Sacrifice

That night felt like a year ago.

But maybe this was the real Jack Faulkner. Maybe a crisis brought out the dad in him, breaking down the awkward barriers.

Michael nodded and had to clear his throat. “I’m all right.”

“What about your brothers? Are they holding up?”

Michael nodded. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Sweat and grit. Sand, soot, whatever. He’d kill for a shower. A hot one. “More or less.”

“You have somewhere to go?”

For an instant, the question didn’t make sense. Why would he go anywhere?

Then reality knocked on his skull. The fire marshal was asking if he had a place to stay.

It hadn’t even occurred to him yet, but now that he had to consider it, Michael had no idea where to take his brothers. Insurance would come into play at some point, but it wasn’t like he could call up his agent and money would appear in the checking account tomorrow. They could ride on credit cards for a while, but feeding and housing five people on Visa’s dime would only last so long.

But what was he supposed to say? He knew from experience that he couldn’t admit uncertainty in front of anyone official. He held back any emotion and wished his voice didn’t sound as if he were speaking through ground stone. “I have to make a few calls. I’ll work it out.”

Hannah slipped her hand under his and laced their fingers together. The motion felt comforting—but somehow defiant, too.

Michael couldn’t tell if Marshal Faulkner noticed. Rain was collecting on the shoulders of the man’s jacket. “It might just be smoke damage. There are a few local companies who can help with that. You’ll have to get an engineer out to check the foundation after that earthquake.”

Or Michael could just walk a loop around the house and feel it out for himself.

As if the insurance company would take his word for it.

Marshal Faulkner turned and looked past the ambulance, his eyes on something in the distance. “A lot of damage here. You guys are lucky.”

Lucky. Yeah, right. Michael hadn’t felt lucky since . . . ever.

The fire marshal stepped closer. “How did you put the fires out so quickly?”

Michael opened his mouth to respond, but Hannah squeezed his hand, hard. “Don’t answer that.”

Michael blinked. She’d asked him pretty much the same thing. “I—I . . . what?”

Her tone was even. “He’s not being nice. He’s trying to interrogate you.”

The fire marshal barely spared her a glance. His attitude didn’t change; it was still official, reassuring. “Hannah, why don’t you let me speak with Michael privately?”

“Why, so you can try to trap him with questions?”

“No, so I can spare him a trip in a squad car and his brothers a night with DFS.”

Michael straightened. DFS was the Department of Family Services.

“What does that mean?” He suddenly wanted out of this ambulance, as if social workers had secreted his brothers away already. Tension held him rigid, and the only thing keeping him sitting here was the knowledge that acting like a panicked freak would do more harm than good.

“It means if I take you in for questioning, I’m responsible for making sure your brothers are taken care of.”

“We just dragged him out of his house, unconscious,” Hannah said. “Why don’t you find someone else to question?”

“There is no one else right now, Hannah.”

The words hung there in space for a moment, and Michael flinched, realizing what that meant.

The fire marshal continued, “I had one of your brothers under arrest a month ago. Should I have kept him that way?”

“My brother didn’t do this.”

“Then help me prove it. Answer my questions. Take a walk through your house with me.”

Michael hesitated. The night had been too long, the events too quick to string together. He needed an hour to sit down and think.

Marshal Faulkner took a step closer. “A rookie cop could put two and two together on this one, Mike. Your brother was a prime arson suspect a month ago—and while he ended up with a rock-solid alibi during interrogation, you didn’t. Your house is the only one still standing. They’re talking about bringing in bomb dogs to see if that earthquake was really a natural occurrence. I’m not trying to rough you up here, but I need something that doesn’t look so damning or I’m going to have to drag you in on principle.”

Michael looked away. Didn’t an officer need a warrant to search the house? Should he be calling a lawyer? Could he even get one at three in the morning?

When his parents died, they sure hadn’t left a manual.

Chapter Three: When You’re Suspected of Criminal Wrongdoing.

Wind sliced into the ambulance, biting through his damp clothes. He shivered.

A terrible, dark part of his brain wanted to start shouting. Yes. I’m guilty. I should have stopped this. Instead, I made it worse.

He swallowed, and his throat was so tight that it hurt.

The fire marshal hadn’t looked away. “If you want me to get a warrant, fine, I’ll get one. But if you’re not doing anything wrong, then what’s the big deal?”

Michael rubbed at his temples. Maybe if they went in the house, he could choke down half a bottle of aspirin. Or a whole bottle of whiskey. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”

CHAPTER 5

Michael wanted to check on his brothers first. He remembered the months after their parents had died, how he’d spend all day worrying that they wouldn’t get off the bus after school. Back then, he hadn’t been sure which to fear more: the Guides who had wanted to kill them for their abilities—or the social workers who had wanted to split them up into the foster care system.

Right now didn’t feel too different.

His brothers and Hunter were huddled at the back of another ambulance, just a short distance away. Only Chris had abandoned the wool blanket, and he was sitting on the bumper, rain threading through his hair to paint reflective lines on his cheeks. Hunter’s dog was curled up beneath the tailgate, behind Chris’s legs. He looked up and beat his tail against the ground when Michael came over.

His brothers watched him approach, but didn’t move. Michael looked at each of them in turn, as if he could reassure himself just by seeing them alive and well and together. Their faces were drawn and cautious, their skin caked with dirt and soot.

None of them said anything. They didn’t have to. He could read the uncertainty behind their guarded expressions like a billboard sign.

What’s going to happen?

Where are we going to go?

Are we in danger?

They always thought he had answers. He almost never did, but he was pretty good at faking it. “Is anyone hurt?” he said.

“No,” said Chris.

“They’re lucky,” Marshal Faulkner said from behind him. “I understand two of you kids pulled a family of five out of . . .” He consulted a notepad, then pointed at a burned pile of rubble. “. . . that house.”

“Me and Nick,” said Gabriel. “They were right by the door. I guess that makes them the lucky ones.”

His words were sharp edged, a reaction to authority, and it was almost enough to make Michael snap at him. But he heard the fear beneath Gabriel’s snark, and he understood the reason behind it.

It gave Michael the answer to one question: his brothers hadn’t been trapped in the house at all. He’d crawled through smoke for nothing. He’d lost consciousness and started an earthquake for . . . nothing.

He swallowed his own self-doubt before they could see it. “Anyone who’s still sitting up and talking is lucky. Can you guys wait here for fifteen minutes while I check the house?”

“Where else are we going to go?” said Nick.

His words weren’t snarky at all. It was a genuine question.

“I’m working on it,” said Michael. “Sit tight.” And then he started walking.

Hannah and Marshal Faulkner were right on his heels, but he needed to get some distance from that ambulance before his brothers figured out that he didn’t have a clue about what to do or where to go. He didn’t even know the right answers to keep himself out of a police station.

When he hit the grass in front of his house, however, he stopped. The sidewalk was destroyed, but from what he could tell, the damage didn’t reach far below the surface. All the front windows had been smashed out, and the boards of the porch looked warped. The front door was hanging open, half off its hinges. Splintered wood surrounded the area around the lock and the knob.

“Wow. You really did break in,” he said to Hannah.

“Yeah.” She paused. “It’s procedure. The windows—we have to let oxygen in—”

She sounded guilty, and Michael shook his head. “I’m not blaming you, Hannah.”

“People blame the fire department all the time,” said Marshal Faulkner. “Broken windows are the least of their worries.”

His tone sounded conspiratorial, but Hannah’s earlier warning had Michael on edge. Was this a ploy, to get him to talk? Or just his girlfriend’s dad cutting him some slack?

Michael kept his mouth shut and climbed the steps.

A rapid cracking sound echoed from inside the house. Michael stopped short at the doorway.

Marshal Faulkner clicked on a flashlight and didn’t seem concerned.

“Is someone already in here?” said Michael. Some part of him rebelled against it. This was his house. No one had a right to be in here.

Then again, the shattered windows and broken door wouldn’t do much to keep out vandals. He’d need to board the place up. He started making a mental list.

“Someone is checking the walls,” said Hannah. “Making sure there’s no fire left.”

Gabriel would know for sure, but Michael couldn’t think of a reasonable way to ask for him to join them. When they stepped through the door, he automatically reached for the switch, then told himself to stop being an idiot.

“We killed the electric for the street,” offered Marshal Faulkner. “Gas and water, too.” He swept his flashlight across the foyer floor.

Michael almost wished he hadn’t. All the wide beam showed was a cone of smoke and dark dust swirling in the air. The light found the stairway bannister: all black. The carpeted steps, too.

“Jesus,” Michael whispered. He was glad his brothers weren’t here.

The flashlight beam moved higher. “We can’t go upstairs,” said the fire marshal. “I don’t like the look of those steps.”

Michael thought about what that meant. He had his phone in his pocket—if it had even survived the swim in the creek. The case was water resistant—an investment he’d made after losing a phone in a koi pond once. He checked now and found it working. Did his brothers have theirs? What about clothes? Schoolbooks?

Identification? Car keys? His own wallet was plastered inside his back pocket, but his ID and credit cards seemed intact. He had no idea what his brothers might have on them, if anything.

Marshal Faulkner hadn’t waited for a response. He’d moved into the dining room. Michael watched the flashlight beam play along the floor, the walls, then the table.

Everything had a fine layer of soot.

The marshal stopped at the far side of the room, until Michael couldn’t see him through the haze, just the bouncing beam of his flashlight. “How long did the fire burn?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“When we broke in, we didn’t see anything actively burning,” Hannah said. “The place was hot and full of smoke.”

The fire marshal’s flashlight stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. “Do you remember stopping the fire?”

“No.” Michael suspected Gabriel had, but it wasn’t like he could say that. His brother certainly wouldn’t have used a fire extinguisher. But Michael had no other explanation. If he admitted not being here when the fire started, would that look better or worse? He didn’t know.