Page 1 of What We Burn

ONE

ELI

I’ve been sitting in my car for forty minutes, parked across the street from Sage’s building like the pathetic, self-flagellating coward I am.

The engine’s off. Lights are off. My phone is pressed to my ear while Micah talks me through the specifics of how thoroughly I’ve destroyed everything. Four days of silence. I’ve earned every word of it.

“She’s barely eating,” Micah is saying. “Knox made her pasta yesterday and she moved it around the plate then scraped it into the trash when she thought no one was looking.”

I close my eyes. Press my forehead against the steering wheel.

“She won’t sleep in the bed. She’s on the couch with a blanket, and every time one of us tries to⁠—”

“I get it.”

“Do you? Because from where I’m standing, you detonated a grenade in her chest and then fucked off to God knows where⁠—”

Here. I’ve been right here.

Keeping an eye on Amy because that’s what Sage wanted us to do. I fucked things up to the point where I don’t deserve to be in the room with the rest of them. But the least I can do is take shifts with Dean, make sure the apartment and her friend are covered.

“—so fucking heartless. You’ve left the rest of us picking the shrapnel out of⁠—”

That’s when I hear it. Through the cracked window, through the salt air and the ambient hum of the street. A sound that doesn’t belong to the night.

“Hold on,” I say, frowning, scanning the front of the building for Sage.

She was right there when I called—on the path near Micah, one arm wrapped around herself, head turned toward the street.

“Eli—”

“Shut up. I need to check something.”

I pull the phone from my ear and roll the window down all the way. The street is quiet. Streetlights throw pools of yellow on the sidewalk. A car passes two blocks over, headlights sweeping the intersection and moving on.

Where the fuck is she?

I’m about to ask Micah when I hear it again. A rocking creak. Rhythmic. A sound I know by heart.

Weight on a rope.

Every hair on my body stands up.

Fuck!

I’m out of the car before I’ve made the decision to move. The phone is still in my hand, Micah’s voice reduced to a tinny insect buzz against my palm. I cross the street at a run, vaulting the low hedge that borders the building’s foundation, and I’m into the bushes along the side of the building.

It’s dark. The landscaping lights are out—all I have to guide me is the creaking and the sound underneath it. A thin, reedy whistle. Air forced through a space too small. The sound a body makes when it’s trying to breathe through a crushed windpipe.

I round the corner of the hedge and I see her.

“SAGE!”

She’s hanging from a thick branch, rope around her neck, feet off the ground, jerking. Her hands scrabble at the twisted cord, toes scuffing at the air for some impossible purchase. She’s clawed her fingers bloody, her face already purple.

I sprint. Trip. Land hard on my knees. I don’t feel it. I rip the knife from my boot, then I’m under her, grabbing her legs, taking her weight against my chest to stop the strangulation while I reach up and saw at the rope.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you⁠—”