Attina ignored me, and I stepped through the sticky red mess to where Brooke was tied to a chair, watching the whole thing and numb with despair.
“Just let me die,” she mumbled. “Just let me die.”
“I will,” I said. I needed to keep her sad, to keep her will for death as strong as possible. “I’m not here to save you—it’s impossible to save you. You’ve been lost for too long.”
“I know,” she sobbed, “just let me die.”
I cut her loose from the chair and helped her stand. She groped for my knife but I held it away in my left hand, holding her tightly to my side with my right. I just had to get her out of here—
—no. I couldn’t think like that. I had to want to kill myself, too, to keep Attina occupied as long as possible.
Or maybe I just had to want to kill Attina.
I walked Brooke slowly to the stairs, searching for anything that might help. How could I kill a Withered who healed that fast? There was an axe leaning against the wall; taking off her head in a single stroke might work, but I didn’t have the skill to pull that off. She’d regenerate so fast, anything less would be ineffective. I looked for more. A shelf full of dusty mason jars. A box of old decorations: Christmas and Thanksgiving and Halloween. Then I noticed the furnace, and had the answer: fire. It was the only way I’d killed Nobody—even the Withered soulstuff was vulnerable to it, and they couldn’t heal fast enough to escape it. What else could I use? Mrs. Butler had said they held barbecues here—there had to be fuel, or at least charcoal.
“We’ll never get out in time,” I said to Brooke, trying to keep her thoughts focused on hopelessness, and I started knocking over boxes as we passed them, spilling their contents onto the floor, searching desperately for something to start a big fire. Finally I found a plastic jug of lighter fluid, but I had no free hands. I had to let go of Brooke or the knife. I dropped my knife and picked up the lighter fluid, popping off the cap and spraying it on the fallen decorations, on the shelves and wooden panels in the walls. I even sprayed some on Attina as she stabbed herself and howled again, ignoring me. Now I needed a flame. I dropped the half-empty bottle on the floor and eased Brooke upstairs, holding her with two hands, taking the steep steps carefully. She tried to throw herself down, pleading with me not to stop her again, not to keep her from her death, but I got her to the top and we stumbled into the kitchen.
“Look for matches,” I said, pushing her toward the cupboards. “For gas lighters, for anything that will burn.”
“Are we going to burn ourselves?”
“We are,” I said, yanking open drawer after drawer. I couldn’t help but feel a bit of eagerness, of excitement for a fire—I had never set one this big before, and it had been far too long since I’d set one at all. “All we need is—this.” I opened the pantry door and found three miniature tanks of propane, dark green and each the size of a melon. I grabbed and shook them, finding them satisfyingly heavy. “Find matches,” I said. “If you want to die, this is how you do it.”
I set the tanks on the counter and ran from room to room, hoping to find a gas grill of some kind to hook them up to. Anything that would let the gas out. There was nothing in the house, and I didn’t have time to search the garage. I found a sheaf of yellowed newspapers and grabbed it, rushing back to the kitchen to find Brooke holding a cardboard box full of matches, fumbling through her tears to light one.
“Is this enough?”
“It’s perfect,” I said, taking them away gently. I looked at her in sudden fear, terrified that my compliment had ruined everything: I needed to insult her, to tell her she had failed, that nothing she did would ever work. I needed her to want to die, or this whole plan could fail. I looked in her eyes …
… and I couldn’t do it. “It’s perfect,” I said again. “We’re going to make the most beautiful fire you’ve ever seen.”
I tucked the matches under my arm and grabbed the propane and walked back to the stairway, back down to the basement. I turned the corner to see Beth standing in front of me, inches away, covered in blood and her eyes practically gleaming. I dropped my armful in shock, stumbling backward into the doorway as the tanks and matches clattered to the ground.
“You’re building a fire,” she said. The propane tanks were still rolling, carving slick pathways through the bloody puddle on the floor.
“Yes,” I said. It was all I could say.
Beth stooped to pick up the newspaper, dropping the pages that had soaked up blood, and holding up the dry pages in her wrinkled fist. “We’re building a fire,” she said. “And I’m finally going to die.” She picked up the fallen jug of lighter fluid and sprayed it on the walls and ceiling, soaking the carpet square that sat in the corner, drenching the rack of old clothes against the back.