Page 60 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

She drew in a breath before answering. “That was where I died.”

My lungs seized. Then I shook my head. “Come again?”

It took her a while before she faced me. When she did, she looked even sadder than she had when she’d said her mother’s name. “It was my fault,” she admitted. “The fire.”

My lips parted. Lifting my hand to cup her scarred cheek, I murmured, “My God. I had no idea. What happened?”

She shifted her attention to the bare section of earth. “I had a boyfriend. Eric. He was…” I removed my hand from her. She sent me a dry glance. “Well, at seventeen, I thought he was everything. My first serious boyfriend. I thought he’d be my last. My happily ever after.” With a roll of her eyes, she muttered, “I thought I loved him.”

I nodded as if I understood, except I couldn’t stop my stomach from churning. She was talking in the past tense, and it had happened eight years earlier, but none of that mattered. I hated this Eric douche, and I wanted to smash his face in, for no other reason than Isobel had once fancied him above all others.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice low and my feelings restrained under tight control.

“Mom found my birth control pills,” she confessed. “We fought. She told me I was too young to be sexually active. I told her it was none of her business, and then she…she grounded me.”

Shaking her head, she glanced at me with a slight smile. “She’d never grounded me before. I’m not even sure if she knew what a real grounding entailed. Neither did I, really. But I didn’t care what it meant. I was the spoiled princess of the manor, Henry Nash’s only daughter. I?

?d always gotten whatever I wanted. So no way did I accept her punishment.”

I shook my head sadly, imagining a young, pampered, entitled Isobel. And as I did, I still felt bad for her. Not even a spoiled brat had deserved the fate she’d landed.

“It was so stupid,” Isobel went on, her eyes glazed and focused on the past. “I wanted to sneak out to see him, so I climbed from my window and jumped down to the ground. I forgot all about the candle in a jar I’d left burning on the desk right in front of that window. The curtain must’ve gotten swept into the jar when I’d opened the window. I’m not sure. I just remember looking back up there once I climbed down to make sure my mom hadn’t spotted me, and that’s when I saw the orange blaze behind the glass.

“I ran back inside, but oh God, do you know how fast a fire spreads? By the time I reached my room, it was entirely engulfed. I couldn’t just beat out the burning curtain, like I thought I could. I thought I could run and find a fire extinguisher, but my brain felt like it was working through molasses. All my thoughts went into slow motion. I panicked and ended up running to my mom for help, or to warn her, or I don’t know. I just knew there was a problem, so I got my mom.

“When we left her room, the fire had already reached the hallway and was eating up more rooms. We could barely see the bright orange through all the smoke, but my mom grabbed my arm and then…then this flaming beam came crashing down toward us.”

When she paused to gasp for breath as if the smoke was still stealing her oxygen, I took her hand. She didn’t seem to notice, even though her fingers squeezed around mine.

“I’m not sure if the rest is real memory or things I’ve heard that happened mixed with dreams I have about that night. But the dreams feel so real like an honest-to-God-memory; they haunt me more than fuzzy things I recall when I’m awake. In them, I’m trapped and burning alive. It hurts like nothing I can describe, so I scream, thinking I’m going to die. I try to find my mom, but I can’t see anything. Then I hear her calling my name above the crackling flames. She sounds so desperate and scared, but I don’t know where she is.”

Isobel finally realized I was holding her hand and she gently pulled her fingers away to cradle them to her chest. She shook her head.

“Mr. Pan saved me. He must’ve kicked the beam off me, because these arms suddenly scooped me up and carried me down the stairs. He brought me out here, right to this very spot. The first time I came back here after the fire, there was still a human-sized burn patch in the grass where I had lain.”

She placed her hand against the bare patch, her eyes filling with tears.

“In the dreams, Mr. Pan was breathing hard, his face full of soot, and his skin bubbling and bleeding where he’d burned himself to free me from the fire. I reached for him, begging him not to leave me, but he said he had to go get my mom.”

“I waited there for them, unable to move, listening to the fire consume my house, smelling my own burned skin and experiencing the worst agony of my life. I really thought he’d be able to get her and bring her back out. Finally, I passed out. I remember waking a few times when the ambulance and paramedics arrived. I remember being lifted onto the gurney. I vaguely remember bits and pieces of the inside of the ambulance. I tried to ask about Mom and Mr. Pan, but I couldn’t talk very well. They said my heart stopped three times, and I coded before I was brought back again. The first time was when I was lying here in the grass, waiting for my mom to escape from the fire I’d started.”

“Jesus, Isobel.” I shook my head and reached for her, pulling her into my arms.

She rested her head on my shoulder.

“She died because I was spoiled and selfish. Mrs. Pan’s husband, Kit’s dad, died because I wanted to pout and break the rules. My childhood home burned to the ground because I just had to see my boyfriend.”

I wanted to argue and tell her those weren’t the reasons why. But I knew she wouldn’t believe me. No one could convince her of this; she would have to convince herself someday. I could only be there to hold her through it until the guilt and misery passed.

“What happened to him?” I asked. “Eric.”

“Oh, he left me,” she said, her voice bland and unconcerned. “I was too hideous for him to deal with after that.”

I stiffened and pulled back to see her face. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

She shrugged and lifted her face. “No one blamed him, least of all me. That was before all my surgeries and graphs. I look tons better now.” Then she touched her own scars. “Remember that comment you made about how my ear hadn’t melted halfway down my neck? Well, it actually did, but they were able to move it back to the proper place. I looked awful. Horrific. I can’t fault Eric for leaving.”

Well, I could. I didn’t give him any kind of pass at all for taking off. The jerk bastard piece of shit. “A misplaced ear is no reason to leave a girl.”

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