Page 85 of Shadows in Bloom

“My dad!” she cries, tears streaking down her soot-covered face. Is that what I look like too? “I have to get him.” She goes to stand again, and pushes me off when I try to yank her back down.

Tripping over herself, she manages to reach the porch just as a wooden beam comes swinging down from the overhang. She jumps back at the same time I lunge for her, grabbing her around the waist, pulling her away from where sparks explode into the smoky night.

There’s more creaking, and the roar of flames seems to be growing louder. They’ve all but swallowed up the house in record time. If her dad’s still in there…

I choke back tears, squeezing Ophelia to me, burying my face in her shoulder.

“Let me go!” she screams, clawing at my arms.

The strength it takes me to keep her from running into a burning building seconds from collapsing in on itself is nothing short of inhuman.

“LET ME GO! DAD! DAD, PLEASE!”

Her heart-wrenching screams echo into the night. Over the flames. Over the crackling structure. Over the sirens and shouts that come from the street.

“DAD!”

And still, I somehow manage to hold her back.

All I can think is, I can’t lose you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please forgive me.

When exhaustion inevitably steals her fight, we fall to the ground, with me wrapped around her, holding her as tight as I can. As if that can somehow make it better. As if that can somehow make up for her loss.

Her house…

Her dad…

Just before firefighters drag us back, and paramedics converge on us, another beam falls across the porch, sending up more sparks.

My gaze lifts, drifting past the open door, and into the flames that have now consumed the interior of the house. And I swear, for a moment, I see something that shouldn’t be there…

Someone.

A tall shadowy figure flickering in and out between the wild orange flames.

It almost looks as if it’s reaching toward me.

No, toward us.

Blackness edges along my vision, narrowing it to a single point just as someone starts tugging us back.

Not once do I take my eyes off the house.

And when it collapses in on itself a second later, I swear I heard a woman’s high-pitched scream in the midst of the crashing rubble and roaring whoosh of flames..

Just as everything goes black, the ground rushing toward my face, I hear Yolanda’s voice from weeks ago when we bought the Ouija board from her—her warning.

“Don’t forget to cast out the spirits and say goodbye when you’re done.”

And all I can think, as unconsciousness devours me whole…

What did we do?

What the fuck did we do?

CHAPTER 5

OPHELIA ST. MAUD

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