Chapter 21 - THE FIRE
The garage went up too fast.
Accelerant.
Noah knew the smell before the fire department arrived.
Mara stood barefoot in the yard wearing a spare pair of glasses Renee Park had taken from evidence.
One lens was scratched.
She kept touching the frame.
“Stop,” Noah said.
“What?”
“You’re going to break them.”
“I know.”
She stopped touching them.
Then started again ten seconds later.
Across the street, people filmed.
A teenager yelled, “Show us your eyes!”
Noah turned toward him.
“Go home.”
The kid laughed.
Noah took one step off the curb.
Mara caught his shirt.
“Don’t.”
He looked at his stone arm.
“Hard to fight anyway.”
“That has not stopped you historically.”
Fair.
Firefighters saved half the house. The garage collapsed.
Inside the ruins, Mara’s custom lenses melted into black curls of plastic and metal.
By afternoon, Park moved them to a safe location at the county courthouse.
Not very secret.
Just secure.
Celia arrived with worse news.
“The material in your lenses was made by your mother. Adrian copied some of it, but his version degraded.”
“How long can these last?” Mara asked, touching the scratched pair.
Celia hesitated.
“A week. Maybe two.”
Noah swore.
Park said, “Can we manufacture more?”
“Yes. If we recover Selene’s formula.”
“Where?”
Celia looked at Mara.
“Adrian had it. Not at the estate. Somewhere he called the reliquary.”
Mara’s face tightened.
My mother’s notebook.
Noah saw the thought land.
They returned to the attic under federal escort.
The black notebook was still in the box.
Mara flipped through pages she had never finished reading.
Near the back, one sheet had been cut away.
Under it, pressed into the paper, faint handwriting remained.
Noah angled a lamp across the page.
Words appeared in shadow.
BENEATH ST. ORPHEUS.
Blackwater had one church named St. Orpheus.
It had been abandoned since 1987.
Park said, “We go in daylight.”
Mara said, “Tonight.”
“No.”
Mara looked at her.
Park didn’t blink.
“See? This is why I’m here. You have a documented tendency to run toward terrible ideas.”
Noah coughed to hide a laugh.
Mara glared at him.
Then the courthouse lights died.
Emergency red lamps came on.
Someone screamed downstairs.
Park drew her weapon.
A man’s voice echoed up the stairwell.
“Mrs. Hale?”
Noah recognized him from the protest crowd.
The teenager with the sign.
Except now he was holding a shotgun.
“I just want to see your eyes.”
---
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