Locked (19 page)

Upstairs, the flames aren’t as bad. The smoke, however, is worse. I’m swept with a wave of dizziness so heavy it nearly knocks me over. But I can’t fall. Not yet.

“Sherlock,” I choke out, kicking open his bedroom door.

It’s empty. Just the haze of smoke and the glow of flames beneath the floorboards. I stagger inside and check on the other side of the bed, just in case, but there’s no one there.

He’s not in the house.

The relief is deadly, it’s so intense. The smoke and the relief work together to make my legs so weak they won’t support me and I trip on my way back into the hallway.

The fire’s spread. The stairs are nearly consumed. I’m on the ground. How did I get here? Shouldn’t be on the ground. Should go down the stairs. My head is swirling. It’s like being back at the party, but more painful. I never knew that suffocating was so painful.

I try to get up and can’t. I’m not working. That’s fine. There’s probably less smoke near the floor. In fact, I should stay down, just to get out of the worst of it, just for a little while.

And then my blood turns to lead and I can’t—

My chest is an explosion. There’s no air. No air. No anything.

Maybe I’ll just go to sleep.

It’s dark, anyway.

“Irene!”

Go away.

“Irene, wake up. Come with me.”

I’m dreaming again. Sherlock is here, kneeling over me, his face blurry. Not bleeding, this time. That’s nice. But the sky isn’t that familiar shade of blue. The sky is red. It’s fire.

And then I’m being lifted, which hurts my chest. “You told me not to trust you,” I whisper.

“Stay awake, Irene,” comes a voice very near to me. “I know how you hate smoke, but you need to stay awake.”

“The stairs—”

Are on fire.

The flames are dancing over them, tall orange licks of light that wave and ripple so wildly that it makes me nauseous. I don’t understand why Sherlock is here. I was happy about him not being here. He isn’t supposed to be here.

He isn’t supposed to be carrying me out.

I’m sliding in and out of sleep. Things flicker and slide in front of my eyes like pictures on an old projector. Sherlock has found a blanket. I’m on his back. My mouth is next to his neck. That’s nice. He throws the blanket over me.

I should tell him not to go down the stairs.

Instead, I fall asleep again and dream that I’m inside the center of the sun and the sun is dying. It’s burning, expanding—

Sherlock is telling me not to trust him.

“I won’t,” I mumble.

No. That’s not what he’s telling me.

His hand is on my cheek. “Irene. Can you hear me?”

I’m back at the party, outside Bree’s house on the lawn. Sherlock. I have to find him. It was a trap. But no. He’s right here. He’s kneeling above me.

“I thought you weren’t home.” I’m murmuring.

“I wasn’t.” His face slides into focus above me, deadly pale in the reflected light of the fire. “Went out for a cigarette. You were always threatening me about smoking in the house.”

I laugh, but it turns into a cough. And then I can’t stop coughing.

“You’re all right,” he says. He says it again. Red lights suddenly slip over his face as the wail of sirens become too obvious to ignore. I work on breathing, on sitting up. Sherlock’s arm is warm and steady across my back.

Everything is noise and fire trucks and men in yellow and black. A firefighter stoops next to us, but before I can say anything, Sherlock demands, “Oxygen. Now.”

I want to tell him not to speak so sharply, they’re here to make his house stop burning down, but a mask is pressed over my face. My lungs flood with cool, sweet air. It’s delicious. The best thing I’ve ever had. Someone’s hand tightens on my wrist, taking my pulse, but it’s not the firefighter. It’s Sherlock.

He’s here with me.

And suddenly everything is a little bit okay.

|||

Sherlock sleeps in Carol’s room.

After the sirens finally wake up Mom, she insists on having him spend the night. Everyone but me wants me to go to the hospital, but after the ambulance people confirm my lungs aren’t burned, any surface burns are minor, and I’m not suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning or shock, they give in to my refusals. I’ve been around Sherlock enough to know how to be stubborn.

After we talk to the police, after we leave a message for Mycroft, after everything, I stand in the doorway of my dead sister’s room to talk to the boy who saved me from a fire.

“I’m sorry your house burned down,” I say awkwardly. This doesn’t change anything. This doesn’t change anything, no matter how much I want to grab him and hold on. I have to stay distant.

“Mycroft’s house,” he says. I can’t figure out anything of what he’s feeling from his expression. The concern and fear that had ruled his face when he found me in his house are gone. His eyes are flat.

“Right.”

A silence stretches between us. I want to tell him that I haven’t been in this room since the day after the funeral. I want to tell him that everything is exactly as it was in here, except for his presence. I want to tell him that his presence makes all the difference.

“You broke your promise,” he says finally.

“What promise?”

“That you wouldn’t put yourself into any more situations where you could die.” And he closes the door.

He thinks I went inside on some self-destructive impulse.

“I went in for you,” I say to the door, so quietly that I can’t even hear it.

But that night, after Mom has finally stopped fussing over me and the lights are turned off, I sleep more easily than I have for days. He’s so close.

|||

That morning, I get a call.

At first I think it’s my phone alarm, but it’s Saturday. It’s also six a.m. I fumble for it, worming free of my blankets, my burned hand stinging.

“Hello?”

“Irene,” comes Mycroft’s voice. “Good to hear from you.”

Immediately, I am very awake. “I can’t say it’s so good to hear from you.”

“Then I apologize, as I must request that you listen to my voice for a little while longer. Come outside.”

I climb out of bed and go to the window. The dawning sun is spraying the sky with cotton-candy pinks and blues. The blackened husk of Sherlock’s house sits, utterly destroyed, across the road. And Mycroft’s sleek car is in my driveway.

“It’s about Sherlock,” he says.

I sigh and hang up. My lungs and throat feel like they’ve been scrubbed with nail polish remover. It’s worse than that time I had strep. I take a Tylenol, wash it down with the glass of water Mom had left on my bedside table, and gets dressed. I wear my nice pants. Talking to Mycroft sort of feels like going out to a fancy restaurant where everyone hates me.

I creep through the house on tiptoes. Past Mom’s bedroom. Down the stairs. Past the bedroom currently occupied by Sherlock. I’ve never seen him sleeping. Was that the only time the cold, hard mask slipped? Then, and when I’d told him he wasn’t that likable.

I stuff my feet into shoes and duck outside.

“Get in.” Mycroft is leaning against his car, in a freshly pressed suit. I’m struck again by how much he doesn’t and does look like Sherlock at the same time.

“It’s six in the morning.”

“I was hoping my brother wouldn’t be awake.”

The air is still dank with the scent of smoke. Here, I have a better view of Sherlock’s house. Part of its charred wooden skeleton still stands. The rest is crushed to the ground, sprawled in dark ashy heaps like silhouettes.

“Unfortunate, isn’t it,” says Mycroft without looking. “Now get in.”

I should have remembered my jacket. His voice is Arctic. “Are you kidnapping me again?”

“After a fashion.”

The inside of the car is just as fancy as it was the first time I saw it—gleaming leather, a mahogany dashboard. I try not to touch anything as Mycroft pulls out into the road.

“Sorry you can’t sell resell your house,” I say.

“Money is not a concern for me.” He drives idly, one hand on the wheel. “You sound like gravel being shoveled. You really did run in after him.”

“How do you know that?”

“I spoke to the firefighters. And deduced a few things on my own.”

I’m quiet for a little while. We turn down one back road, and then another. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular. I wanted a peaceful place to chat. The inside of a car is far more private than a café.”

“To chat about what?” The dull feeling climbs back into my chest. “I’ve been doing what you said. I haven’t—I haven’t been talking to him. For almost two weeks now.”

“Most people would consider it a blessing not to have speak with Sherlock Holmes.” He pulls into a random driveway. A small house painted lavender.

“Who lives here?”

“Whoever it is, they’re on vacation. The newspaper hasn’t been collected in four days and they’ve left their key semi-hidden behind the potted plant on the porch for the neighbor to come water the plants. They won’t mind if we use their driveway.”

“I don’t know how you and he do that.” I move my foot. I’ve tracked soot into the car. “Notice everything like that.”

“If you know that I notice everything, I’m surprised you believed me before. You can’t be as intelligent as my brother seems to be convinced that you are.”

“Believed you before? What do you mean?”

“About my brother not really caring about you. As if I wouldn’t have noticed it.” He reaches for a cigarette but seems to change his mind, pushing it back into the pack. “He loves you.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughs. “This hidden aggressive streak of yours really is amusing, when it does come out.”

I’m shaking. I crush my hands into fists, imagining I can splinter the anger between my fingers. “Stop.”

“I believe you are the only person that my brother has ever loved.”

“Stop.” My voice cracks and I hate it. “I know you’re lying. I just don’t know why.”

“My brother apologizes to you when he has never apologized to anyone else. He pushed you out of the way of an oncoming car when he has never shown a thought for anyone else’s safety. He pretended to date you to distract from a certain photograph. He sought revenge against the person he believed was behind that photograph. He attempted to sever your fake relationship to further protect your reputation when he has always been personally offended by people who care about reputations. He entered a burning house because he deduced you were inside. Do you know the one word I would have used to describe my brother before he met you, Irene?”

I stare out the windshield, my jaw tight. There’s not a speck on the glass. He must have it cleaned every day.

“Selfish,” he says. “For as long as I’ve known him, Sherlock has never displayed the slightest regard for anyone else. You wouldn’t believe the number of psychologists he has terrified. But when it comes to you, he is selfless to a fault.”

“How did you even know all that stuff he did,” I whisper.

“I have my sources.” He rolls down the window an inch so that fresh air works its way in. “I saw the way he felt about you the moment I saw you two together, but I had hoped…it’s dangerous to care. Sherlock has always been blessed with the ability not to. It’s been the one thing that has protected him. You ought to feel guilty for stripping down his only defense.”

“I don’t,” I say. “Because I didn’t.”

“I believed that once Sherlock was removed from your presence, things would go back to the way they were,” he continues. “I was wrong. It’s the final proof.”

“The what?”

“He hasn’t been eating. He hasn’t been sleeping. The amount of money he’s spent on cigarettes over the last several days is truly astounding. He’s lashed out at me every time I’ve spoken to him.”

“He’s just bored. He does all that when he’s bored.”

“He’s not bored. He’s working tirelessly to unravel that murder.” He drums his fingers on the dashboard until I think the rhythm of it will drive me insane. “He’s heartbroken. Because it turns out that the only person he’s ever cared about hates him, just like everyone else.”

“I don’t hate him.” My chest is burning in a way that has nothing to do with smoke. “Why…why are you telling me this? This was all your plan. You wanted him to agree to move.”

“And he has agreed.”

“So why are you talking to me right now?”

“Because I have realized, over the past few days, that taking him away from you may be more dangerous than leaving him in a town full of people who loathe him. He could undoubtedly do more damage to himself than any of them could.”

“You think he should stay,” I say, hope grabbing me by the throat.

“I have a proposition for you.”
      

“Oh, another proposition.” I hardly dare to breathe.

“I have told you I am far too busy to stay around here and watch him every second of every day. What’s more, if I did so, he would probably put himself in reckless situations merely to infuriate me. No. Someone else needs to look after him.”

“I thought you said I couldn’t protect him.”

“That was before you ran into a burning building on his behalf. At the very least, I know you’re willing to sacrifice yourself for him. You’ll have a minimum of one use as a human shield.”

“You don’t care about me at all, do you?” I ask.

“Not at all,” he says easily.

“But you care about Sherlock.”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m okay with you.” I put out my hand. “I’ll protect him if you let him stay.”

His fingers close, viselike, on my wrist. “If anything happens to him, it’s your fault. It will be your burden to bear.”

“I won’t let anything happen.”

He nods, just once, and pulls out of the driveway. We don’t speak again until my house is in sight.

“One more thing,” he says, gradually coming to a stop by my front door. “Don’t tell Sherlock I ordered you not to speak to him. He dislikes me enough as it is.”

“Okay.” I’m waiting for him to laugh and tell me it was all a joke, that Sherlock is still going away. The waiting kills me until I finally wrench open the handle and step out into the sunlight. Then something occurs to me. I bend down to peer in through the window. “Where’s he going to live?”