Burn(67)

“Huh,” he said, his face nearly frozen. She saw him swallow. “I mean, I guess something might have developed—”

“I’m not saying—”

“I did think about it.”

“You did?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? Pretty girl and so forth. But . . .” He looked away again, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, this is too weird. Just . . .” He started backing away toward Hisao’s truck. “I’m sure I wish you well and all but . . . Too weird.”

He got inside the truck and stared straight ahead, not looking at her. She hugged her arms around herself, until Hisao and Darlene came out, too. Hisao—his eyes already on the way to blackening—nodded at her unhappily as he got in beside Jason. They drove off without Jason ever looking at her.

Except at the very last moment, the very last second.

He looked back.

And they drove away.





Twenty


THE DRAGON THAT had once been Veronica Woolf slept. Her dreams were dragon dreams.

“Try not to look, baby,” Grace’s father said. She sat in the passenger seat of their car, seatbelt around her, Little House in the Big Woods in her hand. It was difficult to disobey her father’s instructions—she was so small in a seat meant for adults she could barely see over the window ledge—but she still took quick peeks when he was looking the other way.

Pinedale was gone. There was no other word for it. Fires burned here and there, but they weren’t like the time the barn behind the elementary school caught. There was still a recognizable building shape behind the flames, no matter how long it burned, and when it was out, a burnt building still sort of stood there.

The Pinedale houses hadn’t burned so much as blown up. Whatever had attacked them had hit with a heat so hot everything just evaporated, a word Grace had overheard her father use when he was on the phone talking to the general and she absolutely was not supposed to be listening at all.

She saw Mrs. Bailey as they passed the wreck of her home, her arm at a horrible angle that made Grace look away. Everywhere out there had awful things to see, no matter where she turned. Maybe her father was right. She sat back in her seat, holding her book to her chest.

“What was it?” she asked him now.

“I’m not sure, pumpkin,” he’d said, but she kept looking at him because she’d heard the phone call, heard how certain he’d sounded. She saw him realizing this, too. “It was . . . something that shouldn’t be here.”

“Scenario 8,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows in a bemused way.

“How many scenarios are there?” she asked.

“Ninety-four,” he said. “And that’s where this conversation has to end, sweetheart.”

She was her father’s daughter. Even before her mother had left, Grace knew what “Top Secret” meant and that, though he obviously kept nearly everything from her, she was not to tell any of her schoolmates that her father even had secrets.

He respected her enough to trust her. She respected him enough to keep his trust. It made her feel mature, older than her eight years. Older than the very young eight years she felt sitting in the passenger seat in the middle of a town that was no longer there. In his gentle way now—Agent Dernovich was a lovely man, all his colleagues agreed, and a terrific parent in difficult circumstances—her father refused to tell her any more, so she went over what she’d heard him say in the bunker, broken fragments that maybe told a story.

“That’s what I said, general. . . .

“Visual confirmation, at least a hundred feet . . .

“It means we were right, and if we’re right about one scenario . . .

“I agree. Unfortunately, both bases are on the other side of the mountain it seemed to be using as a roost . . .

“You heard what?”

He had sat up at that sentence and listened for a long time, then he’d glanced at Grace. “I can be there by morning. Grace’s grandma is on that side of the mountains anyway.”

That was how they came to be in the car so soon after the monster had flown back into the clouds.

“I hate leaving,” her father said now. “So many people need help.”

“Then why are we?”

He looked at her, touched her cheek tenderly. “Fire engines and ambulances will be here very soon. As will the men your daddy works with. They can handle it.”

“And there’s something on the other side of the mountains you need to see first.”

He looked surprised at her memory, then smiled. “You know, they let women in the bureau. You’d be amazing, when you’re old enough.”

She smiled back, warmth flushing her face. A platoon of fire trucks with sirens blazing sped past them in the opposite direction, though there wasn’t much good they could do for the corpse of Pinedale.

“Where on earth did you pick up a phrase like that?” her father said, and Grace realized she’d spoken aloud.

She held out Little House. “I’ve been reading books a little older than this one.” Then quickly added, “Not that I don’t love it! But the school doesn’t have a very big library and I’ve read all my age year and Miss Archer lets me take out books sometimes meant for older kids.”