Because without me, none of this happens. Without me, Zander is alive.

I am the reason Zander Haaf is dead.

My body in spasms now, back in this place.

Back in the fire.

My body trying to throw up this air, but the air coming back in, somehow more vicious in its attempt. The taste of smoke, of chemicals.

And I think I see something, although I can’t be seeing it. Yes there, at the head of the table. Mike is sitting like he’s still playing rich. Except these flames have come to the party, reaching their tendrils into the air, snaking their way up, and they are enclosing him, enveloping him. Devouring him. His face, a circus smile, wide and to the ends of his ears. From ear to ear, a horrible big-top grin. And the flames love his grin, too, they are loving his grin so much and his smile so much they are devouring him whole and biting him biting him eating him up.

And the smile stays on his face, plastered there, even as his body slips forward.

Even as his body slips forward and bangs on the now burning table and falls to the floor, sideways. A zombie corpse. Smiling even then, from the floor. Happy to be sideways on the floor. A happy face mask.

And I see that mask, I think this is what I get. This is what I deserve. To die here, in this place. But at the same time another voice tells me, “Get up, Daffy. You don’t belong here. Get up.” My arms decide and my legs hatch a plan to move my body across the floor, drag my body from the landing, still low, over the floorboards, still low, out of the dining room, still low. And I see that grin, still, as my arms and legs decide to take my body out through the kitchen, over the tile, and out past the cupboards and the nook and out into the backyard, elbows and knees giving up as I lay there, outside, breathing the air, the cloud city turning to flames and the house looking down at me, a wildfire in stone, malevolent, seething, looking down at me as if to say, We had you.

No, I think as my lungs fill with air. No, you can’t have me.

Chapter 49

The Bryn Mawr library isn’t actually in the same architectural style as the rest of the campus. Gothic. Stone. They say it was modeled after Oxford, but it’s more helpful to think of it as Hogwarts. It’s basically the Hogwarts campus. I’m sure there are a few budding wizards here. Maybe even I will turn into a budding wizard in this new place.

But the library was built in the sixties and is a kind of tribute to bleakness in the modernist style. Oh, let’s face it, it’s ugly.

There’s an uber-modern science library built in the nineties that at least makes an attempt toward beauty. There is, also, a Gothic library, which is actually an extension of Thomas Great Hall, a beautiful gray stone building in the Gothic tradition. So, that’s more of the Harry Potter thing. You could definitely find Hermione in there, laser focused on her burgundy-bound book of spells and potions.