Ash pleaded with Kara to stay out of the burning building, but short of tying her to a tree, there had been no way to prevent her from following him.

“At least stay behind me!” he shouted, pulling her back before she ran around him in the foyer of the manor house.

The space had been renovated last year to function as a temporary textile mill. It was supposed to be a temporary situation after the original building had developed an aggressive case of black mold. They’d been forced to shutter the structure. He was waiting for the wet season to burn it down himself. He didn’t trust anyone else to flaunt the city’s fire laws, metaphorically spitting in the curse’s face.

Instead, flames were consuming the mill’s provisional home.

“Damn it, I told them to move to new quarters last month,” he growled, following the smoke to the back chambers. That was where the seamstresses worked their looms and pedal-powered sewing machines.

He dragged Kara along with him, not trusting her to stay with him of her own accord. Pausing at the bedroom that had been turned into the manager’s office, he ran in to yank down the fine muslin curtain that had been hung on the windows.

“Here, tie this around your mouth,” he ordered Kara before doing it himself. “Is that all right?”

She nodded, wisely not wasting air to talk before slipping a pair of tinted goggles from her pocket. They were an ancient pair meant for swimming. It was a brilliant way to keep her eyes from tearing, but he didn’t have time to stop and praise her ingenuity—not with the roof threatening to fall around them.

“Come.” He tugged them down the hall, throwing doors open to look for workers overcome with smoke.

Halfway down, they came upon a woman, presumably one of the seamstresses. She had collapsed next to a window that appeared painted shut. Using two fingers, he dug into the wood, crumpling it to give himself a place to grip. The next second, the sash was slapping against the upper part of the sill.

Ash turned to find Kara propping the woman up. He reached out to help, but she took hold of the seamstress and began heaving her out the window.

“What are you doing?” he shouted in normal human tones.

“Relax, flyboy. It’s the first floor,” she said before giving the woman one last shove out the window.

Someone will find her, he told himself, and he turned to follow Kara as she ran on to the next room. This one was locked.

He pushed Kara behind him, and lifted his foot to kick the door open. When it didn’t budge, he realized something had fallen against it.

“What are you waiting for?” Kara asked over the roar of the flames.

“It’s blocked,” he answered.

“So kick harder.”

“But what if it’s a beam from the floor above or the roof?” He squinted at the ceiling, trying to discern from the sound of the fire whether the roof had come down beyond the door.

“Then we should go out the window and come around,” Kara said.

“Wait,” he told her, tugging her into the next room.

He touched the wall, feeling for hotspots.

“What are you doing? We need to get outside.”

Ash reared back, punching the wall with a hard strike. Plaster and brick collapsed behind his fist.

“Or bust through like an elephant,” Kara muttered under her breath. He ignored her, continuing to hit the wall until there was a hole big enough to fit through.

The scene on the other side was a veritable inferno. It looked like Hell itself.

The ceiling above had collapsed. Part of the second floor had landed inside, transforming it into a maze of burning desks and ceiling joists with smaller debris interspersed between like flaming mileposts.

“You have to stay here,” Ash snapped, his innate authoritarianism making him curt. “I’ll pass along anybody I pull out. You’ll have to push them out that window,” he said, pointing behind her. “Call out first. The fire brigade should be here by now. They’ll help you evacuate anyone I find.”

He didn’t waste more time. Rushing into the flames, he dug around, moving burning timbers and smoldering desks to look for bodies. He found two. Not stopping to check if they were still breathing, he tucked one under each arm before taking a running leap back through the hole in the wall.

Kara took each burden from his arms, both women. He went back and kept looking, finding a finely dressed man crushed and impaled by a wooden ceiling support.

The man had been killed instantly. Turning away, Ash focused on searching for the living, pulling out three more women before Kara shouted that there should only be one more.

“The first lady you pulled out recovered consciousness! She says the manager and the youngest apprentice are the only ones left.”

“Manager’s dead,” he yelled back through the opening.

“Then there’s just one, a girl named Clara.” He could barely hear her reply above the roar of the flames. “She was near the shredders!”

“The what?” What was a shredder doing in a textile mill?

“They were in the second story. Get your feathered ass up there.”

Ash scowled and waved to the window. “I’ll go look. You get out now. And I mean now, Kara. If she’s here, I’ll get her out.”

He turned around, taking a running leap for the hole gaping in the ceiling.

The smoke was thicker on the second floor. His eyes watered so badly he was forced to shift the rhythm of his wings to drive the haze and fumes from his face. Trying not to breathe too deeply, he stayed aloft to keep from destabilizing the floor any further.

“Clara,” he called.

He didn’t really expect an answer, but it wasn’t a large house. If the girl was still alive, she might respond. Pumping his wings, he flew forward, catching a glimpse of faded blue linen in the corner.

A girl no older than fourteen was lying prone near the window. She resembled a rag doll tossed in the corner. Lying all around her were dozens of cylinders studded with sharp, glittering blades.

What the hell? Flying over, he assessed the damage. To his relief, he didn’t see any blood. Whatever had happened here, she hadn’t been cut to ribbons. Now he just needed to make sure she stayed that way.

Crap. Ash continued to beat his wings. Gingerly pushing a cylinder aside, he carefully lifted another off the girl’s booted leg. He plucked her out without slicing off any limbs.

A sickening crack sounded overhead. Reacting on instinct, he tossed his wings higher, forming a canopy over them in case the ceiling came down on top of them both.

He braced himself to be crushed, but the ceiling above him stayed intact. Ash took a tentative peek out.

Fallen supports blocked the only exit. Damn it. He could force his way through, but the girl in his arms might be seriously injured in the process. He looked down, reassured to see her chest moving.

That wouldn’t be the case for long if he didn’t get them out of here. Scanning the floor beneath him, he picked a likely spot and jumped. Using the precarious support as a springboard, he leaped into the air with his burden tucked in his arms. He pushed the girl’s face against his chest and spread his wings to shield them as he burst through the damaged roof of the manor house.

Wood splintered, exploding outward with the force of the impact.

Fresh air rushed into the fiery attic behind him. The influx of oxygen fed the beast, stoking the flames until they roared.

Smoke obscured his vision, so he beat it away with his wings. When he could see again, he was over the dirt track that used to be the lawn around the house. It was covered with people. The fire brigade was there, as was Marcus and a few of his lieutenants.

Smoke-inhalation victims stretched out on the lawn. Some were moving. A few weren’t.

“Get some nurses down here,” he barked at the first man he saw.

“Is that little Clara?” the man asked, holding out his arms before suddenly drawing back.

Ash could see it happening—the transmutation from sympathy and concern to doubt and suspicion. It was always this way now. Everyone was a suspect.

He tucked the unconscious girl deeper into his embrace, like keeping her out of sight would shield her from getting branded as a Firehorse. “Never mind. Go get my aide Marcus and bring him to me.”

He turned his back, walking around the flaming wreckage, saluting the fire brigade along the way. The team was setting up their manual crank and pump tank, one of four in the city.

“The house is a loss,” he said. “Concentrate on keeping the fire from spreading to the neighboring buildings.”

At least the muck from the Seine was finally clean enough to put out the flames now. In the not-so-distant past, adding a bucket from the river would have been adding fuel to the fire. It was nowhere near potable, but at least the muddy swirl could be used as a fire suppressant.

The crowd parted as he carried his burden to the rear of the manor house. Kara was still there. She was directing the survivors, arranging them to help each other with the expertise and discipline of a general in the field.

It didn’t seem to matter that no one knew her. They automatically bowed to her innate authority. The woman could teach the archangel Michael a thing or two about leadership.

She turned and saw him. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was relief in her eyes, but his cynical side told him it wasn’t concern for him.

Kara rushed over to him, stopping him some distance from the nearest people. “Is she alive?”

“Yes,” he answered, glancing down. The child was starting to stir.

“I need to get her out of here.” Kara’s dark eyes were darting back and forth as if she expected the crowd to turn on them at any moment. “It’s not safe for her.”

He could taste her fear like tin on his tongue. “I know all survivors are suspect, but you don’t really think she’s a Firehorse, do you? She’s just a child.”

“She wouldn’t be the first, now would she?” Kara snapped, giving him a quick glare.

Ash’s head drew back. There was something in her eyes he didn’t understand. “I know it’s happened before. Believe me, I’ve tried to forget. But it’s rare for someone so young—”

“Theo was only a few years older than this,” she interrupted. “And if your theory is correct that talent is what gets you marked, then this girl has a giant bull’s-eye on her back.”

He glanced down at his burden. Clara seemed so small and young. Was there some earth-shaking discovery in this girl’s future?

“Isn’t she an apprentice seamstress? What has she done?”

Kara looked around again, apparently deciding the nearby smoke-inhalation victims were too close. She motioned for him to follow her to the edge of a scrubby brush line—the kind that should have been cleared as part of Bastille’s fire-prevention regimen.

Ash turned his back to the crowd, spreading his wings as if stretching them. The move effectively blocked them from view.

Kara checked behind them one more time before continuing. “Look, I got a quick rundown on this kid from the others. They said she was figuring out a way to recycle cloth—shredding the fibers, mashing them together, and pulling them into new threads. Except the brand-new cord to the machine sparked when she plugged it into a generator, and somehow the whole thing caught fire.”

He rocked on his heels. The way the fire started had curse written all over it, but it was the invention she was describing that caught his attention. “People wouldn’t have to wear their clothing until it was in rags. Just think of the acres of arable land we could open for crops that currently go to hemp and cotton. It’s the bare minimum right now, but what if—”

“What if, what if, what if?” Kara interrupted. “We’ve all heard that song before. We can’t stand here all day debating whether she’s a Firehorse. She needs to come with me now. Before she sets off an earthquake or a meteor falls on us where we stand. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he murmured, staring at her as the dots began to connect. She seemed so certain about this…

Merde. He leaned closer. “You can see them, can’t you? The Firehorses are marked in your eyes. That’s how you knew to get Didier and all the others.”

Something in her expression gave her away, even as she scoffed. “Of course I can see them. Everyone can see them. They’re not invisible.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. You can see the taint of the curse on them, can’t you?”

She hesitated. “Is that what you do?”

“No, not exactly.”

Kara ran her teeth over her lower lip. “So their souls aren’t black in your eyes?”

His heart ached. How damaged had she been by that lie? Ash shook his head emphatically. “No. I meant what I said before. The cursed aren’t evil.”

Her eyes were hard. “How do you know you have the right person? If it’s not some sort of divine finger pointing from on high, then what is it?”

It was a good question. “I can only identify a Firehorse in the later stages. I see the disturbances they cause, and I don’t mean the disasters. There are…vibrations.”

“From the cursed?”

“From every living thing. Animal, plants, fungi, people…Everything has a specific vibration, but all the variation falls within a specific range. It’s subtle and usually unimportant. A Firehorse’s pattern is disturbed. But the curse itself is usually enough of an indicator. Amducious’ gift doesn’t get an extra kick operating in the dark. It creates more havoc by acting in the open.”

“Yeah, I am more than familiar with the mob,” she muttered, but then looked down. “Hey, there sweetheart.”

He glanced at his burden. The girl was fully conscious now, her eyes wide as saucers as she cringed in his arms.

“Yes, you’ve been struck down by the curse,” Kara said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And no, you’re not going to die—not if you come with me.”

Terrified, the girl trembled in his arms. She glanced at his face before quickly looking away. “I-I’m not a F-f-fire…”

The poor thing couldn’t get the words out. “Shh. Don’t say it aloud,” he advised, glancing behind him. No others were close enough to hear them, but he didn’t trust anyone.

“I’ll meet you in a couple of days with some rations,” he said.

Kara waved that away. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll scavenge what we need.”

“And if you end up taking the former prisoners?” he asked, frustrated with her stubbornness. “You can’t feed them all.”

Kara didn’t even blink. “I said don’t worry about it. We’ll just scavenge farther.”

Merde. She couldn’t give an inch—an admirable trait if it hadn’t been so damn frustrating.

“Take her and go.” He set the girl on her feet. Kara held her arm out for the girl. They’d only gotten a few steps away before he stopped them.

“Oh, and Kara? The next time I see you, we are going to have a long talk about how you manage to grow food in the wasteland.”

It had been a shot in the dark, but her hesitation was all the answer he needed. Kara whirled around, flipping him off.

Next to her, Clara’s eyes widened into saucers. The young girl snapped her head to the sky as if she expected Kara to be struck down by lightning for her show of disrespect.

“Don’t worry, kid,” he called with a rueful sigh. “God’s not watching.”