder, which I immediately shrugged off. He simply put it back. “We’ll track him, Ava.” He waved at the illusion. “He’s done what he does best, so now let’s do what we do best.”

  Sylvie joined Alistair at the window, her shoulders slumped.

  “It’s okay, Sylvie,” I said, trying to reassure my friend. “We’ll find him. Ezra’s right. It’s what we’re good at.” She didn’t perk up, so I kept going. “Sure, it’s a setback. But have a little faith.” Even to my ears it sounded a bit desperate. I tried to think of something more reassuring to say but was distracted by the giant clawed hand coming out of the cupboard. It’s just hard to ignore that kind of thing. “And can someone get rid of that?”

  Lock reached into the inside of his vest, a gift from Alistair, I knew. The lining was dotted with several tiny hidden pockets. He cupped his hand around a seed, his face serene as he stared down at it. Shoots appeared, rapidly twisting upward. The trunk became brown and almost treelike, tiny leaves popping out, the air filling with the unmistakable bite of rosemary. Lock removed a branch and held it up for me. I lit it with a flick of my fingers, and he waved the smoke under the cupboard. The illusion in the cupboard wavered and broke, dispelled by the rosemary. He sent Olive off with instructions to find Cade downstairs and ask about potting materials. Lock wasn’t about to kill off the plant he’d just brought to life. “They’re right, Sylvie. We’ll track Thomas down and do what we’re good at. If he’s running, he can’t be completely innocent.” He turned his head toward me. “And I’m tired of killing things.”

  Bianca and Sid came back in, their faces flushed. “He’s gone,” Bianca said, shaking her head, her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. Their faces were both covered in a sheen of sweat. Sid must have really been running. Weres usually have more stamina.

  “Anyone else feeling hot?” Sid asked. He didn’t notice Bianca nodding as he stumbled toward the fridge and opened up the door. He popped open a Moxie, downing it in several long gulps, before he moved on to another drink. He was halfway through the bottle of sparkling lemonade when he collapsed, the bottle shattering on the floor. Bianca went down a second later, her body rigid, her muscles twitching. Lock dropped the plant as we all converged on our friends. We watched helplessly as Bianca seized, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.

  I felt all the blood leave my face. Sid and Bianca were infected. I stood back and watched everyone running around, trying to help. There was nothing I could do. I wasn’t a healer. I destroyed things. I didn’t know how to put them back together.

  Alistair issued orders, shoving me into motion. We cleared the furniture around them and then did our best to flip them onto their sides. That’s about all you can do to help someone who’s having a seizure. And as I held Bianca gently on her side while her muscles bucked and clenched, I realized that what I’d thought earlier about only being able to destroy wasn’t true. Maybe my gift was destructive, but that didn’t necessarily mean that I was. I was able to do just as much as anyone else could to help Sid and Bianca. It just wasn’t enough. Still, a knot inside me loosened. Not everything I touched had to turn to ash.

  Once their seizures stopped, Bianca and Sid were bundled off into a car to be taken back to the clinic. We all tried to follow but were firmly turned away by Alistair.

  “You’ll do them no good at the clinic.” His voice was firm and calm, but his hair was disheveled, and he’d lost the top button on his shirt. “Sitting by their bedsides wringing your hands won’t crack this. Find me that witch.”

  Sylvie reached out and pulled on his sleeve, a childlike gesture. He seemed about to snap at her but then stopped after taking in the big wobbly tears that were about to fall.

  “The witch isn’t the only lead you have,” she said. Her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath and tried again. “You’ll need to find him eventually, but until then you also have me.” She looked away, closing her eyes and letting those tears finally fall. “I think I know what’s going on … and it’s all my fault!” And now she was crying in earnest.

  I knew Alistair wanted to leave and take off after Sid and Bianca, but he seemed to sense that what Sylvie had to say was important … and that people were starting to stare at the girl sobbing on the sidewalk outside the bookstore. He herded us into the back room of Broken Spines and made her sit down and breathe slowly in through her nose and out through her mouth until she calmed down.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  She nodded, though it was clear that she didn’t feel great. I handed her Gnarly, the round stuffed narwhal we kept in the back room for Sylvie to hug after she’d had to deal with a tough customer. Okay, so we all had hugged Gnarly a time or two. He was just so … squishy.

  She hugged Gnarly to her and took one last, deep breath. “Okay. You remember my aunt, the half-siren? Well, the birthday party wasn’t the only incident. She does her best, you know. But even humming can cause problems, and people do that without thinking all the time.” She rested her cheek on Gnarly. “They’ve been talking about having a baby, her and my uncle, but she’s afraid. You sing to babies. Oftentimes you don’t even think about it. And their baby would be mostly human. And she’s worried she wouldn’t be careful enough.” Sylvie squeezed Gnarly tighter. It was a good thing I hadn’t given her Horatio, or we’d have had a yowling kitty on our hands.

  “I wasn’t supposed to know. I overheard them discussing it—my aunt and my uncle—and after the sweaters I thought, well, why couldn’t magic help them? Why couldn’t we come up with something, some magical googah, to help them? So I talked to Thomas, and he seemed really excited about the idea—coming up with something to dull or remove powers people didn’t want.”

  Oh no. My friend has one of the most brilliant minds in her head, but sometimes … well, experiments fail as you perfect them. That’s only natural. And sometimes Sylvie failed spectacularly. “What did you do, Sylvie?” I asked gently.

  She sniffed and Ezra handed her a napkin. “Thomas really thought it was a good idea. He brought in some friends, people he trusted, and we worked on the problem.” Her hands were trembling now, and she looked like she was going to cry again, so I handed her another tissue.

  “I spent weeks on it. The witch brought me books, and we discussed theory.” She sniffed. “I thought about how physicians used to use leeches to drain blood, and I wondered if we couldn’t do something similar. Only without the bloodletting. Find something to drain off the magical excess to make normal life possible. Thomas brought up locusts, the magic-eating ones, but they seemed too out of control. We needed something docile and slow. So we tried snails. I mean, who ever heard of killer snails?”

  Fitz raised his hand.

  “I mean before this.”

  The hand went down.

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  Sylvie shrugged. “I did the theory, but the witch, he was the one who was going to try it out.” She tilted her flushed f
ace toward me. “He told me it hadn’t worked. That the snails got some kind of fungus and died. It never occurred to me that he was lying. Why would he lie?” She held my gaze, hoping I had an easy answer for her. I didn’t.

  “Where did you get such big snails?” Lock asked.

  “We didn’t,” Sylvie said, taking another swipe at her wet cheek with the back of her hand. “They were just normal snails. The spells Thomas used must have made them grow bigger.”

  “The locusts are quite large as well,” Ezra said. “Perhaps whatever makes them magic eating also causes gigantism.”

  “That explains the snails,” I said. “But what about whatever is causing the aggression?”

  Sylvie slumped into the blankets. “I don’t know. That shouldn’t be a side effect, but since I wasn’t around when the witch tested my hypothesis…”

  Alistair folded his arms, his face grim. “We need to find that witch.”

  Sylvie buried her face in Gnarly’s plush electric-blue fur.

  Alistair reached down and gently tipped her face back up. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

  “I thought I could fix it. Then maybe you guys would never know how much I screwed up.” Her lower lip began to wobble. “I am so sorry. I’ve killed so many people—”

  I squatted down so she had to look at me. “Hey. Don’t. Okay, yeah, you screwed up. But would you have released the snails without suitable testing?”

  She sniffed. “No. I would have run proper trials, found volunteers—”

  “Which Thomas didn’t do. So don’t take all the blame, Sylvie. It’s not all yours to take.”

  Lock snorted and I looked up at him, ready to argue, but the expression on his face wasn’t combative. It had that distinct “you should take your own advice” look to it. Which I, of course, chose to ignore.

  Alistair ran a hand through his hair. Bianca’s seizure had taken a lot out of our fearless leader. He was rumpled and grim. “I need to get to the clinic. Dr. Wesley is running tests, and I want to be there when the results come in. Ava, Lock, and Ezra, go back to the original scenes and see if you guys can find some snails. I’ll put someone else on tracking down the witch. As soon as I have a lead, you’ll know it.” He pulled out his phone, already texting orders out. “And take Katya with you. We need live samples, and she’s the best way to keep them on ice. If she doesn’t know how to do that, have her call me. I’m not a frost, but we have some power overlap.” He shoved his phone in his pocket. “Sylvie, Fitz—check on the knitters. See if they need anything else or if they can manage the project on their own. Then I want you both down at the clinic. I want you to read over the doctor’s findings, Sylvie. See what you can add. If we can tell her where this came from, maybe we can figure out how to stop it.”

  18

  ATTACK OF THE KILLER GASTROPODS

  KATYA WASN’T IMPRESSED by the smoke-stained ruins of the warehouse. She kicked aside a chunk of windowpane with her toe, her nose scrunched from the smell. The police had come and gone. The scene had probably been taped off at one point, but really, what was there to tape off?

  “So why am I here, exactly?” Katya wiped the sweat off her forehead. The sun was setting, and the air was thick and weighty, despite how close we were to the water. Even the mosquitoes and blackflies were having a hard time cutting through it.

  “We need your expertise,” I said with a shrug. “And I think we should really pick your brain about what happened at your house.” She paled at that and I felt bad, but I’d trade her feelings for anything that would help Bianca and Sid.

  “There’s not much to look at, is there?” Lock circled to the side of the debris pile. “You really did a number on this place, Ava.”

  Ezra pinched the front of his shirt, pulling it out to try to get a breeze going. The shirt was tight, and with the humidity it stuck to him like a second skin. Every time he let go, it contoured to his chest and Katya’s gaze wandered away from the rubble to Ez’s sculpted shirt. I dipped my head so she wouldn’t see me smile.

  “I don’t care if there’s nothing here,” Ezra said. “I’m just glad to spend five minutes where nothing is trying to eat me or get some sort of goo all over my clothing.” He batted away a mosquito. “I’m not against frequent wardrobe changes, but it’s becoming ludicrous.”

  We got our gear so we could check the place out before the oppressive humidity made us all more miserable than we already were. I was very tempted to go and jump in the water that I could see from where I was standing. Seagulls circled over the cool, deep blue of the ocean. Multihued buoys indicating where the lobstermen had dropped their pots bobbed with the current, inviting me in. It would have felt amazing. Then I thought about all the kelpies I’d met recently. Kelpies lived in the water.… Nope, I was just going to stay hot and sticky and alive, thank you.

  I popped my sunglasses up so I could blot my face before I started exploring. “Look, we’re here, so let’s just get on with it. Katya and I will walk the perimeter. Ez, Lock, you guys sift carefully through the debris. Alistair wants us gloved and masked.” Even though I’d incinerated the place and then the fire department had hosed down what was left, Alistair didn’t want to take any more chances that the fungus was still here and viable. Spores are generally very resilient. So we donned latex gloves and face masks. I didn’t think it was likely that we’d pick anything up, but after today on top of everything else, well, I was okay with being careful.

  To be honest, I would have preferred my own hazmat suit. Images of Howie in the freezer and my fight with the werewolf zombie kept popping into my mind. I could almost smell the burned fat. Of course, that could have been an actual lingering smell. Who knew. But the warehouse wasn’t exactly a high-level risk. Besides the fire and the water, time had gone by and the hope was that there wasn’t anything left to infect us. And while masks and gloves might warrant a second look, full-on hazmat suits really draw attention. The kind that gets the cops called, though I wasn’t sure who would call them out here. So we did our best to stay safe and took the risk.

  Katya was watching Ezra, who was now taking pictures of himself in his face mask.

  “Doesn’t he take any of this seriously?” Her tone spoke of disapproval.

  I adjusted my mask. “I can see that, to an outside observer, it might seem like Ezra has no feelings. He doesn’t have Lock’s furrowed brow, and he’s not obsessively checking his phone for news like I’ve been doing.” I left out the part about my hands letting off sparks of frustration at the empty screen every time I did check. She’d seen it. “So I guess it’s easy to think he doesn’t care that Sid and Bianca are sick. That he thinks of all of this as a game. But everything is a game to a fox, and that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take it seriously.”

  I pulled my hair up, twisting it in a knot so it was out of my face. “Ezra watches us. He keeps an eye on Lock’s jaw to see if it’s unclenched. And he always keeps me at the edge of his field of vision, so that every time I check my phone, he can see how I take the news, or lack thereof. We’re his emotional barometers.” Ezra had never been a worrier. He didn’t mother-hen people like Lock did, and to be fair, he didn’t really care about a lot of people. But once you had been accepted by Ezra, you were family. And even if he didn’t feel that way about Sid and Bianca, he would have been just as vigilant with them, because Lock and I cared, and we were as important to Ez as his own kin.

  I left a thoughtful-looking Katya so I could pace along the perimeter, skimming the ground as I walked. Try as I might, all I could find was broken and charred remains of the warehouse, which didn’t exactly tell us anything new. The sun beat down on my back, reminding me that it wouldn’t be up forever, and I certainly didn’t want to do this by flashlight. We moved slowly, scanning the wreckage, pushing larger pieces aside with our shoes or carefully with our hands. After a while, I was more worried about tetanus than anything.

  Ezra pulled his mask down in disgust. “Between the mask and the smoke damage, I can�
�t smell a damn thing except the ocean. Can we tell Alistair it’s a lost cause yet?”

  Lock squatted down to get a better look at something. “You want to be the one who tells him we’ve got nothing while he’s sitting over Bianca’s hospital bed?” Ezra thought for a second, then yanked his mask back up. Lock huffed. “That’s what I thought.”

  Far off on the opposite edge of the debris, Katya raised her hand. I decided to take the time to skirt the edges to get to her. Walking over broken glass and rusty nails wasn’t my favorite thing. The last time we did that, Lock had to pull shards of glass out of Ezra’s back.

  Once I was next to Katya, she pointed to what looked to be a crushed shell of some kind.

  We both crouched down to get a better look. The mess was a dark gray husk of something covered in a variegated shell of browns and creams. I poked at it with my finger.

  “We came here looking for snails carrying a dangerous and deadly fungus, and I show you something that looks like a snail. Why on earth would you touch it?”

  “I wasn’t thinking!” I snapped. “It’s just habit, I guess. Poking things.”

  “It’s a stupid habit.”

  “Agreed.”

  The crushed shell was thinner and more delicate than any water-based mollusk I’d seen before. The color wasn’t right, either. The shards had housed something at one point—dried and twisted flesh still bound the mess together.

  “That looks like one toasted snail,” I said, suppressing the urge to sit down. Tetanus, Ava. Tetanus. “Fitz said it was large, but stars and sparks.” I splayed my hand out over it. “It’s bigger than my hand.”

  “Yes, and you just poked it.”

  “I get it! Let it go!”

  Though her face was obscured by the mask, Katya’s forehead was wrinkled as she examined the carcass. “I’ve seen this before, I know I have. But it’s such a mess, I can’t figure out where.”

  “It’s like a disgusting puzzle,” Ezra said, leaning over us. “A stinky, disgusting, gooey puzzle.”