The Chronoses were here, in my home, coming after my family—
“Luxe.” Jamison shook my shoulders. “We have to go.”
He pulled me down the hall, ducking his head into each room along the way and shouting, “Fire!”
This couldn’t be happening. Roger had to be pulling some elaborate prank. Or my uncles, up to their antics again.
But the bells were ringing, and a noxious, smoky scent poisoned the air.
Colette ran into the hallway, struggling with the skirt of her dress. Jamison grabbed her arm. “Where’s Trys?”
“She went to the kitchen, but she didn’t come back.” She searched the hallway. “Maybe she got out already?”
Jamison’s face fell. He tried to turn around, but the crush of Revelles swept us farther from the kitchen. He took my hand, not letting the crowd separate us. “C’mon!”
The three of us rushed toward the beachside exit at the end of the hall, but my family started to trickle back. “Door’s jammed!” someone yelled.
Over their heads, flames crawled along the ceiling.
Flames, in our home. Our very flammable, canvas home.
We barreled down the hall, slowed by the crowd. Everyone was here for the last rehearsal—too many people, moving too slowly . . .
The smoke thickened as we neared the theater. Glass shattered and screams erupted, the soundtrack of a nightmare. As we shuffled into the pit, the surge of my family behind us nearly knocked me off my feet. I risked a look up—
Fire crept toward the ceiling’s pinnacle, raining ash and debris down on us.
“What’s the holdup?” Jamison pushed toward the front doors. The customers’ entrance.
“We need to leave now!” Uncle Wolffe shouted.
“The doors are sealed shut!” Millie yelled back. Nana was beside her. At her feet was little Clara, a protective arm over her brother’s shoulder. Her tear-filled eyes found mine, and I couldn’t muster a brave face.
Every single person I loved was in this tent.
“It doesn’t shut!” Colette barked. How many times had we tried to keep the tourists out, or the wind out, or the sand and the rain and the damn drunks out, to no avail?
“Let me through.” Aunt Caroline pushed her way toward the door. She fisted the fabric beside it and attempted to pull it apart.
It didn’t give.
“What the hell?” She tried to punch through the door, but her fist didn’t even make a sound.
Flames devoured the wooden stage, crackling and roaring as they slid into the pit, driving us closer to the unyielding doors. Jamison pulled me to my knees and tore off a piece of his undershirt. “Smoke rises, so you need to stay down. Put this over your nose and mouth. If it gets hot, find a way to wet it, okay?”
“Try it again!” Nana cried.
Aunt Caroline hurled herself into the door. It still didn’t budge.
I’d singed the tent with enough candles to know that you could burn a hole in the canvas fairly quickly. But the walls of flames were unrelenting, as if the fire itself had been charmed to burn slowly but spread quickly, leaving us trapped at the hollow center of a ten-story bonfire.
Only an Effigen could combine the properties of several flames into a single potent fire, but they were our allies—they wouldn’t.
“We’re trapped!” Sweat dripped from Colette’s forehead, her brow. We were going to boil alive before we even burned.
I closed my eyes and dug into my little inkwell, searching for Dewey’s lightstring. His ferry might not have left yet, and if I could find the right combination of emotions to get him to hurry back . . .
His lightstring was nowhere to be found. He was out of range.
We were all going to die. To burn alive—
No. Dewey would undo it as soon as he heard.
But if he were going to travel to help us, he’d already be here.
Jamison and my uncles tried to yank the doors wide open, tried to hurl themselves against the dark wood, but the doors didn’t even shake.
“Something’s blocking them!”
It might be an Effigen fire—but a Chronos would have the foresight to block the exits.
They sealed the doors.
They fanned the flames.
They meant to kill us all.
Coughing filled the cavernous space. Coughing—and those encroaching flames, spreading across the pit now, trapping us against the hot canvas, the crush of people tightening.
Uncle Wolffe cracked a wooden chair over his knee and tried to jam the leg through the side of the tent. My eldest cousins searched the canvas walls, punching and kicking the many patches we’d added over the years. Nothing worked.
A baby wailed. His mother cradled him close and sang to him, her voice breaking.
Beside me, Colette tore off the bottom of her dress and wrapped it around her mouth. “I’m going to find something sharp.”
“Wait!” My coughing fit stole the word before she could hear it.
“Luxe?”
The smoke was too thick; it was going to kill us before the flames—
“Luxe,” Jamison repeated. His button-down shirt was gone, and sweat stained the neck of his torn undershirt. “Luxe, Trys isn’t here.”
“No one’s coming to help,” I whispered.
“I need to find Trys. She would have traveled already. Something’s wrong.”
“They always win.” My mother. My aunts. Had they felt like this as they sank to the bottom? Knowing they had to watch each other die? They’d choked and gasped and filled their lungs with salt water as they witnessed the light blink from their beloved sisters’ eyes, knowing they couldn’t help them, couldn’t save them, couldn’t stay alive for us.
“Focus, Luxe.” Jamison gripped my shoulders. “You’re not powerless. Not even close.”
I blinked at him, at the urgency in his voice.
I was the advantage my mother didn’t have, the quirk in our magic to balance the scales.
Slowly, I nodded.
He kissed my forehead hard before he disappeared in the smoke.
Digging into my inkwell, I hardly felt the rush of pain, the pressure slamming against my skull. No time to cry out, to do anything but steady my breathing. The infamous Big Tent of Charmant was aflame. There were people outside. Bystanders. Tourists poised to watch with detached horror, or Charmantians who didn’t wish to risk meddling in Chronos business.
I grabbed their lightstrings.
Many were frozen in fear. A few were already taking action, though I couldn’t see them or hear them. I doused them all with an overdose of empathy, determination, and grit.
You want to help us. You want to find something sharp and rip a hole in the tent.
I gripped their lightstrings, carving away each misgiving, each wavering feeling of hopelessness. Only compassion. Only action.
My mind went black as I extended my reach, embracing the Effigens blocks away, dousing them with the need to act on behalf of my family. To bring some antidote to whatever substance the Chronoses had used.
I gripped every damn lightstring in the Night District, stripping them of all feelings except the urge to save us. There are children inside!
My head slammed against the too-warm wooden floor, the magic threatening to crack open my skull. Still, I clung to those lightstrings with everything I had, even as the darkness closed in around me, even as sunlight ripped into the tent, blue sky and—
