“Is everyone all right?” Arthur called. Which was weird—he should have been able to just know, reaching out to them with his mind. Which meant—
She looked for Teddy and couldn’t find him. Even if he’d been far ahead of the rest of them, even invisible, she should have been able to sense him. But she just couldn’t tell. She closed her eyes, and the world became a blank, all her friends and family invisible to her. She opened them again quickly, lest the vertigo of it overtake her. “Dad, I think we’re within range of that telepathic block.”
“Yes, I’d noticed. This is your chance to think all those terrible thoughts you work so hard to hide when I’m around.”
She stared. “I don’t think horrible thoughts. Much.”
His smile was wry. He was close enough to reach out, brush her cheek. “You had some dust on you,” he said.
“Dad, are you scared?”
He thought a moment, looking up the endless turning of stairs to their unknown goal. “I’m cautious. The block shows how close we’re getting.” He must have seen some look of consternation on her face. “If I stopped to think of it, I would be scared, so we can’t stop. We must find your mother. We’ll be scared later, all right?”
The trek up the stairwell became a mountain climb, stepping carefully and hoping the soles of their shoes gripped, clinging to the railing and hauling themselves up, hand over hand. Anna’s father got in front of her, sandwiching her between him and Paulson, as if that would keep her safer. She glanced up once and spotted Teddy in the lead, looking back to catch her gaze. He offered a grim smile before turning to run ahead and flashing to invisibility.
Paulson got rid of his suit jacket, and damp circles of sweat showed at his armpits. Arthur kept his trench coat on, like it was part of his uniform.
The worst trap came on the twenty-fifth floor, so close to their target Anna had already felt the first flash of elation at impending success. Almost there. They’d find Mom, catch the bad guys, and be home in time for dinner. Never mind that the details still hadn’t completely clarified.
This time, Sam stopped them, managing to look anxious even under his mask. The brash fighter had turned into a grim campaigner.
“Hissing again,” Sam said. “You guys hear it?”
“More gas?” Arthur said. “I’m starting to smell it, sulfury…”
“Oh, God,” Analise said, pure dread in her tone. “That’s propane. Something’s on fire.”
They looked up. A light was coming toward them, yellow flickering to orange, wavering with heat. The sound was like distant jet engines coming on, one by one. With each hiss and flare, a flame shot from a projection on the wall—not part of the girders and bolts in the building’s framework as they’d been disguised to appear, but nozzles and ignition systems, shooting out gas, lighting it, filling the stairwell with fireballs.
Waves of heat roiled toward them, and the paint and drywall were scorching, bubbling. The fire was scouring the stairwell.
“Move,” Paulson shouted. “Get to that door, get inside.”
Teia was already there, both hands around the doorknob, yanking on it, rattling it. “Locked!” she called back.
“Teddy!” Anna shouted. “Teddy, ghost through the door and unlock it!”
Lew shouted back, “He went scouting ahead, I don’t think he’s here!”
Anna cursed. Well, at least he’d be safe from this. Weirdly, she thought of prom. Wondered if he’d ask anyone else, after she was roasted. So simple a trap in the end. They’d be burned to cinders before even reaching the thirtieth floor. She was too stunned to even be afraid.
The lead SWAT guy pushed past the teens to make his way to the door, drew a pistol to fire a shot at the doorknob, when Paulson yelled, “Do not fire that gun in a roomful of propane, Mitchell!”
The guy winced, chagrined, and put his gun away.
Teia said, “Sam, maybe you can blast the door—”
“My lasers have the same problem as the gun!” he said, frustrated. Teia let out a string of curses.
With unnatural calm, Arthur reached up to put a hand on Analise’s shoulder. The woman flinched away; her eyes were round with terror.
“Analise, there are water pipes in the walls, yes? Connected to the sprinkler system. Are they active, and can you reach them?”
“I should have known,” she murmured. “I thought, we’re in a fucking building downtown, two miles away from the harbor, Typhoon wouldn’t be any damn use here anyway. But no.”
Arthur repeated, “Analise—”
The woman squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head in fierce denial, clinging to the railing with both hands.
The steel rail was starting to get hot.
“Hang on!” Teia shouted. “I got this!” She gripped the rail, her arms braced, her whole body tensed with effort. A trail of leafy frost edged away from her hands, then shot out in speeding, winding patterns of ice around the railing, crawling both up and down. The air grew cold, then it grew colder. The frost reached Anna’s hands, but she didn’t dare let go. Her breath fogged, and the cold stung her face.
Teia reached up, blasting a sheet of frozen air particles up the center of the stairwell, past the upper landings, toward the oncoming wall of fire. The approaching jets of flame sputtered, and for a moment, Lady Snow had the advantage, sending wave after wave of cold toward the fires, which fought to stay lit, to continue progressing downward like some burning avalanche.
A drizzle began falling down the stairwell, a mist of droplets as Lady Snow’s cold met the fire, vaporized, and became rain. The next set of jets lit, and the droplets turned to fog, more frost dripped off the railings, and the heat won out.
Drenched with water, Teia shouted out in frustration. The air was steaming.
Arthur said, commanding, “Analise. Typhoon. You must do this.”
“I can’t!”
“Then we burn.”
Anna had never heard her father sound so … otherworldly. Cruel, that was it. She had to keep reminding herself, this was Dr. Mentis now. The hero thing, it wasn’t just a costume you put on and took off. This was what people meant when they called it a persona.
Growling through set teeth, Analise turned away and braced against the railing, looking eerily like her daughter when she did. Her back tensed, her shoulders bowed and trembled, as if a great weight settled onto them.
Anna had crept closer to Arthur, who somehow found her hand and gripped it.
The rain began to fall in earnest. What had been a mist turned to drops, then sheets.
The sprinkler system must have been shut down—not surprising, considering the booby trap that had been put in place. But the pipes behind the walls still held water, and sprinkler heads still projected into the stairwell, giving the building a semblance of normality.
Analise pushed off from the railing to lean against the opposite wall, clawed her fingers as if she would break through the drywall with her bare hands, tipped back her head, unmindful of the water falling on her.
Suddenly, the sprinkler heads burst, and jets of water sprayed out to compete with the blasts of fire. The stairwell filled with falling water. Not just rain, but a powerful waterfall. Water ran in a river down the sloping ramp. The fires sputtered, struggling to keep the gas jets lit, and finally the flames died.
Analise fell, and Arthur caught her, leaning her against the wall and murmuring in a comforting tone as the sprinklers and pipes ran dry and the rain stopped.