There was a flash of light. Bright white light. From outside.
Another flash.
Kendall lowered the camera. “What the—”
More flashes. Morse Code maybe.
Even with my limited knowledge, the pattern was obvious.
MOM.
I blinked. The pattern flashed again. It couldn’t be. A signal from beyond the grave.
Was I conjuring spirits?
“Do it. Finish the job. I’ll take care of this,” Kendall said. He set the camera down on the bucket and threw open the door. “I’ll be back for that camera.”
Caesar watched him leave. The lights kept flashing, kept twinkling through the slats in the shack like an army of sprites.
“Please don’t kill me,” I begged.
“If I don’t, they will kill my wife,” Caesar said.
“Did she leave you?”
“I got arrested. Matt Mettle arrested me.”
“Because you were having an affair?”
He straightened up. “No. There was no affair.”
“With a mistress named Molly?”
He shrank again. “Maybe.”
“It’s not too late to change,” I said. “Grow your hair back. Fix your life.”
“It’s too late. I’ve done horrible things. I made a deal with the devil and I’m going to burn for it. Killing you is the only way to save my family.”
He raised the two rods again. I stared at him, trying to drill my eyes through him. If I could raise the dead, then maybe I could—
With one quick motion, Caesar sparked the rods. A tiny spark jumped from the metal and landed on the floor right next to my feet, an inch from the spilled liquid.
It fizzled on the damp wood and died.
I exhaled.
“Please, don’t.”
Caesar scraped the rods harder. Another large spark escaped, but missed my pant leg. He stepped closer to me, his fists ready to make one last spark.
“Please, Caesar,” I said. “You don’t have to do this.”
Then he froze. He stood there, his eyes wide and blank. He stared at me for a long moment and a wheeze escaped his mouth.
“You—you witch,” he said.
His face twisted. And then he fell forward, face first. His chest hit my knees and he fell to the side, the ferrocerium rods sparking with the impact and striking the trail of spilled rum.
The flames ignited instantly and roared and rushed toward me.
“No, no!”
I tried to bounce the chair back, but was bound fast to the support column and couldn’t escape.
The flames groped for my pant legs and I screamed.
46
The flames burned my ankles. They reached the hem of my pant leg, fizzled, the fabric still wet from the lake, but then they reached a patch of Red Rum and flamed up my calf.
A dark figure climbed through the window, fell to the floor, and then scrambled to his feet and ran toward me, full speed. He dove and soared through the air, belly-flop style, the effort throwing a mist over me like a dog shaking out its fur.
He landed flat on the trail of flames and it sizzled under his wet clothes. Then he wrapped a wet arm around my pant leg and snuffed out the flames.
“You—you’re—you’re a—you’re a…a ghost—” I stammered.
“Not yet,” Matt Mettle said, breathing heavy. “Boy, swimming is way harder than it looks. No one ever tells you how fast muscle sinks.”
He stood and kicked Caesar’s body out of his way. Caesar rolled from his side onto his stomach, Mettle’s Leatherman sticking out of his back. Caesar’s leg twitched, his chest heaving, the knife rising and falling like a lever begging to be pulled.
I stared at Mettle in disbelief. Under the swinging lantern, his face was red, but not damaged.
“Kendall,” I said. “We have to get Kendall.”
Mettle untied me and helped me toward the door. “He’s not going anywhere. I slashed his brand new tires.”
I pointed to the video camera sitting on the paint bucket. “You might want to grab that.”
Mettle picked it up, the tally lamp still blinking red. He stared into the lens. “The game’s over.”
He slipped the camera into his pocket and we stepped out of the shack. The rain had mostly stopped and all around us, the gray fog had turned red and blue.
“Backup’s here,” Mettle said.
He waved across the lake. A figure that might very well have been Billy Ganz was standing at the edge of the driveway, a whole platoon of cruisers behind him.
In the middle of the lake, Kyle Kendall sat alone in the canoe. He threw something into the lake and there was a loud plop. Then he slowly raised his hands in surrender.
I stepped a foot into the canoe while Mettle held it steady for me. Up the hill, the cops had taken Kendall into custody and read him his Miranda rights. Billy Ganz himself had come down the hill and swum the canoe out to us. Now, soaking, he sat at the bow like an overweight coxswain.
“Should we go back for Caesar?” I said.
Ganz glanced into the shack. “Nah. We’ll send a team down to get him. He’s not going anywhere.”
Mettle pushed us off the bank, his leg trailing the stern in the water, and then he climbed into the canoe and sat directly across from me. He grabbed an oar and with a series of powerful strokes, rowed us back toward the dock.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“Your phone,” Mettle said. “I would have come sooner, but every time I checked, there was no signal.”
“Yeah, this place is a dead zone.”
“I don’t mean the cell reception,” Mettle said. “I mean the GPS. We installed that tracking app, remember? It doesn’t need a signal, but you must have had your phone turned off most of the time. When I finally got the signal, I tracked it right away. I pulled up to the driveway, saw the tiny lamp through the fog, and it corresponded with the signal from your phone. I remembered that little trick at the motel with the headlights and figured it might work on Kendall.”
I reminded myself to grab my phone from under the lounge chair before we left.
“But what about the funeral? The flames? I saw you die.”
“No, you
