Sparks

by Laura Bickle

  Not knowing when they’d hatch, she’d stoppered the drain and wrapped the faucet shut with duct tape. She had a moment’s neurotic nightmare of baby salamanders crawling down the drain. Dangling from the showerhead above, Sparky’s mobile tinkled lazily. It turned off and on at odd intervals. But since it ran on batteries, Anya figured there was little danger of electrical fire.

  She knelt to check the temperature on the rubber duck thermometer. It was designed to sound an alarm if the nest became warmer or cooler than bathwater. Pulling it from under Sparky’s rump, she read the temperature at 88.6. She hoped when she took Sparky to work, she’d be able to maintain the temperature with the reptile heat packs.

  Anya looked at Sparky, curled up in his nest. She swallowed. She knew Sparky would follow her wherever she went—he was tied to the collar. But she couldn’t, in all good conscience, pull him away from the nest for prolonged lengths of time. Sparky’s natural inclination was always to follow her, but…

  Perhaps… perhaps she could leave him here alone. Images of her house burned to the foundation simmered to her mind’s eye. She never left Sparky alone. What terrible things would happen if she did?

  “Nice ass.”

  Anya turned to the video monitor perched on the countertop. Brian’s voice issued through the speaker with a tinny echo. Her backside was facing the webcam, and she realized that she’d been giving Brian a less-than-flattering camera angle. Anya looked over her shoulder at the device. “Is it working, then?”

  “C’mon out and see for yourself.”

  Anya patted Sparky’s head and left the bathroom. He hadn’t allowed anyone other than Anya to enter, and Anya had no idea what her makeshift salamander cradle would look like to the others. When Brian had been toasting the eggs with a hair dryer, he said he’d seen absolutely nothing but the crystal glaze on the interior of the bathtub. Before Katie had taken Ciro home, they’d managed to peek behind the door when Sparky had returned to his nest. Neither of them had seen anything, either. Anya was relieved the salamanders had inherited their father’s invisibility.

  In the living room, Brian had opened up the back of the other half of the monitor setup. Wires dangled from the back, connecting it to a laptop, a wireless router, and another hand-held device. Brian crooked a finger for Anya to come sit beside him on the couch. He flipped on the video monitor, aimed at the bathtub.

  Anya’s heart fell. The video feed didn’t pick up anything. It just looked like a sleeping bag and some baby stuff crammed in a bathtub for wash day.

  “Thanks for trying, Brian,” she said. “But I didn’t expect that— Oh.”

  Suddenly, the video image switched to a red, yellow, and green display. Anya could see the outline of the tub in blue, and a red salamander curled over dozens of orange dots that glowed like coals.

  “I modified the video feed to pick up data from the thermal imaging camera.” Brian grinned. “Now you can see exactly where they are.”

  “This is great,” Anya said. “Is there any way that the feed could be put online, so I could check this at work? Like a nanny cam?” She was certain that there were tons of paranoid parents who had poured money into the technology. Perhaps she could spy on the salamanders from a distance, too?

  “I did you one better.” Brian flipped out a shiny black iPhone. He punched a few buttons and handed it to her. “I have voice dialing set up. Say your familiar’s name.”

  Anya leaned toward it and said, “Um… Call Sparky?”

  The glossy black screen blinked to life. On the tiny screen, Anya could see the heat signatures of the salamander on his nest. Through the audio, she could hear the echo of Sparky snoring in the next room.

  “Oh, wow,” she breathed. “I can take this with me?”

  “It’ll work anywhere you can get a 3G signal. So… you should be able to see them anywhere in the metro area. Your signal might be disrupted if you’re in an area that’s got heavy concrete walls or is underground. Battery life’s only about five hours, so recharge often, and remember to switch the battery pack.”

  Anya flung her arms around Brian’s neck. “You’re the greatest evil genius on the planet.”

  “That’s why I get the big bucks. And all the hot chicks,” he murmured against her throat.

  Anya lay awake, thoughts churning. On the nightstand beside her bed, the thermal image showed Sparky cuddled up with his eggs. The portrait of Ishtar on the wall seemed to glance over her shoulder at the monitor, red light playing off the glitter of minerals trapped in the paint.

  She dreaded making the decision to leave the salamanders tomorrow. Deep down, she knew Sparky needed to be with his eggs. But she felt some apprehension about taking the collar off and leaving him behind.

  It didn’t bother you to take the collar off last night, Ishtar’s accusing eye seemed to say to her.

  Anya hugged the pillow that smelled like Brian to her chest. She felt guilty and giddy at once. But it seemed that she couldn’t bare one part of her soul without neglecting the other. And if she was truly honest with herself, she also felt guilty for the simple feeling of joy. She didn’t deserve it. In all that stew, a twinge of fear brightened: the fear of loss, of losing everything as surely as she’d lost everything as a child.

  Anya snatched the pillow and the comforter from the bed. Wrapping it around her shoulders like a cape, she crossed the hall to the bathroom. A night-light in the shape of a yellow duck illuminated Sparky, curled in a ball with his tail tickling his gill-fronds.

  He opened one eye when Anya arranged the pillow and comforter on the floor beside the bathtub. He seemed adorably peaceful now, but Anya wondered what would happen if… when… she left him alone. Would he get bored and chew the circuit breakers?

  Worry and fears dogged her until she finally began to doze. The ceiling churned with the amber glow reflected from Sparky’s body and irregular pulses of light from the eggs. Anya wondered if the pulses of light were their heartbeats as the little newts churned in their marble prisons. It was very much like falling asleep on the floor next to a Christmas tree: Sparky beside her, waiting for the house to burn down.

  WHEN ANYA’S PHONE RANG, SHE first thought it was the alarm on the temperature monitor in the bathtub. She bolted upright in a panic, swearing and flailing in the comforter tangled around her elbows.

  She leaned over, into the tub, and the happy duck stated that the temperature was eighty-seven degrees. Sparky lifted his head and blinked at her with irritation.

  The phone continued to ring. Anya disengaged herself from the grip of the comforter and tripped across the hall to the kitchen phone.

  “Kalinczyk,” she muttered.

  “Rise and shine,” the voice boomed. It was Marsh. Christ. She glanced at the kitchen clock. It was still three hours before she needed to be at work.

  “With all due respect, Captain… what the hell? It’s four a.m.”

  “Meet me at the Detroit Institute of Arts when you get your sorry ass woken up.”

  The line went dead.

  “Piss,” Anya growled.

  She hadn’t figured out the logistics of morning ablutions without the benefit of a shower. After some trial and error, Anya managed to wash her hair in the kitchen sink with the vegetable sprayer and gave herself a sponge bath with her nice new washcloths from the mega baby superstore. She had to admit that the organic cotton plush cloths were nice. Very nice.

  Shivering, she managed to get into her work clothes without her teeth chattering out of her head: black pants, charcoal-colored blouse, black jacket. She swiped on some lipstick and decided to let her hair air-dry with the windows down on the way over.

  Brushing her teeth in the bathroom sink, she saw Sparky resting his head on the edge of the bathtub, watching her.

  Deliberately, Anya took the salamander collar off and set it on the counter. Cold droplets from her hair snaked down her bare neck. She pulled a dry-erase Magic Marker out of her pocket and knelt by the tub.

  “This,” she to
ld him, “is for your own good.”

  She drew a wobbly circle on the tile, around the shower surround, down across the floor. Sparky watched her draw, his gill-fronds pushed forward in concern. If a magick circle could keep a salamander out of her bed, one could surely keep a salamander in a bathtub. Even if it was lopsided and ran up over the wall. Anya left the last little bit of it open to reach in and give Sparky a hug.

  “You’re staying home today.”

  The salamander slipped out of her arms and trotted across the bathroom floor.

  “Sparky!” She wasn’t sure how she was going to catch him and put him back. Her muzzy-headed plan hadn’t extended that far.

  Sparky climbed up on the counter, took the salamander collar in his teeth, and padded back to the bathtub. He circled three times, kneading the sleeping bag with his feet. He set the collar down over the faucet spout.

  “Okay,” she said, not understanding. But if Sparky would feel closer to her having the collar in the circle, that was okay.

  She closed the circle with a stroke of the marker. Sparky snuggled down in his nest.

  “I’ll be back tonight,” she murmured.

  As she locked the door to the house behind her, Anya absently rubbed her throat. She felt naked without the collar. Jumpy. She imagined, in the darkness, that shadows moved and seethed. Without the salamander as an alarm, she had difficulty quelling her imagination.

  She slipped behind the wheel of the Dart, pulled the iPhone from her pocket.

  “Call Sparky,” she said to it.

  The screen revealed a soothing red-and-orange image of the salamander in his nest. From the audio, she thought she detected a snore.

  Taking a deep breath, Anya turned the key in the ignition.

  He’s gonna be all right, she told herself. He’s gonna be all right.

  But she only half believed it.

  In the predawn hours of morning, the city was still half asleep. Streetlights hummed overhead, and cars had begun to crawl into the parking lots of twenty-four-hour coffee shops. The freeways were nearly clear, lights only beginning to shine in the bedrooms and kitchens of row houses screened back from the road by chain-link fences. The city seemed quiet, still. But Anya knew it was all an illusion: that children dreamed of their parents fighting about money, that mothers and fathers whispered about lost jobs and moving away. The line was already forming at the unemployment office, and more than one person stared into their cereal and wondered how much longer until the next auto plant would close.

  She turned off on Woodward Avenue, tooled down the street to DIA. It seemed a grand illusion, light shining artfully upon the steps and broad plaza that stretched out to the street. A copy of Rodin’s The Thinker perched in the front, but it was too dark to see if he was lost in contemplation or if he merely slept.

  Anya was betting he was awake. A handful of police cars, a fire truck, and paramedics had pulled up to the curb. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the whine of an alarm that hadn’t been shut off yet. Her bag of gear was heavy on her shoulder, causing her calves to burn as she made the seemingly interminable climb carrying the duffel.

  She spied Marsh at the glass doors, talking to the paramedics in the glow of red and blue strobe light.

  “Captain,” she said. Marsh was always first at a scene. That was one of the immutable laws of the universe. “What’s going on?”

  Marsh jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, toward the lobby. “We’ve got a fire alarm pulled, and two missing guards. We think they’re stuck twiddling their thumbs behind the barricade in the Special Exhibits area.”

  Anya glanced at the water trickling down the steps. “The insurance adjustor’s gonna love these guys.”

  “Yeah. But unlike the crime lab, DIA has measures in place to protect the art. Steel doors and that kind of thing. Nobody seems to know exactly what it is they have in place, though, since museums get variances on that, and don’t have to conform to fire codes.”

  “There’s gotta be some way to know. Isn’t that info on file somewhere?”

  “I got a couple of clerks out of bed to look in long-term records storage for the info. It’s a nice administrative clusterfuck.”

  Anya winced. Marsh rarely swore, and when he did, it was a sign that someone’s ass was going to get handed to them on a plate. “Are the guards all right?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  Anya’s brow wrinkled. “You don’t know?”

  “Remember the steel doors I mentioned? One of them slammed down, and we can’t get through it yet. DPD is getting creative.” Marsh rolled his eyes.

  A loud crash echoed from inside the museum.

  “Wonderful.” Anya groaned. “Can’t they just get the codes from the alarm company? Or get the info from somebody at DIA?”

  “The DIA liaison is apparently out of the country—collecting new art in Fiji—and her assistant’s not answering the phone. The alarm company isn’t being terribly cooperative, since no one seems to know the right thing to say to them to convince them that we’re not trying to pull down an art heist. They’re supposed to be sending someone out.”

  Another crash rattled the glass in the doors.

  “But this is more fun,” Anya said.

  “Yeah,” Marsh agreed. “This is a lot more fun.”

  Anya dropped her duffel bag at her feet and set her coffee down beside it. “Can I go watch?”

  “Knock yourself out, kiddo. But take notes—I’m sure the insurance company’s gonna want the full report about how the security system was damaged.”

  Anya crouched before her duffel bag and rummaged around in it for her coveralls. No point in compromising the scene any more than it already had been. She zipped the suit up to her neck, donned her Nomex gloves—just in case anything else was still burning—and tucked her helmet under her right arm and her bag under the left as she pushed through the glass doors into the lobby of the museum.

  Like many of Detroit’s grand architectural landmarks, DIA had been built in the 1930s. Curved windows reached blackly up to the vaulted ceilings in the Great Hall. Suits of armor stood sentry behind glass cases on the inlaid floors, seeming to watch Anya as she strode through the lobby. A red strobe light cast a hellish glare on the glass, giving the appearance of fire moving in the blackness.

  Anya followed the alarm sirens. Her intuition prickled: She would have expected the alarm systems to have activated a sprinkler system and for there to be standing water and puddles. But there was nothing here. Perhaps the whole fire-suppression system was malfunctioning, and that was not a good sign.

  She walked through the Great Hall, turned right on the promenade, and stopped before the doors to an exhibit hall labeled ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN ART. A half-dozen police officers in SWAT gear were buzzing around it like wasps. Two breachers were making dents in the door with what looked like battering rams. One guy was busily playing with something that looked like Silly Putty. He waved the other two off and stuck the explosives to the door with a blinking electronic detonator.

  Great. This was where the really expensive shit was stored. And these guys were going to start blowing shit up.

  “Fire in the hole!” the Silly Putty guy shouted.

  Anya slammed on her helmet and ran back down the promenade. She’d gotten no more than a half-dozen steps in when a blast rattled the glass overhead. She jumped back and shielded her face with her hands when a plate of skylight glass crashed down in front of her in a glittering hail. Slivers raked over her protective suit, and a piece caught her shin.

  “Motherfucker,” she swore, stepping back and rubbing her knee. That hurt.

  She turned back to the Ancient Greek and Roman Art exhibit, hoping there would be something left of it. Dust and smoke filled the hall, and Anya dug in her bag for her respirator. The plastic explosives had made a very nice hole in the steel door, enough for SWAT to go swarming inside and yelling orders at one another. Someone managed to shut the audible alarm off, leaving a high-pitc
hed ringing in her ears.

  But something was wrong. SWAT was retreating from the exhibit hall, coughing and gagging. Through her respirator, Anya could smell something sickly sweet.

  Shit.

  There was a reason the museum didn’t have a sprinkler system installed here. They’d been using halon gas to suppress the fire. The steel door had been installed to provide an airtight seal while the gas suffocated the fire… and likely the guards inside.

  Anya took a deep breath. Her respirator would be of small help in filtering out the inert halon. She clambered through the hole in the door, picking her way over the curled steel and broken tile into the exhibit room. Immediately, she could tell that the insurance adjustor was going to be plenty pissed. Plexiglas-and-steel cases had slammed down over many of the pieces of art, but it looked as if a bust of a charioteer had toppled over and been crushed in the mouth of a steel safety curtain. Anya could make out a marble shoulder and an arm in the rubble.

  But what stopped her in her tracks was that unmistakable smell, beneath the artificial sweetness of the halon.

  Magick.

  She turned to one of the massive leather-upholstered couches in the corner of the mess. A sprawl of feet stuck out from below it.

  “Over here!” she yelled to the SWAT guys, but no one came. Anya rolled the couch off the bodies.

  A young man in a guard uniform was hugging a fire extinguisher like a kid with a teddy bear. Beside him sprawled the prone form of another guard. Anya grabbed the guard with the fire extinguisher under the arms and dragged him out of the room, through the hole in the door, and into the hallway. Fresh air was beginning to penetrate the room, but not fast enough.

  SWAT was shouting for paramedics. Anya took several gulps of air from the hallway and rushed back into the room to grasp the ankles of the second prone man. The entire front of his uniform was blackened and covered with acrid fire extinguisher foam, and his arms were wrapped around his gut. She hauled him out into the hallway just as more firefighters in respirators converged. The guards were whisked away at a dead run, taken to fresh air and the paramedics waiting by the curb. Anya followed, clomping in their wake.