I choked on the scent of burning flesh and hair. Fresh horror melded with the memory of Clare Parker’s gruesome death, and together they obscured the courtyard around me, the crowd hiding me, and the trampled grass beneath my feet until I could see and hear nothing but the steady roar of a martyr’s flames.

My mouth dropped open beneath the force of shock and outrage I could no longer hold back, and I didn’t realize I’d intended to scream until a hand closed over my mouth, trapping my terror inside me. I bit one of the fingers and shoved the man off me, but didn’t notice his bright green eyes until he’d already stumbled into two other people.

They twisted to look, and he apologized. I pulled my hood as low on my face as it would go and turned just as Maddock took my arm. A second later, Finn had the other one, and I didn’t recognize the face he wore this time, because the man he’d been a second earlier was still trying to figure out how he’d stumbled backward into several people when he couldn’t even remember looking away from the screen.

“We have a problem,” Finn said as we pushed our way toward the back of the crowd. We weren’t trying to hide my face anymore because our withdrawal didn’t stand out. Everyone with a weak stomach—or a strong conscience—was retreating from the human torch who used to be one of my friends and classmates.

“Understatement of the century,” Maddock mumbled from my right as they guided me through the crowd without any spoken plan or direction, as if they could read each other’s minds. “They just lit a kid on fire, and I’m betting there’s more gasoline where that came from.”

Finn exhaled heavily. “That’s not the problem.”

“Wait!” I pulled away from them both and turned toward the side entrance of the courthouse, prepared to push my way back through the crowd, which had thinned but not dispersed. “I’m not leaving her.”

“Shhh, Nina, please.” Strong hands turned me, and I found myself staring at a dark, middle-aged face eyeing me with concern—through bright green eyes. Finn’s rapid body switches were making me dizzy. “I’m so sorry about your friend. But getting us caught won’t help him or your sister. Okay? It’s not safe for us here. It’s less safe than you can possibly imagine.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I’ll explain once we’re out of the crowd.” His voice was as loud as it could possibly be and still qualify as a whisper. “We’ll have to find another way to get to Melanie.”

We were two-thirds of the way through the crowd when a shrill scream pierced the steady crackle of flames, then was cut off abruptly.

At first I thought it was Adam. Then I realized he’d passed out from either the smoke or the pain almost a minute earlier. Or maybe—mercifully—he was already dead. People were looking around, craning their necks, but no one seemed to know where the scream had come from.