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Theta could practically feel the sting of his grip; she’d felt such a grip on her own arm plenty enough. Her heart raced in sympathy. “Let her go.”
“This is none of your business,” the man growled at Theta.
The heat moved through Theta. If she used it, she might get all of her friends in trouble. If she didn’t, this woman… well, Theta had a very good idea of what would happen to her when they got home, if this bastard even waited that long.
“I said, let her go,” Theta said, more forcefully.
The man prowled toward Theta like one of the circus lions spying a pigeon outside its cage. “Who asked you?”
Beads of sweat pimpled Theta’s upper lip and along her brow. The fire was coming. If she ran, she might be able to stop it. She didn’t want to stop it. He was almost to her when it tore through her body, engulfing her hands in orange-blue flames. The man fell back, afraid. The voice coming out of Theta crackled with fire as well. “If you ever touch her, I will come for you. I will find you. I will burn you for every woman who has ever been hurt by men like you.”
Theta lifted her hands in front of her, mesmerized by the sight. Her rage was intoxicating; she felt as if she might let the fire blaze until it consumed every bit of her.
The man turned and ran across the fairgrounds, screaming for help from “a crazy woman!”
The slapped wife fell to the ground, also afraid. “Please. Please don’t.”
“I won’t hurt you,” Theta promised. Already, her fire was ebbing. She trembled from the might of all that anger as if she had run for miles. The skin along the backs of her hands had begun to hurt. She raced to a bucket of water sitting outside the lions’ cage and stuck her hands inside, sighing with relief.
“You need to leave him. He’s a bad man,” she said, removing her hands, which hurt, and helping the woman to her feet.
“He isn’t bad all the time,” the woman said. There was an old bruise below her eye.
“That’s what I used to tell myself, too,” Theta said.
The woman’s face crumpled. “What choice do I have?” she said. She straightened her dress and smoothed her hair. “Billy! Billy, wait!” the woman called and ran after him.
“I shouldn’t-a done it, Evil,” Theta said later. Evie had found a nail file, which she was calling a “blessed miracle,” and she was shaping Theta’s ragged fingernails after having doctored Theta’s hands, which looked sunburned. “I put us in danger of being found out. And for what? She just went right back to him.”
Evie paused. “Round or pointy?”
“Surprise me,” Theta said.
“Pointy it is,” Evie said and scraped the file against the side of Theta’s index fingernail. “Oh, Theta, honey, it isn’t as if you meant to hurt him—”
“That’s just it, Evil: I did want to hurt him. I wanted to hurt him real b
ad. I wanted to see him scared, and when I saw that fear, it felt so good I wanted to do it some more. I wanted him to be scared the way I was scared all those times before.” Theta stared at her hands as Evie worked some cream into her cuticles. “I don’t know if I should be trusted with this power. I-I couldn’t stop and it bit me back.”
“Well, it is your power. It lives in you, and it isn’t going away. We’re just going to have to figure out how to control it some, I suppose. Though I don’t mind if certain terrible men are afraid of you,” Evie said.
“Boy, do I know how to make an entrance,” Sam said, barging into the room. “What’s this about terrible men?”
“Nothing,” Evie said, then added, “Don’t be one.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” He pulled up a chair and sat down.
Evie batted her lashes. “Scram, Sam Lloyd. This is a private conversation.”
Sam got up and put the chair back. “Fortunately, I also know when to make an exit.”
Isaiah wandered the fairgrounds. He bought himself some Cracker Jack and fished out the prize, a little toy soldier he put in his pocket for later. Isaiah frowned as he passed a Fitter Families tent. He’d been to one of those at the Future of America Exhibition, and he hadn’t liked it. The people weren’t nice. They had mean ideas about who mattered and who didn’t. Isaiah looked at all the pamphlets they had stacked on the table. One of them was a WANTED poster with pictures of him and his friends: HAVE YOU SEEN THESE ANARCHISTS? Isaiah didn’t know what an “anarchist” was, but he understood the five-thousand-dollar reward.
“Please don’t touch that,” a white man in a brown suit and wire spectacles said to Isaiah. He was balding a bit.
Quickly, Isaiah put the WANTED poster back down. The man didn’t seem to recognize Isaiah. For that, he was glad. Unsatisfied with Isaiah simply putting the poster back, the man came over to escort him away from the tent. But no sooner had he taken hold of Isaiah’s hand than a vision came down over Isaiah, and there was no stopping it. He could see this man’s future playing out on the picture screen in his head.
“What’s the matter with you? Are you playing games?” the man said as Isaiah shook.
