Crimson Hollow

by Andrea Pearson

  “I haven’t. It definitely is magic, but it doesn’t originate from an Arete.”

  There were murmurs around the room.

  “What is it, then?” the Provo assistant chief asked.

  “I’m not sure.” I understood their confusion. The vast majority of people didn’t realize that Aretes weren’t the only ones who could control fire. Because of the visits from demons several years earlier, most people recognized that there were other beings out there who were powerful. But we’d never before been attacked with flames.

  “Well, great,” the Payson fire chief said. “But you say Eleanora might know what it is?”

  I shook my head. “She’s never heard of it either. I described to her how different the flames were and how odd the magic felt, and she’s just as clueless. But I’m hoping that between the two of us, we’ll be able to nail it down. And before any more mountains catch fire.”

  “Or homes get burned.”

  That was the Springville fire chief. I glanced at him, frowning. “How many houses have been destroyed so far?” Hopefully, not many. I hadn’t been paying close attention to the news—either that, or the news hadn’t been reporting loud enough for me to notice.

  “Five hundred homes up Cobble Creek Canyon. And around a thousand in Woodland Hills.”

  “That’s not all—we did have several vacation homes in Payson Canyon get burned.” That was the Payson fire chief.

  A couple of the other fire chiefs spoke up, and I soon learned that almost three thousand homes total had been destroyed, including the vacation houses.

  I shook my head, feeling my stomach ache. I couldn’t believe so many had been affected. “How many have died?”

  “Only five,” the Provo fire chief said. “And for that, we are extremely lucky.”

  I nodded. They were very, very lucky. Especially with three thousand homes having been lost.

  They discussed plans for how to handle the next fire. They knew with reasonable surety it would happen in Provo, and they decided to have Eleanora and me stay in a downtown hotel not far from the mountain. We would be better ready to get to the fire as quickly as possible from there. I agreed with the plan. It was a good idea.

  “In that case, I need to leave so I can gather my things. I also need to pick up Eleanora. Someone text me which hotel I’m supposed to go to.”

  The Provo Fire Chief promised he’d make sure it happened, then excused me from the meeting, and I headed straight to Eleanora’s house.

  Once there, I helped her pack all her things into my car, marveling at the energy she displayed. Was she putting on a show for me? Or had she purposely been acting frail the last few years? The woman really did have arthritis—I could see it in her hands—so it made sense that driving really was painful for her. But maybe the rest of her body was fine.

  This line of thinking led me to wonder if she got bored regularly. The lifestyle of a Fire Impeder, especially ones in huge cities, was a very busy and dramatic one. We rarely had the opportunity to rest or sit down and relax. Well, except in Utah, of course. This was the quietest place I’d ever been for a position. I was lucky that they even had enough emergencies for me to have a job in the first place.

  We drove to my house where I gathered up my things, explaining to Eleanora what was discussed in the meeting as I did so.

  While on the way back to Provo, I got a text from Abel. My heart jumped into my throat when I saw who it was from, and I handed the phone to Eleanora to have her read it to me.

  “‘Sorry. Will still help. Can’t come now. Sorry. Will explain in email.’” She glanced over at me. “What’s going on?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I knew.” I had theories, but until Abel confirmed them, I didn’t want to bring them up and have to explain the ins and outs.

  We got settled in at the hotel, and Eleanora made sure that Corben and Garrison were nearby—she actually paid for them to have their own room there. She brushed off my suggestion that the department probably wouldn’t mind paying for them too.

  And then we waited. After an hour, we decided to order takeout and watch a movie. Fifteen minutes into the movie, I got a call from the Provo Fire Chief.

  “It’s time.”

  My heart began racing. “On our way.”

  “Time to go,” I said to my roommate as I grabbed my purse.

  It didn’t take long to arrive at the place the fire chief had texted to me. Corben and Garrison followed in their car. By the time we arrived, several hundred acres had already burned to a crisp.

  Eleanora and I helped each other don firefighter suits and masks, then Eleanora perched on a wooden folding chair and her two men picked her up as if she were lighter than the chair itself. And then we started up the mountain.

  I trailed behind my friend, nervous for her. Corben and Garrison didn’t stumble once, though, and I relaxed, switching my concentration to the flames.

  I hadn’t worked alongside Eleanora in a very long time, and I’d forgotten just how powerful she was and how fast she was at putting out fires. I was good—and getting better—but Eleanora had done it for sixty years before I’d come along. She was so quick, I could barely keep up with her. Finally, I gave up, heading to a different section so I wasn’t constantly trailing her. Though, even then, I still couldn’t help but glance at her every couple of seconds.

  The woman was amazing. Her eyes were shut the entire time, the expression on her face blank. She merely pointed where she wanted the men to carry her and they did so in a hurry. The fire spread away from her as she stopped each individual spark before it could ignite the next bit of brush.

  I glanced back at what I was doing, wondering how long it would take until I got that fast. I stopped the sparks, but they didn’t flee from me the way they did Eleanora. Instead, they merely stalled, not moving forward. Occasionally, I was able to get ahead of them, and with the help of the firefighters, stop them from progressing.

  With Eleanora there, we got the fire under control in only an hour. It was the fastest I’d ever fought a fire before. I vowed then and there to practice my magic a whole heck of a lot more than I had been.

  The thought of practicing sent a bit of pain to my heart, and memories of practicing with Abel at the airport flooded me. I missed him. And I was surprised by how much, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Oh, how I hoped he was safe. How I hoped that calling him hadn’t screwed him up or something. How I hoped he’d email soon.

  Once the flames had died down, the firefighters and their chief gathered around me and Eleanora. I looked at her expectantly.

  “Magic, definitely,” she said. “But like Lizzie, I have no idea where it comes from.”

  The Provo fire chief frowned. “How long do you think it’ll take to figure out?”

  Eleanora raised her eyebrows, staring at him skeptically. “There’s no way to know. How long did it take Columbus to discover the Americas? Or Michael Jordan to win the NBA playoffs?”

  “Uh . . .” He obviously didn’t know how to respond. “Okay. What can we do to help?”

  “Nothing. Keep us abreast of any new information and let us know as soon as you hear of another fire.” She glanced at me. “We’ve got work to do, Lizzie.”

  I nodded, and Eleanora motioned for Corben and Garrison to get her down the side of the mountain and back to my car, then we returned to the hotel.

  “We’re checking out of the hotel and heading to your house,” she said as soon as we’d gotten out of the car.

  “Sounds good,” I said, scrambling to keep up as she hobbled down the hall, “her” men trailing.

  “I need to get in contact with my connections, and I’m not doing it in a hotel. We have time before the next fire starts, presumably.” She glanced at me quizzically.

  I nodded. “They happen once a day, so we should have between twelve and twenty-four hours until the next one. That’s not to say the pattern won’t change, though.” I chewed the inside of my cheek as I opened the hotel door. �
��The fact that only five people have died tells me these fires aren’t being started out of malice.”

  Eleanora looked at me in surprise. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because only five have died. Three thousand or so houses, hundreds of thousands of acres of wild land, but only five people.” I grabbed my overnight bag—which I hadn’t unpacked—and slung it over my shoulder. “It’s not fire vampires.”

  “No. Definitely not them.”

  “But it’s something that draws strength from flames . . .”

  Eleanora glanced at me. “Fire vampires draw strength from fire, but that’s after they’ve drained their victims’ blood. I agree with this line of thinking. They’re burning the fires for a reason.”

  “We just need to figure it out.”

  Eleanora was silent the entire way back to my house. I was okay with that. I had a lot on my mind too. I showed her my guest bedroom and gave her space to settle in. I didn’t know what arrangements she’d made for Corben and Garrison, but assumed they weren’t terribly far away.

  I realized then that I’d missed my kung fu class that day. Things were just too hectic for me to remember anything. I vowed to get ahold of the instructor and apologize, then see if I could make up for it later. I’d already paid for the next six months of lessons, so I knew it wasn’t much of a loss to him, but still, I didn’t want to be a flake.

  The next morning, after Eleanora and I had breakfast, I finally got a chance to check my email. With her permission, and while she was puttering around in the kitchen baking cookies, I stole away into the guest bedroom and turned on my computer.

  I opened up my email, my heart tripling in speed when I saw a message from Abel.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was short. That in and of itself was a disappointment, but what really stung was that it didn’t have much information in it. In fact, it had only a little more than his text had contained.

  Lizzie,

  I’m sorry about everything. I’ll explain once I get the chance. You probably realize I’m trying to find someone. I don’t trust email. I don’t know what I can tell you. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can.

  Love,

  Abel

  I knew he was talking about his mom. Who else would he be trying to find? I understood why he couldn’t give more info. His situation was fragile, and he couldn’t afford to have anyone know what he was doing.

  What really caught my attention was the way he ended his email. He used the word “love.” Did Abel love me?

  That thought made the last week totally worth it. He’d apologized for not being here when I needed him, and he ended his email with “love.” It gave me hope that he would come back to me as soon as he could. I knew he would before, but it was still easy to get discouraged.

  And since I knew his history with his family, I realized that finding his mom was much more important than helping me with hounds. Yes, what I was doing affected so many more people, but I could find someone else to help me until he could. His mom wouldn’t likely have anyone else trying to rescue her. Not with her entire family already dead.

  I joined Eleanora in the kitchen, feeling lighter than I had in days, and enjoyed a couple of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk while she chatted about the two guys who were helping her. Apparently, they were friends of her grandson, who no longer lived in the state. They did, though, and they’d kept in touch with her since childhood. I enjoyed her little anecdotes about the funny things they’d said and done when they were kids, but my attention was still on Abel’s email. She eventually noticed, and figured out why I was so distracted, asking if Abel had responded.

  “Yes, he did.”

  I relayed the email to her, including how he had ended it. I still couldn’t believe he had said the word “love.” My toes and everything above tingled with warmth at the thought of him saying he loved me. Then I realized he hadn’t actually said he loved me—it was just how he ended his email. And maybe he’d done it by accident.

  I shook my head to myself. Abel didn’t do things like that by accident. At least, his personality didn’t lead me to believe so. I held on to that thought like a lifeline.

  We next discussed my feelings where finding someone to help were concerned, and we discussed all of the different possibilities. I told Eleanora about the Russells’ offer, expecting her to get a good chuckle out of it, but she surprised me by agreeing with them.

  “You can’t judge someone by how they look.”

  “I know that . . . but . . .” I was walking on dangerous turf here, considering the fact that Eleanora was at least ten years older than my neighbors, if not more.

  We dropped the conversation and separated for a while. Eleanora wanted some time to research, and I just wanted time alone.

  Someone knocked at the door an hour later, and I went to open it. Mr. and Mrs. Russell of all people, considering we’d been discussing them earlier, were there, a pretty little bouquet of flowers in Mrs. Russell’s hands.

  “Lizzie!” Mrs. Russell said, thrilled as ever to see me. She handed the bouquet of flowers to me. “These are for you. We were hoping they would cheer you up, since you’ve been so stressed lately.”

  I thanked her and took the flowers to the kitchen, where I placed them in a vase on my table. As I returned to the living room, I saw Eleanora hovering at the other end of the hall. I motioned for her to join us, wondering why she hadn’t already. Perhaps she felt like she was intruding. The elderly woman followed me into the living room, and I made introductions, eager for some of my favorite people to get to know one another.

  We fell into easy conversation. After a while, the topic turned to magic, as it usually did when magical people were around.

  Mrs. Russell pointed at my necklace. “I’ve seen you wearing that a lot lately.”

  I put my hand over it, wishing I’d found another way to carry it. I’d been looking at different options, but none of them fit my needs so far.

  I nodded. “Yes, it’s been very helpful the last little while.”

  “It’s magical, isn’t it?” Mr. Russell asked. He raised his hands. “Before you answer, I’ll tell you right now that we know it is magical. And, in fact, we’re wondering how it came to be in your possession.”

  I glanced at them, eyebrow raised. His tone of voice had a slight possessive quality to it, like he’d known the amulet for many years. I proceeded to tell them how I’d gotten it, then asked, “And what about you? How do you know it’s magical?”

  Mrs. Russell shrugged, and she and Mr. Russell glanced at each other. The woman looked back at me. “It helps you find shades?”

  I nodded, obviously noticing her redirection. “Yes, but I haven’t used it for that purpose very much. It mostly helps me find demons. Like the ones that have been attacking your place.”

  There was no point in withholding that information from them. The hounds already knew about them, had been at their place many times, and I was beginning to suspect that my neighbors knew more than they were letting on. Regardless, the moment I got ahold of Alexander, I was going to have him set up those devices around the Russells’ house.

  “If the device is what I think it is,” Mr. Russell said, “you should be able to have it tell you to find anything that’s under your . . . er, jurisdiction, for lack of a better word. To warn you about anything that might be coming.”

  I tilted my head, my hand enclosing the amulet again. “What do you mean?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Russell looked at each other, and Mrs. Russell rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Just tell her,” she said.

  Mr. Russell leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. “These fire vampires you talked about a while ago in our house. The ones that consume their victims in flame before running. They fall under your jurisdiction, right?”

  I nodded. “Yes.” Because I was the only Fire Impeder around, it was natural they would be my responsibility.

  “The purpose o
f the amulet is to help you fulfill the obligations that have been placed upon you. And as such, it should help you find fire vampires. And it should warn you when they’re about to attack, too.”

  I leaned back in my chair, staring at Mr. Russell. “Hmmm.” Not a very intelligent response, but he’d totally caught me off guard. I’d frequently wondered how the amulet that had been named after shades had been able to tell me about hounds, but I hadn’t wondered enough to actually ask anyone.

  But how did the Russells know? What had they done before retirement, and why had I always assumed it had to do with landscaping? Probably because that’s what Mr. Russell was doing now, and he was very good at it.

  Still, I needed to ask. “How do you know all of this?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Russell chuckled.

  “I used to be a magical items expert,” Mr. Russell responded. “Much like Mr. Coolidge, your professor from Katon University.” He glanced at Mrs. Russell. “And Mrs. Russell has done quite a bit of her own work. We might not be Aretes, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t learn how to work with magical items. I know the history of pretty much anything that has ever been on earth at one point or another. It may have been many years since I was in that field, but it’s been even longer since the amulet has been in active use.”

  “Did you know my teacher, then?”

  Mr. Russell nodded. “He’s a bit after our day—he started teaching around the time I retired—but yes, we ran in a few of the same circles.”

  His wife pointed at the amulet. “If what we think is accurate, you should be able to request that it alert you to fire vampire attacks as well.”

  That would definitely make my job easier. Part of me wanted them to leave right away so I could talk to the amulet in private. As if on cue, Mrs. Russell directed the attention to Eleanora, and they started chatting with her.

  Pretending to follow the conversation, I searched inwardly, seeking the amulet. Are you there?

  Of course.

  Is what they say true?

  Yes. You need but ask.