Burn(84)

Malcolm put his hand over Hugh’s. The heat of Hugh’s skin was surprising, almost shocking in this cold. Malcolm took Hugh’s hand gently off the wheel and brought it up, pressing his face into it, letting Hugh feel his skin in return. Hugh let out a little gasp.

“For us,” Malcolm said. “For him, but also for us.”

“What do I—?”

“Just knock. Pretend you’ve made a mistake if it doesn’t seem right. I swear to you, this isn’t a trick. You can feel my flesh. You can feel that it’s yours. I have to save you.”

“Why?”

“Because no one saved me.”

Malcolm released his hand, and without another word, Hugh got out of the car, closing the door behind him. Malcolm watched him gather his courage, heard him mutter, “This is crazy,” but he crossed the street.

Malcolm found he couldn’t watch Hugh knock, couldn’t face seeing Nelson answer. Hugh had left the car running, so Malcolm clicked on the radio, anything to distract from the ache of Nelson being so close but so impossibly far.

“—estimated deaths could be in the hundreds of thousands,” the radio said. Malcolm listened for a few minutes more. He glanced at Nelson’s house, saw Hugh speaking, though Hugh stood in a way that was blocking Nelson from sight.

Which was for the best, Malcolm thought, as he slipped quietly out the passenger’s side and headed stealthily for the main road and hopefully a ride that would take him back south as fast as humanly possible.

“I’m just saying you guys should probably leave,” Sarah said.

“My dad isn’t going anywhere,” Jason said, from the driver’s seat. “You know how hard he worked for this farm?”

“I do.”

“Do you? You’re not the Sarah I knew. I don’t know what you know about me.”

They were sitting in Jason’s dad’s truck. The sun had gone down, but there was still no dragon in Frome. It had flown to Seattle instead, leaving it little more than smoking heaps on its seven hills. Estimates at the number of dead were still going up, and the best war planes in the U.S. military hadn’t even made a dent in the dragon, according to Agent Dernovich, which didn’t bode well for the army on its way here.

So what chance did she and Kazimir stand?

A prophecy. One stupid prophecy.

But it was at least a prophecy that had brought her here.

“My Jason lived with his dad, too,” she said. “His mom died in an internment camp in Idaho during the war. I know how hard his dad worked for his farm. My Jason’s dad was the one who suggested we hire Kazimir in the first place, so in a way, he started this whole thing.”

“Kazimir,” Jason said. “The one who’s supposed to be a dragon on the inside.”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t understand any of this either, but maybe we don’t have to. There’s a problem out there. Maybe we can fix it. And maybe . . .” She looked into his eyes. It was too dark to see the color, but she knew the exact shade of brown they were, knew the small chicken pox scar just to the side of his nose (this Jason had it, too, she’d seen it in her mother’s kitchen), saw the familiar way his jaw set when he was trying to figure something out. “Maybe we shouldn’t question second chances when we get them.”

“My mom died over there, too?” he said, quietly. “There’s a second chance I’d have liked.”

He tapped his hands on the steering wheel. That was a new habit, a different one for this Jason. So strange how the similarities could be as exact as a chicken pox scar, but as different as Sarah’s mom being alive here.

“And now, a dragon,” Jason said.

“We had plenty of those over there. A dragon isn’t news to me.”

“It sure is news here. Bad news.”

“Which is why you should leave.”

“Is that why you walked all the way out here?” he asked. “To warn us? About something we already knew?”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then he said, “So that’s why I was with you.”

“What?”

“In your world. I was with you when the big attack happened. The one where, if I understand correctly, a woman shot me dead before she turned into the dragon that just destroyed Seattle.”

“It was actually the sheriff that shot you. Not that that helps.”

“This is so crazy,” Jason said, quietly. “All of it.” He looked at her now, then looked away again. “Like I said, I did think about it.” Tap, tap, tap, with his fingers. “About you.”

“You really did?”

“Of course.” He looked at her again. “But you died.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“Don’t be funny. It was horrible. And it wasn’t you. It’s not like you’ve come back to life. A girl called Sarah still died.”

Sarah nodded slowly. “So did a boy called Jason.”

He tapped his hands on the steering wheel again. “Second chances,” he whispered in the dark.

“It was almost over, though,” she said. “You and me.”

“What do you mean?”