Chapter 19: Smoke

I woke to Wick's voice screaming my name across the yard.

It was ten past two in the morning.

I was out of Talon's bed before I understood the sound.

Through the window, the sky over the Hollow had gone orange.

"The bar!" Wick was shouting. "The bar's on fire!"

Talon was already pulling on his jeans.

"Stay here."

"No."

"Alexis."

"Wick's alive, he's out here," I said. "Who's in there?"

We looked at each other.

Wick was standing in the yard in his socks, gasping, with his phone in his hand.

"Who's inside?" Talon said.

"I was! I mean I live in the back room, and I got out the side, but the new prospect was sleeping on the couch..."

"The one from Ohio?"

"He said he'd stay. I tried to get him up, and the smoke came down, and I..."

He was sobbing.

Talon ran.

I ran after him in his flannel shirt and Wick's boots.

The Hollow stood at the bottom of the Ridge road, a low brick building with a tin roof.

Flames were coming out of the back windows.

The roof had begun to sag at one end.

Men were pouring out of the houses along the row, shouting, with hoses.

Dane got there a second before me and caught Talon by the arm.

"You can't go in."

"He's in there."

"There's no roof!"

"He's twenty-one years old," Talon said.

He tore free.

He soaked his cut in the horse trough by the door, pulled it over his head, and went in through the front.

I screamed his name.

Dane held me.

I fought him anyway, and he held me harder, and I could hear him praying.

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