Chapter 10: The Porch

The detector was screaming, and the air in my grandmother's bedroom tasted of burning oil.

I sat up and my chest locked.

It was the old feeling, the one I knew better than any other, the throat closing like a fist.

I reached for the nightstand.

The rescue inhaler was there. Sam had given me a new one from his own kit, and I pressed it twice.

It helped a little.

It wasn't enough.

Smoke was coming under the bedroom door in a grey ribbon.

I tried to stand, and my legs folded.

I couldn't get a word out. I couldn't shout for Marco.

The door burst open.

Sam stood in the hall in a T-shirt and bare feet, with an extinguisher in one hand.

He saw me on the floor.

He dropped the extinguisher and picked me up.

I was too short of breath to fight him.

He had one arm under my knees and the other around my back.

He took the stairs three at a time.

Cold air hit my face at the front door.

He laid me on the grass of the front yard and pulled the oxygen mask from the kit he'd left on the porch.

"Breathe," he said. "In. Slow."

I breathed.

It took a long, awful minute.

When the grey cleared from the edges of my sight, I saw Marco on the sidewalk.

He was in boxer shorts and an apron, spraying the back porch with a garden hose.

The fire was already out.

It had been a coffee can packed with oily rags, set right under the kitchen window and the back door.

"Somebody poured lamp oil on it," Marco said when I could hear him.

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