“Shit!” He was so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

I could only imagine the looks he was getting as he stood in the E.R. lobby swearing at the top of his lungs. “Calm down. Can you get here, fast?”

There was no answer but a dial tone. I swore and tossed the phone across the floor. If he’d stayed on the line he might have been able to tell me how to help Nathan. Now all I could do was wait for him. Again.

I didn’t want to just sit there and watch Nathan die, but it appeared I had little choice. His breaths grew more shallow, and his chest jerked with every inhalation. I hadn’t been paying much attention to my own breathing, but it suddenly seemed stifled. In fact, the air in the little apartment had become hazy.

With smoke.

“What is it with her and fire?” I wheezed. Jumping to my feet, I grabbed Nathan from under his arms and struggled to drag him. Nathan hadn’t included lack of oxygen as a potential cause of undead fatality, so I assumed smoke inhalation wouldn’t kill us, either. But even with increased vampire strength, I had no hope of getting him down the stairs if I couldn’t breathe. At least, not without dropping him and breaking his neck in the process.

I searched for an escape from the acrid smoke and I finally decided on the bathroom. The tiny, windowless room had an exhaust fan, so I flipped the switch and wet a towel to shove under the crack in the door. It kept the smoke out, but unless Ziggy hurried, Nathan and I would burn to death.

No sooner than the thought crossed my mind, I heard the front door slam open.

“We’re in here!” I called, realizing too late that the heavy footsteps clomping toward the door could belong to a fireman and not Ziggy. Though I wouldn’t turn down the help, I couldn’t come up with a convincing enough lie to keep Nathan out of an ambulance. If he lived to make it to the hospital, I doubted they’d be able to help him. He’d wind up in the morgue like John Doe had, only more dead.

Luckily, it was Ziggy who called through the door, already choking on the smoke. “Are you guys, uh, decent in there?”

“Of course,” I snapped. “He’s unconscious.”

Ziggy pushed the door open, coughing. He pulled the collar of his T-shirt over his nose. “That fucking pyromaniac bitch set the bookshop on fire. I beat the trucks here, but they’re coming. We need to get him out.”

“It’s only a couple hours till dawn. Where are we gonna go?”

Ziggy stooped and lifted Nathan by the arms. “My van. Get his legs.”

I complied, and we shuffled toward the door, Nathan hanging between us like a jump rope.

Ziggy hacked against his shoulder. “This reminds me of the scene in Return of the Jedi where the Ewoks take Han and Luke and Chewie prisoner and tie them to those big sticks.”