Chapter 163

Sarah POV

I woke up to the strangest smell, thickly pungent and raw. It was night, and I had been sleeping deeply, but now I was instantly alert.

My first thought as I threw off the covers was that the villa was on fire. But there were no smells of wood burning or that horrible, acrid stench of paint or plastic on fire. I went almost instinctively to the nearest window and when I pulled the curtain aside, I saw an orange-yellow glow of fire not too far away, though it was far too close.

I shoved myself into socks and jeans, then my bra, a shirt, and shoes. I didn’t bother to check whether they matched. When I got into the hall, I saw Hans in his bathrobe.

“Make sure the children stay in the house. Has someone called the fire department?” I demanded.

“I did.”

“Good.”

I ran down the hallway and out the front door before I followed a familiar path to Mavis’s beloved poppy garden, which I could see now was completely engulfed in flames.

And there, just as I thought she would be, was Mavis, wearing a long and what I assumed was fair-resistant coat while she stood there with a hose spraying futilely at her plants.

I ran up to her, screaming, “Let them go! I know you keep their seeds!”

“I have to keep the fire away from the shed!” she shouted back, not even looking at me.

Goddess, the stench was awful.

“What can I do?” I yelled.

“There’s another hose!” She jerked her head to the left, and I heard the siren of the estate’s emergency vehicles.

I found the hose and just pointed it at the shed. To my dismay, I saw the shed had been spray-painted with anti-human slogans.

A small firetruck pulled up behind me, and soon people were hooking up hoses and screaming about a water main. I heard the property’s sprinklers come on at full blast.

Zane ran up then in gray suit pants and a t-shirt. He stared at me. “How did you get here before me?”

“I just woke up and ran here!” I nodded toward the woman still dousing her shed. “Don’t let Mavis risk herself saving the garden!”

“The garden’s gone!” he said, cupping a hand around my waist and holding me for a precious few seconds. “It’s about keeping it contained now.”

Evidently, he decided I was capable of spraying a garden hose at a shed and rushed over to help the emergency crew with the larger hoses. Distantly, I could make out the sound of a large firetruck coming and assumed Zane had authorized the front gate to let them through.

I was again impressed by how rehearsed and coordinated everyone seemed to be, but as the fire began to be contained, I was concerned with the sag of Mavis’s body as she looked over the damage.

She, like me and everyone else there, was coughing. I hoped we weren’t doing permanent damage to our lungs.

As the second and larger firetruck tapped the water main, my hose weakened to a trickle, and soon I threw it to the ground out of everyone’s way. I walked over to Mavis, who was now just standing there watching as the flames were slowly drowned with water.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her.

She turned and frowned at me.

“We can see this is some sort of anti-human hate crime. I’m so sorry they targeted—”

My words were lost as a golden projectile rushed by us to stand at the edge of the fire and bark her head off.

“Selene!” I screamed. What was the dog doing?

I made to lunge for her, but Mavis caught me by the arm as a stray whip of wind curled the flames back toward Selene, who had sense enough to back up even as she growled and continued to back at the fire.

“Selene!” I shouted as forcibly as I could. “Get back here now!”

The golden turned toward me, looking startled, and then ran back to my side. I grabbed her collar and hung on.

“Stay with me!” I told her. When I looked up, Mavis was eying me strangely, but then we were both distracted by the second firetruck, which had raised its ladder to spray down a torrent of water from above.

In a few minutes, the flames were dead, and it was all just charred sticks and mud.

Zane came back. “Sarah, the girls will be worried. Please go back and tell them everyone’s OK.”

“No one was hurt?” Mavis asked, preempting me.

“Thank the goddess, no.” He looked over to the shed and winced. The anti-human symbols were still quite clear, but then he said, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“People filled with hate often don’t,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, this isn’t right. I mean, it’s not how this sort of thing manifests.”

“What?” I asked.

He looked at me again. “Please, go reassure—”

“The girls, yes,” I said, feeling impatient with him, which wasn’t fair, but it was the middle of the night, I was soaking wet, and Mavis’s poppies were ash. I felt sure he would forgive me later.

I turned and walked back to the villa, bent over with my fingers still through Selene’s collar, as Zane ordered people into cleanup mode and met up with the arson investigator. I realized I was freezing and my throat was killing me. I felt like I’d been breathing in sand and hot oil.

It was a longer walk back than it had been out to the fire, but then, I was taking it much more slowly. I had been consumed by the vision in my mind of Mavis standing there trying to save her garden from the flames.

“Miss Sarah,” I heard Hans say and looked up to see him approaching with Selene’s leash. I took it with gratitude and snapped it onto her dog collar. He nodded and then walked back with me, and the company made it seem almost normal.

We were greeted at the front door by Grace and Chloe, wide-eyed and wearing little matching bathrobes I vaguely remembered ordering online a while ago. They almost burst into tears on seeing me and Selene, and I let the dog run up to them while I told them I was wet and would hug them as soon as I’d had a shower and changed.

Alone in my bathroom, I stripped naked and got into the water, which was warm and comforting.

I found I was asking an all-too-familiar question as I stood there in the spray: how had this become my life?