Burn(59)

Sarah pulled away from him. She saw how she’d got blood, his own blood, all over the front of his shirt. “I mean,” she said, wiping her eyes again, “I know it’s not you but . . . It’s just so good to see you.”

Jason looked over at Darlene in bewilderment.

“It’s not her,” Darlene said, again firmly, but not, Sarah thought, angrily. There might be some middle ground here.

“Who are those two?” Hisao said, nodding at Malcolm and Kazimir. “And why is he in the altogether?”

“That I couldn’t rightly tell you,” Darlene said.

“Did you see it?” Hisao asked.

“See what?” Darlene asked, as if daring him to say the word.

“We saw something,” Hisao said, frowning. “Looked like it came from your place so we jumped in the truck to make sure you were all right.”

“That also has yet to be seen,” Darlene said.

“God,” Jason said, staring at Sarah now, “she looks exactly like her.”

“It’s not . . .” Darlene made an irritated huffing sound. “Oh, for pete’s sake, we can’t all just be standing here out in the cold. Whyn’t you all come inside and we can . . . see what’s what?”

Sarah looked surprised, as did Malcolm and Kazimir. “Not him,” Sarah said, pointing at Malcolm. “Not him at all.”

“You don’t get to choose who I invite into my farmhouse, girl,” Darlene said, “but Hisao?”

“Yes?”

“You bring your shotgun?”

Hisao looked serious as a blizzard when he said, “Yes, ma’am, I did.”

Hisao sat in a kitchen chair—ones Sarah didn’t recognize—with the shotgun across his lap. He stared heavily at Kazimir, now dressed in some of Sarah’s father’s old clothes, removed from a dusty trunk. He had tied a bandanna dashingly around his lost eye. Likewise, Sarah had been given what could only have been her own clothes from before she died. It wasn’t even the fourth weirdest thing to happen today.

Darlene, having refused all offers of help, was making hot chocolate, a drink Sarah remembered from childhood. “Let’s start from first principles,” Darlene said, taking down six mugs. “Like the good reverend always says. This girl—”

“You can call me Sarah, if you want,” Sarah said.

Darlene let out a rueful laugh. “Oh, no. No, I don’t think so.”

“But it is her, isn’t it?” Jason spoke up, still staring at Sarah. “How could it be anyone else?”

“Because Sarah died ten months ago, Jason Inagawa,” Darlene said, raising her voice into an almost-snap.

“You keep quiet in all this, Jason,” Hisao said, in a voice Sarah also recognized. Jason’s father never brooked much nonsense.

“May I ask what the date is, please?” Kazimir suddenly said.

Darlene looked surprised. “February the eighth.”

He nodded. “The same day. Just a few hours different, given that it was light when we arrived.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Sarah asked.

He shrugged. “We might have been off by years. Centuries. Consider it good fortune.”

“First principles,” Darlene said again, louder this time. She set down a mug of chocolate for Hisao, leaving the others to get their own, which they duly did. Kazimir sniffed his so loudly everyone stopped to look.

“Fascinating,” was all he said, and took a drink.

“We all saw something,” Darlene said. “That’s our first principle. So what was it?”

“A dragon,” Kazimir said. “A Canadian red, the largest of all dragons, but large even for that race.”

There was a silence, but he just carried on with his chocolate, as if he’d never had anything so peculiar in his life. Which maybe he hadn’t.

“Who are you again?” Darlene asked.

“I am Kazimir,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“That a Russian name?” Hisao said.

“Yes,” Kazimir said, “my name is Russian.”

“Are you?”

Kazimir took a breath. “Not exactly.”

“What was it that we saw?” Darlene said, more loudly, and stopped Kazimir before he could speak. “And don’t say dragon.”

“Yeah, because I’ve got a first principle,” said Hisao. “There’s no such things as dragons.”

“There are plenty in Japanese culture,” Jason said.

“You’re talking about myths, and you know it.”

“That is obviously erroneous, based on recent evidence,” Kazimir said.

“It sure looked like a dragon,” Jason muttered.

“I said, hush, boy,” Hisao said.

“And this girl looks like Sarah, but she clearly isn’t her,” Darlene said.

“It was the Mitera Thea,” Malcolm whispered, barely looking up.

“What was that?” Darlene demanded, and Malcolm watched all eyes turn to him.

“The Mitera Thea?” he said again, surprised. Kazimir shot him a look. “Though if you don’t have dragons, I guess you wouldn’t have her either.”

“We don’t understand that, son,” the woman who was clearly the girl’s mother said. They looked so much alike, only a fool wouldn’t see it. In all his thoughts bent on assassinating her, in all that time he would have cut her down without a moment’s hesitation, Malcolm had never once considered that the girl, of course, would have a mother.