Kami let herself look back over her shoulder.
Her room was a ruin. Fire had swallowed her bed, the ruffled pillows and bedspread embroidered with flowers and bees replaced by a living blanket of flame. Her wicker bookcase was lying on the floor, burning. Her piles of books and her notebooks were ash. Her wardrobe door stood open, and where there had been rows of colorful dresses there was greedily licking flame. In the smoke-tarnished mirror, she saw herself, small and disheveled, wearing black pajamas with glittery red hearts, and almost lost in flame.
She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how she could even make her way into that enveloping fire. She was scared and already hurting as sparks hit her bare arms, as the tears ran down her face but her cheeks were scorched dry. But she was the one who could do magic. Her family was helpless and she was responsible.
I promise, Ash thought at her, and she could feel the strain of his worry as well as the strain of physical exertion he was feeling, carrying Tomo’s weight and his own. I promise they’re all safe.
Kami looked down from her window to the laburnum tree leaning against it, and the top of Ash’s head glinting in the moonlight. She looked just in time to see the branch Ash was holding break. There was only air to catch them, and then, because Kami wanted it, the air did.
Ash and Tomo were safely deposited a foot down, on the soft grass. Kami saw a shower of sparks hit the grass at the same time they did; she looked at the branches resting against the sill and saw how fire was turning the brown bark, the tender emerald of new leaves, and the yellow bloom of new flowers all black and dead.
Ash had said her family was safe. Her room and home were both gone, and this tree would not last long.
When Kami scrambled out onto the stone of the outer sill, she cut her hands on the broken glass. She reached out into the dark and grabbed at a branch that was not burning. Pulling herself out of her room, she felt another blast of fire hot against her back.
She swung from the furious heat and the shriek of flame and thunder of falling beams into the calm darkness of the tree. She gripped one branch and then another with her bleeding hands, cautiously at first, then as she smelled smoke and burning sap, climbing down faster and faster.
Kami felt a rain of sparks landing on her head, the tiny points of pain shooting through her scalp and the smell of her own burning hair. Her pajama pants got tangled in the branches and she wriggled to get them free, and was still wriggling when pain blazed at her back.
She lost her grip and plummeted into the grass, landing on the ground so hard she was jarred all over. Before she could recover, she felt Ash’s hands on her, urgent and ungentle, rolling her back and forth on the grass until her nose was as full of the smell of wet grass as of smoke.
She sat up spluttering.
“I’m so sorry, you were on fire,” Ash blurted.
“Obviously, I didn’t think you were rolling me around on the grass for fun,” said Kami. “Um. Or something that sounds less saucy than that, sorry.”
She leaned her face in her hands, damp from the grass, and concentrated on healing herself, the burns on her back that she could feel but not see. She looked up after an instant, pain not spelled away but forgotten, to see Tomo hovering anxiously by Ash’s side. He was holding Ash’s hand.
“Don’t worry, kiddo,” Kami said. “I’m all right.”
“You’re bad at climbing trees,” Tomo whispered.
“I’m bad at climbing trees when I’m on fire, yes,” Kami said. “Not my sport.”
Ash made a choked sound, and knelt on the grass where Kami sat. “You’re all right.”
His feelings seemed terribly close to her suddenly, close as the fire that had set her clothes alight. Kami felt almost scared by their warm intensity, and yet she could not help catching alight, just the same.
She reached out, touched his free hand, and met his eyes.
“Thanks to you,” she said, and looked at him for an instant longer, an instant too long, when she saw her father over his shoulder.
Kami scrambled to her feet and dashed to her father. Jon was wearing his Star Wars T-shirt and sweatpants and fighting Lillian Lynburn’s grip on his arm. Ten was standing by their father but warily away from Lillian, a sooty black mark covering his cheek and one of the lenses of his glasses, and Kami had to stop and touch his face and his frail squared shoulders, feel him safe and whole under her hands.
“Ten, you all right?”
Ten shook his head mutely.
“Dad—” Kami began, and looked around the dark garden. “Dad—where’s Mum?”
“That’s what I want to know!” Dad snapped. He tried to lunge forward again, but Lillian’s thin pale fingers were tight and magic-strong around his bicep. “I was sleeping in the office and then this one broke in and dragged me outside and she wouldn’t let me back in!”
“You were on the sofa in your office?” Kami asked. “Why?”
“Because sometimes adult relationships are complicated,” Dad said. “And sometimes adults don’t want to talk about that when their houses are burning down!”
Kami had never been unaware of their house burning, but seeing her father and her brother’s face had pushed the knowledge to the back of her mind for a moment. Now she looked back at the collapsing shape of what had been a house, the thatched roof that was a seething mass of flame, and the orange shimmer against the black sky. The night was painted glowing colors by the destruction of her home.
“She’s still in there,” Kami whispered.“Jared came for me,” Ten offered unexpectedly. “Like he did before. He went back to get her.”
They were both in there, and both of them were helpless.
The roof fell in then, with a groan and a crash and long streaks of orange light stretched across the night sky, like the marks left by a burning witch’s fingers.
Kami let go of Ten. Jon lunged for the house. Lillian held him firm.
“Let me go!”
“I will not,” said Lillian, with furious calm. “What good will it do for you to die too, for your children to be orphans? Do you think this is how I want things to be? Do you think I value the life of this wretched woman over the life of my boy?”
“Do you even know her name?” Jon demanded.
“Do I care?” Lillian demanded in return. “Possibly I would have learned it if she had not been so busy making profiteroles for the traitors in Aurimere!”
Kami heard their arguing, but did not pay attention. She was walking toward the burning house, concentrating on wrapping the deep dark of the night, the bite of the air, the dew of the grass, and her own determination around her as some sort of shield. She could not stop the fire, and she did not know if she could protect herself, but she was going to try.
The door of her house was standing open. It didn’t even look like her house anymore, not her door with the little watering can hanging beside it. It was just a burning wreck that she had to walk into even though she was hurt and scared. It was an ugly trap with people she loved inside it.
She crossed the burning threshold, into her burning kitchen. There was a flaming beam in the chaos of shadows and heat and twisting fire, in her way as if someone had set it there as a barrier to forbid her entry.
Fire was a fiercely burning veil over her eyes and her face, settling in a hot weight over her hair. She reached out and took hold of the beam, thought of Lillian holding back her father when she shouldn’t have been able to, and told herself that she was strong, that she would neither burn nor yield, that she was marble.
She could magic herself, but not the fire. The fire was still there, and still so terribly hot. Kami was keenly aware of that: she could feel the heat even though she was not burned. It was as if her magic was material covering her, and she knew that only the thinnest layer of magic in the world separated her from agony.
She threw the beam into a burning wall and stumbled through the curling smoke and the raging fire, almost putting her feet through the collapsing floor, not even sure of where to go, when she saw movement in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.
Kami ran toward the sight of her mother and Jared, their arms around each other’s hunched shoulders. The fire cast their faces in white, red, and shadow in quick succession—it was like seeing people she loved in hell.
Neither of them ran to her. Neither of them could run, that much was obvious. She got hold of her mother’s hand, soft and clinging, the only thing in this house Kami could touch and feel safe, and began to usher them out.
They were almost in sight of the front door when part of the wall fell in. Kami put her arms around her mother and Jared both, spun them away from the shower of white-hot sparks. She put herself between them, thought only of protecting them, and felt as if the material of her magic was tearing and fraying all over. If it failed, they would burn together.
The brick wall was burning coals around their feet. Kami, Claire, and Jared dragged themselves over it, through the furnace of fire and finally, finally out the door.
The light of the burning Glass house shone through the black thornbushes like a star in a spiked cage. When the wind blew in the wrong direction, Holly could feel a blast of heat as if she had passed by the open door of a furnace.
She wanted to run to Kami and help her. But someone had to stand guard between the Glass house and Aurimere, had to stop the sorcerers from coming down to pick off any survivors. Holly peered into the darkness and saw a familiar face coming toward her.
“Hi, Holly.”
Ross Philips. He’d been Amber Green’s boyfriend for years and years, for as long as Holly could remember. Holly had made out with him once, when they were both drunk, sitting outside in a field at one of those parties that were mostly boys and Holly, because nice girls didn’t go to that sort of party. Holly had always thought it was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy—the nice girls weren’t asked, because the boys respected them. The boys chose who they respected and who they did not, and then condemned the girls for going along with their choices.
Ross had told her, that night, that he really loved his girlfriend, and even though Holly didn’t love him and hadn’t wanted him to love her, she’d known he was really telling her that she was unlovable—not someone to be taken seriously, one of the grubby Prescotts, desperate and scrambling and out of favor with the Lynburns in the manor.
“Stay back,” Holly called. “I’m a sorcerer, just as much as you. I’ll hurt you if you come any closer.”
“I doubt that,” said Ross, and took several steps closer without even hesitating.
She didn’t even mean to do it. She felt indignation rise, wanting to make a scathing comment and not knowing quite how to: the feeling burned in her chest. Fire shot from Holly’s fingertips and almost took Ross’s eyebrows off. He stumbled backwards in a hurry.
“You mean you doubt me,” Holly said, breathing hard and trying not to show how shocked she was. “You really shouldn’t.”
“Come on, Holly,” said Ross, gently scornful despite his singed eyebrows. “I think we both know—”
Ross collapsed. Holly stared at her own hands in disbelief for a moment, then glanced up and saw Angela with a large branch.
“That you’re an ass**le?” Angie asked Ross’s prone body. “Yeah, we’re pretty clear on the subject.”
She’s so mean, Nicola Prendergast had once whispered to Holly, and Holly had nodded because she wanted Nicola to like her. Angela Montgomery doesn’t have to be so rude all the time. It wouldn’t cost her anything to be nice.
Holly didn’t know about that. She’d felt like being nice cost her something, even if it was just feeling a little bit lesser, every time she smiled without meaning to. Angie was smart and rude, no second thoughts tripping her tongue, able to make anyone be sorry they ever crossed her path and refusing to feel sorry about it. She could even deliver cutting repartee to an unconscious body. She was so mean, and it always made Holly smile.