No, he says in my mind. You’ve got to find him. Go.
The high-pitched noise comes again, thin and reedy, frightened. Smoke chokes me, the air in here close and hot and heavy in my lungs, but inexplicably I turn away from Christian and what I think must be the exit and stumble toward the fire, coughing, my eyes watering.
I hit the edge of something hard and wooden right at chest level, hard enough to knock the wind out of me if I had any wind in me to begin with. I figure out what the barrier is at the same time that my eyes finally decide to adjust.
It’s a stage.
I look around wildly to confirm what I already know, but it’s so crazy obvious I can’t believe I never figured this out before. It all falls neatly into place: the slanted floor of the auditorium, the ghosts of white tablecloths along the front, the rows of metal-backed seats. The velvet curtains and the smell of sawdust and paint.
We’re in the Pink Garter.
And in that instant, I figure out what the noise is.
It’s a baby crying.
“Clara!”
I open my eyes. Somehow I ended up on my living room floor, and I don’t quite know how. Two sets of eyes are staring down at me, one blue and one green, both insanely worried.
“What happened?” Tucker asks.
“It was the black room,” Christian says, not a question.
“It was the Garter.” I struggle to sit up. “I need my phone. Where’s my phone?”
Tucker finds it on the coffee table and brings it to me, while Christian helps me over to the couch. I still feel out of breath.
“There’s going to be a fire,” I tell Christian.
Tucker makes a disbelieving noise. “Oh, great.”
I dial Angela’s number. It rings and rings, and each second that ticks by where she doesn’t pick up makes the sense of dread in my stomach grow stronger. But then, finally, there’s a click and a faint hello on the other end.
“Angela!” I say.
“Clara?” She sounds like she’s been sleeping.
“I just had my vision again, and the black room is the Garter, Angela, and the noise I hear—do you remember me telling you?—that noise, which is what gives us away, it’s a baby. It’s got to be Webster. You need to get out. Now.”
“Now?” she says, still half-awake. “It’s nine o’clock at night. I just got Web to sleep.”
“Ange, they’re coming.” I can’t help the frantic squeak in my voice.
“Okay, slow down, C,” Angela says. “Who’s coming?”
“I don’t know. Black Wings.”
“Do they know about Web?” she asks, starting to comprehend some of what I’m saying. “Are they coming for him? How would they know?”
“I don’t know,” I say again.
“Well, what do you know?”
“I know something terrible is going to happen there. You have to leave.”
“And go where?” she asks, still not fully getting it. “No. I can’t go anywhere tonight.”
“But Ange—”
“How long have you been having the vision? Almost a year? There’s no need to rush off all panicked and clueless. We’ll think it through.”
“The vision was different tonight. It was urgent.”
Her voice hardens. “Well, sometimes the visions are like that, aren’t they? And you think you know what they mean, but you don’t.” She sighs like she realizes that she’s taking her issues out on me, and she’s sorry. “I can’t go running off in the middle of the night on a whim, C. I have Web to think about now. We need a plan. Come to the Garter in the morning, and we’ll talk about your vision, okay? Then I’ll decide where to go from there.”
There’s a high-pitched wail in the background. The sound of it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Oh, great. You woke him up,” she says, annoyed. “I have to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She hangs up on me.
I stare at the phone for a minute.
“What was that all about?” Tucker asks from behind me. “What’s going on?”