East

East | Chapter 14

Chapter 14

"TELL ME AGAIN WHERE YOU found him."

"Right in the middle of the road," Callia says. "Ash saw him first."

Andrew exhales shakily. "They just left him there, like so much trash."

I touch him on the shoulder, gently. He doesn't look up from the table.

"Andrew," the professor says. "If you need to..."

"No." He sits up immediately. "No. I want to know who did this to him. I want to know what happened."

"We'll figure it out," I say determinedly.

"We already know that it must have been a lighter," Callia begins. "The orange dust—only one of us would left residue like that."

"Orange dust?" Dimly I remember the bits of colour that I'd seen on his body, interspersed with dirt and leaves and ash and... Burnt skin. "That wasn't just... From the soil, or something?"

Parker shakes his head. "No. When we use our fires to burn an object—or, in this case, a person—" He scowls in disgust. "—it always leaves a residue. Burning like that takes a lot of effort, you see."

"How long has the body been there?" Ash asks suddenly. He's been silent ever since we returned to the house.

"More than a day. Seventy-two hours at most," the Professor says. "I will take another look at him, but there were some signs that he had been dragged out to the road, so I would guess that that wasn't where he was killed."

"So it could've been done anywhere?" Callia asks. "He's been missing for a month, hasn't he?"

"Yeah, but they found his car on Yew Street, and said it'd only been there a few days," Andrew says grimly. "That's barely on the fringes of Edgecliff."

"Maybe the murderer was from there."

"There are no more fireborn in Edgecliff," says Ash.

I frown at this, and sit up a little. "I used to see sparks," I remember. "Three years ago, around early December. And then again, just a few weeks back, just before I came here. There were lights in the woods."

"What colour?" Ian asks.

I have to think about it. "Yellow, I think... There was some red the first time, too, though..."

"It could be totally unrelated," he points out. "Three years is a long time."

"It may have been me or Idris," Ash says, not looking at me. "This month, however... That should not have been my fire."

Everyone around the table seems to sigh at the same time. I look around at them, feeling lost.

Callia sits back. "So, a wildfire. An orange."

"Wildfires are rogue fireborn," the professor explains for my benefit. "There aren't very many of them, as you might expect; we are a small percentage of the population and most of us stick close to our family, move in small circles of friends who accept our paranormal natures. Most wildfires are friendly, albeit unpredictable. But some..."

"Some are rogue," Ash says, "simply because they have a vendetta against the rest of the fireborn. Or against humans."

"Well, that explains everything!" Andrew snaps his fingers, bits of orange flaring. "Russell's parents were related to my dad only through marriage; he doesn't have a single fiery cell in his body. There's no conspiracy theory here. Whoever killed him probably tried to dump him nearer to the woods, but an animal dragged him out on the road or whatever."