Page 56 of The Wicker King

Jack laid his head back onto August’s leg, and August weakly dropped his hand onto Jack’s cheek. He closed his eyes again, drowning in the black. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

WICK

They skipped school that day. August brought a box of Pop-Tarts upstairs and they ate them in his bed. He was too tired to cook. Jack finished his first, then resumed staring off into nothingness.

“So … fire,” he said after a while.

“Fire,” August agreed.

“You kept that lighter I gave you? All this time, you didn’t lose it.”

“Yeah.”

Jack laughed. “How romantic. My knight in shining fucking armor.”

August’s cheeks burned. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a lighter,” he mumbled.

Jack gazed at him for a moment. “Is anything ‘just’ anything? After all these months? Even dressed in my colors? Even with your favor at my feet? Even as the sky falls and the only thing I can hear besides your voice is the screams of the dying and the thundering of horses? You remembered to keep it when you couldn’t even remember to eat. It’s a lighter, yeah. But it’s also everything…” Jack grinned. “We’ve had our conduit all along.”

August gazed out the window. His neighbor was walking her dog. The bus was dropping off elementary school kids. An airplane flew overhead. The sky was so blue.

Jack reached out and grabbed August’s chin, wrenching his face away from the light. “You burn things all the time these days,” Jack said softly. “Would you burn for me?”

August stared him down. Stared into the gray of Jack’s eyes. So clear, they were—not a hint of delusion. Just fierce and grand as the day he lay with his back in the river’s mud. Ten thousand years ago.

“You already know I’ll do it,” August said.

You already know. You fucking know.

HOUSTON

August put the gasoline can down and waited. Jack lit his cigarette, holding it between strong white teeth before passing it over. Like a secondhand kiss on a breath of ash.

“Should I do it from the outside in?”

“Do it however, just make sure it’s done.”

“Will you come with me?” August asked quietly, blowing smoke into the wind.

“Do kings march out to war?”

“They used to.”

He could feel Jack smiling at him. Breathed it in so he could feel it deep in his lungs. This was it. This was everything.

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done.”

THE FIRE

He clipped the wiring to the alarm system and fire sprinklers with a knife.

August took care of the outer rooms first, setting tables and chairs in the offices alight. He splashed the doors and left them open.

Then he took to the perimeter of the factory floor. He went around the main room in a circle, dousing it all in gasoline. It was taking a while. The fire was beginning to break glass and consume wood. He would have to be quicker. August took the Rapturous Blue out of his backpack, wrapped it in the oilcloth Jack had given him, and set it on the floor.

It burned purple and indigo just as Jack had said it would, just like Jack had seen with his crazy eyes, just like it was supposed to.