He yelled over it. “I’m going to try to get us out of here.”
“No—the fire. Like at the farm.” Another cough. “In those houses. You can do something to stop it, can’t you?”
“Not if you want to keep breathing.”
She coughed again, and he pushed her closer to the floor. “What? I don’t—”
“Wrong twin.” His voice was grim. “I’m not Gabriel. I’m Nick.”
When the fire alarms went off, Gabriel’s pencil streaked across the paper. Students were suddenly flooding the hallways, laughing and roughhousing and carrying on, shouting over the alarms.
He looked at Ms. Anderson. “A drill?”
She was already slinging her purse over her shoulder, a grade book in her hands. “There wasn’t one scheduled, but they don’t always tell us.” She sounded exasperated. She took the test and put it on her desk, even though he’d only finished the third question. “Come on.”
He shouldered his backpack and headed for the hallway. His nerves were already shot, and the pulsing alarms weren’t helping.
But as soon as he hit the hallway, he felt it.
Come play.
He stopped short in the middle of the flow of students. They were all heading right, toward the stairs at the end of the hallway that would lead outside. The fire was somewhere to his left—and that left a lot of school to search. He’d have to fight a sea of students to find the source.
He saw Ronald Coello, a guy he’d played soccer with, heading his way.
“Hey, Coello,” he called. “What’s going on?”
Drawing attention to himself was a mistake. Ronald stopped and stared at him. So did everyone else in the general vicinity.
Another guy from soccer, Jonathan Carroll, gave him an unfriendly up-and-down and got in his face. “The school’s on fire, dickhead. You know something about it?”
Gabriel was ready to shove him back, but Ms. Anderson put a hand up in front of his face—and in front of Jonathan’s, too. “We’re evacuating, gentlemen. Keep moving.”
Ronald and Jonathan kept moving.
“You, too, Mr. Merrick.”
He hesitated. His element was calling him.
But his brain was warning him. If the school was on fire, being caught anywhere near it would be bad.
Then someone from behind him snorted and said, “Leave it to Merrick to find a way to set the library on fire.”
The library.
Layne.
And Nick.
He shoved a hand into his bag for his phone—which wasn’t there, of course.
“Mr. Merrick,” said Ms. Anderson. “We need to move.”
He moved all right—bolting left, fighting the surge of students, ignoring his teacher’s protesting calls behind him.
CHAPTER 40
Layne and Nick were trapped.
They’d been able to crawl to the “Cozy Corner,” an alcove the librarians had set up for casual reading. It was really just an old storage area, five feet high and four feet deep, and there was only enough room to sit on beanbag chairs. The back wall was painted cinder block with inch-wide openings that vented into the computer lab.
Which was deserted, of course, the door at the opposite side of the room closed. The library was at the dead center of the school. Any students would be heading away.
All the bookcases were engulfed in flames, completely blocking escape. The heat was intense. The carpet crawled with fire barely inches from where they crouched against the wall. She couldn’t hear students screaming anymore and wondered if anyone even knew they were stuck here.
The fire alarms, however, were deafening.
Simon.
He’d been at lunch, and she knew he’d taken to shooting hoops in the gym instead of submitting to ridicule in the cafeteria.
Would he even know the fire alarms were going off?
“Stay close to the vents,” called Nick. “I’m trying to create a gap in the oxygen so the fire stays out of here.”
Staying close to the vents wasn’t a problem. She practically had her face pressed against the cinder blocks, hyperventilating through the gaps. The air on the other side felt like it was coming out of a freezer. She was sweating through her clothes from the heat at her back.
She couldn’t worry about her brother now. He hadn’t been in the library, so he was probably in better shape than she was.
“How?” she gasped. “How are you doing that?”
“Maybe we can have that whole discussion another time.” Nick glanced over and she watched the firelight flicker across his features. He was sweating, too. “You all right?”
“Is that a trick question?” But his efforts appeared to be working. The fire hadn’t entered their little area yet. It gave her an idea. “Can you make a path through the fire that way?”
Nick grimaced. “I’d have to clear all the oxygen around us as we moved. It would take too much time.”
“How much time?” God, she couldn’t think with these fire alarms.
“Ten, twelve minutes maybe?”
Yeah, she couldn’t hold her breath that long. She probably couldn’t survive that long.
She was already starting to feel light-headed from whatever he was doing. She pressed her face to the gap again and inhaled. The air felt thin, and she took another deep breath. It felt like her lungs couldn’t inflate all the way. Smoke was collecting along the opening to the alcove as if a pane of glass kept it out.
“How long can you keep that up?” she said.
“We’re going to find out.” His jaw was tight. “I should have just taken that stupid test for him.”
“Gabriel was taking a test?”
“Yeah. The math teacher cornered him. He asked me to come tell you, but then Ryan Stacey showed up—”
He stopped talking. The fires went dark.
And all of a sudden, she was on the ground, looking up at Nick. His hand was patting her cheek, his eyes wide. “Layne? Layne.”
She sucked in a breath—a mistake, it was more smoke than oxygen. She coughed, hard. “What happened?”
“You passed out. You have to let me know if you feel light-headed again—”
Everything went dark.
This time, she came to with her face pressed against the narrow vent. The air was cool and rushed into her lungs. Fire still blazed at her back.
The fire alarms were silent.
She started to turn her head, but Nick held her there. “Don’t,” he said, and she heard strain in his voice. “I’m trying to keep the oxygen on that side of the wall, and it’s no easy trick.”
“How—” she gasped. The air was still thin. “How are you breathing?”
“The lack of oxygen won’t bother me.”
She tried to turn her head again, but he held fast until the edge of the cinder block was digging into her chin. “I’m not kidding,” he said. “Don’t even turn for a second.”
She could barely see him from the corner of her eye, and she thought maybe the alcove was just too dark.
Then she realized it was full of smoke. He’d lost some ground to the fire.
She swallowed, and it hurt. “What happened to the alarms?”
“It must mean the school’s been evacuated.”
“Do you have a phone? Can you let someone know we’re trapped here?”
“I already tried the first time you passed out. No signal.”
Layne wanted to be brave. She wanted to be optimistic.
But she started crying anyway.
Nick’s hand went over hers. “Gabriel will find us. He’ll get us out.”
“How?” she choked. “How do you know?”
“Because he always does.”
Fighting through the crowds of students took a while. They packed the hallways, backed by teachers who did not want to let Gabriel run toward the library. He had to shove his way past them. Chris had chemistry this period, so he’d be on the opposite side of the school—and he wouldn’t even know about Lay
ne and Nick meeting in the library. He would have evacuated with everyone else.
Layne and Nick might have evacuated, too. Gabriel could be bolting for the library needlessly.
And the fire was calling him, full of fury and danger. He could smell smoke in the air.
By the time he rounded the corner to the Language Arts wing, the alarms went silent, only the warning lights were strobing. The halls were deserted, thick with smoke.
Come play.
He got low to the ground, putting a hand against the painted cinder block of the hallway. Two more turns and he’d find the library entrance.
But one more turn revealed bodies in the hallway.
Two girls, their faces red. Young, probably freshmen. He didn’t recognize either of them. He hurried to the closest and put his cheek close to her mouth.
She was breathing, but barely. He needed to get her out of the smoke.
He jerked her into his arms and ran.
The front entrance to the school was the closest way out, but the halls were still dense with smoke. His sneakers squeaked against the floor as he bolted around turns, trying to stay as low as he could.
Just as he made the final turn into the front atrium, he almost ran smack into a group of firemen.
“Here!” he cried, shoving the girl at one of them. “There are more!”
And before they could stop him, he was running again.
He almost left the second girl. The firemen were coming, and they couldn’t miss her in the middle of the hallway.
But this school was practically a maze. If they were trying to avoid the smoke, they might take a different route to the library and miss her altogether.
Before he even had it all reasoned out, the second girl was in his arms, and he was running for the front again.
This time the firemen tried to stop him. He heard shouts and felt a hand grab for the sleeve of his hoodie, but he ducked and bolted back into the smoke, running again for the library entrance.
He made it all the way to the hallway running parallel to the library before he found more bodies. The hall was so choked with smoke that he practically tripped over the first one. Two girls and a guy. He recognized the guy, Randy Sorenson. He played starting center for the football team.
He also outweighed Gabriel by a good fifty pounds.
Gabriel grabbed one of the girls first. She wasn’t breathing at all.
The smoke was so thick that he had to drag her. He made it down two hallways before finding firemen.
Good. He dropped her and ran back, yelling behind him, “Down this way! There are two more!”
When he heard them behind him, he passed Randy and the other girl and dove through the smoke into the library.
Fire swirled around his feet to welcome him. It was happy he was here.
Because it wanted him to help destroy.
The rage caught him by the throat and held on. This fire wanted destruction just like the fires he’d found in the community. The carpet flamed around him, sending plumes of smoke into the air. Every bookcase was fully consumed to the point that he couldn’t identify anything. He couldn’t hear a thing over the roaring flames.
It didn’t stop him from shouting. “Nick! Layne!”
Nothing. But he knew approximately where she would have waited, and he started forward.
Only to trip over another body.
This one was on fire, and he only knew it was a guy because of the shape. Not Nick—too big. Gabriel swept his hands across the clothes, sending the fire off to find other things to burn. Then he hooked his hands under the boy’s arms and started to drag.
This guy was easily as heavy as Randy. Gabriel borrowed strength from his element, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
Suddenly, hands were there, beside his, helping to drag. Gabriel looked up, expecting a fireman.
But finding Hunter.
“The firemen are waiting for hoses,” Hunter yelled. “It’s too hot. They can’t—”
“Is this guy alive?” he shouted.
A pause. “Yes.”
“Then shut the fuck up and pull.”
They got him to the entrance. Gabriel didn’t wait to see whether Hunter would follow him. He had more ground to cover.
Another girl was by the circulation desk, her skin red and blistered. Not breathing. He picked her up and carried her back to the entrance, pushing through when he didn’t see firemen there.
They were just outside in the hallway, however, in full gear, masks on, radios crackling.
Gabriel shoved the girl at one of them and turned to bolt, but another fireman grabbed him. Gabriel fought, but a second fireman caught his free arm.
They were wrestling him back, pulling him away from the library entrance, shouting something, but he couldn’t understand them through the masks and his fury.
Then Hunter was there, a gun in his hand.
And then he was pointing it at the fireman holding Gabriel.
They let him go real quick.
Gabriel didn’t even think about the implications of this. He just ducked under Hunter’s arm and ran back into the library.
Somehow, the smoke was thicker now. He crawled beneath it while flames snapped at his jeans and curled around his fingers.
He begged the fire to calm itself, to stop the rage.
It refused.
“Nick!” he yelled. “Layne!”
Nothing.
He crawled forward, around a row of bookcases, heading for the back of the library, where he knew Layne usually sat.
And all of a sudden, the smoke wasn’t as dense. He could see flames billowing from the bookcases above him, but the smoke was moving away, toward the entrance.
Nick. Nick had to be doing that.
But fire was everywhere. Bookcases lined the walls, blazing like suns against the cinder block.
Except for the small alcove, where the carpet was on fire.
And Gabriel could see two figures there, just barely out of reach of the flames.
He surged forward, sprinting through the fire. He slid to his knees into the alcove and sent the fire away, creating a bigger space around them.
Layne was crumpled against the wall. Nick was crouched beside her, his eyes clenched shut, his hands in fists. The air here was freezing and thin, and all of a sudden, Gabriel almost couldn’t breathe.
“Nick,” he gasped. “I’ll hold the fire. I need to—”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Nick let go. A blast of cold air rushed through the vents. The fire rejoiced, flaring higher. Gabriel sent it away, toward the entrance, toward the ceiling, promising better things to burn.
And suddenly smoke billowed around them.
Only to retreat when Nick sent it away again.
Gabriel pulled Layne into his arms. She was limp, her skin clammy and warm. Her head flopped onto his shoulder.
But she was breathing.
“She’s okay,” said Nick. His voice was rough and worn. “I made sure she kept breathing. I just couldn’t keep her conscious.”
“Come on. We need to get out of here.”
Gabriel cleared fire from their path, and Nick pushed the smoke ahead of them, working together wordlessly, the way they always had when they played with fire for fun. He headed for the north entrance to the library, knowing firemen would be waiting at the south side.
Layne made a small sound and shifted against him.
“You’re all right,” he said. “We’re getting out.”
Her eyes opened a crack. “Gabriel?”
The sound of her voice almost made him cry with relief. “Yeah. I’ve got you.”
Her eyes fell closed again. “You’re supposed to . . . math test.”
“I thought maybe this was more important.”
She pressed her face against his neck. Her skin was flushed and hot, but the whisper of her breath against his skin was the greatest feeling in the world—because it meant she was alive.
He ducked his head so
he could speak into her ear. “Did you see who started the fire?”
She nodded—but Nick grabbed his arm and hauled him to a stop.
“Yeah,” said Nick, an odd note in his voice. “It was him.”
Gabriel looked up. They’d made it to the center of the library, an open space under a skylight. Ryan Stacey was lying in the middle of the floor.
Surrounded by a pattern blazing into the carpet.
A huge, flaming pentagram.
CHAPTER 41
Gabriel was still staring when Hunter appeared at his side. He looked surprised to see Layne and Nick—but then more surprised at the pentagram on the floor.
Not to mention the kid lying inside it.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Gabriel.
“No. Not yet.”
Gabriel glanced at him. “You didn’t shoot the firefighters, did you?”
Hunter gave him a look. “No, but we don’t have much time. They’ll be blasting through here with hoses any minute.”
“Too bad we can’t just shoot him,” said Nick.
“Why can’t we?” said Gabriel. He walked forward, into the circle, scattering flames with every step. He kicked at Ryan’s leg, but the other boy remained motionless. Layne shifted in his arms again, reminding him that he couldn’t linger here. “This idiot can’t be an Elemental—I’ve fought with the guy three times, and he’s never called on anything.”
“Then why’s he lying in the middle of a pentagram?” said Hunter.
“And there’s power here,” said Gabriel. “If he wasn’t feeding rage into the fire, then someone was.” He paused, reading the flames around him. He felt eagerness. Expectation. “Someone still is.”
Hunter had the gun in his hand again.
“Are you always armed?” said Gabriel.
“Since we started worrying about Guides, yeah.”
Gabriel thought of all those fires, the focused fury that had made him wonder if he hid in the night with some other guy who shared his affinity for fire. Each fire had been a celebration of sorts. Nothing had been subtle.
Like the pentagram, those fires were a message.