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Against all prior self-estimation, I have discovered I am quite good at standing my ground. Me, scrawny little Heather with my five foot nothing and noodle arms – against demons, monsters, assassins, literal evil wizards in dark fairytale castles, Raine – but as Praem strode toward me in the nude, with her spine straight and chin high, I fell back.

“Praem! Praem- yes- o-okay- okay!”

My hands raised, a blush in my cheeks, I stumbled back into Evelyn’s bedroom. Praem followed over the threshold.

I had seen Praem nude once before, after our nocturnal fox-hunting session down in Sussex at the Saye estate, after she’d slopped back to the house bedraggled with stagnant lake water and slimy mud and had to strip off her ruined uniform. But back then she’d been dripping and cold, wrapped in towels, and we’d all been preoccupied.

The Praem that stepped into Evelyn’s bedroom was fresh and warm, her skin pink-clean and glowing, as if she’d come straight from the bath, completely uncovered. Her hair was curled up in a loose knot behind her head, the one element of her appearance she cared about enough to set right before marching upstairs.

She stopped, and stood there with perfect proper prim poise. Back straight, chin up, toes forward.

Twil’s eyes all but popped out of her face. She turned as red as I felt. Lozzie hid an open-mouthed gasp behind one hand.

“P-Praem, yes, wel-welcome back,” I heard myself saying, relief and happiness fighting with crippling embarrassment and not a little bit of awe. “It’s- it’s- it’s good to see you. Oh! Oh, I didn’t mean … oh God, um. Okay- maybe- maybe put some clothes on? Yes, yes, definitely with the clothes. Please?”

Praem stared at me for a heartbeat. Blank white eyes gave nothing away. Then her head swivelled to Evelyn, unconscious on the bed.

“This is the other demon-host?” I heard Felicity say.

“Yes, yes,” I managed. “This is Praem.”

Twil attempted to answer as well, but out came a splutter. Lozzie muttered under her breath, an appreciative and awestruck “Wow.”

‘Wow’ was right. Praem wasn’t really my type, I’d decided or deduced that long ago; she was also an alien Outsider in a body of hardened pneuma-somatic flesh wrapped around a life-sized wooden mannequin. She was also my friend, I think, and oh so sweet beneath her expressionless exterior, and did not deserve to be ogled by several teenage girls and one questionable older lady.

She was also very plush, and very cuddly.

The effect on the one confirmed and non-comatose lesbian in the room – myself – was undeniable, even under the current circumstances.

I didn’t know where to direct my eyes, caught between guilt, instinctive pleasure, natural curiosity, and sheer bloody-minded relief that she was back on her feet.

Kimberly finally caught up, almost slamming into Praem’s back. “Ahh!” She caught herself on the door frame, still panting. “I tried to stop her! If only to- to get her dressed. She just took off-” Pant, pant. Slow down, I willed her. “As soon as she was ready- she- ahh, umm. It worked, though! She even said thank you.”

“Praem, please, please, clothes?” I repeated, trying not to stare at her boobs. I cast about for something of Evelyn’s for her to wear, and caught the look on Felicity’s face.

Like a bucket of cold water over my head.

With mild surprise and a curious frown, but certainly no blush, Felicity was looking Praem up and down. Not in the manner of a confident lech appreciating a nice surprise, but with the cold appraisal of an anatomist or horse breeder or a buyer at a slave market.

In the back of my mind, I’d formed an educated guess at what Felicity probably was, at where she fit into the puzzle of Evelyn’s past. She’d given us enough clues, I could fill in the rest. Saving Evelyn was penance for her, or redemption, but I didn’t care, as long as she did it.

But that look on her face, I would not stand for that.

“Felicity,” I snapped her name, my blushing embarrassment draining away.

“Yes, what?” She glanced at me, then nodded at Praem. “This is the one Evelyn made? It’s certainly different, I can tell from here.”

“Felicity,” Praem echoed, intoning the mage’s name in her clear, bell-like voice.

“It’s still learning, too? How young is it?”

“She has a name,” I said. “And she is a she, if you please, not an it.”

“Yes, yes, of course, of course,” Felicity muttered. Her eyes were glued to Praem – but not the places I’d be staring. “Wood base, you said? Remarkably life-like, in that case. And it doesn’t understand the implications of being naked? Rudimentary, yes.” Felicity sighed as if in relief. “Rudimentary.”

Praem glided toward the bed on precise, measured footsteps. Felicity tried to rise to her feet, assuming she was about to get a better look at this promising specimen – but Praem invaded her personal space.

“Hey-”

Felicity stepped back, stumbling as Praem kept pace, thrown off by the natural attempt to not touch a naked person suddenly in one’s face.

“What- what’s it doing?” Felicity spluttered.

“Tellin’ you off, that’s what,” Twil said with a smirk. “Don’t you be dissin’ our girl.”

“No, Twil, I think that’s only half right,” I said.

“Eh?”

Praem forced Felicity back another step, then another, inches away but never making contact, until our clever doll-demon was able to step sideways to interpose herself between Felicity and the bed, between Felicity and Evelyn.

The mage’s back hit the wall. Praem stopped an inch or two from her, statue-still, staring.

“I mean … I meant no … insult?” Felicity tried, her one good eye darting at me.  “Can you call it off, perhaps?”

“Oh!” Twil figured it out before Felicity did. “You’re messing with her maker. She doesn’t think you’re cool. Good instincts, Praem, yeah.”

I sighed. “Not if you keep calling her it. And why aren’t you scared of her? You were terrified of Zheng.”

Felicity began to edge along the wall, as if trapped by a large and inquisitive dog. “What? And no, this is different. ‘Zheng’ is mature. This one is only a few months old, and it’s not even real flesh. She’s under a binding from Evee, isn’t she? And rudimentary, too.”

I swear I saw, in the corner of my eye, a hardening of Praem’s empty expression. Felicity flinched, hard.

“I don’t think she liked that,” I said.

“Praem, Praem, alright,” Felicity said, her hands up. “Praem is not rudimentary. Fine. I … apologise.”

“Praem, it’s okay, Felicity’s going to help us cure Evelyn. She’s safe, for now. If rude.”

Praem relented and stepped back. Somehow, even with no true expression on her face, she gave the impression of dismissing Felicity as unimportant. She turned to Evelyn, and stared down at her unconscious face.

We all took a moment to get our breath back, for various different reasons, and I realised Praem wasn’t exactly the same as she’d been before. She’d reverted somewhat.

Her hair had regained more than a touch of it’s original glacial ice-blue, shimmering beneath the blonde when the light caught it at the right angle. Doll-like ball and socket joints were visible on her wrists and ankles and around the base of her skull, faint after-images of the wooden bones beneath her summoned flesh.

“And I believe she does understand,” I said.

“ … I’m sorry?” Felicity asked.

“Praem does understand the implications of being nude.”

“Evelyn,” Praem intoned. Not a call to the unconscious girl on the bed. Agreement.

“Yes. She just doesn’t care right now,” I said. “How would you feel if you’d lain helpless and immobilised, while your mother was maybe dying?”

“Mother?” Felicity’s face twisted with disgust, the expression strangely warped by her burn scars.

“Mother?” Twil echoed too, looking at both Praem and Evelyn. “Oh, right.”

“Awwww,” went Lozzie.

“That is a little … a little bit weird, isn’t it?” Kimberly said, still hovering in the doorway.

Felicity caught my frown and controlled her face, drawing herself up and swallowing carefully. Halfway to a confused apology, she trailed off without having said a word, eyes glued to Praem once more.

“ … Not rudimentary then, no.” Her browns knitted in thought. “Not rudimentary at all.”

“Felicity?”

She glanced around and settled on Kimberly, who suppressed a flinch at the cold calculation filling Felicity’s single shining eye. “You, you’re the other mage, yes? Kim? You put this demon – Praem, sorry – back in her vessel, correct? You re-made her?”

“ … I … yes?”

Kimberly looked at me for help, and I nodded for her to continue. She was safe here, even if she didn’t feel it.

“Yes,” she repeated, still short of breath despite the passing minutes. “It took me most of the morning, but … there she is. I did it. It wasn’t … um … easy. I’m sort of worn out, mostly.”

“But you did do it,” Felicity hissed, her good eye in a tight squint. “You have experience with creating hosts? You understand the principles? Not just corpses, but inanimate vessels too?”

“I-I … some of it.” A hollow look entered Kimberly’s eyes. “Only what I’ve been taught.”

“Kim doesn’t like to think about magic too much,” I said. “Where is this going?”

“She’s given me an idea.”

“I have?” Kimberly asked.

“This doesn’t have to take twelve or fifteen hours.” Felicity’s good eye darted back and forth as it alighted on the fast-moving contents of her own mind. “Three or four hours at most to draw the circle and assemble appropriate apparatus. You,” she pointed a gloved finger at Kimberly. “Kim. You’re going to help me.”

“I-I am?”

“I know precious little about summoning, so we must pool our resources.”

Kimberly, wide-eyed and swept away, glanced to me for help again.

“It’s okay, Kim. You can do this,” I said. “Felicity, what are you planning? What’s the idea?”

“We don’t have to perform an exorcism at all.” Felicity drew herself up. She seemed different from before, absorbed in problem-solving. “We don’t have to make the Outsider leave, we only have to make it leave Evelyn.”

“Eh?” Twil grunted.

“Unpack that, please?” I asked.

“We confuse it, we trick it. It hasn’t been here long, hasn’t had time to adapt to human biology, and Evee, bless her, she’s probably got it more confused still. It doesn’t understand what it’s inhabiting. In theory – in theory – it should be possible to move the Outsider from one vessel to another. Easier than casting it back into the beyond.”

“How?” I asked.

“How, yes, that is the question. How?” Felicity nodded, more to herself than us, eyes wandering off along private convolutions. “Going to be very messy. Yes … messy … ”

“Messy?” I almost sighed.

Felicity snapped to, fixed me with a look, dead serious. “First things first. How much horse dung can you get hold of?”

==

The spell to save Evelyn turned out to require far more esoteric ingredients than a pound or two of literal horse-shit, but we also needed a lot more floor space to work with. We returned downstairs, half at my direction and half at Felicity’s, as she listed the items she needed, asking what we had access to and what we could lay our hands on at short notice.

Zheng directed a grin at me as we passed through the kitchen, still lounging with her feet up on the table. “Where’s your streaker, shaman?”

“Putting her clothes on, this time. We hope.”

Zheng rumbled. “Pity.”

Over the next half-hour, Felicity’s spell began to take shape. We commandeered Evelyn’s magical workshop, had Twil shove the table and the sofa back to clear as much floor space as possible, while Kim scrubbed away the remains of the spell she’d used to restore Praem. The bottle my doll-demon friend had occupied now lay on its side, uncorked and empty. Amid the hustle and bustle I tucked it away behind a stack of papers and books. I doubted Praem would enjoy a reminder of that experience.

The task of drawing the magic circle fell to Kimberly, with Felicity directing and interrogating her threadbare knowledge. I did my best to follow their obscure conversation, but it mostly consisted of comparing scraps of Latin and different kinds of angles, and debating over tiny variations in eye-watering magical symbols.

Felicity herself ventured back out to her car, and returned with a heavy canvas-wrapped bundle which contained a mass of hollow brass tubing. She was stronger than she looked beneath her awkward, willowy exterior, and I kept a close eye on her for more than one reason.

She spent the next hour setting up those brass tubes, constructing a ceiling-height pyramid of copper globes and curved rods.

“Is that gonna need lifting over the … uh … circle-thing?” Twil asked.

“No, over Evelyn,” Felicity replied, distracted. “Here, take this piece, slot it into one of the double-width ends. Lift it up for me, here- no, no, here, pay attention. Hold it steady until I get this other piece in.”

Twil growled softly under her breath, but helped all the same.

Lozzie had delegated to herself the task of encouraging Praem to wear some clothes. When the pair of them finally rejoined us, it was Lozzie-first, bouncing through the kitchen with her nose pinched shut and her eyes screwed up against the lingering smell of blood. She smiled at us – well, at me and Twil, the only ones paying proper attention – and waved a flourish with one arm.

“Ta-da!” she announced with perfect timing, as Praem rounded the corner.

Praem was dressed once again in her re-appropriated maid uniform, ankle-length skirt and silly frills and neat little black shoes. She walked with her hands clasped in front of her, and I swear I saw in the depths of her expressionless face a touch of relief. Perhaps she felt normal again. Comfortable. Herself.

Lozzie’s introduction was somewhat spoilt when Praem paused in the kitchen, to share a silent staring contest with Zheng. The giant zombie stared back, slow and easy, as if she owned everything she surveyed.

“Trussed up like a cake,” Zheng purred at her, half-smiling like a sleepy cat. “Idiot, or slave, which is it?”

“Uh oh,” Lozzie chirped.

“This isn’t the time,” I raised my voice. Neither of them looked at me. “And Praem is not a slave.”

“Idiot, then,” Zheng rumbled.

“Feet. Off. Table.”

Zheng blinked once at Praem’s words – an order that brooked no argument, delivered in the voice of winter wind sliding around the icicles in one’s heart. Twil stepped away from the circle-building work, ears pricked with animal awareness of a brewing fight.

“Make me, idiot,” Zheng purred.

The staring contest continued for several heart-stretching moments. Felicity and Kimberly stopped working too, the former looking on with barely concealed twitchy concern.

“This is not the time,” I repeated, louder. Praem walked around to the opposite side of the table without breaking eye contact. I had a sudden terrible vision of her flipping the table in Zheng’s face or whipping it out from under her feet. “Praem. Praem, what are you-”

But of course, our perfectly poised and proper doll-demon would never do such a thing.

Praem carefully pulled out a chair, sat down with a smoothing of skirts under her rump, and placed her right elbow on the table, hand forward.

Zheng roared with approving laughter. I stared, open mouthed as I realised. Twil laughed too, and Lozzie let out a little whoop.

“What? What are they doing?” Felicity stammered “What is this? Heather is correct, we don’t have time for this.”

“You can ignore them if you want, I don’t think it’ll affect us,” I said with a sigh. “Don’t break the table though, either of you. Evelyn will be most unhappy.”

“But what are they doing?” Felicity demanded.

Zheng took her feet off the table and sat forward, hugely muscled shoulders hunched over as she mirrored Praem’s pose. Elbow on the table, right hand out. They made me think of stags about to lock antlers.

“You are made of wood and thought, idiot,” Zheng purred. “What are you next to real flesh? Hmmmmm?”

Praem waited. Said nothing. Zheng rumbled low in her throat.

“They’re arm wrestling,” I said.

It was no contest.

Not the first time, nor when they wordlessly went to best of three, then five, then seven – by which point Felicity had lost interest, turned back to her work and dragged Kimberly back to it as well, despite Twil’s hooting and hollering and Lozzie’s open-mouthed oohs and ahhs. We clustered around the doorway to the kitchen, an audience at safe distance. I shook my head when the demons went to best of nine, and resolved to put my foot down and stop this before best of eleven. They’d left a dent in the table by that point, a battered and bloodied indentation in the wood, and the slamming noise was getting on my nerves.

Thankfully I was saved from having to get between them, by the resounding snap of Zheng’s wrist bones.

She let out a grunt, not quite pain, and finally gave up on the immovable object that was Praem’s hand. Zheng’s knuckles were bloody and bruised, her finger bones likely riddled with micro-fractures. She’d exerted so much force that last time that she’d snapped whatever was left of her wrist. Sweating, heaving for breath, hunkered down – but she grinned all the same.

Not a single one of Praem’s hairs was out of place. She’d not moved an inch except to slam Zheng’s hand to the table nine times in a row.

“Ding ding ding,” Lozzie announced.

“You been bested, you great big lug,” Twil called out, grinning like a loon.

Zheng reached over with her other hand and wrenched her own bones back into place, rotating her bruised wrist, bones grinding. She clicked her tongue. “Meat.”

“Yes, I hope that issue is settled now,” I said. “Is this some kind of demonic pecking order ritual? Do you always have to challenge each other when you meet, or are you just both being insufferable?”

Prim and proper, Praem stood up, brushed her skirt smooth with a single motion of both hands, and tucked her chair in. “Feet off table.”

Zheng grinned even wider, chuckling under her breath. Her shoulders rolled, a note of wild joy in her eyes. For a heart-stopping moment I thought she was about to launch herself at Praem; my whole body twitched – not away, but toward, to get between them. I caught myself halfway there, heart racing, as Zheng relaxed back in her chair.

“Very well,” she purred. “Demon.”

Praem turned and glided toward us. We all cleared out of her way and let her into the magical workshop. Lozzie reached up and patted her on the head as she passed. She took up position next to the door, settled her hands in front of her, and stared straight ahead.

“That was fucking awesome,” Twil said. “Kicked her arse.”

“You next, laangren?” Zheng purred from the kitchen. Twil cleared her throat and grimaced.

“Praem?” I spoke softly, and felt a strange catch in my throat. Praem turned her head to regard me, and I surprised everyone including myself, by giving the doll-demon a hug. A proper hug, a good squeeze. There was a lot to hug, but she didn’t return the gesture. I wonder if she knew how, or if I’d finally managed to embarrass her. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” I said.

“Alive,” Praem echoed.

I let go and stepped back, and had to wipe my eyes a little. “Well, alive. You know what I mean.”

“Heather,” Praem intoned, bell-like and clear, then returned to her ramrod-straight position, eyes forward to watch Felicity work.

==

On one hand none of us trusted Felicity. I believed I understood her motivations, but what I knew of Evelyn’s childhood still invoked a latent horror at the mage’s presence in our home. The only thing I knew for sure is that when Evelyn woke, Felicity was absolutely not to be the first thing she saw.

And Evelyn would wake up. Of course she would. I had to keep repeating that to myself.

On the other hand, I finally had another capable adult in charge of at least one crisis. The relief was an almost physical thing, a lightness in my head and gut. But it didn’t last long. I had other tasks waiting.

“If we can’t get the dung, we’ll have to do it the other way. Blood.” Felicity dusted her hands off and and stepped back to look at her contraption. “I’ve got clean needles in my bag, shouldn’t have to draw much, but-”

“From Evee?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, who else?” Felicity waved vaguely. “But-”

“You’re gonna take blood from Evee?” Twil frowned like a wary dog.

Felicity blinked at her, wrong-footed. “Obviously. We are hoodwinking a demon, remember? What’s the soil like around here?”

Twil blinked at her. “ … Soil? I have no idea, what?”

I shrugged. “I’m not a Sharrowford native, sorry, I don’t know either.”

We all glanced at Kimberly, down on the floor on her knees, hands shaking over occult symbols as she focused on painting them directly onto the floorboards. “Um … you need clay, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Felicity said. “And lots of it, enough for a life-sized human figure. If the soil around here is clay-heavy, we could use it straight from your back garden. Save us time.”

“My … friend, I suppose,” Kimberly said, carefully tucking a loose strand of auburn hair behind one ear. “Ginny, she runs an arts and crafts supply store. You met her, Heather, at the coven. I-I could call her, ask how much she has right now? Modelling clay, I mean.”

Felicity clicked her fingers. “That’ll do. That’ll do. Can any of you drive? I can’t leave this alone while we finish it,” she gestured at the magic circle. “Somebody needs to go haul clay.”

“Twil, I think that’s on you,” I said.

“Eh?” Twil squinted. “What are you on about? I can’t drive.”

“You can run fast and carry heavy loads.”

“She can?” Felicity asked. “Perfect.”

Twil huffed and rolled her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m tired and flippant and terrified for Raine. The quicker we can do this, the better. Please, Twil?”

Twil glanced sidelong at Felicity, who already considered the problem solved. She was stooping down to supervise Kimberly’s work. “Heather,” Twil hissed between her teeth. “I can’t leave Evee here. What about … you know? I know you’re not, like, defenceless, but … ” She nodded sideways at Felicity, as awkward and conspicuous as an informant in a bad noir movie.

“Present,” Praem intoned from where she stood by the door. Twil jumped, startled, as if she’d forgotten Praem was there.

“I think Evee has a capable enough bodyguard for now,” I murmured.

Forty five minutes later, Twil returned huffing and puffing. Hauling three massive sacks of modelling clay halfway across Sharrowford on her shoulders had sapped even her strength. She’d nabbed a huge bucket in which to mix the stuff too. With time barely to catch her breath, Felicity set her to work kneading the clay with a pair of rubber gloves on both hands, a garden trowel, and elbow grease.

“Double, double toil and trouble,” I whispered to myself, leaning against the wall and watching as the other ingredients went into the bucket. “Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

Lemon juice, iron filings, several strands of Evelyn’s hair, a quarter-pint of motor oil and an eighth-pint of full-fat milk. And from Felicity’s bag – if she was to be believed – a dash of salt water taken from the Dead Sea, and ash from an Old Testament Bible consumed by fire.

Last but not least, a single syringe worth of Evelyn’s blood.

Felicity wanted to extract that herself. Twil stood in the way, barring the door.

“I’m the only one here with any medical experience,” Felicity said, her blind eye twitching. “You risk snapping the needle off in her arm if you pull it out wrong.”

“Still don’t like it,” Twil growled.

“It’s a clean needle. It’s never been used. I’d … ” Felicity swallowed, struggled to get the words out. “Never try to hurt her, even unintentionally.”

“You don’t have to like it,” I said, the confrontation not helping my nerves. “Twil, let her work. We need to get this done.”

“Yeah, but-”

“And face it, either of us probably will snap the needle off. You’re jittery and worried, and I’m exhausted.”

Felicity moved to push past. A growl started in Twil’s throat.

Like an animating statue, Praem stepped forward and deftly palmed the empty syringe from Felicity’s hand before any of us could react. She marched out of the ex-drawing room and up the stairs, leaving the rest of us exchanging surprised glances. Twil leapt after her. They returned less than a minute later, holding up a plastic tube filled with thick crimson.

“Blood,” Praem announced. Felicity thanked her with an awkward nod.

In went Evee’s blood. The clay took on a red sheen.

Two hours had turned into three, and the circle Felicity was building began to hurt my eyes and make me feel sick. The stench of clay and blood and citrus didn’t help either. Or at least, that’s what I told myself, leaning against the wall and downing more coffee. That’s how I distracted myself from what I had to do, kept it bottled up until the right moment.

Eventually, I asked the question. “Is this going to take much longer?”

Felicity didn’t bother to look up. “Another hour, perhaps. I’m working as fast as I can.”

“An hour?” Twil grunted. “Fuckin’ ‘ell.”

“Yes, an hour. Depends how fast you can slap together a basic human figure with all that clay. Time to get to it, I think.”

I levered myself away from the wall and turned to Praem, on guard at the kitchen doorway.

“Can you … ” I started softly, not wanting to disturb the mages at work, but unsure what exactly I was asking, or why. Praem had proved herself capable already, she knew Felicity had to be watched. “I … um … ”

I needed permission. Guilt clutched at my throat. Evelyn was still in a coma. Could I leave my best friend in other people’s hands? A lump formed in my throat, thick and almost painful.

Praem met my eyes. A white emptiness stared back at me.

“Yes,” Praem intoned, clear and loud. The others glanced up, and I flustered at the attention.

“It’s nothing,” I lied. “I’m just going to check on Lozzie. I may be some time.”

“Right, well, yes,” Felicity said, already turning away.

Praem was still looking at me.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and slipped past her.

==

I found Lozzie upstairs, curled up on the foot of my bed, dozing like a cat.

She’d excused herself from the magical workshop over an hour ago, with a whispered, intensely personal reason. She didn’t like to see that kind of magic. Reminded her of bad things, bad times, and bad people. I’d trusted her not to vanish Outside, if that was even possible right now, and she’d proved my trust well founded.

“Lozzie?” I murmured her name as I sat down on the bed, the floorboards creaking. “Lozzie?”

“Mmmm?” She made a sleepy sound, but her eyes stayed closed.

I almost laughed – hysteria threatening to break through my wire-tight nerves. “How can you sleep at a time like this?”

“Nap time, nap time,” she murmured. “Can’t help, so nap time.”

“Lozzie?” I swallowed, throat dry, almost unable to ask. “Do you know if your spirits have found anything yet? Anything about Raine?”

“Mmmm … I’d know,” she mumbled. “Soon? They’ll be in the garden, maybe, in a bit.”

“ … so, no then. Okay, okay.” I closed my eyes and blew out a slow, shaky breath.

I’d fetched the little plastic waste bin we kept in the bathroom, and when I placed it on the floor my hands started to shake. Just the caffeine. I tugged a corner of blanket over Lozzie’s shoulder, and pulled my legs up underneath me to keep my feet warm.

I’d hoped to do this alone, where I’d not be missed for an hour or two, but I was too nervous and too afraid to summon the focus to wake Lozzie.

Instead I reached down and adjusted the plastic bin.

There. Perfect position to catch vomit.

Outdoors, the sun was drooping toward mid afternoon on a winter’s day, sending thin grey light through the window of the bedroom Raine and I shared. I could have locked myself in the bathroom and sat in the tub, but I needed to be here. With her.

The evidence of Raine’s life was all around – her discarded clothes on the floor, crumpled jeans over the back of a chair, a very plain bra dropped carelessly next to the bed. Her books were stacked in a trio of loose piles, some fallen like discarded masonry from a crumbling tower, invaded and occupied by several of my favourites.  Her posters adorned the walls, some old and dog-eared, from that far-away childhood home I’d probably never visit. A playstation controller sat in front of the television, undoubtedly and invisibly stained with the oils from her hands. Her scent was worked into the bedsheets, the smell of her hair on the pillows.

I knew all her textures here. The way she pulled a tshirt over her head. The way she’d hold a book open while reading it, bending the spine ever so slightly too much for my sensibilities. The way she sat when concentrating, cross-legged and serious, or when teasing me, leaning back on her arms. I saw her beaming confident smile in every blink of my mind’s eye.

If I was to define Raine with hyperdimensional mathematics, this was the place to do it.

I closed my eyes, and began.

In retrospect, I made an incredibly stupid decision. I was exhausted, running on fumes and coffee and sheer stubborn determination and – I like to think – love, which is often the stupidest thing of all. Another two or three hours and perhaps Evelyn would be awake, perhaps there would be another way to find Raine, a way that did not involve crushing my consciousness in a vice of fire and acid. I knew I was fragile, on the edge of a collapse, the last of my energy used up to dispose of the bodies that morning. If the Fractal hadn’t been on my arm, I’d have sworn I was close to a Slip. I felt halfway out of reality already, shaky and disconnected.

Just the coffee, I told myself.

Every minute without action was torture. I’d done my best to contain myself, dealing with crisis after crisis, but now other people had taken over and I couldn’t wait any longer. Neither could Raine.

My heart quivered, because I was about to discover if I was strong enough to find her.

And if she was alive.

I’d thrown this brainmath together before, of course, when I’d searched for the not-Lozzie that had visited Kimberly’s flat. The relevant equations still lurked in the depths of my unconscious mind. How to define time, space, position, how to use Evelyn’s map of reality, how to weld it all together into a tool for my purposes. But I was missing one element, and that I would have to build from scratch.

I plunged my arms into the mud in the sump of my soul.

At least this time I didn’t need to hide the pain. I cried out, gritting my teeth and whining at the white-hot daggers inside my skull as I pulled together the hyperdimensional mathematics I would require. Curling up, I tensed every muscle in my body to hold onto the contents of my stomach.

Time, space, they were simple, came to me with the ease of sticking a knife into my guts.

Quickly, quickly now, I told myself, before it overwhelms me.

Raine’s scent in the air and her face in my memory and every facet of her life at my fingertips. Reduced, redefined, laid out in hell-maths from beyond reality.

Over a threshold of pain I hadn’t known existed, quivering and choking on the air itself, my eyeballs on fire, I defined a human soul in hyperdimensional mathematics.

Raine.

A frozen explosion in my head, pain poised on the edge of an abyss, ready to drop me into darkness and oblivion – and it all happened then, all at once, a nano-second of consciousness expanded to infinite awareness.

Sharrowford itself laid out in alien terms. A thousand possible places, a million, a billion, more than I could account for with my my mind screaming and quivering like flayed meat. Not a process, because time meant nothing in that state. An instant of knowledge of every possible place Raine had been or would ever be.

There.

Maths, describing a monkey. Every detail of meat and breath and chemistry and thought, but nothing of Raine, not in the way that I knew her. Not in the human way. A construct of energy and matter and time. That’s all she was in the end. All any of us are.

Alive.

Should have felt relief; couldn’t feel anything. Time meant nothing, so what of human emotion?

I had a location. Nothing so irrelevant as an address, the knowledge was far more pure than that.

Paused in that moment of frozen time, dimly aware of the pain and the crash waiting for me, I tried to push further. Scraps of brainmath suggested themselves, rising from oily depths, half-forgotten pieces of the Eye’s lessons connecting up as I stared at this construct that was Raine, and realised I could bring her back.

I could select her, define her, and make her be here. We didn’t have to rescue her at all, I could simply fix reality.

All I had to do was try harder, plunge myself into the abyss, drink the Eye’s lessons in full and accept what I was changing into.

Why not? What did I have to lose?

I pushed that little bit further, and for a blink of time, I forgot what it was like to be a person.

Raine’s lingering scent in the air saved me. Our bedroom saved me, the memory of what it felt like be fleshy and real, to cuddle with Raine in bed at night, her arms around me. Flawed and warm. I wanted that again, I wanted it so much, to be messy and sweaty, wanted to eat food and make out with Raine and get cold fingertips and have orgasms. Wanted to feel sun on my skin and hair under my hands and smell strawberries and get ill and stub my toe. Wanted to exist, with Raine.

I saw a monkey on a bed, a weird scrawny little thing full of chemicals and proteins, expiring in eighty years or less, her eyes screwed up, doubled over in pain and about to fly apart.

Oh, that’s me, I thought.

And thinking made it so.

Gasping, shaking, my heart pounding hard enough to burst, breath heaving in and out on the verge of hyperventilation, every inch of my skin drenched in cold sweat, I was back. For the first time in my life, pain had never felt so sweet.

I managed to hit the target, vomited into the bin I’d placed earlier. Heather one, brainmath nil.

Then I whined like a stuck pig.

My head throbbed, my vision turning black at the edges. I curled into a ball and began to sob, overwhelmed, hiccuping and laughing and hugging myself. The pain was incredible, but so was the relief that Raine was alive – and that I was still here.

I could save Raine right now. The price was not death, the price was to leave behind being a person. Being flesh. Being me.

For a long time I laid on the bed, panting for breath, waiting for the pain to subside, staring at Lozzie’s peaceful face. How had she slept through all my pitiful noises? Her eyes twitched under their lids, and she made a sleepy noise in her throat. Good Lozzie. If you’re safe, this is all easier. I’d wake her in a minute and tell her where Raine was, how to find her, in case I passed out when I tried to stand up.

“You have to become a monster if you want to save her. You know that, don’t you?”

A nightmare imitation of a little girl’s voice in sulphur and ash, reaching from behind me, creeping over my side like skeletal fingers clutching at my ribs. A weight shifted on the bed behind me, where nobody should have been.

“Don’t you want to save your girlfriend?” the voice continued, mocking and hissing. “It’s not so bad, being like me. Give it a try.”

The voice laughed, a horrible wet bubbly sound, a child’s laugh as imagined by a serial killer.

“ … Felicity’s parasite?” I managed to croak, too drained to even turn my head to look. Instinct told me I was lucky to be so exhausted.

“Tssss, ugly word,” the voice hissed, then purred as if through a mouthful of drool. “Think what Raine would feel, if she knew you couldn’t do it.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Framed beneath the crystal eyes and waving stingers of Evelyn’s spider-servitor, Felicity politely wiped her boots on the doormat.

“Is it safe in here?” she asked. “You mentioned the house is warded?”

The spider wasn’t reacting to her, not beyond an initial tracking glance as she’d passed over the threshold. Felicity followed the direction of my gaze, back over her shoulder, and saw nothing there. She gave me a silently curious look, her posture a touch more stiff than before.

“It’s nothing,” I sighed. “Safe, yes. For a given value of safe. It’s not impregnable to battering rams or baseball bats. If it was, then none of this would have happened in the first place.”

“Safe from that too, while I’m around,” Twil said.

“Yeah!” Lozzie added from her position half-behind me, still watching Felicity like a spooked cat. “Twil’s big and scary, so you better be careful!”

“Yeah,” Twil grunted.

Our Twil was none too happy. She stood with her arms folded, scowling narrow-eyed at Felicity, unable to conceal her suspicions after our confrontation in the street and the unwelcome news of Felicity’s mystery extra passenger. Watch out for a little girl dressed in black? What was this, the plot of a 19th-century Gothic novel? I struggled to contain my own exasperation.

“Yes,” I said, a little too hard, and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “I’m certain that right now, this house contains enough frightening and dangerous people to run off half the city.”

Felicity ducked her head in an awkward nod. “Just being cautious. Used to being behind thick walls. I don’t get out much.”

“Yeah no kidding,” Twil grunted. “Looking like that.”

“Twil.” I shot her a look of genuine outrage. Twil was usually so cuddly, I’d forgotten how hurtful she was capable of being; when we’d first met in the midst of misunderstanding, she’d called Evelyn a cripple.

Twil blushed. “I mean pointing guns at people! In the street! Not the- the- argh … ” She gestured vaguely at her face and pulled a grimace.

“Perhaps, in future, be a little more careful in selecting your words?”

“Yeah! Yeah, cool, okay, yeah.” Twil nodded, hands up, desperate for me to drop the subject.

“I apologise on Twil’s behalf.” I turned back to Felicity. “She tends to … speak … before she … Felicity?”

If Felicity was bothered, she gave no sign. She was running her gaze across the front room, the boxes of junk, the stains on the floorboard, the shoes by the door. Counting how many of us were here? I tried not to think like that, tried to make myself believe she was here to help. She craned her neck to peer up the stairs and past us into the kitchen.

Her booted feet stayed planted on the doormat. One gloved hand rested on the open zipper of her overstuffed sports bag.

“I don’t care,” Felicity murmured without missing a beat. She’d given no impression of switching her attention from the room back to us, no minor startle of the absorbed brought back to a conversation. Was her momentary distraction an act? The learned behaviour of a gruesomely disfigured woman ignoring an all-too-familiar insult – or a carefully constructed illusion of obliviousness?

Twil and I shared a glance. Twil shrugged.

I cleared my throat, trying to keep us on track. “I do have a question for you, if you don’t mind. When is your parasite likely to appear?”

The left side – the burned side – of Felicity’s face twitched around her milky, blind eye. A suppressed wince? “It’s not a parasite. And it’s unlikely to appear at all.”

“Yes, but we’ve already got multiple crises unfolding here,” I said. “I don’t need another one.”

Felicity wet her lips and winced openly this time. “While I’m here, it might try to speak to those alone for extended periods, especially in the dark, or at night. So … don’t walk down dark corridors alone.”

“This thing isn’t a sodding ghost, is it?” Twil asked, a note of panic in her voice.

“Spooky scary,” Lozzie whispered.

“No. Not quite,” Felicity said. “And to answer your next question, yes, I am armed. I suppose it’s only the polite thing to do, before I … ” she glanced down at her shoes.

“Take your shoes off!” Lozzie chanted. “Take your shoes off for the girls.”

“Lozzie’s just enjoying herself,” I said in answer to Felicity’s raised eyebrow. “Let her. And yes, it was rather obvious that you’re armed in some capacity.”

Felicity cleared her throat and had the decency to look ashamed.

“Duh,” Twil said. “You got a gun in there, or what? Also, like, sorry. I really didn’t mean-”

“I don’t care,” Felicity repeated. She shifted the weight of the open sports bag on her shoulder, and tilted it forward to show us the contents.

A viper of black metal and dark wood lay length-ways inside the bag, swaddled in an old towel. A sawn-off shotgun.

Lozzie made a disapproving whimper. Twil breathed ‘fucking hell’ under her breath. I felt a chill in my gut and a lightness in my head. She’d pointed that thing at us? She had, with her finger on the trigger.

Felicity must have caught the accusation and alarm on my face. “The safety was on,” she said quickly. “It was only a bluff. Besides, it’s not even really meant for you. I go everywhere armed, in case of emergencies.”

“In case of what, a bear?” Twil said. “Or if you fancy a spot of bank robbery on your way home? What the fuck are you doing with a shotgun?”

“It’s different, living out in the woods.”

“We can hardly talk,” I said, swallowing my exasperation. “Raine does that too. I’ll thank you not to discharge that indoors, though. We’ve already got two bullet holes in the floor. I don’t want Evelyn to wake up to more holes in her house.”

“Yeah, we don’t wanna bring the rozzers running again,” Twil said.

Felicity froze. “You’ve had the police here?”

“A tame detective. It’s dealt with.” I nodded at the gun inside her bag. “Are you going to put that down, or … ?”

“Yes. Yes, I should.” She nodded. “I’m sorry. I said I don’t get out much, but that’s an understatement. I don’t like being so exposed. That’s all. I’m fully aware I’m jumping at shadows, but I do want to help Evelyn.”

“Well, you best take your boots off then, and we’ll go upstairs to see her.”

Setting down her bag – and her weapon – revealed an internal ordeal for Felicity. She hesitated for a long moment, swallowed, then nodded and finally placed the sports bag gently on the floor. She nodded again, as if convincing herself, then squatted down to unlace her boots. Her fingers seemed clumsy and blunt.

“Should we tell Kim about the spooky little girl that might show up? Don’t suppose Zheng’ll care.”

“Yes, I suspect Zheng might give any surprises a nasty surprise of their own,” I said. “Best warn Kim though, yes.”

“Zheng cares!” Lozzie said.

“There’s others here, besides yourselves?” Felicity asked. She wiggled one boot off, revealing thick and unflattering thermal socks.

“A few,” I said, then stopped myself before explaining further. I was exhausted, but Felicity’s arrival had sparked what remained of my reserves of energy and focus. I held myself back. Twil picked up on it too, shutting her mouth before she blurted out all our secrets.

“A … few?” Felicity caught my eyes.

“I feel like I should apologise for being rude, but I don’t entirely trust you, Felicity,” I said. “Not yet. There’s more of us here, that’s all.”

“Ooooh,” Lozzie made a sound like she was about to see a cat-fight. Twil tried to look tough, nodding along with me. Not difficult.

“Well, good,” Felicity said, more to herself to us, then pulled an awkward smile. “Shouldn’t trust magicians. Very wise of you.”

“You did get here much quicker than we expected,” I said at length, thinking as I spoke. Felicity’s fingers paused on the laces of her other boot.

“Well spotted. I lied about travel time, to give myself an advantage if I needed it.” She waited, as if for accusation or forgiveness, the faintest hint of ironic self-mockery in her one good eye.

Getting an accurate read on Felicity proved exceptionally difficult, even for me. Over the last few months of strange experiences, I’d learned that about myself, far more surprising than the brute facts of the supernatural – I possessed a good eye for reading other people.

But I couldn’t join up the separate parts of Felicity’s behaviour. Skittish and soft, yet I felt half of what she showed us was mere performance, to herself as much as us. Underneath the exterior of tatty clothes and hesitant gestures, it took a certain kind of twisted guts to point a loaded shotgun at another person. She didn’t look haggard or run-down, not brittle or afraid, merely delicate and wrapped in armour. Was she a little like Raine, minus the self-confidence and grace?

Or was it the burn scars, throwing me off? I found it almost impossible not to stare at Felicity’s scarring, at the way the flesh twitched out of sync with her expressions. Was I being unfair?

No. She was a mage, and she’d made it halfway into her thirties. She was dangerous, if only by necessity.

“Figures.” Twil rolled her eyes.

Felicity held my stare for a moment, then lowered her eyes and resumed untying her other boot. She slipped it off, set it next to its twin, and straighted up.

“Can you really pluck bullets out of the air, or was that a bluff too?” she asked.

“She can!” Lozzie said.

“Yes, but it’s a long story and we don’t have time for it,” I said. “We need to go see Evelyn, but I think we could all do with a cup of tea while we do. Twil, will you do the honours?”

“Eh?”

“Tea, coffee,” I said, voice more tight than I intended. “Lozzie and I will take Felicity upstairs, you let Kim and Zheng know about the-”

“I know, shaman,” came a deep purring.

Zheng ducked through the doorway into the front room.

Felicity went wide-eyed at the sight of Zheng, at her seven feet of muscle, bloodied trench coat, and the mass of dense tattoos visible beneath her thin tshirt. Zheng fixed her with a lazy, predatory interest.

“I know all about this one’s familiar,” Zheng purred. “I can smell it.”

“Yes, thank you for the dramatic self-introduction,” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice. “Felicity, this-”

Felicity moved so much faster than I’d thought her capable of, with her willowy awkwardness and clumsy fingers and single functioning eye. She ripped her sawn-off shotgun from the towel nest in her bag, braced it with both hands, and pointed it at Zheng.

“Woah, woah! Fuck!” Twil yelled. My stomach lurched and I stumbled back. Lozzie clung to my shoulders, half-hiding behind me, half holding me up.

Zheng broke into a shark-toothed grin at the double-mouth of the shotgun barrels.

“You didn’t say anything about this!” Felicity yelled.

“You think that little musket can stop me, wizard?” Zheng purred, obviously enjoying the moment. “If I wanted you dead, I’d be eating your flesh already.”

“Oh yes,” I snapped, surprised at the force of my own eye-rolling disapproval. “This is exactly what I meant when I asked you not to fire that thing indoors, thank you. And Zheng, stop it, don’t taunt her.”

Zheng ignored me, watching Felicity’s hands shake.

“Yeah, fucking back off, hey?” Twil suggested.

“No, no no no,” Felicity was repeating, shaking her head in desperate denial. Her good eye brimmed with hollow horror, far beyond any rational response to Zheng.

“No? No what?” I asked. “Felicity?”

“How could she? She- she would never- Evelyn wouldn’t do this. No.”

“Yes, you’re quite correct there,” I spoke quickly. “Evelyn did not make Zheng.”

“What?” Felicity risked a glance at me. A mistake. One flick of her eyes was enough time for Zheng to jerk forward, moving like quicksilver. The playful aborted charge of a big cat, stopping well short. Felicity flinched like she’d touched a live wire, her back slamming into the front door. She pointed the shotgun firmly at Zheng’s head once more. I half-expected the spider-servitor to react, but it hung there utterly uninterested. I guess Zheng didn’t count as worth protecting.

“Don’t you move!” Felicity snapped. “Don’t you move a muscle.”

“Zheng!” I scolded.

“She’s too fun, shaman. See how she jumps?” Zheng’s extra-long tongue rolled out of her mouth, to taste the air and tease our poor guest.

Felicity had none of the confident poise of Raine with a weapon. She visibly shook, despite the firm grip on the shotgun, one hand on the trigger mechanism, the other holding the barrels. She displayed none of what Raine called ‘trigger discipline’, her finger already in place inside the trigger-guard. Her face had turned waxy with barely controlled fear – but it was controlled. For now.

“I said,” repeating myself, raising my voice. “Zheng is not Evelyn’s work. Evee didn’t make her.” I put two and two together, and took the risk. “She’s not following in her mother’s footsteps.”

Felicity took a moment to process what I’d said. “Okay,” she breathed. “Okay. That- that’s good. That’s really good to hear. Okay. But I’m still looking at a mature demon-host. Why?”

“You can put the gun down,” I said. “Zheng is … friendly. Safe.”

Felicity laughed a single humourless laugh. “Are you mad? I’ve seen these things before. They are never safe.”

“Yes, I know she’s intimidating. I freed Zheng this morning, I’ve know her for literally less than twelve hours, and she’s already saved my life. Twice, I think. I’d thank you not to point a gun at her, for a start.”

“ … freed?” Felicity frowned.

Zheng slurped her tongue back into her mouth, and grinned wider then before, showing even more teeth. They seemed to extend forever into the back of her skull. “I am my own, wizard.”

Felicity’s fear suddenly ebbed away, giving way to naked fascination. Her good eye filled with a kind of hunger, one I’d seen before on a very different face. With a shock of recognition I realised Evelyn had given me the same look whenever she’d talked about the potential of my hyperdimensional mathematics. Felicity’s mouth hung open. The shotgun sagged in her grip. “ … you’re unbound? Then why are you still here?”

Zheng shrugged. “Enjoying the moment.”

 “ … oh my God,” Felicity whispered. “How old are you?”

“Ruuuuude!” Lozzie hooted.

“Old enough to know lead shot won’t tickle me,” Zheng rumbled.

“Also true,” I added quickly. “Zheng fell out of a building this morning, and she wasn’t much the worse for wear.”

“Shaman,” Zheng purred. “I did not fall. I jumped.”

“Point being, I very much doubt you can damage her anyway. Please, Felicity, put the gun down.”

Felicity frowned, considering carefully.

“Go ahead, wizard,” Zheng rumbled. “Pull the trigger. Shoot me. Prove it to yourself.”

“This isn’t loaded with lead shot,” Felicity said very quietly. “It’s cold iron.”

Zheng’s expression shifted ever so minutely, intrigued – and excited.

“Yes, that’s right,” Felicity continued in the same soft murmur. “I know how your kind usually work. I can’t kill you because you’re not really alive, but I can cause you a great deal of pain.”

Zheng tilted her head slowly, listening.

“You’re old, very old, aren’t you?” Felicity continued. “Decades in that body for so much fine control, let alone your … modifications. How long has it been since you felt pain like us?”

“Can you pull the trigger faster than I can move, wizard?” Zheng purred. “No depth perception. Interesting handicap.”

“I can.”

“Would you bet an ear? A hand? Your liver?” Zheng slid her tongue out again.

I stepped forward – not quite into Felicity’s arc of fire, I wasn’t feeling suicidal – and put every ounce of frustration into my glare, at both of them. “How about we just don’t? Hmm?” My composure almost buckled instantly, because Lozzie decided to peer over my shoulder and imitate my expression, a little scowling elf to undercut my exasperation. “Can we perhaps not have another bloody fight, here, now? We are on a time limit – two people’s lives are on a time limit.”

Felicity shook her head. “I’m speaking to an unbound demon-”

I let my eyes flash at her. “I don’t care! I don’t care what she is. What is it with you mages and being spooked by these zombies? She saved my life twice this morning. I watched her eat a person, but I don’t care right now. If she wanted you dead, you would be. She’s faster than you can imagine.”

“I don’t have to imagine, I’ve seen it before,” Felicity hissed.

“Then there’s no point trying to shoot her, is there?” I asked. “Either put the gun down and help us with Evelyn, or I make you leave.”

Perhaps it was the tone in my voice, the undercurrent of certainty that I would find a way to make her leave. Or perhaps I made her see sense. I know which I prefer.

Felicity’s good eye travelled back and forth between Zheng and I. She let out a long breath, and then slowly lowered the shotgun. For a drawn-out moment, she and Zheng watched each other like a pair of Old West gunslingers at high noon.

“Boo,” Zheng said.

Felicity shook her head. Shaking fingers clicked the safety on. “I’m not going to apologise this time.” She nodded at Zheng. “This is absurd. This is the last thing I expected to find. What’s your game, demon?”

Zheng rumbled a bored, disappointed sound.

“And you!” I turned on her. “Stop trying to fight everything.”

Zheng shrugged. “It’s my nature, shaman.”

I gave her a capital-L look.

“She started it,” Zheng said.

Before I could give Zheng a look like a primary-school teacher breaking up a playground fight, Twil stomped over and got right in Felicity’s face, finger jabbing at her chest. “You’re not going anywhere near Evee after that bullshit. You’re having a laugh.”

“Twil,” I sighed.

“I think under the circumstances-” Felicity began.

“Not good enough,” Twil let out a growl – a real one, a full-throated animal threat. Felicity flinched backward and the shotgun jerked upward once more, but Twil caught the business end in one hand.

“You got some silver in there too?” she growled in Felicity’s face.

“Twil,” I snapped. She shoved the shotgun barrel down and away, and stepped back to glare at Felicity.

With a metallic click, Felicity broke her shotgun open and fumbled out the two loaded shells. They looked so incongruous, shiny red plastic set in a brass base. She tossed them into her bag, and offered the unloaded weapon to Twil.

“Uh … ” Twil blinked down at the gun, mouth hanging open.

Felicity shrugged. “You made a good point,” she spoke softly. “If our roles were reversed, I wouldn’t let me anywhere near Evelyn either. Take it, please.”

“The polite thing would be to accept, Twil,” I said.

“Yeah, get your fingerprints all over it,” Lozzie giggled.

Gingerly, Twil took the gun, holding it by the truncated wooden stock like a live eel.

“Either I trust you or I don’t,” Felicity said. “Please, show me to Evelyn.”

==

Up the stairs we went. My mind wired with caffeine and the thin shreds of adrenaline, I sketched two mental models of how Felicity might act once she saw Evelyn. The tone in her voice over the phone – an old and painful loss – left me with no doubt. I thought back to when Evelyn had called her months ago, the pleading way Felicity had asked “Can I see you?”

Wistful longing, or jittery possessiveness. Fifty-fifty. Flip a coin.

At least she’d handed over the gun.

The former I told myself I would tolerate. We would all put up with that for the sake of waking Evelyn from her coma. But the latter? In my darkest imagination I saw Felicity trying to stroke Evelyn’s unconscious face, or worse, and knew Twil for one would react with justified violence. Twil and I had worked out a signal – just a wink, nothing special – to use in case we thought Felicity was throwing up red flags.

Both models were wrong.

Felicity treated the threshold to Evelyn’s bedroom like a portal to her own private hell, and the sight of Evelyn’s face like a God condemning her to the pit.

She hid it well, but I was all too familiar with the signs of self-loathing and self-torture, from my own face in the mirror over a decade of personal horror. I read it in the way she crossed her arms tight and protective over her chest, as if trying to hold herself together. I saw it in the way she shook ever so slightly, a tremor deep inside her body. The hollow guilt in her face made it plain.

For a moment I thought she might start crying. I looked away, an intruder on some inexplicable, alien emotion. Even Lozzie pretended not to notice, and Twil looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Evelyn, wrapped up under her plush bed covers, behind a bulwark of pillows and cushions, couldn’t have cared less. Her eyes twitched beneath closed lids.

“The hell is wrong with you now?” Twil grunted, and crossed over to the bed to check Evelyn’s temperature, hand to her unconscious forehead.

Felicity screwed her eyes shut. She murmured to herself, for her ears alone.

“Pull yourself together. It’s not her,” she said.

“ … Felicity?” I ventured, wary for some new development. “Are you up to this?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, quick and curt. When she turned to me, her expression was clear and clean, business-like. “You’ve tried to wake her every other way you’ve access to, yes? She’s not out cold with the flu, or merely passed out, correct? If she wakes up and sees me, she’ll likely attempt to kill me.”

“Yeah! Alright? She won’t fucking wake up,” Twil said, brushing Evelyn’s hair back from her face.

“Yes, we’re certain,” I said. “It was magic.”

“What happened to her?” Felicity said. “Start from the beginning.”

“Loooong story,” Lozzie said, with a sagely nod.

“Yes, that will make an exceptionally long story indeed,” I said.

Felicity frowned. “How long?”

“ … to explain what did this, I have to start a decade ago.”

“That’s fine. Tell me while I work.”

Felicity stepped over to the bed and dumped her sports bag. Twil glared at her with open hostility, like a hound guarding its wounded master. Felicity ignored the scowl and bent over Evelyn’s unconscious face, peering closely. She showed nothing except professional interest – then glanced back up at me.

“The sooner you start, the better, Heather. I need to figure out what’s keeping her unconscious. She’s moving her eyes, which means REM sleep, which means at least her brain isn’t scrambled. More information, and I can start to make educated guesses.”

“Okay. Okay, uh … ”

“Meanwhile, I’m going to examine her, but I respect her hatred of me too much to handle her myself. I need one of you girls to expose her throat and both wrists, but obviously try to keep her warm. She’ll be losing body heat while asleep. Twil, is it? If you would, please?”

Twil narrowed her eyes in a scowl. “Why does she hate you? What did you do to her?”

“Twil … ” I said, but with no conviction in my voice. It was a fair question.

“People hate for lots of reasons,” Lozzie said with a sad note.

“You don’t want to know me, you don’t want me to be your friend,” Felicity said to Twil. “She hates me because I deserve it, because I’m toxic, and I’m a coward. She knew it, and I’m not going to lie about it. Let me work, let me wake her, and then I’ll leave.”

“Too fucking vague, waaay too fucking vague,” Twil said.

“ … she hates me because I helped her mother with something, about twelve years ago now.”

Twil squinted. “What does her mother have to do with anything? I thought her mum was dead.”

“That’s for Evelyn to tell,” I said firmly. “Twil doesn’t know Evelyn’s family history.”

“Ah.” Felicity blinked. “I’m- my apologies. You do, though?”

“Some,” I said, shrugging.

“Then you understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That this is penance,” Felicity said.

Twil didn’t like it, but she trusted my judgement. She busied herself pulling the covers back from Evelyn’s sleeping form, hiking up her sleeves to expose her wrists. They made a strange team, as Felicity slipped into a bedside manner almost like a real doctor. She rummaged in her sports bag and produced various tools – a miniature hand-torch, an overstuffed leather-bound notebook, two plastic food containers full of tiny bottles of powder and liquid, a piece of thick canvas rolled into a tube, several lengths of brass rod, a box of plasters, and a dozen other seemingly unrelated nick-nacks.

She used the torch to check Evelyn’s pupils, had Twil daub tiny amounts of an odd amber liquid on Evelyn’s wrists and throat, touched the top of her head with brass. None of it made any sense. Like watching a witch-doctor at work.

I sat in Evelyn’s desk chair, and explained for the second time this morning, dragging myself through the words as if through mud. The Eye, Alexander Lilburne, Glasswick tower. I left out personal details, kept quiet on brainmath, Lozzie, and Maisie.

I’d grown to expect bewilderment, but Felicity listened – and asked intelligent questions.

She had me repeat what I’d seen during that flash of horror before Evelyn and I had both passed out, asked me why I’d woken up but Evee hadn’t. She asked probing question about the Eye, about the limits of its power, questions I had no answers for. She asked about Evelyn’s health, about her diet, about her sex life – “None”, Twil growled.

She asked about the inside of Glasswick tower, about the Lozzie-thing that had been following me, about the aims of the cult.

She asked about Praem, and the shadow behind her face showed exactly what she thought.

“Praem is fine,” I said, feeling a surge of protective fondness. “I gathered from your reaction to Zheng that you don’t like these Outsiders being here, and in Zheng’s case I … I get that. But Praem is a sweetheart. She’s done nothing but good for us. Don’t you dare.”

Felicity cleared her throat gently. “I’ve had bad experiences. She’s had bad experiences too,” she glanced down at Evelyn. “I thought she knew better, that’s all.”

More tests, scraps of Latin read aloud from Felicity’s notebook to no effect, and Twil was asked to poke and prod and listen to her chest. Eventually Felicity stepped back, failing to conceal the defeated look on her face.

“Nothing’s working, is it?” Twil asked, a tremor in her voice.

Felicity shook her head. “I think she’s possessed.”

“ … you what?” Twil blinked at her.

“Possessed?” I asked. “By an Outsider?”

“The thing that touched your minds – this Eye, as you called it, or one of its agents – I think it tried to leave something behind. That would explain why you woke up, because it has other designs for you. Perhaps your mystery ‘Lozzie-thing’ was made the same way, rapid modification of an original human host?” Felicity mused, more to herself than us, then her voice snapped back into focus again. “Point is, this isn’t hypnotic suggestion or instruction, Evelyn is far too … ” she cleared her throat. “The Evelyn I knew, even as a child, was too strong-willed to succumb to that.”

“I agree,” I said. “Putting it lightly.”

“Yeah. Yeah, right,” Twil said. “So it’s not that? I don’t … I don’t get this?”

“It’s not hypnotic suggestion, or neural damage. Forceful possession, from beyond, by force, should be impossible,” Felicity explained patiently. “But the fact she won’t wake up … well.” Felicity glanced at me, seeing if I was following.

“Well what?” Twil asked.

“I think I understand,” I said, nodding.

“Some weak shard of the Eye, an independent factor, a bud, a spore,” Felicity shrugged. “But she’s been through this once before. She has experience throwing out neural invasion. To use an immune-system metaphor, she’s already got the anti-bodies. So instead of taking over, all it’s managed to do is render her unconscious, while she fights it.”

“She’s wrestling a demon for control of her body?” I asked.

Felicity nodded. “It is the only thing I can think of.”

“Shit,” Twil said, and looked down at Evelyn’s unconscious face, her eyes twitching in sleep.

“She may not even be aware of it,” Felicity said. “More importantly, I believe I can do something about it.”

“Wait a sec, what do you mean she’s been through this once before?” Twil asked, frowning at Felicity, then at me too. “Heather?”

“ … it’s really not my place to say,” I said. “Evee’s probably, um, a little reluctant to share her past with you in detail. Not- not because she doesn’t trust you. It’s complicated.”

Twil shrugged, vaguely hurt. No time for that right now, little werewolf. You can patch things up later.

“We need a young priest and an old priest,” Lozzie announced.

Felicity actually laughed, the first time I’d seen a genuine smile from her. She nodded at Lozzie approvingly. “Yes, an exorcism. We need to perform an exorcism.”

“What, ‘the power of Christ compels you’, and all that?” Twil said.

“No, the real thing is less clean, and takes a very long time. I’m going to need a lot of clear space, and a lot of coffee. And I’ll need to make a phone call, I won’t be going home tonight.”

“How long is this going to take?” I asked, a lump growing in my throat.

Felicity shrugged. “Twelve hours, fifteen hours. I don’t know. I’ve only done this once before.”

“Twelve hours,” I whispered to myself. In the corner of my eye, I saw Lozzie bite her lip. She knew what I was thinking. “There’s no … other way, is there?”

“Heather, I can totally stay here for twelve hours,” Twil said, nodding. “I’ll do it.”

“ … there is something I could do,” Felicity said, frowning tight, her reluctance plain. “Only because it’s her. None of you three are mages, correct? That wasn’t a lie, or anything else, was it? I don’t care if it was, but I’ll ask you to leave the room now, before I try this.”

“None of us,” I said. “Kimberly is, but she’s downstairs.”

“Mmmm.” Felicity considered for a moment, then sighed and got down awkwardly on her knees next to Evelyn.

She rolled back her right sleeve, and revealed a sheath of tattoos crawling up her forearm.

Nothing like either the Fractal on my arm or the intricate binding which covered Zheng’s flesh, Felicity’s tattoo was a gossamer tracery of straight lines in dark purples and pinks, blues and greens, intersecting in right angles and meeting at rounded junctions. Precise, ordered, mathematical; the design terminated midway up her bicep.

The lines caught the light and stung my eyes, as if the act of seeing was to run one’s brain along the edge of a razor.

When she removed her right glove as well, the unity of the design came into focus. The lines joined and thickened along her palm and the back of her hand, formed a solid mass of colour on her fingers. A crossbreed of opera glove and circuit board, in ink and magic.

“What is it with magic and tattoos?” I muttered.

“Hey, I’ve got some too,” Twil said.

“Yes, I know, Twil.”

Felicity flexed her fingers, examining the design as if for blemishes, then hesitated. “I am going to have to wrap my hand around Evelyn’s throat.”

“What.”

“Okay no, fuck off with that,” Twil said.

“Think of this like a surgical robot,” Felicity said. “It’s not going to hurt her.”

“Oh yeah,” Twil grunted. “Like that helps.” She put an arm over Evelyn to ward Felicity away.

“Not the most reassuring metaphor you could have selected,” I said.

Felicity sighed and wet her lips. The scarred flesh twitched around her unseeing left eye. “I mean in this particular use, think of it as a surgical robot.”

“What is it, really? What does that even do?” I prompted. “What are you going to do to her?”

“ … none of you are mages, none of you would understand.”

“I will,” Lozzie said.

“I might,” I said.

“Yeah, try us,” said Twil.

Felicity hesitated. “There is a natural inclination not to share one’s secrets. I can’t simply tell you.”

“Sure you can,” Twil grunted.

Felicity let out a heavy sigh and closed her eyes for a second. “It’s a sixth sense, built from parts of my own sense of touch and a … borrowed non-biological nervous system. But that’s like calling a car a metal horse. That is not what this is, and I cannot put it into words for you. If I’m right, I may be able to make some kind of rudimentary contact with whatever this Outsider of yours left behind in Evelyn. If it understands human thought. Maybe.”

“ … and then what?” I asked.

Felicity shrugged. “I make it leave.”

I stared at her for a long moment, and one kind of guilt overcame another. “You’re serious, aren’t you? I told you what the Lozzie-thing was like, and you want to convince a similar Outsider to leave, just like that? This is staggeringly dangerous. No, I think we can do the twelve-hour plan instead.”

“Yeah. Fucking yeah,” Twil said. “You’re gonna root around inside Evee’s head? No way, you-”

“Dangerous for her, Twil,” I nodded at Felicity. “Not Evee.”

“Oh.”

“I’m willing to try,” Felicity said softly.

“And then this thing fries your brain,” I said. “And we’re back to square one, with yet another body on our hands.”

“Another body?” Felicity murmured, but she didn’t push the question.

“Twelve hours,” I repeated to myself. “Alright, I can deal with this. Twil, you stay up here then, I’m going to make coffee and- … and get anything else we need. Lozzie, are you-”

Lozzie was staring into space, glassy eyed.

“Lozzie? Lozzie?”

“Mm!” Lozzie blinked and snapped to. I had the uncomfortable impression of a puppet pulling its own strings tight. She stared at me for a moment with a smile on her face.

“Lozzie, are you alright?”

“I’m sleeeeeepy. We’re all sleepy, aren’t we?” she asked nobody in particular, eyes wandering across the wall.

“ … yes. We are.” I frowned at her. “More coffee, like I said.”

“I’m still willing to try the riskier method,” Felicity said.

“Please refrain. It’s not worth the possibility of-”

Clatter clatter clatter went feet down below, rushing across the front room and piling up the stairs. We all stopped and looked at the open doorway to the corridor, and heard Kimberly calling “Wait, wait!”, breathless and panicked, and assumed she meant us.

“Kim?” I called. She finished clattering up the stairs, floorboards creaking under her feet.

Felicity hurried to cover her tattoos. I didn’t think there was much chance of timid and traumatised Kimberly stealing any of her secrets, but I didn’t say anything. I was too busy rolling my eyes and crossing to the door, ready to put down another problem before it bloomed into a crisis.

“Kimberly, what’s wrong now … ” I trailed off as I stuck my head around the door.

My eyes went wide. I think I blushed.

What was wrong was Praem – back in her body, full and fleshy and alive once more, gliding down the upstairs hallway toward me with her near-silent graceful tread and perfectly poised expressionless face. Kimberly panted for breath at the top of the stairs, hands on her knees, bent double. Somewhere down below, Zheng was laughing. I could only assume Praem was making a bee-line for Evelyn, for her unconscious mistress.

Praem was, to coin a phrase, fresh from the summoning circle.

As in, stark naked.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Supernatural revelation is one thing; it is another entirely to know in exhaustive detail just what sort of things are going bump in the night in one’s hometown.

Terror, denial, paranoia, these are all extreme responses, yes, but they are also rational. Few of us are truly suited for this side of the world, and there is no shame in it. Some days – even when we’re not in the middle of a crisis – I can barely deal with what I know, I want to curl up and hide, pretend none of it is real. Kimberly shouldn’t be involved at all, jumping at shadows and skirting a nervous breakdown. Often I suspected Evelyn herself would be much happier if she’d never known the truth behind reality. We all deal with it differently.

Detective Sargent Nicole Webb took notes.

“Let me get this straight-” she said.

“Not gonna find much o’ that round here,” Lozzie stage-whispered.

“You’re telling me these people,” Nicole continued, gesturing in little circles with her pen. “This esoteric mystery cult, right here, 21st century Britain, normal people walking around in the Goddamn street – not only are they doing real magic, but they’re after you. You specifically, Heather.”

I sighed and felt an unaccountable urge to apologise. “Yes.”

“Because – and stop me here if I’ve missed an essential building block – because you were abducted by a giant alien eyeball when you were nine, and it gave you magical powers?”

“That’s not … ” I sighed again. “Yes.”

“And now you seriously expect me to believe that you’re not some kind of chosen one?” Nicole chuckled and shook her head. She leafed back through her notes. “Bugger me.”

“The world doesn’t work that way.”

“Bloody well hope not.”

“If it did, I’d be considerably less afraid.”

Nicole glanced up from her notes, a tiny leather-bound pocketbook. She caught the look in my eyes and stopped laughing. “Right. Scared for your … Raine, was it?”

I squinted at her. “Yes. You do have her name spelled right?”

“’Course I have. Attention to detail, it’s part of the job.”

We’d decamped to the disused sitting room once more. Brainmath effort had left my knees weak and my stomach tender and my head throbbing. Had to sit down, and the soiled kitchen was no fit place for a civilised conversation, what with the bloodstained floor and Zheng sprawled all over like a sleepy sun-drenched jaguar. The food in her belly and the lack of anything to fight, kill, or eat seemed to have put her into a lethargic holding pattern. She’d waved off my invitation to join us, claiming she could hear perfectly well from where she sat.

Lozzie and Twil had helped me onto the old sofa, and somebody had the bright idea of handing me a bowl of cereal to calm my stomach, which worked admirably, the first real food I’d had in hours. Twil had returned to the kitchen to attempt more evidence removal, while I unfolded Sharrowford’s nighttime secrets, but she’d rejoined us again toward the end, brooding at Nicole from the doorway.

The detective had taken a seat on an ancient, half-collapsed armchair, and cracked jokes about how she needed “just the facts, ma’am”. One leg crossed over the other, back straight, chin high as she listened. She even let her hair down and re-tied it into a well-contained doubled-up pony-tail, the bun abandoned for now.

Somehow, she regained all her dignity, with no sign she’d been tied up in this same room not an hour ago.

“Yes, here she is,” Nicole confirmed. “Raine Philomena Haynes. I’ve got all the details I’ll need.”

“Read it back to me,” I croaked, then added, a touch too slow, “Please.”

Nicole raised an eyebrow, but did as I asked. “Twenty years old, twenty one in July. No known next of kin. Address is here, number 12 Barnslow drive, Sharrowford. She’s a student at Sharrowford University, studying PPE. No full time employment, but she does take some shifts in the student union bar. Short brown hair, brown eyes, about five eleven in height, athletic build.”

Hearing her reduced to such a cold description made me want to be sick. “That’s Raine.”

“Text me a picture of her and it’ll save time. You’ve got my number now, right?”

“Right,” I murmured.

Twil, lounging against the door frame in picture-perfect girl-gang thug mode, arms crossed and scowling, let out a sudden low growl.

Nicole visibly suppressed a flinch. “Wish you wouldn’t do that, werewolf girl.”

“Why?” Twil said. “Does it bother you?”

“I know you don’t like me, and you want to intimidate me, and yes. For your information that is very intimidating.”

“It is so not,” Lozzie chirped from her spot on the floor. Despite the ample space next to me on the sofa, Lozzie had chosen to sit cross-legged on the floor at my feet, pointed at Nicole and watching her face intently the whole time we’d been talking. “If you can say it’s scary, it’s not really scary.”

Nicole allowed herself a small, controlled laugh. “Interesting logic.”

“It’s not logic.” Lozzie pulled a disgusted face. “Blergh.”

Twil growled again.

“Drop it,” I snapped at her, then sighed and forced myself to be reasonable. “She’s helping us, Twil. I appreciate your feelings and your worries, but playing guard dog doesn’t help right now.”

“I don’t like that she’s keeping notes,” Twil said through clenched teeth. “Notes on us.”

Nicole shrugged with the notebook. “How else am I supposed to keep track of all this shit? Any detective worth their salt is going to be keeping notes, though I’ll admit it’s an unusual choice of subject matter.”

Twil frowned at her, thinking. “What about like … photographic memory?”

“That’s only on telly,” I said.

“What if somebody finds it and reads it?” Twil pressed.

“Nobody’d believe any of this anyway.” Nicole shrugged. “Worst case, I take a spell in the loony bin.”

“Don’t say that!” Lozzie squeaked.

“Besides, it’s not like I’m writing down your whole bloody cosmology, just things I can do something about.” She tapped a page with the end of her pen. “This Sarika woman, for example, I’d very much like to have a word with her, though she’s gonna be hard to pinpoint. That’s not exactly an uncommon name for British Indian women. Hell, I know a couple of Sarikas at the station. Your description wasn’t very remarkable either.”

“My apologies,” I croaked, but Nicole ignored the sarcasm.

“So, not much chance of finding her. Except … ” Nicole smiled thinly. “Except for mister Alexander Lilburne. Now that’s a man with quite a footprint.”

“A dead one,” Lozzie said – then smiled to herself.

“Yes, but I might be able to trace some of his contacts, the old-fashioned way. If I can turn up Amy Stack – if that’s her real name – I can lean on her. Somebody like that’s gonna have plenty of priors. If this Sarika was close to Alexander, or had any regular business dealings with him, she might crop up, if we’re lucky.” Nicole caught my eye and shot me a wink.

I nodded, but privately kept a steady hand on any hope. Finding Raine was still my responsibility, my method had the best chance of working. A washed up ex-homicide detective and a missing person’s report stood in distant third place. I wasn’t going to turn her down though.

“Would be a lot easier if your friend here could remember more details.” Nicole said, nodding toward Lozzie. “If Sarika was mister Lilburne’s girlfriend, and Lauren here is his little sister, then-”

“I was in a castle!” Lozzie repeated for the third time this last hour. “And you don’t know my name! Ssttzzz!” She made a zipping sound and drew her fingers across her mouth.

Nicole raised her hands in surrender. “Alright, castle, yes, right. Bet you’re glad to be out of there, Rapunzel.”

None of us laughed. Lozzie stared at the detective as one would at a misbehaving cat. I sighed and rubbed at the bridge of my nose.

“Tough crowd, okay,” Nicole continued, glancing back at her notes. “As for the rest of it, well, sounds like you’ve already shut down this conspiracy snatching homeless people off the streets. Wish you hadn’t chased the ringleader out of the city, I could have her charged with something.” She paused and sucked her teeth in thought. “Not like there’d be any evidence, I suppose. Does solve the mystery of the spike of missing persons cases over the last year, at least.”

“Cold comfort for the dead,” I croaked.

Nicole caught the chill in my eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and nodded instead. “I know. I’m sorry. My bedside manner’s shot to hell right now.”

“Bedside manner?”

“Yeah, you know. How you talk to the public, victims, that sort of thing.”

“ … so you don’t really care,” I said. “You don’t care that the cult were killing people? Because they didn’t matter, because they were homeless?”

“Of course I care.” She frowned at me. “Why else would I be sitting here asking you about it? Look, you work homicide for any number of years and you have to learn how to bottle your emotions up, or you’ll lose it. Yeah, look at me, I’m hardly some beer-swilling institutional racist who thinks all the bums deserve what they get.”

“ACAB,” Lozzie whispered.

“Yeah, I hear you,” Nicole grunted back.

Why had I goaded her? Why did I care what she thought? Detective Webb was not my friend. At best she was a potential ally, an asset; at the very least she was a diffused land mine. If she exited our lives and never came back, I’d count that as a good outcome.

“Detective … no … ” I scowled at myself, trying to think past the fog of exhaustion and too many hours strung out on adrenaline. “Nicole, why do you care?”

“Why do I care about dead homeless people? I dunno, maybe because I’m not a monster?”

“No, why do you care about any of this? Thank you for agreeing to file the missing persons report for Raine, but why are you interested in the rest? Why do you care?”

Nicole blinked twice and me and laughed, this time not controlled at all. “You prove to me that magic exists, and you’re asking why I care?”

“Ah … um … hmm.” I cleared my throat. Twil snorted a laugh at my expense too. “Well, yes, but that’s not actually what I meant.”

“I know what you meant, I’m just messing with you,” Nicole said. “Look, I’ll spell it out, I’m interested because I haven’t done real police work in years. My life’s a dead end. I got fuck all to live for most days except good weed and MMOS.” Nicole managed to say that without looking the least bit pathetic, in her long coat and her mask of professionalism. “Was thinking about quitting the force this year actually, but I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. PI work I suppose, but I doubt I’ve got it in me to follow cheating spouses and do light industrial espionage.” She tapped the notebook. “This all seems pretty damn real to me.”

“Magic is not a good choice for a mid-life crisis. You really don’t want to be involved, not unless you have to.”

“Maybe I do have to.”

Twil growled. Nicole flinched again and shot her a look. “And what was that one for?”

“You think I’m scary?” Twil said. “You ain’t seen nothing.”

“You’ll get eaten,” Lozzie added.

“Maybe.” Nicole shot her a wink. Lozzie turned her nose up and made a ‘humph’ sound. “I’d like to think I’m smart enough not to walk into Glasswick tower, after what you’ve told me is up there, but I almost have to see it for myself.”

“No. No you don’t,” I said, sighing and resisting the urge to put my face in my hands. “This is exactly what I meant.”

“You’re gonna diii-iie,” Lozzie sing-songed.

“Your Evee girl had the right idea about Glasswick tower,” Nicole said, dead serious. “Good instincts on her. Like to talk to her, once she’s up and about.”

Twil blinked at her. “ … what right idea? You mean blow it up?”

Nicole nodded. “Demolition.”

I stared at Nicole for a moment as my mouth struggled to make sounds. “I … you … you can’t be serious.”

“Perfectly safe if you do it the right way.” A slightly mad smile crested Nicole’s face as she spoke, the detective’s mask dropping away before a moment of excitement. “Set up whatever you need to, cast your spells or whatever, then call in a fake bomb threat from a burner mobile phone, preferably from way over in another county, or drive to Scotland or something. Further away the better, bounce it through a VPN over the internet, call from another dimension. Can you do that?”

“No,” I grunted.

“Sorry. Anyway, a fake bomb threat gets the other tower nice and emptied out. You wait for the police cordon to go up, but before the bomb squad goes in. Not difficult, we don’t have local resources for that anymore, not since nearly twenty years back. So you wait until it’s clear, and then-” she clicked her fingers. “Boom.”

“ … you’re a police officer. You’re not meant to instruct teenage girls how to blow up buildings.”

“Would that actually work?” Twil asked with baited breath. “Fuck that place.”

“This seems like a good exception to an otherwise sensible rule,” Nicole said to me. “Assuming you’re not lying, which is an interesting question, isn’t it?” She suddenly stopped, made a ‘hmm’ noise, and frowned at me in a speculative sort of way.

“What?” Twil bristled instantly, unfolding her arms.

“Yes, what do you mean?” A sinking feeling dragged the pit of my stomach. Had all our work been for nothing?

Nicole held up a hand to stall us. “No no, don’t get me wrong, I believe you about all the magic stuff. You’ve convinced me, you don’t have to call Gandalf over and turn me into a frog. You’re all wizards, mages, werewolves, whatever. We all live in a very stupid universe, fine, I’ll probably have a nervous breakdown about it this evening, but for practical purposes we’re past that.” She paused, raised her chin, and pointed at me with her pen. “But what if you’re not the good guys?”

“Ooooh! Ooooh, she’s clever!” Lozzie lit up, clapping her hands.

I realised exactly what Nicole was doing; the way she spoke almost compelled an answer. Was it her tone of her voice, or the way she made eye contact? Or something more subtle, some aspect of her body language I couldn’t read? She’d built a rapport, and now out came the tripwires and traps, waiting for one of us to blunder into them. It took a considerable effort of will to keep my mouth shut.

Twil wasn’t so resilient. “Fuck you, we’re the … we … what? What do you even mean?”

“What if you’re actually just as bad as this cult you’ve been telling me about?” Nicole’s eyes moved to each of us in turn, watching our reactions. Lozzie stuck her tongue out. “Or they haven’t done half the things you’ve said they have, and you’re feeding me a pack of lies to get me on your side? Police detective stumbles into a situation, maybe you decide to make the best of it, present yourselves as the victims, and I can’t verify anything. Hell, Heather, you’ve admitted to two cases of homicide, one murder and one manslaughter. I should be putting you in cuffs and taking you down the station.”

I watched her carefully too, with a lump in my throat. She let her last statement stand for itself, a threat or a warning, I couldn’t even tell – it worked as one, but not in the way she intended.

Earlier, when she’d been bound and gagged, I’d leapt straight to killing her as the only answer. Only Lozzie had made me see sense. A potential was awake in me, and I didn’t like it.

“But you won’t,” I said – and hiccuped once.

Nicole raised both hands. “It’s just a hypothetical. For the record, I do sort of trust you’re telling the truth. For now.”

“Hey!” Twil barked at her.

“Twil, down,” I grumbled.

“So, other than you three, the girl upstairs in a … ‘magical coma’,” Nicole pronounced those words very carefully. “And the giant in the kitchen, that leaves the girl hiding in back. Didn’t think I’d forget about her, did you?”

I frowned through the growing haze of exhaustion. “What?”

“The one with the cute hair. Short. Scared of everything. What was she, a ghost?”

“Leave Flowsie alone,” Lozzie chirped.

“Oh, Kimberly.” I took a deep breath and pulled myself together. “She’s a mage, but inexperienced. She was with the cult, and we … well.”

“Rescued her,” Twil growled. Didn’t take an animal behaviour expert to read that warning note – back off, detective.

“ … right,” Nicole said at length. “Rescued, I see.”

“She’s already told us about everything she was involved in,” I said. “Don’t make things harder for her. I’m reasonably sure she has some kind of PTSD.”

“What?” Twil blinked at me. “She does? Kim?”

Lozzie stuck her tongue out and rolled her eyes at Twil.

“What do you think?” I asked, and Twil grimaced.

“I’m trained in exactly this sort of thing,” Nicole said, her voice losing its edge. “They used to send me into interview rooms when we had a semi-cooperative witness, scared and difficult. Soft touch, you know? I might be able to get her to talk about things that you haven’t.”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “Not now. She’s working.”

Nicole acquiesced with a nod. “Maybe some other time.” She puffed out a breath, tucked her notebook back into her coat pocket, and stood. “Suppose it’s time I got back to work anyway. Sooner or later people are gonna be asking where I’ve got to.”

“Just like that?” Twil grunted. “You’re done?”

“Just like that.” Nicole shrugged. “You lot are fascinating people, I’m sure, but some of us have day jobs. That is unless you want an extra pair of capable hands around, when this other wizard shows up to treat your friend upstairs?”

“We’ll be fine,” I grunted, and picked myself up as well. Lozzie bounced to her feet too. “If you want to help, look for Sarika. If not, if you want to go back to your life … ” I ran out of words, stopped myself from saying ‘please don’t’, ‘please look for Raine’, help.

“Better than pushing papers,” she said.

“I like pushing papers.”

Nicole laughed. “Then you’re in the wrong vocation, aren’t you?” 

As we watched Nicole leave, walking down the garden path and along Barnslow drive with a glance back over her shoulder, her long coat swishing around her legs, Twil growled a question half to me and half to herself. “What if she dobs us in anyway?”

“Then several of her colleagues will die, Outside,” I said. Twil blinked at me, brought up short.

“ … wasn’t that like … a bluff?”

“I don’t think so,” I murmured. “I don’t think it was.”

==

Not quite the same as being ripped raw and bleeding from the Eye’s clutches, but Lozzie saved me a second time that morning. She found me nodding off on the toilet.

‘Found’ is perhaps putting it a bit too strongly. I doubt she strayed from the bathroom door the whole time. She probably heard me sit down, heard the sigh escape my lips, and the long silence as my prediction came to pass; as soon as I relaxed all the exhaustion of the last twelve hours came rushing up to overwhelm me.

“Heatherrr? Heatherrrrr?”

I blinked awake to the sight of Lozzie sticking her head around the door, her poncho’s hood hanging down with her hair, elfin face peering at me.

“Mm!” I inhaled sharply and sat up from where I’d been drooping. “Loz- wha-” I blinked, bleary eyed, breathing too fast, feeling a hundred times worse than when I’d stepped into the bathroom. My head was throbbing and my chest felt fragile as thin porcelain. “ … Lozzie, I’m on the toilet.”

“I know! I knocked.”

I blinked at her – and put my knees together, self-conscious despite Lozzie’s complete lack of embarrassment.

“Your eyes were closed,” she said.

“Mmm. Mm, they were. Let me finish, okay? … please?”

Lozzie pulled a pouting careful thought. “You need sugar,” she announced, and promptly shut the door again. I heard her patter across the hall and tumble down the stairs in a staccato of footsteps.

Getting myself moving again was more of a challenge than I was up to. Part of me seriously advocated for more sleep right here.

I hadn’t felt this drained in months, not since my last – and, God willing, final – bout of nightmares sent by the Eye, the grinding sleep deprivation that Raine and the Fractal had finally banished. Too much had happened since last evening, between the home invasion and Wonderland, Zheng and the long walk home, our uninvited guest and my unconscionable knee-jerk solution. I’d pushed brainmath out when I knew I shouldn’t, and I’d finally run down all the adrenaline in my body. Now, I was ready to drop.

Couldn’t even finish up properly in the bathroom. For a long time I just stared at the wall, a limbo state like being ill in bed, unable to move but unwilling to sleep. As I dried my hands, I put my forehead against the cool surface of the wall and closed my eyes. A moment later the bathroom door opened again, but I couldn’t summon the energy to respond.

“ … Heather?” Lozzie ventured a few seconds later.

“Mmhmm.”

“Is that comfy?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then you shouldn’t do it.” One of her hands found my head and gently patted my hair.

“Just a moment. Just rest for a moment. I’ll be … be fine.”

“Mm-mmm, mm-mmmmmm,” Lozzie chirped with agreement – then took my hand in hers and gently peeled me away from the comfy sleeping spot on the cold hard wall. I grumbled, but allowed her to guide me the few paces out of the bathroom and across the creaking hallway floorboards, though I drew the line when she tried to pull me into my bedroom.

“No- no, I need to stay on my feet,” I said, blinking and trying to rouse myself. “This Felicity woman will be here soon, I can’t rest.”

“Yeah okay!” Lozzie lit up with her bouncy smile and held a bottle out to me. A neon-blue energy drink, one of Raine’s, the label proudly declaring how much caffeine it would dump into my bloodstream.

I hadn’t actually expected Lozzie to agree, let alone egg me on. I was so used to Raine seamlessly coaxing me into looking after myself, that for a moment I didn’t know what to do.

Then I accepted the bottle, twisted the cap off, and took a deep, glugging drink. Wiped my mouth on my sleeve. Burped. “ … thank you. Can we get coffee? Coffee would be divine right now.”

Lozzie pulled a big wince. “Kitchen smells of blood.”

“I can make coffee. I’ll need to take a shower before all this is over anyway. You don’t have to follow if you can’t stand it.”

Lozzie nodded thankfully. “Keeping safe distance, hands inside, mind the gap.”

And make coffee I did, two mugs of it one after the other. The first lukewarm and downed without pleasure, the second hot, extra-strong, loaded with sugar and little regard for what this concentration of caffeine was doing for my health.

I had to keep my head together, deal with Felicity, and then find the reserves of energy to locate Raine. Shaving a few years off my life was a small price; if I’d never met Raine in the first place, I was certain I’d have been dead by thirty anyway.

Lozzie stayed safely in the front room while I brewed what she called my ‘go-faster bean-juice’, and I didn’t blame her. Twil was still trying to clean up the worst of the mess, but she’d obviously reached the end of her motivation. Getting blood off a slate floor was harder than it looked, let alone figuring out what to do with all the soiled sponges and rags, especially when one had to contend with a seven-foot mouthy demon trying to bait you into accepting a duel.

“I am doing no such thing, shaman. It is not ‘bait’.”

“She called me a fucking poodle!” Twil said. “Overgrown bitch.”

“Save for it for when we’re not in the middle of a crisis, perhaps?” I said. “That’s just a suggestion, by the way.”

Zheng grumbled, stretched, and crossed her ankles on the table. At least she’d finally taken her boots off.

“Maybe help Twil clean up?” I shot back over my shoulder, as I carried my coffee into the front room, eager to get back to Lozzie.

That precipitated another sniping match between Twil and Zheng. If I’d been less tired and less focused, I probably would have intervened, but something in Zheng’s body language told me she was only playing now, like an older cat toying with a younger one. She didn’t ripple with the tension of real violence, all her musculature exhibited an economy of motion, a bone-deep relaxation.

Lucky her. Zheng didn’t care, not really, not in the way we mere monkeys did.

When I stepped into the front room with my coffee, Lozzie was gone.

No mistaking her absence from the soft shadows, no place for her to hide even among the piles of old boxes, no wispy blonde hair or the light touch of her feet crossing the floorboards.

Her absence woke me more than any amount of caffeine.

“Loz- … ” My voice came out strangled. My heart stopped. My eyes felt wet. She’d gone. She’d gone again. I couldn’t believe the pain, more sharp and sudden than I’d expected. “ … Lozzie?”

“I’m up here!” A hand poked out from around the top of the stairs, and Lozzie came pattering down. “This house has the best windows but they’re all in funny places, why is there one at the top of the stairs like that but none next to the front door? You can’t see who’s creeping up on you, it’s really silly, it’s like the house was built for things except living in. Which makes sense, right? It’s a magician’s house, isn’t it? Heather? … Heather?” Lozzie bobbed to a stop in front of me, tilting her head back and forth and peering at my eyes.

“ … I’m fine, I’m sorry. I … I thought you’d gone … somewhere.” I sniffed and wiped my eyes, and covered my emotional mistake by sipping my piping hot coffee and almost burning my tongue.

“I double promised! That’s twice as powerful as a regular promise. Haven’t you ever done a double promise before?”

“ … no, as a matter of fact, I haven’t.”

I’d learnt Lozzie’s way of thinking, back in the dreams we’d shared, and allowed myself a moment of comfort in simply regarding her and recalling the sensation of those dream-land meetings. Carefree, uninhibited, unafraid. She looked back at me with her permanently sleepy gaze, her eye muscles never quite working right.

“Heather?”

I had so much to ask her. “I’m fine,” I lied. “I was just thinking about you.”

Another bouncy smile leapt onto her face. “I think about you a lot too!”

“You … Lozzie,” I sighed at her. If we’d been in any other circumstances, I may have blushed, though I know she didn’t mean it in that way. “Thank you, I think? Oh, Lozzie, I have-”

“-so many questions-”

“-to ask-”

“-you!”

I blinked at her in shock as we finished each others sentences. Lozzie giggled and bit her lower lip, then flipped up the hood on her poncho and waggled the attached rabbit-ears.

“ … I have to admit, that was a little bit creepy,” I managed.

“Noooo! No no no, not creepy!”

“You’re not in my head somehow, are you?”

“No! We just know each other really well, I think? Of course you have lots of questions, I would! I do! But you-”

“-want to-”

“-keep them practical-”

“-for now. Yes.” I clamped a hand to my mouth, as if trying to catch my own words. Lozzie giggled. “Uh- maybe, maybe don’t do that again. Please. That’s … ”

“You did it that time, though,” she pointed out.

“I did? I did, yes. Okay, no, that’s not normal.”

“You mean Raine and you never finish each other’s sentences?”

“Sometimes. Not like that.”

“But you have sex together! She’s in your head more than I am. I’m just really, really good at not thinking, and that means I can think your thoughts too. There’s no magic to it, I promise!”

I gave up and took a long swig of coffee instead. Deciphering the inside of Lauren Lilburne’s head could wait; she was right, I needed to stick to practical questions – the dreams, where she’d been all these weeks, her contact with Maisie, all of that could wait.

“Lozzie, what was that thing you used to save me from the Eye? The … knight?”

“Oooh, yes! That’s what I should call them!” Lozzie bounced on her toes and clapped her hands together in delight. “Didn’t it look cool? And it worked, which is the really important bit, yes. Doesn’t matter if something looks cool if it breaks … but … mmm,” Lozzie’s frowned in difficult thought. She bit her lip. “I suppose he did break, in the end.”

“He? … he did?” I stammered, lost for a moment “It?”

“He.” Lozzie nodded. “Wasn’t it cool though?”

I tried to picture the shining apparition in armour, but it proved difficult. Mostly I remembered the Eye’s tentacles inside my mind, and that brought a wave of nausea up from my guts and made my heart rate spike, until I closed my eyes and forced it down. All I could recall was an impression of living steel animated by lightning. “I was a bit preoccupied at that particular moment.”

“You were, yes! I’ll wanna show you all the rest of them, but we can’t get to them right now.”

“There’s more of them? Wait, Lozzie, back up. You made that thing?”

“Mmhmm!” She nodded, then shook her head. “I made the shells, but the kami inside want to help, because I’m me. I told you I’d get help, and it worked! One alone is sort of weak though, hmmm.” She bit her lower lip in thought, eyes far away for a moment.

My brain struggled to catch up. “You made … knights, with pneuma-somatic creatures inside? To block out the Eye, in Wonderland?”

“Yeah!” Lozzie threw both arms in the air. “Praise me!”

“ … I love you,” I said, an unbidden smile coming to my face, despite everything, despite my best friend in a coma and my lover missing and my world crumbling apart. Lozzie let out a little ‘oop!’ noise as I pulled her into a spontaneous hug, giggling and hugging me back. When I let go I had to wipe my eyes on my sleeve.

Couldn’t let myself think about Maisie right now. Couldn’t let myself hope. Focus.

“Can you … ” I struggled, swallowed. “Can you bring one of those knights here? We need everything we can get to save Raine, every little … no?”

Lozzie’s stage-perfect wince made her answer crystal clear. “They don’t work up here, they fall apart. Like a deep-sea fish brought up to the surface, they’ll just – ploop,” she made a popping noise with her mouth and spread her hand out. “Sort of like me, you know?” She giggled, nervous and awkward all of a sudden. “And I can’t get Outside right now anyway, not with mister handsy whenever we try to leave.”

“Yes, yes that’s a good point.” I nodded, putting the issue of Lozzie’s Knights of the Spooky Table to one side for the moment. “What about … what about Tenny? You said-”

“She’ll be fine!” Lozzie chirped. “She’ll be out of the cocoon in a couple of days, I think, but it might be longer because she stayed in larval form too long and absorbed waaaay too much information. I don’t know what that does?”

She stopped – an actual question.

“Neither do I?” I tried. “Lozzie, I can’t do the things you can. I can’t manipulate spirits.”

She pouted. “It’s not manipulation. She’s growing.”

“Okay, so what’s going to come out of the cocoon?”

Lozzie shrugged, then frowned at me in sudden strange worry. “You did treat her nice, didn’t you?”

“Ah, yes. Yes, I think I get the idea.” I cast my mind back to when Evelyn had trapped Tenny inside a magic circle, and decided not to mention that. I took another swig of my almost-empty coffee, and realised my hand was shaking. I knew what I had to ask, and how it was the first step on a long chain that might lead me down to dark places – failure, or worse.

“Lozzie, I’m almost afraid to ask – uh, actually I am afraid to ask. Very. You said you might have an idea about how to find Raine.”

“Mmhmm!” Lozzie nodded. She swept one arm back to indicate the front door. “We can just ask.”

“ … ask who?”

“The kami, who else?”

“Oh. I actually tried that this morning, and they ignored me.”

“Mmm?!” Lozzie made a sound like a surprised chimpanzee. “What? Why?”

“I don’t think I’m very popular,” I said in lieu of a real explanation.

“But I am!”

==

Beyond the boundary of the garden wall Sharrowford’s pneuma-somatic life skittered and slithered, stalked and strutted, floated and flitted, a natural world – if horribly unnatural at the best of times – carrying on as normal, while we jumped-up apes had our crises and dramas.

“I just hate the idea of stuff I can’t see, you know? It’s creepy as shit,” Twil said, staring at Lozzie out in the middle of the road.

“Trust me, seeing doesn’t make it any less creepy,” I replied.

“Huh.” Twil walked a few paces along the top of the garden wall, keeping level with Lozzie.

We were quite conspicuous – Twil standing on the waist-high wall, on lookout like a gargoyle with her hands in her pockets, me fretting and shivering on the pavement, wrapped in coat and scarf in a bid to keep warm, and Lozzie standing in the middle of the street, speaking and gesticulating to unseen entities, unseen to everyone except me – but Barnslow drive was dead quiet, only stagnant puddles and moldering leaves to witness three strange girls going about some very strange business. I looked and felt like hell, but if the need arose I could pass myself off as a university student with a terrible hangover.

“How much longer she gonna be?” Twil asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

“Wanna get back inside already,” Twil all but growled through her teeth. “Don’t like Evee being alone.”

“Zheng’s inside.”

“Yeah.”

Kimberly was in the house too, but I dropped the subject. We’d looked in on her before we’d stepped outdoors, hidden away in Evelyn’s magical workshop, down on her hands and knees drawing a magic circle on the floor around Praem’s wooden bones. She’d looked dead-eyed and drained, scrubbing away incorrect portions of the circle and muttering to herself as she worked.

“What’s it look like?” Twil interrupted my chain of thought.

“ … weird.”

Over the last few minutes, Lozzie had called together a growing gaggle of spirit creatures, mostly via waving her arms and whistling, pointing at one or two warped monsters like they were cheeky puppies trying to hide from a vet’s visit, touching scales and brittle fur and stroking things that made my skin crawl. They mobbed her ankles, sat to attention, listened attentively to her whispered greetings and requests. As we watched, two spirits – a blobby humanoid with skin like dead slugs and a bird-like monster with three spindly legs – peeled off from the group and vanished into the depths of the city.

“I think it’s working,” I muttered, trying not to hope. “She’s making progress, she-”

“Car coming,” Twil snapped. I looked up the road, following her nod.

“I see it too. Lozzie? Lozzie?” I raised my voice, but she went on talking to the spirits, waving her arms and pointing, drawing a map in the air with her fingertip. “Lozzie, there’s a car coming. Lozzie!”

“Uh, Heather,” Twil said, and hopped down off the wall. She jerked a thumb at the approaching car. “I think this is our girl. Old range rover, right?”

“Oh, oh shoot, now? Lozzie, get out of the road,” I called, splitting my attention. “Twil, I can’t- I can’t wade into that. There’s too much, and you can’t see it. Please?”

“Right you are,” Twil nodded. She stepped out into the road. I averted my eyes from the gruesome spectacle of her passing through pneuma-somatic flesh to take Lozzie by the arm. Lozzie giggled and went “oops!” and then they both clattered back onto the pavement beside me. I turned just in time to see the pack of spirits scattering in a dozen different directions. A hound-ghoul thing sprinted right past me on all fours, racing down to the far end of Barnslow drive and the task Lozzie had set.

“Ooooh, that was nice, seeing everyone,” Lozzie chirped, a great big smile on her face. I frowned at her, but we didn’t have time to discuss the philosophical implications of that.

“Think we should get inside?” Twil asked. She stepped in front of Lozzie and I, watching the car as it slowed.

Part of me wanted to say yes.

“We’re fiiiiine. We’re surrounded by friends,” Lozzie said, gesturing at the rooftops and trees.

The approaching car was exactly the sort we’d been told to look out for. A battered old range rover in dark green, the edges of its bodywork eaten by chains of rust and caked in the sort of dirt patterns that came only from sitting in place for months on end. Once a luxury item but now undoubtedly a nightmare to keep running, despite the healthy purring of the powerful engine as it pulled to a stop a safe distance from us.

The side windows were tinted, but the windscreen was not.

“ … you … you think that’s her?” Twil asked.

I stared too, confused for a moment as the woman in the car examined us. She looked over at the house, then down at her hands or into her lap, seemed to take a steadying breath, and finally killed the engine.

“Yes, Twil,” I said. “I think it’s safe to assume this is her.”

“I already don’t like her,” Twil hissed.

“Twil,” I scolded, half-aware of Lozzie scurrying behind me and clinging to my shoulders, peering around me. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“No, it’s not the- shit,” Twil grimaced. “It’s not the way she looks, it’s … I dunno.”

The woman in the car reached over into the passenger footwell and lifted a large sports bag over her shoulder. She partially unzipped it and stuck a gloved hand inside, keeping it there as she opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement.

“Hello?” I tried. “Felicity? You are- oh.” My voice caught in my throat. I hiccuped.

She kept her eyes on us, kept one hand on the half-open door – and kept the end of the bag pointed in our general direction.

Twil grit her teeth and bristled with threat. “Hey! Hey, what the fuck is that? What are you doing?”

The woman didn’t say anything, but she did flinch, quite hard. Her single good eye flicked between us.

Felicity Amber Hackett – her full name, as I learnt a little later – wore a heavy dark cardigan with obvious repair at the wrists and high neck, a pair of thick comfortable jeans, black leather gloves, and sturdy boots. She also had the most extensive visible scarring I’d ever seen in real life. Even with her pointing a concealed weapon at us, my heart went out to the human being in front of me. One cannot witness such a sight and not feel the echo of old pain on one’s own skin.

Fully one half of her face was consumed by burn scar.

The left half. Old, very old, the skin rough and ridged. The scar stretched from where her hairline should be, down across brow and eye and cheek and jaw and throat, narrowly missing her nose, and vanished down inside the neck of her cardigan. Impossible to hide, and she made no effort to, except the way her reddish-brown hair fell naturally about her face. Beneath her hair, I could tell she had no left ear.

Her afflicted eye was a milky-white, sight burned away long ago. The mystery of her mumble was solved too – the left corner of her mouth was engulfed in the scarring, a small portion of her lips missing. Perhaps speaking normally was uncomfortable for her. Perhaps it was painful. I felt awful for assuming some dark supernatural cause.

Beneath the scarring, Felicity was hardly an intimidating person. Tall, maybe six feet, willowy but brittle-looking, as if moving did not come naturally to her. Mid-thirties perhaps, or older.

The healthy side of her face showed an unguarded skittish softness, better suited to owning a cosy bookstore or a flower shop, not being a mage.

Perhaps I was projecting.

“Hey-” Twil barked again.

“Felicity, yes?” I spoke quickly, struggling to disarm this before it got worse. “I’m Heather, I’m the one you spoke to on the phone. We’re not here to intercept you, we were doing something unrelated. Don’t point that at us, whatever it is.”

“Pointing is rude,” Lozzie chirped over my shoulder.

“It won’t work anyway, I can pluck bullets out of the air,” I forced myself to say, leaving out the fact I’d only done it once.

“She can! It’s true!” Lozzie cheered for me.

Twil just growled again.

Felicity let out a sudden hard breath. She swung the sports bag away, but still kept her right hand inside. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Precautions. You understand? You must understand.”

She spoke in that same half-mumble. I was right about her mouth, she spoke mostly out of the right side,

“Fuckin’ ‘ell,” Twil said, aghast. “Three girls in the middle of the street, what kinda ‘precautions’ do you need for that?”

“I don’t know what any of you are,” Felicity said, her tone almost apologetic. “And yes, yes, I’m Felicity. Heather, yes?”

“Yes,” I repeated. I stepped forward and offered her my hand, with Lozzie in tow. Felicity hesitated, then closed the car door with a soft thump, and slowly let go of whatever she was holding inside the bag. She shook my hand. Strong grip. “This is Lozzie, she’s …”

“You have really nice eyes,” Lozzie said. Her tone left no room for doubt as to her sincerity. A genuine compliment. Felicity blinked at her.

“It’s complicated,” I said. “And this is Twil, she’s a werewolf, so you were probably right to point a gun at her.”

“Hey!”

“She only bites on command,” I said. Twil spluttered.

“I take it this is the place then?” Felicity glanced sidelong at the house. “It does look the part. Very Saye.”

I nodded. “Yes it is, and it does. Thank you for coming.”

She stared at me, and swallowed. “ … I have to warn you first. Uh,” she struggled for a moment, wetting her lips and casting about at the three of us. “Just you three? Three kids, is that it?”

“We’re all adults here,” I said, leaving out the issue that I actually didn’t know Lozzie’s real age.

“Damn right,” Twil grunted.

“And we should get inside,” I said. “Because I’ve had an incredibly stressful morning and it’s very cold out here. And Evelyn is waiting.”

“Of course she is, of course, I- I’d love to see her- I-” Felicity let out a long sigh and raised a gloved hand. “Listen, this is very important, before I step foot in that house.” She paused and glanced back at her car as if expecting to see something there, before turning to us again. “While I’m here, regardless of how long, if it’s three hours or three days – if you see a little girl, dressed in black, don’t approach her, and don’t talk to her.”

“What.”

“It-” Felicity struggled, deeply uncomfortable. “It’s something that follows me.”

“What the fuck.” Twil said. “Heather?”

I stared at Felicity, at her guilt and self-horror, her awkward discomfort. “This is the thing I heard on the phone. When Evee called you months ago, yes?”

Felicity nodded. “Only while I’m present in the building.”

“The house is warded,” I said.

“I don’t think that’ll make any difference.”

“Is it dangerous? Fuck!” Twil turned and spread her arms, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “This is all we need.”

“Dangerous emotionally. Just don’t engage it in conversation. It’ll try to upset you, but it won’t initiate unless you do. Look, it probably won’t even show itself, I just have to warn you.”

“Why didn’t you mention this on the phone?” I asked, harder than I’d intended. Twil was right, we didn’t need more complications. “That you’re carrying some supernatural parasite here?”

“ … because then you might not have asked me to come,” Felicity said, with an apologetic shrug. “Because then Evelyn might die, without me having tried everything I can.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Making credible threats did not come naturally to me, but lately I’d become worryingly good at this.

“Or I have to kill her.”

My ultimatum hung in the late-morning shadows of the old sitting room, on a dingy winter’s day. A self-directed expression of horror. An admission to myself of what I had to do. A half-apology to the police detective, Nicole Webb: ‘look, you’re just doing your job, but you’ve stumbled onto something too far beyond your sphere of experience, and it’s going to be the end of you, unless you start believing in fairy tales.’

Perhaps she read the certainty in my voice. Maybe she used that detective experience to deduce that I’d committed murder before. Or more likely the whole being bound at wrists and ankles thing did the trick.

Nicole Webb took my words as very credible threat indeed.

“Hey, hey hey hey now,” she said. Her widening eyes betrayed her struggle to stay in control. She raised her wire-bound hands and wet her lips. “You’ve already got me exactly where you want me, you can make any demands you like, any deal you want, and I can’t say no, right? I can’t say no. This doesn’t have to end poorly for any of us, does it? There’s a dozen better solutions we can come to, before doing something you can’t take back.”

“I- that wasn’t- I know that.” My thin resolve buckled under Nicole’s obvious fear. “I don’t have anything against you, I don’t want to make you suffer. I just … I need you to not exist.”

“Ahhh shit.” Twil grimaced. “Heather, are you serious?”

“What do you think?” I tried to snap at her, but my words trickled out, slow and cold. “What do you think happens if we let her go, Twil? You think Felicity will be able to help Evee if we’re all in a police station holding cell? You think we’ll be able to find Raine? The … detective here can ruin everything.”

Twil grit her teeth and cast about. “Yeah but, we don’t have to murder her.”

“Yes, listen to her,” Nicole said, wetting her lips again and speaking fast this time. “I understand you’re panicked, you’re in a corner, you’ve got this personal crisis going on – but the last thing you want on your hands is a dead police officer. I wasn’t lying about bodies being hard to hide, it’s exceptionally difficult. Plus you’d have to find my car and get rid of it, and there’s a paper trail at the station that points to this house. If I go missing, my colleagues start following leads.”

“We already found your car,” I said, looking down and picking at the threadbare carpet. “Why am I even talking to you?”

Nicole swallowed, loudly. “Look, Heather, you seem like a reasonable person, and you too, Twil, and um … ” Nicole’s eyes went over my shoulder.

“I’m a secret,” Lozzie said.

“Okay. Look, nobody here has to get arrested, not today, not tomorrow, not a year from now. None of this has to go anywhere. I can pretend I didn’t see anything.” She managed to pull a smile, shaking beneath the surface. “If I’ve got a choice between being a bent copper or ending up in a landfill, I’ll choose being a bent copper every time. I’m not a superhero, yeah? I’m just doing my job here. I’d like to go home at the end of the day.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and hunched over, curling up around the dull ache in my stomach muscles and the tighter ache in my heart; I had to do this, but I couldn’t.

Homicide in self-defence, or murdering a real monster in Alexander Lilburne, or even killing those who would send me back to the Eye, those I could do. Threatening Catherine Gillespie with death, a woman who deserved at least life in prison, that cost me no sleep. For those things I could find justification somewhere in my messed-up little heart.

This? A bystander was pleading for her life. She had nothing to do with those who wished me ill, no responsibility for anything that had ever happened to me. She spoke perfect sense, but I was going to send her Outside, to die alone and unmarked in an alien place.

“You’re too much of a risk,” I hissed. “It’s impossible. Twil, Lozzie, please leave the … the room … Shut the door. I-I can’t-”

Lozzie fell on me like a blanket fresh from the tumble dryer. “Oh Heather, no, no no,” she whispered. “No.”

I opened my eyes and found a very distraught Lozzie staring back at me. She’d fallen to her knees and wrapped me in a hug, biting her bottom lip, big eyes filled with wild horror.

“I don’t want you to watch this,” I said.

“No! Heather, no!” She shook her head emphatically, wispy blonde hair flying everywhere. “What’s gotten into your head? We have to get it back out!”

“Lozzie, I have to get rid of her. She’s-” I glanced at Nicole, who had gone very still indeed. “She’s dangerous. She’ll-”

“Dangerparty is our default setting. I’m dangerous, you’re dangerous. We can all be dangerous together.”

“You don’t understand.” I felt so distant, so isolated. Even Lozzie didn’t get it, wasn’t able to shoulder the responsibility. “I’m sorry, but sometimes … we have to … do things that aren’t right, because-”

“I’ve heard all that before! That’s what he used to say.”

My mind hit a brick wall, from sixty miles an hour to nothing in the blink of an eye. “Your … your brother?”

“He had good intentions too. At first.” Lozzie sniffed back tears, nodding and biting her lip.

I shook my head, still clinging to this false resolve. “You’re the one who asked me to-” I couldn’t finish. You’re the one who asked me to kill your brother, Lozzie. You began this, didn’t you?

“I’m sorry,” she squeaked. “You shouldn’t do it when there’s other ways?”

Not an instruction or a demand, not even a suggestion. A halting, confused question from a girl who didn’t live in this reality ninety-five percent of the time, and it made more sense than all my justifications. One should probably not kill people, if there’s any other way.

Drawing back from the edge was harder than approaching it. I’d convinced myself that being a leader meant making tough choices, just like Raine, but I’d gotten it all wrong. All turned around.

I hiccuped once, and hugged Lozzie back.

“Since when are you my moral compass?” I said, sniffing back tears of my own and half-laughing. Lozzie sobbed once into my shoulder, little hands pressing at my back. “I’m meant to be the normal one around here.”

When Lozzie and I finally disentangled ourselves from each other – wiping our eyes and holding hands for a fleeting moment – I knew we’d shredded any credibility in my threat to Nicole’s life.

But I didn’t care.

The detective watched us warily, as I turned back to her. Anybody else would have been stupid enough to say something at that point, a ‘so, not going to kill me now?’ or ‘thank you, Lozzie’, or some other inane, gloating statement that mistook real moral fibre for weakness. But Nicole swallowed, dipped her head in a nod, and waited.

This was the actual tough choice.

“We’re going to do this the hard way,” I said, and saying it felt so much easier. “I’m sorry, in advance, for what I’m about to do to you.”

“Aversion therapy,” Lozzie stage-whispered, and flipped up the hood on her poncho, the attached floppy rabbit ears falling down over her face.

“Hey,” Nicole said. “If you need me to believe that you’re all werewolves and wizards or whatever, that’s fine, we can work with that. That’s somewhere to start. I’ll- I can try to accept that, if that’s what you need.”

I sighed at her and shook my head. “Humouring us isn’t enough. If you’ve never been exposed to the supernatural, then your mind always finds a way to explain what you’ve experienced. Unless it’s extreme enough or sustained enough to break you, make you accept it or go mad. And then you’re in, and you can never really go back.”

Nicole’s eyes tightened with obvious scepticism. “You’re telling me not to trust my own senses? Forgive me, but that’s a classic manipulative trick.”

“No, I’m saying the opposite. You’ve ignored your senses twice this morning, and you didn’t even notice yourself doing it. Twil could hold you down – how? She’s not exactly heavily muscled.”

“’Ey,” Twil muttered a complaint.

“She’s a slender teenage girl, you’re a veteran police officer,” I continued as Nicole looked Twil up and down. “How’d she do that? And you’ve seen Zheng. She’s seven feet tall. Seven feet.”

Nicole sucked on her teeth. “So what, you’re going to keep me tied up until I develop Stockholm Syndrome, believe the things you believe?”

I sighed, harsher this time. “No, I need you to accept it now, because we’re in the middle of multiple crises.”

“Hold up, hold up,” Twil interrupted, a nasty grin at the corners of her mouth. She cracked her knuckles. “You know what? This looks like a job for me.”

“We need to do this gently, Twil, she could lose her mind.”

“She’ll be fiiiiiine,” Lozzie said, peering out from behind those cloth rabbit ears. “Fuz-zy, fuz-zy,” she began chanting, pounding the floor with her fists.

“Yeah, don’t worry big H. I’ve got this one.” Twil stepped up as if on a stage, raising her chin, cracking a nasty smirk. “Plus, I’ve always wanted to do this. Bet you’ve seen a lot of shit, right, copper? Dead bodies and stuff? Gunshot wounds? Car crashes?”

Nicole looked to me and Lozzie for help as Twil rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath. “ … yes? I’ve seen my share. Where is this going?”

“Somewhere bad,” I warned her. “Brace yourself.”

“Fuz-zy, fuz-zy, fuz-zy!”

“I’d keep your eyes on the prize if I were you, copper.” Twil pointed at herself with a thumb. “On the count of three – three!”

Twil showed no mercy. Human to full-on werewolf in a heartbeat, no partial transformation and no holding back. She summoned her ghostly flesh into full solidity, wrapped it around her own skin and clothes like a collapsing whirlpool in fast forward. Five-foot-two of wolf-girl bristled with fur and claw, amber eyes flashing as she stretched jaw wide on a maw full of fangs. Lozzie jerked and yipped. Even I flinched, and I was far too exhausted to be frightened of what I’d seen before.

Nicole started screaming.

She tried to shove herself away from the sudden monstrosity in the middle of the room, kicking out with her bound feet, hands raised to ward off the impossible, eyes wide and bulging in incomprehension. She saw, completely and without a filter, while the fear overrode her conscious mind.

Lozzie decided this was the perfect moment to bounce back to her feet and launch herself at Twil in a flying tackle-hug that landed like a wrecking ball. Her hooded head hit Twil in the ribcage and nearly sent both of them flying.

“Oof!” went Twil. Gently but firmly she peeled Lozzie off and held her at arm’s length. A wolf and a rabbit, how appropriate. “What-”

“Touch fluffy touch fluffy let me let me!” Lozzie whined. “Please please please!”

“Um,” Twil growled, wolf snout twisted in disbelief. Nicole was staring now, panting hard, and flinched like a struck dog when Twil glanced her way again. “Um, oops?”

“No, this is good,” I said. “This is what we need. Nicole, detective, what do you see? Say it out loud.”

Nicole managed a shake of her head, but that was all, paralysed and goggle-eyed.

“Twil hug me, hug me like that pleeeeease!” Lozzie whined again.

“You may want to turn it off now,” I said.

Twil growled again and flicked her head back – back to human. The summoned spirit-flesh dissolved in an instant, leaving behind a slightly flustered Twil instead.

Lozzie pouted and gave up trying to bundle herself into Twil. “Aww.”

Nicole couldn’t stop staring. She was plastered with cold sweat, face turned ashen white, blinking rapidly as her mind tried to reboot. Her mouth worked as if trying to speak, but no sound came out, shaking her head back and forth in a gesture of hopeless repeating denial.

“Detective? Nicole?” I tried, but she just kept shaking her head. “Twil, are you certain nobody’s ever seen you like that in public before?”

She shrugged. “Like, from a distance. They probably just assume I’m a big dog or something.”

“You’re so fuzzy holy shit please,” Lozzie said. “Please please please I want.”

“I’m not a petting zoo,” Twil told her.

“You could be!”

“What-” Nicole managed, and we all looked at her. She kept trying to look away from Twil, her head moving as if to make eye contact with me, but her eyeballs refused to obey, locked onto this source of contextless threat. “What- what- what was that?”

“A werewolf,” I said.

The wrong thing to say, apparently. The word ‘werewolf’ acted as a catalyst. With an effort of supreme willpower, Nicole pulled herself back together; the on-the-job detective mask slid back down like a steel wall behind her eyes, and she finally managed to look at me.

“There’s no such thing as werewolves,” she said.

“You just saw one!” Twil said, outraged.

“Yes, I know it’s completely ridiculous,” I said. “I reacted in much the same way, and I already knew about magic and monsters. Werewolves are just silly, right?”

“Yes!” Nicole snapped. “Yes they are.”

“Oi, I’m standing right here.” Twil put her hands on her hips.

Nicole flinched as she looked at Twil again, as if expecting to see something other than a mildly grumpy teenage girl. “That was a trick,” she said. “It had to be. With mirrors, or … a … a projector. You people are a cult and you’re trying to convert me.”

“Oh thanks, great. Fuck you too,” Twil told her.

“Detective,” I said. “You’re denying the evidence of your own senses.”

Nicole stared at me for a good five seconds, then back at Twil. She shook her head. “Werewolves don’t exist.”

“God dammit,” I whispered.

“Fuckin’ do it again if you need,” Twil huffed.

“No! No, thank you, no.” Nicole swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Twil snorted with derision. “That couldn’t have been real, that wasn’t real. Werewolves don’t exist. You are not a werewolf, you’re a con artist, you-”

Twil transformed again.

No warning this time, fake countdown or otherwise, though she was prepared for Lozzie, catching the smaller girl’s flying hug in mid-leap with one arm. Nicole started screaming her head off – and increased in volume when Twil reached for her. Failing, kicking with her bound legs, one mis-aimed strike thwacked Twil full in the snout. The werewolf jerked back, growling.

“Twil, stop, it,” I snapped. “The neighbours are going to hear her.”

Twil growled again – but dismissed her transformation, the flesh leaving her in slow wisps of pneuma-somatic matter. She raked her fingers through her curls and rubbed at her face where Nicole’s shoe had connected with her jaw. “Ow, shit.”

“Don’t do that again!” the detective shrieked at her.

“Don’t do what, huh?” Twil sneered. “Thought I wasn’t real.”

“You’re so fluffy,” Lozzie said. “Heather, isn’t she so fluffy?”

“She can be,” I admitted.

“That was not real,” Nicole said. “You are- f-fucking with me. With my head, somehow. Let me go. Let me go!” She shouted, wild-eyed, pulling against her bonds. Her hair was in increasing disarray, strands of blonde escaping the tight, ordered bun. “Look, you’ve successfully frightened me, well done. I won’t tell anybody, I’ll- I’ll falsify my travel reports for the day. I don’t care, just don’t- don’t do that again! I don’t care.”

“Aw come on, she’s so cuddly and fluffy?” Lozzie blinked at her. “Don’t you wanna touch too?”

“Lozzie, I do adore you,” I said. “But your standard for what’s frightening is a little … unique.”

“Mmmmm.” Lozzie pouted.

“It’s not like I was gonna bite you,” Twil grumbled.

“Let me go. Okay?” Nicole repeated. “You’ve made your point, okay?”

“Twil, maybe wait in the front room for a minute,” I said.

“What? But I didn’t do-”

“Please?”

Twil huffed and shook her head, but made the compromise of stomping over to stand in the doorway with her arms crossed. Nicole watched her, visibly relaxing as Twil put distance between them.

“Nicole. Detective?” I said, as hard I could currently muster, trying to get her to look at me. “Do you believe me now?”

She hesitated, trying to say no, unwilling to say yes. “You could be … could be doing something to me. I’m drugged. Or … ”

I sighed and put my face in my hands, then took a deep breath and sat up again, straight as I could with all my aches and pains. I’d made my decision and we had to keep going. “Lozzie, would you do me a really big favour, please? I’m sorry to ask, but I’m too fragile and exhausted to do it myself right now, I had to sort of overuse things earlier.”

“Mmm?” Lozzie took her hood’s bunny ears in her hands and flapped them at me. “Anything.”

“Would you send an object Outside in front of our guest here? You can use a spoon from the kitchen, or something. It doesn’t matter what, nothing important though, obviously.”

“Hmm? Mmm?” Lozzie made a sound like a confused bird.

“I’m sorry, I know- … well, actually, I don’t know. It always seems easier for you.”

“What are you two talking about?” Nicole demanded. “Send what outside where?”

“I can’t do that.” Lozzie shook her head.

I blinked at her, lost for a second. “ … I … I’m sorry, what?”

“I mean, I can’t do that. I can’t move stuff. You can, Heather?”

“ … y-yes?” I frowned at her, confusion increasing. Was I losing my mind? “You can’t?”

“No! Only people, and the kami of course, but they’re like people too. Dead matter doesn’t go anywhere, unless I’m holding it when I go!” She smiled at me as if this was the coolest thing in the world. “Clothes come with people, and stuff in my pockets, and I’ve never figured out why that is – but just stuff? Nope! You can do that, Heather? Serious?”

“Yes … yes I can. We came to this by different ways, didn’t we?” I muttered to myself, no time to analyse this now. Lozzie smiled and nodded. “I suppose I’ll have to do it myself then.”

“Sorry,” Lozzie said, and she did genuinely look it.

“That’s okay, it’s not your fault you’re less messed up than I am. Twil, would you please fetch me something expendable?”

“Right you are, boss,” Twil muttered under her breath, more sarcastic than serious, and stomped off to the kitchen.

She returned a few moments later with a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels – which I suspected she’d fished out of the bin – and a grimace on her face.

“ … Twil? What’s wrong?” I asked as she handed me the cardboard tube.

“Your big friend is making a right mess in there. Like … never mind.”

My stomach lurched. “She’s not eating the corpses, is she?”

“What?!” Nicole almost exploded.

“Ugh, no, fucking hell,” Twil said. “Is that a thing she does?”

“Yes, actually. I think. To be fair, she only did it once, and I think it was a heat of the moment thing. Maybe.”

“Maybe? Oh great, wonderful.”

Nicole looked more worried than when she’d thought I was going to kill her. I cleared my throat and held up the cardboard tube. “Forget about that, please, detective. I’m going to make this vanish.”

“Oh yeah? And then pull rabbits out of a hat?”

“I’m already out!” Lozzie chirped, fiddling with her floppy rabbit ears again. “And out.”

“It’s not stage magic,” I said, exasperated and at the end of my patience. “I don’t know any stage magic. Even if I did, look at me, look how tired I am. Where exactly can I make this tube vanish to? Up my backside? I’m wearing short sleeves, there’s nowhere for it to go. I’m not going to misdirect you, or make you look away, or pull any trick at all. I’m going to use something called hyperdimensional mathematics, to rewrite part of reality. I don’t understand it all myself, I just know I can do it. It’s a long story. Now watch.”

“ … I’m watching.” Nicole frowned.

The brainmath came rough and jagged, like walking on sore muscles and skinned feet; I was running on empty, only just able to do something this simple. A droplet of blood ran from my nose as I struggled to fit the pieces of the equation into place. A second was too long, two were torture, and three set my brain on fire.

Out.

The tube vanished. I doubled up around my roiling stomach and let out a whine.

Lozzie didn’t know what to do. She came to my side but her hands fluttered around, uncertain and confused by my pain. Slowly, panting through my teeth, I held onto to contents of my stomach, and sat up.

“Where … ” Nicole managed, staring at me, at my empty hands. “No. No.”

“I sent it Outside. Outside our reality. Beyond, into another dimension. Call it what you will. I can do it to anything, if I’m prepared to endure considerable pain.”

In one of the most fascinating moments of human observation in my life, I actually saw the precise moment Nicole’s mind buckled.

A survival strategy, that’s what it was, not open-mindedness or a tendency to believe in the occult. Until now, Miss Webb had been a straight-laced, 21st century woman, a child of the enlightenment, the scientific method, technology, and very normal, sensible, four-dimensional maths.

But her primal lizard-brain knew only that she was in danger, and it would do anything to survive. Eventually, with enough evidence, it shouted down her ossified frontal lobe, and she accepted the impossible.

A subtle change crossed her face, falling through incomprehension and denial until landing like a burst melon in plain fear and wonder. The evidence of her senses finally rewrote some fundamental element that kept her grounded in normal reality. If she’d been free, I have no doubt she’d have found some way to rationalise everything she’d seen – a clever sleight of hand, a stress-induced hallucination, drugs and torture. She’d have forgotten us in a month or a year, and gone back to her life. But I trapped her here forever, with us.

I was ready for her to break down, perhaps weep, maybe go into a kind of shock. This was always a gamble, one she might lose.

Nicole Webb was made of sterner stuff than that. The fear and wonder hardened into outrage, and she stared at me like I was responsible. Which in a way, I was.

“I fucking hate Harry Potter,” she spat.

Twil started laughing between attempts to say ‘what?’. Lozzie stuck her finger in her mouth and made a vomiting noise.

I blinked at Nicole. “ … okay?”

“You’re a wizard? A witch, whatever. Fuck you. Don’t you tell me I’m living in a stupid series of children’s books. Absolutely fucking not. Argh.” She spat a noise of pure frustration. “I can’t fucking stand this. You- fuck you. And you, fucking werewolf, stop laughing, it’s not funny!”

And with that, she was off to the races. Nicole spat and ranted, angry in a way I’d never seen a person angry before, an adult’s tantrum of pure disgust, directed not at us but at the whole world. Twice she used her bound hands to punch herself in the leg, and several times kicked at the floor, gathering speed as she heaped insults on children’s books about magic schools and – I quote – their ‘vulture, class-traitor, illiterate authors’. Her furious tirade was surprisingly coherent, though she repeated the same points several times once she began to run out of steam.

We all deal with supernatural revelation in different ways, I suppose. Not everybody has a missing twin and survivor’s guilt.

“Alright then, Miss wizard,” Nicole eventually hissed. “You’re telling me I don’t need to account for the two bodies in your kitchen, or whatever else you’ve done, because you’ve got your own … I don’t know, magical police? Your own authorities are going to deal with this? I’ve blundered into your world, and … and what?”

Lozzie rolled her eyes so hard I swear she was going to dislocate her spine.

“Um, no, not exactly,” I managed.

Twil snorted. “You think somebody’s like, in charge? Good luck.”

“What does that mean?” Nicole demanded. “What the hell does that mean?”

“There’s no … council of mages,” I said, shrugging, trying to keep my voice calm and collected, casting my mind back through the months to when Evelyn had conducted this exact same conversation with me, albeit in far more relaxed circumstances. “There’s no secret world, no secret power structures except a few cults worshipping things they shouldn’t. There’s mages, a few, as far as I know. Sorry to use the analogy, but there’s no ‘Ministry of magic’. Nobody’s in charge. Nobody even knows much. There’s just people.”

“ … that’s it?” Nicole asked, squinting with indignant frustration.

“That’s it.”

Her anger finally began to subside. She stared in silence at a point on the wall, taking deep breaths and shaking her head in disgust, slowly pulling herself back together. I tried to look sympathetic.

“I know what it’s like,” I said. “At least you’re getting it all at once, and you’re an adult. I was a child.”

She sighed heavily, still shaking her head. “So, don’t tell me you lot are busy saving the world, and I’ve held you up?”

“Uh, no, not that either. We’re not really important.”

“You’re wizards!” She almost blew up at me again, exasperated disbelief on her face. “How can you not be important? That’s ridiculous.”

I shrugged. “Because we’re not. I’m here, involved, because my twin was kidnapped by a … something from Outside. It’s a long story, and you don’t care. But no, we could all vanish tomorrow, and the world would go on much the same without us.”

Nicole let out one sad laugh and pulled a self-pitying smile – a real smile, sardonic and grim, not the easy fake smile from earlier, not the detective’s smile. “Just my luck. Bunch’a nobodies, hey? Well, that’s a start, we’ve got that in common.”

“Nobody’s important unless they’re loaded,” Lozzie said. “Loadsa money makes you big.”

“She’s got her head on straight.” Nicole nodded at Lozzie, and got a beaming smile in reply.

“You’ve got no idea,” I muttered.

“Great. So what happens to me now?” Nicole asked. “What am I supposed to do? I can hardly call those bodies in if … I dunno, you’ll turn all the responding officers into frogs or some shit.”

“I … hadn’t actually thought this far,” I said. “I didn’t expect this to work. Why were you here in the first place? Was it the gun shots last night?”

“Gun shots?” Nicole started laughing, the edge of hysteria in her voice. “Fucking hell, thanks for that freebie. They were gun shots then, for real? Was that how those two poor fuckers in the kitchen died?”

“No, I already told you, it was a servitor – which really does exist, yes. The gun shots, well, the thing that got shot got up again, and it’s not in this dimension anymore.”

“Okay, yeah, right, I forgot the whole teleported to dimension X part.” She rolled her eyes. “And yeah, the gun shots led me here, but that wasn’t why I knocked on your door this morning.”

I frowned at her, confused. “I’m sorry?”

“A neighbour of yours two streets over put in a noise complaint last night,” she began, smiling with ironic detachment. “Said they might have heard gun shots, but this is a nice part of Sharrowford. Nobody’s going to send out a squad car out here at five in the morning because some old dear heard a car backfire. But your address, this address? It goes in the system, along with a half-dozen others the noise could have come from. And, what do you know? Ding!” She held up a finger, bound hands together. “It gets flagged, because the address is in some stupid file I’ve got, and this morning that noise complaint is on my desk. I think, bugger it, I wanna stretch my legs. Seems like a good excuse to swing by and see who really lives in that old house. Best case it’s squatters, and I get a free baggie of weed. Worst case, it’s empty. But maybe, just maybe, the occupant owns the house, and I get a lead.”

“A lead?” I asked, my mind racing through the dozen possible crimes any of us might have committed over the last six months. “On what?”

“Property tax fraud.”

“ … what?”

Nicole laughed again, self-pitying and defeated. “You thought I was homicide? For years, yeah, I was. But I’m a major screw-up of a human being, let alone a detective. I’m in a financial crimes unit. A unit that consists of me and two even worse screw-ups, in an office the size of a cupboard, with no real budget, to keep us out of the way. Most of my days I get to spend at a desk while two alcoholic old men wait to collect their pensions. A punishment detail. I haven’t done any real police work in almost five years.” Her voice turned bitter as she spoke, she couldn’t hold it back. “First time I try, hey,” she gestured at us with her bound hands. “Look what I find. Fucking wizards.”

We all stared at her. Even Lozzie was wrong-footed.

“Property tax fraud,” I echoed.

“Yeah. This address? Part of a tax fraud scheme, a really old one, going back fifty, sixty odd years. Small enough to avoid notice, big enough to be dangerous to poke. That’s why I’m here.”

“I … I’m sorry. If it’s … I mean … I can give you contact details for the man who actually owns the house. I think.”

“Oh yeah, is he a wizard too?”

“No, actually. He’s a lawyer, works in London. My friend, his daughter, she’s upstairs right now in a sort of magical coma. We’ve called somebody to help her.”

“Lawyers, great.” Nicole rolled her eyes. “Practically just as bad.”

“So.” I swallowed, gathered myself. “Is it safe for us to untie you now?”

Nicole gave me a thoroughly defeated look. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean you believe us, what we are, what we’re involved in? The bodies in the kitchen, they’re cultists, and they came here to kill us or kidnap us. That … reporting everything you’ve seen would be a disaster, for us, for you? That I can let you go, without … well.”

“I believe what I’ve seen. She’s a werewolf,” Nicole glanced at Twil, wary and frowning. “And you’re a wizard, or whatever, and you can make things vanish with your mind. You ever use that trick on a person?”

“ … in self defence.”

Nicole looked me up and down, all five foot nothing of me hunched over my aching stomach, my scrawny limbs and messy hair and bloodshot eyes, wrapped in Raine’s unwashed baggy clothes. She nodded. “Yeah, I bet,” she murmured. “Is that what you’ll do to me as well, if I try to put cuffs on you?”

I stared back, reluctant to answer, but I knew what I had to say. “I could make you vanish too, yes. Send you Outside to some alien dimension you’ll never return from. You’d die of hunger or thirst, or get eaten by something unspeakable. If we let you go and you call this in, I’ll vanish the responding officers, the car they put me in, the cell door, the whole bloody police station if I have to. Because my lover has been kidnapped by a cult, a real one, that worships something from Outside, and nothing is going to stop me from finding her. Not the cultists, not exhaustion, not you or the rest of the normal world.”

“Me too,” Lozzie stage-whispered.

Nicole shook her head. “You’re telling me a young woman’s been kidnapped by religious nut jobs, and the police aren’t supposed to get involved?”

I pulled a face. “Yes, I know that sounds stupid.”

“It does. Look, even if I believe everything you’ve told me, there’s still the matter of two corpses to deal with. If I don’t report what I’ve seen, if I lie, and bits of hair and flesh turn up in your drainpipes three months from now, I will get shat on from a very great height. I wasn’t lying when I said bodies are hard to dispose of, unless you … can … ” she trailed off, blinking at me, then let out an exasperated sigh. “You can.”

I pulled an apologetic smile. “Yes, exactly.”

“Poof!” Lozzie smiled and spread her hands like a stage magician concluding a trick. “And the evidence is gone!”

==

Two dead bodies, a mess of cleaning supplies, bin bags full of entire rolls worth of paper towels and soiled rags, two buckets of pink-tinted grimy water – and Zheng. The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it.

Blood still stained the floor tiles from where Twil and Kimberly had dragged the corpses from the sitting room. The less said about those the better. I tried not to look at the lumpy humanoid shapes laid out on an old bit of tarpaulin and hastily wrapped up with bin bags. The rest of the floor was littered with the entire contents of the cupboard under the sink, bright pink and yellow cleaning products everywhere, along with a trio of sponges that looked like they’d last been used on a car that had survived a fire. A sad pair of rubber gloves hung over the side of the sink, flanked by some exhausted brillo pads, and some kind of electric scrubbing brush that I’m pretty sure was broken before any of us were born. Everything stank of blood and bleach.

Zheng had her boots up on the table.

I couldn’t summon any words for the mess, let alone ask Zheng to put her feet down.

“Heather, it’ll be alright,” Twil said, grimacing. “We’re like, halfway through cleaning up.”

“Okay. Okay?” I said. “Okay. Sure. Okay. Yes.”

Nicole, still massaging her wrists where Twil had removed her bonds, stared at the giant zombie with an impressively stoic expression. Zheng stared back, calm and slow, like a sated jungle cat.

Sated she better be, because she’d emptied our fridge of every last scrap of animal protein. Before her on the table, like a mound of offerings to some pagan god, lay three empty sandwich meat packets, the wrapping from a trio of raw chicken breasts, and the remains of a block of cheese. She’d even devoured the week-old chili from the bottom of the fridge, which if she’d been human, would have struck her dead with food poisoning.

Twil picked up a long grey coat from the back of a chair, and held it out to Nicole. “Everything’s back in the pockets.” Her eyes flickered to me. “Your phone too.”

“It’ll be fine,” I repeated for the fifth time since I’d asked Twil to untie the detective, though I felt less sure after seeing the kitchen. “We have an understanding now.”

“Yeah, yeah, right,” Twil murmured.

“So what are you supposed to be, then?” Nicole finally asked Zheng.

Zheng grinned, slowly, as if trying to reveal each and every perfect razor tooth in turn. “A nightmare.”

“ … fair enough.” Nicole sighed and took her coat from Twil, shrugging it on and checking her pockets. She was made of sterner stuff than I, if she could ignore Zheng. Then again, she probably had a lot of experience in concealing when she felt intimidated.

“It’s probably best to ignore each other right now, you two,” I said, suppressing a sigh of my own. “Zheng, like I said, we’ve come to an understanding.”

“I know, shaman. I was listening.”

“Of course you were. I’m sorry to have to ask this, but you didn’t … you weren’t … ” I gestured awkwardly at the corpses in the corner.

Zheng raised an eyebrow and managed to look disgusted. A new one for her. “Shaman.”

“I- I needed to ask, to be sure.”

“The dead monkeys are spoiling with their own shit and gut bacteria. No.”

“You know, I think I agree with the uh, whatever the hell she is,” Nicole said, eyeing Zheng. “Can we crack on with this? The less time we spend in a room with corpses, the better for all of us, on every level – legal, medical, and gastronomic.”

Her dignity restored and standing on her own two feet once more, Nicole Webb looked every bit a television police detective, albeit after some minor pre-watershed escapade, dangerous but still suitable for younger viewers. Tight and serious around the eyes, with several strands of hair having escaped her blonde bun, and a small bruise forming on her cheek from where Twil had done some damage during their initial meeting.

The long grey coat over the dark suit and open top button of her shirt lent her an air of both authority and distance. She wore her role in society like armour, and she’d let us in on the secret that it was rusted on the inside.

“Please!” Lozzie agreed, peeking around the kitchen doorway from front room. “The sooner the better!”

I turned to her and she gave me a very uncertain smile.

“Lozzie, are you sure you’re … ” I started softly, then had to self-edit. “Doing alright?”

“Mmhmm! It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere, promise promise,” Lozzie said, seeing right through to my real question. “Just don’t want to see, don’t want to see the dead people.”

“Alright, well, we’ll be as quick as we can, okay?”

“Then it’s time for more cleaning!” she chirped. I nodded and turned back to the kitchen, and tried my best to believe Lozzie would still be in this reality when I wanted to see her.

“So how does this work?” Nicole asked me. She’d stepped over to the corpses, frowning down at them through the veil of bin bags, her hands in her coat pockets. “You lay hands on them and then they’re just gone?”

“Basically, yes. At least that’s what you’ll see.”

“Mind if I take a look at them first?”

“Why?” Twil demanded, doing an exceptionally poor job of hiding her suspicion.

“Seriously?” Nicole shrugged. “In case I ever come across this again. Just from what you’ve told me, you lot aren’t the only wizards or mages or bugbears running around Sharrowford. Maybe I want to see what the wounds from a ‘servitor’ look like. No objections?”

“I don’t mind, but-” I started.

“Yeah, I don’t like the sound of that,” Twil half-growled.

“Twil, stop,” I huffed. Twil blinked at me. “What I was trying to say, detective Webb, is that I don’t mind, but the servitor that killed those men is – as far as I know – the personal handiwork of a woman who’s been dead for a long time, the grandmother of the girl in a coma upstairs. You’re unlikely to find them anywhere else.”

“You think that, or you know that?” Nicole asked.

“I think.”

“Then I’d still like to have a look.” She rummaged around in one of her coat pockets and pulled out a wad of pale blue surgical gloves wrapped up with a rubber band, extracted one, and wriggled it on with a snap. “May I? With permission, Miss wizard?”

I nodded and looked away from the gruesome spectacle. Nicole squatted down to peel back the bin bags from the lumpy, misshapen forms that had once been two human beings. Twil puffed out a long sigh and looked away too, but Zheng craned her neck to watch. I knew I’d have to touch them soon enough, but the less I thought about that the better.

Nicole was quite silent for a good minute or so as she examined the corpses, except for the initial moment as she turned her head and audibly suppressed the urge to be sick. I didn’t blame her. Eventually she covered the bodies again, stood up, and snapped the surgical glove off her hand.

“Well. Well,” she said, holding the glove for a moment as if she didn’t know what to do with it. She’d gone pale and waxen.

“You can just put that in the bin. Gotta burn it all anyway,” Twil grunted.

“Yes. Quite.”

“Learn anything useful?” I asked.

Nicole opened her mouth, closed it again, and shook her head. “Wild animal? Bear? Industrial accident? I’ve never seen anything like that. Like they were … there’s no way I can see this ‘servitor’, right? You said it’s invisible?”

“I can see it, nobody else. There’s a magic circle we can use, but we’d need Evelyn to be awake.”

“Your friend upstairs?”

I nodded.

“Why you?” Nicole asked. “Why can you see these things? Why not the werewolf, or the other girl, Lozzie?”

“You don’t know my name, pig!” Lozzie called from the front room.

I sighed and gave Nicole a level stare. “Because I was abducted by an alien god when I was a little girl, and my mind was violated, changed somehow, and sometimes I suspect I’m not meant to exist in this reality anymore.”

“You are!” Lozzie called. I closed my eyes and thanked her in silence.

Nicole nodded several times. “Fair enough.”

Getting rid of the bodies was both easy and difficult. The brainmath was simple enough, the same thing I’d done so many times in so many different situations, complicated only by the presence of two separate objects to shunt Outside, a problem I solved by conceptualising it all – meat, tarpaulin, bin liners – as one single charnel mass.

The difficult part was getting onto my knees next to the corpses and touching them. Lumpy, hard, cold beneath the thin plastic. I’d seen corpses too many times in the last six months, but I’d never touched one before. The sensation made my gorge rise in my throat. I felt ready to be sick in a whole new way.

Teleporting such a large object finally broke my winning streak. I raced through the equation, slammed it into place with an impatience born of disgust and determination; the corpses vanished, cut-price death shroud and all, and I instantly doubled up and added to the mess all over the kitchen floor.

Sagging, half-choking, whining at the taste of blood and vomit in the back of my throat, I refused to collapse or pass out, hauling myself up to spit stomach acid into the sink.

Lozzie was there a second later, little feet pattering across the kitchen toward me, holding me up. Twil was there too, arm under my shoulders. I wretched and spat and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand.

“Good enough for you?” I croaked at Nicole.

“Think she’s suitably impressed, yeah,” Twil said. I managed to lever myself around to find Nicole staring at the spot the corpses had lain, now painted with the contents of my stomach.

“Are you going to look the other way now, detective?” I croaked again and cleared my throat, feeling like death and letting my friends take most of my weight.

“ … bit more than a cardboard tube,” she muttered, then blinked and drew herself together, met my eyes. “Really messes you up too, huh?”

“How could you tell?”

Slowly, to my surprise, Nicole smirked. “No, I’m not going to look the other way. Ah- ah-” She held up both hands and flinched, as Twil bristled with implicit threat and Zheng tilted her head to watch. “No, no, wait, before you turn me into a frog or something. I’m not going to call this in, I won’t report anything I’ve seen, I realise it’s pointless. Plenty of DNA evidence, but nobody to link it to. I’ve got no bodies, they’re … fucking gone,” she let out a single laugh. “But you’ve told me there’s a cult of crazy people operating in Sharrowford, in my city. They’ve kidnapped a young woman, your girlfriend. The least I can do is fudge a missing person’s report, but there’s got to be more. I could take this to my bosses, all the way up the chain, if there’s a plausible conspiracy to commit. What else have they done? Who are these people? Names, addresses. Anything you got, I can use.”

“They’ve done plenty, yeah,” Twil said, nodding. “This lot are nasty.”

“Kept me in a castle,” Lozzie said. Nicole frowned at her.

“Plenty of things, yes,” I echoed. “But you’re not going to convince anybody of this. That’s not how it works. I had to break you with the evidence of your senses before you even risked belief. You’re not going to get through to your superiors, detective.”

She smiled – the false easy smile she’d worn earlier. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do, I-”

“What if this sort of thing gets out? Blow the lid on it. You people could change the world, you-”

“Don’t wake the sleeping tiger,” Zheng purred. We all looked at her.

“Oh, I know this one!” Lozzie said.

“Mooncalf knows. Have you ever seen a mob, watchman?” She asked Nicole, speaking slow and quiet. “Peasants with fire and pikes? Reality doesn’t penetrate your monkey brains until you’re ready for it, but fear does. You, and I, and the shaman, we’re all in a locked room with a tiger, and if we make enough noise the tiger will wake up, and instinct doesn’t care for allegiance, or right, or words. The tiger doesn’t know what we are and it doesn’t care, but it will still eat us, and shit us out, and the shit will be very normal, and nobody will change the world.” Zheng broke into a grin. “I lied. The tiger will eat you, but I am indigestible.”

Zheng’s tone – spoken from undoubted experience – worked on Nicole in a way the protests of three young women didn’t. Nicole stared at her for a moment, then sighed deeply and nodded.

“Nobody believes until they’re broken,” I said. “And you got lucky. Most go mad, or spend the rest of their life trying to forget. Or so I’m told. That’s how it works.”

“Alright, so I can’t go to my bosses. You can’t call the police. But as of right now, I’m a bent copper whatever I do.” Nicole looked at me, a strange fire behind her eyes. “So tell me everything anyway.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“Well, actually no, not a constable,” Twil said, her throat bobbing with an uncomfortable swallow. “If she was a regular old bobby she’d be in uniform, right?”

I stared at her, lost for words, and also just plain lost in incredulous disbelief. “Twil, what does that mean? Lozzie said police woman, quite clearly,” I pointed at Lozzie, who dutifully nodded. “Did I imagine that? Am I hallucinating from stress? Please, please tell me that woman in there is a cultist, or at least a random member of the public. Please.”

“Uh, no. Kim, what did she say, at the door?”

I turned to Kimberly – she cringed away at the look on my face, but for once I couldn’t soften my expression. “ … well?”

“She … she introduced herself as ‘detective sergeant’,” Kimberly all but squeaked, her voice still raw from Zheng’s hand squeezing her throat earlier.

For a moment I refused to believe my ears, staring, blinking, but not seeing. Kimberly bit her lip and lowered her head as I glanced between her and Twil. “ … and did she volunteer this information before, or after you decided to tie her up?”

Twil pulled a teeth-gritting grimace, ducking her head and hunching her shoulders like a flinching hound; pained, sheepish, embarrassed, and mortified all at once. Normally I found her mannerisms endearing, almost kind of sweet; in her best moments I very much understood what Evelyn saw in Twil, but right now I felt myself ready to explode in her face. I bit my lips to control myself.

“Before!” Lozzie chirped with a smile. “I was listening in.”

“It’s not like we had a choice.” Twil spread her hands. “Our scrub job around the door is pretty bad, and hell, it stinks of blood, right? Even you lot can smell it, can’t you? It reeks in here.”

“A little,” I managed.

“Rancid,” Zheng grunted.

“She was asking questions about ‘the noise’ last night, but then also about who owns the house and all this other shit. I couldn’t keep up with it, I’ve never had to deal with coppers before. Then she tried to walk into the kitchen, and there’s fucking bodies in there, Heather. She saw them, and she … well, she didn’t freak out, not until I had to hold her down.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “Assault as well. Wonderful.”

“I had to!”

“She talked really fast, but it was all surface, no depth,” Lozzie added, almost to herself. “She was really good at talking. I didn’t like her, she wasn’t genuine.”

“At least she’s by herself,” Kimberly said.

“And that makes it better how, exactly?” I snapped at her. I didn’t mean to, and she didn’t deserve that. Kimberly flinched, her hands jerking up to shield herself from my anger. Zheng let out an approving chuckle. I hissed a tut at myself through my teeth, but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to care right now, let alone apologise.

“That’s why I didn’t answer the door right away when you knocked,” Twil said. “Thought it might be another one. Or, you know, a follow up.”

“Twil. Twil, you are absolutely sure she’s what she says she is? You’re certain?”

“Uh, yeah. Here,” she pulled a compact card wallet from one of her coat pockets and held it up, black leather with a Sharrowford Police crest on the front. “Her badge is real. Warrant card? Whatever you call it.”

I let out a shaking breath. “Great. Great.”

“I’m really sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault,” Kimberly whined.

“Nah, it’s fine, fuck, I should have run her off somehow,” Twil said. “I dunno what the hell to do with her, she’ll call the police. Uh, I mean, she is the police, but like the rest of the police. You know what I mean.”

“ACAB!” Lozzie half-laughed.

“I don’t like police either,” Kimberly said. “But we can’t do this. We can’t. We’re going to get in so much trouble.”

“We’re already in-”

“Please, just show her we’re-”

“I could take her Out! Show her- oh no, wait-”

“Police meat tastes as good as any other, shaman. Ten minutes alone, then burn the clothing-”

I tuned them out, the growing argument between Twil and Kimberly, Lozzie’s inappropriate laughter and Zheng’s disgusting suggestions. A high-pitched ringing sound echoed in my ears. My breath tightened in my chest. A tremor took my hands.

A panic attack lurked on the edge of my consciousness.

“Heather?”

No Raine would catch me if I fell. No time for warm tender recovery and a cup of tea. Yes, I was surrounded by friends and allies – yes, more than one of them carrying their own flavour of risk, but friends and allies all the same – but without Raine, and teetering on the edge of an abyss.

If the police got involved, it was all over.

Obstruction by the normal, sane world of human activity and institutions, day jobs and the scientific method, would destroy any hope we had. Evelyn did not need a hospital, she needed a mage. Raine didn’t need a missing persons report, she needed me.

“Heatheeer? Woo?” Lozzie waved a hand in front of my face. I met her eyes but didn’t really make contact. She squeezed my shoulders in a hug, gentle and careful with my bruised stomach. My own arms responded on automatic until she let go again and she turned away to reply to something from Twil, as the argument spiralled onward.

The police were already involved. It was too late.

The police detective bound at wrist and ankle in the disused sitting room, gagged with an old tea-towel from our kitchen – I struggled to hold onto the important fact that she was a person, the fleeting impression of a few scraps of pinned-back blonde hair, a dark suit, piercing eyes. A person, a human being, like me.

But she was also the first exploratory feeler of a bureaucratic leviathan every bit as inhuman as anything from Outside.

What do I do? Imitate Raine? She’d know what to do, with her confidence and her lightning-fast plans, her voice never leaving room for doubt, always pulling me back up to my feet when I felt lost. I wasn’t Raine, I couldn’t be like her. I couldn’t even be like Evelyn. I was me, little Heather, and what could I do?

Ah.

The dark glimmering of a solution presented itself, like a poisonous flower unfolding in the back of my mind.

“No, absolutely not,” I murmured.

But I would do anything to save Raine. All the problems in the way must be excised. Which meant I had to work hard now, to avoid becoming a monster by the time I saw her again.

Panic fell away, replaced with a cold, shaking focus like a icicle grown inside my chest. I shed the filthy blanket from my shoulders, straightened up, and filled my lungs.

“Everyone shut up! Stop talking,” I yelled, then added, almost as an afterthought, “please.”

It worked. Four pairs of eyes – flinching, surprised, amused, and hurt in turn – all looked at me as I took another breath and gathered my thoughts.

“ … Heather?” Twil ventured. I raised a finger and made a face.

“That means stay quiet,” Zheng rumbled for me. “The shaman is thinking.”

“It goes for you too,” I hissed at her, then turned to Lozzie, “I’m sorry Lozzie, it’s fine. I love you, I’m not angry with you.”

Lozzie nodded and blinked, biting her bottom lip, like a child caught in adults’ crossfire.

I filed away that ‘I love you’ for later, a burst of truth in the heat of the moment; I did love Lozzie, like a little sister I’d never had, but this wasn’t the time to think about the million questions I had for her. This was the time for practical solutions.

“How long?” I said, my voice quiet but my tone steady, not through effort of will but sheer necessity. “How long’s the police detective been tied up in there?”

“Uh.” Twil’s eyes went up and left, thinking. “’Bout an hour, bit more?”

“And you did confiscate her mobile phone, any pocketknives, and, I don’t know, pagers? Bent paper clips? Lipstick?” I waved my raised finger at Twil when she frowned with incredulity. “No, I know what you’re going to say, and no. Assume for a moment that we’re dealing with a master detective, the protagonist of her own bloody television program. Is there any way she can escape?”

“I don’t think so. I emptied her pockets, and she’s tied up with gardening wire. I couldn’t find anything else so I, you know, used my elbow grease, bent it round.” Twil rummaged in her jacket pockets again and produced an expensive-looking smart-phone. “This was hers.”

“Is it switched off?”

“Uh … ”

“Switch it off, then wipe your fingerprints off it,” I said. “Are there any other problems I don’t know about? No more surprises, from any of you. If you tell me now, you have amnesty from being shouted at later.”

“Stack knocked on the door round about dawn,” Twil said – to her credit, without hesitation.

I stared at her for a second, not certain if I believed my ears. “ … Amy Stack? The ex-cult assassin Amy Stack?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. The bald bitch.”

“Right. Okay. What … what did she want? Did you take her head off, by any chance? Please, that would be wonderful.”

“Nah.” Twil shrugged. “I mean, I would have, but by the time I got to the door she’d backed up all the way to the garden gate, like she knew it was risky. She wanted to talk, I think, but I chased her off, and she had a car parked nearby, so … ” Twil pulled another guilty grimace. “I didn’t want to leave Evelyn alone here, ‘case it was a trap.”

“Good. Good thinking,” I forced myself to say, to compliment Twil, to keep her head above water. “It’s a pity you didn’t get her, but you did the right thing. Thank you, Twil.”

Of course she didn’t give chase, not after the object lesson of last night, after she left the house. Twil must be feeling terrible guilt, feeling responsible.

“I’ve … ” Kimberly started, then stopped and looked down when I paid attention to her. “It doesn’t matter, but I was supposed to be at work four hours ago. Probably lost my job for real this time. Like I said, it doesn’t really matter, compared to … everything else.”

“It does matter,” I managed. “I’m sorry, Kim. We’ll do something about that. Just, not right now.”

Lozzie raised her hand up high, elbow straight.

“Yes, Lozzie?”

“I put Tenny into her cocoon.”

“ … you … what?”

“That’s what you called her, right? It’s a real cute name! With the tentacles and the black goo? When I made her she was supposed to pupate on her own after she’d grown up a bit, but she didn’t and I don’t know why, but I found her out in your garden this morning and just gave her a little nudge along, and poof! She’s up in the tree in the garden, she’ll be fine, it’s not really a problem but I thought I better tell you in case you wonder where she is. Or if you look out there. It’s kinda cute!”

Lozzie smiled a very Lozzie smile.

“Yeah,” Twil said, looking askance at her. “She just ran out there and waved her arms in the air for a bit.”

“ … okay, I’ll … thank you,” I said. “We’ll … later.”

Clink agreed Praem, from where Twil had left her bottle on the floor.

Cocoon? Pupate? Was Tenny going to turn into a pneuma-somatic butterfly with a twenty-foot wingspan? I put that firmly to one side for now. Bizarre, but not a crisis. Not yet, at least.

“Alright, my turn,” I said. “The cult isn’t dead, obviously, Alexander Lilburne did some last—ditch deal, and he’s dead but now they’re worshipping the Eye. None of you really know what that means-”

“I do!” Lozzie raised her hand.

“Yes, except Lozzie, because she saved me from it this morning. The fake version of her is dead, by the way, she killed it.”

“Wham bam,” Lozzie whispered. Zheng cocked an interested eyebrow.

“And Glasswick tower looks like the inside of an intestine because it thinks it’s Alexander’s body. According to Zheng here.” I gestured politely over my shoulder.

“Cool,” Twil grunted, eyeing the zombie again.

“And here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “First, Kimberly.”

“M-me?”

“Yes, you. You’ve been trying to wake Evelyn but it’s not working, is that correct?”

“I- yes. I’m sorry. I only know the things I was taught. I-if I had time with her books, maybe-”

“See that bottle? That’s Praem, the cultists tore her out of her body, which is also right next to you.”

Clink, went Praem.

Kimberly’s eyes went wide and she turned her head slowly, as if expecting to see an actual corpse lying next to her, then froze for a second at the sight of the twisted wooden mannequin laid out on the boxes.

“You used to put Outsiders into bodies for the Sharrowford Cult,” I said. “Can you still do it?”

“I-I- in theory.” She frowned, swallowed, looking very uncertain. “I’m not sure, I-”

“Can you put Praem back into her body for me? Without, I don’t know, losing her somehow?”

Kimberly stared at the bottle for a second, her brow creasing in a frown that turned from confused to thoughtful and then much darker. She chewed on her lip. “Maybe. I’m not sure. We used … you know what we used, not wood.” She cringed, voice shaking a little on that last word. “Heather, I- I don’t know … I can’t … I don’t know if I can face doing that again.”

Behind me, Zheng rumbled, purring like a disturbed tiger.

“Please try.” I pulled out the big guns, a real Raine-ism. “Kim, you’re the only one of us who can do this, none of us know how this works and Evelyn is in a coma. We need all the protection we can get right now, and that includes Praem.”

Kimberly’s eyes went downward, a hollow space revealed behind them, and for a moment I thought she was going to break, but then she nodded, once, twice, a third time more firm. “Alright,” she whispered.

“Good. Take the bottle into the workshop. Keep it off the floor though, Praem needs all the comfort she can get.”

Kimberly gathered the bottle up in her arms, frowning down at the wisp of oily smoke inside.

I turned to Zheng. “Do you need to … rest?”

“Hmmmm?” Zheng rumbled.

“We walked for three hours, Zheng. I’m ready to collapse. Are you?”

She shrugged, but it meant no. It meant don’t be so stupid, you weak little monkey, I could walk for thirty hours if I so wished.

“Good then. Would you please carry Praem’s bones for Kimberly? Lay them on the sofa in the workshop, it’s the room to the left of the kitchen.”

To Kimberly’s credit she moved pretty sharpish once she realised she was about to have Zheng bringing up her rear. She scurried through into the kitchen as if the hounds of hell were on her heels, but she needn’t have bothered. Zheng didn’t move and stared at me instead, an eyebrow raised, darkly amused.

“Shaman.”

“You don’t have to help, but if you’re not going to, then keep out of the way. Go raid the fridge or something, but don’t you dare slow me down.”

Zheng broke into a big shark-toothed grin, dangerous and approving, the first since I’d peeled her fist out of Kimberly’s mouth. She bristled with implied challenge for a moment, then strode past me, scooped up Praem’s wooden bones, and followed Kimberly.

“And don’t threaten her again!” I called. “And come back here, I need you for something else as well! Now, Twil.”

“Yeah?” Twil blinked at me, a bit lost in all this sudden decisiveness.

“Just before she got taken, Raine was using her mobile phone. Is it still here?”

“Oh, yeah actually.” Twil nodded. My knees went weak with relief but I tried not to show it. The moment I let myself feel normal, I knew I was going to collapse. I had to keep moving forward. Don’t stop. “Her phone was on the floor. I think I put it in the kitchen?”

“Good, I’m going to need that. But first, you’re going out into the street to find that detective’s car.”

Twil’s eyes went wide. “Oh, shi-”

“Yes, exactly. She’s a plainclothes detective so the car will be unmarked, which means you’re the only one who can identify it.” I tapped my nose. “Can you sniff it out?”

“Yeah, shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Cover Barnslow Drive and every street within a five-ten minute walk. Find that car, but don’t touch it. I’ll have to deal with it myself if-” I bit down. If the worst comes to the worst. “Find the car.”

“Right, got you, no problem.” She nodded and gave me a thumbs up, trying to be reassuring, then jerked her head at the closed door to the disused sitting room. “What we gonna do about her then? What’s the plan?”

“What is the plan indeed,” I sighed. “That’s the question.”

“Eh?”

“I’m getting there. Believe it or not, other things have more pressing time limits. The police officer you assaulted and kidnapped is not the top priority here.”

“She’s … not?” Twil blinked at me.

“She’ll keep.”

“I … guess … she will?”

Zheng appeared through the kitchen doorway again, ducking her gigantic frame with one hand on top of the door, thankfully free of any fresh blood. “Zheng, you’re going to watch our captive.”

She straightened up. “Sounds familiar.”

“Please. Go in there, watch her, make sure she’s not escaping or cutting her bonds or something, but for the love of God, please do not make things worse for me by eating bits of her.”

“Uhhhhhhh,” Twil let out a noise like a printer error. “Heather, are you sure?”

“Zheng is the only one I can spare right now, but more importantly she’s by far the most intimidating thing within a hundred miles. That is a message we need to send.”

“Flattery gets you everywhere, shaman.” Zheng purred in approval, like a tiger getting belly scratches.

As the towering zombie strode toward the old sitting room door and opened it on the shadowed interior, an evil voice whispered to me from the darkness in the rear of my skull. If Zheng did eat the detective, the decision would not be mine to make, my hands would clean. Had my subconscious chosen Zheng for this, to shield me from consequence? Zheng pushed the door wide, and I caught a glimpse of the detective’s trouser legs, slender ankles tied with green gardening wire.

“Zheng.”

“Shaman?” Zheng turned before going inside, one hand on the lintel as she ducked.

“I mean it. Don’t eat her.”

The detective made a muffled cough of surprise through the makeshift gag. Couldn’t blame her, really.

Zheng paused for a moment too long, those dark eyes boring into mine with all the slow perception of a jungle cat. Could demons read minds? In the past I’d often gotten the sense that Praem understood more than she let on. Zheng nodded slowly, straightened up inside the room, and closed the door behind her.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to regain the sense of fleeting clarity I’d had moments before.

All this confident order-giving was an act. Fake it until you make it, pretend to know what you’re doing, and convince everyone else to believe. Ignore my racing heart and sweaty palms and churning guts. Doubt would crush me in an instant if I let it in.

I bet Raine didn’t feel like this all the time. I couldn’t fill these boots.

“Heather?” Twil said.

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine.”

“I don’t think you are,” Lozzie said in a small voice. I made myself smile for her.

“And you. Lozzie, you … ” I said – and almost choked up. Lozzie, with her healthy face and silly-cute rabbit poncho, almost broke me. The truth slipped out, or as much of it as I could bear right now. “Promise me you won’t leave again. Not before we have a chance to actually sit down and talk, properly. Please. I can’t deal with it if you vanish again. I’ll go to pieces.”

Lozzie did a double-blink, very theatrical, and pulled a sort of teasing smile with her eyes rolled upward. “Promise-promise.”

“Good. Twil, get moving. Lozzie, help me up the stairs and into the bathroom. I think I can spare five minutes to wipe my face and sit on the toilet.”

==

“Are you sure about this?” Twil asked.

“Sure? No, I’m sure of exceptionally little right now. Moreso than usual.” I sighed down at Raine’s mobile phone in my hands, at the contact listed as ‘Fliss – land line only’.

Raine had typed those words, along with every other contact in her list. Random shops in Sharrowford, takeaway joints we’d eaten from, Evelyn, Twil, a mechanic’s shop on the other side of the city, the university dentist, the student union bar, a number labelled ‘not home’, another with the name of one of her exes – all things I’d scrolled past while clenching my heart, to find the mysterious Felicity.

“Then it’s a risk, right?” Twil said. “Last thing we need is more risks, come on.”

“Everything’s a risk. Leaving her like this is a risk.” I nodded at Evelyn, unconscious on her bed.

“Living’s a risk,” Lozzie said, nodding sagely.

“True that,” Twil murmured.

Evelyn looked as if she was asleep, her face a little waxy as she suffered through troubled dreams behind unquiet eyelids. Her breathing came steady and slow, but she wouldn’t wake up.

In a touching gesture that I refrained from commenting on, Twil had not merely carried Evelyn up to her bedroom and laid her out. She’d cleared a space on Evelyn’s plushly overstuffed bed, and tucked Evee under two layers of warm blankets. She’d wiped Evee’s face and placed her prosthetic leg nearby, perhaps on the optimistic off-chance that Evelyn would wake when none of us were there to watch over her.

We were invaders in this haven of comfort, watched by Evelyn’s jury of plush animals and the judgemental faces of her anime figurines. Twil perched on the bed with her furrowed concern, Lozzie lounged against the far wall biting her lip, and I sat in the desk chair, in all my rotten glory.

Twil had followed the detective’s scent right to her car – an old BMW parked two streets away – and in the ten minutes she’d taken doing that, I’d managed to clean myself up enough to feel approximately human. Lozzie had helped me hobble upstairs to the bathroom, where I’d gulped down pints of cold water, wiped the worst of the dried blood from my face, and ran my bleeding foot under the hot tap in the bathtub, wincing as I’d scrubbed it clean to ward off infection.

I’d replaced my stinking pajamas with Raine’s dirty clothes instead, an oversized black band tshirt and plaid pajama bottoms, plucked from the floor of our bedroom. Wrapped myself in her scent like a suit of armour. Socks too, over the hastily applied bandage around my savaged sole.

Between the blood and the fear-sweat and the Wonderland ash, I probably reeked like an abattoir fire, but I didn’t care right now.

Evelyn was on a time limit, one perhaps more pressing than Raine’s. None of us had any medical training, any knowledge about what to do with a person in a coma. If she stayed like this for much longer she’d need an IV drip for hydration, she’d need to be turned to prevent bedsores, and I could only imagine what being bed-bound would do to the already acute pain problems in her back and hips. We had to wake her, fast.

“We need a mage,” I said, and realised I was trying to convince myself.

“We’ve got Kim,” Twil said from the corner of her mouth.

“A real one. Apologies to those absent.”

“Yeah, I know, okay? Kim’s tried stuff, nothing works. Who the hell is this Felicity woman, anyway?”

“I don’t rightly know. Back before Christmas, we were trying to figure out where Tenny came from – that’s the spirit that’s been following me around. Turned out Lozzie sent it,” I nodded toward the culprit, who lit up with a little satisfied smile. “But before we knew that, Evelyn called around people she used to know, from her childhood, or teenage years, I think. Mages. One of them was Felicity. It was a … weird phone call.”

I suppressed a shudder at the memory of that strange voice which had answered first, that whisper of sulphur across the humming phone lines, but I didn’t mention it out loud.

“Scary?” Lozzie said, all the same. “Was she scary?”

“Not really,” I lied.

“I don’t give a shit about scary, can we trust her?” Twil asked.

“Evelyn had some choice words for her,” I admitted. “I got the impression she didn’t like Felicity very much, but Raine seemed to think it would be safe to ask her for help. Safe for Evee, I mean. I trust Raine’s judgement, often more than I trust my own.”

My thumb hesitated over the call button. There was still time to turn back, to admit we did have another option, one I’d already thought of last night. Last night, with Raine still at my side.

Hyperdimensional mathematics could wake Evelyn. Hyperdimensional mathematics could do anything. In theory.

But I could also fail, and pass out, for hours on end. I knew I was fragile right now, I felt it in my bones and the hollow in my chest, the floaty sensation in my skin, like it was too big for me. Any use of brainmath might put me over the edge – and I had no other way to find Raine. I had one shot at that, and spending it on Evelyn might cost me everything.

Silently, in the guilt-wracked privacy of my own mind, I apologised to her. I told her I cared, as much as I did for Raine.

But I still made the choice.

I pressed the call button and put the phone to my ear, listening to it ring. Twil shifted to the end of the bed and leaned in close. Lozzie tilted her head, only half-interested, her eyes elsewhere.

The phone rang and rang and rang. Echoes in the darkness. On and on, my heart tightening in my chest, hoping I got Felicity first and not that other voice.

Click.

A moment of silence stretched out, as if the line had connected to an abyss, a marine trench of lightless pressure.

Something inhaled as if waking up.

“Tannerbaum house,” a woman’s voice answered in a clumsy half-mumble.

“Hello, good morning. Is this … ” I stumbled. I’d only ever heard Felicity once before, her voice on speaker-phone and fighting against Evelyn’s contempt. “Am I … we don’t … we don’t know each other, but am I speaking to Felicity? I’m sorry, it’s rude of me, but I don’t know your surname.”

“Yes? Yes, this is Felicity speaking,” came the hesitant half-mumble once more. “Nobody … nobody uses this number. Who are you?”

“My name is Heather. Heather Morell. I’m not a mage but I’m in the know, and I’m a friend of Evelyn Saye.”

“Oh.”

So much in that little sound. Deadened surprise. Old pain, the kind of ache that never really heals. Loss, of a sort I knew. Felicity, whoever she was, had reacted to Evelyn’s name with an echo of how I might react to Maisie’s.

“Hello? Miss? … Heather? Hello?” Felicity asked into my shocked pause.

Twil caught my eyes, boggling at why I wasn’t answering. I wet my lips and gathered myself.

“Yes, I’m sorry. I’m Evee’s friend, maybe her best friend. Listen, she’s been hurt, magically, and I’m led to understand that you might be able to help. Might be willing.”

“Evee’s been hurt? How? What happened?” Felicity asked, her voice urgent but still blurred by the mumble, as if she couldn’t open her mouth properly. I’d assumed the phone call had woken her, but now I wondered at some other, darker cause. “Where’s Raine, why isn’t she calling me instead?”

“Raine is indisposed at the moment.”

“Who- no, who are you? This is a trick. Who are you?”

“I’m Raine’s girlfriend, alright?” I snapped at her. “I’m not trying to con you. Evelyn’s in a coma, and she won’t wake up. The cause is too complex to explain. Magic. Can you help, or not?”

A long pause, a thinking pause, during which Felicity swallowed then burped gently. “I’m sorry. I have … I have to be paranoid.”

“Yes,” I sighed. “I’m familiar with the mage lifestyle.”

“Of course I can help Evee, I’d do anything for her,” Felicity said. I heard her stand up on the other side of the phone, and caught a hint of falling rain on thin windowpanes. A scuffle of paper and pens, the scrape of a chair on a stone floor. “But … well … do you know … I don’t know where she lives now. I don’t think she wants me to. Which is … I’ll need an address.”

“Sharrowford. Do you know the city?”

“I’ve never been there, but it’s a few hours drive at most, if I leave now. Which I will … Heather? Hello?”

“Before I give you the address, there’s something else first.”

“ … yes?”

“Evelyn, when she called you a few months ago, she described you to me as a ‘sociopathic pederast demonophile’.”

Twil’s eyebrows well near left her forehead. She gaped at me. Lozzie put her hand over her scandalised smirk.

“ … oh,” Felicity said. Hollow, hurt, old pain.

“I don’t care what you are,” I said. Twil was mouthing an outraged ‘What?!’ at me, but I carried on. “I’m just letting you know that I don’t entirely trust you. I want my friend to be safe and well again, and I don’t care what you are or what you did in the past, as long as you’re coming here to help Evee. Raine seemed to think you’re okay. If you’re not-”

A sigh on the other end of the phone. “None of those things are true.”

“If you’re not,” I repeated. “If you’re a threat, I’ll get rid of you. I’ve killed mages before.”

“ … what? I thought you said you were-”

“I’m not a mage, no. I’m much worse. And I have to be paranoid too, for Evee as well.”

A swallow from the other end of the phone. “I understand. I suppose I deserved that, didn’t I?”

“She’s told me nothing about you, Felicity. I don’t know who you are.”

A sad puff of laughter. “Doing what I never could, huh? Standing up to something like me. She’s lucky to have you, Heather.”

“I hope so. Here.” I gave her the full address for number 12 Barnslow Drive, postcode and all, and heard her scratching to write it down as I rattled it off.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, look for me in three or four hours, I think. I drive an old range rover, so don’t blow it up when I get there, or whatever it is you do.”

“I won’t. Thank you. Please be fast.”

“Try my best.”

The moment she hung up I let out a huge breath and started shaking all over, hiccuped twice and felt bile threaten to escape my throat. Fake confidence shed from me all at once like melted skin. I sniffed hard and hugged myself, dropping the phone onto Evee’s little laptop desk with a clatter. Lozzie was suddenly on me, squeezing me hard.

“Ah, ow, ow, bruises,” I said, and she eased off just enough. I hiccuped again.

“Bloody hell, Heather,” Twil said. “Where’d you get all that from?”

“I can be kind of scary, when I want,” I managed, resisting the urge to curl up and hide.

“Yeah. Nice. Good job, yeah.” She nodded along, believing we were going to be alright. I’d made her believe.

“You’re not scary, durr,” Lozzie said. “You’re Heather.”

“I still don’t like the sound of that woman,” Twil said. “If she smells wrong, she’s not going anywhere near Evee. And she’s definitely not being alone with her.”

I nodded in mute agreement, no emotional energy left for argument. “That’s one down.”

“One?”

“One of many problems.”

“And a bitch ain’t one,” Lozzie said in a sing-song voice. Despite the situation, despite herself, despite everything, Twil burst out laughing. Lozzie laughed back and they descended into a moment of shared giggle fit as I stared on in bewilderment.

“ … I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s a rap song,” Twil said, sniffing to control herself. “I got ninety-nine problems but a bitch ain’t one? Kinda famous? Come on, Heather, you must know that one.”

I shook my head. “No, actually. Sorry.”

Twil shrugged. “Right you are then, boss girl. What’s next?” Twil hopped up from the bed, cast one last glance back at Evelyn’s sleeping form, and looked to me – looked to me for directions. For orders. For confidence.

“Boss girl needs to eat,” Lozzie said.

I held myself back from the answer I wanted to give. Next should be Raine, the great unknown. To whom anything could be happening. But that wasn’t sensible, that wasn’t smart, I couldn’t burn myself out before we were ready, before we were safe, before my effort might mean success.

I drew myself up and clenched down on the shaking. Time enough for that later.

“Next we deal with the old bill.”

==

The officer’s name was Nicole Webb, and she lived up admirably to my mental image of a lady police detective.

Short and compact, hair up in a tight blonde bun, in her mid-to-late-thirties but trim from half-marathons, martial arts, and a sensible diet. No jewelry, and minimal makeup on a tightly alert face. Her legs were drawn up as best she could with her ankles bound, the gardening wire biting into the fabric of her suit trousers, her back against the sofa’s footrest. Intelligent, watchful eyes looked up at me the moment I opened the door on the shadowed room.

She was angry and scared, projecting the anger to hide the fear. Hiding it well, yes, but I was somewhat of an expert on fear. Not surprising, after an hour alone in a room with Zheng.

We’d gotten her name from her police badge, which I now held before me like a talisman, the key to her mind.

“Shaman,” Zheng rumbled at me, arms crossed, radiating boredom. “Is there meat in your fridge?”

“Uh, yes, Zheng, I think there’s some chicken,” I replied without taking my eyes off the detective. “I’m sorry for making you stand here all this time.”

“You don’t make me do anything,” Zheng grunted, and ducked through the door, stomping off toward the kitchen before I had a chance to stop her. Twil and Lozzie both hopped out of her path, then gathered at the door again.

“Would hardly be fair for me to sit in a chair,” I said, and gently levered myself down to the floor. I got halfway there before I remembered my stomach, and rather spoilt the effect as I winced and straightened back up, then had to awkwardly sit down with far too much use of my hands. “Ahh, ow. Ow, okay. Okay, sitting. There we are, here on the same level.”

The detective and I stared at each other, until finally her eyes left me and took in Twil and Lozzie hovering in the doorway. The anger in her eyes melted away, replaced with a tentative curious frown. She’d probably been expecting a man to come in here and shoot her twice in the back of the head, but instead she got a dishevelled college student and two teenage girls. Her frown went through a most interesting transformation; she didn’t know how to play this situation. She didn’t know what we were.

Her brow was sticky with dried sweat. Another sigh escaped me.

“Um … Twil? Can you get this gag out of her mouth? Why is she gagged, anyway? Why was that necessary?”

“So she couldn’t scream for help? Seemed pretty obvious to me,” Twil ventured, then grimaced when I gave her an unimpressed glare. She crossed the room and undid the knotted tea-towel serving as a gag, and revealed the rest of Nicole’s face: a small, neat mouth and a very mobile jaw, which Nicole instantly worked up and down to relieve the stiffness.

She watched me, and watched Twil, and even watched Lozzie still lurking in the doorway, as she wet her lips and took several deep breaths. Finally, she seemed to settle on me.

“Alright, I’ll go first then,” she said. “You obviously want to talk to me, or you wouldn’t have removed that gag. What do you wanna talk about?”

My heart hammered in my chest. Why was this, of all things, so nerve-wracking? I’d faced down a flesh-eating monster this morning, and almost been eaten by a building. This should be nothing.

“What’s your name?” she carried on. “Mine’s Nico-”

“Nicole, yes, I know,” I almost snapped. “Nicole Webb, detective sergeant, Derbyshire Constabulary.”

She smiled a little. “You got that off my badge, didn’t you?”

It was how she used her voice, soft and measured, gentle and coaxing. She was rigid with tension, but doing an incredible job of controlling her breathing, of playing the part she thought would get her out of here. She made me feel every bit what I actually was – an ill and exhausted young woman, not a supernatural mastermind.

“We did, yes,” I managed, trying to stick to the script. “My name is Heather Morell, and I do have a question for you, yes.”

“Ask away, please,” she said quickly, before I could continue. I knew exactly what she was doing, building rapport. She caught my pause and carried through again. “I’m all all ears, Heather, please.”

“Are you a real police detective, or … ” I trailed off, my heart hammering like a deer trying to batter itself to pieces against a fence. “Oh hell, I can’t do this,” I spat.

“Heather?” The detective spoke very quickly now. “Can’t do what? What are you being forced to do here? Talk to me, please, I can help-”

“Heather?” Twil hissed. “The- we need to-”

“Wrong end of the stick,” Lozzie chirped from the doorway, then let out a flighty little sigh.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. “She doesn’t have the slightest clue what she’s walked into, and Zheng hasn’t made the impact I hoped.”

“What have I walked into?” Nicole asked. “Please, help me understand, and I can help you. Your big friend didn’t say a word to me, no, but she sure is big. She coming back too?” Nicole lowered her voice. “Or are you sort of glad she’s not listening in right now?”

I shook my head, at a loss, trying not to face the inevitable even as I said it. “I do not have time to deal with you. I just don’t. We can’t do this, I don’t know how.”

Nicole’s front finally cracked – just a little. She frowned, and that was real, an unrehearsed, unglossed, genuine quirk of confusion. “Heather, yes?”

“Yes. That’s me.”

“Are you in charge here?”

I blinked at her, paused, my mouth open like an idiot. “ … yes. Yes, I suppose I am. Right now, I am the closest thing this bunch has to a leader, yes.”

“You’re all a bit young for this sort of thing, aren’t you?” Nicole tried another smile, wet her lips. “Any of you a day over twenty?”

“I am, in fact. A couple of weeks ago,” I said.

“Hey, Heather, happy birthday!” Lozzie lit up behind me. “I had mine too. We should do a double party when this is all over.”

“’This sort of thing’?” Twil echoed, frowning.

“Covering up a double murder. Striking a deal with a detective,” Nicole said, oddly casual, though the tension in her eyes gave her away. “I assume that is what you’re trying to do?”

I sighed and put my face in my hand. “Nobody here’s committed murder. Not today.”

Nicole puffed out a long breath and pulled a if-you-say-so sort of face. “I did see two bodies. Hiding a body is a lot of work, you know, and ninety-nine percent of the time it’s not successful, pieces get found, forensics turns stuff up. Is one of you covering for a relative? A father? An uncle? Some sort of fight gone wrong? Look, all three of you girls are in trouble, I’m not going to lie, but I can help you. You feel like you’re trapped, like you’ve got no choice, but that’s not true, you-”

“What do you think Zheng was?” I asked.

“ … she’s a professional, isn’t she?” Nicole’s voice dropped to a hushed whisper, her face into a serious frown. “She’s watching you three, while you wait for a real clean-up crew? Or she was involved, she killed those two men? If that’s right, you need to untie me right now and-”

“She’s a demon,” I said. “And my friend.”

“Ahhh fuckin’ ‘ell.” Twil grimaced.

Nicole paused for a lot longer than she needed to, then nodded slowly. “Alright, we’ll go with that. So … is she … uh-”

“The bodies you saw were killed by a servitor – that’s a kind of spirit, which you can’t see – put here by the grandmother of the owner of this house, who is currently upstairs in a coma, because we’re having a crisis.” The words tumbled out of me, as I tried to avoid what I had to do. My voice shook, the plan all coming apart. “Multiple crises, in fact. And that is why I do not have time to deal with you. I need to find my partner, who has been kidnapped by actual evil cultists who worship an alien god outside of our reality. Are you following me so far?”

Lozzie caught the upset in my voice and made a noise like she wanted to hug me, but she hung back. Nicole was doing a very bad job of concealing her conclusion that she was surrounded by not just murderers and criminals, but mad ones.

“Right,” she said. “Right. Okay. This … ‘servitor’, uh, where is it? Does it look like a person? Is it here now?”

“Oh come on!” Lozzie demanded of her. “Use your noggin, think! Think!”

“What did you think happened to you when Twil overpowered you earlier?” I asked. “Was that normal?”

“ … that was just … bad luck. Props to you, by the way,” she nodded to Twil. “Twil, is it? Had me bang to rights with that armlock.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“She’s a werewolf,” I said.

“Heather,” Twil whined, then almost grinned to herself. She loved it really, the showing off.

“Fuzzy,” Lozzie said with a cheeky grin, then darted behind the door-frame to escape Twil’s little growl.

“A … werewolf?” Nicole’s eyebrows went up. “Okay.”

“No, not okay. It’s not okay, because you need to accept it, and I don’t know how to make you do that. And what about Zheng? You think she’s tall? She’s nearly seven feet, can’t you see that isn’t normal? People don’t get that tall, not built like her.”

“What are you trying to tell me here? I’ve stumbled into a bad urban fantasy novel?” Nicole smiled as she spoke, but she failed to keep the incredulity out of her voice. Now she thought I was just messing with her. I wished I was.

“Pffffffft,” Lozzie blew a raspberry from the doorway. “No imagination. She’s never gonna get it.”

“We have to make her get it. We have to show her,” I said, my voice tight and shaking with the racing of my heart. “Or I have to kill her.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

In a minor miracle of grip strength, I’d managed to hang onto the filthy blanket during our rapid descent from Glasswick tower. Which was lucky, because a January morning in Sharrowford was no place to be out of doors dressed in only one’s pajamas.

“We should uh … we should … ” I mumbled. “We should … yes … ”

Bloodstream still awash with the receding floodwaters from a tidal wave of adrenaline, I attempted to get to my feet, and discovered my bruises.

“Ah!” I winced. “Ahh, oh God, okay. Ow. Ow, my stomach.” I bit my bottom lip and squeezed my eyes shut. Our landing had tenderised my abdominal muscles. How was it possible to be this bruised without breaking any bones? I sat very still, breathing very gently.

“Best I could do,” Zheng rumbled. She still grinned with success, but had her head tilted to one side, as if listening to a distant sound on the air.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m alive. That’s what counts. That counts.”

Ting, agreed Praem, the lead weight jumping inside her bottle. I felt a bizarre urge to press my face against the glass.

I spent a good minute figuring out how to stand up without using my stomach muscles or dropping Praem’s bottle. In the end I had to put her down, turn over and use my hands to lever myself off the ground, then tucked Praem back into the crook of my arm underneath the blanket around my shoulders.

“How am I not concussed?” I said, blinking hard at my own left hand. “Am I concussed? I should absolutely have a concussion.”

Clink-clink. Praem didn’t think so.

“I paid the meat price,” Zheng purred. She didn’t bother to look at me.

Her meaning failed to penetrate my adrenaline-addled brain. I touched the back of my neck as if expecting to find protruding bone, gingerly rotated my head on my shoulders, swallowed and blinked and searched for damage. “Shouldn’t I have whiplash? That was like a car crash.”

“I am smarter than a seatbelt.”

I nodded automatically. As the adrenaline drained away, my teeth threatened to chatter. “We should go, we should really go. We can’t stay here.”

“Should,” Zheng echoed.

“That boy might alert somebody. Parents, police, I don’t know. And Sarika could be on her way, she said she was coming here. We’ll need to keep out of sight, both of us. How do we do that? We can hardly take the bus.” I spoke more to myself than Zheng, trying to marshal my thoughts and reboot my brain after the fall. “If somebody spotted us falling … well, we’ll make the strange and unexplained news. I don’t know how we’re going to get home without being seen, I … what, what is it?”

Zheng had turned her shark-toothed grin on me as I rambled on.

“Zheng? We really should go, we need to leave before-”

“Should and could. Different things.”

“ … I’m sorry?”

“Seven fractures.” Zheng tapped her left thigh, then her right. “Four fractures.” Her finger rose to the wide swell of her hips inside her jeans, to her pelvis. “Two fractures. One in my spine as well. Structural. I take a step, I fall down.”

“Oh.” Suddenly the cracking sounds I’d heard earlier made sense. Iron and rock she may seem, but even demon-altered corpse-born flesh and blood was still only flesh and blood. “Oh Zheng, I’m sorry. You- for me. Thank you. I-”

“I’m fixing it.”

“Fixing? … oh, yes. You can do that, can’t you? Like when I … ” I trailed off, wincing in slow motion, gratitude and guilt mixed into a heady cocktail by the rush of still being alive. “I never apologised for severing your arm before. So, I’m sorry. And thank you. Thank you, Zheng, I … thank you. I still can’t believe you jumped out of a building.”

Zheng shrugged, rattling Praem’s wooden body on her shoulder.

“How long will healing take?” I asked. “Sarika might be on her way here. And, well, people might see us.” I glanced around at the thin barrier of old bushes and partially dismantled security fence, the twin concrete cliffs of Gleaston and Glasswick towers looming over us. Nobody had chanced by yet, but it was only a matter of time. “You look like you stepped out of a Greek myth. Plus we’ve got quite a bit of … red, on us.”

“Fifteen minutes, give or take. Bones need time.” Zheng shrugged again. “Don’t run off alone.”

“Believe you me, I am not going anywhere.”

I tugged the blanket tighter around my shoulders and adjusted Praem’s bottle. The road beyond the secluded patch of scrub ground was deserted for now, the gap between the towers hostile with graffiti and broken bottles, but it would only take one passer-by to glance down here at the wrong moment, one stay-at-home mum in Gleaston tower to look out of her bathroom window, and we’d be the subject of a very bizarre phone call to the police. Headly council estate might be numb to vandalism and pretty drug crime, but I doubt they’d shrug off the sight of a seven-foot-tall monster covered in dried blood and concrete dust, accompanying a shell-shocked college girl in her pajamas.

But despite what I’d said, I didn’t care.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or the joy of not being dead, or the sheer madness of surviving a twenty-five story fall, but for once in my life I simply couldn’t bring myself to give a damn.

I filled my lungs with frigid air, and didn’t care how much it made me shiver. I was alive and I was free, and my bruises would heal.

My only witness – other than Zheng, her eyes tilted to the sky, her attention focused inward – was the omnipresent spirit-life, the pneuma-somatic background noise to my life. From where we stood on that half-hidden patch of scrub ground I could already see a dozen different spirits; a blob of tentacles and orange suckers climbed Gleaston tower, a clump of creatures all stalk and eye picked their way across distant rooftops, a Roc-sized bird of black fire hovered low over the city to the east – and a pair of hound-ghoul things snuffled down the nearby road, barely thirty feet away.

An idea struck me, one I would never have dared fifteen minutes ago. That was the old Heather, who had not yet survived death with her eyes wide open.

Well, eyes screwed shut in terror. Still counted.

“Zheng, I-”

“You feel invincible,” Zheng said before I could finish. She lowered her eyes to meet mine. “Maybe you are.”

“I … how did you know that?”

“Go out in a storm.” Zheng’s voice dropped low and quiet, a tiger-purr in the night. “Naked and alone, and climb to the highest point you can find. The trees shake, the rocks shiver. But you shout back at the thunder and the lightning, defy the Gods to kill you. Maybe they do, maybe you die. But if you live, you’re invincible. That’s how your kind do it. The old way.” She took a deep breath and her grin broke the spell. “Or it’s just how you monkeys get when you cheat death. Endorphins.”

“Yes, probably that second one.” I took a deep breath as well. “I’m going to … it’s hard to explain, I’m going to take a risk. Please trust me for a moment.”

Zheng shrugged. Couldn’t help but notice she kept her legs and hips and spine rock steady as she moved.

The two spirits nosing at the road hadn’t moved too far along yet. I wet my lips, wrapped myself in false courage, and opened my mouth.

“You,” I said in a level voice, far too quiet to carry from our hiding place.

One of the spirits looked up at me. Goat-like eyes in a pale lupine face. Its companion stopped too, and they stared at me like a pair of wolves examining a baited trap.

“Come here,” I said. “Or don’t. Your choice.”

A hesitating first step turned into a trot, and the pair of spirits edged up toward the patch of scrub ground, pacing back and forth.

Supremely ugly, a unnatural combination of wolf and ape, leathery hands instead of paws and scraggly fur like old man’s hair sprouting in clumps on their rubbery skin. Big loose jaws full of blunt teeth worked silently on empty air. Eyes too large and too far apart kept sliding over at Zheng, unwilling to venture within her range. That’s right, I’d seen her pick Tenny up by the throat once before, hadn’t I? And Praem had wrestled that spirit at the Saye estate. Demons could touch them, hurt them, and they knew it.

“You know who I am, or what I am.” I raised my voice slightly and reminded myself I’d done this before; I’d spoken to spirits, I’d pressed them for information, I’d even commanded them – briefly. This was unlikely to work, but I had nothing to lose by trying. “I have a task for you.”

Pacing, back and forth, back and forth. No indication they cared.

“There’s a magician approaching this tower, a mage, understand? She’ll be here soon, and she might go up inside the tower. Follow her when she emerges again, follow her home. Then come back to me, and show me where she hides.”

Both spirits stopped, sat on their haunches, staring at me. A demand, a refusal? This wasn’t working.

“In return … I … ” I what? I couldn’t think of anything.

Before I could get out another word, both spirits leapt up and ran off with a skidding and skittering of feet, nipping at each others’ faces and hides. I puffed out a long sigh. A failure. I’d think of something else. I had to.

Zheng was watching me with quiet fascination.

“I thought it was worth a go,” I said. “I can see … uh, spirits, it’s-”

“Of course you can see them, shaman.”

That word again. She’d called me that over and over since I’d freed her, but now she imbued the word with that awful reverence once more, a dark intensity in her eyes.

I sighed to cover my discomfort. “I do hope we didn’t scar that boy too badly. Not to be rude, Zheng, but you’re the sort of thing that causes recurring nightmares.”

Or wet dreams, if one was like me, but I didn’t say that part out loud.

“Thank you.” Zheng grinned in savage delight, back to normal. She rolled her neck and one shoulder, then twisted her torso and hips sideways in a slow motion that produced a machine-gun sound of every spinal vertebrae popping in sequence. She coughed, flexed her thighs, bent a knee, went up on tiptoes, produced more popping noises as her joints realigned. She coughed again.

“Almost there?”

“Mm. Minute,” she grunted, coughed a third time, then opened her jaw wide and fished a chunk of concrete out the back of her throat. “Huh.”

Zheng didn’t strike me as remotely in need of what we mere mortals thought of as dignity, but I averted my gaze all the same. I looked up at Glasswick tower, at the vertical dungeon we’d escaped, and tried to spot the window we’d jumped from. Couldn’t see it from all the way down here, not at this angle.

“Did you know that would work?” I muttered. Zheng grunted an interrogative, busy rotating her ankles. “Jumping that far, I mean?”

“Fallen further before,” she rumbled.

“Carrying a person?”

“Three goats.” She broke into a grin, enjoying the look on my face. “Off a cliff. They lived too.”

“Goats. Glad to know I’m in good company.”

Clink-clink-clink went Praem. Three times? Was that laughter? I frowned at the oily smoke in the bottle.

“They were good goats,” Zheng said. “Good meat.”

“I’m certain they were, but I better not be.”

Clink, went Praem.

“Yes, thank you,” I sighed, and stared up at the tower again.

The corruption, the tentacles, the imprint of Alexander Lilburne’s mind – none of it was visible from the ground. Nobody knew it was there, except for me and my friends, and a bunch of cultists dedicated to my worst enemy.

 Zheng took several steps, rolled her torso around in an arc from her hips and drew herself up to her full height, swapping Praem’s wooden body from one shoulder to the other. She stretched, a tiger preparing to sun itself. “Ahhhhh. Much better.”

“I’ll be back for you,” I whispered to the tower, hugged Praem’s jar, and turned to Zheng with a question on my lips.

“Shaman.”

“Zheng. Are you … ” I cursed my hesitation. Zheng was a demon and a monster, but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase the question. “Are you certain you’re coming with me?”

“My legs work again. Bones,” she grunted amused disapproval.

“No, I mean are you comfortable coming home with me?”

“Mmmmm?” she purred, watching me carefully.

“The house – my home – it belongs to Evelyn. She’s my best friend, I love her, but she’s a mage. I understand if you’d rather not go there. You don’t owe me anything. I’m pretty sure I can get home on my own if I have to. If this is where we part ways.” 

Zheng shrugged. “I’m still here, shaman.”

==

Walking all the way home took almost three hours.

Zheng and I stuck to less-used roads, back alleys, side streets, with much stopping and starting, on a circuitous route to avoid the city centre, the shops, the homeless camps under the motorway, anywhere with people. Peering around corners, listening for footsteps, lurking in back alleys; a painstaking trek through the concrete jungle, all the way to the other side of Sharrowford.

My fears were proved justified a couple of weeks later. A grainy picture of Zheng and I surfaced on the internet, snapped from the window of a passing car with a shaking phone camera, along the motorway embankment near one of the clusters of tents. Nothing visible to recognise me by, only the back of my head atop a shapeless lump of blanket – but Zheng was clearly far too tall. Supernatural sighting or trick of perspective? Photoshop or clever stunt? Luckily enough, the responses to the photograph descended into jokes about giant Yorkshire-men escaped from the moors. I’m certain some amateur paranormal researcher has glanced at my awful matted hair and hunched shoulders, and wondered about some obscure species of Northern English gremlin.

My unshod feet plagued me, sore and hobbling after the first hour, one sock-less soft sole bleeding by the third, so Zheng picked me up and carried me. Princess style. Twice. An experience my body didn’t forget in a hurry.

She carried me until I could walk again, and I didn’t reject the help, despite the quasi-sexual discomfort and Praem’s fleshless wooden bones bumping alongside me.

Raine needed all the help I could get. From any quarter, any monster.

By the time number 12 Barnslow Drive finally hove into view I was back on my own two feet, ready to drop, dehydrated, and shivering with cold.

Home, this cracked and weathered redbrick leviathan, roof tiles patched with tarpaulin. wreathed in shrivelled ivy for the winter, squinted at me from dark windows and made my heart soar.

I hurried the final stretch, feet stinging, bruised abdomen complaining, and pushed through the garden gate with an unbidden smile on my lips. Praem didn’t say anything from within her bottle, and perhaps it was only my imagination, but I swore I felt her respond as well. This was the place she’d come into our reality. Her home too.

“This one?” Zheng purred from behind. In my moment of relief, I missed the warning note in her voice.

“Yes,” I sighed. “Yes, we’re home.”

And not a thing out of place. I stopped on the garden path and bit my bottom lip.

Front door intact and sturdy, not smashed in as I’d half-expected. Raine’s battered old car still squatted next to the pavement a few feet down the road, where she’d last left it parked. No lights showed around the cracks in curtains, all was dark and quiet under the brooding winter sky. The inside of the house sometimes felt like a cocoon or a womb, sealed and guarded from the city beyond.

“Question is,” I murmured. “Who exactly is at home?”

Click, agreed Praem.

I finally tore my eyes from the house to glance back at Zheng, and realised she hadn’t crossed the threshold of the front gate. Spirit-life lurked in the street behind her, at a respectful distance. All the way here the pneuma-somatic wildlife had given us a wide berth, as if Zheng was one of their natural predators. One of them – barred from the Saye house as they were?

“Zheng, you can come inside, can’t you? I didn’t think to mention, the property’s warded. I actually don’t know what that means, but … can you?”

“Signs won’t stop flesh,” she rumbled, and stepped through the invisible barrier, stalking up alongside me like a panther, without once wavering from her staring contest with the house. She watched the building with a slow, wary regard, tilting her head one way then the other, as if getting a good view through each separate eyeball.

No dark amusement, no face-splitting grin. Not amused.

“What’s wrong?” My words emerged as a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Zheng, what’s wrong? You’re spooking me. Do you see somebody?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I see this place. Not so different to the tower we ran from.”

I sighed and resisted an urge to roll my eyes. “I did tell you it’s an old magician’s house. Everyone’s so upset by it – you, Twil, the Brinkwood people. Why weren’t the cult scared? None of this would have happened.”

“Because they’re fools,” Zheng purred, gaze still locked onto the house.

“Zheng, I’ve known you for one morning, and this is the second time you’ve wanted to fight a building. Unless you’re secretly intending to murder Evelyn or steal her books, I don’t think the guards will pay you any attention, and the house won’t care. It’s not a haunted house, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The shark-grin returned to Zheng’s face, directed down at me. “Afraid? Perhaps you should be afraid of this house, shaman.”

“Well, I’m not. It’s home, it’s treated me well, and it’s where my friends live. Speaking of which, Zheng, you … I don’t mean to imply- and I do want to just get indoors already, but-”

“Spit it out.”

“You won’t get violent with anybody, will you?”

“Anybody?” Zheng purred.

“Any of my friends. You know what I mean.”

“And if the house bites?”

I huffed, curling my freezing toes against the pathway flagstones. “Bite back.”

And without further ado, I marched up the path and knocked on the front door.

Luckily for my remaining credibility, Zheng decided to join me, a tower of muscle at my shoulder ready to threaten, kill, or eat anybody who wasn’t supposed to be here. If she’d hung back, well, I would’ve had to retreat and try again. Maybe go around the back, find Tenny. I’d check on her as soon as I could.

Nobody answered my knock. The house echoed with a long pause through which dark things crept in silence. I rattled the handle and knocked again.

“It’s me!” I called out. “I don’t have my key, for obvious reasons.”

My mind backed up a step and I looked at the door properly – and my heart crawled into my throat. Number 12 Barnslow Drive had indeed been broken into, quite expertly. The keyhole showed a scuffed ring of fresh metal amid the decades of old scratches, and the thick wood had been dented slightly, about level with my head; the lock been forced, a shoulder rammed against the door? After Twil had run out into the night, had Raine closed the bolts? I didn’t recall. If only we’d locked it properly, if only-

A rapid patter of feet sounded suddenly from inside the house. I jumped, my heart leapt, and my stomach dropped. Somebody – something – bumped into the door, turned the lock and rammed back the bolts with a clatter.

“Oh.” I backed up, right into Zheng. She put a hand on my shoulder and put herself in front of me, just as the door flew open.

Sharp amber eyes in an angelic face, wide and blinking in surprise.

“Twil!” I half-shouted her name in a shudder of relief. Suddenly my knees felt weak and rubbery.

Twil didn’t hear me, not from behind seven feet of zombie muscle; I scurried around Zheng to hug my friend, not even thinking, but then things got tiresomely predictable.

Twil catapulted herself backward from Zheng in a feat of canine gymnastic shock. I flinched and swallowed a yelp. She landed already bristling with fur and claw and the elongating snout wrapping itself around her human face, growling deep and loud through clenched teeth – not a warning, a war cry.

“Twil! Twil, it’s me, it’s fine, it’s me!” I blurted out as I hurried over the threshold. Praem agreed with a clink from inside her bottle. Wolfish eyes caught me and Twil’s entire body jerked as she aborted a forward charge.

“Heather?” she growled through a snout of ghostly wolf-flesh.

“Yes! Yes it’s me, I’m here, and I’m- well, I’m not okay, but I’m unhurt- wait, no, that’s not accurate. I am hurt.” I almost laughed at the absurdity of the moment, an edge of hysteria in my voice. My strength was draining with relief, my body knew I was home. This warm dark cavern of old wood and familiar scents, of our shoes by the door and the unique way the light through the curtains dusted the front room with plush shadows. A wall of warm air washed over me, the heating still turned up against the cold outdoors.

And under it all, the faint iron scent of blood tainted the air. Blood, and cleaning chemicals.

Zheng had to duck to follow me through the doorway, then straightened back up to her full height. Twil’s eyes flicked between me, the giant zombie, the huge glowing bottle in my arms, and the twisted wooden mannequin over Zheng’s shoulder. Much more of that and she’d make herself dizzy.

“Twil, it’s okay,” I almost laughed again. “It’s okay, we’re all friends here.”

“Yeah right, sure, fuck,” Twil managed.

Like a huge jungle cat squaring off against a rival, Zheng showed all her teeth, and grinned at Twil. “Laangren?” she purred.

“And you can knock that off!” I snapped at Zheng, emboldened by finally being home. “And please, shut the door before somebody sees us. Please?”

Zheng closed the door without removing her eyes from Twil. My werewolf friend growled back as Zheng’s grin widened again.

“Please, both of you, please,” I repeated, exasperated. “I am exhausted, we are in a crisis, please.”

“Heather?” Twil asked through gritted teeth. “You’ve gotta be joking.”

“I freed her,” I rushed to explain. “Zheng, I mean, I freed her. She’s on our side – my side, sort of. Zheng, this is Twil, please-”

“We’ve met,” Zheng rumbled. “Never got to have a proper fight, did we, skinchanger?”

Twil reacted like a startled hound, blinking and shaking her head. “Hey what, you talk proper now?”

“I have a mouth, I must use it.”

“She saved my life this morning,” I said to Twil. “Yes, she is extremely dangerous, but not to us. I think.”

“Your trusted are mine, shaman,” Zheng purred, but her grin stayed fixed on Twil. “But don’t you want to feel it too, laangren? I haven’t had a good fight, a real fight, in decades. We’ll both walk away, no real skin in the game, just the sheer joy of it.”

Twil blinked at her. “ … later. Maybe. Fuck’s sake.”

Zheng grumbled like a tiger having a dream, but finally allowed her shark’s grin to simmer down to a dark smolder. She shrugged, and Praem’s wooden body rattled on her shoulder. “I’m up for a round with you anytime, skinchanger.”

“Not indoors you’re not.” I tutted.

A ripple of change passed through Twil’s transformed musculature. Her wolf-flesh melted away, wisps curling and vanishing into nothing as she tilted her chin up at Zheng, all human again. “Beat you last time, didn’t I? What, you want a rematch between my foot and your face?”

“No,” Zheng corrected her. “You ran away.”

Twil frowned, not quite following. “Fuck it, whatever. Who cares.”

That should have alerted me to how dire the situation was – Twil refusing to rise to the bait. Instead, she stepped forward and pulled me into a fierce hug.

“Ah! Ah, careful,” I winced as Praem’s bottle was squished against my abdomen. Sometimes Twil didn’t know her own strength. “Stomach, stomach’s very bruised. Ow.”

“Sorry. Sorry, Heather. S’just, you know, shit’s so fucked up. Welcome home, yeah?”

“Yes,” I managed. “Thank you.”

A wave of emotion welled up in my chest, but I swallowed it down. My body said rest, you’re home, everything’s going to be alright; I told it no, we still had miles to go.

Twil pulled back to look at my face. “God, fuck this morning. I’m real glad you’re okay, Heather.”

“’Okay’ is a relative term, but I am alive. Thank Zheng.”

Twil glanced up at the zombie, frowning hard. Zheng shrugged and stepped away from us to prop up Praem’s altered wooden mannequin on some of the many boxes of junk Evelyn kept stacked in the front room. Better than dumping Praem’s body on the floor, I suppose, but it still hurt to see.

“The hell is that?” Twil asked.

“Luggage,” Zheng purred.

“Praem’s body.”

Twil gaped at me.

“Oh, oh, don’t worry,” I hurried, and held up the bottle. “She’s in here, this is her, for the moment. Say hi.”

“Um … hi, Praem?”

Clink, went Praem.

“I think we can put her back together,” I said.

Twil nodded, frowning, quite lost indeed. “The hell happened, Heather, where were you?”

“Bad places, then the ground. Long story. Twil, where’s everybody else? I’m worried sick, I think they took Raine, at least that’s … that’s what they … ” The look on her face made it obvious. “She’s not here, is she?”

Twil winced and shook her head. “Hoped she was with you.”

“The cultists kidnapped her. I think.”

“Shit!” Twil swore through her teeth. “Last night, I got back here as fast as I could, I really did, I promise, but you and her were both gone already! I’m sorry. Evee won’t wake up. Kimberly, she- I think she was hiding somewhere, under a table or some shit, and-”

“Kim’s okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Twil nodded. “Scared, you know? But yeah. We put Evee upstairs in her bedroom, and Kim’s been doing stuff, you know. Magic? Trying to get Evee to wake up. I called my mum too, but she says none of them can come into town right now, not with this going on. My folks are in full panic mode, I’m supposed to be at home, but sod them. Evee won’t wake up. Heather, I can’t wake her up.”

I looked at Twil – really looked at Twil, and realised she was closer to the edge than I. Face puffy with lack of sleep and panic, eyes wild, still in the same clothes she’d been wearing when she’d torn out into the dark last night. Her easy exterior was cracking. Nothing to chase, nothing to punch, a faint shaking in her chest and face. She didn’t know what to do.

I did.

“We’re going to wake Evelyn up, and I’m going to find Raine,” I said, and surprised myself with the conviction in my voice.

In truth I had no idea if we could do either of those things, but if we wanted a ghost of a chance then Twil had to believe, because I might need her, so my job was to make her believe.

“ … yeah,” Twil mouthed.

“Twil. We will. We absolutely will. I will do anything. Understand?”

Clink, agreed Praem.

“Yeah. Yeah, we will, we can do this.” She nodded, going along with me. “Right. We can … oh!” Her face suddenly lit up. “You can make things vanish! Right?”

“I … I can, yes?”

“Oh, fuck me. Lifesaver.” Twil let out a huge sigh of relief. “Heather, you are a lifesaver. I didn’t know what to do with the corpses!”

“The … ” I blinked, rewound, replayed that word. “I’m sorry, Twil, the what?”

“The corpses,” she gestured at the floor – and the wall behind me, and the door-frame. And the inside of the door. In all the excitement I had failed to notice the wood was slightly damp, and still stained faintly in a way recent scrubbing had failed to completely eliminate. The whole area was punctuated by several patches of damage that looked like impact craters from railway spikes. I reconstructed the scene in my head: blood on the floorboards, blood up the walls, blood up the door.

My eyes travelled upward, and I flinched. One of Evelyn’s spider-servitors still hung over the doorway, in an ambush position, so well-concealed I hadn’t seen it when I’d stepped inside.

The Eye Cult had paid a high price for invading my home.

“Thank you,” I said to it. “Next time, don’t let anyone take Raine, please.”

“ … is it … it’s not one of the invisible spiders, is it?” Twil whispered, as if it might hear her.

“Yes. It is,” I sighed.

“Ugh. Well, yeah then, I guess that must have been it. When I got here, there were these two dead guys on the floor. Huge mess. Put them both in the kitchen, but uh-”

Twil wasn’t exactly a master of misdirection, or of concealing her emotions. Her eyes flicked to the closed door to the disused sitting room.

I followed her gaze. “I thought you said you put them in the kitchen?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah I did. They’re both still there, you know, getting cold and stiff. It’s just, um, there’s- it’s a been a bit of a complex morning and we’ve got, um … ” Her eyes wandered over my shoulder, frowning at Zheng.

I sighed. “We can discuss this in front of Zheng. She’s on my side, and yes, she’s also a violent cannibalistic demon-”

“Cannibal implies the same species,” Zheng purred, almost as if distracted. “I’m no monkey.”

“-but she saved my life twice this morning, and I think she wants to help.”

“Uh, no.” Twil pointed. “I mean, what the fuck’s she doing now?”

“I can hear you, laangren,” Zheng rumbled.

“What? She … oh.”

Our friendly neighbourhood flesh-eating demon had also noticed the Spider-servitor, and was now locked in a staring contest. The spider’s head of crystalline eyes rotated to return Zheng’s look, both of them frozen in the moment of eye contact. Two supernatural beasties vying for who was bigger and scarier.

“It’s fine,” I said with a sigh. “She and the spider are squaring off, just like you did too. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t care. It’s okay, Zheng, I … I think.”

“I have eaten spider many times,” Zheng purred.

“Not one of those, I’d wager,” I said.

“A first time for every kind of meat.”

“I’m extra glad I can’t see any of this,” Twil said, hands up in surrender.

I stared at Zheng for a moment, trying to figure out if she was serious. The last thing we needed was a demon getting into a death match with what was left of our security system.

“Look, Heather,” Twil was saying. “It’s just, we’ve got a situation to deal with. Uh, a really … delicate situation, and maybe like, she should go somewhere else for a bit?”

Caught between a territorial zombie and Twil sounding worryingly un-Twil like, I frowned at the latter in confusion. “Delicate situation? What are you talking about?”

Her eyes slid to the sitting room door again. She winced and struggled over a word or two. I was about to tell her to get on with it, I’m too tired, I need to sit, I need to wash my sore feet, I need to eat, and we need to save our friends – when a cry of delight split the air. My name.

“Heather!”

My name, from the most unexpected source.

Thundering down the stairs in a clatter of bare feet, flying the distance between us in a twirl of plaid skirt and pink poncho, throwing herself at me in an uninhibited tackle-hug, here came Lozzie.

I almost couldn’t believe my eyes – and barely remained standing when she hit me, that flying hug not just for show. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders, squeezed all the air out of me, and nuzzled her face into my neck. Pulling back, laughing, making me laugh back at her in surprised delight, wheezing from the bruises in my stomach but not caring. I almost dropped Praem’s bottle, but Twil reached in and took it from me, like sticking her hands between a pair of wrestling ferrets.

“You’re here! You’re here! You came back!” Lozzie laughed at me.

“You too,” I croaked, speechless, smiling all over. “Ow.”

“Mmm!” She made a sound like a small excited animal, and hugged me tight. I went ‘ow!’ again but I didn’t care.

“Yeah,” Twil added. “And your spooky friend is here too. Turned up outta nowhere.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked Twil over Lozzie’s shoulder, hugging her hard as I could stand.

“Other things on my mind.”

Lozzie pulled back again, half-dancing on her bare feet. God, she looked so healthy, her elfin face glowing, well-fed and clean – though still pale and mushroom-like, as if her skin had seen no sun in months. Which made sense if she’d been Outside, beyond the reach of terrestrial light. Where’d she gotten the clothes? The plaid skirt was so her, and the pink poncho had a cute little hood with floppy rabbit ears. Her hair was everywhere as she raked back wisps out of it out of her face. She smelled of foreign bath soap and medical moisturiser, mango and Vaseline. And underneath it all, the lingering taint of Wonderland ash.

“I have so many things I need to ask you,” I said, overwhelmed by emotion.

“Heather, Heather, where did you go? Why did you go?” She laughed, bewildered with me. “I was getting you out.”

“Somebody – something grabbed me. Pulled us apart! Lozzie, I wouldn’t leave, not … not when … I thought you were gone.”

“Ahhhh,” she sighed, nodding and smiling. “Same thing. I can’t leave! Have you tried? I can’t get back Out, it’s so weird.”

“You … you tried to leave again?” An unexpected barb of pain twisted in my chest.

“To find you! You were supposed to be here!”

I swallowed and focused. “Hands on your ankles? Dead hands?”

“Yeah! You too?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Weird, huh?” Lozzie smiled at me, a bouncing, happy sort of smile, and hugged me again.

“Ahh, ow. Lozzie, I’m sore, I’m so sore.” She’d come back to me. She was healthy and whole and safe. I laughed, and realised I was crying too. “You got me from Wonderland. You got me. Thank you, Lozzie. Lozzie.” The tears came on full now, I couldn’t stop them, and my voice emerged as a whine. “Lozzie, I’ve lost Raine. They took her somewhere. I can’t- I-”

“No!” Lozzie pulled back, her face set in a serious little frown. “They can’t do that! I’ll help! You love her, this is important! We’ll get her back, I have an idea already!”

“You- you do? Of course you do.” I took a shuddering breath, sniffed, and managed to stop the tears. Lozzie nodded and helped wipe my face. I had to focus. Lozzie likely did not have any ideas that made sense in this reality, but her sheer blinding enthusiasm helped hold me up.

“Little … little Lauren,” Zheng purred, almost a whisper, and we both looked up.

Zheng wore an expression I hadn’t thought her capable of, a lost fragile wonder, her staring contest with the spider forgotten. One huge hand reached out and brushed the top of Lozzie’s head, the gentlest gesture I’d seen Zheng make.

“Oh!” Lozzie lit up again. “You’re awake! Hi, Zheng.” She gave the zombie a little wave. “How’s it feel?”

“This is … I spoke to you, little Lauren, in dreams,” Zheng purred, the stone of her voice softened and blurred. She blinked heavily. Can demons cry? “You gifted me with dreams where I was free.”

“Uh huh, yeah, it was fun!” Lozzie wriggled out of my arms – leaving me more than a little unsteady on my unsupported legs – and threw a hug at Zheng, as unafraid and uninhibited as she had been with me, utterly unintimidated by this rippling giant of barely suppressed violence. Zheng looked as surprised as I felt. Lozzie danced away again, panting and red in the face with excitement. “Did you get her out, Heather? How did you do that?”

“Um, I just removed some of her tattoos. It was … well, it wasn’t easy, it made me pass out. But it was simple enough.”

Lozzie tilted her head back and forth quickly, as if this feat was beyond her imagining. “Wow, cool. Heather, you’re so clever! I could never figure it out.”

“Little Lauren, little … ” Zheng grinned again. “Hahhh. I remember now. My little mooncalf.”

“Mooncalf?” Lozzie pulled a face, stuck out her tongue and pulled down on one lower eyelid. “Ruuuuude.”

Zheng rumbled a low laugh – then froze.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” a tiny voice came from the kitchen doorway. Kimberly, one shuffled step into the room, staring at Zheng with poorly concealed horror, then at me with an uncertain smile. “Heather, hi. I’m- I’m glad you’re alright. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Kim,” I said, trying to sound soft. “I’m glad you’re okay too, you-”

Zheng moved like a foxhound after the scent of blood. She pounced past me in a blur of uncoiling muscle made of quicksilver and lightning. I flinched and gasped, Lozzie let out a little ‘oop’ and hopped backward, Twil growled like a startled dog – and Kimberly wasn’t fast enough to scream. Zheng picked her up by the throat and slammed her against the back wall, knocking all the breath out of her lungs.

“Little wizard,” Zheng hissed through a shark-toothed grin.

“Aw fuck,” Twil shouted, first off the mark – but she had no idea what was happening.

Legs kicking, eyes wide in naked terror, Kimberly opened her mouth to scream. Zheng’s other hand whipped out like a snake and darted forward into the opening, fist jamming Kimberly’s jaw wide open.

“Zheng, no!”

Luckily for Kimberly’s tongue, I got there first, one hand on Zheng’s arm. I knew that all the strength in my body wouldn’t be enough to stop the demon’s little finger, but the tone in my voice worked better than any physical restraint. Not a shrill cry, not a scream of panic. A command. A command given to a freed slave.

Slowly, her hand still ready to rip Kimberly’s tongue out at the root, Zheng turned her flesh-eating toothy grin on me.

She radiated cold malice. She thought Kimberly was a threat, but I’d offended her, in probably the single way anyone could.

“Zheng.”

“ … shaman,” she rumbled through her teeth.

“Kimberly is my friend.” Keeping my voice steady was impossible. I let it quiver. I was terrified, why pretend otherwise? I glanced at Kimberly, pinned to the wall and staring back at me, panting through her nose. She moaned a muted scream around Zheng’s fist, her feet scrabbling at the wall for purchase. In the corner of my eye I saw Twil circling to Zheng’s other side, half-transformed, ready to take her up on that offer of a rematch. “Twil, don’t,” I said out loud. “Zheng, Kimberly is mine. Understand?”

“I recall this one, skulking and worming, filling her grey meat with secrets. Making more like me.”

“What she did in the past does not matter. Or what she was forced to do. Now, she’s mine. And free, like you.”

Zheng let out a growl, a nasty one, like a mountain disagreeing with me. I hiccuped.

“And,” I added, shaking all over. I hiccuped again. “You said that removing your tattoos guaranteed no wizard can bind you with words. I heard you say that. Was that a lie? Is Kimberly dangerous to you? I don’t think she is. She’s helped me. She’s with me. Are you with me?”

Zheng grimaced. She turned a hateful gaze on Kimberly, made the poor woman squeeze her eyes shut, still fighting to breathe.

“Don’t hurt Flowsie, she’s harmless,” Lozzie said. Her little blonde head appeared over Zheng’s arm, peering up at Kimberly. “She’s kind of boring, and stiff, but she’s harmless. Sweet if you catch her alone.”

Zheng looked down at Lozzie and the awful toothy grin died in an instant, as if it couldn’t touch her little mooncalf. The fury in Zheng’s frame dropped away. She levelled a mere nasty look at Kimberly instead, and her huge tongue slowly inched out of her mouth to brush Kimberly’s cringing cheek, before whipping back again.

“Woah shit what,” Twil muttered.

“One betraying twitch from you, wizard,” Zheng purred in Kimberly’s face, and clacked her teeth together. Kimberly tried to nod – difficult with a fist in your mouth – and Zheng dropped her to the floor and stepped back.

“Back further, you big fuck,” Twil growled. Zheng grumbled, but amazingly enough she did as she was asked.

Hacking and coughing, wheezing for breath, shaking and crying, Kimberly flinched as I went to my knees and put my arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Kim. I’m sorry. I didn’t … I didn’t think … I didn’t think, that’s it. I’m sorry.”

“I hate magic so much,” Kimberly whined.

“Good,” Zheng purred.

“You shut the fuck up,” Twil snapped at her.

“Yes, Zheng,” I added quickly. “Please just … just leave it alone.”

Zheng grumbled and refused to look at anybody.

“It’s okay, Flowsie, I don’t hate you.” Lozzie patted Kimberly on the head too, but I suspect that didn’t help. Twil, still eyeing Zheng like an unexploded bomb, fetched Kim a glass of water, which went down without obstruction and was quickly followed by another. It took us a while to get the poor woman back to her feet, by which time Zheng had retreated to the other side of the room, brooding like a moody teenager.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here,” Kimberly kept saying. “I keep screwing everything up, I-I can’t-”

“You don’t screw everything up, and that wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“It was,” Kimberly hiccuped. “I deserved it. The zombie’s right, I did so many terrible things. And now I’ve screwed up everything here too. We can’t wake miss Saye up, and I hid when you needed help. And it’s my fault that we’ve got … ” She trailed off at a look from Twil. I glanced between them.

“She thinks the police woman’s her fault,” Lozzie said. “Typical Flowsie.”

“ … police?” I echoed, going cold inside. “Oh no, what is this? Twil?”

“Oops!” Lozzie bit her lips. “We’re not talking about that?”

“I was, like, getting there. Okay?” said Twil.

“I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault,” Kimberly repeated. “I shouldn’t have opened the front door in the first place.”

“Twil?” I demanded.

Her eyes slid to the closed door of the disused sitting room.

With terrible inevitability and a growing sense of unreality, I stepped over to the door, turned the handle, and opened it on the curtained and shadowed room inside.

I’m not certain exactly how long I stared. It felt both too long and too short at the same time. Mortified, my mind racing at a million miles an hour, yet unable to process the implications of what lay in front of me. A pair of solidly stoic eyes stared back at me, neither accusing nor pleading, but quite afraid.

I closed the door, paused, then turned the handle and opened it again, hoping that something different might be inside. Nope, still the same. I closed the door a second time. Straighted up, took a breath, let it out slowly.

“Heather-” Twil started.

“Please, Twil.” I raised a finger. “Please, please tell me that is not a real police constable we have bound and gagged in there?”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“It’s alright, Praem, I’ve … I’ve got you. It’s going to be alright, you’ll be alright.”

Meaningless reassurances, spoken to a near invisible wisp of oily-rainbow smoke trapped inside a glass bottle.

Tink, went Praem’s lead weight against the glass. One for yes.

One for yes Heather, I trust you, you’ll save me, you’ll get me out of here, won’t you? One for I’m helpless and tiny and vulnerable, my strength stolen and my flesh banished. One for please, don’t leave me here.

A veil of red descended inside me, along with a shaking that had nothing to do with the cold, my jaw tight and my breath coming fast and hot. I turned to the cultist – Jacob, still hunched on the floor with his hands bound.

“How do I put my friend back in her body?” I hissed through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know, I’m not trained. It’s not my … ” He trailed off when he saw the anger boiling behind my eyes. If the bottle in my hands hadn’t contained Praem’s soul, I would have smashed it across his head. I bit my lips and swallowed too hard, struggling to find an outlet for this awful rage.

I felt rather than saw Zheng’s grin, the shark-toothed smile in my peripheral vision.

She reached down and took the end of Jacob’s rope, dragged the cultist to his feet, and pulled him close. One of her hands encircled the top of his head to hold him immobile.

“Looks like the shaman is angry,” she hissed in the man’s ear. “Dangerous when she’s angry, a large bite for such a small jaw.”

Her huge tongue slid out of her mouth in silent threat, a wet pink tentacle that made my heart squeeze. Jacob cringed away, his eyes pleading with me for relief.

“And you can stop with the theatrics,” I snapped, too angry to care about Zheng’s sadistic needs. The tongue whipped back inside her mouth and slowly she turned to regard me. I ignored her, thrusting Praem’s bottle at the cultist. “Did you have anything – anything at all – to do with this … this violation? Did you?”

A tiny part of my mind, trying to calculate and analyse even now, noted that the lead weight inside didn’t swing as I moved the bottle. External force was cancelled out, only Praem’s spirit could affect the line and the attached weight.

“No! No, I don’t know how to!” He pleaded. “Really, I can’t- it was-”

“Did he?” I asked the bottle – asked Praem.

Clink-click. Two for no.

“Lucky you,” Zheng growled into his face and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Praem, can you … I’ll get you out, I promise. I promise,” I told the bottle.

Tink, the little lead weight jumped. The oil-on-smoke wisp curled about itself, impossible false colours shifting and turning, glowing faint as a daylight moon.

“Can you … you can hear me, yes? You can hear everything I say to you?”

Tink.

“What about other people, you can hear them? Things happening beyond the … the bottle?”

Tink.

“Can you see?” I waved a hand in front of the glass.

No response. The lead weight didn’t move.

“When they were up, they were up,” Zheng growled in a slow, sing-song voice. “And when they were down, they were down. And when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down.”

I boggled at her.

“Halfway up.” She pointed a finger at the bottle. “Meat-senses aren’t the same.”

“Yes, thank you so much for the metaphor. Do you know how to put Praem back in her body?”

Zheng shrugged, a performance of disinterest.

“T-there should be-” Jacob started. “There should be a way, to get it out, I mean. Marcus was saying things like- uh- telling her she’d be free if she answered- h-he was asking her questions about you- t-the Saye girl, all sorts. Really, real talk, he was interrogating her, offering her a way out. H-he would know, Marcus would know. It’s him you want.”

Zheng let out a growl of laughter.

“Marcus put her in this bottle?” I asked, and he nodded. “Praem?” I asked her.

Clink.

And Marcus had died a violent and painful death. Why didn’t that make me feel any better?

Because Praem was still trapped in the bottle.

I swore, worse than I’d ever swore before, a short train of vile words borrowed mostly from Evelyn, culminating in a choice scatological paradox. In a way I was glad only the demons were here to witness that.

“I … I know where he lives,” Jacob hurried on. “I think. Or Sarika might. If you make him show you how-”

“He’s dead,” I said.

“ … o-oh.”

“I ate him,” Zheng purred, a nasty grin spreading across her mouth.

“I-I … I don’t- here!” Jacob blurted out. “You should call Sarika! Take my mobile, it’s in my back pocket, her number is on there. She and Marcus, they both know how to do things like that.”

Zheng hitched an eyebrow, turned our captive around with a shove, and extracted a mobile phone from the back pocket of his jeans. He babbled something inane about how we could keep it.

“Thank you, Zheng.” I held out one hand – but Zheng held onto the phone. She watched my eyes with the slow judgement of a predatory reptile. At any other time that look would have reduced me to pudding, but my indignant rage ran too deep and too hot right now to be quenched by even a seven-foot tall Amazonian goddess. “ … what now?” I snapped.

“You need allies, yes, but this one comes at a high cost,” she purred. Her eyes indicated the bottle in my arms.

I squinted at her like she was an idiot. “Praem is my friend, not an ‘ally’. You can eat me before I’d leave her behind. Really. Kill me then.”

Zheng growled, exasperated or unimpressed or merely thinking, it was hard to tell. “What can she do that I can’t?”

Clink-clink. Tink, went the lead weight inside Praem’s bottle. Tink-tink. Practically a tantrum.

“We absolutely do not have time for a- a- demonic territorial pissing contest,” I said. “Please, Zheng, give me the phone.”

“Time, exactly,” Zheng growled. “You make this phone call, and Sarika – I shit on her name – will move against you. She’s sharper than her predecessor. Less mad.”

“ … and?”

“Do you have a plan, little shaman?”

I shook my head, bewildered. “For what? Talking to Sarika?”

Zheng shrugged, sullen and watchful.

I opened my mouth to say no, of course I didn’t have a bloody plan. To tell the giant zombie that a plan didn’t matter. Hot anger and inner cold and intense worry ate at my mind. I had to get Praem back into her body, or out of here; I had to find Raine, get home and make sure my friends were safe. A plan? Sod plans! I was ready to scream threats down the phone at Sarika until she gave me what I wanted. The only answer was act.

Zheng hadn’t been allowed to make plans of her own for a very long time indeed. A slave, always forced into other people’s designs. Watching monsters like Alexander Lilburne stumble and crash, good intentions leading to hell and worse. All her former masters were dead. Now she was free, she could choose to have none.

She was also correct: I was exhausted, worn out, and now blind with anger.

Her approval was a tightrope.

“All right,” I said – and left.

I left Zheng and the sad, defeated cultist together by the radiator, the last thing either of them expected me to do.

Cradling Praem’s bottle gently in my arms, I padded back over to the beach chairs and settled the bottle in one of them, so it couldn’t be knocked over by accident. I had no idea what smashing the glass or popping the cork might do, and I didn’t want to take that risk yet. I regained the filthy but warm blankets, pulled them around my shoulders, and shuffled over to the tote box full of bottled water and emergency cereal bars.

Not the most appetising, but I took two, and another bottle of water to wash it all down. Then I got myself settled in a chair, folded my legs to keep my feet warm, and commenced eating.

Zheng levelled a slow stare at me. Jacob seemed confused too, slack-jawed.

“What?” I said after a swallow, and held up one of the cereal bars. “Peanut and chocolate, not bad but not terrible. Would you like one?”

“What are you doing, shaman?” Zheng purred.

“Getting more protein, like you suggested. One can’t make a good plan on an empty stomach.”

Zheng snorted a laugh. “Monkeys.”

“This monkey needs to eat.” I drank some water to drown the embers of my indignant rage. It sort of worked. Sitting still and going through the mechanical process of putting food in my mouth did drain away the hottest thoughts, give me a moment to pause and think, begin to scrape together the scraps of the plan Zheng demanded.

I was in charge here, I was in control, this was my responsibility. At least that’s what I told myself to stop anger decaying into panic.

Zheng dropped Jacob’s rope, and in lieu of tying him back to the curtain rail, she gave him a horrible silent grin instead, one that left no question as to what would happen if he dared try to escape. Even all the way on the other side of the room, I flinched as well, and the cultist cowered against the wall, curling up tighter.

Zheng grabbed a cereal bar from the box. With a dubious look on her face she peeled the wrapper, gave it an experimental sniff, and wrinkled her nose.

“Not to your taste?” I asked.

“No,” she growled. She did pour a bottle of water down her throat, though not before crushing the cap with a twist of her hand.

“Don’t suppose you have any painkillers up here? Paracetamol, anything at all?”

Jacob took a moment to realise I was speaking to him. He blinked several times and tentatively shook his head. I tutted and sighed. No longer cushioned by either sleep or anger, a splitting headache was brewing inside my skull, the product of dehydration or brainmath or stress, who knew? I settled for drinking more water. Zheng wiped her mouth and squatted down on her haunches to watch me – which almost rendered me unable to eat. Like being observed by a hungry six-hundred pound tiger.

“Before I freed you,” I said to her. “You said you’d ‘be mine’, in the ‘old way’. What does that mean?”

I’d expected a grin and a glib comment, perhaps a laugh. Instead, Zheng shrugged, and a subtle discomfort crossed her features, a twitch or a tic akin to a suppressed wince at the pain from an old wound. “Means I’m still here.”

I nodded, let it drop. “Fair enough. Thank you.”

She grunted.

“So what about you, do you have a plan?” I repeated her own question. “To get downstairs, past the ‘corruption’, as you called it?”

Zheng looked over at the lead-grey sky visible through the dirty glass in the room’s windows. Sharrowford lay below, hidden by the wall. “Jump out the window?”

Clink-clink, Praem disagreed.

“Right, I’ll take that as a no then.” I sighed, took a deep breath, and drew myself up. “But you know more about that than I do. You work on that part, getting us downstairs.” Zheng raised an eyebrow. My turn to shrug. “I can’t do everything on my own now, can I?”

“Mmhmm,” she grunted agreement, and her brow furrowed in thought.

“I have three problems,” I continued, letting it all flow out, the real plan assembling itself at high-speed in the back of my head. “One, getting out of here. Two, putting Praem back in her body. Three, finding Raine – my lover – and possibly Lozzie too, though the more I think about it the more I doubt she’s anywhere near right now. One is your job. Two and three, well, I need to get home, find Evee, the others, but while we’re here we have two options. Option one, we could force him,” I nodded toward Jacob, “to call Sarika for us, lure her back here, but he could spoil the whole thing with a single word.”

“If he wants his heart eaten.”

“Or,” I corrected her gently. “They might have a code phrase to use in emergencies, which means we wouldn’t even know.”

“Mmmmm. Clever.”

“I’m going to go with option two, which is more work and quite difficult, but may yield better results.”

“Which is?”

“A series of threats and lies.” I held out my hand for the phone again, and to my surprise it wasn’t shaking. “Don’t say a word while I call. Don’t let them know you’re free. That could be useful later.”

Zheng grinned in approval. She handed me the phone, and I did a pretty successful job of concealing my anxiety. I felt almost like Raine, competent and clever and quick, decisive and devious and – well, no, not dashing. In my best moments I can almost manage cute, at the right angle and in the wrong light, but I will never be dashing. I hoped she would be proud of me, proud of this plan, proud of how strong I was trying to be. I hoped with all my heart I’d get to tell her about this.

Sarika’s number wasn’t hard to find among the two-dozen Jacob had in his contacts list. He stayed silent and Zheng stayed squatting before me, as I placed the call.

Sarika picked up on the third ring.

“What is it?”

That same voice, thin and tight with bone-deep exhaustion.

“Jacob?”

“He’s alive,” I answered. “For now.”

A long pause, stretching out the seconds. I think she was trying to spook me, get me to break first and offer information by accident, but I harnessed my cold anger and my cold toes, lost myself in the numb sensations inside my body.

Eventually, Sarika let out a big sigh down the phone. “Got free in the end, did you?”

“I’m going to find you. If you touch one hair on Raine’s head, I’ll do far worse than kill you.”

“Raine? That’s her name? She wouldn’t tell me that. Thank you for that one, makes my job easier.”

I mock-hesitated as I shot Zheng a tiny, wavering smile of triumph. Sarika had taken my bait. They did have Raine, no question about that now. They knew of Evelyn, Kimberly had once been one of them, and they’d never be able to hold Twil – but Raine? She’d give them nothing, not even her name.

“Let me speak to her.” I didn’t have to work hard to make myself sound nervous.

“Or what? You don’t have any leverage.”

“My leverage is that when I find you, I’ll only kill you, instead of sending you to the Eye. The best thing you can do right now is let my friend go. Drive her back to the house and let her go, and then there’s a small chance that you can get out of Sharrowford before I and Saye find you. Twil – that’s the Brinkwood werewolf to you – I know she’ll be after you already, and I doubt you want her to catch you.”

I heard Sarika cover the mouthpiece on her end, muffle a question beyond earshot. She came back to the phone and spoke quickly.

“How’d you get past Zheng?”

“Sent her Outside. If she’s not dead she will be soon. Marcus too.”

“Fuck you,” Sarika snarled. Zheng grinned like a skull, laughing through silent teeth. “God fucking damn you, Morell. You don’t understand anything. You think I put that monster up there to just threaten you, is that it?”

This time I didn’t have to fake the hesitation. I glanced at Zheng, and wondered what that grin really meant.

“What … what do you mean?” I said.

“You think Zheng’s going to stay outside, with Lauren Lilburne running about? She’ll be back here within hours, and that girl will be holding the leash. Trying to! Do you understand what that fucking means? Do you know what that thing is or what it’s capable of? Of course you don’t. Alexander could barely control Zheng, his little sister certainly can’t. That thing gets free, you and I are the least of each others problems in this city.”

Zheng winked at me. I stared back and shivered, and not in the good way.

“You’re bluffing.” I held my voice tight and steady. “You wouldn’t- wouldn’t put Zheng in a room with me and not expect me to get rid of her.”

“I expected you knew better than that. That was the whole point! She was mutually assured destruction!”

“I’m not a mage.”

“Evidently,” Sarika spat. “Thank you for the heads-up. Fuck this.”

The plan was running through my fingers. Had to think on my feet, think past the headache and the fear and the suspicion about Zheng. What would Raine say? A bombastic threat, probably. What would Evelyn do? Get angry and call these people filth. What would I do? What should I do?

Lie. I was good at lying. I’d lied to myself for ten whole years.

“Let my friend go,” I all but stammered. “And I’ll bring Zheng back from Outside and deliver her to you.”

A thinking silence, stinging sharp. Zheng’s grin twisted with sadistic mirth. She mouthed a phrase at me, one that contained the words ‘eat’ ‘skin’ and Sarika’s name. I nodded.

Sarika finally spoke again. “You’d have to provide first. Get us the zombie, then I’ll think about letting your friend go. But what happens after that?”

“We go our separate ways.”

“You know I can’t do that, Heather. The Eye wants you. How about you give yourself up in exchange for your friend? You care so much, and I can’t back down without my … ” She paused, pain in her breath. “You, of all people, you understand this, don’t you? It wants you, every time I close my eyes. Same for all of us. I can’t tell it no. I can’t even tell it to fuck off. Stay where you are, we’ll loop back to pick you up, we’re not far. In exchange we’ll let your friend go, I promise. We’ll bring her with us, and we’ll let her go right in front of you.”

“No. The zombie for Raine, that’s what you get. Or you say no and I send you all to meet the Eye instead.”

Sarika sighed. “Alright, alright, but this ‘Raine’ girl is our insurance now. You come after us before we get Zheng, and we’ll hurt her, got it?”

“You-” I almost snapped out the words ‘you started it’, reduced us to the level of a playground fight. “I know where you are, and I know how to find you.”

“Try me, bitch. Zheng wasn’t the only zombie we’ve still got.”

We were both bluffing now, playing both ends; why threaten me with zombies if they would hurt Raine? I tried to think through the bluster, to predict the Eye Cult’s real next move.

“Okay, deal, as long as you don’t hurt her,” I said, heart thumping, playing this out as far as I could. “But listen, I’m going to need help.”

I heard the sneer in Sarika’s voice. “From-”

“Not from you. Don’t be stupid. Praem, I’ve found her … ” I swallowed a throat full of bile, and tried not to look at the warped-wood mannequin splayed out on the floor, tried not to think of that as Praem’s bones. “The bottle. How do I get her out, put her back in her body?”

Tink went the lead weight in Praem’s jar. I smiled at it, then recalled she probably couldn’t see my face.

Silence on the line.

“Sarika?” I prompted.

“Your zombie? Just smash the bottle, that should work.”

“ … smash the bottle?” I repeated. Zheng bared her shark’s teeth and shook her head. Tink-tink went Praem, two for no.

“Yes, smash the bottle near the vessel she arrived in,” Sarika repeated. It didn’t take a master of deception to know not to trust her. She rushed her words and spoke them flat. A bad lie.

A naked lie. Which meant the fake deal was already so much rubbish.

Zheng held her hand out for the phone. She whispered at me, silk rustling through fire. “You’ve lost, shaman. My turn.”

I hesitated, a mistake; Zheng surged up from her squatting position, a mountain of muscle in motion, and plucked the phone from my grasp. Her other hand gently gripped my head for a moment – a warning love-bite from a war-hound – then let me go. She stood tall and lifted the phone to her ear.

“Sarika,” she purred. “Sarikaaaaa. Guess who?”

Then she laughed, long and low, bowel-quaking and chest-constricting. When she lowered the phone again, the line was dead.

“Zheng!” I almost screamed at her. “I’d- she’ll- I’d gotten her to agree! To not … not hurt … ” I trailed off at Zheng’s raised eyebrow, and forced down a shuddering breath. Impressive how much this inhuman zombie could communicate with mere expression. “She was lying,” I said. “Of course.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Yes, yes she was lying, yes,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as agree with Zheng. “She would still hurt Raine if she needed to, she knew the deal meant nothing. Now she knows you’re free, she’ll be more cautious, she’ll be afraid.”

“Shitting herself,” Zheng growled with obvious pleasure, and dropped the phone back into my lap.

“Yes. Good … good move. Yes. She might think if she hurts Raine, I’ll let you eat her. Or something along those lines.”

“You think that’s why I did it? I just wanted to make her scream.”

Zheng grinned, wide and mocking.

I stared at the zombie for a second, trying to figure out if that was sarcasm, or something much darker. Had Sarika been telling the truth about Zheng? What exactly was this demon-possessed corpse capable of, that had made Sarika so worried? Could I trust Zheng?

Trust, maybe not, but I didn’t have a lot of choice right now, no other friends and no support, and even if I wanted to go it alone from here, I doubt very much I could have made Zheng leave.

She must have caught the incredulous curiosity on my face, because she grunted and pointed at the phone. “Why not call your friends now?”

“I can’t.” I sighed and let the phone flop against my leg. “I’m terrible at memorising numbers. I can’t even remember Raine’s number, not off the top of my head. I could call my mother at home, I guess, I still remember my home’s landline number. But that’s not going to help.”

“Sarika’s clever, you know?” the cultist said.

I turned to look at Jacob, surprised he’d spoken up. Zheng just growled, but to my surprise he kept talking, still rubbing his throat where he’d almost strangled himself earlier, sparing Zheng only a flicker of attention before he focused on me again.

“She’s kept us alive, since the … since … ” He tapped the side of his head with one blunt paw of a hand. “She’s kept us together, given us something to work towards. Stopped us from killing ourselves. Most of us. Look, I don’t have anything against you, I don’t even really care, but I can’t … I can’t live with this in my head.”

“A solution to that can be provided,” Zheng rumbled. She didn’t bother to look at him.

“The Eye,” I said.

“If that’s what you call it.” Jacob nodded.

A terrible notion wormed into my mind, a suspicion I hadn’t the time or energy to consider until now. “You dream about it, yes? That’s correct?”

He nodded, half-shrugged.

“Does it … ” The words caught in my throat. “Does it teach you things? Mathematics?”

“What?” He blinked at me. “No, no nothing like that. It just … it wants things. It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t do anything, it- it- it just is. It is, all the time, behind the- the-” He groped and gestured helplessly at the air, face contorting with the effort of expressing the ineffable. Behind the fabric of reality.

Whatever deal Alexander Lilburne had struck with the Eye, he’d given it a pipeline to these peoples’ minds – but it wasn’t using them in the same way it had spent a decade tormenting me.

Why? Why not hand them the same tools it had given to me? Why not take one of them to Wonderland instead?

“Stop. Stop,” I said. “I know what you mean. Look, here.”

Not sure why I was doing it, I rolled back my left sleeve to expose the thick black lines of the Fractal. Raine and I had last refreshed it a week ago, a shared ritual I relished every time. I held it up to show the cultist, proud of the ink on my skin. Zheng frowned and tilted her head at it too.

“This keeps the Eye out of my nightmares. Do you have a pen?”

The cultist’s face lit up with fragile hope, frowning, uncertain as he realised what I meant. He cast around for something to write with, settled on a black marker pen discarded near the magic circle at the back of the room. Still tied to the radiator, eyes asking permission, he reached out with a foot and hooked the pen toward himself.

“Make sure to get the angles correct,” I said, as he furiously scribbled the Fractal on his arm. “Memorise it, write it down, I don’t know.”

When he was finished he gripped his arm tight, staring at the design, then at me. “Will- will it-”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Good luck, I guess. You probably deserve to die, but … maybe you don’t deserve the Eye. That’s all. And don’t thank me, ever.”

“Monkeys,” Zheng grumbled.

“Sarika said she had more zombies. Is that true?”

“I-I’ve never seen them,” Jacob said.

“Yes,” Zheng purred. “Nothing as old as me. Leftovers from the castle, a few months old at most. Closer to her,” she nodded at Praem’s jar.

Clink-clink went Praem’s disagreement.

“Okay. Okay.” I stood up, shed all but one of the blankets as a final defence to keep out the cold, and scooped up Praem’s bottle. After a moment’s thought I wrapped it in a blanket too, in a sort of protective sling.

Briefly I considered trying to put her back into her body myself; hyperdimensional mathematics could do anything – in theory. In practice, I was capable of performing the magical equivalent of tying a sharp rock to the end of a stick. Returning Praem to her physical vessel would be more like restarting a nuclear reactor.

“I have to get her home,” I said to Zheng. “To Evee, to … to Evee. She’ll know what to do. I can’t carry all of her.” I allowed myself a lingering glance at the grotesque and beautiful sight of Praem’s altered wooden bones. “I’m not strong enough, but you are.”

Zheng raised an eyebrow, watching me.

“She’s my friend, Zheng,” I said. “You claim to know how humans work, you’ve got to understand that. I am not leaving her behind. Please, help me carry her.”

“What’s it worth to you, shaman?” she purred.

I played the card, the trump card which might mean nothing. “ … are you with me or not?”

Zheng shrugged, bent down, and lifted the limp wooden doll over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“Right, getting home means getting out of here,” I said. “Do you have a plan yet?”

Zheng grinned a dark and ugly grin. “We walk. Down.”

==

Zheng took the lead into the dark bowels of Glasswick tower. I crept along in her wake, clutching Praem.

Thankfully for life, limb, and my threadbare dignity, Zheng hadn’t insisted on killing – or eating parts of – our captive cultist. We’d left poor Jacob tied to the radiator for his comrades to find, head between his knees, staring in silence at the jagged Fractal he’d scrawled on his arm.

This was not the time to examine my feelings, trapped at the top of a magically corrupted tower block with only a murderous cannibalistic demon for help, still covered in my own dried blood and desperately worried about Raine, but as I followed Zheng into the concrete gloom I couldn’t stop thinking about these cultists, about what they might not deserve.

Marcus had been a true fanatic, potentially very dangerous, and I was glad he was dead. But Jacob? Even if he had been part of the homeless-killing zombie-making operation, having the Eye screaming at you in your dreams was worse than any punishment I could think of. No torture would compare.

I’d made the threat several times this bleak morning: could I actually send any of these cultists to meet the Eye? Was my heart that hardened?

Alexander, I could have done it to him. Sarika – no, this wasn’t the same.

But what if they hurt Raine?

I wanted to feel anger like before, clean hot razor focus, but I’d drowned that heat in order to think and plan clearly. All I had now was the sodden dregs of fear, scared of losing Raine. Revenge meant nothing if she was-

No, that train of thought would paralyse me, and Raine needed me moving forward. I pushed the toxic idea down, bottled it up, and focused on the problem at hand: getting out.

The old stripped flat the cult had been using as a guard room was situated right next to the top-floor entrance to the stairwell, a tube of echoing concrete draped with shadows. Shafts of winter sunlight probed through the windows on one side of the stairs, but left pools of deep darkness stretching off on the opposite side, into the forbidding unknown of the residential corridors.

Two floors down from the top of Glasswick tower, on a mid-way landing before the next set of stairs, Zheng stopped.

I almost blundered into her back in the gloom. Praem’s wooden body, held over Zheng’s shoulder, stared at me with an accusing blank face.

“What is it?” I hissed, peering past the zombie. “Oh.”

“Mm.”

We’d reached the edge of the corruption.

Frozen ridges of concrete muscle pushed up through the floor of the next landing, as if emerging from wet tar. Structures like tendons jutted from corners, vanishing back into the building at sickening angles. Scales and bone spars and protrusions like teeth dotted the walls, all cast in concrete. The windows above the next flight of stairs looked puckered and rounded, the metal frames half swallowed by metastasised concrete growth.

“Alright,” I said, trying to tear my eyes away from the sight. Praem’s transmitted vision through Evelyn’s remote viewing setup had not done this place justice. It made my skin crawl. “Alright, what’s your pla-”

“Shhhhh,” Zheng hushed me. She reached into her coat pocket.

Before we’d left the flat-repurposed-as-guard-room, I’d taken several cereal bars from the stash in the tote, just in case. Zheng had filled her coat pockets too – with anything and everything. Pens, bits of paper, all the ritual detritus around the magic circle, discarded wrappers, a small paperback book. She’d even torn up pieces of one of the blankets and shoved those in her pockets too. When I’d asked why, and she’d explained the first step of the plan, I’d wished I hadn’t said anything.

Now she extracted one item from her magpie-collection – an old shoe – and threw it underarm, down the stairs.

Tap-tap-tap it went, then rolled to a stop amid the warped concrete below us. Zheng watched it like a hawk, eyes fixed, every muscle held in perfect stillness. She didn’t even breathe, and I wasn’t certain she needed to.

Thirty seconds went by, perhaps, and she finally grunted. I let go of a breath I hadn’t been aware of holding.

“You follow, shaman?” she purred.

“Yes. Yes,” I nodded. “So it’s … ‘asleep’ for now? Or it would have reacted?”

“No idea. Maybe it only sees souls. Maybe it’s a trap. Clever enough to let your demon get up here before it did for her. Or maybe she shouldn’t have gone around pulling heads off.” Zheng broke into a grin. “Don’t blame her though.”

Ting went the lead weight in Praem’s bottle.

“Like a Venus fly trap,” I muttered, and hugged Praem’s bottle to my chest. In a way it was comforting to know that the cultists hadn’t taken Praem out – the building itself had, letting her get deep enough that she’d be unable to escape. Or, at least, that was Zheng’s theory. “What is it, exactly?”

Zheng shrugged. “An echo in matter. Thinks it’s him.”

“Alexander?” Disgust twisted inside my chest.

“Just processes, no mind. We stay silent, we tread softly, it’ll take longer to react.”

“Is there a plan B, if … if we’re noticed?”

“When.” Zheng grinned a nasty grin. “Not if. No plan B. The lower down we get the better plan A will work.”

I sighed, couldn’t help myself. “Zheng. Zheng, what is plan A?”

Her grin widened. “We both live, that’s plan A. More I tell you, more scared you’ll get, and my part gets harder. Come on, shaman. And touch nothing.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” I hissed, rolled my eyes, and scurried along behind Zheng as she descended the stairs.

Creeping down the corrupted concrete stairwell was a singularly disgusting and unreal experience, with my heart in my throat and my every extremity tingling with adrenaline despite the cold.

Surrounded by biological shapes cast in looming, bulging concrete, pitted and cracked like concrete should be, but shaped by the hand of a mad giant sculptor. Nausea took me at the sight of gigantic muscle and tendon emerging from the walls in frozen curves, and at the feeling of rough uneven surfaces beneath my one sockless foot. Microbes inside a corpse, we trod across empty blood vessels down an architectural trachea.

The windows on one side of the stairwell made it worse. Far below lay Sharrowford, normal and dingy on a overcast morning. The sun was up behind the clouds and the city moved on as normal, oblivious to what had taken root in Glasswick tower.

Zheng walked with the silence of a stalking cat; how could somebody so big move so quietly?

I felt like a blundering elephant by comparison, my padding footfalls and shaking breath echoing up and down the cylinder of warped concrete.

Two, three, four floors further down, we must have been nearing the hollow floors which cradled Alexander’s headless corpse, when Zheng stopped and tilted her head, like a dog listening for a distant sound.

“What is it?” I breathed in the barest whisper.

She stayed like that for a few seconds, then grunted softly and gestured for me to follow again. We made it another four steps down the stairs before a groan filled the air.

A groan like layers of concrete sliding over each other. Like a building taking a deep breath.

Zheng froze, statue-still. I froze too, but shaking all over, clutching Praem’s bottle tight under the blanket. With an effort of will, I kept my lips closed, and made not a sound.

Silence didn’t save us.

Invisible at first, mere bumps on the concrete walls indistinguishable from the rough and knobbly surface, then growing, pushing out, extruding and extending, with thick bases and flared ends. From walls, ceiling, and floor, tentacles of shiny wet concrete felt their way into the throat-like cavern of the stairwell.

Neither very thick nor very long, about three feet in length and as wide around as my arm. In retrospect there weren’t very many of them, but I defy anybody to stay calm when a building sprouts cilia with which to digest the people inside it.

I did, to my credit, successfully resist the urge to scream. I bit down on my lips.

Ducking, squeezing, making myself small, trying to hold my breath in silence as the tentacles probed and tasted the air – it worked. For once in my life, being tiny and scrawny helped me survive, because the tentacles couldn’t see. They groped blind. I crammed myself as tiny I could get, heart hammering, holding on tight to Praem’s vulnerable, breakable jar, untouched.

Zheng wasn’t so lucky. Too big, too unwieldy. She gritted her teeth in naked frustration, seven foot of muscle too large to hide amid the reaching feelers. She dodged and twisted, tried to step between them, and failed.

I stared, helplessly, too scared to even whisper, as one of the tentacles caught her arm.

A brush, the merest touch on her coat’s sleeve, and the slick-wet tentacle shot forward to wrap around her arm. Every other tentacle went berserk, straining toward her, whipping for her face and feet. In a second three more had her, then six, then ten, then a dozen. In moments they had both of her legs, her throat, her ribcage.

Zheng fought like a titan, pulling and ripping, digging in her heels, roaring like a goaded lion. She dropped Praem’s wooden body to the floor with a clatter but the tentacles ignored it, ignored me as I put a hand to my mouth, ignored everything but constricting the giant zombie woman like a dozen pythons.

She pulled tentacles apart with sheer force, tore handfuls of concrete out of the floor as they dragged her along it, toward the wall.

The wall slopped open like a mouth. Toothless and wet, gaping and dark, from floor to ceiling.

“Zheng!” I couldn’t stop myself now. Luckily the tentacles were too focused on the difficulty of reeling her in. “What- what do I do!?”

“Stay still!” she shouted.

“What about- what was plan A?”

“This!” she managed to roar – and then tentacles of concrete closed over her mouth and covered her eyes, and heaved her into the obscene wall-mouth.

The wall closed like poured concrete, slurping and slapping and then going still, as if the mouth had never been there.

Glasswick tower swallowed Zheng whole.

Silence fell, broken only by my racing heartbeat. The concrete tentacles calmed, but didn’t retract. Their purpose now fulfilled, they waved lazily in the air.

Hand to my mouth, tears on my cheeks, I clenched my jaw and forced myself not to panic. A single mistake, a single misstep, a single sound could end my life. I hugged Praem’s jar close to my chest as if to hide her.

‘Zheng?’ I mouthed in silence. The nearest tentacle twitched ever so slightly, and I quashed the urge to speak.

No Zheng.

Between the spot I stood and the next landing, two dozen tentacles dotted the floor and walls. More waved in the gloomy stairwell below.

No choice, no way back. I had to protect Praem, and I had to get out of here; her body was unrecoverable now. Even well and whole I couldn’t have dragged all that wood down Glasswick tower without making a sound.

I took the first careful step, threading my way between the tentacles, cringing and shaking, a sob held tight in my throat. The urge to run was almost unbearable.

The air I displaced betrayed my presence. The nearby tentacles twitched toward me, exploring and groping. A scream clawed up in my throat.

A scream echoed by a roar.

Zheng burst out of the wall.

In a shower of concrete and dust, seven feet of avenging god exploded through rock and rebar like it was paper. Bleeding thick red from a score of cuts, covered in fragments of concrete, her coat and tshirt torn, she slammed back into the stairwell like a tank shell. She spat a mouthful of crushed concrete and a savage grin tore across her face.

Blinking, coughing, half-blinded by rock dust, I saw the tentacles react with panic, rushing to close the hole in the wall, whipping and lashing over the gap like a wound.

In one swift motion, Zheng scooped Praem’s wooden body off the floor and hauled it over her shoulder, then took two steps forward past me and kicked the glass out of the nearest widow, her boot sweeping the shards aside and smashing the frame open to the cold air.

“What-” was all I had time to say before she swept me up too. Over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, one arm pinning my rump.

“No, no! Zheng, no!” I screamed as I figured out what she was about to do.

Zheng laughed, loud and exuberant and utterly bonkers. The tentacles were writhing back toward us, snaking for Zheng’s ankles and my face as she climbed through the window. She braced herself against the slim foothold of the exterior windowsill, as the clean air ruffled my hair and whipped out her trench coat. I twisted, half to look and half in an animal-instinct attempt to wriggle out of her grip. My head whirled at the view below. So very far below. A wave of vertigo sent my stomach flopping end-over-end and turned my legs to jelly.

“Plan A was always jump, shaman!” Zheng roared.

And jump she did.

==

Falling out of a high-rise tower block is a rare experience, but then so is having your toenails pulled out, or being attacked by a polar bear. Placing little value in this terminal lesson, I decided to close my eyes and forgo the once-in-a-lifetime sight of the earth rushing toward me from twenty five stories up.

Well, no, that’s a lie. I didn’t decide to close my eyes. I screwed them shut because falling out of a building is terrifying.

Clinging to Zheng with one arm and clutching Praem’s soul-bottle with the other, with the wind whipping past my ears – and whipping Zheng’s coat into my face; with Praem’s wooden bones rattling, and out of breath with which to scream, that fall took a lifetime. An adrenaline junkie’s dream, to be certain, but not one of mine. Free fall was not fun or exciting, because I was convinced that I had put my life in the hands of a homicidal, suicidal demon, and I was about to die.

Over the sound of Zheng’s mad laughter, my brain groped in panic for a relevant equation.

Later – much later, weeks later, with the terror safely behind me – I actually sat down and calculated how long that fall took. About 5 seconds, give or take the effect of Zheng’s coat on wind resistance, and how much Praem weighed without her pneuma-somatic flesh.

Five seconds.

Not enough time to dredge for hyperdimensional mathematics when I didn’t even know what I was looking for.

Hitting the ground knocked the wind out of me, forced a gut-deep ‘oof’ from my lungs, and bruised my stomach muscles for days afterward. A loud crack, a softer crunch, a moment of shock and sudden stillness.

Shaking all over, clutching both Zheng’s flesh and Praem’s bottle in a death-grip, I found that I was still alive. Still held over Zheng’s shoulder, her arm an iron-hard restraint over my hindquarters.

With no little difficulty I got my eyes open. I must have said something akin to ‘put me down’ because Zheng dutifully planted me back on my feet.

Of course I fell over onto my arse right away, because my legs muscles now consisted entirely of custard.

I did, however, not drop Praem’s bottle. Panting, dizzy, apparently with nothing broken, I couldn’t get any words out. Luckily I’d had my head at the right angle when we’d landed, or whiplash would have broken my spine.

Zheng straightened up. I heard several distinct cracking, crunching sounds from her legs. She’d stopped laughing, but wore a triumphant grin. Her feet had made a sort of dent in the ground, embedded into the compacted dirt by several inches.

She’d absorbed the impact.

I just shook my head at her.

We’d come down on the rear side of Glasswick tower, in a bit of scrub-ground that had once been a common green area, now a mass of weed trying to climb the graffiti-caked concrete, inside an old metal security fence that was supposed to block access to the lowest level of residential windows. Some old raggedy bushes and a electrical junction box hid us from the little-used, run-down road along the rear of Headly council estate.

Out of the tower. Mercifully, beautifully free, under the open skies of Sharrowford.

With company.

A young boy in a school uniform and coat, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, with russet hair and freckles and a face upon which puberty was not being kind, had been busy spray-painting one of those ghastly graffiti tags on the wall.

His eyes like saucers, mouth hanging open as if we’d fallen out of the sky. Which, to be fair, we had. We were also both covered in blood, carrying a stripped wooden mannequin and a huge faintly glowing bottle. And Zheng was seven feet tall, can’t forget that.

The spray can he’d been using dropped out of his hand, and a wad of chewing gum fell out of his mouth.

I swallowed, coughed, made sure my voice worked, and said the first thing that came to mind.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I asked.

“I’m … I’m bunking off,” he managed.

“That’s not good. You’ll get in trouble. Stay in school, yes?”

“Boo,” Zheng rumbled.

He nodded once, backed up several paces, and ran away.

Sensible lad.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Content Warnings

Attempted suicide

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Zheng’s question made perfect sense, both rational and reasonable – why had this trembling scrap of humanity decided to set her free?

My brain, held in a death grip by fight-or-flight response, cowering and cringing beneath a seven-foot tall monster leering over me with a mouthful of bloodstained razor-sharp teeth, squeaked an answer through my closing throat.

“Personal space, please.”

Zheng tilted her face-splitting grin and leaned closer. She sniffed me – fear-sweat, dried blood, and the lingering ash taint of Wonderland.

“Scared?” she purred, as a tiger would.

My head jerked in a nod. “I … I n-need you to straighten up, or … personal space.”

Zheng placed one huge hand on top of my head. “Hmm,” she rumbled.

How did I stay standing? How did I, tiny weak Heather, not collapse to the floor and curl up in a ball?

Because Wonderland had acted as a paradoxical inoculant.

Zheng was terrifying, yes, but her terror was all reassuringly bodily and terrestrial. She moved with the barely-veiled violence of a predatory cat at rest, but like a living being should do, not the awful click-clack ratcheting of the Lozzie-thing. Big – very, very big – and dangerous and scary, but not an affront to my senses or an invasive dismantling of my consciousness.

With every passing second my lizard-brain arousal liked Zheng more and more, and that probably helped too, loathe to admit it though I was. If we’d met under any other circumstances she’d have easily reduced me to a stuttering, blushing mess.

I closed my eyes, felt my fingers twitch, and took my mind to the edge of the equation to send her Outside.

She let go of my head.

“Personal space. Room to breathe. That enough for you, little wizard?” Her voice was like granite wrapped in silk. I opened my eyes and found her still far too close. She’d straightened up and eased back, kept only one hand against the concrete wall.

I took a shuddering breath and felt a sudden deep appreciation for still having all my vulnerable extremities attached.

“Still scared?” Zheng purred.

Somehow, from the God-forsaken black pit in my soul, born of a death-wish or sheer exasperation, or perhaps with fear blotted out by my worry for Raine, I managed to level a capital-L look at Zheng.

She laughed, a low-throated chuckle of real amusement.

“Of course I’m scared,” I managed. “You’re huge.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“And you’re not what I expected.”

“Hmmmm? Expected something more like your little demon? Barely awake, an idiot and half-mute? I’ve been here a long time, you monkeys have rubbed off on me.”

A long time? I almost asked her age. Was that a rude question, when speaking to a demon from Outside?

Still clutching the reflective space-blanket Marcus had thrown me a few minutes ago, trying not to think about the poor man’s cooling corpse several feet away, and also trying to ignore the overwhelming urge to inch away from Zheng, I did my best to see through the crimson gore on her face and read her as a person, as I did with Praem.

Sharp-edged intelligent eyes, a wide and mobile mouth, and that thatch of greasy dark hair sticking out in all directions.

She didn’t make it easy, almost like she was showing off. As I watched, Zheng looked away and unhinged her jaw, working it from side to side as if the muscles were sore from disuse. She swallowed, grunted, and ran her tongue over her bloody teeth – a tongue easily twelve inches long, tapered to a point, a wet red tentacle of muscle.

The tongue retracted back into her mouth, and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

“Praem. You mean Praem,” I said. “And she’s not an idiot.”

Zheng’s awful grin widened again. She made a head-tilt radiate more threat than a entire room of professional thugs. “What does it matter what I call your pet demon?”

“Because-” I swallowed. My mouth was so dry. “Because it’s her name. I gave it to her. And she’s not my pet, she’s my friend.”

Zheng made a ‘hmm’ noise that sounded like a tiger turning over in its sleep.

“Don’t … don’t you have a name? Zheng? T-they’ve been calling you-”

“Zheng is a name. And we’re both mangling it.” Her grin faded to sullen boredom. “No ‘zz’. More like ‘jyung’, quicker.”

Her pronunciation sounded vaguely Chinese to my ears, though the amount of spoken Chinese I’d heard in my life amounted to almost nothing. Zheng did look somewhat East Asian, but in a way I couldn’t place. Her skin, light chocolate with a hint of red, gave me few clues. Not Chinese, I’d thought, but then again China is a very big place.

“Then I apologise,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to say your name wrong. I-”

“Doesn’t matter. Call me whatever you want.” She grinned again. “Could teach you my real name, but I’d have to break your jaw in three places and split your tongue, or you’d mangle that too.”

“Of course,” I sighed, unable to control my exasperation. “Of course your true name would collapse my windpipe or blow out my eardrums or something. Obviously.”

“Smart monkey,” she purred.

“You are a demon, yes? The same as Praem?”

She shrugged, a huge gesture from her. “I’m not from here.”

“Clearly. Zheng, then?” I did my best to say it right.

“Mm. Can you answer me now, wizard? Have I satisfied your little monkey brain that I’m not going to eat you too? Is your heart pumping a few paces slower?”

“ … yes, yes, no,” I almost squeaked. “In that order.”

That extracted another grin from Zheng. She liked it when I shot back, and that gave me a few more scraps of courage to work with, to keep me on my feet, to keep up with her.

“Why free me?” she rumbled. The grin grew across her face once more, toothy and bloody.

I allowed my eyes to flicker toward the door, the now-unlocked door, the key presumably still in Marcus’ pocket. I tried very hard not to look at his ruined corpse on the floor with its burst-melon skull. “Aren’t you worried they might … come back? You … we … ”

Zheng stared at me, grin fixed like the smile on a skull.

“Zheng?”

“No.”

“ … no?”

“No, as in you and I are doing this right now, little wizard.” She leaned in close again, slow this time, a snake hypnotising a quivering mouse. I tried very hard not to be that mouse, to keep my spine upright and my knees straight. “You freed me, and we’re in trouble, you and I. Deep in enemy territory, both woefully friendless. I need to know why, so I can choose between picking you up and carrying you out of here, or crushing your skull against the wall behind you.”

A lump in my throat. My limbs turned to water. I couldn’t control the shaking.

“A-alright, I- b-because you were guarding me. And I need to get out of here. That’s why.”

The grin widened. “No, that’s not the real reason,” she purred. “I’ve seen what you do, little wizard. You-”

“Heather,” I squeaked.

“Hmm?” A tilt of the head.

“That’s- that’s my name. Heather. Not ‘little wizard’. I’m not even really a mage.”

Perhaps I was merely buying time for the moment I would brainmath her into oblivion, but I told myself that if she knew my name, she might be less inclined to murder me.

Zheng tilted her head the other way, thoughtful. “Exactly. I’ve seen what you do, watched how you killed the old chief of this pathetic milk-blooded rabble. I’ve been gagged for years, but nobody’s been able to blind me for decades. I remember you, Heather, and I think you could have dumped this body” – she tapped her own chest, bloody fingertips sticky against the crimson-stained tshirt – “anywhere you liked. Exploded my head. Taken my arms and legs off, left me to roll around like a turd. But you didn’t. Why take the risk?”

“I … I don’t know … I-”

Twitch my fingers, get ready to reach out and grab her. All I needed was a second. Oh, this was such a terrible mistake. Why was she demanding an answer to this question? This was more like it, wasn’t it? A classical demon wrapping the summoner in riddles, toying with me like a cat with crippled prey.

“Not good enough,” she purred.

“I freed you to … to free myself!” I blurted. “Because I’m trying to escape, a-and I thought maybe you would want … ”

“Naive, or stupid? Not stupid, no. Naive? Maybe. Why did you free me, little wizard? Dig deep, and speak truth. I can’t defang you, your magic works differently, but I can shatter your brainbox faster than you can touch me with that little hand.”

My eyes went wide. Zheng made her point – she grabbed my wrist just to show me just how unafraid she really was. She held me like a gentle vice, iron-strong but without squeezing.

“The things you were saying to me mere minutes ago, Heather. Those assumptions. I liked those. I liked those very much. Were they lies?”

I could have executed the equation right then, with her skin touching mine; despite all her threats I knew I could unweave the fabric of reality at the speed of thought.

She was bluffing.

Terror peeled back. A seed of doubt sprouted.

The shark-toothed grinning, the lazy intimidation, the riddle-like question she’d accept no rational answer to – was this her survival strategy?

She knew I could obliterate her with a thought, send her Outside and strand her in some alien dimension, even if that’s where she was originally from. So the only way for her to live through the next few minutes, after murdering – perhaps justifiably – one of her former slave-drivers, after giving into her hunger for meat right in front of me, was for her to intentionally trigger all the animal fears in my soft mammal brain, remind me that I was small, keep me guessing, make me think she was totally unafraid – all while skirting the line at which I’d resort to self-defence.

She was trying to forge an understanding. And doing an awful job of it.

“Oh, dammit,” I swore softly, right in her face, shivering all over. “If you’re going to kill me, at least I’m going to die warm.” I huffed and shook off her hand – luckily, she let me go. I would have been rather out of face if she’d decided to hang on. I tugged the space-blanket around my shoulders and pulled it tight, hugging myself against the interior cold.

Zheng did this thing with her eyebrows, a quizzical kink so deep it would have been comical if she wasn’t covered in blood.

“I freed you … ” I started, then made myself meet her eyes and stand up straight. All my body rebelled, but it was either this or murder her. “I freed you instead of getting rid of you, because you were a slave. Nothing that can think for itself should be a slave.”

The grin returned, a wall of teeth. “I’m no djin, no friendly genie,” she rumbled. “Freeing me doesn’t win you infinite wishes.”

I glared at her as best I could, a mouse staring down a tiger, as I wriggled one arm free and pointed at the door. My hand shook. “Then go. Go wherever you want, do whatever you want. I have things to do.”

Zheng shook her head. “No wizard would ever say that to me. I’m the greatest prize this side of the Volga.”

“And I barely even know where that is. I’m serious.” I waggled my finger at the door. “Go. Go on. Leave. I won’t stop you.”

Zheng’s grin faded to nothing. She clacked her teeth together, still shaking her head. Her breathing turned rough and urgent, halfway between confusion and desire. She squinted at me, incredulity and wonder around her eyes.

“I’ve been a slave for a very long time,” she purred. “The leash, sometimes short, sometimes long, often muzzled, but never withdrawn. Until now. Any other wizard would want me.”

“I already told you. I’m not even really a mage.”

Zheng nodded slowly, regarding me with a strange fascination in her eyes. Her silk-and-stone voice dropped to barely a breath, to caress an ancient reverence.

“Shaman, then,” she said.

Shaman; that word meant something important to her. If she’d been human, she would have shivered, her arms covered in goosebumps. I got the shivers instead, and they had nothing to do with how cold it was in that room.

I stared back, eyes wide at the awful, hungry way she looked at me.

“Z-Zheng, I’m not-”

“Prove it,” she grunted. She yanked up the hem of her bloodied tshirt in one fist, to bare her tattoo-covered washboard abdomen and heavy breasts. It was like being flashed by an Olympian Goddess, she was big in every sense of the word. I swear, my eyeballs almost popped out of my face. “Take it all.”

“ … I … uh.” It took an effort of will to close my gaping mouth, to look up at her eyes again. “I … what?”

“The binding. Take it all,” she said between clenched teeth.

“ … your tattoos?” I swallowed and tried to see past Zheng’s impressive physique, tried to ignore the boobs shoved in my face.

The mass of semi-faded, layered tattoos on Zheng’s torso really did cover every square inch of her dusken skin. One could spend hours unravelling and cataloguing even a single hand-span. I saw Chinese or Japanese in there, and stranger writing-systems which while not alien, were so foreign in time as to be utterly unknown today. My parents had taken me to museums when I was younger – Maisie and I, when we were little girls – and the artwork on Zheng’s flesh reminded me dimly of the relics of a lost antiquity, seen under the harsh electric lights of the modern age, robbed of all their context and culture.

Zheng was a work of art in more than one sense.

I shook my head, lost for words. “It’s beautiful, I-I can’t destroy -”

She leaned in close, fast enough to make me flinch. “It is a chain,” she growled. “You freed me, shaman. Either you want me free or not, or was that talk about slavery so much flapping meat?”

I focused on the tattoos again. Wet my lips. Trying to think. I’d been right about Zheng, despite everything. Despite the gruesome cannibalism and the ugly threats, I’d been right. ‘Zombie’ was a fancy mage word for slave. How could I blame her for asking this?

“Zheng, Zheng I can’t.” I raised a hand to stall her snap-toothed rebuke. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m freezing cold. I’m dehydrated, I’ve been through an ordeal, and if I push myself too far, I could pass out and die.”

“I will catch you,” she purred, softly. “I will look after you. I know this place, this tower. They have rooms up here, their usual mess, but there’s a heater, emergency supplies. Food. And you won’t get out of this building intact, little monkey, not without help. Not past the corruption downstairs.”

I cast about for some way to explain myself. “But we need to get out of here first, we-”

“No.” She edged even closer, almost pressing herself to me. “Not later. Now. You remove this, all of this, because as long as this remains I can be re-bound with the right spells, the chains laid again, and I cannot trust you or yours yet, little shaman. I want to believe you, but I would sooner take my chances crushing your skull and slipping into obscurity. I will live under rocks and eat rat-meat, naked and free, rather than risk it again.” She bared her teeth. “Finish cutting my chains.”

“I can’t!” I shouted back in her face. Couldn’t believe myself, not courageous but desperate. “I have to rescue my friend – my lover. You heard what they were saying, the- the- them! The Eye cultists! She might be here right now, and they’re going to hurt her. I have to help her now, not in an hour after I pass out.” A spark of thought snagged in the back of my mind. “And Lozzie too, don’t you remember her? She liked you, she said you were her friend. She might be here too.”

“Lozzie … ” Zheng rocked back, blinking, dropping the hem of her tshirt as a strange confusion came over her features. She looked away, at nothing. “Lauren, little Lauren. Yes … I … I dreamed of her. I was free in my dreams.” Zheng’s attention whipped back to me. “Is she here too?”

“I don’t know!”

“Then trust me, damn you, you hooting ape. Unchain me and I will find her, and your lover too. I will kill in your name. We’ll have a deal, I’ll be yours, in the old way, not in this false flesh.” She grabbed a handful of her own skin.

I ran my eyes over her imposing frame, over the tattoos beneath her flimsy tshirt, over her muscles and what she represented.

I couldn’t find Raine by myself. Zheng was our best chance.

“Alright, okay. What is the minimum amount I can remove to make it safe? Safe for you, I mean?”

Zheng bared her teeth in a growl, a sound to make the bowels quake and the knees weak. She yanked up her tshirt again, craning her neck to look down at herself – then she exploded with frustration. She shrugged her trench coat from her shoulders, dumped it on the floor, and then ripped the tshirt off over her head in the most impressive act of disrobing I’d ever seen.

I’d like to say I found nothing sexual about Zheng’s nudity in that moment, but that would be a lie.

Stripped from the waist-up, she twisted and turned and lifted her arms to examine her skin, flexing the chords of toned muscle beneath. Quite a sight.

“Here, this spiral here,” she circled a portion of her belly with a fingertip, then traced upward and across. “To here, under my armpit, and here, below, that needs to go too. The shoulder blade, this stuff, and this, and these.”

I stared at her, trying to follow all the twists and turns she mapped out across her own flesh.

“This one as well, this is the root, this has to come out. And-”

“Wait, wait, stop,” I held up a hand. “Slow down, I need to … I’m going to have to do this in one go. I need a mental picture. Turn around again, let me start from behind.”

Zheng grunted her acquiescence and twisted to show me her back. The part I hadn’t said out loud was that her back was easier on my libido, less distracting. My eyes traced the patterns she’d indicated, and my hand wandered up, throat dry with anticipation. Could I really do this? It would be far more complex than selecting only the ink under my hand.

Gingerly, I touched Zheng’s muscled back, and began to nod as I linked the various structures together in my mind. Her skin felt hot, as if her body temperature ran several degrees above human.

“Alright. Turn back around. Show me again, slower, and trace some connections too. I don’t think I can do multiple places at once unless they’re part of the same … pattern. Object. Thing.”

Zheng nodded. She turned around and I tried not to marvel at her breasts. “Here, this spiral is the root,” she pointed. “And here, and here, then up here. And here, then here. That is the minimum. After that, any wizard wants to bind me, they’ll have to find a way to pin me down and write their name on my flesh. Can do you this for me, little shaman?”

Already half-rummaging through the necessary equation in the black abyss of my mind, I nodded, distracted by the technical questions of the task. “I think … I … how do I know you’ll really help me afterward? That you won’t just leave?”

“You don’t. I’m a demon.” She grinned. Combined with her top-half nudity, the effect was a little too heady for me. “You have to trust me, monkey.”

I made myself frown at her, made myself look like what she thought I was. This wasn’t my life on the line – who cared about me, what happened to me? At least if I died of exposure in this concrete room, I’d never see the Eye again. This was about Raine, this was about my friends.

Zheng’s grin died. I’d made my point.

“You’re Lozzie’s friend,” she purred. “You killed my former master, and freed me. I owe you, in the old way, the real way. Finish freeing me, and I’ll repay the debt.”

A tiny and intensely rational part of my mind screamed that Zheng was a demon, an Outsider walking around in an ancient corpse, that her expressions and words were mere imitations of human communication. She’d follow her own unfathomable ends as soon as she’d gotten what she wanted. Perhaps she was lying to me, perhaps every part of this was a trick toward some incomprehensible end. She was alien. She wasn’t supposed to be here.

Praem was a demon. I trusted Praem, I stuck up for her, and she’d come through for me.

Before I could second-guess myself, I pressed my hand against Zheng’s abdomen, just above the waistline of her jeans, and stared at her tattoos.

“Should I do anything?” she rumbled.

“Stay still,” I hissed. “And quiet. And … and if I go, catch me before my head hits the concrete.”

“Mm.”

Hyperdimensional mathematics with my eyes wide open, trying to describe the delicate tracery of Zheng’s tattoos in mathematical terminology, to excise specific chunks of ink, was infinitely more difficult than I’d imagined. To remove what lay under the shape of my own palm was one thing, but the math required here made my eyeballs ache and an ice-pick headache tingle at the back of my skull before I’d even begun.

I needed a better way to define Zheng’s chains.

I closed my eyes. Chains, bindings, ropes around her soul – that’s what I was really removing. The ink needled under her skin was only outward representation. I dug with my mind, tried to define and see Zheng in mathematical representation, the same way I had done during my ill-fated attempt to track the Lozzie-thing in Kimberly’s flat.

The ink itself, old and faded, in a hundred languages; Zheng’s skin, hot and supple; thick muscle and iron bone, cords of sinew and tendon, appropriated from her vessel and adjusted in a million-million inhuman ways too deeply biological for me to understand, filled with new structures and cells and impossible additions.

Deeper, much deeper, past matter and blood, I found Zheng.

A writhing shard of starlight, in chains.

The whole picture, every layer described in hyperdimensional mathematics, held still in my mind. In that final instant before execution I felt hot crimson dripping from my nose and across my lips.

I really needed to start taking iron supplements.

“You’re ble-” Zheng said.

Out.

==

Warm temptation lulled me back to the edge of sleep, but I found only shark-toothed grins and terrifying giants waiting there.

I struggled up through layers of unconsciousness and jerked awake, gasping for air and scrubbing at my own eyes.

“Welcome back to meat-world,” Zheng’s voice greeted me.

“Where-” I croaked, pulling myself into a sitting position as my feet found the floor. I’d been curled up in a low chair of some kind, wrapped and warm, loose canvas cradling my weight – a beach chair? A jumble of shapes and colours faded back into focus through my blurry vision. More plain concrete walls, but not the same room as before. “I don’t rememb- … I need water.”

A shape detached itself from the corner, rising and unfolding, and Zheng walked over to me. Rough but gentle hands took mine and pressed an open bottle of water into my weak, shaking grip. I didn’t care if it was stale, drugged, or actually a bottle of lighter fluid, I put it to my lips and drank like my life depended on it. Which, to be honest, it probably did.

Coughing, spluttering, my vision returning, I looked up – and up, and up – and met Zheng’s eyes. Blue. She’d washed the blood off her face while I’d been out.

“I feel like death,” I groaned.

“You’ll live,” she purred. “Seen plenty of you monkeys die, and you’re not there yet.”

Zheng looked like a wheat field after a UFO visit – her tattoos were covered in crop circles. She’d donned her blood-stained tshirt again and draped the trench coat back over her shoulders, but that couldn’t conceal the transformation I’d wrought on her body-art. Wide circles of blank untouched flesh now punctuated the black mass of ink, each circle connected by at least one clear line of unblemished skin.

Whatever I’d achieved with brainmath at the end there, it had erased almost all the spirals from Zheng’s tattoos.

She grinned, the same unnerving shark-toothed grin as before. “Thank you, little shaman.”

“You’re welcome, I think?” What on earth does one say to a newly liberated giant zombie animated by a spirit from outside reality? I cast about the room instead, squinting through a real monster of a headache and trying to figure out where I was now. “Sick of passing out and waking up in other places,” I muttered.

I tipped a little of the bottled water into my cupped hand and splashed it on my face, rubbing the corners of my eyes, before I downed the rest to wash the taste of blood and bile out of my mouth.

Zheng had wrapped me in a pair of filthy blankets, apparently warm enough to stop me from freezing. A hissing gas-powered space heater poured warmth into the concrete room, rubber hose plugged into a free-standing cannister, like some sprawling industrial spider dredged up from a nightmare of the 1970s. Well done, Zheng.

“Where … ” I gestured vaguely.

“One of their lairs,” Zheng purred. “Top floor. You passed out, easy to carry though. You weigh nothing, shaman. Need to eat more protein.”

One of the cult’s lairs – the Eye Cult now, I suppose – and it looked the part as well. Another stripped concrete flat in Glasswick tower, whether the same unit or a nearby one I couldn’t tell. Once a sitting room, perhaps. Light entered through two filthy windows in the longest wall.

The room was full of supplies and equipment: a first-aid box, a plastic tote full of bottled water and cereal bars, a couple of crowbars against a wall, binoculars on one windowsill, rolls of tarpaulin, a tin of paint, and a dozen other innocuous everyday items, though I did wonder at the expensive fishing rod propped up in a corner. A magic circle had been inscribed onto the floor at the far end of the space, in black paint, surrounded by a few odds and ends – a bundle of feathers, a small knife, a single leather glove. An empty glass bottle stood in the middle of the circle. Whatever magic had been performed there, it wasn’t active anymore.

Another two beach chairs stood near the one Zheng had placed me in. Along with the space-heater and a small stack of paperback books, they gave the distinct impression of a sort of watchtower or guard room.

Zheng had caught one of the guards.

A thin young man with a face like a seagull, wearing jeans and a zipped-up athletic hoodie, had been roped to the room’s radiator much like I had, but with far more medieval sadism. A rope ran from each of his wrists to loop down under his groin, then up around his neck from behind, then to the radiator pipe and up to an old rusted curtain rail. The arrangement forced him to stand on tiptoes if he wanted to keep breathing. A dark blotch of urine had stained the front of his trousers. Terrified eyes met mine.

“Help me,” he whined, tears on his cheeks. Appealing to a fellow human being. “Please!”

“ … are you one of them?”

He stared, half-shaking his head, not understanding my question.

“He is. I remember him well enough,” Zheng grunted. “Jacob something. Unimportant.”

“She- she’s going to eat me!” Jacob pleaded.

“Will you?” I asked Zheng.

“Be a waste if I didn’t.” She shrugged, and turned a nasty grin on the bound man. “Still full after the first course, but I’ve got room.”

Jacob closed his eyes in mortal resignation, trying not to weep. I looked away, didn’t have the bandwidth for this right now. I was painfully aware I’d made an unspoken pact with something cruel and violent, which liked me for reasons I didn’t entirely understand yet.

My eyes alighted on a bundle of discarded clothes and a coat on the floor nearby, wrapped around strangely curved and spiked pieces of polished wood, lying as if dragged there. I blinked, couldn’t quite make the connection, a sick feeling in my stomach.

“You want the bad news or the good news first?” Zheng rumbled.

“What?” I blinked up at her, my jumbled thoughts all lining up suddenly. “Raine! Did you find-”

Zheng shook her head. “Bad news. She’s not here. Neither’s little Lozzie.”

A wrenching emptiness settled in my chest. “What? No, they said … ”

“Top two floors.” Zheng squatted down in front of me, lowering her incredible height so I didn’t have to crane my neck. She looked almost apologetic. “Been right down to the line where the corruption starts, but no further. I don’t have safe passage through that anymore. You’ve seen that place?”

I nodded urgently. “I-I know what you mean.”

“Good news: he was the only thing here,” she nodded toward the bound man. “Sarika and her sad hound must have left, gone downstairs, gone home. Doubt they’d keep any prizes below the line, besides the dead master’s corpse itself.”

“No, no they must have her somewhere else, you … you know all their safe houses, all the places they use, don’t you? You know where she might be? You know how they think, you-”

Zheng pulled a shrug with her face. “Less than I know you, shaman. Furniture doesn’t get the need-to-know.”

“You mean you don’t know anywhere they might be?” I started to shove the filthy blankets off me, wanted to stand up, felt so drained and weak, but had to do something. Had to find Raine, get back to Evelyn, call Twil. Something, anything.

“Not doors I’d knock on without knowing what’s behind them,” she rumbled. “But yes, three ‘safe houses’ I can think of, maybe, perhaps, if we’re very lucky.”

“Where? Zheng, tell me, where?”

The grin crested her features again. “Why don’t we find out for certain?”

“ … what?”

She stood up without explaining herself, and met the eyes of the terrified man tied to the radiator.

“No, please!” Jacob blurted out before either of us asked him anything. “I don’t know anything! I don’t know- I don’t- I don’t- I-”

His pleading dissolved into babbling as Zheng did what I suspect she’d first been designed for. The grin spread on her face as she opened her jaw, wider and wider, taking each step toward him with slow purpose. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth, inch after obscene inch, fat and thick and wet, extending far below her chin. The man cringed, closing his eyes and trying to press himself back from her without choking himself on the rope around his neck.

“Zheng!” I snapped. The tongue whipped back into her mouth, and she turned to regard me, oddly neutral. I had the sudden and unmistakable feeling of getting between a dog and its food. “What are you doing?”

“You want to know where your lover is?” she asked.

“Yes, of course I do, but … don’t … ”

“Do you have a better suggestion?” She took the final step toward the terrified man, and grasped his chin in one huge meaty fist, ignoring me once more. “First I will take one of your eyes,” she hissed. “Then a hand. Which do you use to wipe your arse, worm?”

Zheng only did her thing for a few seconds, but it made my stomach turn and my blood run cold. She slid up close to the shaking, cowering cultist, her hot breath in his face, hissing something between her teeth about how he had to open his eyes, an obscenity I will not repeat here because I don’t wish to think about it ever again. Her teeth in his face, her frame radiating animal threat and lust and hunger all at once – she was going to eat him. She wanted to eat him, every cell in her body screamed it out loud. He was crying, panting, babbling denials, when her tongue extended again, a rough tentacle crawling up the side of his face, daring him to close his eyelids.

“Actually,” I managed to say out loud. “Yes.”

She stopped. The tongue whipped back into her head again. She didn’t look at me. “Yes?”

“Yes, I have a better suggestion,” I said. My voice shook, but I got the words out. Zheng tilted her head one way, then the other, a low hiss of frustration in her throat. “I’m not- I’m not telling you what to do, but I’m going to politely request that you not eat parts of that man. Please.”

Zheng sighed, shrugged, and let him go.

The cultist – Jacob – looked at me like I was an angel. I glared back. “I’m not saving you from her,” I said, only half a lie. “I’ve got an ultimatum.”

“Anything, anything- I- they just pay me!” he said. “I’m hired to watch the room, I-”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

Zheng grinned.

“But it doesn’t matter,” I continued. “I assume you’re not a mage, at least, or Zheng would have pulled your head off by now.”

“Mmhmm,” the zombie grunted.

“Well, believe it or not, I’m worse than her. I can do a lot worse than kill you or torture you.” I managed to get to my feet, hugging one of the blankets around my shoulders. I felt wobbly and ill, a hollow pain inside my chest, bones fragile as fine porcelain. “Do you know who I am? Tell me the truth, or I’ll … I’ll … or Zheng will eat one of your eyeballs.”

Had to swallow, to keep the bile down.

He glanced at Zheng, then back at me, feet adjusting to keep the rope from closing his windpipe, and nodded once.

“Then you know what I can do,” I said. “I will send you to meet your new God, the Eye, whatever you people call it now. I will send you there, and you will not come back, unless you tell me what I want to know.”

A horrible realisation dawned on his face. Zheng had terrified him, but the prospect of meeting his God sent claws of soul-horror raking across his beaten mind. His face went grey and his jaw went slack.

“I don’t-” he choked out.

“Don’t is not the word I want to hear,” I managed. Deep down in the back of my mind I felt like a monster, like something hatching from a misshapen shell, but I would do anything to find Raine.

“I don’t know!” he almost screamed. “I don’t know where they took the other girl, I swear! I swear, oh God, please no, no, I swear, I-”

“You must know, or you’re going to meet your God.”

His eyes darted back and forth, sweat on his brow, shaking all over.

Then he tried to kill himself.

He did a little hop on one foot and kicked his own legs out from under him; the rope snapped taught with his weight, and almost snapped his neck. Luckily for all of us, Zheng had seen this coming. She moved like greased lightning, and hit about as hard, grabbing the ropes that ran from the cultist’s wrists and under his groin in the split-second before his entire body weight slammed through his spine.

Instead of breaking his neck he jerked and writhed, choking for air, squealing like a stuck pig. Zheng reached up and unhooked the top rope from the curtain rail, and poor Jacob crashed to the floor in a sobbing, retching heap.

I stared, numb, lost for a moment, trying and failing to convince myself he had deserved that. My threat had made a man want to die.

“So eager to leave this mortal coil, monkey?” Zheng rumbled down at him, grabbing a handful of his hair. “At least let me do it for you.”

“Alright,” I snapped out, before Zheng could pick him up and eat his fingers. “Alright, I believe you, you don’t know where Raine is.”

The cultist nodded, clutching at his bruised throat, trying to squeeze himself away from Zheng. His eyes found me like a drowning man clutching for a piece of driftwood.

“But you’re going to tell me every place your cult has, every place she might be. Addresses, details, any-”

He didn’t take much convincing. I suspect he was broken long before Zheng tied him to that curtain rail. As he babbled out a trio of targets – a place on the riverfront, an old pub out west I’d never heard of, a suburban address he swore was Sarika’s – he broke down slowly, all energy fleeing his body until Zheng finally let go of his hair and he curled up on himself like a wounded insect. He slowed, words deadened, eyes drained of vitality.

“That’s all? Just those three places?”

He nodded. “Those are the only- only ones I know. I know they took another girl, I don’t know who, I never saw. If I had, I would … I … I-I never agreed with … with … ”

He trailed off at the look on my face. “Whatever you have to tell yourself,” I said quietly. “You’re not worth killing.”

“She’s not going to kill you,” Zheng corrected me. The man flinched, but that was all. The horror of the Eye had drained the life from him. He’d given up. Zheng tutted, unimpressed with the lack of reaction.

“What about Praem? Where is she?” I asked.

Tink. A clink of metal on glass, a fragment of gravel on a window, too faint to notice beyond the subconscious.

“Who? What?” The cultist blinked at me.

“The zombie. Who came here last night? Sarika told me you people captured her too, unless that was another bluff. She’s my friend, where is she?”

Blink blink. Incomprehension. “Last night? Oh, you- you mean that.”

He nodded past me at the floor, and for a moment I thought he was being funny or we’d pushed him so far he’d lost his mind. He was nodding at the bundle of clothes and polished wood.

A sick pressure mounted in my chest. I took a shaking step toward what resolved itself as a splayed figure, wrapped in a pair of ugly cargo trousers and a big puffy coat. The boots. I recognised the boots, I’d seen them so many times before. Another step and I fell to my knees, shaking my head. Reached out with one hand, but stopped, confused. To touch would be only further desecration.

“Shaman?” Zheng purred.

“It’s her,” I managed.

A wooden mannequin, ball-jointed, of the kind only found in the most expensive and exclusive boutiques or the workshops of fashion designers. Evelyn had spared no expense in making Praem, but the wood had been warped by the effects of Praem’s inhabitation. Little spars and anchor-spikes jutted from the limbs, threads like a nervous system or frozen blood vessels lay just below the surface, and many of the joints had been added to with sheaths of wooden sinew or strange adjustments to their ranges of motion. The head was a blank oval, the wood grain twisted in impossible ways.

I shouldn’t be seeing this. It was like looking at a friend’s bones.

“Praem?” I whispered.

Tink.

Only in the silence of impending grief did I hear the little clink of metal on glass. I cast about with sudden wild hope. “Praem? Pra-”

Clink. Clink clink.

“Ahhh,” Zheng purred, and pointed at the magic circle, at the empty bottle standing within. “Found her.”

Careless of the danger, stupid and rash, I scrambled over to the magic circle on freezing feet and scooped the bottle up in shaking hands. A cork filled the neck, trapping a piece of fishing line so it dangled down inside the glass enclosure. A bead of lead, like a fishing weight, hung at the end of the line.

Inside the glass, I could see the faintest suggestion of a rainbow discolouration shifting and curling, like oil on water transmuted into the slimmest wisp of smoke.

“It’s-” Jacob spoke up. I stared at him with too much anger and steel, made him flinch and cringe; right then I wanted to murder him. I wanted to get my hands on the person responsible for this and slap them.

“This is an obscenity,” I hissed at him.

Zheng snorted mean-spirited laughter. “Got herself corked.”

I whirled on her and, without meaning to, vented cold anger at the target she’d presented. “Don’t you dare laugh. You were like this, an hour ago! You were as good as in a bottle!”

She blinked once, and lowered her head to me in acknowledgement.

“It- it’s one tap for yes, two for no,” Jacob stammered out, nodding at the bottle. I turned back to it, shaking my head in denial.

“Praem?” I whispered.

The piece of lead jumped, as if caught in a breeze, and clinked against the side of the bottle.

Tink.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Handcuffed to a radiator in an empty concrete room, in only my pajamas and underwear, dried blood crusted around my nostrils and eye sockets and the edges of my scalp, aching and cold and missing a sock, with only a terminally taciturn seven-foot tall zombie for company.

Still an improvement over Wonderland.

I stared back at Zheng, met those empty, dead-fish zombie eyes, but she didn’t move. Apparently my regained consciousness didn’t warrant a response.

“Hi, Zheng,” I croaked, then cleared my throat. So dry. “Don’t suppose you’d know what I’m doing here?”

She said nothing. What had I expected?

Reluctantly, I tore my eyes away from the huge zombie, and inventoried my various aches and pains. I probed my face, my tender hairline, my sore nose, rubbed flakes of dried blood away from my eyelids until I could blink freely without too much stinging. To my surprise I’d sustained only a couple of external bruises – probably acquired fighting the Lozzie-thing, as well as a nasty livid purple mark on my wrist from where she’d grabbed and held me.

Internally was a different matter, fragile and tender.

My soul, my sense of self, the coherency of electrical impulses in my brain, whatever you wish to call it – that felt bruised and bloodied. That was why my heart ached, why I felt so cold inside, brutalised by the Eye’s rummaging. My connection to my own body was thin and torn, and slow to repair.

I tucked my knees in closer to my chest, shivering, desperate for some warmth.

“Shouldn’t you … I don’t know, go fetch whoever’s in charge of you now?” I asked Zheng.

She stared back at me, eyes empty, face devoid of expression. No body language, like a shop dummy or a sculpture. Her statue-like inhumanity seemed worse than before, but I wasn’t in a state to catalogue exactly how. If her eyes hadn’t moved to meet mine, I’d have assumed she wasn’t in there anymore.

I sighed and tutted at her, and glanced around the room.

Shouldn’t I be terrified? Panicking? Pulling on the handcuff, sobbing and shivering? Crying out for somebody to come help me? That was what young women tied up in cellars did in television and movies. This was supposed to be everyone’s worst nightmare; kidnapped, restrained, by parties unknown. An empty concrete room, even. How cliche.

I’d just survived my worst nightmare, for the second time in my life. A sort of numb euphoria still cushioned my mind. What could be worse than the Eye? This was nothing.

Mostly I felt irritated, cold, and thirsty.

Real fear – for my friends – tickled the back of my consciousness, but I crushed that down under the practicalities of the moment.

I examined the handcuff. Shiny, new, with a rigid black plastic midsection, the metal cuff itself cinched tight around my thin wrist. I tried to squish my thumb down and wriggle free, but couldn’t squeeze through. No getting out without the key.

“Feel like coming over here and crushing the mechanism in here for me?” I rattled the cuff as I asked Zheng. “No? Didn’t think so. May I get up, then? Yes or no? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

She didn’t blink at all. Spoil-sport. I began to ease myself to my feet. Zheng’s eyes tracked me.

“I’m going to look out of the window, figure out where I am. Shouldn’t you be trying to stop me? … alright then, don’t say I didn’t ask permission.”

Uncurling made my teeth chatter. So cold in here, inside this bag of wet meat I was dragging around as an excuse for a body. The handcuffs limited my range of motion, but I managed to slide them up the radiator pipe, stand up straight, and look out of the window.

Up – dawn. Grey skies. The North in winter.

Down, and a touch of vertigo clutched at my legs. Sharrowford spread out below like a concrete-and-brick skid mark, caught in the vulnerable process of waking itself up, shaking off the shadows and cobwebs. Streetlights flickered off and cars passed in the distance.

Below us, so very far below us, lay Headly council estate.

“Oh, great,” I sighed.

If I craned my neck to the right and pressed my face close to the filthy glass, I could see the corner of the other high-rise tower. I didn’t need to guess which one I was in, or how high up I was. Intact glass, beyond range of the concrete-warping effect of Alexander’s corpse, in a stripped flat.

Glasswick tower, top floor.

I tried the window, but they’d thought of that – the catch was closed and locked, with a key. If I found something heavy to smash the glass, I could wave my arms and shout to attract some attention, but why bother?

Time to leave.

“Well, um, nice seeing you again, I suppose?” I said to Zheng, then took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

The bravado wasn’t entirely false. Whoever had handcuffed me here had no idea what I was capable of. Physical restraint couldn’t hold me, not in this reality.

I’d have lost my nerve if I’d stopped to think about the risks. I felt more fragile and paper-thin than any other time before; I could be about to collapse and pass out in some Outside place, choke to death on my own vomit, or perhaps my body would finally give up. The alternative was to sit here, thinking about what might have happened to Evelyn and Raine. Unable to help. Far away, and alone.

No. Much better to Slip, to take the risk, than wait in this empty room for whoever – or whatever – had imprisoned me.

Considering where I was, I could make an educated guess.

Familiar by now, almost deceptively smooth, the first pieces of the equation slipped into place. Pain spiked in the back of my head. I grit my teeth, tried to hold my breathing steady, focused on the rest of the hyperdimensional mathematics that would get me out of here and my wrist out of these handcuffs. Another piece slid into place, white-hot metal burning a passage through my brain.

Dead hands found my ankles. Held on tight.

Held me here.

I gasped out loud, opened my eyes, and dropped the equation – on purpose this time, carefully, though it still stung like star-fire and made me curl up around my stomach, wincing and wheezing pained breath through my teeth. I blinked down at my feet, but no skeletal hands clutched my actual flesh. Where had that sensation come from?

“That wasn’t … you? Was it?” I asked Zheng, but she didn’t look like she’d moved in weeks.

Shaking, confused, with real panic rising up my throat, I tried again.

I got further that second time. Pushed right up to the edge, stomach heaving on nothing but bile – and the feeling of bony, dessicated hands wrapped themselves around my ankles, held on tight, clawing at the periphery of my soul.

Crumpling to the floor, hacking and coughing flecks of blood onto the bare concrete, exhausted by the effort of failed brainmath, I whined in horrified frustration. The calm and lack of fear slipped through my fingers. I scratched and scrubbed furiously at my ankles, trying to wipe away the memory of that awful grasping.

“Get off me, get off me!” I hissed. “Let me go!”

I couldn’t Slip.

==

My captors came to check on me ten minutes later. Felt like eternity.

Turned out the reason I’d been so unafraid was the assumption I was able to Slip away, use brainmath, get out of here. As soon as I couldn’t, it all came crashing down.

Nothing to do except think, huddled against the wall, going around and around inside my own head, faster and faster. I needed to get out of these handcuffs and break the window, but with what? How? Could I get past Zheng? Hit her with a wrecking ball of force again, like I did before? I’d pass out afterward, and then I’d end up right back where I started, unless I took the top off the entire building.

Nobody was coming to rescue me. Raine had been knocked out, maybe worse. Vulnerable. Acid burned in my throat – Raine, made vulnerable.

Chest tight, shivering in the cold. Evelyn too, in a magical coma, alone and unprotected, except for Kimberly, and she’d run away. Didn’t blame her. How long ago had those strange men been hammering on our front door? An hour? Two? I needed to get out of here, they could be anywhere, anything could be happening. The Eye could be coming back for me.

What about Lozzie? Why wasn’t she appearing to help me? Was she trapped here too? Nearby, tied up like this, unable to Slip out because of dead hands grabbing at her feet? Was she scared too?

The radiator was bolted to an exterior-facing wall, so I couldn’t hammer on the concrete. The best I could manage was to stretch out a leg and thump my heel on the floor.

“Lozzie!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, throat hoarse and raw. They should have gagged me. “Lozzie?”

Dust and echoes.

I wanted to cry, but I was alone, no heroic Raine coming to rescue me, no friend about to appear around the corner to help. Alone. I did cry, a tiny bit. I’m not ashamed to admit so.

No, not like in films or television at all. Sometimes there’s no way out, unless you cheat.

I focused on Zheng, and started thinking like a mage.

Last I’d seen the giant zombie woman was in the Cult’s ridiculous castle, in the last moments before I’d killed Alexander Lilburne. She looked as if she’d been treated to at least a perfunctory wash since then.

Clean boots, new denim trousers, greasy black hair sticking up in all directions from a pale scalp. Her trench coat was mercifully free of blood – but was still missing the left sleeve where I’d knocked her arm off, the reattached limb still exposed. The arm looked much healthier, her shoulder no longer a mass of pulped tissue, now all clean, lean, toned muscle.

Unlike every previous time we’d met, her trench coat hung open. She wore a thin white tshirt beneath, and obviously no bra.

Also unlike every previous time, I finally witnessed the true extent of Zheng’s tattoos.

I’d seen the tattoos on her left arm before, in those terrified moments when she’d confronted Lozzie and I in the cult’s castle, but I’d had neither time nor presence of mind to examine them.

Now I had nothing but time and fear, and Zheng stood there, unmoving, the white tshirt doing little to conceal either modesty, muscle, or body-art.

The looping, winding, spiralling black of the tattoos covered her entire muscled torso. Emerging from below the waistline of her jeans, reaching the rough terminus of her wrists, scrawled on her heavy breasts and washboard stomach, crawling up her throat and across her bold collarbone, in a design so complex it stung the eye not with magic but with sheer visual confusion. A thick mass of infinitely tiny text, in dozens of languages, formed into symbols, whorls, loops – but mostly spirals, so many spirals, etched into the skin over corded muscle.

All of it was faded, some more, some less, some almost to nothing – from different times, different ages, inscribed in different hands, some on top of older designs, some interlocking with them. Zheng’s skin carried a multi-generational work of art.

Among the faded, blurred tattoos, one unmistakable addition stood out, bold and clear.

On her exposed left forearm, the one I’d injured, a half-complete spiral shape interlocked with a much older part of the design. The ink looked fresh.

“That’s new,” I said to Zheng, meeting her eyes again. “And you didn’t do that yourself, did you?”

A mad and dangerous idea took root in my mind, based on too many assumptions. I wet my lips, weighed my courage. Better than sitting here. If I could only reach her.

Then, I realised I was an idiot.

“The cuff,” I said out loud, and sighed in sudden relief. “I’m so stupid. Heather, you’re so stupid.”

Heart fluttering with nervous tension, I grabbed the rigid middle of the handcuffs with my free hand. If I couldn’t go Outside, then these could – and the glass in the window could, too.

A key rattled in the door, interrupting my small nervous victory.

Jerking to my feet, heart in my throat, I rose as best I could to meet whatever had come for me – Alexander’s walking, headless corpse, or the Lozzie-thing with a hole in its chest, or robed cultists with knives and chanting. I kept my hand on the cuffs, but internally I began to prepare, painfully and with some reluctance, for a very different kind of brainmath. Whatever they wanted, whatever came through that door, I was going to fight.

The last thing I expected to step into that barren concrete room was three very ordinary looking people. A woman, and two men.

The woman was the leader, I think. She stepped inside first, with a pause at the threshold and a curious raised eyebrow at me.

“You gonna to try to kill me?” she asked.

“ … I don’t know,” I managed. “Should I?”

She shrugged and strode into the middle of the room, but stayed well beyond my reach, ignoring Zheng and watching my eyes. Short and trim, severe in the face from too much shouting in her life, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, with a long shock of black hair and the fine-boned, classically pretty features of a British Indian or Pakistani. Long grey coat, high leather boots, and exhausted. She looked as if she hadn’t truly rested in several days, kept on her feet with a cocktail of determination and spite.

I recognised her. This was the woman who’d been outside number 12 Barnslow drive, directing the men.

The two who followed her into the room, however, had not been at the house. The first was exceptionally clean-cut and very young, perhaps no older than me, not a hair out of place on his blonde head, in a crisp white shirt and a plastic smile. He had a large notebook open over one arm and a pencil ready in the other hand, and went straight to Zheng, peering down at her exposed arm and making ‘hmm’ noises.

The second man looked like a teenage drug-dealer or pothead who’d aged badly into his twenties. He squinted at me from under scraggly twists of hair escaping from his beanie hat, and played with an unlit cigarette held in grubby fingers. For some reason, he made me think of a badger.

Neither of them looked like capable muscle. The woman scared me much more than either of them.

She sighed and cast about the room. “Well, she’s still here.”

“Mm. You owe me twenty quid,” the badger man said.

“Later,” she grunted.

They watched me for a second, in silence, though the clean-cut man was absorbed in taking notes as he examined Zheng’s tattoos. Their looks felt nothing like the pressure of Alexander Lilburne’s infinite self-satisfaction. His gaze had been like a snake waiting for a twitch. This lot looked more like they weren’t sure how to proceed.

As a second turned into two, then three, then five, I realised the look was no act – they genuinely had no idea what to do with me. If they were hoping I’d say something, they didn’t know what.

“Would you leave the zombie alone?” The woman hissed at the clean-cut man. “For five fucking seconds?”

He ignored her and lifted Zheng’s wrist, to examine the new tattoo up close. Zheng didn’t even glance down at him.

“I’m speaking to you, Marcus,” the woman snapped. “For fuck’s sake.”

“The new sigil is taking properly,” Marcus murmured. “Despite the constant changes in her binding. This is good, this is good news.”

“This is also not the time,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

“This is important work, you know that.”

“Uh, maybe we shouldn’t use names in front of … ” The badger-like man nodded toward me.

“What fucking difference does it make?” the woman asked him. He shrugged.

“Who … ” Had to swallow, my throat was so dry. “Who are you people?”

The clean-cut man – Marcus – turned away from Zheng and pointed his plastic smile at me, before the woman could answer.

“We are the favoured and the blessed,” he said, his voice floaty and not-quite-here. The voice of a missionary, or of drugs crossing the blood-brain barrier.

“We’re what’s left,” the woman answered – measured, quiet, and filled with hate.

“Left of … left of what?” I swallowed again, playing for time, for information. I couldn’t make myself confident here, but I could make myself seem oblivious.

“Don’t be obtuse,” the woman said.

“The Brotherhood of the New Sun.” The badger man snorted an empty laugh.

I glanced between the three of them, but there was no joke in their eyes. The woman sighed and shrugged.

“Just … just you three?” I asked.

“I’m not completely stupid, I’m not going to tell you that,” the woman said, then narrowed her eyes and smiled in a thin, dark way, voice turning sarcastic and mocking. “No, in fact, there’s dozens of us, hundreds even. All of us exist purely to torment you, because you’re the centre of the Goddamn universe.”

“Hey, Sarry … ” the badger-man muttered, half reaching for her shoulder, and then thought better of it. She ignored him.

Undignified, dressed in my pajamas and ugly with my own blood on my face, I tried to turn vulnerability into the only form of strength I could grasp. I pulled on my right wrist, let the handcuffs clink against the radiator.

“I’m the one cuffed to a wall.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You are. So why the hell are you still here?”

“She’s run out of juice,” the badger man said. “Too tuckered out, eh?”

“That,” the clean-cut young man raised his pencil. “Should not be possible. That never happened with the younger Lilburne. She was irrepressible. Something else is keeping our guest here. Reluctance, perhaps? Maybe she’s seen the light.”

“Maybe,” the woman drawled. She sounded unconvinced. “She looks pretty tired to me. You feeling tired, Heather?”

I blinked at her. Too many things to take in at once, struggling to hold onto every scrap. Every piece of information could be valuable, could get me out.

They didn’t know why I couldn’t Slip. They didn’t know about the dead hands.

“I’m thirsty,” I said, instead. “And how do you know my name?”

“We all knew your stupid name. Alexander wanted you on the team, so we all had to fucking know about it.”

“Then you appear to have me at a disadvantage,” I said, raising my chin.

I don’t know how I put so much haughty weight into that sentence. Half an impression of Evelyn, half stolen confidence from their petty infighting. I couldn’t see a way out, yet, but I knew there must be one. These people were tired and bitter and not what I’d expected.

“Why not, hey?” the woman said. “Why not pretend we’re all regular fucking human beings? I’m Sarika, and this is Nate. Marcus you heard earlier.”

“Call me Badger,” Nate said. “Not that we’ll know each other for long.” I blinked at him, not quite believing my ears. “Yeah, you were thinking it weren’t you?”

“I … yes.”

“This is our chance,” Marcus said, eyes shining with zeal. “This is our opportunity, to prove ourselves, to Him. She can’t leave, or she’s unwilling to go, and the construct – well, the construct is missing. So we send her, ourselves. We send her back to Him.”

“Mm,” Sarika grunted, staring at me. “Sounds good.”

“We must. We must do it!”

“Alright. We will. Hold onto your pants,” she grunted.

“What?” I asked, stomach sinking, but I didn’t really have to ask. A cold shiver ran down my spine and into my blood. “Send me where? You … you people work for the Eye now, don’t you?”

“ … ‘Eye’?” Sarika raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you call it?”

“Makes sense.” Badger shrugged.

“He has a name and His glory should not be diminished by our fragility,” Marcus said, raising his head and closing his eyes.

Then he spoke the Eye’s true name.

A not-sound with no business issuing from a human throat. My eyes stung and my ears popped as a static crackle passed through the frigid air. I assume the temperature dropped, as it had months ago when Evelyn had spoken the Eye’s name to make a point, but the bare concrete room was already too cold to notice. Sarika jerked and winced, gritting her teeth. Badger grunted and screwed his eyes up.

Zheng blinked.

Marcus raised his voice, a little blood on his lips. “We speak His name and embody His will and-”

Sarika grabbed a handful of Marcus’ collar and got up in his face, bearing her teeth. “If you do that again without warning me first, you little shit, I will have her,” – she jabbed a finger at Zheng – “split you from your cock to your throat, and feed you your own steaming guts. You’ll die with a mouthful of your own shit. Do I make myself clear?”

“She’ll do it, man. You know she will,” Badger said.

“I will not apologise for my devotion,” Marcus said through his plastic smile.

Sarika let go and pushed him away – then gestured at Zheng.

My heart leapt into my throat. For one terrible moment I thought their leader was about to make good on her gruesome threat. Zheng came to life all at once, whirling into motion, one hand grabbing Marcus by the shoulder and shoving him at the wall. He bounced off – but Zheng stopped at a click of Sarika’s fingers.

“Want me to keep going?” Sarika snapped.

Marcus straightened his shirt and turned his plastic smile back on. He tilted his head down in the smallest gesture of submission. Sarika sighed, and Zheng returned to her waiting pose, eyes locked back on mine again. Badger took a deep breath and swallowed.

“Right, now that’s over, we don’t want her to die in the meantime,” Sarika muttered. “You said you’re thirsty?”

“Yes,” I answered after a moment. “Very much so.”

“Here.” She dug around in her coat pockets and pulled out a plastic bottle. She tossed it to me, and of course I couldn’t catch it with one hand cuffed to the wall. I crouched to fetch it off the floor.

Half empty. Seal on the cap already broken. I met Sarika’s eyes.

“ … what?” she huffed. “You think it’s drugged? We don’t need to fucking drug you, we can have Zheng drag you wherever we want. Drink it or not. I’m beyond caring.”

I didn’t touch the water, but I placed the bottle on the windowsill.

“So you people do work for the Eye? I don’t understand, how?”

“’Work’ is perhaps a little too optimistic,” Sarika sneered.

“What’s to understand?” Badger said with a shrug. “We’re here, and none of us are getting out.”

“We serve Him now, as we always should have,” Marcus added.

Great. The Eye, my childhood nightmare, my twin’s jailer, and the ultimate foe of everything good in my life, now had a real-life doomsday cult in Sharrowford. I could connect the dots even if I didn’t know the details – Alexander had found out about Maisie and my past, somehow encountered knowledge about the Eye. And now his former followers had decided to worship the thing as a God.

I’m certain Evelyn could have told about a worse possible outcome, but right then I couldn’t see one.

“How did I get here?” I asked.

“A wonderful question,” Sarika said. “One we were hoping you could answer, in fact.”

“ … what?”

“We found you on the floor in front of Alexander’s body. That’s what.”

“Where’s the construct?” Badger asked me.

“Mm, yes, that too. We know it came for you,” Sarika added. They were getting into the swing of this now, back and forth, hitting me with questions – but only because I’d given them the opening, ceded control of the tempo. Marcus may have been a loon, lost to the Eye, but these two had at least some brains cells to share between them. “In fact, I’m pretty certain it got you. Got there before I did, and spirited you away. So how the fuck’d you get free from it?”

“It should be coming for her right now,” Badger muttered. “Should be here already.”

“Yeah, and it’s not.” Sarika shivered. “Thank fuck.”

“It is otherwise occupied,” Marcus said, nodding to himself. “It is His creature and His ways are not our ways.”

“You mean the thing that looks like Lozzie?” I asked.

Sarika tried to laugh, but it didn’t take an expert on body language to read the shudder in her face. “Yeah, the thing that looks like Lauren Lilburne. The construct.”

“It’s dead,” I said – and relished the looks on their faces.

“A lie,” Marcus said.

I didn’t respond, though more because I wasn’t actually certain it was dead than any calculated intimidation tactic. He frowned at me.

“She ain’t lying,” Badger clicked his tongue. “It’d be here if it was still walking about. They must have killed it before it took her.”

“Killed it after it took me. The Eye can’t hold me,” I almost spat at them. “Sending me back would be pointless, because I’ll just escape again.”

“Okay, that’s obviously nonsense,” Sarika said, sighing. “If it had you, you wouldn’t be here. I’ll accept you killed the construct, or your friend with the gun did, but there’s no way you escaped the … the ‘Eye’.”

“Him,” Marcus corrected.

“You think it has a fucking gender? Really?” She shook her head.

“The Eye can’t hold me, and you can’t hold me.” I managed to sound much more confident than I really felt, shivering cold and restrained in front of these people. “I could kill all of you with my mind, right now, and there’s nothing you could do to stop me.”

Except that I’d pass out for hours and freeze to death on the floor. I didn’t say that part out loud.

“Oh yeah? Just like you and your friends did to Alexander?” Sarika’s voice twisted with disgust – and a strange touch of sorrow, a catch in the back of her throat. “Did to my friends? You gonna kill me too, now, huh? Go on. Bitch.”

“We should be thanking her,” Marcus said. “For acting as the catalyst of our revelation. Without her actions, rash and destructive as they may be, we would never have found Him.”

My turn to frown at this fanatic – what did he mean, my actions?

“She doesn’t know,” Badger said with a sad chuckle.

Sarika blinked at me. “You really have no idea, do you? You don’t think about the consequences of your actions, people like you never do. You just do violence, and then swan away. I hate your type, I really do.”

I stared at her. Couldn’t quite process the words. She was outraged – at me?

“What do you think happened, hmm? After you and your friends killed Alexander? Killed the best visionary I’ve ever known? Cut off our fucking head? My … ” She paused, pressed her lips together.

“You found a bigger monster to follow?” I tasted bile in my throat.

Sarika regarded me for a moment, bitter and silent, then spoke. “He didn’t die right away. Lingered maybe three or four hours, I don’t remember exactly. I don’t remember much of that night very well. Zheng brought him back here, he was just … limp meat … and he … ”

“He gave us a God,” Marcus said, his eyelids fluttering half-closed

“He made a deal. A shitty one, with this ‘Eye’,” Sarika continued, gritting her teeth. “With the Magnus Vigilator. It was supposed to save his body, put him back together, but I don’t think that thing understood the meaning of human biology well enough. In return he gave it raw material. His memories of his sister, I assume, to form an avatar, a puppet, a … I don’t know how it works, alright? I don’t care. Something that can move back and forth between our reality and the Beyond, the way the real Lauren had done. An abomination, no? All that’s left of him, all I’ve got left of him, and it’s a walking nightmare.”

She couldn’t keep the emotion out of her voice. I wasn’t certain what Alexander Lilburne had been to her, but it had been more than a follow-messiah relationship.

I think I was talking to the ex-lover of the man I’d killed.

Oh dear.

“You forget the most important aspect of our ascension,” Marcus said, his plastic smile tinted with smugness.

Sarika sighed heavily, bringing her emotions under control. She displayed remarkable restraint in not thumping Marcus across the face. “Yes. Yes, how could I possibly forget? He gave it another bargaining chip too, to spice the deal. Us.”

“A God is no God if it is not deserving of worship,” Marcus said. Badger cleared his throat, lowered his eyes.

“You?” I blinked at her, not quite getting it.

“We’ve all … communed with it now, we all dream about it. That was the deal.” Sarika said. “It’s in my head, when I close my eyes. It’s in all our fucking heads, girl, and in a way that’s your fault. Yours and Alexander’s, and I can’t throttle him.”

“It is a blessing,” Marcus admonished her. “The vistas of thought that open before the human mind, if one is but willing to accept, are beyond words.”

“Sure is that,” Sarika grunted. “This thing Alexander found, when looking into you, Heather. Your background. It wants you, and I am fucking well going to find a way to give it what it wants. Nothing personal, understand?”

I almost – almost – didn’t blame her.

“You don’t have to listen to it,” I said, but my voice shook too much to sound convincing. “I’m going to … to defeat it.”

Sarika started laughing.

“Why not just park her back in front of Alex’s corpse, like we all had to?” Badger asked. “Let it in her head?”

“You want to risk touching her?” Sarika shook her head, laughter dying.

“Ehhh.” Badger shrugged. “She’s out of juice.”

I raised my chin, stood as tall as I could, and tried to stop shivering. “I can still send you Outside – Beyond, whatever you call it – if you let me touch you. You want to meet your God, in person? I can send you there.”

Marcus’s eyes flashed with a split-second of interest, but the other two merely stared at me, thinking.

“Come on, we need to hit the books, find a way to send her back,” Sarika said eventually. “And Marcus, you need to go pray again, figure out if there’s something He wants done with her. There’s got to be a way. Make another construct, I don’t know.”

“What if we get her to go willingly?” Badger muttered.

“Hmm?”

“What?” I said.

Badger wet his lips, swallowed, and played his hand.

“We’ve got your friends. All’o them,” he said, nodding. “We could hurt them, cut bits off’o them, until you just … poof, go back to the … ‘Eye’. And then we’re all free, and your mates go free too. Or we can hurt ‘em. That’s a promise.”

A sudden weight on my chest. Sick and blinking through a flush of heat in my face. They had hit the house, Raine and Evelyn had both been unconscious, and I doubted very much that Kim could have put up much of a fight. I tried to focus on the tone of the man’s voice, to read his expression.

“You’re bluffing.” I shook my head.

“No I’m not,” he replied, too quickly.

“We picked up Evelyn Saye, and her bodyguard, and the Brinkwood werewolf,” Sarika said. “We were following the construct, got brave, got lucky. You’ve got nobody left.”

Relief pulsed through my chest. A tiny, borderline hysterical smile curled on my lips. “You couldn’t hold Twil,” I hissed. “That’s a bluff. And you missed somebody else. How’d you get past the invisible spiders? How many people did they kill?”

That struck a nerve. Badger frowned and grit his teeth – perhaps Evelyn’s Spider-servitors had hurt one of his friends.

“Alright, we have one of them,” Sarika admitted with a sigh and a side-eyes glare at Badger. “You think you can do that, Nate? Torture some fucking kid? Cut off a finger?”

Badger shrugged. “Yeah. You know? Yeah.”

“No,” I said, clinging on. “No. Who, who have you got? You’re lying. That’s a lie, it-”

Sarika tilted her head, slowly. She had me now, and she knew so.

“Who?” I almost screamed at her.

“I wouldn’t tell her if I was you. This is working,” Marcus announced. Sarika sighed and ran a hand over her face.

“Torture it is then,” she grunted. “We’ll let you stew a bit, have a think if you wanna save your friend. We’ll be back with a finger, or an ear, or … fuck knows. Come on you two, out.”

They turned to leave.

“Wait!” I said, scrabbling for a handhold, for anything. If they’d broken into the house and had time to take only one person, I knew exactly who they had, and I did anything to deny that reality. “It’s Praem, isn’t it? You’ve got Praem. She was here, she came to the tower. You can’t hurt her, she’s not even human, she’s made of wood.”

Sarika squinted at me. “Praem?”

“She means the zombie we found,” Badger grunted.

“Oh, that thing. Yeah, we’ve got her too.” Sarika smirked. “Don’t worry, she won’t be mounting a rescue anytime soon. She’s in a bottle. Corked.”

My world shrunk, walls closing in, head throbbing with more than simple pain. Sarika was last out, and I stared at her as she left.

“Try to keep warm, yeah?” she said. “Don’t freeze to death up here.” She closed the door, turned the key, and locked me in.

They had Raine. I knew, in my bones, they had kidnapped Raine.

My Raine, my beautiful Raine, handcuffed to a radiator pipe like this? What would she be doing – planning a way out? She’d have a plan, of course she would, she was probably already free, right? There was no way she’d let them hurt her, I could barely imagine it. She’d fight like a cornered fox, she’d find a way, she’d break free.

Wouldn’t she? She was only human, and perhaps she was as cold and drained as I was. Unarmed. Alone.

In the dark watches of the night, in my most private, isolated moments, I’d feared a time like this would come – ever since Raine had slid into my life over the top of a bathroom stall, and made the choice to help me, defend me, become part of me. Feared that if the certainty of her confidence was ever taken away, I’d crumble to nothing. I was a half-person pretending to be real, an emotional dependent, a weakling. So afraid that without her, I’d relapse into retreat and reclusion, give up, give in.

Shaking all over, eyes wet with tears, I did the opposite.

As soon as the door was locked and I heard the cultist trio’s footsteps vanish, I didn’t even think. I grabbed the rigid centre of the handcuffs with my free hand, grit my teeth and tensed to stop myself vomiting, and jammed the familiar old equation into place so fast that my eyeballs hurt.

Out.

The handcuffs vanished.

Reeling, spitting blood, doubling up with pain as my stomach spasmed and my head pounded like an explosion, I clung onto consciousness – and my stomach acid – with pure force of will. Forcing myself to breathe, breathe, in and out, I straightened up, made my legs take my weight.

Zheng stared back at me. Seven feet of statue-still zombie muscle.

“I think it’s time we test some assumptions,” I said, voice shaking.

It wasn’t courage. I’m not a courageous person, I refuse to believe so. I simply lacked any other options. Sit in this room and wait for those awful people to return, with a magic circle or Raine’s severed index finger? Smash the window and shout and wait for Zheng to stop me? Try to Slip Outside again, and leave Raine – or somebody else, if I’d gotten it wrong – behind?

Those weren’t options. Easier to stop breathing than pick one of those, no matter how much this new plan terrified me. Not courage. Blind and unthinking, the only choice.

“Assumption one – you didn’t attack me. That night. And you … a-and you … dammit, Heather.” I swallowed, sniffed, forced steel into my voice as I spoke to the towering zombie. “And you stood by when I killed Alexander.”

I took a step toward Zheng, and she didn’t move.

That awful night when the Sharrowford Cult had mounted its last attempt to kidnap me, the night I’d knocked Zheng’s arm off, broken the integrity of her tattoos, she’d gone berserk. She’d killed two of the Cult, eviscerated them, left their corpses behind as she’d careened off into the labyrinth.

But she hadn’t attacked me.

That night, I’d regained consciousness underneath one of Evelyn’s Spider-servitors, and I’d assumed that it had protected me from Zheng. Perhaps, but perhaps not. She’d also not attacked us when we’d stumbled across her in the labyrinth. And, in those final moments in Alexander’s throne room, she’d seen what Lozzie and I were doing. She hadn’t stopped us.

“Assumption two.” My eyes flickered down to the new tattoo on her forearm, black spiral half-complete. “That’s how they control you.”

Another step toward Zheng. Her eyes tracked me.

A major assumption, that. One of Evelyn’s theories, not my deduction. Please, Evee, please be safe, please be well. I hope Twil found you in time.

Another step. God, but Zheng was so tall. An animal part of me quivered, told me to back away, out of her arm’s reach. But I stepped closer, almost close enough to touch her.

“Assumption three. You hate these people,” I hissed. “And if I’m right, you deserve this.”

I lunged for the door.

A very poor lunge, on exhausted, shaking legs and slippery feet, at the wrong angle and without enough reach. I wouldn’t have touched the door handle even if Zheng hadn’t decided to move. She didn’t so much grab me as catch me around the middle to stop me falling on my face. One huge hand whipped out like the jaws of a snake, hauling me up and back.

Quick as I could, flailing and missing once, twice, heart in my throat – third time lucky! I wrapped a hand around Zheng’s exposed left forearm. Directly over the new tattoo.

Out.

No time to plan the equation, to minimise the pain. I’d never attempted such physical finesse before, such delicate mathematical selection of what I was touching. Not skin or muscle or bone, and certainly not the whole of her, clothes and all.

Only the ink, under my palm.

The effort almost blacked me out. A second of oblivion as I reeled away from Zheng, a second of sagging and choking, as I spat a string of bile onto the floor, gritting my teeth and holding on and holding on and-

An intake of breath, sharp, surprised, deep. Not mine.

Blinking through the darkening edges of my vision, I braced myself against the radiator to avoid a rapid meeting with the floor, as I boggled at what I’d done.

Zheng exhaled, and life blossomed on her face. She blinked three times, eyes wide. Her gaze lowered as she lifted her arm, to examine the small palm-shaped blank spot where I’d erased a section of her tattoos. I’d removed the new one entirely. Good aim. Cleaner than severing her whole limb, at least.

She flexed her arms, rolled her shoulders, let out a grunt.

I’d expected a change akin to Praem’s growth over the last few months, but simply accelerated – a few subtleties of expression, a little more willingness to communicate, the power of independent decision making – but this wave of physical awakening surprised me. With every second that passed, Zheng looked more like an actual human being rather than a demon possessing a corpse.

She lifted her eyes, no longer dead and empty, but alive and alert, expressive even. The colourless pallor in her skin was flushed away with those first few hungry breaths, returning what I assumed had once been her natural colouration, a dusky light red-chocolate.

She made eye contact with me.

And grinned.

My stomach contracted, my entrails tried to climb up through my chest cavity, and all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

Wide, wider, baring row upon row of teeth suddenly much, much sharper than they had been a few moments ago. A shark’s grin.

Zheng took another deep breath, relishing the taste of the air. She grinned at me, and spoke.

“Yaagaad ve? Yaagaad, jijig shidten?”

Voice like granite, deep but unmistakably feminine, the question filled with confused wonder.

“I don’t-” I squeaked. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.”

Her grin twisted. She flexed her jaw wide, clicking and grinding, limbering up, and tried again.

“Why?” she repeated, in perfectly accented English, as if this seven-foot monster had lived in the North of England her whole life. “Why, little wizard?”

The key in the door interrupted my frantic grasping for an answer. A click, and the door eased open. A face peered inside – Marcus, the fanatic, returned for some private reason.

Zheng didn’t bother to turn and look at him, still staring at me, still grinning like a shark. He glanced at her from behind. He didn’t see the transformation.

My heart, hammering in my chest. He must have seen the fear on my face, but misread the reason.

“Still here? Good. Perhaps we can convince you yet,” Marcus purred as he stepped into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him. He carried an emergency space blanket over one arm, the kind that you might find in a first aid box or survival kit. He stepped past Zheng, favouring me with his plastic smile.

He didn’t see the way she turned her head to fix the grin on him.

“Here, for you. Catch,” he said, and tossed me the blanket.

I caught it awkwardly in my left hand, trying to hide that I had freed my right.

“I don’t want you to die of hypothermia. Malice is not our purpose here, death is not our purpose. You must return to your benefactor, and for that, well, you need to stay warm. I can get you some fresh clothes, too, and … oh, you’ve defeated my handcuffs. Ahhhh. Yes, yes, I think we can indeed convince you to go back of your own accord, can’t we? Zheng, hold her wrists still, please, I must do an experiment.”

Zheng exhaled, warm breath through her shark’s teeth.

“Zheng?”

Marcus looked over his shoulder. Saw the grin. His eyes went wide.

“Ret-”, he managed. Half a word of Latin, I suspect.

Zheng moved so fast it confused my eyes, her limbs whirring like animated quicksilver. One hand grabbed his head. The other shot forward into his mouth, breaking several teeth. A jerk and a twist, a choking cry of pain from Marcus, and a scrap of wet pink flesh dropped to the floor from the zombie’s fingers.

She’d ripped his tongue out.

“No more chains from you, wizard,” she growled at him.

“Oh my God, oh-” I clamped a hand over my own mouth.

She picked him up by the head, blood streaming from his face. No time to look away, no comprehension of what she was doing. Zheng spun her whole body, one clean arc, and slammed his skull into the concrete wall. Once was all it took. Like a burst melon. The most awful sound.

I must have squeezed my eyes shut – and crammed myself as far back against the wall as I could – because I remember the sounds that followed, not the sights. Zheng’s breathing, huge and rough and urgent. A ripping of fabric, then of meat. A pop, a crack – was that bone? Then a sound like peeling.

“Unngghhh. Meat.”

Zheng grunted, through a very full mouth.

Shaking, horrified, I opened my eyes to the sight of her eating the dead man’s leg.

She’d ripped his trousers open and had somehow torn his leg off at the knee, then peeled part of the skin away to reveal the bloody muscle beneath. As I watched in abject horror, she crammed another handful of torn flesh into her mouth.

She chewed and swallowed, blood down her face and throat and tshirt and pooling around the man’s shattered skull.

“S’been so long since meat.” She almost purred, like a huge sated tiger.

Then she remembered I was there.

For a split-second I considered throwing myself out of the window. No, I reminded myself – then I would die for certain, whereas Zheng was still a gamble. A gamble with human flesh in her teeth.

No, no, she’d killed Marcus, not me. Stand fast, Heather. Don’t show too much fear. She’d looked at me and asked a question. If she wanted me dead, I would be dead.

None of that mattered when this blood-splattered giant stood up, grinning like a demon from hell, towering over me.

I actually cowered. It’s a very specific sensation. I was caught between trying to make myself as small as possible, and trying to prepare to zap her to another dimension when she got too close.

She dropped the severed leg and stepped toward me, eyes fixed on mine, turning her head one way and then the other, as if not quite sure what to make of me – or waiting for me to scream and mess myself in terror, a response not entirely off the table. The grin split her face, wider and wider. She came close enough to touch, muscles moving under her bloodied tshirt, breasts hanging downward as she loomed overhead.

She slammed both hands into the concrete on either side of my head.

Deep down in my lizard brain, an animal part of me sat up and paid attention – the same part that had paid attention when Raine had first pulled out a nightstick and called it ‘insurance’, the part that had shivered in arousal when I’d watched Raine beat a monster to death, the part I tried so often to ignore, that found violence attractive.

Oh no. Oh no no no no, not this, not this, I told it, not now. This was not Raine. This zombie had just eaten human flesh, right in front of my eyes. She was seven feet tall and terrifying. She was exceptionally dangerous and I had made a terrible miscalculation.

That part of my mind quite liked Zheng.

I told it no. Absolutely not. Not now. Down.

“Why, little wizard?” Zheng purred down at me, eyes wide with savage amusement above her bloody grin. “Why take the risk?”

“What … ” I swallowed, trying not to panic, trying to prepare the brainmath to make her go elsewhere, permanently. “What risk?”

“Freeing me.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

That voice was an awful thing – because it still sounded like Lozzie.

Even muffled through the thick wood of the front door, it was a noise from the pit, a discordant mockery of human speech that set the little hairs standing up on the back of one’s neck. Like hearing a foreign language for the first time, the brain stumbled to render raw vocalisation into comprehensible words. The sounds were all wrong.

The inflection, the cadence, the timbre – wrong, wrong, wrong. Not merely not-Lozzie or not-human, but not even biological. A hissing of breath over dessicated meat, the crackle of static, rusted metal on cracked stone.

My brain refused to accept that I’d heard actual words. I broke out in a cold sweat. Kimberly’s hand tightened on my arm like a vice.

“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin,” Raine called back.

For a confused, horrified moment I had no idea why she’d said that. The words made no sense. Had my language processing centre been corrupted by that terrible voice? Was Raine losing her mind, too close to that thing on the other side of the front door?

Three little piggies.

I blinked, came back to myself. The three little pigs, of course – though there were four of us in here – and the wolf at the door. Lozzie’s sense of humour.

Raine had talked back to that voice. Her eyes glued to the door, handgun held steady, muscles whipcord-tight. I could barely squeeze a breath down my constricted windpipe, but Raine had talked back.

What was the next step?

I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and blow your house down.

“Don’t open the door,” I hissed. I clutched the blanket tighter around my shoulders.

“Ain’t gotta tell me that,” Raine murmured.

A second passed, two seconds. Next to me, Kimberly trembled like a sapling in a storm. “Heather, w-we should … we should hide,” she whispered, but I was rooted to the spot.

Was it really Lozzie out there? I couldn’t imagine that voice issuing from her throat, it was unthinkable, even possessed by a demon from Outside. My skin crawled at the thought of that thing getting inside the house. A bone-deep panic settled into my marrow as I realised what was happening, as I realised what I was truly afraid of.

The cult didn’t know that Evelyn was unconscious and Praem was gone and Twil had run off – the Eye did.

Or at least, its servants did, between the graffiti and Alexander’s corpse. And now this thing pretending to be Lozzie had come for me.

“Lozzie,” I heard myself say out loud, calling to her. Where I found the courage, I had no idea. “Lozzie, please … please don’t come in … please … ”

No reply.

Three seconds. Five. Ten.

“That all you got? No comeback?” Raine called out again – and received no reply. She crept up to the door on silent feet, gun still pointed at approximately where Lozzie’s head would be on the other side.

“Raine!” I hissed. “Don’t-”

“Shhhh,” she hushed me. I bit my lips, tried to convince myself that Raine knew what she was doing. She pressed her ear against the door, then backed away again. “Nothing.”

“Y-you can’t hear her breathing?” Kimberly stammered.

“Nothing,” Raine repeated. Reluctantly, she glanced over her shoulder, at Kimberly and I. “Kim, I need you to do me a favour, quickly. Go-”

“Me?” Kimberly’s face looked like that of a condemned woman. “I-I’m not going out there, I’m not, I can’t, I-”

“Go upstairs. The corridor.” Raine said, clear and firm. “Second window on the right has a view down to the doorstep. Call out what you see.”

“I-I-”

“If I know what’s there I can shoot it through the wood,” Raine said, in the same tone one might discuss assembling furniture. “I need a spotter. Upstairs, now.”

“Raine, no!” I hissed. “You can’t-”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.” Kimberly scrambled away from me and up the stairs, unsteady on her feet but doing as she’d been asked. I stared at Raine in mounting horror, shaking my head, trying to form words.

“You can’t, Raine, you-”

“It got her to go upstairs,” Raine whispered. “Besides, that ain’t Lozzie out there. No way.”

Kimberly’s footsteps stumbled and hurried across the upstairs floorboards, then stopped. A horrible two seconds of silence.

“Kim?” Raine called.

“There’s nothing there!” Kimberly’s frightened voice called back. “S-she’s gone.”

“The back door!” I hissed.

“It’s locked,” Raine said. Her eyes roved over the house, seeing the walls beyond the room as she calculated. “Windows too. I made sure after Evee passed out. Plus, the house is warded. This is a fortress, it can’t get in.”

Cold realisation clutched at my guts. “ … I could.”

Raine raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t you remember? When I saved Evee? I could get into the house. Go around the door, around the walls, come in from Outside.”

Raine paused, assimilating this new vector of threat in a split-second. She crossed the front room to my side, eyes flicking between the doors to the kitchen and the disused sitting room and up the stairs, gun still in both hands. “Kim, get back down here,” she called, then turned to me, a bad attempt at an easy smile on her lips. “We need to stay with Evee, all together in one place. This thing comes for us, we’ll be-”

“It wants me, Raine. It’s from the Eye.” I couldn’t stop shivering. She grabbed my shoulder and squeezed – stable, firm, so confident, whatever situation we found ourselves in. I wish I could feel such courage.

“It’s not getting you,” she said, then turned and raised her voice. “You hear that, out there? You can fuck right off back where you came from, she’s mine!”

“W-what?” Kimberly clattered halfway down the stairs, blinking at us.

“Talking to the nasty, never mind. New plan, Kim, we’re all going back to wait with Evee while I make a couple of phone calls. I think we’re safe inside the house, for now, but we need-”

“Heather?”

My name in that thing’s mouth.

It stepped out of the corner of the room, as if it had been standing there the whole time.

In an instant, I understood why Kimberly had hidden in her flat for a week after this thing had visited her. Uncontrollable revulsion took me, every muscle responding on a pure animal level. I must have backed away, because I recall my shoulders bumping against the wall. Raine span and pointed her gun, but even she took several involuntary steps of disgusted retreat. Kimberly screamed and tripped over her own feet as she scrambled back up the stairs.

Stack had told the truth – this thing was not Lozzie. It could not be. I refused to believe such violation was possible. The alternative was to go mad with horror for my friend.

Perhaps if you’d only ever met Lozzie a few times, distracted and pressured by the Sharrowford Cult and the nightmare of your own life, perhaps if you were terrified out of your mind and alone and scared, and unwilling to examine her too closely. Perhaps if you’d only ever seen Lozzie in her wretched, abused state, rather than the bright, energetic girl I’d known in the dreams. Perhaps then, you might mistake this mockery for the real thing.

The Lozzie-thing walked toward me, limbs jerking and muscles pulling as if connected to a puppeteer’s strings. The mouth – a slash in a plastic bag pretending to be a face – pulled and twitched into an alien approximation of a smile.

“Heather,” it repeated.

Skin and face like plastic, without a single blemish or pore, bunching as it moved. The hair long and straight and limp, nothing like Lozzie’s wild tail of floating gold. The clothes – jeans, tight shoes, a tshirt – moved as if extruded from the skin beneath, not fabric at all, and failed to conceal the flawed operation of the lungs in the chest. The eyes, empty and dead, pointed at me but contained nothing inside.

It was so deep in the uncanny valley, it should have flown apart or fallen down under the conditions of our reality. To breathe the air it exhaled was to risk contamination.

It stretched out one hand toward me, every fingernail a precise arc of white.

“Back to school,” it sang.

I shook my head and tried to back up into the wall, willing the plaster and brick to swallow me. I couldn’t think with this abomination bearing down on me. I couldn’t even scream.

Raine stepped away, gave it clear passage.

In that moment, I didn’t blame her. The only thing worse than letting it touch me would be for it to touch her. Once it had me, it would leave. Evelyn and Raine, people I cared about, at least they would remain uncorrupted by this thing’s mere presence.

Raine took one more step to the side – yes, get away from it while it’s still ignoring you, Raine, please, don’t let it take you too – then two quick steps toward the Lozzie-thing.

She raised her handgun and shot it in the head.

The deafening bang-crack of the gunshot sent a whip of reaction through my adrenaline-tightened body.

The shot passed clean through the Lozzie-thing’s skull. No puff of blood and brain, only a jerk of the head to one side from the kinetic force of the bullet. It paused mid-step, as if it was trying to decide whether a bullet through the head was fatal or not. Raine held the gun ready for a second pull of the trigger, but even her hands were shaking. Stepping closer to that shambling thing went beyond bravery and into madness.

Then the Lozzie-thing crumpled. It clattered to the floor in a tangle of limbs, eyes staring at nothing, and lay completely still.

“Fuck,” Raine said.

My breathing returned too fast, lungs sucking down great heaving gouts of air as my head span. I wrapped both arms around my chest and squeezed, tried to stop myself from hyperventilating.

“Fuck,” Raine repeated. She looked at the gun in her hand, then at the dead thing on the floor, then at me. “Heather, I’m so sorry, I had to-”

“It’s not Lozzie!” I almost screamed. “Make sure it’s dead.”

Raine nodded, levelled her gun, and shot the Lozzie-thing in the head a second time. Another bang-crack to make me jump and jerk. The corpse didn’t even twitch.

“It- it’s dead. It’s stopped moving. It’s not moving anymore, and that is great.” Raine blew out a long breath, recovering much faster than I could. “I am super happy that thing is not moving any more. Top of the world, in fact. And yeah, it ain’t Lozzie. S’not her. Look at it, no way.”

“Raine,” I whined.

That pulled her together, the sound of me still in pain. She was on me faster than I’d been prepared for, half-hug, half-lift, bundling me away from the Lozzie-thing’s corpse on the floor. “Hey, hey, breathe, yeah? It’s dead, I got it. And it wasn’t Lozzie.”

“No, no no, it wasn’t, there’s no way, no way-”

“It’s okay. Don’t look at it. I know, I know, it’s not as bad now it’s not moving, but-”

“It was never Lozzie, couldn’t have been.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing. Now the animal terror was beginning to subside, the deeper fears surfaced. “Couldn’t have been. It’s nothing like her.”

“Heather, Heather? Hey, look at me.”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I lied, nodding, pulling the blanket tight around my shoulders, shivering inside and out.

“Hey, it’s alright to admit it,” she said, and the grin – that endless, confident grin – eased back onto her face. “Neither of us are okay right now, you don’t have to pretend otherwise. But we will be. We need to deal with this.” She squeezed my hands, pressed them to my chest, and turned away. “Hey, Kim?” She called out. “It’s dead, I domed it, get down here.”

Kimberly appeared from the top of the stairs, wide-eyed and ashen-faced. She stared at the ‘corpse’ on the floor.

“You … you shot Lauren?” she asked, voice so small.

“It wasn’t her. Not really,”

“Oh.”

I shook my head, and bit down on the sob in my throat. I couldn’t be certain, but I had to convince myself that this was not Lozzie, had never been Lozzie, that such a beautiful friend could never, ever be violated like this. It wasn’t her. It was a trick, from the Eye, or the cult, or both somehow. I tried to draw myself up, not look at the thing.

“Wait,” I murmured. “Wait, why didn’t Evee’s spiders respond?”

“Hm?” Raine quirked an eyebrow at me.

“The Spider-servitors. They’re supposed to, when there’s a threat in the house. They came for Twil that one time. Where are … ah.”

The spiders had responded – two of them. One of the Spider-servitors lurked behind the kitchen door, frozen in place. The other was upside down just beyond the stairs, mass of crystalline eyes fixed on the Lozzie-thing’s corpse. Until that moment, I’d considered the spiders incapable of showing any form of emotion, but somehow in the set of their many legs and the limp, retreated poise of their stingers, I read their feelings exactly.

“They’re here?” Raine asked.

“ … as terrified as we were, apparently,” I said, then murmured, “Thanks for the assist, guys. Not that I blame you.”

“Evee’s gonna kill me for that,” Raine said, nodding at a new and prominent hole in the skirting board – a bullet hole, from the first shot, after it had exited the Lozzie-thing’s head. The round itself was likely embedded in the wall, or in the ground. Raine sighed, smiled, and turned to us, a light in her eyes. “Somebody’s gonna have heard those two gunshots. Maybe they call the police, maybe not. Maybe the police knock on our door, maybe they don’t. If they do, the one thing we don’t want them to see is that,” she pointed at the body. It didn’t look much like a corpse – it wasn’t even bleeding. The head wound was round and dark, like an unlit room seen through a hole in a piece of paper. “And I don’t think any of us wanna touch it. Right?”

Kimberly nodded. “R-right.”

“Absolutely not,” I breathed.

“Kim, there’s a tarpaulin in the corner of Evelyn’s workshop. Green, about yay high, rolled up. Grab that, check on her, call out how she looks, then come back here.” She turned to me. “Heather, the old utility room. There’s a broom and I think a pair of gardening gloves in there somewhere. If you can’t find the gloves, get me bin bags, the whole roll. Actually, scratch that, grab the bin bags regardless.”

“Got it.” I nodded. God, it felt good when Raine took charge. Her direction scraped away the outermost layers of panic and worry, gave me something to focus on.

“I’m gonna stay here, keep an eye on the kill.” She waggled her gun at the corpse. Kim turned and started for the kitchen. I hugged my arms around myself and moved to go after her as Raine called out. “Keep talking, keep shouting to me and each other, okay? We’re all here, we’re all together, we’re not going any- … ah. Ahh.”

Raine trailed off, eyes rising to the ceiling. We all heard the sound out in the road, the distinctive thrumming of a large car engine pulling up and then sputtering into silence.

A car had stopped in the street outside the house. At seven in the morning. This morning.

“Oh, I don’t believe this,” I said.

“Yeah, we’re all bloody well here alright, aren’t we?” Raine growled to herself. “If that’s a coincidence, then I’m the Pope.”

“What do we do?” Kimberly hissed. “What do we do?”

“We keep the door shut,” I said.

“What if it’s the police?”

“That quickly?” Raine shook her head, a sardonic smirk on her lips. “Nuh-uh.”

“They must have been following her- it.” I couldn’t make myself nod at the corpse. “Maybe it’s Stack?”

“I hope so, I owe her a hole in the head. Kim, back upstairs, same window, tell us what you see.”

“Again?”

“I’ll do it,” I hissed, desperate to get away from the corpse on the floor. I hurried up the stairs, hands shaking, into the shadowy darkness of the upstairs corridor. Floorboards creaked beneath my socks as I peeked around the edge of the window, into the lingering night.

A long black car squatted beyond the garden wall like a battering ram. Four people were climbing out and carefully shutting the doors behind them – three men and one woman, none I recognised, age and details blurred by distance and darkness. Staring up at the house, glancing down the street, their hands in their coat pockets. No robes or magical symbols, no visible weapons or lurking servitors, just coats and gloves against the cold. Stamping feet, tense shoulders.

The woman pointed to the side of the house and spoke a few words. The others nodded. One of the men went to the back of the car, opened the boot, and lifted out a long cloth-wrapped package.

My heart leapt into my throat. My brain said gun, but then the man slipped a pair of baseball bats out of the cloth and handed them to his companions.

I scrambled back down the stairs. Kimberly had scarpered off somewhere. Raine already had her phone to her ear, still covering the Lozzie-thing’s corpse with her pistol.

“Not police,” I said all in a rush. “Four of them. They’re armed, but I didn’t see any guns. I think.”

Raine nodded at me and gestured with her eyebrows for me to get into the kitchen, get out of the way, get safe. Then her call connected.

“Twil,” she barked down the phone. “Get your furry arse back here, now. We’ve got all kinds of trouble. Need you to knock some heads together.”

I stopped in the kitchen doorway – what was I doing? Why was I going to hide? I could stop bullets with my mind, let alone a baseball bat. I could threaten those people out there with a fate worse than death, and it would be no bluff. I turned back, and took a step toward the front door.

“There’s no time, dumb-arse,” Raine continued into the phone. “You’re supposed to be a good sprinter, right? Get back here … Heather? Heather, where are you going?”

“To get rid of our visitors,” I said, and swallowed.

“Twil, hey, shut up a sec, you- Twil? Okay, cool, great, now, yeah? You don’t hurry, I’ll tag them all, none left for you.” Raine lowered the phone. “She’s on her way. We’re gonna be fine, Heather, but please, please get back in Evee’s workshop, it’s the safest place in the house.”

“I can help. Fuck these people!” I put a hand over my mouth, surprised at myself. Horror had transmuted to outrage. Raine’s eyebrows shot up. “They- they’re with the Eye, somehow. They hurt Evee! It can’t be allowed, Raine. They want to make murals to the Eye, they can all go to Wonderland and stay there.”

Raine grinned. “Sure thing, after I’ve got them gut-shot and hogtied, okay?”

I opened my mouth to complain.

Bang bang bang – a fist, hammering on the front door.

“Open up,” a man’s voice called out.

“Unless you’re police, you can stuff it up your arse, mate,” Raine replied, her grin widening. We were back in her territory now. She knew what to do, and I trusted her utterly to do it right.

“Yeah,” he replied through the door, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m a regular policeman, me. Now open the fucking door or I’ll break it down.”

“It’s a diversion,” Raine hissed. “One’ll be going round back. Think the spiders’ll go for ‘em?”

I looked around for our pneuma-somatic arachnid friends. The one by the stairs was now halfway down the wall, creeping toward the door. The one in the kitchen had vanished – toward the back door, perhaps?

“Yes.” I nodded. “Yes, they’re with us.”

“Nice.” A savage grin pulled at Raine’s face, the sort of look I’d seen on her so many times before, the anticipation of violence written in every muscle. She gave me courage, gave me something to hold myself together with. We’d get through this. In a couple of hours it would all be over. She checked her gun, then dragged the big black combat knife from her waistband and flicked it out of its sheath. Cold metal, sharp in the morning chill. “This is gonna be a huge mess, but they don’t stand a chance. Here’s the plan, you-”

The Lozzie-thing got back up.

Perhaps it had been waiting for the moment Raine’s attention wandered. Perhaps the men hammering on the front door had pressed the issue. Or perhaps it had finally chosen to give up its ridiculous attempt to pretend it was a human being. It didn’t stand – it writhed to its feet, every joint pointing in the wrong direction, as if it had never risen from prone before and wasn’t certain which bones were meant to turn which ways.

Raine reacted faster. She did everything right. She backed up, one-two, raised her gun again, trigger-hand braced on the opposite wrist.

Smooth and calm and correct. Everything she was supposed to do. The Lozzie-thing lashed out with one failing hand, fingers all turned in the wrong direction, and Raine should have been able to dodge at that distance, she was already ducking away, lining up the shot. She was good at this. She was meant to win.

But the Lozzie-thing cheated.

Elbow and wrist moved at impossible angles, writhed around into the space Raine was about to be instead of the space she’d just vacated. A miracle of instinct, really, that Raine understood what was happening, that she managed to turn and shove her big black serrated knife up and into the thing’s throat, through imitation windpipe and imitation brainstem.

The Lozzie-thing’s palm slammed into Raine’s chest.

A crack.

I remember the cracking sound – the sound of one of Raine’s ribs snapping. All else was panic, contextless snippets of memory in a sea of adrenaline.

Raine sliding down against the wall, unconscious, the force of the blow more than mere physical impact.

The Lozzie-thing stepping toward me again, wheezing “back to school” through a ruined throat.

Kimberly, in the kitchen doorway, screaming and scrambling away, dropping a tarpaulin on the floor, which I promptly tripped over.

The hammering on the front door, again, again.

I think I grabbed a chair in the kitchen – no, I know I grabbed a chair from the kitchen. I grabbed a chair and tried to throw it at the Lozzie-thing, the un-thing, the thing that should not be, shambling toward me, the sheer physical pressure of its mere existence enough to crush all thought and reaction down into a singularity of disgust. Me, weak little Heather, who didn’t have the upper body strength for a dozen push-ups, throwing an old heavy chair.

The chair bounced across the floor. The Lozzie-thing smashed it aside.

It grabbed my wrist – that un-skin, fingers like alien bones, flesh without human warmth or prosthetic logic – and smiled, and wheezed “time to go home.”

Reality folded up.

==

How quickly one can lose everything. Reduced to thin clothes and lingering body heat. Friends, defences, ideologies, all shed in an instant, leaving behind an ape whimpering to itself on the ashen ground of an alien dimension.

“We are home,” the Lozzie-thing said.

I didn’t need to open my eyes to know where she’d taken me.

As reality reasserted itself, I crumpled to my knees and refused to open my eyes. Perhaps if I didn’t look, I could retreat to a safe place inside myself, and everything that was about to happen would happen to another person – but I knew that was impossible. In a few heartbeats, I would be denied any coherent sense of self.

A great pulse of awareness, from the sky above. My lips formed ‘no no no no’ over and over and over.

The Lozzie-thing still gripped my wrist. A leathery shard of myself said fight, get up and fight, but any strength I had was drowned out by a childhood nightmare screaming up out of my memories. Ashen wind robbed the heat from my skin, wriggled invasive fingers through every gap in my pajamas. The smell of this ruined place filled my nostrils, and I remembered. If despair could have a scent, it would smell like this. Darkness and ash.

I felt ten years old again, and I was back in Wonderland.

My eyes wouldn’t stay closed, of course. The first teasing barbs and hooks of pressure snagged at the edges of my consciousness, flensed layers of thought from my mind, forced my eyelids open.

Rubble and ruin stretched away across an endless plain, to a horizon of broken teeth I remembered from every nightmare. Mists like shadow drifted across the wreckage, obscuring snippets of looping alien script on every broken wall, words that made me wince with pain. In the distance, life – of a sick, malformed kind – crept through the hollows and beneath the fallen monoliths. Jellyfish creatures bigger than whales pulsed through the air, and in the distance the terrible mountain-sized watchers stared upward at the sky in mute devotion.

Up, up, up – to the sky that was not a sky. To the vast ridged eyelid that filled all creation.

The sky cracked down the middle, a hairline fracture on a sea of infinite night, as the Eye began to open.

Tendrils of alien thought wrapped tight around my mind, pushed through the whorls of my brain, began to take me apart – in the most fundamental sense of me.

The word ‘pain’ fails to do justice to the Eye’s attention. It was beginning an examination, an awful rifling through my neutrons and atoms. I was naked and alone on the altar of an alien God.

Sobbing, whimpering, bleeding from nose and eyes and even from my hair follicles, tugging on the Lozzie-thing’s grip to get away, I did the only thing that made any sense. I groped inside my own mind for the familiar equation, the piece of brainmath that spelled O-U-T, that would let me wriggle free like a greased fish, escape back to reality, away from this living nightmare.

The first few pieces slipped into place, as yet beyond the Eye’s deepening reach. My head pounded with a sudden spike of pain – and then the Lozzie-thing tightened her grip on my wrist.

“Stay,” it rattled, Raine’s knife bobbing in its ruined throat.

The equation fell apart, trickled through my fingers.

Writhing, choking on the pain, sobbing, I howled through my teeth in despair. That’s why the Eye had made this mockery of my friend. That was her purpose. To stop me using what it had given me.

This wasn’t how I’d imagined myself returning to Wonderland. I was supposed to be ready, prepared for anything, surrounded by friends and shielded by magic and knowledge and love, to rescue my twin sister. In the private, quiet hours of the night, sometimes I’d imagined myself armoured – though I couldn’t have defined exactly how. Nonsense, a fairy-tale to soothe a lifetime of anxiety and sickness. This was always my fate in the end, wasn’t it? Cold and terrified, dressed in my pajamas, my mind flayed down to nothing until I was a screaming ape in the dust, the same as ten years ago. No escape. Even if I’d lived to see seventy years, there was no escape.

Was this how my life ended? After not even six months of warmth and meaning. At least I’d be with my sister again soon.

We were all the way down now, from the rarefied heights of firearms and friendship, heroics and hyperdimensional mathematics.

I was just an ape – an ape with a sharp rock in its hand.

My free hand had moved on automatic. There wasn’t enough of conscious Heather left to make a plan, the Eye had already displaced too much. But a tiny, warm part of my mind held out for a few precious moments – a part nurtured and fed and encouraged by Raine week after week, day after day – the part that still believed in myself, that I deserved to live, that this scrawny messed-up scrap of flesh called Heather was going to win.

That part of my mind had found a piece of shattered masonry within arm’s reach. A leftover shard of whatever had inhabited this dimension before the Eye had arrived, or been born, or been wrought by some magical insanity.

You can sling all the alien math you want, but at the end of the day a rock can still bash your brains out.

A Raine-approved course of action.

The Lozzie-thing was busy staring up at the Eye, communing, communicating, whatever. Ape-Heather didn’t care. Ape-Heather lifted the rock up and slammed it down as hard as she could on the Lozzie-thing’s wrist. Slam slam slam! I wasn’t really there, it wasn’t me doing that, I was pure animal by that point. I spat and screamed and howled my little defiance at the Eye’s tendrils worming their way through my brain, and I shattered whatever the Lozzie-thing used for imitation bone.

I pulled free, fell back onto the ashen ground. The Eye was open another sliver – a million miles wider, up there in the firmament. Its thoughts were in my soul, the pressure of its massive tentacles strangling all thought, let alone emergency brainmath.

I believe I tried to throw the rock at it.

Then, a light.

A light that touched my mind, my soul, the tiniest bright spot from amid the vast probing darkness of the Eye. The smallest, weakest ebb against this tidal wave of pressure. It passed over me, like a lighthouse searching for a reply, and for a second I was myself again.

I did have one ally here in Wonderland, didn’t I?

I think I managed to speak my sister’s name. I’m not sure.

The light passed away from me. Only a second’s pulse of relief, and I felt the Eye’s attention gathering to crash back down. Relief had served as false hope. Neither of us could hold this back for long.

A tiny pop of displacing air, the crunch of gravel under shoes, and a “Wah?”

Maisie hadn’t been calling to me. She knew we had no hope here. She’d been calling for help.

Lozzie – the real Lozzie – stood there on the ashen dark ground of Wonderland, five feet away from me and her abominable double, eyes wide, a chocolate brownie halfway to her mouth. She dropped the brownie in surprise.

How could I ever have mistaken a fake for the real thing? Lozzie was beautiful – though part of that was the relief speaking, the relief that she was neither dead nor possessed. She looked healthy, no more bruises or bloody scabs. She was wearing flip-flops on bare feet, a plaid skirt, and a pink poncho. Somehow, she’d had a hair cut, fringe a neat line, trailing ends tidied up. How in God’s name did one get a hair cut Outside?

“It’s me!” She blurted out at the double, then saw me. “And you!” She lit up – then looked up. Her face fell. “Oh … oh dear.”

“Lozzie!”

The Eye’s tendrils pierced my brain again, thoughts peeled back. Lozzie winced – she felt it too. The double turned toward her.

“Kill it!” I managed to scream.

She blinked, and said, “Oh, right,” in the sort of tone one might use when asked to please put the laundry on.

Lozzie raised her hand, clicked her fingers, and pointed at the imitation-thing. The gesture seemed superfluous at the time – only later did I realise it resembled the manner in which one might issue a command to an attack dog.

Lozzie’s attack dog did not disappoint.

Burning chrome and lightning-etched steel – shining armour. A bulwark of metal – a tower shield. A shining star – the point of a lance. A helmet, no visor for eyes. Seams in the armour but not cut for a human. It rose behind Lozzie, twice her height in pneuma-somatic spirit flesh.

A knight.

Under the circumstances, my brain simply accepted what I saw. A knight, why not? We were beyond the rim of the sane universe out here, it was hardly the weirdest thing around. If the knight had removed its helmet and introduced itself as King Arthur reborn, I would not have complained.

The lance took the imitation-Lozzie full in the chest, threw the creature fifty meters to crash down in the rubble and dust.

The knight raised the tower shield over its head to shelter us both – I gasped, spat blood and bile, and drew in a shuddering breath, suddenly myself again. Bruised and bleeding, my sense of self was intact once more. The Eye’s invasive thought-tentacles had been blotted out, cut off, held back – for a second.

The knight’s shield was melting fast, its armour burning and buckling as it absorbed the weight of the Eye’s attention. As it melted, I caught a glimpse of what lay beneath that armour, what manner of creature wore that suit of pneuma-somatic metal, and couldn’t tear my eyes away.

“We gotta go!” Lozzie yelled, and bundled into me, dragging me to my feet and hugging me tight. She grinned in my face, then in an act of pure absurdity she waved upward at the Eye. “Buh-bye!”

“Lozzie! Yes!” I yelled back. “We have to-”

Wonderland dissolved into a kaleidoscope, folded up, and collapsed into nothing. I screwed my eyes shut and clung to Lozzie with all my strength.

All my strength was not enough.

Dead hands grasped my ankles.

==

Cold, hard, rough – bare concrete beneath my cheek.

I gasped awake and sat up in a rush, confused and dehydrated, eyes gummy with dried blood. Everything ached. Tried to move my right hand to my face and found I couldn’t. My wrist clinked, caught, stopped.

My right wrist was handcuffed, the other cuff attached to a radiator pipe in a concrete wall. Left hand still worked, rubbed at my face, made me wince as I touched my bloody scalp and eyes and nose. Freezing cold, shivering, one sock missing from the feet I drew up toward myself, curling into a ball, back against the wall.

“Where-” I croaked, swallowed.

For one long moment I didn’t care where I was or how much I ached or why I was handcuffed – all I knew is that this was not Wonderland. Sweet, blessed relief. Tears made tracks on my cheeks. Maisie had called Lozzie, and Lozzie had saved me.

“I love you, I love you,” I whispered, eyes closed, thinking of my sister. “Thank you, I love you, thank you.”

And then Lozzie and I had been pulled apart?

By the Eye? Dimly, I recalled a sensation like dead hands on my ankles, dragging me out of Lozzie’s arms as reality had un-blinked. We were both back in reality, but in different places? Or was this some other Outside dimension?

I couldn’t think, everything hurt and my heart felt strained, like I’d put my body through too much in the last few hours. Where was I? I blinked and rubbed at my eyes, brought my blurry sight back into focus.

A concrete room. No furnishings except for the door, the radiator bolted to the wall – to which I was handcuffed – and a second, empty doorway on the left, leading off into what looked like a stripped kitchen. A single window above the radiator let a shaft of thin winter daylight into the room. Dawn, perhaps.

A figure stood in front of the door. Guarding me. Seven feet of zombie muscle, dressed in her trench coat and boots.

Zheng met my eyes, and said nothing.

At least I was back in Sharrowford.

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