Page 92 of Magdalene Nox

A familiar voice was calling her name, and Magdalene turned around, because the panic in it was anything but familiar. Sam, her long legs eating away at the ground at superhuman speed, almost barreled into her, with Joanne somehow keeping up behind her.

“We’re missing two! Headmistress, Mr. Robson! We’re missing two—” As Sam shouted above the roar of the fire, above the scared chatter of the crowd of girls huddled together and the teachers doing roll calls to ensure they were all there, Magdalene heard another ragged call full of desperation.

“Amanda! Amanda!” Lily, in clothing that was about three sizes too big for her, was rushing towards them. “She’s missing, she’s not here, Sam! Headmistress! Please, please, please… Professor Fenway took her aside after dinner, said they needed to talk about the scholarship girls’ situation, but she never came back to the dormitory. I know she didn’t, because she always stops by to wish me good night. Even if it’s just for a second, she always stops by. I thought she was with Suzie on the other side of the quad, but she’s not there and I looked everywhere. You have to find her, you have to. Please!”

Her thoughts on the school perishing would have to wait because there was something much worse and it was the goddamn place not doing it alone and dragging one of Magdalene’s kids with it.

She knew she must have looked possessed when she whirled on the Fire Chief.

“You heard her! We have a child inside. Possibly an adult as well. And if I find Fenway, I will kill her myself for being a stubborn mule and not leaving those girls alone!”

Robson, the balless waste of space, took one look behind him, where the fire was now ravaging the third floor of the Main Hall, and shook his head.

“Ma’am, my people are not equipped to go in there. We don’t have respirators or any other such gizmos. We’re a volunteer department.”

Magdalene wanted to whale into him, to tear his head off, but in the light of the condemned school raging behind him, she knew her anger was misplaced. And it wasn’t really anger at all.

“Are you telling me that, knowing that there are people in that building and one of them a minor, you will not go in?” Her voice was taut as a whip as she stared him down, desperately trying to not let her fear show.

“Ma’am, I can’t order my men into a fire on a wild goose chase. We don’t even know where the child could be… But if you just listen to me…”

Lily’s cry of terror and obvious desperation at the words of the Fire Chief seemed to cut through the mayhem before she dashed off towards the burning building.

“Lily, stop! Lily!” But all the shouting was for naught, and Magdalene watched as the girl disappeared through the massive doors thrown open by the earlier exodus. Sam’s aghast ashen face mirrored hers, she was certain.

Well, damn…

“Make that two minors, Robson.” Magdalene didn’t even wait for him to shake his head mournfully again. “If you’re not helping, Robson, you’re in my way. Get out of it.” Her shoulders felt constricted, and in the scant seconds it took her to spring into action, she shrugged off her blazer. Dior. One of her favorites. Blinking, she watched as it fell onto the muddied grass, soon to be ground into the wet earth by countless feet.

Her grounds were desecrated, after all…

Hadn’t that been what she’d thought when she signed that contract for the Viridescent Observatory? Hadn’t that been how she’d felt when she made every single little change? When she fought tooth and nail to make sure Dragons had enough oxygen to breathe one more day, one more week, one more month?

And now it was all in vain. Ash was falling like snow on her once pristine woolen blazer, marring its black lines with gray, leaving it dirty and worthless.

Just as well…

Without a backward glance, Magdalene took off towards the burning school, overtaking Sam, who had run after Lily.

“Jesus, Magdalene!” Well behind her now, Sam was left cursing.

The moment she crossed the threshold into the Main Hall, Magdalene knew that everything was lost, and the last vestiges of hope for the stone and the glass were gone. The school was groaning around her, consumed by fire, turning into rubble and ruin. And that deathbed rattle was both frightening and enraging. But there was no time for fear or anger just yet.

First they had to find Amanda and Lily, then she had to commit the murder of one Orla Fenway, for which Magdalene was absolutely convinced she’d be acquitted by a jury of her peers. And she’d grieve for Dragons when her day was over and she was alone with the emptiness that was sure to consume her soon enough.

The entrance was filled with smoke but appeared sturdy, untouched by fire so far, yet she could see the flames feeding off the dying beast just a few flights of stairs above.

By the time Sam reached Magdalene, she was standing in the middle of a corridor, completely lost. In the dark, with only the fire from above casting an eerie glow and the burning wing across from them illuminating the sky, she realized she had no idea which way they should go next.

“Sam, I can’t…”

Magdalene was scared. She was also resolute, and she needed Sam to help and not ask any questions, to understand her, even when she herself did not fully comprehend what was happening to her.

“Magdalene…” She poured all her determination and fear into a glare and Sam trailed off.

“Whatever you are about to say, Sam, please don’t. Not now. Lily is in here somewhere, no doubt ready to run headlong into the fire if she thinks Amanda might be there. And that old fool is probably in here, causing more trouble as well. We can’t leave anyone behind. I can’t do it, Sam. I can’t chance it.”

And Sam did understand. The contrary look on her face, that contemplative one of trying to get Magdalene out of the building, was immediately replaced with one of concentration. Magdalene wanted to weep.

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