firefighters, which meant an ambulance, then cops, then jail. I tried to convince myself it was better than dying, but I couldn’t make those thoughts come together in my head. The hands were strong; they lifted me and propped me against the fence.
I looked up but didn’t see a firefighter’s jacket and helmet. It was the guy in the red T-shirt and the camo pants.
He seemed happy to see me. “Hey!” he said. “Here you are!”
I punched him in the mouth with all my strength, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. The whole world turned dark, and I went down into it, knowing that I might never see daylight again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pain woke me. I was lying on my stomach in a darkened room; my legs were stiff and my back felt like it had a turtle shell attached. I put my arms underneath me and raised myself slowly—I couldn’t see any people, but if Camo Pants was nearby, I wanted him to think I was fall-down weak right up to the moment I jumped him.
Unfortunately, I
Still, I had to move. I didn’t know anything about this place except that Camo Pants had brought me here, but that was enough. I had to get out.
Most of my burns were below the knee, so I lifted my feet off the bed and did my best to roll over into a seated position.
I didn’t make a sound. It took every bit of restraint I had, but I didn’t make a single sound.
When the spots faded from my vision, I looked around. In the dim light from the window, I could see a little lamp on a table by the bed. I snapped it on. I was in a little room—a hotel room, by the look of it—with white paper on the walls, gleaming silver in the fixtures, and pale, ghostly furniture.
I wasn’t wearing a shirt. My clothes were gone and my lower legs were covered with gauze and gauze pads. Now that I was finally ready to look at my burns, they were hidden. I glanced around the room again and saw burned, ragged black cloth on the little table by the window. My pants.
My head was pounding and my mouth was parched. I peeled the edge of the gauze away from my leg just enough to peek underneath. It looked red, swollen, and wet. Had they smeared some kind of gel on me, or was that a huge blister? I hoped it was gel.
I stood. The pain was blinding. I gritted my teeth to hold back a scream and dropped back onto the bed. God, the power of it made me nauseous. What the hell had I done to myself?
I had only walked a few steps through a fire. A magic fire.
Dammit. I was out of commission. How was I supposed to help Arne and the others with these drapes on them? How was I supposed to find Wally again? How was I supposed to find out what happened to Mouse?
I put my feet on the floor. They felt swollen and the pain was agonizing, but it was only pain. Only pain. I staggered to the little table and searched my pants pockets. I found my wallet, my keys, and my ghost knife. The wallet even had my money inside. What this said about Camo Pants, I didn’t know and didn’t care.
I put my wallet in my teeth, biting down hard on it to distract myself from the pain. I slid the key ring over the little finger of my left hand and used my ghost knife to cut the corner of the table. The table leg came free, with enough of the top still attached that it made a dull wooden pick. I stared at my ghost knife for a few seconds, wondering how I was going to take it with me. Eventually, I slid it inside my wallet and put the wallet back in my mouth. It didn’t fit but I didn’t care. I just needed to get to a place where I could call an ambulance.
I used the table leg as a cane while I crossed the room, then I pushed the door open and staggered through.
It was a hotel suite, as I’d thought, and an expensive one. There was more white, silver, and platinum out here. My feet felt like they were soaking wet through the gauze, and I was sure I was seeping onto the snowy carpet.
A gleaming silver phone sat on a tiny table at the far side of the suite. My original plan had been to get out of the building to get help, but suddenly I wasn’t sure I could cross the room. My vision was swirling and my head throbbed. I nearly lost my balance, which would have gotten me off my feet, but I didn’t think I could get back up.
Then I noticed a small figure sitting at a marble-topped table in the center of the room. Its back was turned to me, and it was wrapped in black lace and hunched over like a vulture. It couldn’t have been Camo Pants, could it? He was too large for this small shape.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t get to the phone without passing him. I hefted the table leg like a club and moved forward. The pain made it hard to think, but maybe this little person all wrapped up in black fabric was Camo after all.
It was just pain. Just pain. It made me dizzy and sick, and it clouded my vision at the edges, but I could push through it. I raised the table leg, feeling bleary and angry. I was hurting and I was ready to share that hurt.
“Ray.”
I stopped, confused, and turned toward the voice. Annalise stood beside a small desk in the corner, watching me carefully.
Annalise Powliss was my boss, a peer in the Twenty Palace Society, and she was incredibly powerful. Although she was just barely over five feet tall and as thin as a rail, she was covered with tattoos—spells—that gave her extraordinary strength and toughness. She could tear a car door off its hinges with one hand and could shrug off a bullet through the eye. I’d seen her do both.
She wasn’t wearing her usual gear—there was no outsized fireman’s jacket, no vest covered with alligator- clipped spells. She wore a pair of plain blue drawstring pants and a white button-down shirt. Her tattoo-covered feet were bare. I’d never seen her dressed in such flimsy clothes.
Like mine, her tattoos were spells, but hers covered her whole body from her collarbones down—I’d seen them one time after her clothes had burned on a job.
Finally her face, which was pale and delicate—almost childlike—was set in the most curious expression I’d ever seen. She had always been difficult to read, but for the first time since I’d met her, she seemed nervous.
