More creaking behind him. A snap of wood. Then white-hot pain lanced Tom’s back as he dove headfirst out the window. He tasted dirt and anguish. Groaning, he writhed against the flames, suffocating the pain, until his clothes and skin no longer burned.
Meg.His mind swam, like a ship bobbing in and out of a turbulent wave.Got to get Meg—
“Over here!” Voices anchored him back to the alley. He told himself to move, to crawl to her, but hands touched his face before he had the strength.
“Tommy, dear boy.” Mrs. Musgrave’s crooning tone. “You have lost the sense God bestowed you.”
God had bestowed nothing on Tom McGwen.
Least of all sense.
“Meg—”
“Lie still. You are burnt.” Shuffling footsteps, humming voices, the sickening smash of more timber caving. “All is well, dear boy. Do not fret.”
But when his vision finally cleared and the light brushed faintly across Mrs. Musgrave’s wrinkled face, the lines of her lips were hard and uncertain. As if there were something she had not told him. Something she didn’t wish to tell him.
Tom’s stomach gutted. “Meg—”
“Dear, I am so sorry.” Mrs. Musgrave sniffled. “Most terribly sorry. I turned for but one moment. Poor Lenox, my little cat, was wandering too close to the house, and I hurried over to fetch him, never imagining that—that I would find …”
Unbearable fear closed his throat. “Find … what?”
“That she would be gone.” Mrs. Musgrave dissolved into a sob. “Just gone.”
CHAPTER 2
Something scraped across her face. Rough, like callouses moving in circular motions. She smelled too many things at once. The revolting odor of fish. The choking linger of smoke.
Then something softer.
Fainter.
The sour, grassy smell of a wool coat in her face.Help.The whimper lifted, but she could not hear her own voice—and it didn’t matter anyway, because the jostling didn’t stop.
Clomp, clomp.Horse hooves trotting faster.
Reins snapping.
Heavy breathing.
“You won’t die.” A command—whispered, hoarse, like a lifeline she was meant to grope for. The blackness grew heavy. Her mind screamed, then silenced.
The next time she awoke, the bumping and jarring had ceased. The arms clamped her tighter, until the wool was suffocating and her head split with pain.Let me be.Everything hurt, as her weight lifted, as a door groaned into airy coolness.Please. Let me be.
She must be asleep, because nothing was real to her.
Sometimes she saw a pink pinafore with white lilacs brimming from the pockets. The tiny petals floated, carried by sunlight and wind, and she swatted her hands to catch them. They melted away before she had the chance.
Other times she climbed onto a window sill. She brushed back a frothy curtain. Someone laughed in her ear. Two yellow-beaked puddle ducks waddled into view, quacking, but they wandered away as quickly as the laughter faded.
No.
Loss churned through her, pushing tears to her closed eyelids as she touched her hand to the glass window. The curtain whipped at her face, harsh and dark.
Stay, please.
“Lie still, Meggie.” The voice drew her back from the dream, as he situated her body on cold, dewy grass. “They’ll find you here. I promise.”
