The fire burning the cloaks around me suddenly ramped up several notches. Jackson was feeding the fire I’d created, trying to eradicate the cloaks as quickly as possible. As they screamed and raged and fell apart around me, I started making my way up through the pile of debris and bodies. When I was finally free, I gasped in relief and, for several seconds, moved no farther. I simply hovered above the flames devouring both flesh and rubble with equal ferocity, and sucked in the strength and heat of it. It wasn’t enough—nowhere near enough—to completely refuel me, but it at least knocked the edge of weariness away.

I turned around and spotted Jackson standing in the hall—or rather, spotted the very top part of his head. The ceiling’s collapse had blocked all but a foot or so of the doorway, which certainly wasn’t enough space for a man of Jackson’s size to crawl through. And while he could undoubtedly use the force of his flames to blast enough of a gap to get in, he’d feared to do so until he knew where I was and whether I was in human or spirit form.

Our connection, I noted, was definitely getting stronger if I was now sensing such information without his telepathically sending it.

I gave him two fiery thumbs-up to indicate I was okay, then glanced at the ceiling. Three-quarters of it had come down, and not by accident. The metal struts that remained—poking out like fingers across the now-empty space—had been cut. And not recently. The trap had been prepared long before, but why would Luke set it over an empty, unused lab?

I glanced back to Jackson and motioned upward.

“I’ll head up the stairs and join you,” he immediately said.

I spun several fingers of fire out from my body and quickly wrote, No, wait here.

“Damn it, Em, be sensible.”

Wait, I repeated in fire. Trust me.

“I do. I just don’t trust the bastard who used to run this area.”

Safer, I signed. Report to Sam.

I rose without waiting for his answer. A growl of frustration followed me, but a quick look back revealed he was doing as I asked and talking into the com unit.

The room above looked to have been some sort of storeroom. Metal shelving still lined three of the walls, and what little remained of the floor bore markings that indicated there had been other units as well—they were probably down below, in among the rubble and the dead. Dust sprinkled across my flames, and I glanced up at the ceiling. Only it wasn’t there.

It wasn’t one ceiling that had come down on top of me, but two. Which really didn’t make much sense.