Siren Queen(57)

I blinked at him in surprise, and he smiled at me briefly.

“I would have cut you down sooner, but Annette managed to have hysterics and a fainting fit all at once.”

“How…”

“I don’t know, and it became someone else’s problem when I pushed her into Whalen’s car. Can you walk?”

I hung on to him like grim death until I learned the answer was yes, and then I stood away. I was barefoot and my sweaty legs were already studded with grit and grime, but I could walk.

“Good.” Harry reached in his pocket and handed me the keys to his Bentley. “Fill up the car and get going.”

I stared at him, the keys almost unnervingly heavy in my hands. There was a smudge of cinder caught in his hair, giving him a roguish and dashing look, and it felt all wrong. Harry was a man who loved grapefruit in the morning, a dinner of cold salmon and tennis every Saturday. This was real life, not another final confrontation between the siren and the captain. Death in the Santa Ana fires was something that happened to the migrant workers, to the unlucky, to the foolish, not to us.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t.”

He gave me a bright grin, the kind of charm he never really got to show in the siren movies.

“I won’t,” he promised. “Not like you’re afraid of, anyway. But go.”

He turned away, striding into the worst of the crew tangles. The cameras were monsters then, slow to move, precious beyond all measure and protected fiercely by the men who worked them. I didn’t trust Harry, but there was nothing I could do for him now.

I knew where he had parked, in the shade of what had been Saint Aidia’s general store, and on my way there, I grabbed a lost light technician who was supporting a girl from craft services. There was room for one more, but everyone else was occupied with securing gear or making their own escape. The pair huddled in the back seat as I eased the Bentley out of the shade and towards the road. Harry had taught me to drive the Bentley a year ago, and though it never liked me as well as it liked him, it went willingly enough.

I had just pulled onto the tarmac when I saw a figure standing by the side of the road, boxes in her arms and a wayward gait that told me she didn’t know what she was meant to be doing.

“Get in,” I shouted, pulling up next to her, and, boxes still in her arms, she piled into the front seat next to me.

I paused for a moment, looking at the smoke that was coming closer and closer, and then shaking my head, I followed the convoy heading towards town. Everything felt faded except my hands clenched on the wheel and my unblinking eyes. I followed the bumper of the truck in front of me all the way back to the studio, and when the houses and buildings grew up on either side of the road, I became aware of a small hand on top of my own on the clutch.

“It’s okay,” said the girl who had told me to undo my latches first. “We’re okay.”

I stared at her, and then abruptly pulled over by the side of the road. I was back where fire was a beast carefully controlled by the pyrotechnicians, and where the smoke came from the cars and from dry ice and not the burning desert. I took my hand carefully from the clutch. I had been hanging on to it so hard that the first two nails on my hand were shattered.

“We left my tail in Santa Aidia,” I said, my voice echoing and distant, and I started to laugh, tears rolling down my face.





III


For want of direction, the cast and crew of Siren Queen met back at Lot 12, where we had all started from that morning. Whalen Mannheim strode from group to group, trying to keep order while dealing with runners from Oberlin Wolfe himself, demanding to know what was going on.

People gathered with their own, counting heads and tallying losses, but it was far too early to see what those might be. Annette Walker sprawled with a cigarette in her fingers in the director’s chair, a pair of wardrobe girls fluttering around her and repairing her hair and makeup. The tech and the craft services girl I had hauled back in the Bentley had disappeared into their respective clans.

Time seemed stuck where it wasn’t flowing too fast, and it took me an hour or more of sitting in a dark corner behind the flatted sets to realize that I needed pants. I was still wearing the artful drape of fishnet and shells with nothing but a pair of cotton shorts on underneath. I had at least cleaned off my legs with a hose and a dirty rag, but otherwise, I felt like a cinder blown off the mountain.

When I stood up, every part of me ached. My actual clothes were somewhere back in the desert, but before I had gone more than a dozen paces, the girl from the side of the road waved me down.

“Here,” she said, handing me a pile of clothing.

She guarded the door while I changed in a janitor’s closet. The smell of chemical cleaners dragged me farther out of my daze, and I finally noticed that I was dressing in men’s clothes. The shirt was too long for me, and the trousers had to be cinched tight around my waist, but at least I was covered.

“Sorry,” said the girl when I gave her a questioning look. “I don’t know where the truck with your proper clothes ended up. Those belong to Jalisco. He keeps a spare set in his locker.”

“Tell Jalisco thank you for me,” I said. “No shoes?”

“Sorry, can’t have everything,” she said, and I smiled a little at her brisk manner.

“Guess not. Where’s Harry?”