Chapter Fifty-One Set Fire to the Pain
“Clementine!” Jude yells my name from what sounds like the living room.
“I’m here!” I scream back as best I can as I race down the hall toward him.
We slam into each other in front of the bathroom doorway, and he grabs me, yanking me into his arms and burying his face in my hair. “I thought you were dead,” he tells me, his whole body shuddering against mine. “I thought you were dead.”
“Eva—” I start, but my voice breaks.
“Where is she?” he demands. But then his eyes go toward our room and the flames licking the door and out into the hallway, and he figures it out.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
And then he’s picking me up and racing out the front door into the torrential storm that only seems to have gotten stronger in the last few minutes. All the rain only makes what happened in there seem so much worse—there’s tons of water everywhere, and I still couldn’t save Eva.
“Are you okay?” Jude is still shouting to be heard above the roar of the storm. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to say to that, so I just stare at him, eyes wide and wild.
When I don’t answer him, Jude runs his hands over me from head to toe, looking for injuries. When he doesn’t find any, except for a few minor burns on my hands, he yells, “Stay here!”
And then he darts back into the cottage.
“She’s gone!” I yell back, ignoring his order and running up the stairs after him. If I thought there was any chance that Eva was still alive, I’d never have left her there. But she was dead. I know she was, and having Jude risk his life to try to save someone who is already gone—
But before I can even pull open the cottage’s screen door, he’s back, grim-faced and covered in soot. He’s also carrying the damn tapestry. Only now the manticores are gone and in their place are the words YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME in huge, bold black letters.
No shit. The warning’s a little late, if you ask me.
“She’s gone,” he confirms, like I don’t already know that.
“Did you go back in for Eva or that damn rug?” I demand as anger wells up inside me.
“Both,” he answers, because he’s Jude and he doesn’t lie. Ever.
And just like that, the anger drains away, drowning in the grief and confusion slamming through me like a tsunami.
“I don’t know what happened!” I tell him as lightning streaks across the sky and rain—fucking buckets of rain—pours down on top of us. “She was fine. I was awake. I saw her. I swear she was fine! And then, just like that, she was on fire. I don’t know how it happened.”
“She just burst into flames?” Jude asks. “Like Ember?”
“Exactly like Ember, only not. I could see right away—” My voice breaks, but I clear my throat. Force myself to keep talking. “I could see right away that it wasn’t the same.”
“Because she was really burning,” he supplies.
“Yes. I swear, I tried to put the fire out. I used everything I had to try to—” I’m shouting to be heard above the continuous roll of thunder above us, and my voice breaks again. “I tried to put her out, but I couldn’t. Nothing I did worked. No matter what I did, I couldn’t save her.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jude tells me, face grim.
“It feels like my fault,” I answer. “I tried to call for help in the middle of it all, but Michaels didn’t answer and then…then it was too late. It just happened so fast.”
“Michaels didn’t answer?” He looks surprised, and I get it. Michaels is the dorm director, and he always answers.
“No one did. I don’t know if the storm…” I trail off, suddenly too exhausted to say any more.
“We need to call him again,” Jude says, pulling me over to the front porch of one of the other cottages to get us out of the rain. “And we should probably call your mom, too.”
“I know. I was about to—” I break off as my cottage shudders violently before starting to collapse in on itself. Flames lick along the caving-in roof, but it’s only a matter of a couple minutes before the downpour takes care of it, extinguishing the flames just as the roof falls in completely.
“Eva’s in there,” I whisper, my whole body shaky as I stare at the rubble that was once my home.
“We’ll get her out,” Jude promises as he wraps his arms around my waist from behind so I can lean back against his chest for support. “But there’s nothing that can hurt her in there anymore.”
Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to just leave what’s left of Eva there. Alone. In the dark and the storm.
But Jude’s right. There are things that need to be done right now. “I’ll call my mom. You call Michaels.”
He nods as he pulls out his phone and starts dialing while I do the same.
But the moment I hit the green phone icon, the call drops.
I try again, but it happens a second time. And a third time. And a fourth time.
“I’m not getting through,” Jude says, shoving a hand through his hair in obvious frustration.
“It’s got to be the storm, right?” I tell him. “It’s blocking out the cell signal.”
“Gotta be,” he agrees. “We’re going to have to go to Michaels’s place.”
“I know.” I glance back at the cottage, at Eva. I don’t know why, but leaving her alone seems so wrong.
Jude sees the look. “I can go by myself. You can stay here.” The with Eva part goes unsaid but not unmeant.
“No. I need to tell him what happened. He’s going to have to try to get in touch with her family.” I’m not sure her parents will care, but they deserve to know what happened to their daughter. Not that I actually know the answer to that. I just know what I saw.
Jude nods, and we head toward the main dorm. Since it houses the underclassmen, the dorm supervisor’s apartment is always on the first floor.
“It’s strange that Danson and Aguilar haven’t come,” I tell him. “I thought they were patrolling all night.”
“Me, too,” he answers, sounding more concerned than confused.
I start to ask what he’s thinking, but before I can get the words out, an explosion rocks the air around us and sends us flying off our feet.