Shaman

by Chloe Garner

  “Potassium, rubidium, magnesium…” he grinned, “powdered aluminum… powdered iron oxide…”

  She glowered at him. He would have had plenty of time to recover plenty of potassium hydroxide from the aluminum tub he had used to light the potassium. The house had burned so fast that the tub of water hadn’t actually evaporated by the time the fire ran out of things to burn. Potassium hydroxide would make powdered aluminum explosive, in turn.

  “Say you had to find him…” she said. “In the next, oh, hour or so. Where would you look?” She sat forward and rested her elbows on her knees, watching him.

  “Who’s to say where a fresh-crossed class two goes to celebrate a burn,” he said. “You’re from New York, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “We don’t have clubs here. It’s the sticks, girlie. We keep to ourselves out here.”

  “Would calling Argo remind you of anything useful?” she asked. He snarled.

  “I keep my head down and my nose clean. You can leave my office, now.”

  “How do I know I’ve found him, when I do?” Samantha asked.

  “Blond hair, scruffy. Like a big kid.”

  She nodded and stood. Samantha was amused that Sam had seemed to be pricked worse by Lasloe calling her ‘girlie’ than she was, herself. It was cute. And completely distracting. She pushed the thought away. Where would a class two go to celebrate killing a family of three and watching a house burn to cinders? When he had a bunch of potassium hydroxide literally burning a hole in his pocket. Jason and Sam followed her into the hallway.

  “I didn’t make it to chemistry,” Jason said. “Care to translate?”

  “Potassium and rubidium have the same reaction we saw at the house. Rubidium is a lot worse, actually. It will burn in ice. Magnesium, if you have it shaved small enough, lights off hot. Burns in anything. Air, water. Anything. Powdered aluminum and powdered iron oxide combine to make thermite, which burns hotter than anything I know of; you actually use the magnesium as a fuse. It’s crazy.” She paused. She had lost Jason at ‘rubidium’. “Stuff. It’s bad. Depending on how much metal was in each block… he could burn down houses for weeks with it.”

  “Why do you know this stuff?” Sam asked.

  “Demons burn things. I know lots and lots about how things burn. If he were class one, he’d have a preference for how to light off fires, and I could track him with that. Class twos… They don’t think things through. They’re actually really dumb, but they don’t have patterns. I don’t know how to find him. I need to think.”

  “Was that what I asked?” Sam asked.

  “I think it was, at the beginning. Got sidetracked.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

  “Give her a break, man. She’s hunting a deeply stupid demon basically on her own, here.”

  “Yeah, I do get the feeling that we’re just following her around.”

  “You, too?”

  “Big televisions,” Samantha said.

  “Yeah. I find I don’t like being told what to do,” Jason said.

  “It took you this long to figure that out?” Sam asked.

  “No, I never said it was a new finding.”

  “Ah. That makes me feel better.”

  “Big televisions with the sound turned on,” Samantha said.

  “Because it’s really all about how you feel, with me,” Jason said.

  “You’re a good brother like that,” Sam told him.

  “I am.

  “You are.”

  “Guys,” Samantha said.

  “You just described every McDonalds in the city,” Jason said.

  “Not big enough. Not private enough. He’d want to just sit and stare up at a television with news coverage of the fire playing over and over again.”

  “Network studios? Do they usually have televisions somewhere?”

  “People would look at him funny,” Samantha said. “They’d expect him to be there for some reason.”

  “Do demons drink?” Jason asked. Samantha shrugged.

  “Copiously.”

  “I’d go to a bar. Order a beer or two, you just sit at the bar and stare up at the television. Everyone leaves you alone,” Jason said.

  “That sounds awfully self-serving,” Samantha said.

  “It’s what, like three o’clock in the afternoon? How many people are we talking about, really? We just hit all the bars that are open, see if we can’t find our arsonist,” Jason said. “And if I just happen to accidentally get a beer or two along the way, maybe as an excuse to ask a waitress important, on-task questions… I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”

  Samantha waited for something cutting to occur to her, but as the silence stretched on to awkward, she gave up.

  “Fine. Whatever. On to the bar crawl.”

  <><><>

  By six-thirty, Samantha took away Jason’s keys. He had bought a beer at nearly half of the bars they had hit, not based on the likelihood that Bennie had been there to watch television so much as how much skin the most attractive waitress was showing. He preferred tan women.

  At seven, they were sitting yet another bar.

  “What do you think?” Samantha asked, motioning to a huddled figure at the bar. Jason glanced then looked back down at his beer.

  “Could be. How do you go about accusing someone of being a demon?”

  “How did you get the professor to own up?” Sam asked.

  “I called him a demon, and he understood me,” Samantha said. Sam grinned.

  “So?” he asked.

  “If that’s Bennie, and I walk up to him speaking angeltongue, he’s going to run. People could get hurt,” Samantha said.

  “You have another plan?” Jason asked. She grinned and stood.

  “You forget. I have specialized training for just this situation,” she said, snagging Jason’s beer and heading over to the bar. She sat down next to the blond and tipped the beer back, then set it on the bar and looked at him.

  “Hello, beautiful,” she said. He didn’t look at her.

  “What do you want?”

  “Someone interesting to talk to,” she said.

  “You came with them,” he said, motioning in the mirror behind the bar at Jason and Sam. She grinned.

  “They’re dull. What do you do around here for fun?”

  He raised his glass at her and twisted his chin to one side.

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “Oh, come on. I know you can do better than that,” Samantha said. He looked at her, eyes resigned.

  “Is this a bet?”

  “No. This is me trying to meet someone in a bar. I’m Sam.”

  “Calvin.”

  She smiled.

  “Buy me a drink, Calvin.”

  “Is that how you win the bet?”

  “No. Buy me a drink. Tell me who you are.” She let her mouth slide sideways into a smile. “That’s it. If it helps that one of them might be jealous if I spent the evening over here with you, that might be true.”

  He laughed wryly and motioned to the bartender. She didn’t turn her head when Sam walked over to the bar.

  “Sam,” he said into her ear. He was upset.

  “What?” she asked. He pointed at the television Calvin was sitting across from. It was helicopter footage of a house burning.

  “Yeah? That’s been on the news for the last day,” Samantha said loud enough for Calvin to hear. Then she saw it. Breaking news. She looked at Calvin, who had narrowed his eyes at Sam.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He looked at the television.

  “You know that place?”

  “I need to catch the guy who did it,” she said. “I’m sorry. Better luck next time.”

  She took another long look at the footage - this house had evidence of a bigger explosion triggering the fire. The caption said that four people were suspected dead. Sam and Jason were already on their way out the door. She grabbed her backpack from
behind her stool and ran after them.

  She gave Jason his keys back as they got in and Sam started working on the address of the new house.

  “Hello, beautiful? That’s your big line?” Jason asked. She stared him down in the rearview.

  “It’d work on you,” she said. His face rejected it, and he started to argue, then he reconsidered.

  “You know, you’re probably right.”

  She nodded. Sam got the address and Jason put his foot down, jumping the Cruiser away from the curb and onto the road.

  “He’ll be there?” Sam asked.

  “He’ll be there. If he sees us… if he knows we’re looking for him, he may be powered enough to glitch.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out the two guns strapped to one side wall. She checked them over quickly, then loaded clips of steel bullets into each and handed one to Jason. He tucked it into his jeans. Sam looked at her with the obvious question.

  “You’re kind of a bad shot,” Samantha said. He shrugged.

  The media crowd around the house was half a block deep. Jason pulled over and they got out, Samantha glancing once at the helicopter overhead. A column of smoke rolling up off the house had precluded the need for navigation almost from the outset. She looked at Jason and he motioned for her to go ahead.

  “You’ve been on point all day. No reason to switch now. After you.”

  “We split up,” she said. “He might be in another tree, he could be on a roof. Keep in mind that he won’t want to be seen from the sky, either. Someplace with a clear view and not much crowd.”

  “You don’t have a cell,” Jason said.

  “Sam will let me know if you find anything. Same for me. Get moving. He’ll want to be here until they put the fire out, but with this many people, he may bail early.”

  She pointed them off to the right and she worked left. The second house backed up to a large, open hillside that was dotted with little pines and aspens. There were a few larger trees along the road in front of it, but the people there were much too thick, watching the firefighters working and the house burning. It occurred to her than a clever demon would just stand with the crowd, but arsonist fire demons, especially the dimmer ones, tended to want to be alone to watch the chaos of their handiwork with uncontained glee. She walked down the lot line between the houses across the street from the burning house and the ones behind them, checking sight lines from there, then turned right and crossed the street slowly, scouting for likely hiding places. The setting sun was casting long shadows toward the burning house, from where she stood, and she needed to check all of them. The problem was, the firefighters nearly had the fire out. She only had a few minutes. Maybe.

  The trees were clear along the street.

  He liked to be up high.

  She looked at the hillside and made a call. The street was too busy. The hillside was nearly empty. She ran through the next yard and up the hill, trying to reach the naked crest of the hill so she could get behind anyone hiding in the trees. The smoke rolling off the house was beginning to choke off when she saw the white of his shirt. He was hiding behind a thicket of bushes where he had a clear view of the house, and he didn’t know she was there.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t guarantee he was a demon, from here. He could just be a dumb teenager. She started down the hillside, pausing once, spiking her anger and resolve to try to get Sam’s attention. He was still on the other side of the houses, a long way down the street. His focus tightened on her and she willed him to come to her. He changed direction, ducking between houses, and started along the bottom of the ridge.

  “Quite a scene,” Samantha said, approaching the boy. He looked up at her with a maniacal grin. Definitely the fire demon, but she no longer had surprise. If she pulled her gun, he’d glitch. She needed to keep him here long enough for Jason to get behind him. She pulled at Sam again - hurry - and sat down next to Bennie.

  “Who are you?” he asked, quickly looking back down at the house.

  “An admirer,” she said. “It looks like good work.”

  He grinned at her again, eyes wide, pale eyebrows up.

  “It is.”

  “I went and looked at the other one he did,” Samantha said. “Put a water bath under a glass container of mineral water in a bag of sand, looks like. When the sand ran out, the container fell in the bath and the mineral water floated, so the potassium in it would blow up. Genius.”

  Bennie laughed.

  “Genius,” he echoed mindlessly.

  “This one looks like rubidium,” she said. “A lot of it.”

  He nodded.

  “Tank of water at the bottom of the stairs again? So the family can’t get back downstairs, if they survive the explosion?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s a specialist, that is,” she said, pulling her knees up to her chest to fight off the wave of sickness.

  “I have aluminum next,” he said. She nodded.

  “Biggest bang of all,” she said. He grinned. She struggled not to look away. Jason and Sam were almost there.

  “This is boring, now,” he said, as the smoke cloud thinned to nearly nothing. Samantha gritted her teeth.

  “But look at them all. Ants. You see the helicopter? Running around in a frenzy about the fire? Look at all the people.”

  He sniffed.

  “It isn’t burning any more.”

  “But they’re all still upset,” she argued. Sam was worried. Jason was taking aim. She steeled herself to not look. She stood and took a couple of steps up the hillside. Bennie stood as well.

  “It isn’t burning any more,” he said. There was a gun report and for an instant she didn’t know if Bennie had glitched or if Jason had hit him, but her mind processed the cloud of ash as it scattered heavily across the ground. She looked down the hillside. There were people pointing.

  “We need to go,” Jason said, coming to look down at the recently-deceased Bennie. Samantha stooped and picked up the steel bullet from the ashes and dropped it into a small pocket inside her boot.

  “We’re spotted. Running would be dumb,” Samantha said. “Act normal. Walk with me.”

  “Um… I just shot a guy,” Jason said.

  “Prove it,” she said. She unzipped the side of her backpack and motioned to Sam. “Mags.”

  He dipped his hand in and pulled out the mesh bag of them. She sorted through them quickly and tossed one to Jason.

  “Swap,” she said. She pulled another one out and swapped it for the one in her gun, then took his magazine of steel bullets from him and put it into the bag and handed it back to Sam. He returned them to her backpack and zipped it back up.

  “Blanks,” Jason said approvingly. “What about your bag?”

  “Not a problem. Let me talk.”

  She saw Sam and Jason exchange a look.

  “You two would have run, wouldn’t you?”

  “Big park that way,” Sam said. “Circle back to the Cruiser and vanish.”

  She shook her head.

  “Amateurs.”

  A pair of policemen came running up the hillside with guns drawn.

  “Oh!” Samantha said. “Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Jason, put your gun down.”

  “What’s going on up here?” one of the officers asked, edging up the hillside. Samantha put her arms out as Jason turned his palms forward and Sam put his hands halfheartedly over his head.

  “I have a gun at my waist. Before anything stupid happens, I’m going to pull it out and toss it over to you,” Samantha said. “There’s an explanation.”

  She turned and lifted up her shirt so they could see her gun, pulling it out with two fingers and tossing it, backwards, down the hillside. She turned back around and waited for the officer to collect the two guns.

  “They’re blanks,” she said.

  “What are you doing up here?” the officer said, confirming what she had said. He sniffed Jason’s gun and nodded at his partner. This was the one that had been fired. She had p
ulled the top round out of the clip before she had given it to Jason. One shot fired.

  “Watching,” she said simply. “I’m a writer. We saw on the news there was a house fire, and we came to… see. I’m sorry if that sounds callous, but I’m a horror writer. It’s what I do. I publish as Sam de Winter.”

  “Who are they?” the one holding the guns asked, motioning at Sam and Jason.

  “My dim-witted assistants, I’m afraid.” She glared at Jason. “Itchy trigger finger on this one. They help me with scenes, but he shouldn’t have a gun out unless it’s for a specific reason.”

  The two police officers turned to consult with each other, then the one who hadn’t spoken turned and walked a ways down the hillside, talking into a radio.

  “We’re checking,” the first said. “You mind if I take a look inside your bag?”

  Samantha looked at the ground.

  “It’s completely full of weapons,” she said. “The main character in my stories carries an identical bag, and I like to keep it all with me. It’s my process.”

  She set the bag down on the ground and unzipped it. The policeman whistled, walking up the hill to get a better view.

  “I need you to step away,” he said. She did so, and he came and took her backpack down the hill a few steps. Sam was starting to seriously worry, which didn’t help the visceral reaction she had to someone having control of her backpack, like that. She glanced at him and shook her head.

  “It’s a good story, but they can check,” Jason said, edging over to stand next to her. She rolled her eyes.

  “What exactly do you guys think I do all day?”

  He jerked his head back.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  The second officer came back up the hill and motioned to his partner.

  “Ms. Wilkinson,” he said, walking up to her and shaking her hand. “My daughter reads your books.”

  Samantha smiled with genuine pleasure.

  “I’m so glad to hear it.”

  “Hank, you need to look at this,” the first officer said. The second one winked at Samantha, then walked down the hillside to look into her backpack. He whistled.

  “America’s backpack,” he said, then looked up at her and grinned sheepishly. “I’ve read a couple, too.”