Child of Fire

opposite us. “Go fuck yourself.”

The woman stepped back. “Well!”

The man became indignant. “You have some nerve,” he said, huffing out his cheeks.

“Try it!” I shouted at him, my voice rebounding off the walls of the room. They were taken aback by how quickly things had escalated. “Even with my hands cuffed I’ll stomp you.”

The woman laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. Her long, fake nails dug into his shoulder.

I shut my eyes, closing out as much of the rest of the world as I could. I felt for the ghost knife. Nothing. The supermarket shoppers weren’t carrying it. They turned and left.

I rolled back onto the bed and returned to working on the post. The encounter with the shoppers had fired my anger, and I strained even harder, but I couldn’t crack the damn wood. If they already knew I was awake, there was no reason to keep quiet. I lay on my back and started kicking the top of the post.

Kick kick kick. I wasn’t being secretive or clever about it. I wasn’t in the mood for either. Tools would have been great, but I didn’t have any. If I could have tipped the bed on its side, I would have laid my weight against the frame and broken the post that way, but I couldn’t move my hands far enough to get decent leverage on the whole bed. So I kicked and kicked, letting my anger block some of the pain as the cuffs dug into my wrists.

Finally, I heard wood crack. I began to kick frantically then, until the wood splintered enough that the post bent at an angle.

I rolled to my feet and put my shoulder against it, breaking it off. I was free.

I lifted the broken hunk of wood. The empty ends of the handcuffs swung free.

The lock on the door clicked and the door opened. Bobby entered. He held a.38 in his hand. “You’ve been making a lot of noise up here.”

“Quietly waiting to be killed is too hifalutin for me.”

He didn’t seem to remember the reference, and I didn’t care. He waved at me with the gun, encouraging me to follow him. I tossed the broken post aside and followed him into the hall. There were three more men waiting out there, along with Tiffany.

She was looking at me like a hungry dog eyeing a steak.

I knew right then, from the look on their faces, that they were taking me away to kill me.

“We found our boys,” Bobby said.

“The ones you sent for my boss?”

“They were friends of mine.”

I wanted to tell him that was the price of playing gangster, but there was no point. “Next time you want to talk to her, be sure to use the magic word.”

“I think we’ll send her a different sort of message.”

I looked at the other men. They had guns but didn’t look happy to be there. They weren’t gunmen; they were carpenters or Sheetrockers or what ever. They looked like guys with an unpleasant job to do and they looked like they wanted to get it over with.

Bobby twisted my arms behind my back and clamped the empty ends of the handcuffs onto my wrists. I’d never been double-cuffed before. I guessed they were a little nervous about me.

There were doors along both sides of the hall. The carpet was deep red with faint brown stains.

Bobby turned to the fattest of them. “Bring the van around to the back.”

“I hope that’s not your personal van,” I said to his retreating back. “Bloodstains don’t come out.”

Tiffany’s expression was still, but her eyes were wide with wonder. “I want to do it. Is that all right? I brought my knife. I want to do it.” She sounded a little breathless.

“Shut up,” Bobby said. He wasn’t taking any pleasure in this, but he was being professional about it.

“I’ll make it quick, if you want,” she said, and glanced back at me. “I can do it what ever way you want.”

“Fine,” Bobby said. “Just shut up about it.”

We started walking down the hall. Tiffany was ahead of me on the left, leading the way. Her stride was measured and careful, as though she was hyperaware of herself and her surroundings. Bobby was behind me again, this time on my left as well. A young, clear-eyed kid who seemed barely out of high school was behind me on the right. In front of me on the right was the same tubby, middle-aged guy who had searched me in the Chevy van. I wondered if he was still carrying my things. I also wondered why I was cooperating with my killers.

I stopped walking and turned around. The kid nearly bumped into me. Bobby lifted his gun and pointed it at my heart. “Keep going,” he said.

The kid followed Bobby’s lead. He pointed his gun at my chest, although he was still much closer to me than he should have been.

I closed my eyes. I could feel the ghost knife behind me.

“Why should I make this easy for you?” I asked.

If Bobby had been smart, he would have lied. He would have told me that he didn’t really want to kill me, that he was going to let me go if I promised to disappear so completely that his boss never found out. But he’d seen too many movies. “Because if you don’t,” he said, “you’re going to hurt. A lot.”

I reached for my spell. The ghost knife slid out of the chubby man’s pocket and