6 Under The Final Moon Read Online Free

happens, I told myself. There were always fires in the cities. And people occasionally self-combusted . . . right?
    My mind was a mass of bouncy tunes and flaming hellfires by the time I pulled around the corner to my apartment building. I lived in a squat, three-story place that bore all the beautiful architectural nuances of old San Francisco: hand-laid black and white tiles outlining a solid slab of marble in the front vestibule, intricate ceiling moldings, hand-tinned backsplashes. In keeping with times of 1905, the place also boasted a deathtrap-slash-elevator, poor heating, and windows that could snap and behead you at any moment.
    But it had parking.
    I sunk my key into the lock, hearing the jingle of ChaCha’s collar as she threw herself at the door, yipping and growling. With the door closed, she was a fearsome predator, the weight of her well-muscled dog body thumping against the wood as she clawed and snarled. When I flung open the door she was still yipping and snarling—four and a half pounds of terrifying, flouncy beige fur and teeth the size of Tic Tacs. She popped up on her popsicle-stick back legs when she saw me, patting at the air with her front paws, her little pink tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. I dropped my shoulder bag and scooped her up.
    “Hey, girl! You’re a good little attack dog, aren’t you? Yes, you are! Mama’s going to spend some quality time with you, yes, she is!”
    I clicked on the television and rifled through the fridge for something chocolate covered or at the very least, not rotten. I settled on a sort-of-yellow banana and was popping open a Fresca when a stern-faced newscaster broke onto the screen.
    I instinctually went to the remote, but froze, arm extended, when the little box to the left of the anchor’s face showed an animated picture of a fire truck, emblazoned with the word A RSON . I turned up the volume instead.
    “Firefighters were called out three times today to fight flames in downtown San Francisco. Authorities were alerted to the first one at about ten o’clock this morning with an anonymous nine-one-one call.”
    “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
    The screen went blue, yellow words populating it as the crackling recording went on.
    Heavy breathing . “Fire.”
    “I’m sorry, what was your emergency?”
    “Fire.”
    “There’s a fire? Sir, did you say fire? Where? What’s your location?” The dispatcher’s voice was direct and quick as the responder breathed heavily on the other end of the phone. “Sir, are you in a structure that is currently on fire?”
    “They’ll burn. Everyone will burn.”
    “Is there a safe way to exit? I have your location as one-eleven Harrison Street. Can you tell me if you have access to a door or a window? Can you feel the door or window?”
    There was another muffled word, but it was drowned out by the wailing sound of approaching fire engines.
    “Firefighters are on their way to help you right now. Sir? Sir?”
    There was the fumbling of a receiver, and then the line went dead. I sucked in a breath, a cold shudder whipping through me. The camera flipped back to the newscaster at her desk, her eyebrows knitted together sympathetically.
    “The burning building was the old home of the Leonard Textile Mill. Though the nine-one-one call was shown to have originated inside that building, firefighters found no bodies inside the blaze, but they did find paraphernalia that led them to believe this fire was not accidental.
    Firefighters are still working to contain the fire on Fulton and Golden Gate Avenue, which has grown to five-alarm. The earliest fire, called in at seven-twenty-five this morning from the Sunset neighborhood, was contained, but authorities have confirmed that none of the five occupants survived.”
    The television flicked to a picture of a single-family home pulled down to the studs, the wood wavy and black. The detritus of the home was scattered knee deep as a fireman waded through the