“Quinn.” I shook his shoulder, bringing him back to me. “Look.”
Quinn opened his eyes and jumped as he noticed the rats, the star, the cold shadows lurking behind us. “What the fuck is this?”
A single rat stepped out from the army and scurried toward us, stopping at my feet and standing up on its hind legs. A tiny nose twitched.
Silence fell. As one, every single rat in the gym stopped moving. The scritches stopped. The shadows remained mute. My heart pounded in my ears.
What the fuck is going on?
I knelt. “You’re the rats in the walls?” I asked.
The rat nodded.
“You understand English?”
Another nod.
“And you stop the shadows from coming closer?” I pointed behind me.
More vigorous nodding. The rats scraped their claws against the wood.Scritch-scritch-scritch. It was an answer.
Quinn’s fingers dug into my shoulder. “No way.”
The rat turned its tiny nose to Quinn, and nodded slowly, as if to say,keep up.
“If you’re on Hazy’s side, why did you attack her last time she was in the gym?”
The rat shook his head. He made a little “tsch-tsch” noise with his teeth as he threw his tiny paws in the air. He seemed to be saying,you’ve got it all wrong.
“Maybe they weren’t trying to attack me,” I said. “I think they were trying to show me what was beneath the gym. I know this is insane, but I think they’ve been looking out for me the whole time.”
Quinn nodded. “Okay, sure, the rats are our friends. I’m not going to question it with all these sharp teeth around.”
I nodded to the head rat. “Thank you so much for looking out for me. I’m only sorry it’s taken me this long for me to understand. Can you help me now? I’m trying to find my friend Greg. Do you know where they’re keeping him?”
The head rat turned its head and made that “tsch-tsch” noise again. Feet skittered across the floor as the rats parted like I was Moses commanding the Red Sea. They dived and scrambled over each other to line up in perfect rows, leaving us a straight path across the gym into the darkness.
Quinn gripped my hand so tight pain shot up my arm. We stepped onto the path. Thousands of beady rat eyes watched us, unblinking, as we followed the path. I held up my hand and made a flame on my palm.
The rat path led to a small alcove with a roller door. The words ‘Weight Room’ were scrawled on a faded sign. A length of rusted chain secured the roller door to a ring in the floor, and it was locked with a shiny padlock.
A brand new padlock for a gym no one uses? Not fucking likely.
Quinn pulled out the key mold we’d taken, but of course, it was useless. Ms. West had got her hands on a new padlock. This one was stainless steel – it would take ages to burn through. But the chain was much older. More malleable.
“You might want to turn away,” I told Quinn.
He didn’t, because he was Quinn and if you told him not to do something it only made him want to do it more. I gripped the chain in my hands and drew up the spark inside me, stoking the fire with my rage and fear until my palms glowed with heat. Quinn leaped back as if I’d burned him, his eyes wide as saucers in the gloom.
“You… you…” Quinn stammered, collapsing in on himself, curling up into a ball like a porcupine.
“Yes. I can summon fire.” The chain burned hot, then turned to liquid, which dribbled through my fingers to form a molten puddle on the floor.
One chain destroyed. One Quinn reduced to a mess in the corner.
I went to him, cupping his cheeks in my hands even as he tried to jerk away. “Quinn, listen to me. I swear to you, I don’t know why I have this power. I’ve had it my whole life. But I taught myself to control it. I promise I will never, ever hurt you.”
Quinn grabbed my wrists, turning my hands over. His whole body trembled. “What the fuck, Hazy? How’d you not burn yourself?”
