Chapter 8: Soot

The fire went out by itself when the lane was clear.

I stood in the gravel with smoke coming off my hands and nothing left of my sleeves but two black cuffs.

Eleven Bloomed lay along the fence. I had not meant to touch most of them.

They had come at the light. Every time I turned around, there were more.

I do not remember walking back through the inner gate.

I remember Nolan's hand at my elbow the whole way, and I remember that I let him keep it there.

By dawn the five people I had saved were asleep on cots in the warehouse.

The baby slept on the church woman's chest, and she kept saying sorry in her sleep.

Amos lay on his back with his boots still on and his old dog flat across his legs.

Nolan had checked every one of them for bites.

He had done it with a flashlight and a rolled-up shirt for a pillow, and he had done it gently.

There were no bites. Amos's collar was torn, and his neck was red where it had been pulled.

"He's fine," Nolan told me. "He'll have a bruise across his neck."

"And me?"

"Come into the kitchen."

I sat on a stool by the stove while he filled a pan of warm water.

My forearms were black to the elbow.

He knelt in front of me with a clean cloth and took my left wrist in his hand.