I surveyed the room. Malachi’s eyes flitted but didn’t open. So he was alive after all. Maybe. I waited for another flicker, but none followed. Then again, maybe not. I didn’t much care. A pair of long, light curtains swayed around the window I’d broken with my head. I ripped them down and wadded them up, then dropped them on top of the stove. They ignited immediately. I watched with satisfaction as orangey flames sprouted and spread, eating the curtains and starting on the walls.

I picked up the knife again, and used it to fish some burning chunks of wood out of the stove. I scattered them around, watching them char the floor and ignite the rug by the bed. Then the bedspread caught, and the fire worked its way up to the pillows. Bed, walls, bits of floor all sparked into spreading heat. The shack was a hundred years old and not in the best state of repair. It would burn fast.

I stood in the middle of the increasingly warm room and surveyed my handiwork. Satisfied that the place would go completely up in smoke, I turned to leave.

But Malachi was awake again. His wheedling voice whispered over the hungry crackling of the fire. “You . . . you can’t leave me . . . here,” he said, smoke choking his words and raising tears in his eyes—or maybe he was only afraid.

I hesitated in the doorway. “Why not?”

“I’m . . . sorry. About . . . all of it. I . . .” My cousin-brother coughed and tried to raise his head to an upright position. “I was wrong. Please . . . don’t leave me. Help me. I’m sorry. Never . . . never again.”

A small thread of fire was working its way along the blanket towards Malachi’s wobbly head. I watched as it approached him, devouring the cotton sheets and spitting them out as coal and ash. I could let it take him. I could leave him in the shack, and even if someone found out what I’d done, no one would care.

Self-defense. Ample precedent. I wouldn’t even have to lie.

The flame sneaked up to his collar and singed it dark, then attacked his hair. He didn’t feel it, or if he did, he lacked the strength to do anything about it.

Decisions, decisions. I sighed. It wasn’t so difficult after all.

I stepped forward and patted at the flame with the back of my hand. Malachi dodged away, thinking that I was trying to hit him. “Stop it,” I commanded. “You’re on fire. Let me put it out.”