“I don’t want to,” the boy cried.
“I know.” I held his gaze. “It’s all right to be scared. You can be scared and still move. That’s the trick.”
He stared at me.
“Koala,” I reminded him.
He clung to me as I eased him through the window into Hassan’s waiting arms, and the moment they were clear, heat rolled over my back hard enough to prickle my skin under the gear. I swung one leg over the sill, and the room flashed. Light burst behind me, sudden and furious, the bedroom turning into a mouth of flame, and for one second the world was heat andorange and the old warehouse, Brian’s laugh, his radio going silent, Brian not coming out.
Not now.
I dropped onto the conservatory roof so hard something cracked under my boot. Polycarbonate, hopefully, and not bone. Hassan had Milo and the cat. The ladder appeared below as hands reached and voices shouted instructions. We got the boy down first, then the cat, who came out of the sling like a demon released from a handbag and bolted straight into the arms of the sobbing mother. Ungrateful beast.
By the time I reached the ground, Milo’s mother was on her knees with both arms wrapped around him. He was coughing and crying, but very much alive. The orange cat sat under her elbow, wild-eyed and damp, looking for all the world like it had organized the rescue itself.
Hassan pulled off his mask, rain streaking soot down his face. “Criminal temperament?”
“It attacked an officer of the fire brigade.”
“Technically you kidnapped it.”
“I saved its ridiculous life.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “You all right?”
There it was again. The question everyone had started asking after Brian died. Softer now, careful around the edges, like they were all waiting for me to crack down the middle.
I peeled off one glove and looked at the small tear where the cat had clawed through. A bead of blood welled up on my finger. “I’m fine.”
Hassan didn’t argue, which I appreciated and disliked in equal measure.
Across the pavement, Milo peered at me over his mother’s shoulder, his face streaked black with soot except where the tears had washed clean lines down his cheeks.
“You saved Toast,” he called. “Thanks.”
I blinked. “The cat’s name is Toast?”
He nodded, solemn as a judge.
I looked at the orange menace. “That explains a lot.”
Milo smiled, small and shaky and real. And that was it, really. That was the thing that kept me walking into burning buildings even after one had taken Brian. Not glory or courage. Not any of the shiny rubbish they printed on recruitment posters. A boy breathing. A mother holding him. And a cat named Toast ruining everyone’s morning.
It should have been enough. Once, it had been.
Back at the station hours later, after the kit was cleaned and the report filed and Hassan had told the story of Toast the Arson Goblin to anyone who would stand still long enough, I found myself in front of Brian’s old locker, trying not to hear him laughing. Someone had finally cleared it out six weeks ago, and somehow that only made it worse.
“You need a break,” Watch Manager Ellis said from behind me.
I closed the locker next to Brian’s, mine, because I’d been staring too long. “I had a break. Tuesday. Very dull. Wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I mean a real one.”
“I rescue one child and one badly named cat and suddenly everyone’s a wellness expert.”
Ellis didn’t smile, which I thought was rude of him.
“You were solid today,” he said. “Too solid.”
