Priya grabbed my arm. She pulled me toward Pollywog’s room, which was at the front of the house. But just then, Bea darted toward the stairs. “Signor!” she yelled.
She probably would of gotten past Miss Lizzie and Miss Bethel, too, because by then they each had Madame by a wrist and was hauling her, limping, up the stairs. But when she darted past Priya, Priya let go of me and grabbed at Bea.
The air was getting thick. My head spun, even with the wet cloth over my face. I grabbed Bea’s other arm and helped Priya hold her. “I’ll look for him,” I said. “You go with Priya.”
“Karen!” Priya snapped.
I shoved my journal and my little purse at her. “Keep these safe. They’re yours if—”
“Karen.”
“Connie’s down there, too, unless she made it out the back,” I said. “And didn’t you just tell me animals have souls?”
She threw up her free hand in despair. “All right,” she said. “All right.”
And then she leaned forward, and in front of God and Madame and Effie and everybody she kissed me square on the mouth, wet rags and all.
“For luck,” she said, and dragged Bea toward the windows.
“Wait!” Crispin yelled. He had a big voice. It carried through the room. I thought he was going to try to stop me, and I’m sure he thought about it — but Miss Lizzie and Miss Bethel was struggling with Madame, who was coughing like a consumptive as she came to the top of the stairs. I saw him look around, and think about the odds.
“You can catch the girls when they jump,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
One thing about Crispin. He don’t waste time making up his mind. He yanked his boots off and shoved them at me, then threw the overcoat he’d been struggling into over my shoulders. “It might help,” he said. “Get Connie. I won’t let them open the window for two minutes, so’s you can get down the stairs.”
Because once that window was open, the stairs would be a chimney. Right.
Hopping on one foot to get the other boot on, I looked him in the eye and nodded. “I’ll see you outside,” I said. “Shut the stair door behind me, too.”
I wouldn’t of gotten past Miss Francina that easy. But she was corralling Pollywog and Effie after Priya, so in the thickening haze I figure she didn’t see what I was fixing to do.
It’s damn hard to crawl down stairs, I don’t mind telling you. I skidded down backward on my hands and knees as fast as I could, mindful of my time limit. Whenever I lifted my head, it felt like dunking it into a warm bathtub, except for upside down and strangely dry. But there was a ribbon of cooler air down by the steps, and through the wet cloth I could breathe it.
I was counting under my breath — that one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi — and I had gotten to sixty-seven when my feet thumped against the wall at the landing. I couldn’t see much anymore — my eyes was streaming and the smoke was damn near chewable — and I hoped Crispin didn’t count much faster than me. So I turned around and scurried faster. Eighty-Mississippi. Eighty-one. My knees were going to look like somebody’d taken a hoof file to ’em. I weren’t going fast enough, and I knowed it. I think I peeled off half my senses, reaching ’em out like whiskers, trying to feel the draft that would be followed by the flood of hot air and maybe fire up those stairs.
I should of shut the door at the top. Ninety-Mississippi. But I weren’t going back up there to correct the oversight now. Maybe Crispin would remember I’d asked him to. My elbows were bruised up something awful, but I was running on so much fear and excitement that they only hurt when I whacked one of ’em on something. In sorrow I report, I whacked ’em on a lot.
One hundred. Twenty seconds until Crispin opened the window. I must be almost there by now, but I couldn’t count stairs and seconds both at once. One-hundred-five …
The door was kitty-corner to the stairs, and I kicked out as I slid down what I thought was the last few steps. So I felt it was open space. I kind of swapped ends and fell out into the hall, then scrambled forward and kicked the door shut, nearly losing one of Crispin’s giant boots. I jammed it back on by stomping my foot against the doorframe.
Then I lay there on my belly for what felt like enough time for the whole damned house to have burned down around me but was probably only ten seconds or so. My breath heaved in and out like a bellows, and thank Christ there was less smoke down here or I would of choked on it. I pressed my face to the carpet and breathed through the wool fibers and the wet sheet, and it was almost like breathing air.
But the fire wanted that air, too, and when it was done there wouldn’t be none left for me. Even if I didn’t manage to roast alive before then. I pushed myself to my knees — damn, my knees — and tried to crawl. But Crispin’s overcoat got tangled in my legs and his boots was too big, and I didn’t have rags to stuff them with, so instead I laid back down and I kind of shuffle-kicked my way forward. Like a frog. Smoked frog.
I laughed, which I shouldn’t of done, because even with the wet wrap I got a stinging lungful. But I couldn’t see anyway, so coughing myself blind didn’t really matter, except it slowed me down.
I couldn’t afford to get lost. It was dark as pitch down here, like swimming in muddy water at night. I figured that was a good sign, because if I got in sight of the fire I’d sure be able to see that, no matter how dark it was otherwise. So I was feeling my way around and hoping I could remember where all the furniture was in the dark. Furniture we’d recently rearranged, of course, due to the riot in the parlor previous.
Down here, though I couldn’t see the fire, I could hear it. There was a hollow, grumbling roar, like a splintercat raging in an empty barn behind a stark oak door. It came from the kitchen, and that made my stomach churn, because Connie’s room was in the hall right outside. Every so often that was punctuated with crackling pings of hot metal and the thud of falling beams. I could hear something else, too — the clarion peals of Signor’s loud, monotonous, evenly spaced meows, that rang all the way back from the parlor to where I huddled at the base of the servants’ stair.
Maybe I should of tried to come down the grand staircase to the front, but I was thinking about Connie and—
Well, it was too late to change my mind now.
Groping, I felt a doorjamb and found the door to the back hall, where Connie’s room was. Priya saved my life, because before I jerked it open I touched it.
I yanked my hand back with a real ladylike swear: my finest. Hot; sharp hot. Blistering. Then I realized I could see my hand, dull red through the clouds of smoke. And something like flakes of black snow was falling through that smoke, stirring eddies.
I looked up. The ceiling was on fire, flames licking from behind the door, and what was flaking down on me now was bits of blackened lath and plaster. And I could see the glare of red through the keyhole, too.
If Connie was back there … there weren’t nothing I could do for her. All I could hope was she’d made it out the kitchen door.
I wanted to curl up and sob. I wanted to yank open that door and go running into the fire looking for her, but I couldn’t even touch the cut-glass doorknob, it was so hot. And Signor was still yelling. Maybe I could get to him. And anyway, that was my only way out now.
I got up on my hands and knees and crawled.
At first, it seemed like the air was getting cooler around me, the smoke less thick. But then it started getting worse again — hotter, smokier. And when I came around the corner to the parlor, there was that awful orange flicker again.
The parlor wasn’t on fire.