by Ritter, Todd
Grunting from the exertion, his arms burning as hard as the fire below him, Henry kept pulling until his head and shoulders were above the edge of the roof. With one last push, he propelled himself higher, leaning forward until his chest was flat against the shingles. With legs kicking and arms clawing, he scrambled fully onto the pitched roof.
He had made it.
He was, at least for a minute or two, out of harm’s way.
Just like the night before, the street was a rush of activity. The fire trucks had screeched to a halt in front of the Sleepy Hollow Inn. The sidewalk across the street teemed with onlookers. Oblivious drivers turning onto the road were blocked by Carl Bauersox on one side and Tony Vasquez on the other. The motorists tried to backtrack, doing awkward three-point turns in the middle of the street while dodging more cars that turned on to it. Standing amid the chaos, staring at the fire in rapt disbelief, was Kat Campbell.
Watching the flames dance behind the hotel’s windows, Kat could only think about the words of warning scrawled on Constance’s hand. Had she known there’d be another fire? Is this why she’d written them? Kat doubted she’d ever know for sure, but it was something to consider. Especially now that the Sleepy Hollow Inn was ablaze, its owner a numb figure standing alone in the middle of the street.
“It’s gone,” Lottie Scott cried to no one and everyone. “All gone.”
Kat joined her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. But it was cold comfort. Lottie’s pride and joy—and Perry Hollow’s only hotel—was a goner, no matter how fast the fire squad put the blaze out.
As they worked to douse the flames, Kat tried to count their ranks, seeing if Danny Batallas was among them. But they were moving so fast, and the scene was so chaotic, that she couldn’t keep track. She found herself counting the same firefighter twice or mistaking one for another. The only person she recognized without a doubt was Dutch Jansen, who led the charge as they unleashed water onto the burning hotel.
Remembering what Larry Sheldon had told her, Kat also kept an eye on the steadily growing crowd. Once again, she recognized a lot of them. Dave and Betty Freeman, no doubt rattled by two fires on their street in less than twelve hours, held hands and exchanged worried looks. The four remaining members of the historical society stood side by side, watching flames consume yet another Perry Hollow landmark.
Scanning the throng, Kat caught a flash of blond hair in the middle of the crowd. It vanished behind a cluster of onlookers, only to reappear a moment later farther down the street, away from the crowd.
Kat left Lottie’s side and pushed into the crowd, again losing sight of the man. She only found him once she was also beyond the wall of bystanders. She couldn’t make out a face—the person was, strangely enough, looking away from the fire—but she could tell that the blond hair belonged to a man. It was pulled into a ponytail and trickled down his neck to a black-collared trench coat.
“Stop right there!”
Although she could have been shouting at anyone, the man in the ponytail knew she was talking to him.
“You in the ponytail! Stop walking and stay where you are!”
The man started to run, his trench coat flapping behind him. Kat gave chase, trying hard to keep up with the stranger. But he was taller and he was faster. The man seemed to realize this as he glanced back to see her receding figure. A smile crossed his face—a smug one that would have infuriated Kat had she not seen Nick Donnelly standing a few feet up the street. When the man reached him, Nick thrust his cane into the street.
The stranger, caught by surprise, tripped over it. He fell to the asphalt, arms thrust forward, trench coat billowing over him.
Nick pressed the tip of his cane in the center of the man’s back. “The chief told you to stop.”
Kat caught up to them and flipped the man over. He was wearing the same clothes as the night before—white shirt, black pants, weird buckled shoes. But as he sat up, his coal-black eyes were wide with fear.
“What the hell are you doing?” he yelped, looking first at Kat, then Nick. “What did I do?”
“You didn’t stop when she told you to,” Nick said.
“That’s not a crime.”
“It is when I’m the police chief,” Kat said, angrily tapping her badge. “Now I need to see some ID.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
Kat knelt until she was eye level with the stranger. “Do you see my face? Does it look like I’m kidding?”
The man had scraped his hands during the fall. He looked down at his palms, which were speckled with dirt and blood. Wincing, he reached into his coat and pulled out a wallet. He opened it and held it out so Kat could see the driver’s license inside.
According to the license, the man’s name was Connor Hawthorne. He was twenty-seven and hailed from Salem, Massachusetts. Yet none of that explained what he was doing in Perry Hollow.
“Here for a visit?” Kat asked.
“Work, actually.”
“And what kind of work is that?”
“I don’t have to answer that.” Connor Hawthorne climbed to his feet, trying to wipe dirt from his trench coat but smearing it with blood instead. “I’m an American citizen. I have rights, you know.”
“You do,” Kat said. “But as police chief of this town, I have the right to question people I find suspicious. So let’s just save both of us a whole lot of trouble and tell me what kind of work brought you to Perry Hollow.”
Connor tilted his head and smiled. It was the same smug grin he had given earlier, only now it made Kat more unnerved than infuriated. Everything about Mr. Hawthorne was slightly unsettling, from the razor-sharp cheekbones to his too dark eyes.
“I’m a witch,” he said.
Nick let out an incredulous laugh. “Don’t you mean warlock?”
“There’s no such thing as a warlock,” Connor said, his voice a strange brew of defensiveness and annoyance. “Besides, men can be witches. It’s not gender-specific.”
“Thanks for the lesson,” Kat replied. “What does it have to do with my town?”
“Unless you’re going to arrest me, I don’t have to say another word.”
Patience wasn’t Kat’s strong suit, especially when she could tell the mysterious Mr. Hawthorne was hiding something. Yet he was right. He didn’t have to tell them anything, even if she did arrest him. Which she couldn’t do.
“I have no grounds to arrest you. At least not because you’re a witch.”
“I know,” Connor said. “Isn’t freedom of religion a bitch?”
And so was the fact that Kat couldn’t slap cuffs on him simply for being an asshole. But she didn’t have a choice. She was obliged to let him go.
“Mr. Hawthorne, I don’t trust you. And I’m going to keep an eye on you. So whatever brought you here, you better stay on your best behavior. Do I make myself clear?”
Connor wasn’t allowed to answer. A scream—short and startled—echoed up the street, cutting him off. It was followed by a collective gasp rising from the crowd. Kat, too far away to see what was happening, took a few steps forward, straining to get a better view. After a few more shuffles down the street, she saw what the crowd was looking at.
It was a man. Staggering along the roof of the Sleepy Hollow Inn. Vanishing and reappearing in the wafting smoke.
“Oh, my God,” Kat said. “It’s Henry.”
The roof was hot, close to scorching. Henry felt it through the soles of his shoes, which were slowly melting. They stuck to the shingles—also melting—and caused him to stumble awkwardly. But that was the least of his problems. Now that he was on the roof, Henry had no idea where to go next.
Standing in the center of the roof, he looked to neighboring structures, seeing if one of them was close enough for him to leap to safety. The nearest one, a residence by the looks of it, was at least ten yards away. Definitely not within jumping distance.
He backtracked, heading up the pitched roof until he was at the very top. There was more suppo
rt there, which would come in handy if the roof started to cave in. Judging from the increasing heat and the roar of the flames inside the hotel, that would be sooner rather than later.
His perch gave him a view of the opposite side of the street, where it looked like most of Perry Hollow had gathered. Some stared up in openmouthed shock. Others couldn’t bear to look. A small group formed a circle of joined hands, their heads bowed.
They were praying, Henry realized. Praying for him.
He recognized two of the people standing in the crowd—Kat Campbell and Nick Donnelly. They were shouting something he couldn’t hear, gesturing wildly in ways he couldn’t understand. Kat was especially emphatic, waving her arms toward the right side of the roof.
Following her flailing arms, Henry saw the top of a ladder rise into view. A second later, a firefighter appeared, clinging to the top rungs.
“Come on!” he shouted. “Hurry!”
Henry bolted across the roof, trying hard not to lose his balance, trying even harder not to notice the sounds of collapsing wood getting louder from within the hotel. He willfully ignored the smoke that seemed to rise between the shingles like vapor from a steam grate. All he noticed was the ladder. If he reached it, he’d be safe.
Having made it across the roof, he now had to descend its slope. It was a tricky proposition. The angle was steep, and his increasingly gummy shoes made it even harder to navigate. Henry’s first instinct was to sit down and slide toward the ladder. He dismissed the thought quickly. If the heat radiating off the roof was turning his shoes to liquid, imagine what it would do to his pants. No, he needed to descend on foot.
Henry started down the roof, walking with his legs widened, arms extended for balance.
The firefighter on the ladder frantically waved for him to move faster. “We don’t have much time, man!”
Henry tried to pick up the pace. He was halfway down the side of the roof, slipping a little but remaining upright. The firefighter began to descend the ladder, making room for him to climb on.
“Just get to the ladder,” Henry muttered under his breath. “Be fast. Don’t fall. Just get—”
He stopped talking, listening instead to another ominous sound coming from inside the hotel. It was one he hadn’t heard before—a sizzling noise, underscored by a sharp whistle that reminded him of a tea kettle at full boil.
The shingles at his feet seemed to melt away, replaced by licks of orange as the fire officially broke through the roof. Thriving on this new patch of oxygen, the flames leaped high, consuming even more of the roof’s surface.
Henry fell backward, landing hard, the shingles iron-hot through the fabric of his pants. The hole in front of him widened and large chunks of the roof disappeared into the fiery depths.
Desperate to get away, Henry crab-crawled backward, scurrying once again up the roof. The fire followed his path, eating through the areas he had just escaped, making him move even faster. It seemed like the flames were intent on grabbing him, punching through the roof in a desperate attempt to drag him kicking and screaming back into the hotel.
Henry managed to evade each grasp, pushing himself higher and higher. He soon found himself back at the roof’s peak and almost tumbling down the other side. But he caught himself—barely—and sat for a second, mind spinning.
He needed to get off the roof. Immediately. And now that the ladder was no longer an option, he was left with only one choice.
He had to jump.
Henry didn’t want to. There was probably forty feet between the roof and the ground. It was enough to hurt him badly. Enough to kill him. But at least he had a chance of surviving the fall. Remaining on top of the Sleepy Hollow Inn would only lead to one result.
To his right, the fire continued to chomp across the roof. To his left, another hole opened up, spewing flames. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to jump and he had to do it now.
Hopping to his feet, Henry allowed a split-second glance at the street below. The prayer circle was still in full swing. In fact, it looked like it had grown.
Good. He was going to need all the help he could get.
Exhaling one last, terrified breath, Henry started to run down the roof. His mind, no doubt coping with the prospect of imminent death, shot off in strange tangents. He thought of the Ring Cycle again and Valhalla burning. The only production he had seen—at the Met, during college—had used shreds of fluttering orange silk to represent the flames. Skipping amid real fire now, he realized how realistic they had been.
His thoughts jumped to Gia, his wife, dead going on six years now. He flashed back to the accident that killed her. The same one that caused his first round of scars. Then his son entered his thoughts. His unborn son. The child snatched away from him before he could leave the womb.
His thoughts leaped again. To Deana, of course. And how good she smelled when he held her in bed. How soft she felt in his arms. Then, oddly, to Kat. Her smile at the diner that morning. Her awkwardness the first time they met.
Henry was jerked back to the present when a new hole opened up in the roof, right beneath him. Only momentum allowed him to clear it, his legs seemingly skimming on the air. Then he fell forward onto his stomach. The force of the impact knocked most of the air out of his lungs. The undiluted terror he felt evaporated the rest.
Yet he still moved, sliding downward on his stomach, hands out in front of him, the lip of the roof getting closer.
Henry twisted his body when he reached the edge, aiming to hit the ground feet first. His legs went over the side first, the roof vanishing out from under them. Gravity immediately took over, tugging him downward, the edge of the roof sliding past his crotch, his stomach, his chest.
He clawed at the shingles, refusing to completely surrender to gravity even as the remainder of his body cleared the roof. Henry’s fingers, now bloody and burned, scraped along their last patch of shingles before bumping against the rainspout.
Then, faster than he wanted to and more terrified than he thought he’d be, Henry Goll slid off the roof.
Kat couldn’t bear to look. Not anymore. Not after Dutch Jansen and his ladder were pushed away by the mounting flames. It was bad enough seeing Henry stumble helplessly across the roof, trapped and terrified. But she couldn’t bring herself to watch him jump from it, or worse, plummet into the flames. So she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head for good measure, waiting for the reaction of the crowd to tell her what had happened.
She heard a collective gasp, followed by a surge of motion. Nick grabbed her arm and shook it until her eyes opened.
“He didn’t fall,” he yelped. “The son of a bitch is still hanging on!”
Kat reluctantly turned her head, seeing that Henry was now dangling from the rain gutter attached to the lip of the roof. His body, suddenly halted, swung forward, bringing him perilously close to the hotel’s fiery exterior wall. He turned his face away from the flames as, above him, the rainspout sank under his weight.
Kat knew he couldn’t stay that way. The walls were unstable. The flames and smoke were everywhere. He needed to let go eventually. And she would be there to help break his fall.
“We can catch him,” she said, now dragging Nick toward the burning hotel. “It’s not too late to help him.”
Others joined her, surging forward. On the edge of her vision, she saw Carl Bauersox step into the fray. Tony Vasquez did the same, running right beside her. Soon there were about a dozen of them scrambling past the fire trucks. Dutch Jansen, back on the ground, tried to get them to stop, shouting that the fire was too strong and the building too unstable. They ignored the order, giving him no choice but to join the circle forming below Henry.
Kat shouted up at him. “Let go! We’ve got you!”
Henry didn’t hesitate. One quick glance at the ground was all he needed to convince him to let go.
He fell faster than Kat thought he would, a straight drop to the group beneath him. There was a flurry of movement—hands reaching upwar
d, kicking legs, bodies tumbling like pins in a bowling alley. Kat felt the heel of a shoe, Henry’s presumably, glance off her shoulder before knocking into Tony’s chest. They fell forward, pulled into the scrum, piled on top of one another.
When it was all over, Henry was on solid ground. A little worse for wear, maybe, but mostly unscathed. When he stood, the crowd watching from the other side of the street let out a cheer. His rescuers patted him on the back before shaking hands and congratulating themselves on their success. They lifted Henry onto their shoulders, not stopping when he began to protest.
Dutch Jansen shooed them away, pushing them out of range of the fire until only Kat, Nick, and Tony remained.
“You’ve got to move, folks,” Dutch told them. “Give us room to put out this goddamn fire.”
Tony helped Kat to her feet. She tried to do the same for Nick, who was flat on the ground, wincing in pain. It was his knee, she knew. He had hurt it during Henry’s rescue.
“You okay?” she asked, offering him a hand.
Nick grunted as he pulled himself into a kneeling position. “I’ve been better.”
Kat slid a shoulder under one of Nick’s arms and lifted him into a standing position. Tony joined in, supporting Nick’s other side. Together, the three of them began to shuffle away from the hotel.
They made it two steps before Dutch Jansen was upon them again, shouting. “Get out of here, Kat! It’s too dangerous!”
Behind them, the fire raged. Kat felt its heat on her back, as intense as it was deadly. Sneaking a glance back at the hotel, she saw that the roof was completely engulfed by flames leaping high into the air. Dutch was right. It was too dangerous.
“Nick,” she said, “you need to move faster, okay? Can you do that?”
If he responded, she didn’t hear it. All she heard was the roar of fire and the sound of breaking timber.
The inn’s roof was about to collapse.
