Hang Wire by Adam Christopher Page B

seat, slightly too low and too angled to be comfortable for sitting on – or for sleeping on, which was probably the intention. To the main intersection at First and Maple, with the Apple store on her left and the towering frontage of Macy’s on her right. Ahead the road was wide and straight, and filled with streetcars and other traffic. A pause at the lights until they turned red and the cross signal shone. Then up the hill, toward Union Square and Chinatown, to her apartment.
    She walked it on automatic, her mind elsewhere as her brain piloted her home. Dangerous in any big city, perhaps; maybe even more so on this particular route through downtown San Francisco when there was a killer on the loose. Her friends had told her several times – even her boss. If you want to walk, Lotta, he said, for God’s sake don’t go behind Grestch Street. Stick to the open. Be safe.
    But the Gretsch Street shortcut knocked five minutes off the journey home, maybe more. And the narrow street was always deserted. Lotta worked nights and when it came time to head home the empty backstreet seemed preferable to running the gauntlet of leering, drinking men outside the strip clubs. They stared and said things, and sometimes they even followed her for half a block, calling out and clutching at their crotches before laughing and sloping back to their habitual loiter spot. Maybe they didn’t actually ever go into the joint. They probably couldn’t afford the cover.
    Lotta turned into Gretsch at 2.30am. Today’s shift had been nothing out of the ordinary. Like her walk home, she was so used to the routine that she switched off at work, her mind wandering in one giant daydream. Sometimes, the dream never quite went away, and sometimes she blinked and found herself pushing the key into her front door and she couldn’t remember the walk home at all.
    She followed the curve of Gretsch as it veered to the left, past a shuttered newsstand. A fire escape platform jutted out here as the buildings on either side crowded in, so close that, Lotta thought, you could almost step from one fire escape to the other, traveling between buildings without ever touching the ground.
    Lotta sniffed. The sky was clear and there was no mist, but it was chilly. She passed under the fire escape and adjusted her coat, and as she did so the figure on the fire escape peeled out of the shadow, swung over the rail, and dropped heavily to the street.
    Lotta stopped and turned around.
     
    The bonfire had long passed its peak, when it had towered over even the Big Top like a giant pyramid of ever-changing orange and yellow. But despite the size of the blaze, it had been strangely cool. Malcolm and the members of Stonefire sat around the fire while the rest of the circus slept in their trailers.
    Malcolm let his eyes un-focus as he watched the dying fire, turning it into an abstract swarm of red and black shapes, like the roiling surface of a dying sun. The heat was there all right, it was just going somewhere else.
    And now it was hot enough to begin.
    Malcolm stood up, ignoring the cracks of his knees and his protesting muscles as he rose from the cross-legged position. Around him, the rest of his company jerked into life, uncurling themselves from their fireside positions, brushing the dust from their leather and bare skin.
    They were silent, all of them, and all of them watched Malcolm, because Malcolm was not just their leader, he was one with the spirits, chosen. Malcolm knew how it all worked because the fire spoke to him. Something else spoke, too: their true master, their creator, the thing asleep. Close, so very close.
    The embers of the bonfire glowed scarlet. Malcolm moved closer, until he was standing in the ashes and charcoal that marked the edge of the fire itself. He stopped, and stared into the fire, listening to the magic in the cracks and crackles.
    The glow of the embers began to brighten. Dull red became white, so bright that in Malcolm’s vision there