Within the Flames

Chapter Two

When Jimmy screamed, Lyssa was holding a warm teacup in her gloved right hand and shading watercolors with her left: ungloved, her skin pale and oh-so-human. A mild headache had been brewing all morning. Not enough sleep. Too little sunlight and fresh air. Bad premonitions.

Lyssa jumped when she heard the boy’s voice, jumped right to the edge of her battered folding chair, knocking her knees on the plastic table. Everything slid sideways. Tea sloshed over her wrist, onto the painting — and the brush tumbled from her hand, hitting the concrete floor. Cold sweat broke against her back, followed by a wave of heat that made all the burning candles flare with a massive, crackling hiss.

They found me, thought Lyssa, and all her careful planning went out the window. She sat, paralyzed, even when the boy cried out again. Her body just wouldn’t move.

Until, suddenly, it did.

And she ran.

It was black as a cave outside her nest, which was at the farthest end of the unfinished subway tunnel, at the spot where construction had stopped, many years ago. Nothing there but the old worker’s station she’d moved into, built inside a massive concrete wall. Outside — scattered, shoveled up against the damp walls — was loose rock, unused iron rails, and old electric cables that draped in snakelike piles. In some spots, garbage still remained from the previous resident: plastic cups and rotting clothes, a hollowed-out mattress that was home to rats.

Desolation, in the dark. Her apocalyptic garden.

The cool air was heavy with the scent of rust and cement, and stagnant water; and the ground was uneven beneath Lyssa’s boots: dirt and gravel, and the old train tracks that hadn’t ever been used. She raced over them with sure footing. No flashlight, no lamp burning in her hand. Her eyes were good in the dark.

Lyssa tried to stay calm — to think—but when Jimmy cried out again, his young voice echoing against the cavernous walls, power poured into her muscles, and her entire body prickled with heat. Sight faded into a golden haze. Her teeth sharpened. Lyssa slapped her gloved hand over her mouth, breathing hard through her nose.

No, she told herself, running faster. Not now.

Lyssa rounded a curve in the tunnel, passing tents and lean-tos: small makeshift rooms with no roofs, and walls made from standing sheets of cardboard and plywood; surrounded with folding chairs and other boxes; piles of nameless, unidentifiable stuff that had probably served some purpose, once upon a time. Clothes, toys, magazines, broken Styrofoam, metal scrap: rotting in the dark, filthy, smelling vaguely like shit and piss. Or maybe that was the fact that there was shit and piss everywhere, at the edges of the tunnel. Years of it.

She hated the place.

Ahead of her, light glinted: cookfires burning in old stainless-steel pots and deep pits dug in the ground. Lyssa smelled onions, hot dogs, and whiskey; and the air sizzled, smoke rising around the face of a familiar man: Albert, who crouched over the food with a pair of chopsticks held in his trembling grip.

His watery gaze was focused on the boy. On the man holding the boy.

Jimmy. Twelve years old, so skinny he was practically swimming in loose jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt. His hair was brown and floppy, his cheeks ruddy. His brown-eyed gaze, usually so cocky, was lost behind an expression of real fear. He was trying to free himself from the old man standing rigid in front of him.

It was Mack. Which was good and bad.

Bad, because he was nuts. Good, because he was only human.

He held the boy’s skinny arm with his right hand — the other raised high, gripping an empty can of SPAM.

“You little fuck!” he roared, shaking Jimmy so hard, the boy lost his footing. “Where’s your fucking dog, you worthless piece of shit?”

Stay calm, Lyssa told herself, jaw clamped tight. Calm.

But she wasn’t feeling calm when she grabbed Mack’s left wrist with her strong right hand. She held on so tight her claws almost punctured her glove. Her sweater sleeve slid down. Reptilian scales glimmered into view. Just a hint of them, covering her arm.

It was dark. No one was close enough to notice that her skin wasn’t human.

But it made Lyssa panic, all the same — and she forgot her strength.

She yanked down too hard on Mack’s arm. The old man screamed, and dropped the can of SPAM. He also let go of Jimmy, who scrambled backward, eyes huge.

Mack fell to his knees, groaning. Lyssa released him, ashamed and afraid. Her skin burned, and she lowered her head, long braids and oversized knit hat falling around her face. If her eyes were glowing. .

Lyssa shut them. “Mack. What the hell?”

She heard him shifting on the gravel, hissing through his teeth. “Bitch. You broke me.”

She wanted to be sick but made her voice strong, hard. “No. You’ll bruise, but that’s all. Jimmy, you okay?”

“Fine,” he said, somewhere in front of her.

Lyssa took a deep breath, then another. “What happened?”

Mack’s voice quavered with a sob. “His fucking dog stole my lunch. Left the can out for just two fucking seconds.”

She finally opened her eyes and looked at the old man. In the three years she had lived in this tunnel, she had never seen him without his gray knit cap, punched with holes and bits of debris. His beard was the same dull color, and so was his skin: ashen, the shadows so deep under his sunken eyes that it was hard to know where one began and the other ended. A skinny, sinewy, cadaverous man — burdened with profound mood swings.

Seconds ago he had been enraged. Now he just looked miserable, and hungry, and very old. Too old to be living down here, too old to be touched so roughly. Too old to be dealing with someone like her. Even if he was an asshole.

“Jimmy,” she said heavily, without looking away from Mack.

The boy climbed to his feet, but remained half-crouched, wary. “I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

He didn’t sound sorry. Lyssa gave him a warning glance. “Mack, I’ve got some food you can have.”

“Keep it. You got mean hands.” The old man shot Jimmy a hateful look. “I’ll kill that fucking dog if I see it again. You hear me?”

“Go to hell,” said Jimmy, with all the squeak and snarl of a puppy.

Lyssa rolled her eyes, marched over to him, and grabbed his arm. She didn’t have to say anything. The boy looked at her and grimaced.

Albert, who had finally risen from his cookfire, shuffled forward to help Mack stand. Albert was middle-aged, black, with a bad knee that got stiff on rainy days. According to him, it rained every day.

“That kinda talk’s no good,” said Albert gently, also giving Jimmy a warning look. “Come on, Mack Daddy. I got some dinner you can have.”

“Fuck you,” Mack said, and this time there was definitely a sob in his voice. “Not hungry. Just surprised I still got my arm.”

You’re lucky I didn’t rip it off your body, thought Lyssa, uneasy. At full strength, she could have. She had done it before, to other men.

Fewer than ten people resided in the tunnel, but it was midday up top, so only a handful of the usual residents were around. Most had jobs — part-time at McDonald’s, or working as janitors at Grand Central. Some temped at local businesses that needed muscle for a day. Two panhandled. A veteran who had come back from Iraq only a year before had just landed a job at a construction site — but like Lyssa, had issues with living around people. Nevertheless, she didn’t expect him to stay in the tunnel for much longer.

The rest, like Albert and Mack, were alcoholics or too mentally disturbed to function up top. Lyssa didn’t care about their problems, so long as they stayed harmless. This was a good tunnel, filled with folk who were desperate but hopeful. Old Mack losing his cool with a kid was a bad sign. Almost as bad as the police sniffing around, which hadn’t happened yet.

Lyssa figured it was only a matter of time. Most tunnels were watched by authorities — locked, or rigged with cameras and alarms. No one wanted terrorists slinking underground and setting bombs.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said to Jimmy, walking him down the tunnel to her nest. “Forget the fact it’s a school day. It’s not safe. Your mom got you out of here for a better life. Not more of this.”

The boy didn’t answer her. His silence was tense, heavy.

“Jimmy,” she said, worried. “Why are you here?”

He ducked his head, almost like a flinch, and pulled a flashlight from his backpack. He switched it on. It hurt Lyssa’s vision, but she didn’t tell him to turn it off. He swung the beam around, and somewhere on their right, she heard a muffled sniffing sound, followed by toenails clicking on stone.

A dog slunk close. A mutt, one of the ugliest animals Lyssa had ever seen. Part Chihuahua, maybe, but there could have been dachshund in it, or some kind of Jack Russell. Lyssa had seen rats that were bigger.

The dog whimpered. The boy scooped him up. Lyssa said, “Mack was serious. He’ll kill him.”

“I’ll kill him,” muttered Jimmy, hugging the dog even closer to his chest. Lyssa gripped his bony shoulder with her human left hand.

“Don’t say things like that,” she said quietly.

Jimmy tensed and gave her a sullen look. “I was joking.”

“I don’t care. You have to think about repercussions.”

The boy stared at her, then glanced away. “Did you ever kill someone?”

Lyssa felt cold. “That’s some question.”

“My mom was wondering why you’re still down here. You’re not like the others. Which means you’re like us.” Jimmy looked at her again, and the glow from his flashlight cast shadows that made his face look hollow, ghastly. “You’re hiding.”

It was Lyssa’s turn not to answer him.

The tunnel curved. Most of the walls were unfinished, nothing but excavated dirt. The support columns were made of concrete, covered in graffiti. Trains rumbled, sounding so much like thunder it made Lyssa homesick and heartsore. She missed a good rainstorm.

“I’ll take you to school,” she said. “We’ll drop Icky off at your place first.”

“They hate me at school,” he mumbled.

“Good. Having people hate you builds character.”

Jimmy gave her a dirty look. “You’re mean.”

Lyssa ruffled his hair. “Don’t come back here. Not unless someone is with you.”

“I had to.” Jimmy pulled away from her. “Mandy is missing. Flo, too.”

Lyssa missed a step. “What?”

“They’re gone. That’s what their friends said when Mom stopped by their bench at Grand Central. She had sandwiches from work that she was going to give them.”

“They’re heroine addicts. Anything could have happened.”

“You haven’t heard the rumors?”

“No.”

“People are disappearing,” said Jimmy. “I’m afraid you’ll be next.”

He had newspapers, articles that he had torn out.

It was an old habit. The boy was a punk, but he was good with words, and his mom didn’t read English as well as she spoke it. She depended on Jimmy to keep her updated on what was going on in the city, and elsewhere. Newspapers were cheap. Listening improved her English. And it made Ms. Sutabuhr feel good that her son might be learning something every time he read to her.

Lyssa gave Jimmy a bottle of water from the cooler. He knelt on the threadbare rug, and dribbled some into his cupped palm. The dog, Icky, wagged his tail and lapped at the water. She watched for a moment, amused and uneasy.

You’ve been alone too long, she told herself. Solitude was easier to accept without reminders of what she was missing.

Lyssa smoothed out the newspaper articles Jimmy had given her. He watched, wiping his wet palm on his jeans. No emotion on his face.

He focused instead on the watercolor she had been working on. The canvas was part of a thick drawing block: a heavy sheet of paper with a prominent tooth, its rough texture creating a grainy surface that captured pools of flame-colored water. Flames, everywhere, twisted in knots and claws, and wings made of sheer, delicate fire — all surrounding an empty white space to the right of center.

A white space that made her heart ache when she looked at it. A white space that stared at her from the page with its own peculiar, haunting, life. Even when she did not look at it, she felt its presence.

Like now. Heavy, at the corner of her eye.

Lyssa swallowed hard. “You’ve brought me articles on six different women. Disappearances dating back three months. Only three of them are from New York state. None are homeless, either.”

Jimmy shrugged, and bent to pick up Icky, who pawed at his ankle. The tiny mutt got lost in the oversized folds of his sweatshirt. “Those have to do with something else.”

“Jimmy.”

“Rumors started a couple weeks ago,” he said sullenly. “Maybe earlier. I didn’t hear anything until I went with Mom to the church place and helped with the sandwiches. Guys were warning her to be careful. They knew people who knew people who were just gone one day. All girls.”

“Homeless? From the city?”

“Yeah.”

“How many?”

“Four, five. More if you count Mandy and Flo.”

“Maybe they’re sitting in jail, some hospital.”

“The guys didn’t think so. They were sober,” Jimmy added, after a thoughtful moment. “One mentioned blood had been found at a Midtown bench, in a station where some girl liked to hang.”

Blood meant nothing. Probably there wasn’t any blood. Just a crazy unfounded rumor getting larger and nuttier by the minute. But hearing that word—“blood”—sent a chill through her anyway.

Lyssa tapped the newspaper clippings, forgetting herself and using her right hand. The claw on her index finger clicked through the leather on the hard surface: a distinctive, cold sound. Her heart lurched a little, but Jimmy was still looking at the watercolors and didn’t seem to notice. The dog, though, twitched.

“These six,” Lyssa said, after clearing her throat. “What about them?”

Jimmy hugged the dog more tightly. “No one knows what happened to them, either.”

It didn’t surprise her that he’d paid enough attention to the news to single out six missing women. Even when the kid was still living in the tunnel, he kept boxes for different kinds of crime. He collected robberies, murder, assault, rape, kidnapping — there was even a box for the elusive and indefinable miscellaneous—and he was as careful and obsessive as any detective in poring over facts..

Lyssa wasn’t certain his obsession was healthy or normal, but she wasn’t in much of a position to judge. If it helped Jimmy feel in control of his life — then fine. Maybe he would grow out of it. Maybe she was looking at the future director of the FBI.

She studied those six faces. Besides the fact that their disappearances remained unsolved, the only thing the women had in common was their relative youth — all were in their thirties, or younger. Two were black, one was Asian, and there was a blonde, a brunette — a lawyer, a college student, an accountant, a homemaker, a cashier at Walmart. .

No connection. The dates of their disappearances were random. Their locations dissimilar.

Lyssa gave Jimmy a careful look, but he was staring at her painting again.

“Is that fire?” he asked.

“It could be,” she said. “Yes.”

Jimmy pointed to the empty white spot on the drawing block. “What’s supposed to go there?”

Dread filled her. With some reluctance, she said, “Eyes.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because I see eyes in my head,” she said, which was the truth but not the whole truth. “And I can’t get them out of my head.”

Lyssa could see those eyes even now, as though they occupied a permanent spot just to the left of her thoughts: eyes that were dark and masculine, staring into her with incredible intensity.

A knowingness. . leveled at her soul.

Premonition, maybe. Which frightened her. Enough so that she was already considering uprooting her life — again — and running. But that was the problem with premonitions: Running might be the very thing to make them come true.

Lyssa was afraid of what would happen if she ever met the man those eyes belonged to.

Jimmy scrunched up his nose. “You’re weird.”

She had to smile. “Yeah?”

“Well,” he said, hedging a little.

Lyssa shook her head. “Why these women? Why did you bring them to me?”

“No reason,” he said, after a noticeable hesitation. “I told you. . they’re gone.”

She wished he would tell her what was really on his mind. “And nothing in the papers about homeless girls disappearing?”

“Not yet. Probably won’t be.”

He was right, but it pained her to hear that kind of pessimism in a twelve-year-old. “What does your mom say?”

The dog squirmed, sad eyes watery and huge. Jimmy tucked its knobby head under his chin. “Nothing. I tried talking to her. . but she got mad. She doesn’t. . want to be afraid anymore.”

Lyssa said, “You don’t have to be afraid, either, you know.”

Jimmy shot her a cold look, then ducked his head, burying his face against his dog. Lyssa also looked down, embarrassed. Of course he was afraid.

She began folding the newspaper clippings. Both hands at first, then just her left.

Her right hand was suddenly useless — seized with a terrible cramp that made her clawed fingers curl inward against her palm. She breathed hard through her nose, trying to control the pain. It was getting worse, every day. Her body, betraying her in so many little ways.

“Okay,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound too strained. “I’ll keep my ear to the ground. I’ll be careful. I promise. If I hear anything, I’ll talk to your mom.”

Jimmy shrugged, like he didn’t care — but his eyes, half-hidden beneath his hair, lost some of their sullenness. His shoulders relaxed.

And then a smile touched his mouth. “Do I still have to go to school today?”

“Don’t even,” muttered Lyssa, and bent past him to blow out her candles, one by one. Careful to separate her mind from the silken heat of fire licking at the edges of her thoughts.

Before she put out the final candle, she glanced around her small, dark, nest: with its sleeping bag set on layers of cardboard and swept concrete; and the walls with their scorch marks; and the dirty air that smelled like smoke because of the mattress that had so recently burned beneath her while she slept.

Twenty minutes away, Lyssa had an apartment that she never lived in — and in this same city, an employer, and agent who didn’t know her real name or what she looked like — or that she lived beneath their noses. In all this world, she had only one friend who knew who she was — and what she was — and Lyssa hadn’t seen him in several years.

Because it wasn’t safe. Because she wasn’t human, and people had died because of that. Because she might die — or worse — if the wrong people found her.

Whatever it takes, you live, her father had said. Whatever you have to do, don’t let them catch you.

Lyssa grabbed her backpack off the concrete floor. “Better turn on your flashlight.”

Jimmy did. She blew out the little flame, and darkness swept in.