No. Not now.

She leaned against the dying Faulknor, grabbed on to Honour’s arm, and twisted her ankle, trying to free her foot. Her shoe was stuck fast. It’s the Phoenix all over again, she thought.

Colin had leapt lightly down off a chunk of broken stone and had helped Mr. Dunworthy—who looked like he might not make it—down off the pile of rubble, and was leading him over to the brightness in front of the door. He glanced back at Polly, saw her, and started back toward her.

“Go with him!” Polly called softly across the rubble. “I’ll come next time. Go!”

He shook his head, said something to Mr. Dunworthy, and stepped back away from the shimmer, out of its reach.

“Colin, go—”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said, and the shimmer brightened to a white-hot flame.

It looks exactly like an incendiary, Polly thought. It lit Mr. Dunworthy’s face and then hid it, obliterating it, and the light began to fade, to shrink. Mr. Dunworthy was no longer there.

He made it, Polly thought. He’s safely home. A weight seemed to lift off her. But Mike didn’t make it. Eileen didn’t. They both sacrificed themselves for you. And so did Colin.

He was already clambering back over the wreckage to her. “Stay there,” he whispered.

“I haven’t any choice,” she said. “My foot’s stuck.”

“And you’d have let me go through and leave you here?” he said angrily. “Is your foot injured?”

“No, it’s only my shoe. It’s caught. Careful,” she warned as he hurried to her.

He knelt beside her and began shifting timbers aside. “Take care you don’t get stuck,” Polly said.

“You’re a fine one to talk.” He broke off the end of a wooden slat, pried another rafter up with it, reached down into the hole, and took hold of her ankle. “Do you care about your shoe, Cinderella?”

“No.”

“Good.” She could feel him yanking on her foot and then pulling up on whatever was holding it down, and her bare foot came suddenly free.

He straightened. “All right now, let’s go before anything else—” he said, and the rafter he’d pushed aside went clattering suddenly down the pile of rubble with an unholy crash and into the crater.

“Oh, Christ! Hurry! No, not that way.” He pushed her back across the rubble in the direction of the transept’s entrance. “If someone comes, there’s nowhere to hide in the transept.”

They clambered quickly across the wood and broken stone. And please don’t let one of us get caught again, she thought.

The shimmer was fading rapidly. By the time they were safely back down on the floor—which, thankfully, wasn’t as strewn with glass on this side—and over the barricade, the light was nearly gone.

“What’s the best place to hide?” Colin whispered. “The choir?”

“No,” she said. “There’s no way out.” She grabbed his hand, and they darted across the nave and down the south aisle. They could hide in the Chapel of St. Michael and St. George, behind the prayer stalls—