The Wrong Girl(63)

"So why did you steal his research?" I asked as we slowly made our way down the side of the house. It was damp and dark beneath the shadows of the house on one side and the wall of the neighboring factory on the other. "Do you want to pass off his new drug as your own?"

"No. This time it's different. I'll admit that I have debts. I like to spend money and...unforeseen circumstances have meant a large outlay recently. But that's not why I took his papers which, I might add, didn't have everything I needed to replicate the remedy."

"Good," said Sylvia.

"Long before August and I developed the remedy that made us rich, we were working on another experiment."

"What has this to do with anything?" she asked.

Tate paused and looked at me, but I already knew. It had to do with me. "August and I belonged to a group called the Society For Supernatural Activity. It's not exactly a secret organization, but they're not very open about what they do. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say the members like to dabble in the supernatural."

Sylvia snorted. "What rot. There's no such thing as ghosts and what not." She flapped her hand, but neither Tate nor I paid her much attention. Weren't Jack and I proof that supernatural phenomena did exist?

"Why do the members like to dabble, Mr. Tate?" I asked.

"To see if it exists or not."

"I'm surprised that it interests you. Doesn't believing in such things go against everything scientists stand for?"

"For many, yes. Not for August and me. We wanted to study these phenomena, to see how they work and try to replicate them in a laboratory environment. We thought if we could identify what caused paranormal traits in humans, we might be able to harness it."

"And sell it."

"Yes."

I stopped and put a hand to the wall of the house. The moss-covered bricks cooled my palm, but I had difficulty catching my breath. It felt like a weight was pressing down on my chest, pushing the air out of me. "What am I, Mr. Tate?"

"You are a rare fire starter," he said softly. In the dim light of the shadowy path, it was difficult to see him clearly, but his eyes sparkled with tears. "But you already knew that."

"Yes. Jack and I are the only ones."

He shook his head. "No, you're not. There's another."

"Who?"

We'd reached the factory door, and he held it open for us. The door sported thick bolts, but none were locked. The heavy wood seemed new, the paint fresh. The bricks of the small factory were blackened above the doorway and the single boarded-up window to the right. Same as the house. There were no other windows on the one-story building that I could see. No sign of Jack, either, or indeed anyone else. I spared a thought for Tommy and hoped he had not yet arrived.

"I'll tell you inside," Tate said. "Jack's in there, and he's very curious about the same things as you, Miss Smith. I'll tell you together."

"Everything?" I asked.

"Yes. The entire story, dating back almost twenty-two years."

"Wait!" Sylvia gripped my arm and pulled me back along the path, out of earshot. Tate didn't come after us, but kept on smiling. "It might be a trick," she hissed into my ear.

"There's a very good chance that it is," I said gravely.

"Then we have to leave!"

"No. Jack might be in there and in difficulty."

"I doubt it. Jack doesn't get himself into difficulties, only out of them. He at least can set things on fire at will. You can't."

"I can if I'm angry, and I can assure you I'll be furious if Tate is lying. Sylvia, I have to find out what he knows. Do you understand how important this is to me? He has the answers to questions I've longed to know, not only about my fire starting, but about my parents. Finding those answers means...everything." My throat squeezed shut with the effort not to cry. I hadn't meant to sound so vehement, nor had I expected to want answers so badly that I would walk into a suspected trap. But I did. God, how I wanted to learn what Tate knew. I suddenly felt like half a person, with a major part of my life missing. Tate could fill in the hollow spaces.

I had to know and I would do anything to get those answers. Anything.

I walked away from her and back to Tate. As I stepped through the doorway, the faint odor of damp ashes filled my nostrils. I could only see what lay within the beam of natural light, yet even that disappeared when Tate shut the door on Sylvia, himself and me.

But not before I saw the twisted and blackened metal of broken machines, the burnt beams and tools, and the utter devastation wrought by fire.

"Is there a lamp, Mr. Tate?" Sylvia tried her best to sound commanding, but the wobble in her voice was unmistakable. "Light it this instant!"