HUMANS HAVE BUILT fires and shared stories of what lurked in the dark for our entire existence. If they only knew why midnight was a time to dread.
I smiled.
Midnight.
The witching hour.
My hour.
I’m the Midnight Man. I put the monsters back to sleep.
EVEN BEFORE FRANKIE Flame had been cremated alive the old mortuary and its adjoining church and graveyard had been weird. The church was haunted in locals’ eyes in the way most old buildings were—people felt the weight of its history, not spirits from the Kingdom interacting with our world. The complex was up the hill from Mort Cheval; a little city with a big appetite for the odd. Frankie Flame wasn’t my problem’s real name but it was what I called him. I liked to name my villains. Francis MacDonald had lost big betting Calgary would win the Stanley Cup. Oh, and he’d been an arsonist who specialized in insurance fraud with a side business in murder.
Legend says he jumped from the furnace and ran to the church, burning all the way and bringing it down around him. Same legend says Frankie’s spirit, still burning, now runs to escape a fate he’d already succumbed to.
When Frankie’s ghost had first appeared, it’d been no big deal. He didn’t have the power to kill. Not then, or at least, not yet. And since I didn’t have the power to summon him, Frankie had always sat on my backburner. A death on the grounds early in the morning—or late in the night, depending on your reckoning—had changed all that.
The decedent, one Todd Bickle, had been a cameraman on Ghost Walkers, a bullshit ghost hunting show. My police contact said Bickle spontaneously caught fire, and nothing could put out the flames. After thirty minutes of dousing, smothering with blankets, and Todd screaming, the fire died, as if it’d never been. The Ghost Walkers crew had obviously caught some spookier action than they’d hoped for.
Either Frankie had levelled up, or somebody had made a long distance call to the Kingdom. That meant a necromancer. Which meant it was my job. The bad guys—villains all—called themselves necromancers, called their gear necrotech. I usually called them dead. At least, I did after I was done. Only problem with killing necromancers: given their skillset they often weren’t done after they were “done.”
The first thing a necromancer does after they roll into town is take over a mortuary or funeral home. It gives them cover and access to raw materials. Next they go after their competition, whether by buying them out, or more commonly, burying them.
That’s how I joined the Fight, when necromancers killed my family.
Before I’d joined the Fight, there’d been no one to battle that evil for me. Now the Midnight Man fought for everyone else. Ever since I’d retaken my parents’ old funeral home and made it my hideout, I’d held Mort Cheval from all comers.
Tonight’s mission couldn’t have come at a worse time. I was low on gear. The last necromancer I’d dealt with, The Black Crown, had exhausted my reserves—the curse of scavenging their necrotech and not being able to make my own. I had two clips of tombstone bullets, a ball-and-chain bomb, my Hades cap, and my Grave Sight goggles. It was unlikely my Colt Model 1911s or remaining gear would do any good with a pure spirit like Frankie Flame, but I had to try.
THE CHURCH AND graveyard predated Mort Cheval’s founding and the old church was a hotspot for Mort Cheval residents. Wedding photos. Grad photos. That’s why there’s been so many Frankie sightings. People hoped to catch him in their special moment.
No one had been buried here in a long time. Grave stones, toppled by time or the teens who congregated here to drink, lay prone in the tall grass amid branches, rocks, and swarming ticks. I did a quick scan—never underestimate the willingness of late night mourners, partiers, or tourists to muck up a mission. I saw no one.
I wasn’t worried about being seen. My Hades cap kept me hidden from the living as long as I wished, providing there were shadows. Unfortunately it was the dead who worried me, not the living, and they were everywhere, and saw everything. You also never knew who they talked to. If one warned Frankie, my part-time fireman gig might be over before I could get the truck rolling.
I slipped on my Grave Sight goggles and the world turned red.
Unlike the necromancers I usually hunted, I couldn’t see into the Kingdom beyond, but my goggles kept spirits from surprising me. They also showed me where their power connected them to the Kingdom, and how I could best dispatch them.
In the penumbral grey of my Grave Sight, the old church was still whole, still ruined, still burning all at once, its three states superimposed over one another. A typical sight when the Kingdom is overlain with our world. Shades stood and wept all along the cracked causeway leading into the old church’s walls. A phantom bell swung in a phantom tower, but only the roaming spirits could hear it sound.
The crematorium was where I needed to go. It remained mostly intact; a conical roof clad in cedar shakes topped octagonal walls. Three rectangular windows on each facing had long ago lost their glass. Broad steps—the width of its facings—lead to an arched double door entrance. Trees had infiltrated the stairs and entrance; slender trunks and creeping ivy formed natural bars over the doors. Hints of landscaping survived, but wildness had dulled those edges.
I pushed through the foliage and shoved at the doors. Rusted hinges protested. If anyone waited for me, they’d hear me coming.
I trailed my hands over the walls, taking in the graffiti and scratches, scoring the soot left behind from Frankie’s last trip out of the furnace. With my Grave Sight goggles on, I saw that old fire, fresh as if it still burned. I could almost feel its heat. Time to find whoever’d taken Frankie Flame from light show to murder show.
It didn’t take me long, the chanting drew me in. Even if I wasn’t in the know, I would’ve suspected him for a necromancer. He looked like your typical bugeater: dressed all in black with greasy hair; long fingernails on digits encrusted with rings. Although I supposed I couldn’t point fingers when it came to the “none more black” sartorial choices, considering my head-to-toe black leather and the Jolly Roger emblazoned on my Hades cap.
“Francis MacDonald, come forth and burn again,” a man’s voice, raspy from too-enthusiastically calling on the dark powers, said. “Francis MacDonald, come forth and burn again.”
Whatever the necromancer’s plan to raise Frankie Flame’s spirit, I guessed each repetition of Frankie’s true name brought him closer to success.
Braziers burned with coals and he upended something—no doubt an unpleasant something—into the last one remaining unlit. The braziers ringed a rectangular hole in the chamber’s centre. That hole, once the elevator to take bodies to the fire, was my ticket to the furnace room—to Frankie Flame—assuming this chucklehead didn’t kill me first.
“Howdy,” I said, firing my Colt.
Tombstone bullets kill dead things deader. Usually. Tonight, the bullet pinged off an invisible ward my Grave Sight goggles couldn’t penetrate.
The bugeater whipped around, and I added sallow skin to his necromancer’s ID package. He had a number of magical geegaws, but I couldn’t tell which had stopped my bullet. His Grave Sight gave his sunken eyes a milky corpselike cast as he probed me for any exploitable weakness.
If I got too close, he’d use his death magic to end me. There was no telling how close was too close with thanatomancy, either. Effective range varied necromancer to necromancer. As did strength of effect. Maybe he could only make old wounds—sore knees, dislocated shoulders, a thousand aches and pains, distract me. Maybe he could stop my heart. Give me a stroke.
The necromancer smiled. Evidently he’d seen something. I put my back to the wall. I saw something too. Him. In my sights. I had twenty-five more rounds. And if both clips couldn’t break his wards? I’d dust off my knucks. Few necromancers liked fisticuffs. That’s what they had meat puppets for. We circled the chamber.
He had a Zippo in his hand. One brazier unlit.
He smiled again.
Damn. He wasn’t trying to kill me. He wanted to stall me. To call and bind Frankie. He wanted to watch me burn.
“Drop your gun,” he said. “It’ll have no effect on me.”
“Obviously, you don’t know who I am.”
He snorted. “You’re a deluded fool who thinks he’s a hero—a paragon. A fool who believes he can stop the inevitable by dressing in a ridiculous costume.”
Okay, he did know who I was, and he was being purposefully hurtful. Costume. My uniform was iconic.
“If you knew who I was,” he said, smirking, “you’d run screaming.”
I shrugged. “I may not know you yet, but I’ll happily name you after I kill you.”
I fired at his face. He flinched despite his protections. I leapt over the hole in the floor. The necromancer started and backpeddled. Right into the wall. Nowhere to go. I punched him in the nose. Hitting him was like hitting steel. Slammed his head into the stone. He didn’t drop. His ward—a cloak pin—blazed in my Grave Sight. I snatched it and elbowed him in the temple. This time he slumped, groaning.
One more tombstone bullet and a red flower bloomed on his throat. Blood streamed as he gurgled and gasped. The lighter and something smaller, also metal, tumbled out of his hand to clink and clatter over the floor.
“Who’s the deluded fool now?”
He didn’t answer, but there was someone else who might. Life pulsed into view through my goggles: someone alive—and hiding—down the entrance hall. An innocent who’d followed me in, or an apprentice?
“You may as well come out,” I called, turning on the flaring lights in my jacket’s double M logo. “I see you.”
Shuffling, cautious steps inched closer. I recognized her despite the arm held over her eyes. She’d been the one in the film crew with the blue hair. Jennifer . . . something.
I turned off my lights so she could see me and demanded, “What are you doing here, Jennifer?”
She jumped at the mention of her name. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Fingers knotted behind her head, Jennifer’s eyes drifted from the fallen necromancer to me. “Did you kill him?”
“I sure hope so.”
“He . . . he was in the crew. Our new PA.” She took a step back. I shook my head and she froze.
“He’s a necromancer. Was. The one who killed Todd Bickle.”
I knew how nuts my explanation sounded. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to give one. I didn’t care how I sounded to civilians. Not anymore. Only the Fight mattered.
“Todd burned to death. An accident. A terrible accident.” Her voice said she didn’t believe that last part. Ghosts were one thing, but necromancers were obviously a bridge too far. “Electrical short in his camera.”
I holstered my Colt and gestured at the necromancer. “An arsonist’s ghost this creep stirred up caused the fire.”
“And that’s why you’re dressed like a superhero?”
Close enough. I also would’ve accepted black mask or vigilante. Comic heroes were my inspiration. Their black and white goodness, their purity, kept me going when I’d lost my parents to real evil. An origin story I shared with my inspirations.
I tapped my logo. “I’m the Midnight Man.”
Oddly, she didn’t find me crazy. Maybe she’d heard of me. Or, considering what she did for a living, she saw a new reality show in the making.
“What’s with the deal with the Jolly Roger?”
“To scare the bad guys.”
She furrowed her brow. “You fight ghosts and necromancers. Why would they fear skulls and bones?”
“It took them time to get the point.”
“Which is?”
“Death comes for everyone. Even the undead.”
And those who raise them. Especially for them.
“I wanted to see for myself,” she said, “the place where Todd died.”
She had spunk, but she was also ignorant of the Kingdom and ghosts in general—let alone Frankie Flame. There’s no hell. No heaven. Only aimlessly wandering the Kingdom until something worse ate your spirit. I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Not yet, anyway.
“We stopped the necromancer. We figure out how he planned to wake Frankie Flame and the deaths should stop.”
“Frankie Flame?”
“My name for Francis MacDonald. The arsonist’s ghost.” I shrugged. “I name my villains.”
“Villains.” She rolled her eyes. “And if the deaths don’t stop?”
“I stop him too.”
I almost didn’t hear the flick of a lighter being ignited, didn’t smell the butane, or see the small guttering flame as the Zippo arced toward the unlit brazier. The brazier ignited the instant the lighter landed. That couldn’t be good.
“Francis MacDonald come forth and do my bidding. Francis MacDonald come forth and burn again,” the necromancer rasped, smirking, as he stood. My bullet oozed from his body. “I’ve three lives left, Midnight Man.”
I hate necromancers.
But his boast also gave me his name. Triple Tombstone.
I couldn’t wait to carve all three of his markers. Later.
Triple Tombstone held a clenched fist toward Jennifer and she doubled over in pain. “Release her.”
“No.” He laughed and held a knife to her throat for added insurance.
I might’ve been able to tag him, but I couldn’t count on it. And if he wasn’t lying, tagging him might not do any damned good.
There was a racket from below as the furnace started. Frankie was awake.
We did our little dance, me trying to get a shot off, him hiding behind Jennifer. He’d kill her, I knew. One way or another. But if his boast was true, and I shot through her to kill him, he wouldn’t be done, and she’d be dead for nothing.
Besides, I wore the double Ms to kill necromancers, not add to their body pile.
Triple Tombstone glanced downward. Something had caught his eye. My chance. I had a shot but Jennifer took the option from my hands. She snapped her head into bugeater’s nose. He shrieked and she shoved him away, diving to the side. I fired but I couldn’t tell if I’d hit him.
Frankie Flame stirred and I had a civilian running around. Now that Frankie was crackling, in the next thirty minutes one of us would die.
I ran toward the exit, barely stopped before Triple Tombstone’s ward trap would’ve fried me. He gambolled over the field toward the graveyard. I didn’t follow. I couldn’t. Tricky creep made a ward passable from the outside. Anyone who came looking for Frankie tonight would’ve been stuck, same as me. My Grave Sight goggles showed me the wards, but I couldn’t unthread them. I had to laugh. I could see the exit, but the invisible barrier was solid real oak.
We were locked in. My bullets weren’t.
I fired. Triple Tombstone fell. I watched for him to get up. When he did, I shot him. The third time he tried to stand, he didn’t rise again.
Maybe he’d actually told the truth about his three lives. If he hadn’t been such a braggart, he might’ve left here with two in the bank and a score to settle.
“Mister . . . Midnight?” Jennifer said.
“Midnight Man,” I corrected.
“Is he dead?” Her voice quavered at the question.
“I think so.” Unfortunately, if I watched his corpse until satisfied, we’d join him. Trust a necromancer to make me waste my life to confirm their death.
Jennifer wiped sweat from her brow. “I don’t feel good.”
When she brushed her hand aside, I saw a ring. That’s what Triple Tombstone had dropped with the lighter. Frankie Flame’s ring. Thick gold band. Fire opal centrepiece. Three rubies on either side. It’d been Frankie’s pinkie ring. Jennifer wore it on her thumb. His lucky charm, except the charm—or his luck—wore off. On the plus side, now I at least knew which of us would die first.
“Where’d you get that?” I demanded.
“I found it. After I hit the necromancer.”
“You shouldn’t have put it on.”
Her face turned ashen. “Why?”
“Cause it’ll burn you alive.”
“Like Todd.”
“Yes.”
She jerked at the ring and screamed as if already aflame. Jennifer hit the ground with a thud; an ash cloud billowed.
I knelt at her side. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“You’ll stop him? Right?” She held out her hand. “Stop this?”
“Yes.” I nodded, pulling her to her feet. What I didn’t say: Not likely before you die.
UNDER GRAVE SIGHT ash cloaked Jennifer like a shroud. Embers glowed underneath her skin, and with every second they brightened. I asked, “How do you feel?”
“Terrible,” she croaked, coughing. “My head pounds. My body aches. I can barely catch my breath.”
“I don’t blame you.”
She regarded Frankie’s ring. A flash reflected in her eyes. Fire. Smoke. Pain. Knowledge. “I don’t remember putting it on. I remember . . . They burned him alive. Alive. Oh God.” She looked at me. “That’s waiting for me, isn’t it?”
No point sugar-coating it. “If you live through this, you might be able to control that fire.”
“Then what?”
I shrugged. “Join the Fight? Keep dead things in the ground?”
She considered and nodded. It was hope. A mad hope. The belief she could fight against what waited in the night. I knew the look. I saw it in the mirror.
“I’ll need a name.”
I loved naming duty. Her name was Jennifer. She had blue hair. “How’s ‘Blue Jay?’”
She pulled a face and shook her head for emphasis. “Ugh. That’s terrible.” After a moment, she murmured, “Acetylene.”
I didn’t like “Acetylene” any better than she’d liked “Blue Jay,” but I supposed it was her name to bear. “You do you.”
TRIPLE TOMBSTONE’S ZIPPO still burned in the final brazier, unharmed, arcane runes blazing blue against the orange and yellow flame. A dangerous trinket in anyone’s hands except mine. The Zippo or the ring had woken Frankie; they might put him back to sleep. I kicked over the brazier and spread the coals with my boots. No fires died.
I snatched the lighter. Its heat seared my hand through my leather glove; I snapped it shut and the fires flickered, as if I’d denied them air, but didn’t die. I tucked the lighter into my belt and affixed Triple Tombstone’s cloak pin to my coat.
“What now?” Acetylene asked.
I pointed to the hole in the floor’s centre. “Down we go.”
THE FIRES IN the basement were no longer phantom flames reflecting the Kingdom. No longer visible only through Grave Sight. They were real. And growing. The furnace room floor was a twelve-foot drop, but only seven or eight to the casket table. I lowered myself, dropped the final span and hoped my weight wouldn’t collapse the table. It creaked, holding.
I gestured for Acetylene to follow. When we were both in the crematorium’s bowels, I breathed easier. Acetylene couldn’t stop coughing. I jumped off the table and ash puffed around me. The pillars supporting the crematorium tower were caked in it. Every crack in the building’s foundation glowed like hot embers; tongues of flame crept, slithering vines, hunting new fuel. Litter snapped with ignition and new fires spawned in every corner.
I drew my Colt, though I didn’t know what to shoot at.
“Is that a magic gun? Can it kill ghosts?”
It was, and it could. Sort of.
“Can I have one?”
Not the reaction I’d expected. And an intriguing one. She was ready to join the Fight. Another shooter would be handy, but I didn’t trust strangers’ trigger discipline. There’s no such thing as a flesh wound with tombstone bullets. “No.”
When Acetylene’s time was up, Frankie Flame would make sure she took me with her too. His fires would cross over from the Kingdom and bring the crematorium down around us. And then he’d be free to return to his old business.
I could’ve found a way out. There’s always a way out if you’ll pay the price. The price for tonight’s freedom: let Acetylene burn. Deal with Frankie Flame and Triple Tombstone later. A choice which would’ve made me the same as the necromancer who’d killed my parents. I’ve made tough calls, bad calls, and sketchy calls, this one was easy.
The furnace’s rumble took on a human cast, the groan of an old man who’d sat too long, and yet must rise. The groan changed pitch, becoming a scream. Acetylene covered her ears, shaking her head, as if the sound was something beyond the physical realm.
Frankie was fire in a man’s shape; his eyes were as blue as Acetylene’s hair, and his body mimicked a once-powerful build. His flicker and glow showed he ostensibly wore the clothes Frankie had died in—a power suit, complete with a fiery tie. When he saw us, he screamed again. Fire shot from his body to fill the chamber.
My clothes frayed and smoked, but the leather held, and Triple Tombstone’s lighter and pin protected me from burning as the heat in the crematorium grew unbearable. Frankie’s ring protected Acetylene—as it had Frankie in life—and would until he killed her or took it back, but no trinket would keep us safe forever. Sweat pooled on my back and beaded from my scalp, streaming from my Hades cap and into my eyes, stinging.
“My ring,” Frankie snarled. “Give it to me.”
“Do not do that,” I yelled over the crackle of flames.
“Yeah,” Acetylene said. Flames gathered around her arms and she hurled them at Frankie. “No chance.”
The furnace fire snapped, cracked, and roared Frankie’s displeasure. Any trace of Frankie would’ve been long burned to ash, but the furnace was a direct conduit to the Kingdom and Frankie’s rage. If I jumped in and survived the trip, I’d have a path to where the monsters came from.
“Always outnumbered, never outgunned,” that’s my motto. I wasn’t ready to make that jump today. Throwing my life away for revenge meant Acetylene would die and Frankie would burn Mort Cheval to its bones. The Fight—Acetylene’s life, and every life in the city—outweighed my own desires. Snuff Frankie. That’s the job.
Binding his spirit with a ball-and-chain bomb probably wouldn’t work. Frankie had no meat to be locked into. Normally when you kill the necromancer you don’t need to worry about summoned things. They run back to the Kingdom or they go poof but Frankie was just warming up.
Tombstone bullets wouldn’t stop him. I fired anyway. Frankie’s heat envelope was so intense, it cracked my granite bullets, turning them into birdshot before they reached his “body.”
He screamed though; while my shots didn’t end his manifestation, they hurt him. I was an irritant. Pissing at an inferno. Assuming the bullets’ enchantment survived their breaking, they might slow him down. Or they might make him really irritated. Considering he already wanted to burn me alive, I wasn’t sure I wanted Frankie Flame angry.
I shot again.
Since I’d been lucky with the bullets, I tried a ball-and-chain bomb. Its eggshell-thin casing burst, releasing a puff of silver dust. The dust sparkled as it coated Frankie’s body. Now he roared. Grave Sight showed me why: the bombs had worked, if not as expected. Normally ball-and-chain bombs locked a spirit in whatever meat it’d possessed and my bullets sent it back to the Kingdom. My bombs had severed the connection between Frankie and the Kingdom. When his fuel extinguished, he’d be snuffed.
Unfortunately, we were currently standing among his fuel, and I doubted he’d be inclined to let us leave.
He slapped me across the chest with a heated backhand that was palpable for all he was not. I reeled backward from the impact, skidded into a burning trash pile, and rolled away trying to keep the flame from igniting my uniform.
“My ring!” he roared, burning brighter, growing larger.
I needed another tactic.
“Francis,” I said. He turned back to me. His name had been used to call him. It might put him back to sleep. “Francis MacDonald.”
He advanced, orange flames going white. The echo of his screams still remembered his name, but no one in that much pain couldn’t easily find slumber. Not without more help than I knew how to give.
I gripped Triple Tombstone’s lighter before me. “Francis MacDonald, rest again in your ashes. Burn no more.”
He wavered, before turning to Acetylene and advancing on my nascent sidekick.
She scrambled away from him, creating a fiery wall to obscure her retreat. A fast learner. I liked that. I gave her cover, snapping off a rapid succession of tombstone bullets, interposing myself between them. Both furnace and Flame roared.
There had to be a way. Acetylene’s ring. Frankie’s name. The lighter. We had the means. Somewhere. I caught a wild-eyed look from Acetylene in my peripheral vision. Frankie had found her.
I snapped open the lighter, flicked it on. The fires seemed drawn to it. Frankie turned to me as I repeated his name. I snapped the lighter shut. Smaller pockets of fire died.
“I have an idea,” I said.
Acetylene hurled a ball of white hot flame at Frankie. Fire with Fire. “I hope it’s a good one.”
“Get upstairs.”
I hurled another ball-and-chain bomb, holstered my Colt, and cupped my hands for Acetylene. She ran to me, setting her foot in my locked fingers. I alley-ooped her out of the basement as the crematorium crumbled in on itself. We needed the ring and lighter both, working in concert to wake, or snuff Frankie. And since Acetylene couldn’t take off the ring . . . I’d die quick and ugly without the lighter’s protection. Triple Tombstone’s cloak pin may work against fire as well as impacts, but I couldn’t be sure. Still, no choice at all.
Her life or mine.
I hoped she’d take up the Fight when I was gone. I only wished I had time to show her the hideout. And my car. Especially the car.
In the distance, sirens cut through the night. I couldn’t count on the Mort Cheval fire department to free us.
I held up the lighter. “Take it!”
I wouldn’t last long without it. But we didn’t have long left anyway. Acetylene was sharp. She’d figure it out. I tossed it to her and the moment the lighter left my hand, the heat in the furnace room dropped me to my knees. Soon the smoke would suffocate me. My gloves caught fire.
Over the flames, I heard the snap of a Zippo opening; the rasp of striker over flint. Despite the smoke, burning butane filled my nostrils. Frankie ignored me. I had nothing he wanted.
A fiery ladder formed with a gesture from Frankie, and he ascended like a risen god. One plus: he dragged the heat and smoke with him. I could almost breathe. I rolled, beating out the flames that’d caught on my leathers. I’d live long enough to deconstruct the mess I’d made tonight.
The Zippo clanked shut and Acetylene yelled, “Francis MacDonald. Rest again in your ashes and burn no more.”
Frankie flickered and his fire dimmed.
Acetylene repeated her chant. Again. Again. Once for each overturned brazier. With each repetition, Frankie’s fire guttered as his brightness faded. With the last, his ladder collapsed and he fell back into the furnace room.
His defiance and raging roars became a slow hiss; a whining keen as his form lost coherence. His afterlife had been pain, but it’d been all he’d had. Fire’s alive in a way. It needs to breathe. It can grow. Be nurtured. And it can die. Nothing remained of his flame body except a shimmering heat mirage, until that, too, was gone. Peace at last. Even if he hadn’t deserved it.
“Goodbye, Frankie.”
Despite Frankie’s death, the natural fires still burned. My uniform had taken the brunt of the damage, but I’d definitely need to replace my kit. First, I had to get out.
Acetylene asked, “Midnight Man? You alive?”
“Toasted, but not toast,” I called back.
She sighed with relief. “You look terrible.”
“I’ve been worse.”
I hauled myself from the furnace room and walked Acetylene out of the now ruined crematorium. Fortunately for us, the door where Triple Tombstone had set his wards had burned up—we were free to leave, and wouldn’t have to answer questions from the Mort Cheval Fire Department.
“What if he comes back?” Acetylene asked, fingering Frankie’s—now her—ring.
“We’ll be here,” I said. “Midnight Man and Acetylene.”
Outside, I saw no sign of Triple Tombstone’s body. Only blood in the grass. He’d lied about how many lives he had in the bank. No surprise there. I turned to Acetylene. “We have another fire to put out. Ready to join the Fight?”