Chapter 15
Nora whipped the wood behind her with the same force Ruby had used and quickened her steps.
The smoke was billowing out of the kitchen, the same kitchen where Charlie had just been doing the dishes, vulnerable to anyone who might want to harm him.
Which, as of now, could be anyone in this nightmare town.
Ruby was through the door only a few strides ahead of Nora, who stumbled into the house in a flurry of panic and breathless wheezing.
Richard and Vince were rushing around with buckets of water and the kind of inexplicable sense of purpose that comes with having the better part of a century under your belt.
Patty, meanwhile, pushed past Nora and into the open air to catch her breath. But Charlie…where was Charlie?
Nora dodged her grandfather as they passed in the living room, and rushed into the kitchen. The smoke in there was so thick it split the room almost in half horizontally, leaving only the lower portion with any degree of visibility.
“Charlie?” Nora screamed into the near-invisible kitchen before the heavy air sent her sputtering. “Charlie!”
A warm palm landed on her shoulder. She whipped around, half expecting to see her brother there, but instead she found his namesake. The expression on Charles’s face sent a wave of dread up her spine. It seemed to be a look of pity. What did he know? Where the fuck was Charlie?
Charles guided Nora out the side door in the dining room. Her lungs stung as the sea air hit them, pulling an ashy cough out of her, but she barely noticed. The majority of fire-related deaths were due to smoke inhalation. If Charlie was still in there…
She moved to run back inside, but Charles grabbed her shoulder again. Patty had rounded the house and come to join them now, her arms crossed over her chest. The rest of the household was slowly filing out, but there was no sign of her brother.
“Where the hell is Charlie?”
“Hey, it’s okay,” said Patty, her voice hushed.
“When the fire started, Charlie went downstairs for that parrot of his. I told him to take it to my place for safekeeping until we get things under control. Mom and Dad…they wouldn’t want her here.
Plus I didn’t think they’d want to see him doing mouth-to-mouth on a bird. ”
“Charlie’s okay?”
Patty nodded. “You can go see him if you’d like.”
Nora started a deep inhale but stopped halfway. “Why would he have to do mouth-to-mouth on Jessica if he got her out of there just after the fire started?”
“Jessica,” Charles said with a wry smile. “That’s cute.”
Patty threw him a look. “She was unconscious when he found her. Um. You know. Birds have such little lungs. It must have made her extra sensitive to the smoke.”
Nora furrowed her brow at this but quickly dismissed the whole scenario. Instead she fumbled her way onto the grass and took off towards Patty’s house.
Sure enough, Charlie was safe and sound inside, curled on the couch with Jessica in his arms. Nora leaned against the doorframe for support. At this rate she was regularly producing enough adrenaline to fight off three full-grown grizzly bears a day.
“She okay?” was all Nora could muster. She indicated Jessica with a lazy head loll.
Charlie looked up from the bird in question. “Oh hey. Yeah, I think she will be. It was touch and go there for a sec, though.”
“I’m sorry,” said Nora.
“Thanks. Nice walk with Grandma?”
“Kind of. She’s a fugitive from Death.”
“Huh.”
“So that’s something to bond over.” Nora pulled herself upright and dragged her heavy limbs to the couch, dropping herself beside Charlie.
She gave the bird’s head a little pat with one finger and quickly thought better of it as she remembered she hadn’t brought any hand sanitizer to Virgo Bay.
“Do you think it’s a bit weird that Jessica was unconscious when the smoke was mostly contained in the kitchen? Or that there was even a fire at all?”
“You think this was another way to get me dead?” asked Charlie.
“I mean, I don’t know what Jessica would have to do with that, but it seems likely.”
“Two in one day feels excessive.”
“Three,” Nora corrected. “The knife thing was after midnight. Someone’s clearly determined. But who? And why?”
“Think it’s your grim reaper pals?”
“No,” said Nora. “If S.C.Y.T.H.E. had found us out here, we’d know. Besides, they don’t kill people—that’s strictly against company policy. It has to be somebody from here.”
“Then your guess is as good as mine,” said Charlie. “Everyone here seems so chill between murder attempts.”
Nora leaned her head back against the cushion with an exhausted sigh. “Patty was the last one to use the oven, right? And then she told you to come here, alone.”
“Wait, I thought you thought it was Phil.”
“I did. Or maybe Ruby. But it could be Patty, couldn’t it?”
“She does have too many dried starfish to be completely stable. Wait, you think it could be Granny? She’s like a hundred, isn’t she?”
Before Nora could reply, the front door opened and Patty wafted in.
Her pale blue shirt was smudged with ash.
Charlie and Nora exchanged a quick look that said something to the effect of “oh shit” as Charlie swung his feet off the table.
Nora decided that was a wise choice. If Patty already had some kind of motivation for killing Charlie, she didn’t need further validation.
“You kids okay?” Patty asked as she slumped down into the armchair near the couch. “How’s the parrot?”
Charlie pulled Jessica in closer to his chest protectively. “She’ll be all right.”
“And so are we,” Nora added quickly, standing up to leave. “But you must be exhausted. If things are under control back at Ruby and Richard’s, we can leave you to rest.”
Nora studied her aunt, waiting for a protest at their leaving, or a sign of disappointment at their well-being, but instead she got a “Thanks, I’m pretty tuckered out.”
On the walk home, neither twin seemed fully capable of tying their thoughts to their tongues.
Nora tried twice, only managing a few odd sounds that contained too many vowels.
She was exhausted, too little sleep and too much attempted murder pressing down on her, turning her limbs to lead and her mind to the consistency of pudding.
The whole thing seemed to be taking a similar toll on Charlie, though he eventually remembered how to form words.
“We okay to sleep under the same roof as Ruby tonight?” he said at last.
Nora shrugged. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, they didn’t have anywhere else to go.
There wasn’t a single person in town they could trust. At least (Nora was pretty sure) she could take on Ruby if it came down to that, though she really, really didn’t want it to come down to that.
The thought of a physical altercation with anyone, even an octogenarian, gave her heartburn.
All it took was a hit at the right angle to send a bone from your nose straight into your brain and then boom, dead.
Though given the current pudding-like texture of her brain, she half wondered if that move would still be fatal.
Clearly exhaustion-fueled delirium had taken full effect. She found her tongue.
“We’ll lock the bedroom door tonight.”
“That won’t do a whole lot of good if they actually manage to burn the house down this time,” Charlie replied.
“I really hate this town,” said Nora.