Page 139 of Envious Of Fire
“They’re here,” says Kyle, realizing it. “They got here last night somehow. They’ve been hiding all day.”
Elias nearly covers Kyle with his body, the way he gently pushes him back toward the church doors. “I’m serious, go back inside, back downstairs.”
Kyle stands his ground. “What’s going on?”
It’s Drake who answers: “He doesn’t want you to be part ofthe negotiation, hot stuff.”
“Drake,” snaps Elias, nearly growling.
Kyle stares at Drake, confused, then at Elias. “What in the hell are we negotiating?”
Drake, who unlike Elias has no reservations about telling everything to Kyle, comes right up to him and pulls out a small slip of parchment paper from a pocket, extending it to Kyle pinched between two fingers. Kyle gently takes it. The paper is fragile, like it could fall apart from a breeze. Handwritten by a fountain pen from the looks of it, tiny blotches of ink here and there, dotting the fancy letters. It reads:
Return my golden boy to me posthaste.If one further night falls without his sweet shape, I will be so inspired to impart a grim gift upon yours in parting with tenderer mortal coils.
Kyle lowers the note. “Golden boy?”
“It’s my dear Uncle Salazo’s writing,” explains Drake, “and he means his pet. I swear, he can’t just say things plainly. It gets so tiresome, listening to his twisty old vocabulary navigate itself around the simple message of: send Mikey back, I’m in heat.”
Kyle rereads the note again. “This sounds like a threat.”
“It is.” Drake sighs flippantly, rubs his eyes. “I guess we’ve got no choice but to deliver Mikey back.”
Kyle turns on Drake. “What? No.”
“Hey, it’s his only condition to keep the peace. Small price in my opinion. We ought to count ourselves lucky. I thought he was gonna show up and raze the town in retaliation. He literally just wants his pet back. Easy, right? And to be fair,” Drake adds with a gesture back at the church, “Mikey didn’t belong to us.”
“Mikey doesn’t belong tothem!” cries Kyle.
He lifts his hands. “I’m just trying to keep everyone happy. Well, except Mikey, but maybe I can talk with my brother, sortthings out better, see if Uncle Sal can agree to treat Mikey with more dignity from now on, maybe an upgrade from thecage…”
“What’s all this ‘uncle’ crap? You weren’t like this before.”
“I was.” Drake frowns, bites his lip. “I just held back a little. I quickly got the sense that you … don’t really like my family all that much. Not that I blame you. They’re problematic. In many ways. But what family isn’t?”
Kyle tosses the note aside, lets the wind take it away. “And what’re you gonna do if I don’t let you hand Mikey back?”
Drake winces. “Well … it’s less whatI’mgonna do …”
Through the thin, wispy trees of the park, a shadow moves, catching Kyle’s eye. It’s Lazarus, wearing a long, skinny pair of pants that don’t quite reach his ankles, and no shirt, long black hair swaying behind him like a cape as he slowly approaches.
Elias stands in front of Kyle brandishing a thick metal club, which Kyle hadn’t noticed until now. Drake glances forward, watching his brother approach with an eerie stillness.
Lazarus stops some distance away. “Are you done playing?”
Drake pulls back his hood, takes off his shades, tugs down the fabric covering his mouth. “Not quite.”
“You’ve had a couple of days,” says Lazarus, as if reminding him. “Plenty of time to play as you please. Have you had fun?”
“Not as much as I’d like,” confesses Drake with a tilt of his head. “Can you give me another day or two? Or maybe a week? Actually, a month might be more what I need …”
“You think this is a game?”
“Isn’t everything?”
“Come home, Drake. End this childish rebellion. Bring the pet with you. Everyone’s happy.”
“Everyone? You sure about that?” Drake laughs, nudges a rather stiff Kyle who doesn’t join in the laughter. “Uncle Salazo will be happy, he’s easy to occupy, like a cat given a ball to paw around or a box to squeeze into. But what about everyone else?You believe the rest of our family will be so willing to leave this place alone now that they all know where it is? I wouldn’t give them a night.”
