The Revelle tent was a maze of smoke and flames.
I couldn’t find the kitchen, or even my own feet. I had no idea where I was going, let alone where I was.
Kitchens had ovens. And ovens needed vents. So the kitchen had to be along the outside wall. The canvas one.
On all fours, I crawled through the darkness.
“Trys!” I yelled. Screams sounded in the distance. Panicked screams, not end-of-life screams. The Revelles were still trapped.
Another dead end. I tried the next. And the next.
The hallways weren’t straight, and my mental map was precarious at best. If I’d had Luxe’s magic, I could have found Trys’s lightstring. If I were an Edwardian, I could have heard her thoughts. And if I could fucking time travel, I would have gone right back to sunrise, when we were all safe on the beach. Together.
But I had no magic, no tricks.
“Trys!” Still no response.
Finally, my hands found the tough fabric of the outer tent. Feverish but ungiving.
The kitchen had to be somewhere along here.
Minutes passed like hours. The screams quieted. A good sign. Unless it wasn’t.
I could have died right then, searching for a friend who wasn’t even there. Caught up in the same ancient rivalry that had ensnared my parents. My . . . sister. But Trys was my family now, and her watch had been left beside that damn threat. They couldn’t take her, too.
“Trys!” Turning slowly on my hands and knees, I wound through another narrow hallway, away from the canvas wall—
More flames. I skittered back from the heat licking my face.
“Help!”
I froze. A female voice. Not Trys’s.
“Where are you?” I fumbled on my hands and knees down what seemed to be a hall.
“Over here!”
I crawled toward the voice as quickly as I dared, crushed glass and fractured wood piercing my palms. The smoke was so thick, so low, I could hardly see two feet in front of me.
“Hurry!”
So close to that voice. My free hand pressed against the wall until part of it gave way, like a door swinging open.
Kitchen doors.
“Hello?” The smoke was thinner here, though it rushed through the swinging doors. I rose to my feet. Pots and pans jangled over my head. Several fridges. Cupboards full of hard-earned food.
And two figures curled atop the island at the center, unmoving. Trys and—
Dewey.
I lunged for Trys. Despite the relentless heat of the fire, her skin was cool. Clammy.
“Trys?” I shook her, but she didn’t respond.
She was pale. Dewey, too, his strangely older face lifeless.
Glass crunched behind me. I swiveled to see a woman pointing a gun at me.
She squeezed the trigger.
My shoulder erupted in searing pain. Before she could shoot again, I dove to the floor, crying out as I hurled myself to the other side of the island.
Leaving Trys and Dewey on the counter between us.
“What are you doing?” I exclaimed. “We’re all going to die if we don’t get out of here!”
Tears streamed down the woman’s face. “I’m sorry.”
Her hands trembled as she cocked the gun again.
I ducked, and the bullet ricocheted off a pot hanging from the ceiling.
The fire roared outside the kitchen. Glass shattered, and in the distance, sirens wailed.
Her sobs gave away her position. I risked a peek over the counter. Her iridescent ivory horns caught the light from the flames.
“Stop,” I pleaded, pressing myself against the kitchen island. “We can both survive this if you just stop!”
She stepped closer, glass breaking beneath her feet. “He said I have to kill whoever tries to save them. It’s the only way to get my son back.”
Her son. Now I recognized those horns. “Wait a second. You’re Margaret’s sister.”
The sound of crunching glass ceased.
“We met in Nana Revelle’s room. I’m Roger’s friend, Jamison. Remember?” I risked a peek over the counter. White streaks snaked through her black hair. She was aging, and fast.
Impossible. She was an Effigen, not a Chronos.
“Your son’s missing.” That was why they’d been there that day, searching for clues about his disappearance. “A Chronos took him?”
Glass shattered in the distance, the smoke thickening as it slipped beneath the kitchen door. Soon we’d all be dead.
Tears streamed down Rose’s face. “If I do this, he’ll bring him back.”
“Was it George?” The bastard had threatened Trys and Dewey a week ago.
Gun still cocked, she shook her head slightly. “He wore a mask. A Revelle theater mask, like a tiger. He was just here a moment ago.”
Every hair on my arms rose. Slowly, I stood, lifting my palms as I glanced around. “A Chronos did the same thing to my parents: he told them if they wanted my baby sister back, they needed to do something terrible to the Revelles. But he used them, and they died without ever seeing her again. I don’t want the same to happen to you. Let’s get out of here, and we’ll find a way to get your son back.”
The gun wobbled in her unsteady hands. Every second, more wrinkles crept across her tearstained face.
“Rose? That’s your name, right?”
A curt nod, and a sniffle. Smoke thickened just over her head.
“Roger said you make the best doughnuts. He’s been bragging about them nonstop since the moment I met him.”
A sob escaped her. She covered her mouth with her hand, the heavy pistol trembling in her other hand.
“Can you put the gun down, Rose? We need to get you to a Strattori.”
Finally, she lowered the pistol, turning her arms to examine the wrinkles deepening by the second. “What’s happening to me?”
I could have cried from relief, had I not had two unconscious bodies and a rapidly aging woman to get out of the fire. “We need to leave.”
“I started it,” she whimpered. “I used my magic to make the fire spread twice as quickly with half the fuel.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“It means it’s going to burn for hours.” She ran a shaky hand over her withering face. Older than her grandmother now. “We have to use the antidote. I’m supposed to get the two Chronoses out, too.”
“How?” At this rate, the smoke was going to kill us before we had a chance to escape.
She fumbled in her pockets, pulling out a small vial. Christ, she was startlingly old now, her snow-white hair thinning. A cough overtook her, and I pulled her to the ground, away from the thickest smoke. My hands shook terribly as I removed my undershirt and ripped it into strips.
“Here.” I wrapped the fabric around her nose and mouth, her skin shriveling like a raisin. “Give me the antidote. Hurry!”
She lifted a trembling, withering hand, the vial slipping between her fingers.
The little glass shattered.
“No!” I cried, trying to gather it between my fingers, but it was useless. “Do you have another?”
No response.
“Rose?”
She fell to her side, her frightened eyes wide and glassy and utterly still. Gray skin flaked like ash as her body continued to age, even though she was gone.
Gone, without her son.
I swallowed the awfulness of it. Time to find a way out. Fast.
The kitchen’s back door was nothing more than a zippered flap in the tent. It didn’t budge when I kicked it.
I yanked at the zipper. It wouldn’t even wiggle.
Broken glass cut my knees as I crawled back to Dewey and Trys. I picked her up and tried to rouse Dewey, but no response. “C’mon, you bastard, wake up.”
He’d have to wait. Trys didn’t stir as I cradled her against me and rushed toward the door from which I’d entered—
Flames roared as soon as I kicked it open, so hot on my face, I yelled out. Craving the oxygen, they rushed into the room after us, spreading across the canvas, the ceiling—
We were trapped.
Lowering us to the ground, I leaned against the cupboards farthest from the door, the flames creeping closer.
“Wake up, Trys.” I shook my friend, but she didn’t respond.
“Trys? Please, wake up.”
She could get us out of here. Magic or not, she’d know what to do.
But Trys didn’t move. Nor did Dewey when I shook him.
I was on my own.
I could do this. I just needed to think for a moment.
If Roger lost Trys and me at the same time . . .
No. I could do this. I had to get us out.
Laying Trys on the ground against the thick fabric wall, I crawled back to Rose. As I removed my undershirt rag from her face, I tried not to look at the glint of exposed cheekbone between patches of drooping skin. I dragged the rag over the broken glass where the antidote had spilled, soaking up whatever I could. Ceramic shattered as the flames overtook the shelves, sending them crashing to the ground.
I darted back to the tent’s outer exit, rubbing the rag over the seam between the flaps, then took a knife from the counter and stabbed at it. The knife bounced back, clanging uselessly to the floor.
The Big Tent trembled, a great beast about to collapse.
