Page 98 of Sweet Nightmare

“Jude?” I scream back as the owner of the voice registers in my mind.

“Where are you?”

I start to answer—maybe he can help me get Eva out of here—but the smoke sends me into a coughing fit that nearly brings me to my knees.

“Clementine, goddamn it, where are you?” Jude roars as the front door of the cottage slams open.

And that’s when I know I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t let Jude risk his life coming into this room, not when the entire cottage is about to go up in flames.

I turn back to look at Eva—one last look—at the girl who just a few hours ago was telling me that everything was going to be okay.

And then I run.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

SET FIRE TO

THE PAIN

“Clementine!” Jude yells my name from what sounds like the living room.

“I’m here!” I scream back as best I can as I race down the hall toward him.

We slam into each other in front of the bathroom doorway, and he grabs me, yanking me into his arms and burying his face in my hair. “I thought you were dead,” he tells me, his whole body shuddering against mine. “I thought you were dead.”

“Eva—” I start, but my voice breaks.

“Where is she?” he demands. But then his eyes go toward our room and the flames licking the door and out into the hallway, and he figures it out.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

And then he’s picking me up and racing out the front door into the torrential storm that only seems to have gotten stronger in the last few minutes. All the rain only makes what happened in there seem so much worse—there’s tons of water everywhere, and I still couldn’t save Eva.

“Are you okay?” Jude is still shouting to be heard above the roar of the storm. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to say to that, so I just stare at him, eyes wide and wild.

When I don’t answer him, Jude runs his hands over me from head to toe, looking for injuries. When he doesn’t find any, except for a few minor burns on my hands, he yells, “Stay here!”

And then he darts back into the cottage.

“She’s gone!” I yell back, ignoring his order and running up the stairs after him. If I thought there was any chance that Eva was still alive, I’d never have left her there. But she was dead. I know she was, and having Jude risk his life to try to save someone who is already gone—

But before I can even pull open the cottage’s screen door, he’s back, grim-faced and covered in soot. He’s also carrying the damn tapestry. Only now the manticores are gone and in their place are the words YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME in huge, bold black letters.

No shit. The warning’s a little late, if you ask me.

“She’s gone,” he confirms, like I don’t already know that.

“Did you go back in for Eva or that damn rug?” I demand as anger wells up inside me.

“Both,” he answers, because he’s Jude and he doesn’t lie. Ever.

And just like that, the anger drains away, drowning in the grief and confusion slamming through me like a tsunami.

“I don’t know what happened!” I tell him as lightning streaks across the sky and rain—fucking buckets of rain—pours down on top of us. “She was fine. I was awake. I saw her. I swear she was fine! And then, just like that, she was on fire. I don’t know how it happened.”

“She just burst into flames?” Jude asks. “Like Ember?”

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