Page 67 of Killer Kiss

Instantly, I’d known she wasn’t leaving my house. Not until she told me what she was running from.

I peered around the dark room, looking toward the window that faced Willa’s house. The sun rose over there, and my blinds were so old and broken that I could generally tell what time it was by how light the sky was.

I sat up fast when the sky outside was an eerie shade of orange.

Ophelia rolled over and blinked sleepily at me. “What’s going on?”

It took a second for my brain to catch up with my eyes, but when it did, it sent a jolt of panic through my system. “Fire!”

“What?” Ophelia jerked up, twisting around only to see what I did.

But then I was gone, running down the stairs three at a time. “Call nine-one-one!” I shouted to Lia, slamming into a wall as I took the turn toward the front door too fast. Pain ricocheted through my body, but it didn’t matter. I got out on the front lawn and stared up in horror at Willa’s house, identical to mine in every way except for the plumes of smoke pouring from the second floor and the unearthly orange glow.

“Willa!” I hurdled the low fence that separated our properties, landing on the other side and sprinting up to her porch. I slammed my hand against the wooden door. “Willa!”

I tried the handle, and it gave way beneath my hand.

On the other side, Willa staggered through the smoky interior.

Horror filled me at the burns on her body. I ran to her, grabbing her arm to help her out, but she pushed me away frantically, coughing and spluttering, disoriented by the smoke.

“It’s me!” I shouted at her over a roar of something I couldn’t identify. I didn’t know if it was blood in my ears, adrenaline, or if it came from the fire itself.

She pushed at me again. “No! Luna is upstairs!”

I was sure the blood drained from my face. Banjo’s car was in her driveway. “What? Banjo and—”

Willa shook her head frantically. “Just Luna. The others took a limo to the city. Augie, please! She’s in Colt’s old bedroom.”

I didn’t think twice. I ran deeper into the smoke-riddled house.

Almost instantly I lost ninety percent of my visibility, the smoke permeating everything. My eyes. My ears. My mouth. My nose. I yanked my T-shirt up to try to filter some of it out, but it didn’t help much. A racking cough seized my lungs, but I pushed on, each step taking me closer and closer to the invisible threat of a fire I knew lurked above.

The smoke only got worse as I made it onto the landing, the fire burning in the two front bedrooms, flames licking their way across the walls and up the carpets and dangerously close to the ceiling, fanned by a broken window that let in the cold night breeze. I pulled my shirt sleeve down over my hand and yanked the bedroom doors closed, hoping it would buy me a few more minutes.

Because fuck. I desperately needed them.

Luna’s screams of terror cut through the roar in my ears, and I spun around, looking for where they came from before I remembered Willa saying she was in Colt’s old room. I thanked the town planner who had been too lazy to come up with different designs for each house on this street. Willa’s place was the exact same layout as mine, and I knew from years of Banjo and her son, Colt, being best friends that Colt’s old room had been in the attic.

“Don’t be up there,” I murmured to the fire. “Please don’t be in the fucking attic.”

I thundered up the stairs, choking and coughing until I made it into the room.

The fire was beneath me, rapidly eating away at the ceiling of the bedrooms below us.

Burning through the support beams that kept the floor from giving way beneath my feet and sending me and Luna into the middle of the fire.

The floor groaned in complaint at my weight, but there was no time for thoughts. No time for concerns over the floor not holding me.

There was no other option when my brother’s daughter was on the other side of the room, her arms outstretched, screaming for me to get to her.

I sprinted across the room, grabbing her from her bed and tucking her face into my neck. “It’s okay, baby. I got you.”

She clutched me with terrified little-girl fingers, her tiny nails pressing into the skin of my neck so hard it hurt, but I relished the pain.

While she was holding on, she was conscious. Breathing.

Which was becoming more difficult by the minute. I ran us both down the attic stairs to the landing, pausing for a second in horror at the flames that had eaten their way through the doors I’d closed and were attacking the hallway.

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