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The longer I waited, the more I recalled every nasty, awful thing I’d ever said to him. Every fight we’d had—and there were plenty to choose from. My whole body trembled, overcome with the fear I might not be able to save him now because the universe somehow mistook my cruelty for a lack of caring. Maybe the fates, or God, or whoever was in charge of doing this, thought I didn’t want it enough.
Bile churned in my guts. This was all wrong. I was supposed to have time to say goodbye. I was the one who was supposed to die.
“Get up, get up. You come back to
me, you stupid asshole.” Tears streamed down my face, superheated by the blast furnace we were now standing in. Logically, I understood no one could have survived falling into that fire. He probably hadn’t had time to feel it. He wouldn’t have suffered like Morgan had.
But I couldn’t accept it. Logical or not, it didn’t matter.
Lucas couldn’t die here.
“Come back to me,” I whispered, trying every command I could think of to undo what had happened. None of them worked. The fire burned, and time ticked on, and Lucas Rain was gone. “Come back.”
More of the floor fell away, bringing the fire closer to us, and as the heat turned my tears to steam and singed my eyelashes, I knew I couldn’t change what had happened. I couldn’t bring him back, because he was gone. He’d given himself to save Genie, just as I would have, and if I didn’t save her now, his sacrifice was for nothing.
With one last pleading look at the growing hole, I turned around and grabbed Genie by the wrist, racing towards the stairs at the end of the hall. The floor beneath us felt flimsy, as though we were running on a waterbed. When we reached the concrete stairwell, it was cloudy with black smoke, but the heat was less intense. Keeping one hand on Genie’s wrist so I knew she was still with me, I ran down the stairs, all the while hoping I was wrong about Lucas.
Maybe my commands had worked. Maybe he would be waiting for us when we got to the lobby. It was that foolish hope, along with the need to get my sister out of this living hell, that kept me moving forward.
We reached the lobby a few minutes later and found it empty, the one remaining chandelier swinging precariously, and the walls all crumbling to black dust.
“Outside,” I commanded, though I don’t know why I bothered since I was dragging her along behind me. I spared a last glance back to make sure we weren’t leaving anyone behind, and it wasn’t until we got to the safety of the sidewalk outside that a final thought caught up with me.
We had left someone behind.
Someone terribly important.
Lucas.
We’d run almost two blocks before we found the rest of the group, all huddled together in a small, iron-fenced park. I let go of Genie, and she staggered towards a bench, where Cedes found her and went immediately to her side to check her injuries. O’Brian, demonstrating he must have children of his own, sat next to my sister and took her small hand in his large one, and started telling her a sweet story about his past to distract her from Cedes’s attempts at first aid.
I looked at everyone and mentally counted our numbers, but the tally came up short.
Two short. Morgan and Lucas wouldn’t be coming.
My hands shook and I sank to the ground, my whole body reduced to hard, aching tremors. Arms encircled me, and the taste of lime in my mouth told me without looking it was Desmond holding me.
“I couldn’t save him,” I gasped, my voice trembling so badly it took me three tries to get the words out. “I tried, but I couldn’t do it. It happened too fast.”
It was Dominick who first understood who we were missing. “Where’s Lucas?” he asked, though the tone in his voice told me he already knew the answer.
I began sobbing anew, and each lime-infused breath reminded me I would never again taste Lucas’s cinnamon flavor. He would never annoy me or be there for me to cuss at. He was well and truly gone.
Burying my face against Desmond’s chest, I cried until there was no energy left in me to cry. I cried not only for Lucas, but for Keaty, whose death I had tried to keep from feeling until right then. I cried for everyone lost, and everything I hadn’t been able to save. I wept until it hurt inside my bones, because I thought, foolishly, I could save the world.
But I couldn’t even save one man.
“Secret, you have to breathe.” Desmond stroked my hair and whispered against my scalp. He wiped away my tears and held my face so I had to look at him. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Where’s Lucas?” Dominick asked again.
I couldn’t explain what had happened, so I gave them an abbreviated version of the events. I painted Morgan as every inch the villain she was, but left out any part Genie had played. I didn’t know whether or not her spell had been what caused the floor to weaken, and it didn’t matter now. There was no need for anyone else to think she might have been responsible, especially not her.
If she remembered anything that had occurred when her magic took her over, she didn’t let it show. She seemed satisfied with the version of the story I told the others.
Desmond helped me up, and though I was still shaken, I knew I couldn’t let myself be demolished by this. I’d survived, I’d saved Genie, and though we hadn’t walked away unscathed, and I hadn’t gotten through this without any losses, I was still here. Everyone surrounding me had pulled through, and though my grief wanted to pull me under, I understood we weren’t done here yet.
