Only the Lady Premiere stood stock-still in the middle of the room, her hands pressed to her sides, her face glowing with emotion. “It works,” she whispered. “The magic works.”
The alchemist was so startled he lost control of the fire. Whipped from his hands by the tremendous tumult of moving ghosts, it shot across the room and exploded. Suddenly one whole wall was covered in flames. Fire tore up the old wallpaper toward the ceiling; flames raced down toward the wooden floor, hungry, burning higher and higher, fed by the rush of air and motion. Ghosts became flame and then people again. Then they were merely shapes.
The heat made Liesl’s eyes water, and her mouth was filled with the taste of ash.
“We have to get out of here!” she screamed to Will, bouncing her chair closer to his. “We’ll be cooked like dumplings!”
Will rattled his handcuffs in frustration and kicked as hard as he could, trying to detach his ankles from the chair legs to which they had been bound. The chair teetered and fell over, and Will lay coughing and choking on the floor, as flames raced along the wooden boards toward his face. Already, he could hardly see. The room was full of dark, thick, roiling smoke, and smoky shapes moving within it.
“Will!” Liesl screamed. Her voice sounded very distant.
Then there was another voice, closer, and the feeling of something pulling at his legs.
“Hang on a second,” the voice was saying. “Just a few little snips and you’ll be all right.” It was the Lady Premiere’s guard; Will looked down and saw him sawing with a pocketknife at the ropes binding Will’s ankles. Then, just like that, the ropes snapped and Will was free. Or at least, he could walk. The handcuffs were still cutting into his wrists.
The guard helped Will to his feet, then knelt and freed Liesl’s ankles with a few slashes of his knife. Her head was slumped forward on her chest. The whole room was consumed with flame.
Will could no longer see the alchemist or the Lady Premiere or Augusta or the policeman—all he saw was burning, burning, burning. The fire was out of control. It was in the cellar, and racing into the second floor, and licking into the attic.
“No time to stand around gaping,” Mo said, and Will felt himself roughly dragged forward by the collar. “Too hot for my tastes.”
Mo swung Liesl out of her chair with his free hand, and pressed her to his chest. Then, keeping Will, Liesl, and Lefty protected, he crashed back-first through the dining room windows and, amid an explosion of shattering glass, charged into the cool air outside.
Chapter Thirty-One
ONCE LIESL WAS OUTSIDE AND AWAY FROM THE smoke, she revived.
“Po,” she said, with her first intake of breath.
“It’s all right,” the ghost said. “I’m right here.” Po was still very weak and its voice sounded faint, but Liesl was comforted.
“Where’s Bundle?” Liesl asked.
A shaggy shape flickered momentarily in the air. Bundle was tired too. It had herded the ghosts back through the opening and returned them to the Other Side, and Po had closed up the door.
“I’m all right too,” Will said, somewhat annoyed that the ghosts had been Liesl’s first concern.
“Everybody’s in tip-top shape,” Mo said cheerfully. He ignored the fact that their clothes were black with smoke, their faces streaked with ash, and their wrists cuffed behind their backs. “Even Lefty here is happy as a clam. Though she might be happier with a clam.” Mo laughed at his own joke as the cat in the sling looked up at him—disapprovingly, Will thought. Then Mo leaned down to Will and whispered conspiratorially, “I only wanted to give you the hat, so’s you wouldn’t be cold.”
“The house!” Liesl cried out. They were sitting at the edge of the pond, by the old willow tree, where Mo had felt they would be safe, and Liesl had looked behind her for the first time. “The whole house is burning!”
The fire, driven now by that strange and unfamiliar wind, which had blown the real magic all across the countryside, had reached the very top of the peaked roof.
“I’m afraid so,” Mo said. “From the crown to the cellar. There won’t be nothing to it but ash.”
“The cellar . . .” Something had just occurred to Liesl, and she turned to Will, eyes shining. “Augusta buried my father’s ashes behind a wall. Remember? She said so. But now even the walls are burning.”
Will nodded solemnly. “It looks like he’ll make it to the willow tree after all, Liesl.”
Liesl squeezed her fists tightly. “Let it burn,” she whispered. “Let the whole thing burn down to the last piece of wood.”