His eyes flickered with impatience. “It’s an election year. The mayor didn’t want to show any sign of weakness.”

“That was a mistake,” I said. “A big mistake. Meridian’s going to set fire to Deacon’s house, the sidewalks, too, I’m sure of it.”

A stunned expression appeared on his face.

“I sent my friends—”

“Your friends?”

“Yes. Lily and the others. They’re here—it’s a long story—and I sent them to the firehouses in the area, to warn them.”

“And you are here…?”

“To warn you,” I finished lamely.

“Well.” He nodded. “Thank you.” He turned to leave.

“Wait,” I called.

He looked back at me as if I was chaining him to the room and he wanted nothing more than to walk out the door and never see me again.

“Why are you acting like this?” I demanded.

“I’m not acting like anything,” he said coldly.

“You are.” Then I understood. The knowledge bored into me, flooding me with horror. And loss.

“You know,” I whispered.

“Do you mean”—he raised his brows—“I know what Kellford told you? What he told me?”

“He told you.”

“Yes.” He opened the door. “Are we done?”

“Listen, I know how you must feel—”

“No.” He slammed the door. “You don’t. You don’t know how I felt when I woke up, and you were gone.”

“Conn—”

“I waited for you. I waited for you all day. Were you there? Were you watching?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No.”

“Do you think that I wouldn’t have figured out that you’d gone to Kellford on your own? I went there, Saturday night, and he told me everything.”

“He can’t have,” I shot back with anger of my own. “He can’t have told you everything. He can’t have told you how it feels to have been the cause of my parents’ deaths, and how confusing it is to love two people who could do something so horrible. I saw them tortured, Conn.” I stared at him and felt accusation mount in my face. “You are being unfair. This is hard for me, too.”

Conn closed his eyes, and when he opened them they looked desolate. “You have no faith in me,” he said in a low voice. “You think I blame you for what happened. For something you didn’t do. I read the transcript of your interrogation, Darcy. After I talked to Kellford, I moved heaven and earth to dig up that document. Anyone reading it would understand that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that you were just a five-year-old girl who adored her parents. Because if you’d been anything else, you would have confessed it. You were saying everything. You were telling the Vox Squad that you had a loose tooth, that it was your birthday, that you had an uncle who gave you crayons, what your favorite color was … all of that mangled and mixed with the real information they wanted until everything got so mangled and mixed they gave up. They broke you. Couldn’t you trust me a little, enough to know that that was what I’d care about?”

“I do trust you.” Only then did I realize it was true.

He kept speaking as if he hadn’t heard. “And then there was that letter. That impersonal, empty letter. There was nothing of you that I could hold on to. Nothing. You just vanished. You were gone. It’s been nearly a week, and I had no idea where you were. No idea what had happened to you. You could have been hurt. You could have been dead, killed by Orion or Meridian or God knows who else. Or you could have decided I simply wasn’t worth it.”

“Conn, no.” I groped for the right words. “I was afraid you’d hate me.”

“Hate you?” He shook his head. He started to say something, then stopped. A silence stretched.

When he spoke, his voice was even but sad. “I shouldn’t have said this. I’d take it back, if I could. You’re right. Of course you’re right. Kellford’s news can’t be easy for you. I only wish…” He glanced down at the cuffs of his uniform. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait. Listen. I do trust you. I didn’t come here just to warn you. I need your help.”

His brow furrowed.

“We could stop the attack,” I said. “Zephyr would never let it happen if she knew about it, and she could command the entire Society to track down Meridian and the others to stop them. Only a few Shades are involved in the plot, and I think the rest of the Society would be against it, especially if they could believe in Zephyr’s plan for peace. If they could believe there is a way for humans and Shades to live together. Come with me to the Sanctuary and help me convince them. We still have time. The Sanctuary’s not far by car. It’s beneath Graceland Cemetery, and there are entrances a human could use, below gravestones—”

“I think that’s about all we need to hear, don’t you, Michael?” said a new, metallic voice broadcast into the room by a speaker.

Conn looked suddenly sick with the same sinking feeling I had.

Seams appeared in the wall, forming a rectangle that turned into a door. It slid aside, and Ivers and Michael walked into the room.

“Really, McCrea.” Michael smirked. “An interrogation room? It’s like you were begging us to listen in on you. Frankly, I don’t get the fuss everyone makes over you. You’re sloppy.”

Conn ignored him and turned to Ivers. “Sir, we need to adjust our strategy for New Year’s Eve—”

“We? Must? There is no ‘we.’ Because this”—his thick finger waved between Conn and me—“is a sickness, and I sure as hell am not going to catch your disease. Thank God Michael came to get me when he did. Now we have the chance to strike a big blow for the IBI. Can you imagine? I’ll be responsible for the destruction of the Sanctuary.” He switched on his flamethrower, and Michael did the same. I stopped breathing.

“Darcy, ghost,” said Conn.

“Darcy, don’t.” Ivers pointed his flamethrower at Conn. “He’ll burn as easily as you.”

I stayed where I was.

Ivers smiled. “I probably won’t hurt you two, if only because I don’t have the time. But if you don’t do as I say, I’ll make time. Got it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then follow me.”

Ivers led us to the room down the now-deserted hall, with Michael right behind us. Ivers opened the door, and I backed into Conn when I saw what was inside.

It was solitary confinement.

Conn held me steady. “Ivers—”

“Shut up, McCrea.”

Michael leaned forward and danced his flame into the ends of my hair. It caught fire, and I clamped down on my scream as Conn put it out with his hands. I went dizzy from the smoky stench.

“You see?” said Ivers. “See what happens when you don’t listen? Now”—he pointed at the tall glass box in the center of the room—“get inside. Both of you.”

“Remember,” Conn murmured in my ear.

Nothing here could hurt me.

I remembered, but my memory only made things worse as Conn and I walked toward the large box.

Ivers pushed us inside and turned to Michael. “Take McCrea’s agents,” he said, “and call up six more divisions. We’ve got a Sanctuary to burn.”

“This is the wrong move,” said Conn. “The last thing we need is for the IBI to start a fire. We need to stop one—”

Ivers sealed us inside the coffin. “Bye-bye, McCrea. Enjoy yourself, and later on you can thank me.”

He and Michael left the room. Then there was a hiss and a click and everything burst into flames.

47

I couldn’t close my eyes. Flames thumbed my eyelids back, burrowed into my mouth, my ears. The fire was climbing inside me.

I had to get it out.

I tore at my skin.

But something grabbed my hands.

“Darcy.”

Something was holding me. Something hard and strong.

No. Someone.

I shoved back, struck out, felt my hand connect with solid flesh. I hit again. He didn’t move.

“Darcy,” he said. “This is an illusion. Remember?”

I remembered fire burning my mother’s hair, and I sobbed.

“Shh. Nothing here can hurt you. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

His hands folded over mine again, and the panic in me eased a little. My hands are safe, I thought. The fire can’t reach them now.

That sense, that certainty, that at least part of me was protected helped chase away the red-orange blindness that filled my eyes. I saw a network of fingers. I focused. I knew those hands on mine. Large and long and kind of messed up. Lots of old cuts. A vague memory stirred, and I realized that, once, I had wanted to touch every single one of those scars.

The fire continued to flicker at the edge of my vision, but as I blinked clarity began to return. I went still, and could feel that those hands felt my stillness, and that the worry in them lessened.

I glanced up. There was a face that I knew was dear to me, that sometimes slipped into my dreams. When I would wake up all I wanted was to sleep again. “Conn?” I whispered.

A shudder of relief went through him. “Yes,” he said. “The fire can’t touch us, Darcy. You know that, don’t you?”

I considered this. The fire tried to drag my gaze away from Conn’s face, but I stared back into his lake-colored eyes and thought about that: a lake. Dark and deep. “Yes,” I said.

“Ivers and Michael locked us in, but we won’t be in here forever, someone will come eventually…” Conn began to ramble. I remembered enough to know this was odd behavior for him. Conn did not ramble. He’s trying to distract me, I realized.

“I know,” I told him, though I didn’t mean it. I had wanted to comfort him, and his comfort seemed so dependent on mine. Then, as soon as the words left my mouth, I did know. I remembered how we had gotten here. Everything became clear.

Conn’s gaze dropped to somewhere near my neck. His eyes immediately met mine again, but I had noticed. I touched the skin beneath my collarbone. It stung, and my fingers came away bloody. “I did that,” I said. “I thought the fire was inside me.”

“It—”

“I know,” I stopped him. “It isn’t. I’m okay, Conn. Really. Just a little case of temporary insanity.”

He smiled faintly.

“I thought I was learning how to handle fire,” I said, “but it’s worse now that I remember my parents.” I swallowed against the parched feeling in my throat. “It’s so hot in here.”

“Try to ignore it.”

The flames kept mesmerizing me. It was hard not to look at them.

“Close your eyes,” Conn said.

I did.

Fingertips touched my face like rain. Cool palms were on my cheeks.

Water.

Conn.

My mouth opened with relief.

I felt the sudden intensity in Conn’s body, and the hesitation. I pulled him to me. A softness covered my lips, and I breathed into it, and it was like the first breath after none at all.

Conn was the rain, he was the water. Those were his lips on mine. I drank him in. I tasted my own urgency. I tasted his.

Our kiss fluttered and tugged, and it was strange, so strange to sense that the fire had won, that it had somehow slipped inside me, and that it was one I would never want to put out, even if it ravaged me whole.

Conn pulled away for a heartbeat, looked at me with hazy eyes, and lowered his mouth to my throat.

“Uh, Conn?” said a new, faraway voice.

We broke apart in confusion.

The voice spoke again. “Why are you in solitary confinement … making out with a Shade?”

Conn peered through the flames. “Paulo!” he shouted. “Cut the fire!”

“Yeah, well, is that a good idea? It doesn’t look like that Shade’s cuffed. I mean, she had her hands all over you. What is this, some new interrogation technique?”

“Paulo, just do it!”

The fire died. I ghosted out of the box to reappear at Paulo’s side, and he jumped, his hand skittering away from the control panel set into one of the iron walls. “You’re Jones,” he said. “You must be.”

“Let Conn out.”

Paulo threw his hands up defensively. “Okay. I was going to do that anyway.”

When Conn stepped out of the box he strode up to me and Paulo, who said, “What is going on, Conn? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Do you know that Ivers has reassigned your division to attack the Sanctuary? He’s practically emptied the building of agents.”

“Does Fitzgerald know about this?” asked Conn.

“Doubt it.” Paulo spared a nervous glance my way, but I stayed very still. It didn’t seem to be a good idea to spook Conn’s only current ally in the IBI. “Fitzgerald always spends the holiday with her family, so unless someone’s contacted her—”

“That’s exactly what you’re going to do. You know what this is, don’t you, Paulo? It’s a coup. Ivers may outrank me, but he’s breaking regulations to take agents assigned to me by Fitzgerald. He wouldn’t do that unless he knows he won’t pay for it, and the only way he won’t pay for it is if tonight he has a victory so big he can topple Fitzgerald and seize the directorship. You go to her and tell her that. You tell her that if she doesn’t stop the assault on the Sanctuary, she won’t have a job tomorrow.”