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“Who?” Emery asked.
North took out his phone and pulled up a picture. When he displayed it, Jem made a scoffing noise, and Tean shook his head.
“Heather?” Tean asked, although there was no mistaking her in the picture. She stood at the rear passenger door of the vehicle, holding a piece of metal she had worked behind the window. Her face was turned toward the camera as though she were scanning for witnesses.
“The animal psychic?” Jem said. “Are you kidding me? She’s, like, a million years old.”
“She was pretty spry tonight,” North said, pocketing his phone.
“What did she say when you confronted her?” Emery asked.
“First of all, motherfucker, maybe I wanted to see what she was going to do. Maybe Shaw and I just hung back and watched.”
Emery snorted. “In those boots?”
North sat up, dropping his feet from the back of the chair, his face coloring.
“North,” John-Henry said.
For a moment, North seemed to fight an internal battle. Then, words stiff, he said, “She got away.”
“She got away?” Emery asked. “How the fuck did she get away? On her fucking scooter?”
“Hey!” North shouted.
“She got away by setting North on fire,” Shaw said brightly.
Tean looked at North. Jem looked at North. Emery pinched the bridge of his nose, and John-Henry sighed. In the lull, the furious whispers between Auggie and Theo were a snakeskin noise.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Emery said. “This is amateur hour, John.”
John-Henry rubbed his shoulder.
“You two,” Emery said to North and Shaw, “managed to get yourselves set on fire during a fucking stakeout.”
“Emery, wait—” Shaw said.
“And you two, regardless of the fact that you have no fucking idea what you’re doing, keep poking your noses into everything after you’ve been told not to.”
Jem’s face darkened, and he balled his fists.
“And you two,” Emery shouted toward the back of the room, “fucked up our best—and so far, only—chance at finding this killer.”
“We’re in the middle of a conversation, Emery,” Theo said.
“Flashing your fucking headlights?” Emery asked. “How about next time, you do a hula dance on the roof of your fucking car?”
“Jem wasn’t answering his phone,” Auggie protested. “The killer was going to catch them.”
“The good news,” Shaw said, “is we didn’t get totally set on fire because I’m a pyromancer, well, just a baby one right now, but I channeled the flames away from us.”
“Pyromancer,” North said. “He fell asleep with a jay one time and set his own dick on fire.”
John-Henry held up a hand before Emery could speak. In a surprisingly tight voice, he asked, “North?”
“When we saw her splashing kerosene on everything,” North said, not meeting anyone’s eyes, “we tried to stop her. She was obviously trying to destroy evidence. I didn’t expect her to throw the kerosene at me.”
“And you definitely didn’t expect to catch on fire so quickly,” Shaw said in what must have been meant as a helpful tone.
