Page 46 of Fire
They were having dinner at a pub in the Windy City when the ASC finally held a press conference to address the unrest, which had risen to yet another unprecedented height of violence that week. Windows had been smashed at several ASC offices, and a Molotov cocktail had nearly burned down the ASC state headquarters in Florida. The arsonists had been caught and faced life sentences for domestic terrorism, but protesters were marching around the clock outside the jail.
The ASC spokeswoman, with shadows under her eyes that even her makeup couldn’t totally conceal, took the podium. Her smile was tight.
“She’d almost be cute,” Jake muttered to Tobias. “If she wasn’t a fucking Dixon.”
Tobias grimaced. “Doesn’t that make her your cousin?”
“Like I said: if shewasn’ta Dixon.”
The news anchor interrupted them, refocusing Tobias’s attention. “Alice Dixon will be testifying in Congress this week to urge Representatives not to cut funding for the agency. We go now live to the press conference in D.C.”
Alice Dixon’s defense to reporters was nothing that Tobias hadn’t heard before. FREACS was the most essential institution for national security. It was unfathomable to consider releasing the monsters inside to wreak havoc on untold civilian lives.
But because she was a Dixon, Alice could play another card.
“I know my aunt Sally Dixon would beappalledby the current situation,” she said, voice icy with perfectly modulated outrage. “After all she sacrificed her life for—in the hope of an America where monsters have been wholly eradicated—she would be at the forefront now, demanding that the ASC stand up for the ideals it was founded on. The incident in Cleveland was a tragedy that should not be repeated, but there are greater horrors... greater horrors that the ASC faces every day.”
Tobias watched her, the face of the ASC in this moment, and marveled that she had even slightly acknowledged that the hunters who had mowed down that family might be wrong.
Jake grimaced at the sound of his mother’s name and downed his beer.
Tobias laid his hand subtly on Jake’s back and called down the bar, “Hey Joe?” Just a few days in town, looking for their ghost, and they were already on a first-name basis with both the regular bartenders at the pub. “Could you put on ESPN?”
“Sure thing, Tim.”
Neither he nor Jake cared about the teams playing, but they were unlikely to bring up the ASC press conference.
* * *
In the checkoutline at a grocery store for a supply run, Tobias saw theTIMEcover in the magazine rack. Bold letters declared “Why FREACS Should Be Closed” before a photo of colossal iron doors set in unmarked concrete walls with coils of wire lining the top like a crown.
Tobias picked it up and added it to their pile. Jake took it in with a glance, then looked away.
After Tobias had been reading and rereading the essays in the magazine for about a week, Jake finally said something.
“Doesn’t that bother you?” he demanded, gesturing with his plastic fork at the issue where it lay on the motel table between them.
Tobias frowned at him, puzzled. “What about it?”
Jake glared down at the magazine. “Staring at the doors of that hellhole.”
Tobias looked at the cover, then up at Jake. “Is that what it is?” As Jake stared at him incredulously, Tobias began to laugh. “I only stood outside Freak Camp once, Jake, and I didn’t look back.”
10
Eight months ago
Alice didn’t often go out drinking with family. Partly it was scheduling—managing public relations for the Agency of Supernatural Control took a significant amount of time, and her hours weren’t exactly what she would call regular. Another factor was that most Dixons were either incredibly driven, borderline alcoholics, or complete assholes. After being surrounded by government assholes all day, she didn’t have the tolerance to deal with other types, even if they were family.
Still, sometimes a group of cousins and distant relations would show up in the D.C. area for a meeting or mission, and Alice would end up shooting the breeze and trying to find that perfect balance between enough booze to have fun but not enough to put ASC secrets at risk.
On this particular night, a group of over a dozen boiled down to just five: Alice, Matthew, Lucas, Charlie, plus Donnie Anders, who worked with Lucas at FREACS.
Alice was pleasantly buzzed, chatting with the guys in the sitting room of their hotel suite when the shop talk turned to their cousin Jonah.
“Gotta be a barrel of laughs working for that hardass, all his talk about reputation and shit.” Lucas snorted. “I just have to keep freaks in line, and he’s all about ‘respect’ this and ‘pride in the family name’ that. I’ve been riding herd at Freak Camp for years, and he don’t give me any damn respect.”
Alice personally thought that Cousin Jonah wasn’t that bad to work with. He gave clear instructions, detailed his expectations, and listened if she had concrete reasons why those expectations were unrealistic. It could have been much worse, as she knew from working at Target and the local grocery store during high school. She made a sympathetic noise and poured another finger of Jack into her Coke.
