Wicked Sense (43 page)

Brianna
and Mona are a mass of fire. T
he gym
is instantly ablaze,
the fire spreading
rapidly.
Exercise m
ats are burning
. Posters and signs blacken and crumble
.

T
he energy
wave
is
su
ddenly gone. After I recover
the control of my muscles, I
push
the doors open with all my strength. Hair-raising screams fill the gym.

While removing my jacket, I rush toward Mona and
Brianna
, who are
still
on fire.
In
my peripheral vision
, I see
Jane in the corner of the court, t
hrashing around.

I’m about to use the jacket as a blanket to quell the fire, when I see Mona stepping back from the
orange and yellow
flames,
staring
in horror
at
Brianna
’s burning body.

Mona is completely unharmed.

Brianna
i
s
flailing and screaming. I try to
wrap
her with
my jacket, but she spreads herself
on the floor and starts to roll
over
. I use the jacket like a mat
ador then, flapping it over her
, helping her
extinguish
the flames.
Why aren’t the sprinklers on?

The wooden floor is
catching fire quickly
, and
the
smoke becomes
thick
. I see Mona step right over a high flame
,
and she doesn’t even acknowledge it. Not even her
hospital
gown burns.
Behind her
, flames lick the walls.

Still helping
Brianna
, I yell to Mona, “Drake! Check him!”

This bring
s
Mona out of her stupor. She rushes to Drake.

Brianna
stops moving
and
just
l
ies
there,
face
down. But at least she’s not on fire anymore. When I turn her, a scarred,
grimy
face greets me.

She’s breathing, barely. And s
he’s badly burned. The smoke will do her in
soon
.

“We’ve got to
get out of here!
” I yell.
“
Now!”
I grab
Brianna
under
her armpits and
drag
her towa
rd the door. I cough and
look around, but I don’t see Jane any
where
.

“I can’t carry him!” Mona yells.

“Drag him!” I reply.

“He’s too heavy!”

I lay
Brianna
down on the floor. “Let’s switch!”

We do that. Mona
clutches
Brianna
’s left arm and
drags
her
.
I carry Drake, grabbing him by the armpits
. He’
s facing away from me, but I can tell he’s not burned as badly as
Brianna
.

Mona and I
maneuver
to avoid the flames. My cough get
s
worse, but Mona
is
unaffected. When
she
opens the door, the hallway’s clean air is a blessing.

The sprinklers
still
aren’t working.
Mona
close
s
the door
,
and
we
look through the glass. The gym is completely
consumed
by fire. Paint starts to bubble up on the
smoldering
walls on our side.
T
he door is
scorching
.

I look
at
Mona
’s hand. She
has
just touched the handles
. Not a
single
burn.

Kneeling down
,
I
examine
Drake
’s wounds
. He’s breathing
in gasps
, his face covered in soot, and he’s got a few burn marks, but he’s not
hurt
as badly as
Brianna
.

“The fire is spreading,” I say, turning to Mona.
“We’ve got
to move them.”

“Call 911!” Mona says.

Thinking fast, I
search
Brianna
’s pockets and find a
phone
. “Call them on this. Tell them your name is
Brianna
. I have
an idea
.
I’ll be right back.”

The cafeteria is right next to the gym. I rush there and find a pair of busing trolleys.
I come back with them.

“The dispatcher
told me they’re
overwhelmed. They
will send someone as soon as they can,” Mona says while we
hoist
Drake
and lay him down on
a trolley.

We move to do the same with
Brianna
. “What about the firemen?”

“Same
thing,” says Mona. “What
are we going to
do?”

We
begin
to roll
them back to the entrance
, away from the inferno.
I say, “About the school?
It’s no use.
They’ll never be here on time.
Let it burn,” I say.

“What about them?”
Mona asks, nodding in the direction of Drake and Brianna.

“I have an
other
idea,” I say.
“But we have to move fast.”

***

“Okay, don’t ask me anything,” I say.
“
We don’t have
much
time
.”

The gym is in the school’s central building, and I don’t think the
neighbors
have seen
the fire yet. We have a small window before they notice the smoke and call for help.
And maybe the firemen will still be busy with the quake.

After Mona nods, I continue, “We’re doing a circle of prayer. I can’t use your energy
,
and you don’t know how to perform a healing ritual, but the both of us can pool our strengths and make it happen.”

Maybe, I think. B
ut I don’t say it.

We’re standing up, holding h
ands.
Drake and
Brianna
lie
side
-
by
-
side on the ground,
at our feet,
still unconscious.

To her credit, Mona doesn’t question anything. She just nods, her eyes small plates of awe.

“You only have to do one thing. Do not freak out. Relax. Let the energy flow. Slowly.”

“The energy?” she asks.

“Don’t worry. You’ll feel it.”

She starts to shake and takes her hands away. “I can’t do it…”

I grab her hands. “Drake told
me tonight you’re a tough girl.
” She looks at me. “Drake,” I repeat, nodding in his direction.

She looks at him and nods to me, but her hands still shake.

“You can do it,” I say. “You
will
do it.”

We close our eyes. I
start
the chanting I did in the woods the day I met Drake. I already traced the bloody runes on their five points. We’re going to have make do with a makeshift commune.
At least we’re outdoors, in contact with dirt and grass, and a
n
enormous bonfire burns next to us.

Please Goddess, allow it to work.

I invoke
my
magical energy, but since we’re communing, Mona’s
energy
comes into
the
energy
pool. I feel it, a rush of power. Mona’s body jerks back, but I expect it and grab her hands
firmly
.

My biggest fear
is
Mona
creating
another
disaster
when
she releases
her energy.
But she understands a little bit now, expects it, and that makes a difference.
Other Sisters will feel her energy too, but it’s
going to be much less intense than when she created the earthquake or the inferno. I hope.

Her energy flow increases
,
and I push these thoughts from my mind. I breath
e
steady, visualizing
Drake and Brianna’s
healed bodies, invoking ancient powers of nature.

Mona and I become one. Her energy is overwhelming, and
,
for a moment
,
I feel like she’s holdin
g back, trying not to overpower
either of us. It’s working.

She learns fast.

My
chanting gets more intense, and I start to feel our energy flowing toward
Brianna
and Drake.

***

When the ambulance finally arrives, Mona and I are in the Volvo parked next to the pool. Drake is coming in and out of consciousness,
resting
on the
floor of the
large cargo area.

The school is beyond help.
The paramedics get out and see
Brianna
lying
on the grass,
alive but
still unconscious.

I turn to Mona
,
and she smiles
at
me.

I’m th
inking about wearing a helmet ever
ywhere I go. Seriously, how many times can you be knocked out without suffering a
massive
brain injury?

At least
I didn’t get burned in the fire. The shockwave threw me away from the flames. And
I’ve got the world’s greatest nurse by my side.

Skye leans over me and kisses me fully on the lips.

“
Hello, n
urse,” I say.

***

We
had many bases to cover, and
Skye
came
up
with a solution for each of them.

First, we had to explain Mona’s disappearance from the hospital. That was easy, but it required a lot of acting on Mona’s part. She just said she woke up in the hospital disoriented and called the nurses several times before
leaving her room
.

The hospital staff and the police were skeptic
al
at first, but they had had a number of machine glitches on the day of the earthquake. The c
onfusion and the crowd also made it
plausible that a patient would wander
around
the hospital attracting little attention.

Aft
er the
fire in the gym,
Skye dropped
Mona
off at the hospital’s garage, where she was conveniently found by an orderly after a few minutes. She acted the part, sounding disoriented and making little sense. The police, busy with more pressing matters, gladly swallowed the explanation. The hospital also
was
awfully hap
py we weren’t pressing charges. M
isplacing a patient
i
s not good PR
.

Well,
officially
, they
did
misplace Jane. Police are still looking for her, since she hasn’t been seen since she disappeared from the hospital. Also, there’s the small matter of her school burning down. The police
’s
only clue about the fire is
Brianna
, who is in a coma.

Mona and S
kye’s voodoo worked well for me
and spectacularly for
Brianna
. T
hey actually saved
Brianna
’s life. They even reverted almost all of
her
burn wounds. When she wakes up, which Skye tells me
it sh
ould
be soon, she’ll be able to live a normal life.