She would want to see my ruined, ashy, burned body.
In fact, she would demand it, and she wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less. If there was no body, then she would assume that I had escaped, and she’d tear Ashland apart searching for me, not to mention keep terrorizing my friends.
Madeline wanted me dead, so I was going to give her exactly what her black heart desired.
I pulled the strap of the duffel bag up over my head and tossed the whole thing over into the corner, so I could move more quickly and easily. Then I opened the freezer and started tossing out the boxes of frozen peas and bags of ice inside until I had uncovered the maid’s body.
She’d been in the freezer for more than twelve hours, long enough to be frozen solid, a life-size icicle with stiff, brittle limbs. It was difficult, since she was dead weight, literally, but I managed to grab hold of her arms, stand her upright in the freezer, and maneuver her over my shoulder like a fireman would. Sweating, and not just from the growing heat of the fire, I carried her over and slung her down so that she was lying on the floor in between the double doors that led into the storefront and the one that opened up into the alley out back, as if she’d been trapped there and overcome by the smoke and flames, just as Madeline wanted me to be.
Then, when that was done, I considered how I might actually survive the fire.
While I’d been working, the sprinklers had come on, spraying water everywhere, but the blaze quickly swallowed up all those precious drops, and they weren’t going to be enough to put out the fire. The flames had already reached the far side of the double doors, painting the interior of the restaurant in a bright, flickering, orange-red glow. Thick gray clouds of smoke wisped through the cracks in the doors, making me cough, and I crouched down to keep my head out of the worst of it as I considered my options.
I had no doubt that I could go into one of the walk-in freezers and remain safe from the fire. But I might run out of oxygen and suffocate before the flames died out. Besides, even if I had enough air, part of the restaurant could always collapse in and block the door, trapping me in the freezer until Madeline sent Emery and the cops inside to make sure that I was dead. I had no desire to be captured and taken back to the bull pen. So the walk-in freezers were out, and so was the one I’d hauled the body out of, since it would have far less air.
I could have gone over to one of the brick walls, let loose with my Stone magic, and blasted open a hole big enough to stagger out of, but the cops were still waiting in the alley. At this point, Madeline and Emery had probably told them to watch the walls and be on the lookout for any sign that I was using my power, so I couldn’t escape that way.
I might have gone through one of the walls into the storefront next door, but if I were the acid elemental, I would have posted men there too. Besides, I had no way of knowing how fast or far the fire might spread. The sturdy brick walls of the Pork Pit should contain the blaze, but there was no guarantee of that. So nothing doing there.
The drop ceiling wasn’t any help either, since it was covered with tiles that would soon succumb to the flames. Besides, smoke was already boiling every which way up there, and I’d die from inhaling it before the flames even had a chance to scorch my skin.
No, I had to stay in the restaurant, and I had to figure out some way to keep myself safe from the fire. My Ice and Stone magic would help with that, but I’d already used up a good chunk of my power escaping from the bull pen. I didn’t know that I had the reserves left to wait out a lengthy fire. And my magic still wouldn’t save me from the smoke. Even now, it threatened to overwhelm me, and I kept coughing and coughing, drawing treacherous particles of soot and carbon monoxide deep down into my lungs with every ragged breath I took.
My gaze fell to the floor and all those disgusting boxes of frozen peas. I’d tossed them out of the freezer, not caring where they’d landed, but some of them had stacked up together, almost like . . .
Bricks.
Once again, I flashed back to that night with Fletcher and how we’d taken refuge in those metal barrels as the warehouse had exploded around and then collapsed down on top of us. I didn’t have a barrel, but in this case I had something better—frozen peas.
I knew what I had to do now.
Time was running out, so I yanked the neck of my bloody T-shirt up over my mouth and nose, blocking out the billowing clouds of smoke as best I could, as I went around to all three of the freezers, throwing the tops open, reaching inside, and grabbing all the bags of ice and the biggest, thickest boxes of frozen food I could find.
I worked as fast as I could, and then, when the freezers were empty, I dragged all the bags of ice and boxes of food to the very back corner of the restaurant and grabbed my duffel bag from where it had landed.
Then I started building my frozen-food fort.
I stacked the bags of ice around the corner, bringing them in as close and tight to my body as I could, then piled the boxes of frozen food all around me, until I had a makeshift wall that was about three feet high. I sank down behind the wall, sitting on my duffel bag, and pulled my knees up to my chest. Already, the flames had eaten through the double doors, and the eerie, orange-red glow had intensified, as had the heat.
My throat burned from the searing, smoky air, and I coughed and coughed, but there was one more thing I needed to do before I shut myself off from the flames. So I turned to the wall pressing against my back.
The bricks had already started to shriek, scream, and shudder from the fire racing through the restaurant, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d be screaming in the same sort of agony before this was all over with. But I couldn’t let myself think about that, so I made my body as small and comfortable as possible, then reached out and put a hand on a single brick, right at the level of my nose and mouth. With a small trickle of power I loosened the brick from the gray mortar and wiggled it out of the wall. I doubted that anyone outside could hear the movements, but the steady scrape-scrape-scrape of the stone sliding free sounded as loud as a drum to me, beating out the fact that I was still alive.
I pried the brick loose, set it aside, and peered out the small, narrow opening. The back of a Dumpster stood in front of me, its dull, gray metal hull blocking my view of the alley and anyone who might be lurking in the corridor. I was so desperate for oxygen that I couldn’t even force myself to wait a few seconds to see if someone was coming to investigate the noise. Instead, I shoved my nose up to the opening and sucked down gulp after gulp of air. It was foul stuff, reeking of the empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and bags of fast food that had long ago spoiled in the Dumpster, but some of the fog cleared from my mind.