I raced up the stairs, the skin of my palm burning from the friction of my hand on the banister, the toes of my shoes scraping against the carpet.
“Lucy!” I shouted.
Where was she? I sprinted down the corridor toward her father’s rooms, passing smoke escaping from the doors to my left where the fire had spread, a wall of heat pressing in on me. I burst through the door. “Lucy!”
I could just make out a figure next to the bulk of the wardrobe. I scrabbled for a light switch and the lamp illuminated a room with dark wallpaper and heavy mahogany furniture, a row of mounted heads opposite the large bed.
“She’s not here,” Lucy said, and looked at me with haunted eyes.
“No,” I said, “she isn’t.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her from the room, back toward the stairs, past the flames that were now devouring the right side of the corridor, spreading up toward the ceiling with such heat I cried out and shut my eyes, fearing they were singed.
But when we reached the top of the stairs, Lucy pulled her hand from my damp grasp and headed up, not down.
“No! Lucy!” I cried, clambering after her. All thoughts of my animals, of trying to rescue the last of them, were gone. They were my life’s work but she was living, she was my heart, and I would do anything to save her.
She had reached the second floor; the smoke was thicker here, brown like mud, and rolled up from the warm floorboards.
I stopped a few steps below her and glanced back at the glow of the first floor. We had to leave now or we would get caught here and die.
“Lucy! Come with me!” I begged.
I saw her shake her head. Her face was pale and terrified, and I realized she was that little girl again, haunted by dreams and the living nightmares of her life here.
“I can’t leave it, I can’t leave Lockwood!” she sobbed. “I can’t do it.”
“You can,” I said, and held out my hand. “I’ll help you, take my hand. You can.”
There was a screeching groan of metal twisting and falling, and then the muffled thud of a ceiling crashing to the ground.
Lucy screamed as if the noise had broken through her terror, and reached for my hand.
We ran down the stairs, her leading me now, both of us stumbling, almost falling, as we made our way through the smoke and heat, clutching so tightly to each other’s hands that I could feel the bones grind together, blundering past walls and rooms and furniture rendered unfamiliar by smoke and panic.
The fire thundered to our left and bellowed at our backs as we dashed through the entrance hall and burst into the clean air of the night.
We were out, we were safe, and, once we reached the front lawn, I fell to my knees and was violently sick, hands clutching at the grass in front of me.