“No … it’s not like that. I took it to run a DNA test!” As he tells me, a grin spreads over his face. The guy next to him just keeps looking at me like I’m a ghost, and it isn’t helping his case.
“You did what?” I’m still trying to work out how he got ahold of my hair. He must have plucked a couple strands off my shoulder when he did that weird shoulder pat.
“I ran a DNA test on it!” Eli repeats, leaning clo
ser to me.
There’s an outburst of noise from one of the other rooms, but it’s hard to make out exactly what it is over the rest of the party.
“I got the results back!” He shouts again, even louder. He’s obviously excited, but I’m getting distracted. I hear an odd noise again, something deep and rumbling … and then something sharp and high pitched. A scream?
I glance at Astor, wondering if he’s hearing it too, but Eli is growing impatient. He takes my shoulders and I turn my head swiftly to look at him.
“You have to listen to me!” He looks down at his hands, almost in wonder. “This is the sort of thing you wait your whole career for,” he says. “We don’t often get the chance to see this kind of good, thanks to what we do.”
I don’t get the chance to hear what this good is supposed to be, because my fears are confirmed as another sound pierces the noise, and this time it’s unmistakable. Those aren’t screams of delight, but terror.
An odd smell overwhelms me, and a split-second later, smoke starts billowing out from beneath a doorway to my left—the same doorway Dana disappeared through a few minutes earlier.
Panic grips me at the same moment the rest of the room disintegrates into pandemonium. I rip myself free of Eli’s grasp and run towards the smoke. It’s hard going, the bodies pressing and pushing me back with every step. Just as I reach them, Victoria comes hurrying past me, coughing and choking. I grab her arm and make her look at me.
“What’s going on?” I demand, and then I see it. From the elbow down her arms are stained in colors pulled straight from a box of crayons, or this case, a boxed science project.
The rumbling noises, the screams, the smoke—it all makes sense now.
“You. You got into the rainbow flames!” I shout at her. She grits her teeth and tries to pull away from me. “What did you do?” I demand furiously. She knew what she was doing. She must have overheard us at lunch.
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even look at me with the same hateful, spiteful look as she has every other time for the last year. Her face is blank, and that is so, so much worse. I try to hold on to her, but she yanks herself away from me and runs for the front door without another word.
I can’t follow her. I still haven’t spotted Dana among those streaming from the back rooms. I can’t even see in past the thick smoke and choking chemical smell.
“Dana!” I call out, and suddenly Astor is at my side, gripping my arm.
“You have to get out of here,” he says, choking through the smoke, but I shake my head.
“Not without Dana.”
“Where …” he trails off, his eyes lifting to peer into the smoke-filled rooms. He dashes in, his shirt pulled up over his nose. For a long, agonizing moment—I’m sure I’ve lost them both. Wills and Blair are pushing their way through the crowd, but they don’t quite reach us until Astor is fully engulfed and invisible in the smoke. I clutch at them for support, knowing I should be running away with everyone else—but unable to leave them behind.
Then Astor reappears, his body covered in soot—with a limp body held in his arms.
I don’t have time to see if she’s still breathing when another loud explosion wracks the cellars, this time followed by a massive burst of flames. They engulf the whole back wall around the entrance, where everyone else is trying to escape. They only last a minute, a brilliant display of color in every shade. Beautiful, bright, and deadly.
The entire place shakes from the ground up. The lights flicker and go off, dust and debris spray throughout the area, and I am surrounded by screams and crying as people rush about in the darkness. I keep a tight hold of Blair and Wills, and they won’t let go of me, either.
It’s pitch black for a full minute before the lights flicker back on. I can see the orange and yellow flames lighting up the next mad stampede for the door. But me, I’m frozen.
All around us on the floor are bodies. Some of them are awake and crying for help, and some of them, it is quite clear, are dead. Astor was knocked off his feet in the explosion, but aside from a bit of soot on his face, he looks fine.
Eli’s friend, on the other hand, is not so much. He lies motionless on the floor, one arm stretched out as if reaching for me in his final moments. His desperation is matched only by mine as I search for Dana in the wreckage. She was in Astor’s arms before the explosion, but now she’s nowhere to be found.
I cry out for Dana again, lurching closer to the fire with only Blair and Wills holding me back from plunging through it to search for her. I can barely see through the dust and smoke. Eli still stands at my side, his face a mask of shock and horror.
“Teddy,” he says, quietly. I don’t know how I hear him through all the commotion, but I do.
“What?” I snap, my eyes searching the flames furiously for my missing friend. “What could you have to say that could possibly be so important right now?”
He’s staring down at the ground. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raises a hand to point at something behind me.