Bea kept screaming, until Thea reached her. With one movement she wrapped her hand firmly around Bea’s arm and then up to the gun. With a soft “Shhhh,” Thea gently took the gun away from her, holding it tight as she curled herself around Bea. Then she pulled her broken friend into her arms. “I’ve got you,” she whispered, and Bea collapsed against her with a sob.
One of the women stirred, and Bea turned to look at her. “You’re falling, deeper and deeper,” Bea commanded. “Deeper and deeper.” The woman went silent, her chest rising and falling gently.
Thea touched Bea’s cheek before she leaped up, her hands yearning to caress Drew’s face. Everything fell away as she reached his chair. Thea let out an exhausted cry, frustrated by her hands not working fast enough, until she finally was able to pull him free. His arms went around her and she ripped the gag from his mouth. “Drew!”
“Thea.” His voice was kind.
She fell against him, her mouth pressing against his bloodied lips. “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry!” she whispered into his mouth, needing him to know everything. She had come so close to losing him, and she wouldn’t again. Never again.
“Thea . . .” She held her breath as a painful smile appeared on his face. He looked straight into her eyes. “You owe me some waffles.”
A sob escaped her lips as her hands traced his face. He was still Drew. He was still hers.
Drew clutched Thea as if she would fly away. Her hands traced over the bruises on his face, the cut on his lip. “Did they hurt you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing that isn’t easily fixed.”
“Not to interrupt,” Bea piped up from behind them. “But can we get a move on?”
Thea pointed to Drew. “Drew, Bea. Bea, Drew.” With the edge of her toe, she softly poked one of the slumbering Monarchs.
“We don’t have long,” Bea said. “Maybe ten minutes before they wake up.”
“Let’s go, then.” Thea pushed up to her feet.
“Where did that witch go?” Drew glanced up at the ceiling and closed his eyes, probably remembering something horrible.
“Probably the Breviary,” said Bea. “That’s where we were going to meet your dad. That’s where I was going to help her kill him.”
Thea turned. “The Breviary. What is that? I feel like I’ve heard someone mention it before.” Then: the memory of her first day in Mademoiselle Corday, when she had heard the phrase as she walked down a hallway lined with antique furniture, her heart pounding with the possibility of revenge. The water grows shallower each year. I’m just not sure it’s a safe place anymore. They are building that gaudy new home not far from there, and it’s a pebble’s throw away from the Breviary . . .
Bea looked at the floor for a moment. “The Breviary is a graveyard, Thea. It’s where they bury . . .”
Drew finished her sentence. “The men who meet the Monarchs.” He bent over and grabbed the gun on the floor, checking the chamber with ease. “It’s empty,” he sighed. “You made short work of this place, Bea.” The dome overhead was letting in tiny pieces of the night sky, pinpricks of stars now visible through the gold.
Thea turned to Bea. “Where is it, the Breviary?”
“South of Mademoiselle Corday. You know that boggy place, where the land dips down?”
Yes, she knew it. Thea had seen it on one of her runs with Sahil—a nondescript murky pond surrounded by overhanging cypress and oak trees. Sahil had described it as a haven for snakes and mosquitoes, ensuring that she stayed away. Sahil. Where is he?
Bea continued. “The graveyard is just on the other side of the marsh.”
Thea turned Bea to face her. “Drew and I are going to stop Julie. Find the rest of Team Banner and go to the police. Get as far away from the house as you can. Some of the Monarchs are still out there.”
Bea’s eyes filled with tears. “But I can’t leave you.”
“And I can’t ask you to come. Bea, you’ve seen enough.” Thea watched an internal battle raging in Bea’s troubled eyes. “And you’ve done enough.”
Bea surrendered, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “Okay.”
She gave her friend a quick hug. “I’ll see you on the other side of this.”
“Thea!” Drew was growing restless. “We have to go. If we don’t stop her, she’ll find another way to lure my dad here, I know it.”
The three ran out of the atrium and into the hallway, rapidly winding down the stairs. Bea left them behind and headed toward the exit as Thea stopped with Drew where she had last seen Kennedy. The only proof that she had been there was a small drop of blood on the ground. She heard the door slam as Bea left. Otherwise the house was eerily silent.
Drew reached around Thea’s waist. “I know we’re in a hurry, but I’m worried I will never get this chance again, and I can’t . . .” Then he hungrily pressed his mouth against hers, and she could feel him pouring every regret into her, a kiss laced equally with sorrow and desire. His hands wrapped themselves around her and he lifted her off her feet, pulling her into him. When she looked up into the depths of his green eyes, she saw herself reflected for the very first time: Thea, a grieving girl and a Black Coat. In return she saw who he was as well: Drew Porter, a boyfriend and a son trying to do the right thing. “I love all of you,” he whispered. “No more secrets.”
“Never.”
He held her tight. “I’m sorry I thought you needed saving. Apparently, that was me.”
Thea pressed her nose against his, free in a way that she had never been. “I’ll save you anytime, Drew Porter.”
“Isn’t this sweet?” Julie spoke out of the darkness above, completely unhinged. She was on the second level, leering over the balcony at them as they stared up at her. “You’ve found love while ruining the legacy of this house. You kiss that boy while standing on the bones of women who have gone and fought before you.” She cackled. “You’ve almost done me a favor, Thea. This house has become disappointing to me. I’ve been looking for a sign, and here it is: one of Nixon’s recruits standing in the house I built, kissing the son of a police officer who will take us down. Smiling as she destroys the Black Coats of Austin. You’ve disappointed me, but perhaps this is a much needed sign that it’s time to move on.”
Thea opened her mouth to scream as Julie raised a glass lantern over her head, but it was too late. With a cry she hurled it down toward them. They leaped backward, narrowly avoiding the plumes of fire and glass that exploded across the floor. Another lantern followed, and then another, the gas in the lanterns fueling the blaze. Thea watched as the stairs—and their only way out—were swallowed up in a hungry rush of scorching flame.
When they looked up again, Julie was gone, and in her place thick black smoke curled up the walls. Drew yanked her back, away from the flames blasting her cheeks. “Thea! Come on!” She wrapped her hand around Drew’s, and then they were sprinting away, Thea’s head whipping around in time to see Julie toss three more lanterns down, each one releasing a liquid pool of crackling gold that spread across the floor. “Go, go, go!” Drew shouted.
The old wood of Mademoiselle Corday caught fast, and in seconds the flames had jumped from the wall to the ceiling. The black wood started to smoke and crumble as the fire grew. Above them, the grand staircase was catching. This house, thought Thea, is essentially tinder. Another lantern exploded when the flame reached it, sending shards of burning glass outward. “Run!”
“Where?” screamed Drew. Everything was burning now. The searing heat pushed them back like a physical blast, black smoke billowing around Thea, in her lungs, in her eyes. Julie had expertly trapped them; they were in the hallway of the classrooms, which Thea knew were windowless for secrecy reasons. She covered her mouth and tried not to inhale the hell that encompassed them and felt like it was melting her lungs. Everything was ash and smoke and hot flame; it raced across the ceiling toward them. There was no escape, no windows except . . .
“Follow me!” Thea pulled Drew inside the wide wood
en doors and into the library. Blistering flame had already begun crawling its way through the old books on the north wall, the violently whipping fire having made its way across the floor. Pulling Drew behind her, Thea sprinted up the small staircase as the heat started melting the mirrors in the sitting room, the glass becoming pools of mercury running down the walls. They were going up then, away from the fire.
“Thea! This door has a lock on it!”
“I know!” Thea bent forward, typing frantically on the keypad. 481542. The keypad buzzed, and a red light appeared. Thea entered it again. 481542. Red again. “They changed it. Oh God, of course they did.”
Thea could feel hysteria building in her. She was going to burn to death because she couldn’t get the door open. The fire began to crackle at the bottom of the staircase, the books on either side of them burning, their pages lifting into the sky. There was so much smoke.
“I’m sorry, Drew, I’m so sorry.”
Drew dropped her hand and took a few steps back from the door. “Don’t start that. Don’t start the death speech. I am not going to die—” Bam! His muscular legs kicked against the door. “In this—” Bam! He backed up again. “FUCKING RIDICULOUS HOUSE!” he screamed finally as he ran at the door. Bam! At his impact, the door began to splinter on its frame. Drew took a step back and got a running start, this time his foot landing near the keypad. The door shuddered and flew open. “Sometimes, you just do things the old-fashioned way.” He gasped as a flaming book page landed on his arm.
“Shut the door!” Thea yelled.
“It won’t buy us much time!” Drew answered, but he obeyed. He whipped off his shirt and stuffed it into the crack under the door.
“Welcome to the records room,” uttered Thea, the filing cabinets lined up from end to end. Drew slumped against the door when he saw the thick panes of glass and the cool night sky beyond them, their salvation so close and yet so far. Under their feet the ground was growing hot, insatiable flames engulfing the house crumbling beneath them. Thea threw the curtains aside. “You’re not going to like this.” There it was. The bomb.
Drew blinked as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing: red cords plugged into a blinking gray monitor, bound to the window latch. Lines of copper tubing, wires. “Can we go through them?” He motioned to the thick windows to the left of the bomb. “Break them?”
Thea shook her head. “The glass, it’s that thick antique stuff, but we could try.” Smoke burned her eyes.
Suddenly, there was a loud crack and the ground beneath their feet shifted, sending them both sprawling to the floor. The body of the filing cabinet began slowly sinking into the floor beneath it as tendrils of flame started licking their way up. The house gave another shudder as Thea crawled toward the window.
“The house is collapsing!” screamed Drew. “Thea!” He reached out for her with a look she knew she would never forget: the hard resignation that they would both be burned alive, that there was no escape for them.
Thea gritted her teeth. “No. We are not dying here today. I owe you a date.”
Even here, in this hell, a small smile. “You owe me more than that.”
Even as the ground beneath her feet was burning the rubber of her soles, Thea carefully unlocked the large window and stepped back. It was crazy, but it was their only chance. She looked at Drew. “Ready?”
He nodded. “Together.”
There was no time. Thea backed up and laced her hand through his, and then they were running for the window. They threw their bodies straight into the panes. The window bounced open and the first thing she felt was cool, clean night air. The next thing she felt was Drew wrap his arms and legs around her as they fell, making a shell with his body to protect her. She hadn’t even taken a breath when the bomb exploded with a sound louder than any sound she had ever heard; a sound that pushed her body out of itself.
BOOM!
The vibration shot through her bones, the blast of billowing heat sending them flying forward. As they dropped from the second level, a hellish inferno of fire and smoke and burning wood swirled around them. Disjointed images flashed in her mind as the house fell away from her: Drew’s body behind her, the feel of his hand clutched to her chest. A fiery orange flame consuming the night. Plumes of black smoke twisting like demons. And finally a monarch weathervane, spinning as it burned. This might be the end of everything, Thea thought as she fell.
I’m coming, Natalie, she whispered into the smoke. I’m coming.
Thirty-One
All Thea could hear when she came to was an incessant ringing in her left ear. Pieces of smoldering paper were floating down like snow, dusting her eyelashes, singeing her cheeks. Above her, a raging inferno of black wood and orange flame was billowing out of control. The light from the fire made everything around her as bright as day. She could hear voices in the distance, but something about her hearing was unbalanced.
Thea stretched her legs and gasped as she felt a still body underneath her. “Drew!” She turned over, finding Drew’s soot-blackened face. He wasn’t breathing. She had just pressed her mouth against his when he coughed violently. Thea sat back with a cry of relief.
“Lost my breath.” He took a huge gasp of air, wincing when he exhaled. “Ahhh, God!” He grabbed his leg. “Something’s wrong. Thea, I think my ankle might be broken, and . . .” He moaned, pressing against his side. “Possibly my ribs.” Her fluttering hands felt their way down to his right ankle and yanked up his jeans cuff. Sure enough, the ankle was distorted. His breathing was unsteady. “Where is Julie?” he moaned. “She can’t get to my dad.”
Thea took his face in her hands. “I’ll find her, I swear it. She’ll pay for what she’s done.” And she has Natalie’s file, Thea thought to herself.
Drew shook his head. “No. It’s done. Walk away. Please.”
She looked up with panic as she heard voices coming closer.
“Come on.” She hooked her arms underneath Drew’s and began pulling him away from the fire, her back screaming with the effort. Finally, she rested him against a trellis covered in yellow roses. They glimmered in the flames. She kissed his forehead once.
“Thea.” His eyes were pleading with her, and she could tell he was rapidly losing consciousness, which worried her. “Just stay.”
Thea rested her forehead against his. “I love you, but I have to go. I have to finish this.” As she ran away from him he screamed her name. She darted past the shadows gathering on the side of the lawn and past the hungry bonfire that was once Mademoiselle Corday. Fire was consuming every inch of the house now; she saw wicker furniture burning on the patios and the Haunt melting in on itself. Thea flew past it all, barely able to hear her footsteps above the howling wind and the crackle of burning wood.
She ran into the woods behind the house, following a dark gravel trail through overgrown bushes and thickets of green. The entire valley was lit up with a hazy gold from the flames. As she ran, her lungs pushed out the smoke that had taken residence there and her legs pumped faster than she knew possible. Each step took her farther away from the Black Coats, and she shed the house like a skin as she sprinted through the woods. Her feet crunched as she looked down. Ink-black gravel led away from the house. What had Robin said? There is a long black road between the assault, revenge, and recovery, and unfortunately, you will walk it alone.
The terrain dipped, and the ground became slick as Thea neared the marsh. It appeared up ahead of her, a large pond of green algae sitting ominously silent. Cattails poked up through the surface and high grasses protected the water from the jagged rocks around it. Beyond the marsh a small light bounced and moved. Something was moving in the shadows there where the trees swallowed the shore of the pond. The light swayed and she saw a cruel face emerge. Julie.
Thea paused for a moment and turned her head. Something stopped short right when she did. Someone was following her. When she turned back, Julie was gone, vanished into the trees. Thea crossed over the left side of the marsh, leapi
ng over fallen branches and big gnarled roots, this section of the woods like something out of a distorted fairy tale. The night consumed her as she ducked under a lush canopy of kudzu and continued to follow the unmarked trail.
Ahead of her, a light peeked through a small opening as Thea stumbled out into the clearing and fell to her knees. When she looked up, she realized with horror that she had stumbled into a mass grave. Handfuls of bones littered the ground where the recent rains had flooded the area. With a shriek, she lifted her feet, trying to not step on them, but it was too late. Plain gray tombstones rose up from the ground, one after another. There were no names or crosses or flowers, just rocks draped with brown condensation and moss, no more than a foot apart. The bodies couldn’t be buried here; there was no room. Thea’s eyes rested on the deep marsh beside her. Oh God. The bodies were in the water. She took a step closer, only to leap backward: just above the surface, reflecting the flames behind her, were several pairs of watchful eyes. She shivered; there were alligators down there. She backed up from the edge of the water.
She heard a small creak, a breath. Ahead of her, a flashlight was tied to a branch and was swinging back and forth in the wind, the light flickering with the breeze. Bait. Thea turned slowly, hoping the light hadn’t brought the monsters closer.
Julie stood in front of her, her eyes wide and wild, a gun in her hand pointed right at Thea’s head. “Do you know what you’re standing on?”
“Julie, listen to me. . . .”
“The rich soil of justice, made fruitful with the bones of evil men,” she intoned.
“You’re crazy,” said Thea as she moved sideways, her eyes on the barrel of the gun.
Julie went on. “And now you can be a part of it, too! Your parents won’t even get to bury you next to your cousin.”
The Black Coats Page 25