The second door opened onto a room that wasn’t the habitat of a toaster any more than the first had been. The third, though…
Yep, the toaster was in here somewhere. Hidden behind that wall of unquenchable flames.
Celeste was the one who slammed the door, cutting off the flow of billowing smoke. My eyes didn’t just tear now. They burned, trying to squeeze shut to protect delicate membranes.
I could see well enough, though, to know that the kitchen had passed the point of fire suppression. Celeste was right to create a barrier between the conflagration and the hallway. She was also right to hurry us further down the hallway, away from the exit rather than toward it.
After all, there could still be children locked in one of the rooms we hadn’t checked yet.
The two spaces we’d looked into on the way to the kitchen had been a bathroom and a living room, both currently devoid of life. Which left three doors further down the hall…
I hesitated, uncertain whether it would be safer to send Celeste back toward Orion and the stranger or to let her follow me deeper into what Finnegan had termed the underworld. My sister was the one who made the decision for us. “We’re not leaving kids behind in this,” she said, taking the lead as she felt her way deeper into the smoke.
Past the kitchen, heat from the fire turned suffocating. If I had to guess, I’d say the flames had burned through an interior wall and spread in this direction. It also seemed as if the air-filtration system was drawing smoke toward this end of the hallway, condensing it beyond the filter’s ability to clean.
The thought fizzled in my head, rational explanations pushed aside by painful skin prickling. By breathing gone raspy. A cough started in my lungs then shook my entire body in a way I couldn’t seem to stop.
Then Celeste was sloshing water out of a plastic bottle onto my sleeve and dragging that sleeve across my nose. The layer of wet fabric helped a little, enough so I could peer at her to ensure she’d done the same.
“Never underestimate a kindergarten teacher,” my sister admonished, her voice coming out as a croak from behind what appeared to be a cloth handkerchief tied across her nose and mouth.
My sister was right—she’d had more foresight than I had. And it wasn’t so much that I was underestimating her. It was that working together on a critical mission was unfamiliar territory for the two of us. I’d been trained to walk through hazards unflinching. She hadn’t. And I needed Celeste to make it out of here alive.
I didn’t waste time trying—and failing—to send her away though. Instead, I took the lead as we entered a portion of the hallway so smoky Celeste had to grab onto the back of my shirt to keep her bearings. Even my shifter-assisted eyesight had turned our surroundings into a blur now. Smoke and heat pressed against us in a suffocating embrace.
I could barely discern the first door on my right, the opposite side of the hallway from the kitchen. My hand had just touched the knob—still cool—when heavy footsteps pounded up behind us.
Orion. I knew the cadence of his stride without having to look, but I glanced backwards anyway as the dark shape behind me rumbled, “Finnegan swears there’s no one else here.” Despite his words, Orion continued to keep his body between Finnegan—who’d followed him down the hallway—and the rest of us.
“Won’t hurt to check,” I answered, yanking open the door. Before haze took over the air inside, I scanned the space and found it just as devoid of life as the others.
This room was an office, complete with desk and computer. Would a prisoner be given supplies like those? But if Finnegan wasn’t a prisoner, wouldn’t he have taken advantage of Orion’s turned back in order to call for reinforcements?
Which is when I realized Celeste’s fingers had left my shirt. My rasping breath was so loud in my own ears, I hadn’t heard her move away from me. But I caught the motion as she opened the next door down, the last one on the non-kitchen side.
“Bedroom,” she called back to us.
“Mine,” Finnegan answered, “and you look remarkably good in it.”
Just like everyone else’s, his voice had turned rough from smoke inhalation. No, that wasn’t quite right. His tone was also tinged with flirtation despite heat from the kitchen pressing into our skin like a physical force.
Celeste was mostly human, so she should have felt ten times worse than I did. Still, she leaned toward Finnegan while his entire body angled back in her direction. Both of them appeared willing to make calf eyes as the building we were inside literally went up in flames.
“Terrible pickup line,” I muttered under my breath. “Even worse timing.”
I’d kept my voice shifter low, but Finnegan as well as Orion responded by glancing in my direction. Celeste didn’t. She was so intent upon gazing at Finnegan that I expected cartoon hearts to pop out of the smoky air and form a halo around her head.
I’d never seen my sister like this. Still, when we watched movies together, she always ogled the bad boys. Was this the moment she fell for exactly the wrong man, not on screen but in real life?
Something fell then, but it wasn’t Celeste. Instead, the crash came from the kitchen. I could only hope a cabinet had come loose from the wall rather than a structural support losing its integrity. Surely a building this large would be framed in metal? Still…
“I swear there’s no one else here,” Finnegan said, his tone turning urgent as if he’d just realized he and Celeste were inside a burning building. “Let’s go.”
“There’s one more room,” Celeste countered, already moving toward the door on the kitchen side of the hallway. The door I suspected would open onto flames.
A louder crash emerged from the kitchen. The wall on that side bulged as if something heavy pressed up against it. If sheet rock collapsed into the hallway, Celeste’s only exit route would be blocked…
“It’s time to evacuate. Ladies first.”
The alpha command spun me around and thrust my feet forward before I fully understood what was happening. My motions weren’t my own as I hurried back down the hall, aiming toward the exit. Only the sound of Celeste’s parallel footsteps prevented me from struggling against the compulsion and forcing myself to stay in place.
As I walked, I puzzled as best I could while breathing through my sleeve and swiping at tearing eyes. My sister wouldn’t have left that doorknob unturned of her own free will, which meant shifter magic worked on her even though she showed no other signs of having a connection to her wolf. Thank you, Orion, I thought, grateful he’d guessed my sister’s susceptibility and used it to protect her.
Then Orion’s growl carried down the hall through the smoke. “You’re a wolf.”
“Not much of one,” Finnegan answered. “Can’t shift. Perhaps we could hold the rest of this conversation somewhere the walls aren’t about to cave in on us?”
Whatever Orion replied, I didn’t hear it. Because the alpha command—Finnegan’s alpha command?—continued carrying me down the hallway faster and faster. I thrust open the unlocked outer door and stumbled out into the fresh air of the dimly lit alley. There, I bent over and hacked out sooty yuck that had settled in my throat, blinking my eyes furiously to clear my sight.
It took me far too long to straighten and look for a sister who might need my help. Shifter constitutions tended to be hardier than humans’, and Celeste was far more human than she was lupine. The smoke had been bad there at the end, far too bad for damp cloth over a nose to protect us. Celeste might not have made it…
She had made it. Wasn’t in any distress, apparently.
Instead, my sister stood with her head cocked, gazing intently at the doorway we’d so recently stumbled out of. She was waiting for something. She was waiting for—
Finnegan emerged, not bent over but rather just as tall and sturdy as he’d looked when he greeted us the first time. His trench coat billowed out behind him like a cinematic wizard’s cloak, and he didn’t seem to chafe at its bulk despite the Texas heat and the fiery interior he’d just strode through.
In response, Celeste sighed, the breeze of air wending out of her lips soft and awestruck. I had a sinking suspicion I’d just witnessed love at first sight.
