Ann Aguirre - Hell Fire

He had to be shitting us. I felt like we’d slipped through a gap in time, or taken a wrong turn to wind up in May-berry.

“Okay,” I said, feeling dazed. “Thanks.”

“We’ll have to make this last,” Chance murmured, tapping his wallet.

Damn, that absolutely meant grocery shopping . . . and cooking. I sighed. Kilmer didn’t seem to have a limit in the ways it would torture me.

It was almost, almost enough to make me turn tail and run.

Almost.

I accepted the key while Chance signed some paperwork for Mr. Regis. He drew us a map on a yellow legal pad, giving good directions on how to reach the place. “You’ll pass Ma’s Kitchen on the way out of town. That’s how you know you’re on the right track.” Then he began outlining all the twists and turns. It sounded like the house was really in the middle of nowhere, like a witch’s cottage in a fairy tale. He hadn’t been kidding when he said “deeply wooded and private.”

“Shall we?” Chance asked.

“I guess.” We thanked Mr. Regis and stepped out into a heavy, purple twilight. The horizon seemed oddly dark and devoid of color, with none of the usual fiery streaks. I shivered as I got into the Mustang. “Let’s see if Ma does takeout. We’ll need something to eat while we go over that file.”

Butch popped his head out of my bag—I needed to reward him for sleeping through the meeting with Regis—and yapped once in agreement. He could always eat.

There were no lights for miles. Everywhere I looked, there were only the trees and the dark. In daytime I could tell you the names of them and what medicinal plants grew in their shadows. My mother meant me to be a witch when I grew up, and she had been preparing me for it. I still had my grimoires back in Mexico, but I had no magick.

The house we’d rented sent a cold chill through me. Most likely, it was the light slanting through the trees that gave the place such a desolate, devilish look. It could also be the way the rough gravel drive snaked through the woods, rounding a corner and opening into a cleared field, like a witch’s cottage from children’s stories.

This house was bigger than a cottage, of course, and more run-down than it had been in the photo. The roof over the porch sagged a little, but it appeared structurally sound. I hefted my purse as I got out of the car. Call me a coward, but I immediately set Butch down and let him go sniffing around the exterior. I trusted him to find anything we should know about, like, say, a reanimated corpse crawling around the perimeter.

He trotted around the side of the house and out of sight. I clutched the paper bag full of takeout from Ma’s Kitchen, waiting for the dog to reappear on the other side. When Chance touched my shoulder, I almost threw our dinner at him.

“Whoa,” he said softly. “We’re okay, Corine. We can handle this. I admit, the place is a little creepy, but we’ve been in worse spots.”

I didn’t know whether he meant this house in particular or Kilmer in general, but I was worried about our stupid dog. To my vast relief, Butch came trotting around the other side with nothing to report. He climbed the stairs and sat waiting beside the front door.

Chance smiled. “Our security expert has approved the place, it seems. Let’s go see what seven hundred dollars bought us.”

I gave him the keys, and he led the way, carrying both his duffel and my backpack. Trailing behind, I cast a nervous glance over my shoulder as I went into the house. We stood inside a sitting room, furnished only in the most basic sense. All the pictures had been stripped from the walls, but they’d left a flowered sofa and matching settee. The place smelled musty and damp with a hint of old-lady lavender. Butch poked his head beneath a chair and sneezed.

“Is there a lamp or an overhead light anywhere?” As I said it, a dim circle of gold dispelled some of the shadows. Chance had found a side table with an old-fashioned glass lamp. It must not have been worth anything, or it would’ve been removed along with the paintings. A fine layer of dust covered everything, so it had been a while since anyone cleaned.

“It has a hairline crack,” he told me over his shoulder.

It was scary how well he knew me.

Learning the layout didn’t take long. The downstairs was arranged in a semicircle, connecting parlor to dining room to kitchen. A hallway branched from the parlor, forming the other side of the circle, leading to the bedrooms. The corridor terminated in a bathroom, and what I took to be the master “suite” had a half bath attached.

I flipped a light switch, and a dim overhead light came on. Whoever removed Mrs. Everett’s personal effects had done a haphazard job. They’d hauled off the bed frame and headboard, and left the mattress on top of the box springs on the floor, but they hadn’t taken an exquisitely carved armoire, just because it had been painted a hideous green and dinged up a bit. If someone put a little effort into refinishing that piece, it would retail for nearly a thousand bucks. I resisted the temptation to find who might be willing to pay it.

Before I lay down on that bed, I had to know, though. I wiggled my fingers in preparation for contact with the mattress and relaxed my mental grasp on my gift. Heat rocketed through my palms and up into my arms, but I didn’t receive the impression of death. Instead, I saw a mosaic made of many nights: just an old woman sleeping or reading, or lying awake and staring at the ceiling. Whatever became of her, Mrs. Everett didn’t die in bed. Thank the gods.

I felt more like a squatter than an honest renter, but we could make do here. I checked the bathroom and found a toilet, a stained, once-white pedestal sink, and a shower stall; nothing fancy, just blue tile with a green tinge to the grout. I hoped we wouldn’t be here long enough for that to bother me.

“Finishing scoping out the place?” Chance asked from behind me.

This time I didn’t jump. “Yeah. It looks bearable.”

“Let’s eat before the food gets cold. There’s no microwave.” He led the way into the kitchen, Butch trotting at our heels. Apparently Chance had flipped light switches wherever he found them, as if he could banish the ocean of night that surrounded us. He caught my look and added, a touch defensive, “What? It’s really dark out there.”

I knew what he meant; without city lights and noise, this place freaked me out too. Add in the looming threat of the trees, and I could hardly think, but I couldn’t help teasing him. “You’re scared of the dark, Chance? You? ”

“I’m not scared of anything as long as you’re beside me.”

Call me an idiot, but I melted a little over that. I covered by unpacking the food. I found it unspeakably sad that the old woman who’d lived and died here had probably spent her mornings sitting at a table with placemats laid for two. The kitchen was small, old-fashioned, and painted a pale, streaky yellow. The fridge looked like it had last been updated in 1945—a squat Hotpoint unit with rounded edges and a silver handle.

Before we sat down to eat, I set out Butch’s portable dishes. After the dumplings earlier, he wasn’t too interested in dog food, but he did take a drink, and then he came to sit on the floor by the table, telling us via big bulging eyes he thought we sucked for not giving him more people food. The waitress at Ma’s had packed us two blue plate specials, which turned out to be meat loaf and green beans. Good packaging had kept it warm while we drove around country roads after dark, looking for our destination.

Chance tucked into his food, but I had a phone call to make first. To my surprise, I had twelve text messages and four voice mails, but the phone hadn’t rung. I checked the settings, and it was programmed to vibrate and play J.Lo’s “If You Had My Love . ” My cell hadn’t made a peep all day.