20. Chapter 20
Icannot see. Smoke pours through the servants’ wing, so I drop to the floor and crawl, pulling myself forward on my forearms. It’s my doing.
My fault Sally’s here. She’ll be curled up with that wretched novel, oblivious to the fire until it’s too late.
Which room is hers? I shove each door open, but all the rooms are empty.
She’ll not die on my account.
The gallery! She’s always loved the window seat. I found her lounging there once in secret, curled up with a book and a cup of tea, curtain drawn across the whole window bay. I hold my bare arm over my mouth and nose as I press forward, but the smoke is pervasive. Evil.
Crouching low, I make for the gallery, feeling my way through the corridor and up the servants’ stairs. Smoke fills the air, but the fire hasn’t reached this wing yet. It’s unbearably hot as I near the main house, though. Hot and thick with smoke.
A beam splinters and crashes down ten feet in front of me. I scramble back, sparks stinging my arms and neck. “Sally! Sally, answer me!” I won’t ever reach that alcove. I cannot see.
She’d have noticed the smoke by now, wouldn’t she?
Surely.
Yet she hadn’t been outside. I inhale to yell again and the putrid smoke fills my lungs.
I cough until I’m doubled over. I shield my face and navigate down the hall.
Plaster rains down on me, then a thunk as something strikes my ear.
Pain fizzles. My eyes water, and I cough until I cannot breathe. The room doubles, then rights itself.
I collapse, shaking as I gasp in sooty air. I cannot breathe. I’ll never make it there. Sally will die. I will die.
Then Papa will die, too.
I claw my way along the carpet, gasping in half-breaths, fighting dizziness. Then an unseen beast comes barreling up behind me, clutches me with an iron grip, and yanks me off my course. “No!” I flail. “I have to…”
Sally. Where is Sally?
He swings me across his thick shoulders, hunched and mighty. “Stay put, girl,” he growls.
Uncle Elias. That voice rumbles through the fog. “Why must you…” I cough. My throat is raw. Why must you always control me?
My head, my spinning head, bobs against his back as he carries me away from Sally, who is somewhere deep within Dunn House.
I will never forgive him for her death.