Child of Fire (8 page)

The receptionist wore a name tag that read
CAROL
and had a burning hoop with a squiggle of black lines inside that, at first glance, looked like the sigil on my ghost knife
or on Annalise’s ribbons. After a second, I realized it was a stylized
HBT
, for Hammer Bay Toys. Carol looked at her schedule, then picked up her phone and told the person at the other end of the line that Mr. Hammer’s ten o’clock had arrived. She hung up, smiled at us, and told us it would be just a moment.

The lobby had a slate floor and walls lined with something stained to look like unweathered cedar. A wide flight of concrete stairs swept up to the next floor. I toyed with the idea of asking the receptionist for a job application. Everyone in town seemed to think I should, so why not? It would certainly annoy Annalise. I was wearing clothes she’d bought, had a belly full of food she’d paid for, and had slept in a room she’d rented. I felt like her personal toy, one she would break at her whim. The urge to annoy her was strong.

The elevator dinged, interrupting that dangerous train of thought. A man of about sixty walked out. He wore a six-hundred-dollar suit, three-hundred-dollar shoes, and a twelve-dollar haircut. He had a wide, playful smile on his face. His eyes reminded me of twinkling plastic.

“Ms. Powliss,” he said, extending his hand. There was a little hitch in his smile as he took in Annalise, then his grin redoubled. “I’m Able Katz, vice president of operations. How was your flight?”

“I drove. I don’t like to have my head in the clouds. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Katz.”

Able turned to me, waiting for Annalise to introduce us. She didn’t. “I’m Ray Lilly,” I said, to end his discomfort.

“That’s a familiar name. Have you been to New York?”

“I haven’t,” I confessed. He shrugged, smile still in place.

“Shall we?” He stepped toward the elevator. Annalise didn’t order me back to the car, so I followed them.

We rode to the top floor in the tiny elevator. The
cramped space made us all stand slightly too close together, so we said nothing. The elevator dinged again and Able led us out.

I looked around the office as we walked through it. There were desks everywhere but no cubicle walls. Carts and shelves were packed with stacks of papers, disorganized jumbles of folders, and assorted toys. Many of the toys were posed in various positions of everyday life. Heroic action figures sat around a tiny table holding flowery teacups. Barbie-type dolls dressed as Marie Antoinette posed like country-western line dancers. A tiny soldier seemed to be pondering a spreadsheet of sales figures, and another passionately embraced a coffee cup.

The toys made me smile. In fact, they made me feel damn good. I suppressed the urge to pick one up and put it in my pocket.

All the employees were middle-aged women. Every few seconds one of them would stop typing or what ever and touch one of the toys—just lay a finger on it or adjust its position slightly—with an absent expression that suggested it was an old habit.

An action figure dressed as an ancient Greek warrior but mounted on a huge eagle sat on the edge of a file cabinet. I ran my finger along the front edge of its wing and felt a sudden contentment. I could have played with that toy all day.

Three of the office workers were watching me closely. I left it where it was.

“I’m afraid my office is a little cluttered right now,” Able said. “But we have a conference room set up.”

“That’s fine,” Annalise answered.

I tried to study her face to see if she was drawn to the toys, too, but I couldn’t get enough of a glimpse to tell. Able Katz seemed to be perfectly fine, and the workers around us seemed basically normal. One woman burst out laughing as we walked past. Able glanced over and
saw that she was looking at a toy train with hands that were holding a jump rope. Suddenly, all the women began to handle the toys and smile.

Able grinned. That was just what he wanted to see.

He opened a glass door and stepped aside to let Annalise and me into the conference room. The windows were large and scrupulously clean. I couldn’t see the ocean from here, but I could see the town. Hammer Bay spread out before me, stretching north toward the hills.

“I was surprised to hear from Jimmy Larson,” Able said. “I haven’t spoken to him since we were at Mattel. How do you know him?”

“Excuse me for one moment,” Annalise said. She drew the scrap wood out of her satchel and held it so that only she and I could see the moving design. The lines seemed to be moving more quickly than usual. It wasn’t a big difference, but it was there. She turned to Able Katz and said: “Will Charles Hammer be joining us? My meeting was with him.”

“Mr. Hammer was unavoidably detained,” Able responded. For an absurd moment, I thought he meant that he’d been arrested. “When one of his creative jags comes on, he goes into seclusion to work out the new toy.”

“I’m disappointed,” Annalise said.

“I understand. I’m sorry. However, I can pass to him any information you give me here.”

“Before we do that,” Annalise said. “I’d like you to indulge me in one favor. Hold your hand out, as if you were stopping traffic.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I’m rich and eccentric and I’m asking you to.”

Able looked at us for a moment, then shrugged. He held out his hand, fingers pointing toward the ceiling and palm facing us. Annalise laid the scrap wood against him. The moving design didn’t change. She scowled and returned the scrap to her satchel. “Thank you.”

Able laughed. “Jimmy warned me you would be a creative type. In this business, you get used to odd things.”

“It’s funny Jimmy would say that about me. He’s never met me. And I’m not creative at all. What I am is an activist.”

“Okay. What cause?”

“Human survival.”

“I can get behind that,” Able said. He snuck a glance at his watch. “But I don’t know why you’ve come to me.”

Annalise began her pitch then. It was about the clothes they made and sold for some of their fashion dolls. Annalise knew they made them locally, and she had a company in Africa that could do the work cheaper and where the people needed the wages more. She was calm and articulate, and I’d had no idea she could string so many words together at once.

“I wish I’d known this was what our meeting would be about. I could have saved you the trouble. Mr. Hammer is adamant about sending work overseas. He won’t do it under any circumstances. He started this company, in part, to revitalize Hammer Bay. See, he’s also an activist, but his sole cause is the survival of the town his great-grandfather founded.”

Annalise pressed him. She knew he had more orders than he could fill, and that he’d turned buyers away at the last toy fair. The company—

Able interrupted her. He understood and respected her passion for her cause. He’d had her checked out before the meeting, but if he’d known
this
was what she wanted, he would have saved her the trip. Mr. Hammer would rather burn the company to the ground than outsource the work.

Able looked at his watch again. I could see it was a lost cause. The absent Mr. Hammer had made his feelings known, and Able Katz didn’t have the authority to
make this decision and didn’t want it. He just wanted to get on with his workday.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have another meeting to prepare for. I sympathize with you, I really do, but I can’t help. Here.” He took a pen from inside his jacket and wrote on the back of a business card. Then he passed the card to Annalise. “Chuck is an old friend from New York. Talk to him about the problems he’s been having with the clothes for his snow ninja line. Okay?”

Annalise took the card from him. “I still want to talk to Charles Hammer.”

Able’s smile faltered. Not even a thank-you from her. “He’s in seclusion working on a new line. He can’t be disturbed.” He stood to show us out.

We stood, too. “You’re protective of him,” I said.

Able turned toward me. His smile was a little strained. “Absolutely,” he said. “He’s earned it.”

“How?” I asked. “I don’t mean to pry, but I’m really curious. Why did you leave New York to come to Hammer Bay, Washington?”

Able shrugged. “Four years ago I was bringing down six figures with my own marketing-and-consulting firm. We designed ad campaigns for promo toys and ran the best focus groups in the business. When I saw the Hammer Bay Toys exhibit at the toy fair, I thought they were a joke. Everything about them was wrong, according to the conventional thinking.”

Able opened the door and led us back into the main office. “I mean, fashion dolls from the seventeenth century? What little girl would buy Marie Antoinette outfits? Every toy fair has a couple of exhibitors that seem a little wacky. We were all snickering at Charles behind his back.”

We slowly walked across the office toward the elevator. Able was on a roll. There was a light in his eye and a note of desperation in his voice. He sounded like a
convict who’d found Jesus and wanted you to understand why.

“But we were wrong and he was right. Those old-fashioned dolls flew off the shelves as fast as he could make them, even though the price point was too high, and the profit margin was nearly non ex is tent. I was supposed to be the expert, and as far as I knew, kids just
didn’t want
that sort of thing.

“By the next year, when he came out with the Eagle Riders, Robo-Zombies, and Helping Hand Trains, I didn’t know what to think. The toys were still all wrong and they were priced too high, but this time I was
drawn
to them. I
wanted
them, just like all those kids did.”

I noticed a woman walking the length of the office toward us.

“So I left New York and my six-figure job to work for someone who believes in ideas instead of focus groups. With every new line we release, I expect the company to come apart. But it doesn’t happen. Every knockoff line out of Mattel or Hasbro flops, even though their prices are lower and they can fill the shelves. I can’t explain it, but it’s been an amazing ride. And this year we’re releasing more toy lines than ever.”

He pushed the elevator button. The woman reached us. “Excuse me, Able,” she said. “Charles is ready to meet with you now.” We looked across the office. A tall, angular young man with a thick head of dark hair stood at the far end of the row of desks. He watched us, apparently waiting for Able.

It only took me a moment to recognize him as one of the four who had met with Emmett Dubois beside the van. He was the one who’d had the seizure.

Annalise turned and looked at me. Her face was blank. It was the same expression I’d seen on her face dozens of times, but at that moment goose bumps ran down my back. The elevator dinged and the door opened.

Annalise casually pushed Able and the woman aside. “Stay,” she said, and walked toward the dark-haired man.

I guessed she’d found the person she’d come to kill.

Able didn’t stay. “Excuse me,” he said. There was anger in his voice. “Excuse me, but that area is off-limits.”

He started after her. I grabbed his arms from behind. He tried to shake me off. I shoved him at a desk, and he fell into the lap of a woman with a stack of files in her hands.

“She told us to stay,” I told him. Able didn’t understand how dangerous it was to cross Annalise. The woman dropped the papers she was holding and grabbed on to him to keep him between her and me.

Annalise was halfway down the rows of desks. “Charles Hammer?” she asked.

“Yes?” he said. I couldn’t see Annalise’s face, but I guessed that something in her expression made him uneasy.

A woman at the desk at the end of the row stood and stepped in Annalise’s path. She was a big woman and she looked like she was used to getting her way. She grabbed Annalise’s shoulder. Annalise smacked the woman’s arm away. The woman gasped and grabbed her elbow, holding it as though her arm was broken.

Annalise grabbed Charles Hammer’s left hand and laid the scrap wood on his palm. A shower of dull gray sparks and a jet of black steam blasted from the design toward the ceiling.

Everyone gasped. Hammer tried to pull away, but Annalise didn’t release him. She tucked the scrap under her arm. “Your spell book,” she said. “Give it to me.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

Annalise sighed, then tore off his index finger with as much effort as it would take me to break a stalk of celery. She tossed the bloody digit over her shoulder.

Hammer screamed in pain. The women working in the office screamed and cringed against their desks. Hammer tried to yank his hand away, but Annalise held him as tightly as an iron vise.

She spoke to him in a clear, quiet voice. “I can ask you that question nine more times.” Hammer drew his right fist back and threw a haymaker at the side of Annalise’s face. He screamed again when he connected, then cradled his hand against his chest as though it was broken. Annalise’s face was unmarked, and she kept talking as though nothing had happened. “You’re not going to like it if I have to ask again after that. Spell book. Where?”

The sigil below my collarbone twinged. Again, there was no wave of force, but maybe that only come the first time. The room grew slightly dark, and the HBT name tags the women wore flared with yellow flames. Then the office workers dropped their arms to their sides and stood up in perfect unison.

They moved toward Annalise and Hammer like automatons. Annalise didn’t see them.

“Boss!” I called.

Annalise turned, and just as one of the women drew in a huge breath as though she was about to scream, Annalise grabbed the front of her sweater and kicked her legs out from under her. I could hear bones break from where I stood. Annalise tossed the woman over the row of desks.

I didn’t see her hit the floor, but I thought she’d survive. I hoped to God she would survive.

“Enough of this,” Annalise said. She struck Charles Hammer with the back of her hand. His head tore away from his body and bounced into the corner.

I brought her here
, I thought.
I helped her kill these people
. The thought made me sick.

A flat-faced woman stepped forward and took a deep breath. Annalise looked at her, obviously surprised that
Hammer’s death had not restored the women to normal.