Page 33 of A Love Most Fatal
I decide I will call Vanessa, because something is very wrong, though I don’t know what, and it is absolutely her fault.
This is exactly what I tell her when she picks up the phone, I whisper it, and she doesn’t understand, so I have to repeat myself, louder this time, and I still haven’t opened my bedroom door, because I just know there’s something in there.
“Nate?”
“Yes, this is Nate,” I snap. “Someone was in my house, might still be in my house.”
“Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Home, and no?—”
There’s a creak behind my bedroom door and a yelp escapes from me.
“Nate?”
“I just heard something,” I whisper.
“Do you have a gun?” Vanessa says.
“No, I do not have a fucking gun,” I snap, though I am cursing myself for not listening to Jenna when she told me I should buy one of her dad’s pistols off him.
“Get a knife then, a kitchen knife will be fine,” Vanessa says through the phone. I want to talk back again but I hear a loud thud, like something just dropped off of my bookshelf. Taking as few steps as I possibly can, I grab my biggest kitchen knife from the block and hold the phone between my shoulder and my ear, still cradling Ranger in the other arm. He has no clue the danger we are in.
“Do you have it?” Behind her voice, I hear honking through the phone. She’s driving, maybe driving here, or maybe just on her morning commute to do crime around all of Boston. “Nate.”
“I have it.”
“Good, now don’t move.”
This is not the advice I thought she would be giving me right now, I thought she might say to leave and potentially be ambushed on the street again, or to barrel in there and go all slasher-flick on whoever has broken into my apartment.
She’s right, staying put sounds like the best option.
Vanessa spouts some commands to someone on the other side of the line before her voice is back in my ear. “We’re on our way.”
It sounds like she’s about to disconnect the call and my stomach lurches. “Wait?—”
Vanessa is quiet, waiting. I hear the car through my phone’s little speaker, imagine her racing through the city, hitting morning traffic. I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Please don’t hang up.”
A beat passes, but I know she’s still there. “Okay,” she says, and her voice is so soft. I almost let myself take comfort in it.
Almost.
Ranger sneezes in my arms and I start sniffing too. It smells almost like. . . smoke.
I turn my gaze to my bedroom door and sure enough, I see smoke seeping out beneath the crack of the white door, crawling across the scratched and stained floor towards me.
“Shit,” I murmur.
“What is it?” Vanessa asks.
The fire alarm starts beeping; I spring into action, dropping the knife on my kitchen table and setting Ranger on the ground before retrieving the tiny fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink. I don’t even have to psych myself up to open the door, I’m too worried about all my shit getting burned to a crisp, the whole building catching fire with it.
There’s a good amount of smoke in the room, but I find quickly that the source is a small fire in my metal trash can, the one from the bathroom. Ranger barks at it with all his might, like doing so will scare it into submission.
My phone slides to the ground with a thunk while I pull the pin and squeeze the lever on the extinguisher, covering the fire in white foam. The smell burns the inside of my nose and my eyes, ammonia and ash.