“I hear we get to suffer through a week of this.” I pointed to Tad and his three team members trying out different poses along the curb.
“I’ll give them four days,” Bach said, spooning frozen banana into his mouth.
“Four?” I snorted. “You going to scare them out of here?”
“Oh no. I’m on a loose leash these days; I’m not going to ruin that freedom.”
“So it wasn’t you who set the fire at Masrell’s?” I said it so only he would hear.
“No,” he replied, just as quietly, “but it was one of us. Sammy’s lying low—he knows the rumors are going to come up again and doesn’t want anyone bothering him.”
Hermit Forester—Sam Forester—didn’t want anyone bothering him soIwouldn’t look into Bach’s entrance again, soIwouldn’t ruin the little farming operation they’d had here for the past thirty years. Twelve ghosts they were feeding off of.
“How does it work?” I asked him, glancing around to make sure no one was paying too close attention to us. “I know Forester pulls strength from the people you kill, but he’s human.”
“Partly,” Bach said. “His mother was a firestarter.”
“Lenore Forester?”
“No. His other mother. My mother. Hildegard.”
“So he’shalfhuman.”
Bach made a noise. He didn’t look happy; he had told me before that his mother—if that was really what firestarters called them, the things that spawned more firestarters—had shackled him to Sam Forester, and Sam was the one who made him kill. I wasn’t sure I believed him yet, but everything I knew about firestarters had come from Mom, and they hadn’t exactly been spilling their secrets to her. Bach told me things, but only a little bit at a time, to keep Hermit Forester from finding out he was doing it and going on another rampage.
The audience at Hal’s was turned now, facing the street, where the camera crew had set up. Lamps lit the long line of quaint, touristy buildings down Valleywine. Tad handed his cone to the one girl in the group—her name was Leila, according to the white block letters on the back of her sweatshirt—slopping melted chocolate over her fingers. Then Tad took his power stance with his hands clasped in front of him.
The producer quieted the crowd at Hal’s. Customers and fans alike already had their phones out. The cameras started rolling.
“Tonight,” Tad’s voice was low and serious, “we arrive in the sleepy town of Addamsville, Indiana, to investigate some of the grisliest murders ever seen in small-town America.Collapsed coal mines, missing children, a family of killers, and a mysterious spree of fires—believed by many in the town to be the work of the devil himself—have plagued this midwestern hamlet for years.”
I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “A hamlet is smaller than a town!”
Heads turned. Sadie, at a nearby table with Grim, gave me a look that could have stripped paint off a speedboat. The producer held up his hands and called back, “Quiet, please!”
I sank against the counter. Even correcting a bunch of jerks couldn’t help me relax. My only small consolation was that these hacks would never know the dead were here.
“The town itself is overflowing with stories,” Tad continued, “but we’ve narrowed our investigation to a few specific locations. The first: the abandoned coal mine where the son of the town’s founder died tragically more than one hundred years ago. The second: Maple Hills Campground, where two teenagers perished in 1990. And the third location, the focus of all of Addamsville’s dark energy: the Forester mansion, hidden in the woods to the west of town. It is in this house where the fires began; is it also where the spirits of Addamsville draw their power? That’s what we’re here to find out.”
I looked for Artemis; she was already looking at me. Worry laced her features. The coal mine. She wouldn’t know about the firestarter there yet—but going to Forester House was badenough. I nudged Bach with my elbow. “Did you know that? That they’re going to Forester’s?”
He nodded, mouth full of ice cream. “I knew. They’re filming that one last. A couple days from now. They already knew I worked for Forester, big shocker. I think Greta Wake told them. She e-mailed Sam about it, and he didn’t want to comment. I had to turn down an interview request from that producer when I got here, too.”
Greta told them. Greta okayed it. Did she not think Forester would do anything? If he was trying to lie low, he wouldn’t, so maybe Forester House was safe. Then what did Artemis look so worried about?
“Don’t want to be on TV?” I asked.
“I’m not big on spreading rumors.”
“So Forester really had nothing to do with Masrell’s fire?”
Bach looked at me, taking on the preternatural stillness firestarters could manage in a human body. His gaze jumped down to my hand, then back to my face. “He didn’t. Neither did I. And I thought you gave up hunting, after the last one.”
“Yeah, well.” I swallowed against a dry throat. “One person is already dead. I have to do something until my mom gets back.”
Bach gave me a look I couldn’t decipher and went back to his sundae. Artemis had shuffled closer to us, watching the filming with her face screwed up. Artemis usually looked likeshe was two steps from having a frustrated meltdown, but this was from worry, not anger.
When theDMWcrew finished with the shots away from the building, they came in close.
