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“If Orla made Amanda come over after dinner, she’d have taken the conversation to her office. I’m sure Lily was thinking the same thing. You stay here.” Sam looked at the staircase filled with smoke and coughed. “I’ll run up there to see. It’s our best bet.”
Magdalene no longer wanted to weep. Instead her determination to kill people resurfaced with vengeance. Certain people. One Orla Fenway. Preferably with her own bare hands, in the most gruesome way possible. And she wanted to thrash herself for kicking this can of poison down the road, and not dealing with Fenway sooner.
“Like hell you’ll go alone. Let’s go.”
Magdalene took off with Sam hot on her heels. They entered the winding hallway side by side, and Sam pulled Magdalene to the left. They were going by memory since there was almost no visibility now as the smoke got thicker. On the floor above them, the burning wood cracked, and they could hear pieces falling near and far.
Magdalene’s heart broke into a hundred pieces. She remembered the first time she’d stepped foot on the island and the glorious sight of the mansion appearing before her as she climbed the cliffs. It was like nothing else, glory to the masonry masters of old, a refuge against storm and heartache. And now it was dying all around, its last breaths heartbreaking and horrifying.
Despite the fire not yet making it to the second floor, the smoke was heavy, and Magdalene reached into the pockets of her skirt to find not one but two handkerchiefs. Flimsy and stylish as they were, they helped with her occasional perimenopausal hot flashes and would have to suffice to protect them from inhaling more of the acrid fumes.
After a few minutes, they stopped again. It was getting harder and harder to breathe, and Magdalene could tell that, despite Sam’s strong sense of direction, they were lost.
Still, first things first and breathing was an undisputed priority.
“Get on your knees!” Reaching out to where Sam stood peering into the smoke-filled hallway, Magdalene tugged on her arm, and as Sam turned to her, she could see the mischief in her lover’s eyes and her own went wide, realizing what she had just said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Sam chuckled, and Magdalene’s heart did that silly somersault it always did when she stopped to think about how much she actually loved this woman, how much she absolutely adored that, even in moments like these, Sam’s brilliant—if dirty—mind found something to distract her from the distinct possibility of dying.
“Sam…” Still, she rolled her eyes, but her long-suffering sigh was interrupted by a fit of coughing, and seeing her distressed, Sam set off again—whether with any sense of direction or at random, Magdalene did not know. Just as they were about to start crawling, a small voice from the opposite side drew their attention.
“Teach, Teach, here. She’s here somewhere.” Lily’s silhouette in the smoke was like a beacon, and Sam pulled Magdalene towards it. The girl was crouching in the long corridor that held the faculty offices. Magdalene wanted to hug Lily. They were found. She was found. Then she wanted to shake the girl, because who even does that? Run into a burning building? Did she have a death wish?
Magdalene chose to ignore her own behavior and alternately focused on being relieved about Lily being all right, and angry at her for running away and risking her life in the first place. Still, the girl was okay, and without a doubt she’d saved their hides, since they’d been about to take off in the opposite direction and probably straight into more danger.
Now it was a matter of finding Orla’s office.
On their hands and knees, all three of them coughing more and more as they slowly passed one door after another, it was becoming evident that they wouldn’t last long. Magdalene untied her handkerchief and tied it around Lily’s face. Just as she was about to succumb to another coughing fit, Sam’s victorious exclamation to her left almost toppled her over.
When she crawled closer, she could see the ugly, knotted monstrosity of the macrame that decorated the entrance to the former headmistress’ office. Hell, Magdalene had to get rid of almost three boxes of half moth-eaten, half unfinished pieces when she’d taken over Orla’s office. The woman really had no concept of finishing anything she started, and if she did, without fail, it wound up being grotesque.
Regardless, monstrous or not—and in her mind’s eye Magdalene could picture the hideous design of the one that ended up serving as their beacon in the dark haze—this piece of macrame was a lifesaver right now. When they pushed through the door, their three bodies almost fell over the threshold in their haste.
The fire that was tearing down the adjacent wing illuminated the space through the window and revealed a silhouette slouching in the visitor’s chair in the corner. Lily was a hairbreadth ahead of Sam, already gently shaking her girlfriend.
“Amanda! Wake up, sweetheart, wake up!”
Coughing violently, the girl staggered to her feet, only to be pulled down into a crouch, where she proceeded to throw up and cough again.
“What’s… happening?”
“Sweetie, the school is on fire.” Magdalene gentled her voice, all the while trying to maintain an air of nonchalance that wouldn’t alarm the already sick and discombobulated girl.
“Amanda, where is Professor Fenway?” Sam was looking around wildly, clearly searching for Fenway, but Magdalene was fairly certain Amanda was the only one in the office. Because if Orla were here, Magdalene would have pummeled her with any of the thousand dirty mugs lining every surface, and she never had that kind of luck.
Amanda tried to say something, but a coughing fit interrupted her, and she resorted to shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders, leaning heavily on Lily, whose tears of relief were streaming down her face, leaving tracks on her soot-covered cheeks.
“You don’t know, okay.” Looking around one more time, Sam tried to get more concrete information out of the girl. “Has she been here with you at all?” Another shake of the disheveled, blonde head and more coughing. Magdalene, however, had had enough. Even if Fenway lay passed out under the debris of dirty pizza boxes under her desk, she was past caring. The former headmistress could go hang, well, burn in this case.
“Amanda, sweetheart, can you walk or crawl? We need to get out of here and quick.” Lily’s voice was tender and unhurried, belying the tremor in her hands.
The moment they entered the hallway, it became abundantly clear that visibility had decreased even more and they would likely get lost within seconds.
“Sam, do you think you can get us out of here?” Magdalene tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible, maybe even inject it with a level of determination she was no longer feeling. Not when everything around them was a massive abyss with no clues as to how they would in fact begin to navigate it.
She knew she’d failed on the determination and resoluteness front, because she could hear the fear in her tone herself, and Sam’s eyes blinking at her with concern told her as much. Just as Sam opened her mouth, something brushed past Magdalene’s ankles and before she could hear the disgruntled high-pitched meow, she knew her knight in orange armor had arrived.
“Oh my god, Willoughby!” Sam laughed and Magdalene scowled. “Seriously, did absolutely nobody take the evacuation training seriously? It’s about running out of the damn building, not running into it.”
