Page 138 of Envious Of Fire
An hour later, the table is empty, and Kyle and Drake are back on the floor, sitting with a foot of distance between them, heads and backs leaned against the wall, trying to sleep.
Another hour, Kyle is lying down alone while Drake slowly paces the room. The floorboards above creak under footsteps as a muffled discussion goes on between Chief Rojas and Leland, who apparently got a “cryptic text” and came by to see if he can help with “whatever weird stuff” is going on. He is clearly out of the loop, and Chief Rojas does not intend to bring anyone else into it, not wanting to start a panic in the town.
In and out of sleep Kyle drifts. One moment, Drake is near him sleeping. The next, he’s sitting in the middle of the room and the fold-out table has been taken upstairs. Then Kyle has no idea what’s going on as he turns to face the wall, eyes closed.
But even down here, beneath the feet of his friends, Kyle’s sensitive ears pick up a lot. “You don’t have to stay,” says Chief Rojas somewhere above. “You aren’t from here, got no ties to this town. Why don’t you call your folks? I can get you a bus.” “No,” comes Mikey’s voice, soft despite its deepness. “I can’t be out there on my own, not even on a bus. Second the sun goes down, I’ll be found, he’s gonna come for me.” “I’ll have youescorted home,” says the chief. Mikey isn’t having it. “Salazo’s eyes are in my dreams, his ugly eyes. You can send ten officers to escort me, it wouldn’t be enough, they’d all turn up dead.”
The words stick with Kyle, even if he wasn’t truly listening.
Salazo’s big ugly eyes. Haunting Mikey.
Kyle keeps thinking of a grin—a twisted, scary grin on the most beautiful, porcelain face, turning every pretty child’s doll in the world into a piece of the nightmare. La-La’s grin. And the length of that sharp, curved blade he brandished so easily, ready for it to slice through air, slice through flesh, through any of Kyle’s bones that stood in the way, just for fun.
I’m going to kill someone you love someday.
Something dark enters Kyle’s heart.
He opens his eyes. Drake is gone. He’s alone.
Kyle sits up with a start. “Hello?”
30.
No Such Thing as Virtue.
—·—
Kyle looks up. People upstairs are talking, moving around. He rises from the floor, listens more closely. He hurries up the creaky steps to the door, stops. After a glance back at the empty basement, he decides if Drake left, it must be dark enough for him to leave, too.
He cracks open the door.
The church is lit only by candles—and they are everywhere in sight. On the pews. Windowsills. Scattered all over the floor. Tall candles, short ones, wide, all of them black or white with no exceptions. Cade is at the pulpit, also covered with candles, the book spread before her. Layna is at her side, whispering. Ahead, the chief and his son are at the front window, which still glows with the last light of day. At the pew behind them, Mikey is sitting with one leg bouncing in place, all kinds of nervous.
“Where’s Elias?” asks Kyle to no one in particular.
The chief turns from the window. “Not sundown yet.”
“Where’s Drake?” he asks instead, coming toward the front of the church. The shred of deep blue light from the windows is annoying at worst, like a shower turned slightly too far to the hot side. Kyle walks right past them, brings himself to the east front window, peering outside. He sees someone standing in an oversized hoodie in front of the church, the hood drawn over their head. Elias is next to him. “Drake?” he mutters to himself.
“Since the sun started going down, he went out there,” says the chief, coming up to Kyle’s side. “His choice. My son had ajacket, the guy put it on, covered his hands and most of his face, went on out there like he was braving a winter storm.” He looks at Kyle. “Elias didn’t want you playing it risky to join them.”
Kyle goes to the door, peels it open. “What the hell, guys?” he calls out to them. Elias and Drake both turn. “You were just gonna let me sleep through everything?”
Drake, whose mouth and nose is covered by fabric and his eyes with a pair of shades, lifts a hand and wiggles his fingers. Elias, hands in his pockets, looking like he’s been through hell, says, “It’s not dark yet, Kyle. Don’t—”
Kyle steps right out of the church into the dark blue dusk. “I go to work at the bar in this light all the time.”
“Just … stay in the church,” Elias presses again, coming to him. Then he lowers his voice. “Please.”
That’s when Kyle senses the ice-cold brick of dread.
He meets Elias’s eyes. “What’s going on?” he hisses under his breath. “What is it?”
Elias can’t quite look at him. His foot is tapping in place. Though his hands are stuffed away in his pockets, Kyle senses they’re sweating.
Kyle looks into the distance down the road. Turns, looks at the nearby buildings, at the park behind which the dark blue of the sky is quickly giving away to night. His eyes search every corner, every shadow.
It isn’t that his Reach finds anything. It’s that he feels space between what his Reach sees. Pockets of nothing—vacuums.
