Both kids tore into the pile, quickly clearing the old man’s body. He was wearing a burnt and smoking blue jumpsuit, and his face was soot-covered around a pair of flight goggles. The glass lenses had melted and were hanging from the bottom rims like icicles. Two canisters were strapped on his shoulders and pinned beneath him. A cracked silver tube laced with copper wire stuck out from under his arm like the barrel of a leaf blower. Oil oozed out of its mouth.
The old man licked his charcoal lips and smiled. His teeth were gone. “Killed Pug,” he said. “The others? Maxi? Where’s Maxi? He won’t die.”
The ceiling was crackling like pinecones. Antigone coughed and pulled her shirt collar up over her mouth and nose.
Billy Bones looked at her, and then at Cyrus. “Didn’t break—” He paused to breathe, and his eyes shut. “Not every promise. Your father—”
Antigone slid her hands under the old man’s shoulder. “We have to get you out of here. Cy, try gripping under his arms.”
“No,” the old man said. “No! Listen! I have no secrets.” His voice was fading, drowned out by the popping of burning shelves, the loud breathing of flames. “Cyrus, my hands. To my neck. Hurry.” Cyrus looked at his sister. Antigone nodded. Cyrus grabbed Skelton’s wrists in the rubble. His arms were soft, boneless, like socks full of mud. As Cyrus lifted, the old man groaned, and then sobbed. Cyrus hesitated.
“Don’t stop. Don’t.” With a final motion, Cyrus forced Skelton’s hands to his throat. The old man’s fingers moved, and in the darkness, Cyrus saw a thick necklace come free. It was glowing silver. “Yours now,” Skelton said.
Cyrus blinked, confused. Antigone leaned in and took over.
She raised the old man’s hands to her brother’s neck. The necklace — the thing — suddenly moved, twisting between Skelton’s hands. “Use her,” Skelton said. “She was your father’s once.”
Heat seared against Cyrus’s skin and slithered tight around his neck. Yelping, gasping, he reached for it.
“No!” Skelton yelled. “No! Defend what I give you. With your souls.” His voice died. The thing around Cyrus’s neck was only warm now, metallic but soft, scaled, as thick as a small rope.
“Cyrus,” Antigone said, leaning close to the old man’s face. “Cyrus.”
William Skelton’s voice sank below a whisper. “Smiths. Beekeepers. Trust. Nolan.”
“Brother Bones. So dramatic in life, so he should be in death, yes?”
A man, slight, dressed in close-fitting black, stepped through the charred doorway. His accented voice was smooth despite the smoke. A four-barreled gun dangled in his left hand. Flames from the wall licked his shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“What does the dying man give to the little ones, eh?” he asked cheerfully. “William, what should their sweet souls be defending?” He cocked his head, listening. “Has he met with friend Death already?”
Grabbing Antigone, Cyrus slid away on his knees. The man moved toward them through the rubble as Cyrus scrambled to his feet. A bright smile full of very tiny teeth sparkled in the man’s soot-covered face. His eyes were ringed with a pair of empty goggles. His hair, an ashen tangle, stood out around his small head.
“Children, please remain,” he said. “I cannot find what I need. Can it be that the famous Billy Bones no longer holds it?” He pointed his gun at Skelton’s body. “If he was still keeping his charm, I would not expect to see him in such condition.”
A slab of ceiling collapsed onto Cyrus’s bed, and flaming shards sprayed around the room. Smoke swallowed everything. Coughing, Cyrus tucked his face into his arms. His eyes were blinking acid.
The man hadn’t moved. “What did old Skelton give the ducklings?” He raised his gun. “Tell your uncle Maxi.”
Cyrus couldn’t think in the smoke, without air. His brain was on fire. His lungs were bursting. Antigone squeezed his arm tight.
“Cy! Tigs! Where are you?” Dan, barefoot, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, appeared beside the truck.
Without looking, the man swung his gun over his shoulder and sent a pair of twisting fireballs spiraling through the smoke above the truck and into the trees across the road.
Spitting into his shirt, Cyrus pulled his sister. The gun didn’t matter. Smoke mattered. Fire mattered. The two of them staggered toward the man, toward the crumbling doorway. Cyrus was ready for an impact. For a struggle. For a fireball in his stomach.
Instead, they shot through the doorway, careened into the truck, and tripped over the dead man’s legs. Dan’s arms wrapped around them and they were surrounded by cool, moving air. There were stars again. Lights were flashing. The world was full of sirens.
Bigger arms than Dan’s picked Cyrus up and tore him free of his sister. He could hear her yelling. She wanted to go back in. But even louder voices were shouting orders and diesel engines were throbbing and red lights were whirling and someone was wrapping something cool and wet around Cyrus’s face, pressing a mask over his mouth.
A fireman set Cyrus down on the hood of a police car. “Stay here! The paramedics will check you.” And the man was gone.
Cyrus tore his mask off. A skyscraper of smoke was rising from the Archer. The rooftop was an angry mob of bonfires. He slid down to unsteady feet, but the oxygen had cleared his head. Where was Tigs? Where was Dan?
Men with masks were carrying a body out of 111. Cyrus slapped at his pocket. No keys. Did he care? He tore off the thing around his neck, but it twisted in his hand, winding itself tight around his wrist. It didn’t matter. The door to 110 was still open, and his sister’s pictures were worth more than a dead old man’s keys or charms. They were all going to burn — his father, his mother, every trace of another lifetime, another home in another world.
Cyrus was suddenly moving, tripping on hoses, pinballing through big men in helmets and yellow suits, running toward the roar of growing flames and a fading past.
Earth turned, twisting its shadowed back out of darkness, dragging a continent into dawn. The Archer Motel had changed. The potholes in the parking lot were brimming with water and skimmed with ash. In places, polyester curtains had melted into the asphalt. The second-story walkway had collapsed, and half of the second story had collapsed with it. Rooms were open to the morning air, missing their exterior walls like compartments in a scorched dollhouse, revealing burnt mattresses, blackened dressers, and the occasional melted television. Webs of yellow tape surrounded it all.
The Golden Lady, dim in the daylight, still glowed.
The sun was ready with summer heat, and the sky was clear. As the sun climbed, the motel’s soaked ruin and the puddled parking lot began to steam, releasing the stink of burnt paint and carpet and curtains into the morning.
In the courtyard, a door was cracked open. Behind it, sprawling sideways across a queen bed, Cyrus and Antigone were sleeping.
Cyrus’s hair was singed in places, and his skin glistened with a mixture of soot and sweat. A patterned ring of tiny blisters stood out around his neck.
Antigone slept with her filthy arms around a small mound of film tins and photo albums. Two cameras, both minus their glass lenses, were perched on top. Her projector, now little better than a pile of melted black plastic, sat on the floor beside the bed.
The door swung open. A little man with tired eyes, half-moon glasses, and a rumpled gray suit stepped into the room. He coughed loudly. “Excuse me. Pardon. Become wakeful!” He thumped his fist on the wall.
Cyrus stretched slowly, groaning. His eyes fluttered open and rested on the little man in the doorway. He blinked, slowly processing what he was seeing, and then he sat up quickly. He shouldn’t have. Someone had inflated his head and filled his lungs with ashtrays. His eyebrows were going to explode, his eyes felt like they’d been replaced with steel wool, and his mouth was overflowing with the taste of burnt tire.
“Sorry,” the little man said. “My condolences on the motel. You were insured?”
Cyrus shoved his knuckles into his eyes and then grabbed on to his eyebrows to keep his forehead on. He snorted, he hacked, he roared, scraping at the smoked phlegm inside him. Dropping his hands, he spat on the
