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To keep with the style of the neighborhood, my house was built on the cul-de-sac and the extra land was basically backyard running space for the dog, kids, unicorn, and horse. There were nine fire trucks, a couple of ambulances, 20 police cruisers, and a ton of neighbors lining the road to the cul-de-sac where I lived. Thick, black smoke billowed into the sky and we could hear the roaring whoosh of the fire before we saw it. It wasn’t just my house or my buildings on fire. It had jumped to Abigail’s house, and from there to Camille and Bill’s house. Lucy’s house was also on fire. Lucy had the first house after the cul-de-sac and bordered my property on the left, while Abigail’s was on the right and Bill and Camille lived across the cul-de-sac from me. The house next to Lucy’s was starting to smolder as well. The flames from all of these buildings were an incredible white with just a bit of blue at the very tip.
“Stygian flames,” Jerome said, and I nodded. “There was a spell for calling it in my grimoire.”
“Not your fault,” I reminded him. We were told to park at the top of the road and that if we wanted to get out, we’d have to walk, but it wasn’t recommended. The fire was so hot the concrete was melting. Dad stopped and I got out and ran toward my house. Angel was sitting in the little planter in the cul-de-sac that held flowers. She looked a bit singed.
“Angel!” I shouted at the dog, and she came running toward me. “Are you okay? Who’s a good dog?” I gently touched an area that looked pretty severely burnt. Camille came around from another neighbor’s house, and she had Pinkie Pie with her. “Luna Sparkle?” I asked her, and she nodded and pointed up the road.
“Abigail and I were able to get them out,” Camille told me.
“Are you both okay?” I asked. Camille nodded. “Does this have to do with the demon boxes? I thought they’d made arrests on that.”
“They did. This has to do with Helia getting a divorce.”
“Oh God, Mark did this??” Camille asked.
“I think so. He and another person came by yesterday morning, drugged Angel with chicken nuggets from McDonald’s and vandalized my place. Whoever’s working with him has magic abilities. They also stole Jerome’s grimoire. He had a spell for calling Stygian flame in it.”
“Oh no! Did you tell him it wasn’t his fault?”
“Yes, but I will probably have to tell him several more times over the next few months or years or decades. Even though Stygian flame isn’t exactly a big secret, he immediately told me it was in his grimoire that was stolen.”
“I hope that motherfucker rots in prison for the rest of his life,” Camille said.
“I am so sorry about your house,” I said as the ceiling collapsed in.
“We’re all safe, that’s the important part.” Camille told me. “We are insured. We can replace the stuff. A few years ago, Bill and I digitized all our old photographs and so the few things we can’t replace, we still have: each other, the kids, and the pictures of our lives since the invention of photography.”
“Are you okay?” Abigail came up to me. “Luna Sparkle got a little burned. I just gave her over to your vet. I hope that’s okay. We called him as soon as we got them out of the stable. Angel is a hero.”
“How so?” I asked.
“The house caught fire and Angel got out and stood in the front yard and barked and howled until everyone came out to see why your dog was going nuts; it’s not like her. Because of that, we got to the stable before it caught fire. Luna Sparkle was panicked and bolted past your house, catching her tail on fire. She ran next to Lucy’s and the heat from the flame on her tail ignited Lucy’s house.”
“And yours?” I asked.
“I think it was just close enough to yours to start smoldering and melting,” Abigail said. “But everyone is okay. The kids were at school, and my husband was at work. I’m sad to see our lives go up in flames, but there’s nothing in there we can’t replace. When Bill and Camille told us last year about their big digitization project, we did it, too.” Abigail grinned. “So, the insurance will pay out on the fire and we’ll be fine. Do you know who did it?”
“Know? No. Suspect? Yes. I think it was Helia’s ex, Mark.”
“What a jackass,” Abigail said. “But how did he call Stygian flame? Rocks have more magic than Mark.”
“He has an accomplice.” I told her about yesterday and the break-in and Jerome’s stolen grimoire. Abigail suddenly hugged me.
“That poor kid. He’s really had it rough.” Abigail sighed.
“Yeah, he has.” I nodded. “He’s feeling guilty about this because he sent Mark a stink bomb, and he had a spell for calling Stygian flame in his grimoire that was stolen.”
“We can’t get the fires out,” a fireman came over to Camille and Abigail. “Nothing we have works on it, not even magic.”
“I think I can do it,” I said, and turned to the fire. It was brutally hot. Even in the center of the road, I could feel the heat and it blew my hair around my face. I pulled magic to me and felt a jolt of it enter me. I looked down and the sun symbol Jerome drew for me was under my feet. I pulled on the flames, trying to draw them to me, and Lucy’s house, which was smoking on one side, exploded in an eruption of flames.
“My wards gave,” Lucy said, grimly joining Abigail, Camille, and I at the round planter in the middle of the cul-de-sac. I tried again and my house imploded as if all the air was sucked out of it, and all the burning walls and flaming ceiling fell in on itself. Oddly, my front door remained standing and while it was charred, it wasn’t burnt.
“Yeah, that’s not working,” Camille said. I nodded. There was another explosion, much louder than the one that had occurred at Lucy’s, and debris shot out of the flaming wreckage of my house. A chunk of metal buried itself in the ground at my feet.
“Damn, my car,” I said. I’d forgotten it was parked in the garage. I checked my phone and exactly one year earlier, to the very exact minute, I was homeless because of a fire.
“What is it?” Lucy asked.
“Exactly one year ago today, I got the call that my house was on fire,” I said. “In a few hours, Jerome and I will be homeless again and it will be exactly one year since his mom passed away.”
“Oh man,” Camille said.
“It’s a hell of a thing.” I sighed and took Angel to see Jerome. He and Dad were standing on a sidewalk about nine houses up from the flaming ruins of the cul-de-sac.
“Huh, we’re homeless again. I hope this doesn’t happen every year on this day for the rest of our lives,” Jerome said to me, and he was smiling.
“Why are you smiling?” I asked.
“I know who helped Mark,” Jerome said. Jerome started the explanation about who Mark’s accomplice was as we walked back to Dad’s SUV. The house next to Lucy’s was now on fire, as was the one across the street; the houses on either side were starting to smolder and the vinyl siding was melting. Mark might not go to prison for mutilating Ariel, but he was going to go to prison for a long time for burning down my neighborhood. He would also spend the rest of his life paying restitution to my neighbors. I was going to make sure each and every person affected by the fire sues him for it. I might even encourage the insurance companies to go after him for it. On the flip side, two house fires in two years was going to make my own homeowner’s insurance astronomical.
They were bringing in multiple covens and other groups to deal with the fire. I considered offering to stay and help, but let’s face it, as much as I loved this neighborhood and my neighbors, I was probably going to be really unwelcome from this point on. I was sure I would be getting a letter asking me to sell my ruined properties and move. As Raphael backed up to turn around, my Uncle Gabriel landed near a fire truck about a third of the way down the road, probably to ensure Jophiel’s corpse wasn’t disturbed. We drove to my parents’ house. The girls, Helia, and Mom were there.
“How bad is it?” Mom asked when we walked through the door. Ariel and Aurora had no interest in us, they both immediately ran to Angel. Helia examined Angel and went to the bathroom.
“The vet is going to board Luna Sparkle and Pinkie Pie,” I told the girls. “Luna Sparkle was injured in the fire, but she’ll make a full recovery. Pinkie Pie wasn’t injured, but since I don’t have stables anymore, we worked it out that we could go see them, but the vet will make sure they are taken care of while I sort out what I’m going to do next.”
“Is Luna Sparkle okay?” Ariel asked, her eyes wide and shiny with unshed tears. Aurora was not trying to hide her grief and was openly crying.
“Luna Sparkle did get burnt, her tail caught fire and it burned her hindquarters as well as her tail. I called the vet on the drive over and he said he gave her some medicine for the burns, so she isn’t in pain and they won’t get infected. It could be six months to a year before anyone is able to ride her again, but she will be okay and you guys can still feed her, pet her, love on her, and brush her as long as you don’t get close to the burned skin. The vet told me she would probably like all of that very much while she recovers, and I assured him we’d be over tomorrow to see her.” I’d actually spent the entire ride here on the phone with the doctor and we’d worked out the details of Luna Sparkle’s recovery using both regular medicine and magic healing.
“Can we go today?” Aurora asked.
“No, honey, we can’t. Today she needs to rest, and the vet needs to take care of her. But we can go over tomorrow and spend as much time as you want.” Janet’s coven was dealing with the neighborhood fire, and Penelope’s coven would be at the vet’s this afternoon.
Later in the day, Jerome explained to an AESPCA investigator and an FBI agent how he knew who Mark’s accomplice was. He met her once at a dance recital at the girls’ school. She had the ability to shift herself to impersonate others. Like mimicry, it was an innate talent, but it took practice to master. She was a lycanthrope and a teacher at the school. Jerome gave them one of his possession protection pendants to help trace the others and his magic. He was hoping they could find the grimoire. Once they did, they would be able to get Mark and the teacher, who Ariel called Miss Coleman, for the vandalism and burglary. Finding proof they were behind the fires was another story, and I was glad it wasn’t my job to find that culprit.