His knees wobble, but he fights it. He puts his hand at my waist, turns me, pulls me closer, which surprises me.

“I can accept that,” he whispers, and holds his breath, and leans in to kiss me.

His lips brush mine for an instant, and an emotion like victory tears through him, but then he pulls away and glances toward the front door. Groans.

Christian is standing in the doorway.

“Wow,” Tucker says, trying to grin. “You really know how to cramp a guy’s style.”

His legs give out. He falls to his knees.

My light blinks off.

Christian’s clutching a DVD copy of Zombieland in one hand, the other hand clenched into a fist at his side. His expression is completely shut down.

“I guess I’ll come back later,” he says. “Or not.”

Tucker’s still catching his breath on the floor.

I follow Christian to the door. “He just came over. I didn’t mean for you to—”

“See that?” he finishes for me. “Great. Thanks for trying to spare my feelings.”

“I was trying to prove a point to him.”

“Right,” he says. “Well, let me know how that turns out.”

He turns toward the door, then stops, the muscles in his back tensing. He’s about to say something really harsh, I think, something he won’t be able to take back.

“Don’t,” I say.

Dizziness crashes over me. I hear a strange whooshing sound, like wind in my ears, accompanied by the distinct smell of smoke. Christian turns, his face all scrunched up like he’s confused by what he sees in my head. He looks suddenly worried.

That’s when I pass out.

The black room is filling up with smoke.

I jolt into future Clara in the exact instant that the darkness explodes into light, and in that moment I understand: This light’s not glory. It’s fire. A fireball streaks over my shoulder and strikes the wall somewhere off to the side, behind me. Then Christian screams, “Get down!” and I drop just in time for him to literally leap over my body, his glory sword out and bright and deadly, blinding me. Everything’s a jumble of black-and-white flashing: Christian and the figures circling him, the swift movement of his blade against the dark. I scramble backward until my back hits something solid, glance over my shoulder to see what’s happening with the fire.

The flames lick up the side of the room, igniting the velvet curtains like tissue paper. This place is going to be an inferno in about five minutes. My heart’s hammering, but I swallow and push myself to my knees, then to my feet. I have to help Christian. I have to fight.

No, he says in my mind. You’ve got to find him. Go.

The high-pitched noise comes again, thin and reedy, frightened. Smoke chokes me, the air in here close and hot and heavy in my lungs, but inexplicably I turn away from Christian and what I think must be the exit and stumble toward the fire, coughing, my eyes watering.

I hit the edge of something hard and wooden right at chest level, hard enough to knock the wind out of me if I had any wind in me to begin with. I figure out what the barrier is at the same time that my eyes finally decide to adjust.

It’s a stage.

I look around wildly to confirm what I already know, but it’s so crazy obvious I can’t believe I never figured this out before. It all falls neatly into place: the slanted floor of the auditorium, the ghosts of white tablecloths along the front, the rows of metal-backed seats. The velvet curtains and the smell of sawdust and paint.

We’re in the Pink Garter.

And in that instant, I figure out what the noise is.

It’s a baby crying.

“Clara!”

I open my eyes. Somehow I ended up on my living room floor, and I don’t quite know how. Two sets of eyes are staring down at me, one blue and one green, both insanely worried.

“What happened?” Tucker asks.

“It was the black room,” Christian says, not a question.

“It was the Garter.” I struggle to sit up. “I need my phone. Where’s my phone?”

Tucker finds it on the coffee table and brings it to me, while Christian helps me over to the couch. I still feel out of breath.

“There’s going to be a fire,” I tell Christian.

Tucker makes a disbelieving noise. “Oh, great.”

I dial Angela’s number. It rings and rings, and each second that ticks by where she doesn’t pick up makes the sense of dread in my stomach grow stronger. But then, finally, there’s a click and a faint hello on the other end.

“Angela!” I say.

“Clara?” She sounds like she’s been sleeping.

“I just had my vision again, and the black room is the Garter, Angela, and the noise I hear—do you remember me telling you?—that noise, which is what gives us away, it’s a baby. It’s got to be Webster. You need to get out. Now.”

“Now?” she says, still half-awake. “It’s nine o’clock at night. I just got Web to sleep.”

“Ange, they’re coming.” I can’t help the frantic squeak in my voice.

“Okay, slow down, C,” Angela says. “Who’s coming?”

“I don’t know. Black Wings.”

“Do they know about Web?” she asks, starting to comprehend some of what I’m saying. “Are they coming for him? How would they know?”

“I don’t know,” I say again.

“Well, what do you know?”

“I know something terrible is going to happen there. You have to leave.”

“And go where?” she asks, still not fully getting it. “No. I can’t go anywhere tonight.”

“But Ange—”

“How long have you been having the vision? Almost a year? There’s no need to rush off all panicked and clueless. We’ll think it through.”

“The vision was different tonight. It was urgent.”

Her voice hardens. “Well, sometimes the visions are like that, aren’t they? And you think you know what they mean, but you don’t.” She sighs like she realizes that she’s taking her issues out on me, and she’s sorry. “I can’t go running off in the middle of the night on a whim, C. I have Web to think about now. We need a plan. Come to the Garter in the morning, and we’ll talk about your vision, okay? Then I’ll decide where to go from there.”

There’s a high-pitched wail in the background. The sound of it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Oh, great. You woke him up,” she says, annoyed. “I have to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She hangs up on me.

I stare at the phone for a minute.

“What was that all about?” Tucker asks from behind me. “What’s going on?”

I meet Christian’s eyes, and he knows what I’m thinking. “We can take my truck,” he says.

We start moving toward the door. “We’ll go over there and I can put my hand on her and try to show her what I see. Maybe she’ll be able to receive it. We’ll make her understand. Then we’ll pack her and the baby up and take them to a hotel.” I sling my coat over my shoulder.

“Wait, what?” Tucker follows us out onto the porch. “Hold on, Carrots. Explain this to me. What’s happening?”

“We don’t have time.” I look at Tucker over my shoulder as I’m dashing away, and I say, “I have to go; I’m sorry,” and then I climb up into Christian’s pickup and we take off, spraying the gravel in the driveway, off to Jackson, and I get the sinking feeling that the trials my dad was telling me about are really about to begin.

14

ABANDON ALL HOPE

Just before we get to town, I get a text from Angela: trp dr, it says, and I don’t know what that means, but it makes my bad feeling get worse. Then when we arrive at the Garter, we find the front door open a crack. Christian and I both stiffen at the sight. We know that Anna Zerbino keeps this place locked up extra tight in the off hours, ever since an incident last year when a group of drunken tourists broke in and stole a bunch of costumes out of the dressing rooms and went gallivanting in chaps and petticoats all over town. Christian toes the door open enough for us to pass through, and we creep into the front lobby. The room is empty. He takes a moment to inspect the door, but there’s nothing to suggest violence. The lock is intact.