Free Relics by Mary Anna Evans Page B

house. Before she rounded the first corner, she was forced to drop to her knees. This was going to be hard. She tried to rise again but, instead, fell on her face and laid there. Maybe, if she rested a minute…
    She heard Joe’s voice crying her name and raised her torso, hoping to find enough breath to answer him. He was a shadow, silhouetted against the burning building, and he was charging the dragon’s flaming breath to look for her.
    “Joe.” Her voice was barely a whisper against the fire’s crackling roar. “Over here. I’m over here.”
    Joe could track wild animals by the sound of their paws hitting the ground as they fled through the forest, and his acute hearing picked up her faint voice.
    “Who else is here?” he bellowed. “Is there anyone else in the house?” He stood ready to throw himself into the furnace and Faye couldn’t answer him. She’d intended to take the same risk herself, but she couldn’t make herself say the words that would spur Joe into the flames.
    Laurel did it for her. She crept toward them, dragging her wounded foot. “Carmen’s in there. She was sleeping in the back room on the other side of the house.”
    Joe bolted past them. Faye reached out to stop him, but she had no strength. Oblivion was sneaking up behind her, ready to throw his black hood over her head again, ready to make her sleep.
    Before Joe had taken three steps, an earsplitting blast knocked him to the ground. “The LP tank,” whispered Faye. “The fire got to the LP tank.” She watched two of the exterior weight-bearing walls collapse, taking the tin roof to the ground with them. If Carmen was still under that roof, even Joe couldn’t save her now.

Chapter Eight
    For Faye, watching the fire was like taking a slide-show tour of hell. She slid in and out of awareness, watching flames rise out of the old house’s windows. The tremendous updraft of hot air flung sparks so high that they blended with the stars in the sky and the stars in her dazzled eyes. Then her conscious mind flicked off completely and she slept for a time.
    When she was aware of her surroundings again, firefighters—with the help of a steady drizzle of rain—were dousing the grass fires that had spread like cancers from the smoking heap that sat where a house had once been. She saw no sign of Carmen. Brent had arrived at some point, and he sat between her and Laurel. He seemed to be devoting all his efforts to tending their minor injuries, which struck Faye as an ill omen. If Carmen had been pulled from the flames, she surely would need a doctor’s care more than Faye and Laurel. She tried to ask Brent about Carmen, but nothing escaped her lips but a sigh. Putting her hand up to touch the jangling ache on the back of her head, she found a lump that felt as big as her bony fist. The lump and the hair around it were crusted with something that could only be dried blood. She slept again.
    ***
    Someone standing very close to her was talking. “The place was a black hole before I got here. We’re cooling things down now. I’ve called for an arson dog and handler. A couple of deputies, too. Should be able to retrieve the victim’s body soon.”
    Faye tried to focus on the man’s face. His voice was so calm and his words were so ugly. She would have thought that familiarity would have made him calloused to sudden death, but his face said something different. There were tears in his eyes and sweat in his reddish-blonde hair. His uniform told her that he was Fire Marshal Adam Strahan, but the tears said that he was a human being, too. Faye let sleep take her again, because it made her feel safe to know that someone like Adam Strahan was in charge.

Chapter Nine
    “…seems obvious. Happens every year on the first cold night. Somebody puts an old space heater that worked just fine last year too close to their bedclothes. When it happens in a house this old, the whole thing goes up. Ain’t nothing burns quicker than hundred-year-old heart