A truck roared down the street, barreling toward me. Isprinted around the side of the house as the lights inside came on, then leaped over the back fence. I didn’t stop until I was four streets away. I ducked down by a culvert at the end of a driveway as the roar of the truck and the hoots of the men riding in it faded away.
I knew that truck. Gargantuan, fire-engine red, with a massive steel grille guard. It was Buster Gates’s truck, and I’d bet anything the guys riding in it were part of his usual crew of gun-toting vigilantes.
I’d starting doing nice things for people at night because they wouldn’t let me do them during the day. I’d hoped raking and trimming and cleaning and fixing enough mailboxes would even out the Novaks’ bad karma, even though no one knew who was doing the work. I’d hoped that the hatred toward us might lessen. A Novak doing good things and not taking credit for it? It had to count to someone, somewhere.
But no. Instead of some kind of understanding, I got Buster Gates in a truck, trying to run me down.
The first night of filming was the next day. TheDMWcrew was scheduled to visit the Hillcroft coal mine, not far from the bluffs, to investigate rumors of strange voices in the old tunnels, traces of demonic activity, and sightings of Salem Hillcroft, the son of the man who’d built this town. The mine opened up somewhere far below into a series of caves, and Salem was said to have diedin a tragic fall into the depths when he was my age.
In my explorations of the mine, I’d never seen Salem, but I’d seen plenty of other ghosts. Usually miners. The mines went deep, and the ghosts seemed to follow them all the way down.
Every entrance had been closed off except the north one, the one theDMWcrew would use. I’d found a second entrance down south when I was in middle school, boarded up and grown over with weeds and underbrush. The boards had rotted enough to pry them off with a crowbar. It was a creepy old place—chains hanging from the ceiling, water dripping somewhere, and the occasional dead miner—but I’d scared the bats out and peeked around. After a bit of walking, it connected to the other entrance, and by my best estimates, also to the cave system below. I explored enough times to get a feel for the upper layout, but after that I mostly hung around in the mouth of my secret entrance, burned whatever twigs and trash I could find, and complained about the lack of mine carts.
The second entrance would make it easy to fake the crew out. Noises echoed. Voices sounded spooky no matter what was said. And I knew the tunnels they would be using.
Filming started at ten. No one at school that day would shut up about it; it had beat out this weekend’s homecoming as the topic of choice, a difficult feat in a town where homecoming was a headliner in every possible news outlet, including thebarbershop and the drugstore. The information about the filming had not been released by theDead Men Walkingcrew themselves, but, I was almost sure, by the kid of someone in close with the town council.
Artemis came close to talking to me a few times throughout the day, only changing course when I dialed my expression up to code red. If Artemis was seen talking to me at school, it would eventually get back to Greta, and I didn’t need Greta getting up in my business again. Greta could not be allowed to interfere, and she would definitely try. I still didn’t understand what she was doing, pretending like she didn’t know about firestarters. If Artemis needed to say something to me, Ididhave a functioning cell phone capable of receiving text messages, and she knew the number for it.
I hadn’t been joking when I’d suggested Bach to Artemis for our outing in the mines. He had motivation to join us on the hunt, he knew more about firestarters than any of us, and he was capable of the special type of shit-eating grin that said he was well versed in screwing with people.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, Bach hung out on a bench beneath a big maple tree in the park, listening to music and watching people play with their dogs. I knew this because Ialsospent a lot of time watching people play with dogs at the park. He was there when I arrived, a slash of black against the brown and orange. There were only a few ghosts here, and they stuckto the edges of the field where the dogs played, far from Bach. Five, six. Usually there were ten or more. They were running in the advent of another firestarter’s arrival. I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jacket and sidled up to the bench.
Bach looked up through his sunglasses and tugged out one earbud. “Hey, Zora.”
I liked that he called me Zora when other people weren’t around. Some days it was hard to remember he was a murderer, even if it had been against his will.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Usual,” he said. “Burger’s not bringing the ball back, and Gracie and Tater are fighting over their Frisbee. Want to sit?”
I sat next to him. He offered me his other earbud. He was listening to something slow and chill, with a lot of guitar. A fluffy brown dog went galloping after a bright red ball that squeaked when it hit the ground.
Dogs are better than people. This is a complete and true verified fact. Dogs don’t care what you look like. Dogs don’t care what skeletons hide in your closet. They don’t care what color you are, or what weight, or how rich, or how guilty. They don’t care about your gender or your sexual orientation. They don’t care if you have deformities or illnesses. They care about being fed and played with and petted. They’ll lick your face because it’syourface.
“I love dogs,” I said.
“I’ll agree with that,” Bach said. He rested his elbows up on the back of the bench. “It must be nice, having such a simple life.”
“Life with Hermit Forester getting you down?”
He smiled. “It’s not bad. Definitely more chill than it used to be.”
“How long have you worked for him?”
“Oh.” He thought. “Awhile now.”
I had no idea how old Bach was. I wasn’t even sure firestarters had ages. The person whose body he wore was young, about my age, and his cover story was that he went to high school in Harrisburg. But firestarters essentially made their human bodies immortal; they hollowed out the insides and paraded them around as long as they liked. Bach could have looked like this for a very long time.
Bach’s smile widened as he tilted his head toward me. He had killer cheekbones and a nose that could be used as a straightedge. “Did you come here to talk about dogs and ask how long I’ve been working?”
I took the earbud out. He took his out, too. “Fine, no. I came to ask if you wanted to help with theDMWcrew.”
“What about them?”
“They’re filming at the mine. Masrell pointed me there yesterday. This new firestarter is down there, and Artemis and I are going into the mine tonight to try to get them out of there before it hurts them. Nothing illegal.”
Bach’s eyebrow lifted as I spoke. He slid his sunglasses off and hung them on his shirt collar. The shade from the trees and his brow made his eyes look as dark as mine. “Can I ask you a question?”
