Chapter 7: Gas

Mabel lay awake for a long time after the kitchen went dark.

An accident at home.

So the bad men weren't going to send someone with a balloon this time.

They were going to come here.

She went over the apartment in her head the way she'd once gone over the Ainsworth house, looking for every place she could get hurt.

The stairs. The bathtub. The windows. The stove.

The next afternoon, a man in an orange gas company vest was coming down the stairwell when she and Linus got home from school.

He had a clipboard and a toolbag.

He smiled at them and held the door.

"Routine check," he said. "All done. You kids have a good one."

Mabel looked at his shoes.

They were brand new and very expensive.

Nobody who climbed into basements all day wore shoes like that.

She told Fern at dinner.

Fern stopped chewing.

"Did the super let him in?"

"I don't know," Mabel said. "He was leaving."

Fern looked at Hank.

Hank got up and looked behind the stove with a flashlight.

He looked for a long time.

"Line's fine," he said finally. "Clean."

He came back and sat down, and Fern relaxed a little.

Mabel didn't.

She went to bed in her clothes, with her socks on.

At two in the morning, she woke up and smelled it.

Rotten eggs.

Faint, under the door.

She sat straight up.

In her first life, she'd failed a lot of things the tutors tried to teach her.

But she had loved chemistry.

And her chemistry teacher had told them one thing so many times it stuck.

If you smell gas, don't touch a switch. Not a light. Not a doorbell. Nothing that sparks.

Mabel got out of bed in the dark.

She shook Linus awake in the bottom bunk.

"Gas," she whispered. "Don't turn on the light."

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