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Both Malon and Aura’s husband look like perfectly ordinary men at first glance. My gaze bores into them as I try to discern if there’s anything special or extraordinary about them, but I honestly can’t tell.
“Don’t talk to your mother that way,” Ash says.
“Oh my God, I know you’re not trying to parent me,” Trine says. “You have to be joking.”
Aura flashes him an angry look. “Stay out of this,” she says quietly.
“Right,” Ash mumbles.
“Whatever,” Trine says. “You two can stay here and do whatever the fuck it is you’re going to do, but we’re leaving. We’re…”
I’ve been so absorbed with listening to their conversation that I barely notice the sound of the axe clinking on the tile floor when Luke lets go of it. It bounces, spinning on the tile for a few seconds. I glance up at Luke, but he doesn’t make a move to pick it up.
He’s looking out the window, his face turned away from the living room. I follow his gaze, my eyes widening when I find the rolling inferno coming toward us.
I don’t understand how there can be a fire outside when it was just raining fish, but smoke billows and rolls toward the house, fire crackling and spreading on the large oaks and pines that line the street in front of the yellow suburban house.
“What the fuck?” Trine asks.
I don’t notice when she sneaks up on me, but I do notice when she wraps her hand around my wrist, holding tight. She’s breathing heavily.
“Maybe we can get out through the back,” Misha says.
Good. At least he’s trying to come up with solutions.
“I’m calling 911,” Ash says. He takes his phone out of his pocket and stares at it, his brow furrowed. “It says I have no signal but I should still be able to get through to emergency services.”
Malon glares at him, his arms crossed over his chest. “Do you really think so?” he asks. “You know better than this. They’re going to stop any call from getting out.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I say, taking my phone out of my pocket. I press the buttons to call 911, but my screen crackles and turns black the moment I do, turning hot in my hand.
It’s so hot I can’t fucking hold it. I drop it at my feet, watching as the screen shatters next to my toes. I’m vaguely aware that everyone else is grabbing their phones, and they’re also swearing under their breath.
“What’s happening?” Trine says, looking up at me.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But we have to get out of here.”
“Well, we can’t go through the front and we can’t go through the back,” Luke says. “The backyard is burning too.”
“We can leave through the garage,” Aura says. “What the fuck is happening?”
“They found you,” Malon says. “I told you they’d find you.”
“Didn’t you lead them here?” Misha asks. “If you weren’t here in the first place, they might not have found us at all.”
“Can we keep arguing about this when we leave the burning house?” I ask. “We can still leave through the garage, but if we stay here and argue we’re just going to suffocate.”
That seems to be all that Trine needs to hear. We rush to the garage as a group, all of us facing away from the windows that line the porch.
That’s why we don’t see it when something hard shatters the glass.
At first, I think it’s just loud enough to be a rock. But then the sound gets louder, glass crunching under fists and boots. My breath catches in my throat when I realize that we’re not just surrounded by fire, but by people.
And they look…they don’t look right.
Their faces are pressed against the cracked glass, distorted by the cuts in it, their skin painted with ash. They’re making this sound that I’ve never heard before–something like a cross between a mournful scream and a terrifying animal roar. Their eyes glow the same colors as the embers of the fire crackling behind them.
One of them–the one closest to us, someone who looks vaguely familiar, a man wearing a blue uniform–uses a long fingernail to scratch against the glass, sending a shiver down my spine.
