“Not the best.”
“Hey, Lo,” Grim said through the window. Lorelei appeared behind me, a white shadow, and smiled. Her answering “Hi” was so soft it could have been another breeze. Lorelei and Grim were cousins, though the way they acted, you’d swear Grim was her older brother.
“Hey.” Sadie leaned over the outside counter until I had toback up. “You don’t know what happened to Masrell, do you? Seriously? You have no idea?”
I paused. Even Sadie had to ask twice, because my word wasn’t enough. My own sister, who knew exactly what kind of shape I was in after I lost my fingers. Whoknewhow I reacted to fire now. Even she couldn’t completely believe I hadn’t killed someone.
I clamped down on the hollow feeling in my chest and said, “He yelled at me for throwing coffee away. I yelled at him for being the cryptkeeper. That was it.”
“Did the cops talk to you this morning?”
“At school. I said I didn’t have anything to do with it. They said they were going to talk to you.”
Sadie rubbed her forehead, looking the picture of the young bedraggled mother. She always looked like a young bedraggled mother after she got off work. She’d been talked at all day and she’d be talked at all night, until sleep finally let her escape, and even that was temporary. I was glad she didn’t know about ghosts or firestarters; it would just be another thing for her to worry about. “All right, well, it’s not like we actually did anything.”
“Hey, Sadie.” Hal slid an orange cream freezie and a tall chocolate swirl cone across the counter between us. “Sorry you guys have to deal with this.”
Grim took the chocolate and sucked contentedly on thetop curl of ice cream. Sadie shook her head while she pulled a twenty from her purse. “It’s fine, it’ll pass. I do feel terrible, though. There are plenty of people who didn’t like Masrell, but murder? Who would hate him enough to kill him?”
“Everyone I know thinks it’s Hermit Forester, emerging from the woods after thirty years,” Hal said. “Like the clown fromIt.”
“Or a copycat,” Mads said. “That’s what the marching band thinks right now. A twenty-something running around with a boner for the Firestarter Murders.”
Except Forester was too far from the coal mine. More likely a new firestarter had opened a gateway—its entrance—in the mines and had retreated there after killing Masrell to build up power until it could possess someone. Much easier to set more fires when you could walk among humans undetected.
Sadie jammed a plastic spoon into her orange cream, brows furrowed and mouth turned down.
“I saw the video,” she said quietly. “One of my regulars showed me. She recognized you from the picture on my counter. Why would you go anywhere near his house? Andwhywould you stick around if you saw Aunt Greta there?”
“I know it was a bad idea. I wanted to—to prove I hadn’t done it, and I needed to know more about the fire. I didn’t see her. I think they pulled up afterward.Theywere the ones who came up tome—”
“Zora, pleasethinkfor, like,two secondsbefore you do something next time. There is always someone around to film something, especially at a place like that. We can’t afford this kind of attention, not when Dad is getting out of prison in two days. Let Rivera do her job.”
Heat pooled in my face. It wasDad’sfault we were getting so much of this attention, and she could only talk abouthisfeelings, andhisreactions. But worse, she said it like I didn’t know what was happening, like I was too stupid to see how my actions affected the situation. Like I wasn’t smart enough to figure out for myself that this was pretty near a worst-case scenario. I try to make things right, and everyone tells me to sit down, shut up, let the adults handle it. I wished I could. I would have handed all of this back to Mom in a heartbeat, if it was possible. But I was the one here, and I had to dosomething.
I lowered my voice. “It’s not even your problem.”
“Itismy problem,” she hissed back. “I’m responsible for you until Dad comes home.”
“Eat your fu—fudging ice cream, Sadie.”
“Let’s go sit,” Grim said gently, rubbing Sadie’s back and looking strangely like some kind of druid in a jumpsuit, put on Earth to heal weariness. “We can talk to the police later and tell them what we know. Everything will be okay.”
Sadie huffed, gave me a look halfway between reproach and apology, and let Grim pull her to one of the patio tables.She ate her ice cream with a hand covering one ear, the other open to Grim.
I busied myself getting more spoons and napkins to refill the holders by the windows and slammed the spoons down so hard the cup fell over and rolled onto the floor. I bit my tongue to keep from swearing. I was always the one who had to be careful, and the only thing I’d ever done wrong was underestimate one little firestarter. Dad had been the thief. Mom had been the witch. All the Novaks before me had been the trailer dogs of this town, and thanks to them, we always would be. I was trying to make thingsright.
Even Sadie had to ask if I’d killed George Masrell. If I’dkilledsomeone.
Mads’s voice rose. “Why would an old hermit kill a janitor? Anddon’tsay because he—”
“Because he murdered twelve people,” Hal finished.
“He was only suspected of that.” Lorelei appeared by the soft-serve machine. “Never convicted.”
“His whole family dies in different mysterious fires within a week and he comes out totally unscathed, but somehow the police never find out who did it?” Hal shrugged. “I’m just saying, looks suspicious. Start your investigations with the most obvious. Maybe George Masrell knew something.”
Mads looked like she’d just realized she was in an argument with a ten-year-old. “The Forester mansion gets used for ghosttours now. He doesn’t even live there anymore.”
