Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Once I made it back into the house, I was up the three flights of stairs so quickly I was almost shocked to find myself there.
Every light was turned on, a chair overturned in the hallway, as if Mrs. Graham had tried fleetingly to beat the door down before giving up and dashing back down the stairs.
I tried the handle, and, of course, it was locked. Worse, it was hot to the touch.
Fire?
That would explain a lot.
I took the ax I’d pulled from the barn and heaved it up over my head, then crashed it into the door with all my strength.
I reveled in the flow of my muscles, the force I channeled up and through the ax.
The world around me suddenly took on a sharper, deeper resonance, like it had in the back rooms of Descent.
The crunch of the metal into the wood zipped through me with a visceral satisfaction, the growing smell of heat and something sweet, too sweet, filling my nostrils and lungs and urging me to faster and faster movement.
I was like a creature possessed—only I wasn’t, not anymore. I was me, Delia. I was alone and I was enough.
For this, anyway.
The door was heavy and old, but it was still made of wood, and the Grahams had kept their tools well-sharpened. It took only a matter of minutes for a hole to appear, large enough for me to reach inside. I turned the lock easily and pushed the door inward.
Smoke billowed out. It smelled heavy and dank, though, not like a brightly burning fire, but as if—
Fireplace.
I ripped off my hoodie and held it over my face, then dropped to the floor, scrabbling forward. The lights were off in this room, making it impossible to see, but it didn’t take me long to find Max’s grandmother. She was on the floor by a couch, moaning Sam’s name. She seemed impossibly tiny.
The smoke seemed to press down harder as I reached for her. I heard sirens, and suddenly a great pounding noise sounded behind me. “Delia!” I heard Max shouting, from somewhere far away.
I hooked my hands under the old woman’s armpits, straining to pull her out of the room.
She was wet with something that eventually stung my fingers, and I dropped her again, as gently as I could.
Some sort of acid or cleaner? I couldn’t place it, so I wrapped my hands in my hoodie and hauled on her some more.
For a small woman, she felt like she weighed a thousand pounds.
I was halfway to the door when I felt someone behind me, then large hands slipped beneath my armpits as the hiss of white mist burst out over top of me. I was dizzy, falling, and let myself be dragged free of the noise and soot. Wanting to stand, I reached up—and collapsed.
What felt like only seconds later, I snapped back to awareness in the front yard, disoriented by the sudden change of environment.
My fingers still burned, though—a deep, bone-ache burn that felt different from the smoke damage.
Holy water, I realized dimly. Grandma Kate had been soaked in it.
That was significant, but my smoke-addled brain couldn’t quite figure out why.
“Sam?” I coughed.
“He’s fine, he’s good. They got him down. Take a deep breath.” The EMT had a stethoscope on my chest, and she was looking at me worriedly. “There was a lot of smoke in there. You were lucky you didn’t inhale more of it.”
“Gran—” I sat up.
“She’s out of there, too. She did inhale too much, but she’s a tough old bird.”
“Delia.” Max was at my side, looking at me as if I was a ghost, Claire beside him.
She was holding his hand tightly, and he was letting her.
Relief swept through me at the sight, but I didn’t know why.
Then Steve squatted down beside me, and awareness crackled deep in my belly.
Not romantic awareness, either—simply human.
I needed humans, I was pretty sure. Lots of humans.
“I’m okay,” I croaked, peering at Max. Something was seriously wrong with my voice. My throat felt rough and scratchy. “I’m okay—your grandma, though.”
“It was the damper,” Max said, his mouth moving but his voice sounding weirdly muted.
He and Steve helped me get to my feet, both of their hands dropping away faster than I wanted them to.
“She’d forgotten to open it and built a fire for some reason, though it’s generally hotter than hell up in those rooms. The smoke built up before she could get the thing open and she must have passed out.
Sam, disoriented, woke up in the middle of this and headed for the only exit he could see.
Unfortunately, that one led straight up to the roof. ”
“Oh.” That all made sense. It even seemed realistic. But Grandma Kate had an oxygen mask on her face and was being put into the ambulance, and something about that struck me as very, very bad. “She going to be okay?” I asked as the doors slammed behind her and the engine gunned.
“They think so. She’s still out, but her pulse is strong.”
“What about Sam?”
“He got his own ambulance. They think they can keep them both at the local hospital, no need to go to the city. It’s a big day in Hooperton.” Max cracked a smile, and I saw the strain on his face, the strain and relief. “Mom and Dad are on their way there now.”
“So we’ve got the house to ourselves for the rest of the night.”
“I mean…” He looked up toward the third floor. “Grandma’s apartment is pretty messed up, but the windows are all open now. It’ll have to be professionally cleaned, but there was no actual fire, at least.” He shook his head. “They said the smoke should clear out enough in the next few hours.”
I nodded, shrugging off the blanket. The night seemed strangely warm anyway, probably the adrenaline kicking in.
A sheriff’s officer came looking for Max to get some kind of official statement, and they wandered off together, leaving Claire and Steve standing with me.
Only Claire wasn’t looking at us. She was looking up to where the third floor was now brightly lit, smoke still drifting away from it.
“Who’s that?” she asked, squinting.
Standing at the window of Grandma Kate’s apartment was Aunt Emily.
An unexpected bolt of rage surged through me. “I’ve had just about enough of that bitch,” I muttered. I gestured curtly to Claire. “Come on. Steve, sorry, this is girls only.”
He gave a low, amused snort. “No problem.”
Claire, wide-eyed, looked again to where Max and John Bell were standing talking with the sheriff’s officers, but she gamely walked with me.
The blunderbuss was now in the hands of one of the deputies, and John was gesturing wildly, clearly trying to explain that the ancient weapon had been fired multiple times, but nobody seemed to know by whom.
It hadn’t been him, though. Apparently, guns didn’t usually spontaneously go off on their own.
They didn’t even notice us heading for the house, and that was okay. There were a few last things I needed to understand about what was going on here, and only Claire could help me out with that.
We stopped in the kitchen so I could rewash my face, though the EMTs had cleaned me up pretty well. Claire looked uneasy. “Why is she up there in the grandma’s rooms? That seems kind of rude, don’t you think?”
“Rude is a particular skillset of Emily’s. You’ll get used to it.” I glanced at her. “She’s Emily Winslow, if you know the name.”
She blinked at me. “From The Family Five?”
“Oh great, you know it. Let’s go.”
I’d half expected Emily to have fled the smoke-heavy third floor by the time we headed up, but her room was empty, the door left open. A quick peek inside was enough to convince us not to explore further.
“It looks like a lingerie bomb went off in there,” Claire whispered, awed. “Does she have an extremely needy boyfriend or something?”
I thought about Joe in his paper-crowded lake cottage. “I think she likes to keep herself busy. Shopping’s one of the ways she does that.”
“I guess,” Claire said. “This is all primo stuff, though. So either she’s got a deal on shipping, or she spends a lot of time somewhere other than Hooperton.”
I thought about that as we moved up the stairs to the third floor.
The smoky stench hit us before we reached the first landing.
When we got up to the Grandma’s room, I could see why.
The firefighters had sealed off her apartment with plastic, but Emily had ripped part of that down.
After we stepped through, I tacked the plastic back up.
Might as well keep the cleaning of the rest of the house to a minimum.
“Oh, look, Delia has a friend! Hello, there, friend.”
Aunt Emily’s voice was so loud it startled me, and her peal of laughter rang out through the room.
The smoke had dissipated somewhat, leaving a veneer of grittiness in the room, but the air was surprisingly clear, almost cool, with all of the windows open.
A steady breeze had kicked up at this level, and I was glad for my hoodie.
I supposed it was a little more understandable for Grandma Kate to light a fire in the summer if she’d caught a chill from the breeze.
But the windows had been closed when I’d been up here before. I was sure of it.
“Emily, this is my friend Claire. Claire, this is Max’s Aunt Emily.”
“Well, aren’t you pretty.”
The edge to Emily’s words caught me off guard, and I turned to look at Claire, who was giving every indication of being a rabbit caught in the spotlight. “Um, thank you,” she managed.
I noticed the lit fireplace, and I scowled at Emily. “Is that safe?”
She shrugged. “The damper’s open now. There was nothing wrong with the fireplace, just the witch who was living up here, keeping it all to herself.” She refocused on Claire. “Do you model? I’m a model, or I was. Not so much anymore, though the acting continues.”
“You’re Emily Winslow,” Claire gushed, as if she’d suddenly figured it out. “I’m such a fan, but—” she coughed on cue, and Emily straightened, clearly delighted.