My fist slammed against the glass before I could think.
“HELP!” The word tore out of my throat, desperate, directed at anyone, the whole sleeping town. “Someone HELP ME!”
Hudson didn’t move and just smiled. That smile I knew from two years of small torments, telling me how much he enjoyed my suffering. He raised his hand in a wave, as if mocking me.
The flames surged between us.
One second I could see him clearly, that sinister smile burned into my vision. The next, a wall of fire roared up from the floor, driving me back from the window, and Hudson’s silhouette disappeared behind a curtain of orange and red.
I stumbled backward, coughing, my eyes streaming. The smoke was thicker now. I dropped low, remembering something about breathable air near the ground, and tried to think through the panic clawing at my chest.
Exits.I needed exits.
The front door was a wall of flames and the back door was somewhere behind the stockroom. The windows were bolted shut, reinforced, because I’d been so paranoid about break-ins that I’d paid extra for security locks on every single one.
Locks that now trapped me inside with the fire.
My own paranoia was going to kill me. That was almost funny, in the darkest possible way.
And then a memory surfaced.
It wasn’t mine. Or at least, not one I could access properly, the edges blurred and unfinished, filtered through the fog of whatever was in that tea.
Candlelight. Dozens of flames dancing in the darkness of my apartment, the power out, rain battering the windows. His face lit by firelight, all sharp angles and storm-gray eyes with gold flecks. The smell of smoke clinging to his jacket because he’d come straight from a call.
“You’re staring,” I said.
“I know.”
“That’s creepy.”
“I know that too.” His hand reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers trailing down my jaw. “I can’t seem to stop.”
The way he looked at me, as if the fire could consume the whole building and he wouldn’t notice. As if I was the only thing in any room worth seeing.
Suddenly, the memory dissolved. I was back on the floor with smoke filling my lungs and a different, more tangible fire closing in on three sides.
Oh, I need therapy. So much therapy. If only I could afford it.
If only I wasn’t about to die in a burning bookshop because my psychotic ex couldn’t handle rejection and my brain was hallucinating romantic encounters with someone I’d never met.
“HELP!” I screamed again, slamming my palm against the floor because it was the only thing I could reach. “PLEASE! SOMEONE!”
Finally, the cruel world seemed to have heard me.
Sirens. Distant, but real, growing closer.
The ceiling groaned above me. I pressed my sleeve over my mouth and nose, but the smoke was taking over and my vision was tunneling now, going gray at the edges. My body was giving up the fight that my mind was still trying to win.
Without conscious thought, I closed my eyes, my body losing its strength…
Then the back door exploded inward.
Wood splintered across the floor in a wave, and through the smoke, a flashlight beam cut the dark. Then a voice, clear and commanding, crackling through what had to be a radio.
“I’ve got visual. She’s on the floor, northeast corner. Solomon, cut the gas line before the whole block goes up. Percy, you’re with me.”
A crackle of static follows. Then a second voice, clipped. “Gas line’s already compromised. You have four minutes before the structure fails.”
