Firefighters were trying to maneuver some kind of ladder toward the building. People were running, appearing and disappearing in the swirling smoke. The scene was eerie, otherworldly.
Jez remembered this, remembered listening to the barely suppressed horror in the reporter's voice, remembered Claire beside her hissing in a sharp breath.
"It's a kid," Claire had said, grabbing Jez's arm and digging her nails in, momentarily forgetting how much she disliked Jez. "Oh, God, a kid."
And I said something like, "It'll be okay," Jez remembered. But I knew it wouldn't be. There was too much fire. There wasn't a chance....
The reporter was saying, "The entire building is involved...." And the camera was going in for a close-up again, and Jez remembered realizing that they were actually going to show this girl burning alive on TV.
The plastic buckets were melting. The firemen were trying to do something with the ladder. And then there was a sudden huge burst of orange, an explosion, as the flames below the window poofed and began pouring themselves upward with frantic energy. They were so bright they seemed to suck all the light out of their surroundings.
They engulfed the girl's window.
The reporter's voice broke.
Jez remembered Claire gasping, "No..." and her nails drawing blood. She remembered wanting to shut her own eyes.
And then, suddenly, the TV screen flickered and a huge wall of smoke billowed out from the building.
Black smoke, then gray, then a light gray that looked almost white. Everything was lost in the smoke.
When it finally cleared a little, the reporter was staring up at the building in open amazement, forgetting to turn toward the camera.
"This is astonishing.... Regina, this is a complete turnaround.... The firefighters have-either the water has suddenly taken effect or something else has caused the fire to die.... I've never seen anything like this...."
Every window in the building was now belching white smoke. And the picture seemed to have gone washed-out and pale, because there were no more vivid orange flames against the darkness.
The fire was simply gone.
"I really don't know what's happened, Regina.... I think I can safely say that everybody here is very thankful. ..."
The camera zoomed in on the face in the window. It was still difficult to make out features, but Jez could see coffee-colored skin and what seemed to be a calm expression. Then a hand reached out to gently pick up one of the melted plastic buckets and take it inside.
The picture froze. Morgead had hit Pause.
"They never did figure out what stopped the fire. It went out everywhere, all at once, as if it had been smothered."
Jez could see where he was going. "And you think it was some sort of Power that killed it. I don't know, Morgead--it's a pretty big assumption. And to jump from that to the idea that it was a Wild Power-"
"You missed it, then." Morgead sounded smug.
"Missed what?"
He was reversing the tape, going back to the moment before the fire went out. "I almost missed it myself when I saw it live. It was lucky I was taping it When I went back and looked again, I could see it clearly."
The tape was in slow motion now. Jez saw the burst of orange fire, frame by frame, getting larger. She saw it crawl up to engulf the window.
And then there was a flash.
It had only showed up as a flicker at normal speed, easily mistaken for some kind of camera problem.
At this speed, though, Jez couldn't mistake it.
It was blue.
It looked like lightning or flame; blue-white with a halo of more intense blue around it. And it moved. It started out small, a circular spot right at the window. In the next frame it was much bigger, spreading out in all directions, fingers reaching into the flames. In the next frame it covered the entire TV screen, seeming to engulf the fire.
In the next frame it was gone and the fire was gone with it. White smoke began to creep out of windows.
Jez was riveted.
"Goddess," she whispered. "Blue fire."
Morgead ran the tape back to play the scene again. " 'In blue fire, the final darkness is banished; In blood, the final price is paid.' If that girl isn't a Wild Power, Jez ... then what is she? You tell me."
"I don't know." Jez bit her lip slowly, watching the strange thing blossom on the TV again. So the blue fire in the poem meant a new kind of energy. "You're beginning to convince me. But-"
"Look, everybody knows that one of the Wild Powers is in San Francisco. One of the old hags in the witch circle-Grandma Harman or somebody- had a dream about it. She saw the blue fire in front of Coit Tower or something. And everybody knows that the four Wild Powers are supposed to start manifesting themselves around now. I think that girl did it for the first time when she realized she was going to die.
When she got that desperate."
Jez could picture that kind of desperation; she'd pictured it the first time, when she'd been watching the fire live. How it must feel... being trapped like that. Knowing that there was no earthly help for you, that you were about to experience the most terrible pain imaginable. Knowing that you were going to feel your body char and your hair burn like a torch and that it would take two or three endless minutes before you died and the horror was over.
Yeah, you would be desperate, all right. Knowing all that might drag a new power out of you, a frantic
burst of strength, like an unconscious scream pulled from the depths of yourself.
But one thing bothered her.
"If this kid is the Wild Power, why didn't her Circle notice what happened? Why didn't she tell them, 'Hey, guys, look; I can put out fires now?'"
Morgead looked annoyed. "What do you mean, her Circle?"