One human figure, an undifferentiated blur, clung to the ladder. He or she had climbed partway down and now tarried at the level just below the inferno, as if trying to decide on a course of action, though it was clear to John Gund that the fire would not be extinguished, that no power could save the guardhouse now. The platform at the top of the scaffold glowed like a furnace. Veils of fire obscured the little house’s walls, its collapsing roof. The line of smoke was an arrow in the sky, pointing it out; the open door its molten orange heart. No one trapped within could survive such a crucible.
Yet he could see only one person. Was it a guard there on the ladder? Or was it Asyl?
John Gund clutched at his ankle and thought of Asyl’s God, who lifted people from the hottest of fires. Wasn’t hers the shape he couldn’t quite identify? Wasn’t it? He would have to get closer to know, but he didn’t try to rise from the ground yet.
He was a sinner, too weak to have deserved salvation—or was it his very weakness that had preserved him? That was what John Gund thought to himself just then. Or something along those lines; Hel couldn’t quite remember the terms he’d used to berate himself. He was too late. He’d made himself too late.
Hel had to read it again, to know the rest for sure.
An hour before they would enter Sleight’s house together, Hel and Dwayne stood in front of a grave, the cold stone incised with Shawn Sealy’s name and the dates he had lived. There was the patch of grass that was all the real estate he had in the world.
“What do you do here?” she’d asked.
“I’m going to talk to him now. Just like I would if you weren’t with me. I’m going to concentrate on what I want to tell him and I’m going to say it in my head. Even though he can’t hear it. I’m not crazy. I know he ain’t really here. Still, it makes me think of him, standing on this spot.” Dwayne’s gaze swept the nearby graves, with their flowers and stuffed toys and miniature Christmas trees. “You don’t really have anywhere to go, for Jonas.” He said her son’s name carefully. “Do you?”
“No,” she whispered.
She could put down the bouquet of poinsettias she was still carrying, right here on Shawn Sealy’s grave. Their spade-shaped cloth leaves were dyed a red as bright as oxygenated blood. She remembered what that looked like, when you made the first incision. The body’s protest; the most alive thing she knew of. She wanted to lay them down here.
As she started to crouch, Dwayne touched her arm, stopping her. “Please.” His hand on her bicep gave a little apologetic squeeze. “Please don’t. I just mean, maybe you should save those for your Jonas. Find it. Figure out where.”
Now, Hel counted. The big man with the tattoos she’d seen on the way in had been running through the empty lot behind the cottage for the avenue, which meant that four of them now remained. Dwayne in the upstairs hallway. Vikram aghast in the bedroom doorway. Klay struggling with her here, in the small clearing in front of the painting. One, two, three, four. The place reeked of fuel. Was The Shipwreck already irreparably damaged? Gas was a solvent, just like paint thinner.
Only more volatile.
“If you don’t want to die, right now,” Hel said, keeping her voice even, “your only choice is to put out that lighter. If you burn this house, I swear I will cut your jugular.” She pushed the stem of the plastic flower harder against her antagonist’s bared throat. Klay stood a few inches taller than Hel but had a slighter frame. Her hair, loosened from its tie, tickled Hel’s nose. Hel heard Vikram’s voice, heard that he was speaking, but couldn’t focus on what he said; it didn’t matter right now.
Klay did not let the Bic go out, but she didn’t drop it into the widening pool, either. She groped out with her free hand, reaching blindly for what she believed was a blade, but Hel held her wrist tight, keeping it immobile, and tried not to sneeze from all the dust in this place.
The Shipwreck, somehow right here where she’d sensed it would be. “Where did you find it? Why did you bring it here to burn?”
“I didn’t,” said Klay, bucking in her arms. “It was here. Your boyfriend told me.”
The wail of an approaching siren became audible. “They’re coming for you, shitfoot,” Hel said. “Stop moving.” She was still thinking it through. William Sleight had owned this house. Perhaps he’d recalled Ezra’s fascination with the painting and asked after it, perhaps the headmistress of the school gave it to the grieving father. Perhaps William bought it outright and the record of the sale had been destroyed. Klay’s body went stiff, but Hel didn’t relax her hold. “Now, the lighter. Give it to me.” Perhaps William Sleight crept into the foyer in the dead of night and stole the painting—the painting that failed to save his son—and brought it back here. She was not in a position to judge.
And it didn’t matter how it happened. The painting had been here, all these years, hidden from a world indifferent to its survival. Now recovered, only to be annihilated.
Hel felt Klay’s pulse, its ardent thrumming, and thought of lying on the couch and holding her son. Of his small heart. The memory took over her whole being, coursed through her synapses like a wave. Jonas. His smell. The plastic flower in her hand, which she still needed to give to him, and this house, which she needed to save.
“Just so you know, I took your book,” Klay said. “I burned that first thing.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Vikram knelt in front of the painting now, and Hel heard the anger in his voice and thought he must be addressing her, but no, he was talking to Klay.
“Let me tell you both something.” Klay twisted her shoulders, testing Hel’s grip. “Your so-called project? Collecting UDPs’ little treasures? Your book by a dead author, a crumpled-up tract from some religion that forced all its members to stay behind and kill themselves, a bottle of wine created from a variety that doesn’t exist in a vineyard that’s been nuked, a dead baby’s goddamn shoe? That’s not educational. It’s just sad.”
Vikram wasn’t listening. “You ruined the painting! You destroyed the book! Why would you do that, when Hel needs them so badly?”
No, Hel wanted to say. Not just me.
“Your world wasn’t that great, just because it was yours. Who would want to put its morbid relics on display? Why not just leave them buried?”
It’s for all of us. But that wasn’t right. Hel had been selfish in her grief. All the while she’d reached for something that could not be touched, he’d been reaching back to her in generosity. Vikram, her lover. The two of them missing each other in the dark.
Hel found she had no anger to summon. She could only defend Klay. “She’s not one of us. She doesn’t understand.”
“She is! She should.” Vikram stood. He slapped the lighter from Klay’s hand, and time seemed to stop for a second, but it was only a disposable lighter, after all. Once it was out of her grasp, the flame went out, as Vikram must have known it would. The Bic dropped to the floor with a plastic clatter. “She’s a UDP too—aren’t you? You worked with the scientists who built the Gate. Admit it! Here, can you turn her around? I can’t see her in the dark.”
It didn’t make sense. There was no way to hide one’s status. Special requirements had to be met. Employers had to be notified. How would Donaldson not know? “Impossible,” Hel said aloud, doing her best to maneuver the smaller woman toward the brighter hallway as Klay resisted passively, relaxing all her muscles. “She would have been debriefed, she would be going to meetings like us. How would the Reintegration Education and Adjustment Counseling Authority not know about her? It’s impossible.”