Dell had expected to come downstairs the next morning to find his belongings ransacked, his fridge emptied, and the arsonist long gone. The couch was empty, as he'd predicted, or at least mostly. The dog was sprawled on the cushions, licking at an empty pie tin.
When he found the arsonist was sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over something, it was kind of a shock. More than kind of. Her gas mask was still in place, though the gloves had been discarded, lying in a rumpled mess nearby. Just within reach sat an empty ceramic bowl. A whole mess of swiped paper was spread out on the table, covered in tiny sketches and notes. In her right hand she held a pencil, moving it carefully and urgently, and in her left she clutched a Zippo lighter that she flicked on and off, on and off, on and off.
It was like he'd found a wild animal in his kitchen. For the first few seconds he stood stock-still, even though her back was to him. When she did nothing but keep writing, he eased his way toward the fridge. He couldn't help glancing over her shoulder to see the chickenscratch she was making, and to his surprise found the papers covered in sketches, diagrams of something mechanical. He couldn't identify it, couldn't even begin to parse the shaky writing.
He was so absorbed in trying to decipher the nonsense that when she slammed the pencil down with a bang and a wild, frustrated noise, he flinched a lot worse than he might have otherwise. He remembered himself and stepped back a ways as she snatched up some of the pages, crumpled them, and shoved them into the bowl. A snap of metal and a flare from the Zippo later, the paper was burning. Dell raised an eyebrow.
She still hadn't noticed him. Now she was staring intently at the blazing paper. As he watched, she slouched slowly forward onto the table, chin resting on folded arms.
"That ain't no way to treat blueprints," he observed, and she jumped so hard she banged her knee on the table. The lighter leapt out of her hand and tailspun across the linoleum, stopping only when it thumped against his bare foot. She barked something, some explosive, angry curse, when he knelt to pick it up.
It was scuffed, dented, warm from her touch. Rust and age had turned its casing the color of a Martian landscape. He turned it over in his hand, and found etched lines, worn smooth from overhandling. Psalms 23, it said, or used to say. Someone (the arsonist?) had scratched at the numbers until they more closely read 22:1. Bible verses. Huh. Not what he'd expected to find.
The chair made a godawful shriek as it was scraped backwards, the arsonist bolting to her feet. "Give it back!" she snapped. Her muffled voice carried thunder.
"I will, I will," he said, as placating as he could, closing the distance between them to return it. She ripped it from his outstretched hand, and then dropped down into the chair again, hunching over it like it was some precious jewel.
"Sorry," Dell said after a while, when she did nothing more. "Didn't mean to startle you none."
"Go away," she said petulantly.
"Pardon me, Smoky, but this does happen to be my house."
That silenced her again. He sighed, and went back to getting his breakfast. The minutes passed, and only the soft crackle of burning paper could be heard. The arsonist had pocketed the lighter and pulled the bowl closer to her, gazing into it as if in a trance.
He got no more out of her after that, and she gathered up her things and vanished outside shortly after. For his part he went and did what he could to fix Jackson's milking machine, and got Belle's horn-glow down to something subtler. When he came back, no arsonist. There was neither hide nor hair of her the day after that, nor the next. On the fourth day, though, he came in from a trip to the store to find her sleeping fitfully on his couch. An emptied box of crackers and the remains of his stores of rock candy lay in a mess on the wood floor. In the morning, he found his garbage barrels thick with smoke, their contents ash. It rapidly became the same every night after, every banana peel or newspaper or molding leftover reduced to soot. But that was why the bins were metal, he supposed, so things could be burned in them.
The day after that he heard about the fire. A blaze had taken out most of Jackson's shed, though it had been caught in time to spread no further. "When'd this happen?" Dell asked him over the phone that evening, eyeing the sleeping vagrant that had appeared on his couch yet again. The dog was tucked up in a tight circle by her feet.
"Oh, two days ago or like."
"Huh. What d'ya think caused it?" His guest twitched in her sleep. "Arson, maybe?"
"Nah, figure one a' the boys left a cig'rette by mistake. The Talbots lost their whole barn that way a few years back, 'member that?"
"Sure I do," Dell said, and that was all.
The arsonist, he soon realized, was similar to a stray cat—and he'd done the mistake of feeding her. Now she hung around, silent and strange, a phantom in a black jacket with torn-up shoes and a gas mask. They spoke little after that first day; once she asked him if he had any cigarettes, and when he said no she'd drawn up into herself and gone out onto the porch to sulk. She'd stood leaning against the railing all night, the only sign of life her compulsive on-off-on-off-on of the Zippo. It wasn't until well past dark that she'd slouched back inside without so much as a how-do-you-do and flung herself down onto the couch, which had grown muddy and rumpled with her presence. And because he was a considerate man, Dell turned off the lamp, put down the book he'd been reading and went upstairs.
He'd stormed down again not three hours later, gun in hand and dog behind, summoned by a thump and an unearthly shriek. But he only found the arsonist, curled into a knot on the floor and shuddering. "I get nightmares," she'd snarled when he asked what happened, surprising him by answering at all. "It's none of your fucking business. Leave me alone."
Tired, frustrated, he'd returned to bed. He didn't sleep. Instead he sat up, thinking. The more he considered what he was doing, the more foolish it seemed. He was harboring a self-admitted arsonist, which dangerous enough in itself. He'd hidden his matches right quick after he discovered she'd decided to stick around. And that wasn't even giving due consideration to the fact that she seemed to have more than a handful of things wrong upstairs, or that her attitude was nastier than a cottonmouth's.
Dell glanced at the shotgun in the corner, where he'd returned it to rest. A sigh escaped him, unbidden. He couldn't very well have left the arsonist where she was. Running her off likely would have meant it would be his neighbors' properties going up in smoke—Jackson would have lost a lot more than his barn. He didn't trust Bee Cave's sheriff enough to turn her in; he'd not trusted that man since he'd stayed quiet during the lynching of Adam Calliper. And he'd really not been too fond of the idea of shooting her. That left him with very few options.
So here he was, letting a mad vagrant use his couch. That was Southern hospitality for you.
This carried on. He was dragged from sleep in the middle of the night no less than twice more, and she was always gone in the morning. But when he came down the stairs at 6 AM some time the next week, she was both awake and present. The dog sat at her feet. He could see her watching him from the empty lens.
Dell paused on the bottom step, taking this new turn of events in. "G'morning," he said eventually. "Sleep well?"
"Where is it?" she answered, muted through the mask.
He blinked at her. She made an aggravated gesture. "My flamethrower," she said. "I know you took it. Where the fuck is it?"
"Thought you said it was broke."
Venom oozed from her one visible eye, nigh-tangible. "It's mine."
Sighing, he made his way to his armchair. It was too early for this. "And what do you plan on doin' with it if you get your hands on it?" Predictably, he got no reply. He shook his head, leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees. "Missy, look. Let's start over. Name's Conagher. Dell Conagher. Pleasure meetin' ya." He held out a hand. "You got a name?"
"No."
"You got somethin' I can address you by, then?"
"No." Dell let his hand drop and thanked God for his endless patience. "Where is it?"
He sighed again. "It's safe. I ain't done no harm to it."
"It's in that garage, isn't it?" she pushed. "I've seen you go in there. The door's always locked."
Dell's voice grew stern. "And it's locked for a reason. You go bustin' in there, you're in for a world of trouble." When she rolled her lone eye at him, he felt his face harden at once. "I am serious, ma'am."
"That's my property!" she snapped. "You stole it. You don't want me breaking in, you give it back, I won't have to."
"You said yourself what you intended to do with it. I did what I did out of self-defense."
Her silence was thick as smog with smoldering fury. Dell shook his head, rubbed sleep from his eyes. "Look. I don't like to be this way, but what you got there—it's dangerous, it's a weapon. It's—"
"It's called Shark," she interrupted, sounding exasperated. He stopped short, and to his surprise found he could read a dawning shock and a measure of horror on what little of her face he could see.
"…Shark?"
"It. Nothing."
He put his head a little to one side, incredulous. "Shark the flamethrower."
She stood up, quick as a whip, and stormed out of the room. He did not see her again that day.
Time passed. The arsonist did not confront him a second time, and Dell's life began to go back to normal. Today he was in the garage. Finally. Having a wildcard like the arsonist around made him nervous about leaving his house unattended, which in turn meant his machines suffered. And this last damn project of his was fixing to make him blow a gasket anyway. He'd not got a chance to really sit down and get oil on his fingers in nearly a week, and frankly, going that long without brandishing a wrench at something disrupted his sleep.
Soft morning light filtered down through the garage's high, reinforced windows. It sifted through dust motes and gilded whatever it touched. It stopped just short of lighting up most of the tarp-covered lumps stowed away in every nook and cranny, but reached over the scuffed cement floor to glance off shelves and assortments of tools and spare parts and seep into the cracks of whatever it could find.
One of the things it found was a stout little gunmetal gray machine in the middle of the building, propped up on four sturdy legs. On top of the legs sat a squat cylinder, with a rectangular barrel pointing in front of it. Its beeping, regular and quiet, filled the still air.
Dell studied it from where he leaned against one of the half-dozen workbenches lined up against the walls. Smudges of fresh grease already coated his work-clothes (overalls, tool belt, goggles and hardhat). Next to him on the bench was a whole collection of paper: blueprints pinned to the wood, drafts and pencils everywhere, and on top of these sat a mess of crumpled-up wads, in either red or blue.
The machine beeped, and Dell shook his head at it. "Now just you wait," he told it, picking out one of the blue paper balls from the lot. With an easy underhand, he tossed it down in front of the machine. It beeped again, but nothing happened.
He nodded, and then pitched it a red one. The paper bounced off the ground and ricocheted off a crate, rolling to a stop just a foot in front of the machine. The machine beeped twice, but otherwise did nothing.
"Dagnabbit," hissed Dell softly. He hefted a wrench out of his tool belt and crossed to where the machine stood in the sunlight, kneeling. "I'll be darned if you ain't given me more trouble than the other two, scamp," he said to himself, quiet, checking the machine over as carefully as he might examine a horse.
When the crash came outside the window, he'd barely gotten the thing to the bench to dismantle it. He dropped the wrench, startled, and then cursed. Picking it up again, he stormed outside.
"Dog!" he roared, rounding the corner of the garage with the wrench brandished. "I done told you to git out of them damned barrels for the last—"
What greeted him was not the German shepherd, having narrowly avoided death by falling junk once again. The dog had at some point gotten it in its head that something wonderful must be hidden in the scrap Dell kept on one side of the building—there was simply too much of it to keep in the garage. Instead he found a dark lump slumped awkwardly over an upturned barrel, half-covered by the splintered remains of a busted crate. Pieces of metal pooled around it like jacks, both rusted and new, sharp and dull.
He stared at this new witchery for what seemed like a long time before it moved ever so little, giving a long, muffled groan. The arsonist, he realized. He relaxed, and tucked the wrench away in a back pocket. "Now what in the heck do you think you're doin'…" he sighed to himself, going forward.
Very slowly, she sat up. Stripped screws and broken wood slid off her to fall to the ground. She swayed, touching a hand to her unhooded (for once) head. Her fingers came away red, and she gazed at them stupidly. By the time Dell reached her and knelt by her side, the blood was running freely. "Don't," she said, the moment she noticed him.
"I won't do nothin' without askin', firecracker," he promised. "You remember where you are?"
"What?" she got out, thickly.
"You just knocked your head somethin' fierce. Might be a concussion. Can I see it?"
Surprisingly, she let him. Gingerly he investigated the wet mess of greasy, matted hair with his gloved hand, still talking to her. "How you feelin'?"
"Hurts."
"That'll happen."
The strap of her mask was getting in the way, already slick with red. Looking at where she'd fallen, he found more blood on the metal lip of the barrel she'd landed on. The cut itself seemed shallow, at least. He frowned. "Bleedin' real bad, but head wounds'll do that. Don't look serious otherwise, just gone and knocked it good. I ain't no doctor, though. Can you stand?" he asked, offering her his unbloodied hand.
"Don't touch me," the arsonist said. She tried to stand, reeled back a step, and fell right back down.
Dell said, "You're bein' plain stubborn, missy. You remember who I am?"
She groaned, covering her face. "Short bald jackass with a shotgun."
A crooked grin drew itself across his face. "That's right. Now I do believe you're going to want a bandage for that. I can help you, but you got to have a little trust in me here."
A withering silence fell over her. It grew worse and worse the longer she stubbornly ignored his hand. Finally he dropped it, and looked heavenward for a moment, thinking. Fine. He'd take the direct route.
He picked her up. She about blew out his eardrum with the squawk she made as he hefted her into a fireman's carry, but that was more or less all the fight she had in her, thank God. Dell trucked her all the way back to his kitchen and deposited her as gently as he could into the table's lone chair. She said something that manifested only as a series of mmphs, and slouched forward onto the table.
Trundling off, he went in search of all the things he'd found wise to keep around, living a good hour's drive from the nearest sawbones. Gauze, antiseptic, painkillers, cup of water. Needle and thread, though he didn't think it'd probably come to that.
Tools in hand, he returned to find she had gotten her lighter out. For just a moment, he stood in the doorway, watching. On and off. On and off. She snapped it shut and rubbed her bloodied fingers against it, leaving dark smears on its brassy surface.
He stepped forward, and the floor creaked under him. She tensed and vanished the Zippo back into her oversized jacket, and in turn, he pretended not to have noticed. Setting the supplies on the table, he pulled his goggles up to his forehead and checked her wound again. "All right. Shouldn't be a problem, but I'm gonna have to ask you to take that mask of yours off."
Automatically, she raised her hand and flipped him off. He rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't be askin' if it weren't important. The strap's in the way. That blood's gonna get stuck under it an' that won't be pleasant for nobody, it's gotta come off."
"Then let me do it," she growled. "I'm not stupid, I can take care of myself." She reached out for the gauze as she said it, groping across the table. Instead, her hand smacked into the cup of water, knocking it over entirely. She stared at it mutely, then started off into another stream of muffled cursing. Staggering upright, she tried to seize the gauze from the table and succeeded this time, though she lost her footing and knocked the chair hard enough to topple it. She nearly followed. When Dell put out his hand to steady her she smacked it aside, storming off to the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her, and he heard the lock click.
So much for the rest of what he'd gotten out. After a few seconds he sighed, and went to fill up the spilt cup with more water, clean up the mess.
A few minutes later, the door unlocked, and she emerged. The bare minimum of gauze required was wrapped sloppily around her head, secure beneath the straps of the mask. She pitched the roll of cloth at him, and he caught it, easy. It found a home on the table, and he scooped up the painkillers. "Here, firebug," he started, picking out two, "take these an'—"
Dell never saw it coming. His head snapped sideways when the arsonist hauled back and slugged him square in the jaw. He crashed into the table, pills clattering to the floor. Iron flooded his mouth, pain flooded his nerves. First shock and then a red burst of anger jolted through him.
"What in the hell," he began, holding his jaw and staring at her. His voice ratcheted up in anger with every word. "What in the blue hell do you think you're damn well doing?!"
The arsonist was staring at her own fist, looking baffled. "I," she began, falteringly. "I don't know." She dropped her hand, looking up at him. The sheer bewilderment in that lone eye was astonishing, and her voice was thick with confusion. "I don't know." Then she swallowed and added, "Sorry."
She meant it, he realized. That was the oddest thing he'd seen her do yet. His brow knit, and for a long few seconds he studied her, carefully. Her gaze had dropped almost at once, back onto her hands. Dell wiped his mouth.
"Firebug," he said again, low and testing. The arsonist tensed up in an instant. That was interesting. "Now how is it I can say 'Smoky' and 'firecracker' and all manner of thing, but 'firebug' gets you all het up?"
"Stop," she hissed, backing away from him. "I don't know, stop."
Dell said nothing, still watching her. She was wound up now, all right, more than ready for a fight. She had a mean right hook, too, much more powerful than he'd expected. That was going to bruise. "I won't," he said at last. "I won't. Just curious."
When she seemed sure he really meant it, her shoulders loosened, and she knelt to pick up the pills he'd dropped. Turning her back to him, she undid the bottom straps of the mask and tilted it up. She threw back her head and swallowed them dry, and then the mask was put back in place.
She slunk back to the couch, ignoring him, and flung herself down on it. Dell rubbed his smarting jaw again and shook his head. I don't know. What was he supposed to make of that?
But he got her set up with some food and water, a random stack of books pulled from a shelf, and, after some thought, found the dog and lured it into the room. The pair of them seemed to get along, at least. When he left her, she was silent and still, lying on her side and facing the cushions.
Only when he was safely back at the garage did he allow himself to sink down onto a crate, looking up at the window the crash had come from and massaging his jaw. He'd try and find out what she was doing later, he supposed, when he was less sore and she was less concussed. He could guess, really. But he had work to do; the gray machine waiting to be dismantled. Yet he sat for a while anyway, trying to imagine what was under that mask—why that one word had pulled her trigger.
"Asleep on the job, monsieur?" asked a thickly-accented voice, interrupting his thoughts a few minutes later, and Dell nearly fell off the crate.