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My beautiful retreat was violated. I left Emei Secondhand Books in a hurry, ignored the polite goodbye from the lad behind the counter as I rummaged for my phone with shaking hands.

Tenny backed out behind me.

Her presence offered a bizarre source of comfort, but I had neither time nor wit to stop and think about her. She hovered at my back, a good doggy, trying to hustle me on and protect me, though I knew she couldn’t even touch anybody except myself. Moral support was better than no support.

Out in the alleyway, tripping over my own feet, I cast glances back at the cramped bookshop doorway. Any moment a monster would emerge, unfold itself like a blossoming nightmare, and see me. My chest wrenched tight and my hands quivered, I couldn’t move fast enough, breath shaking in my throat.

In my panic, I’d turned the wrong way – away from the high street. Round a corner, down another alley, narrower and dimmer in the shadow of the buildings, between a dark-fronted jewelry store and an abandoned hairdressers.

Behind me: a grunt and a scrape of shoes on cobbles – footsteps, clacking fast, catching up.

Tenny surged out, tentacles wide, a cat making herself look big. I almost dropped my phone, fumbled and caught it again, clutched it to my chest and readied a scream.

Twil turned the corner, curly dark hair and stupid blue-and-lime coat and all. She hooked her thumbs into her jean pockets. I gaped at her.

“Yo, big H,” she said. “You know you’re being followed, right?”

“Yes!” I almost shouted. “By you! Oh my God Twil, you terrified me. Why didn’t you say something, you- you-”

“Not by me, you numpty. You’re being tailed by some skinhead bitch.”

My anger drained, along with the colour in my face. I hiccuped.

“W-what? Not you? F-following me?”

“Me?” Twil snorted a laugh. “If I wanted to stalk you, you’d never know I was there.”

Tenny was jabbing and feinting at Twil with her tentacles, blocking my view in the cramped cobblestone alleyway, a totally ineffectual attempt to menace a person who couldn’t even see her.

“Stop that!” I snapped. Tenny halted and bobbed back, tentacles drooping. She looked at me like a scolded dog.

Twil blinked.

“Not you, Twil,” I spluttered. “There’s somebody following me? There’s actually a person stalking me? You’re certain?”

“She’s been on your arse since the high street, followed you into that bookshop,” Twil said. “You didn’t notice?”

“I-I- sort of, yes.” I swallowed on a dry throat and peered over Twil’s shoulder. “She’s not- wait, you were following me too?”

Twil shrugged. “Well yeah, duh.”

Fresh fear crawled in the pit of my stomach.

I reminded myself what Twil was, who she represented; this teenage girl, short as me, with a face straight from a glossy magazine cover, fluffy dark hair and a bad girl attitude stamped over a middle class accent – she could clothe herself in wolf-flesh at will. I’d seen her pull a steel chain apart with her bare hands and crack concrete with a kick. She’d recovered in moments from a laundry list of broken bones and in half an hour from magical torture. She’d fought monsters when Raine and I had fled, and could catch me in a second if I tried to run.

And I’d turned down a secluded alleyway.

Stupid, stupid Heather.

Raine had bought me one last present when we’d gone out shopping together. She’d purchased it without my input or knowledge, then given it to me back at the house, so as not to spoil our fun day out. About the size of an egg, made for a quick and easy thumb-grip with an accidental-press-proof button right in the middle. Disarmingly and disgustingly pink. She’d made me promise to carry the thing.

I shoved my shaking hand into my pocket and pulled out the personal attack alarm.

Twil’s eyebrows climbed. “Woah, is that a tamagochi?”

“I … sorry?”

She frowned. “Wait, what is that?”

“An alarm,” I managed through my closing throat. “Why were you following me, Twil?”

Twil blinked through a moment of dumb incomprehension – then her face twisted, genuinely offended, mouth half open. “I- you- I can’t fucking believe you. Fuck you, Heather. I played fucking rearguard for you and Raine, got my fucking head split open, hurt like a bitch, and you treat me like I’m- fuck. Fuck!” She spread her arms and swore some more.

“You were following me! Twil, you scared the piss out of me! I’m-” I lowered the alarm. Twil did not possess enough guile to fake such outrage. “I’m sorry, okay? You terrified me.”

Twil dialled back and frowned, then cracked a thin self-satisfied smile. “Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Fair cop. I’m good at that.”

I took a huge, shaking breath. “I-I still don’t- just explain, okay? Why were you following me?”

“Caught Raine’s scent in the high street, didn’t I? I don’t know yours well enough. Thought I’d come say hi.” Twil sniffed the air as if to make her point. “Where is she anyway- oh. Ohhh.” Her eyes lit up with a dirty smirk. “You’re wearing, like, I dunno, one of her unwashed tshirts or something, aren’t you?”

“I … ” I hugged my coat around myself. “I am. And that’s none of your business.”

“Aw, come on, that’s awesome. I said you were her girl, didn’t I? She made it official and-”

“Why are you here in the first place?”

Twil rolled her eyes. “Don’t get like Saye with me, alright?” She pulled a plastic bag out of her coat pocket and showed me the contents: a video game box, still in the shrink wrap. “You try ordering stuff online in Brinkwood, dickheads’ll nick any package left on your doorstep. S’why I come up Sharrowford, release day, innit?”

My head swam. I huffed with exasperation. “Right. Video games. And- and somebody is following me?”

“Yeah, some skinhead girl. Bloody criminal, Raine letting you go off on your own. This city’s full of basket-cases and I figure you’re like a lamp to moths or some shit. Look, I’m here now, you want me to help or maybe like walk you home or-”

My mind filled with high-pitched whine: skinhead girl. Shaved head. Rare enough. What were the chances of a coincidence?

“Heather? Yo, Earth to Heather? Come in, cosmonaut girl?”

I blinked at Twil waving a hand in front of my face. Tenny had moved to my side, protective but useless against real flesh and blood.

“Is-” I swallowed on a dry throat. “Is she still after me?”

Twil frowned at the very real panic on my face; or perhaps she saw the other emotion underneath, a feeling I couldn’t process yet, new and smoldering and hot.

“I dunno,” said Twil. “D’you wanna find out?”

“ … what do you mean?”

Twil smirked again, dangerous and wolfish even without her transformation. She grabbed my hand. “I’ll show you some master hunting tricks in action. Come on.”

Despite everything Raine had once said about this crazy little werewolf, despite her very strict instructions to call her if anything happened, I let Twil lead me out of the alleyway, around a corner, and back into the high street among the afternoon shoppers. The crowd had thickened with groups of lads, young mothers with pushchairs, and a gathering numbers of secondary school kids. It was after three now, the schools had let out.

Twil was quick and snappy compared to my panicked confusion. She checked over our shoulders with casual ease and weaved through the crowd with apparently zero effort. She led me about forty feet up the high street and over a pedestrian crossing, toward the big department store wedged next to Sharrowford’s only indoor mall.

Squatting the open space before the department store and the mall, a very ugly and ill-considered piece of modern sculpture reached toward the sky, a fountain with a huge rotating steel ball planted on top, the size of a bus. No idea what it was meant to represent. Four stone benches ringed the exterior, dotted with a couple of old men sharing a cigarette and some schoolkids making noise. Twil rounded one of the empty benches and turned to watch the way we came. She scanned left and right, moving her eyes more than her head.

Tenny caught up with us and crouched in front of me. A lone tentacle brushed my hand and a word reached my mind: “Leave? Leave?”

“I-I have to call Raine.”

Twil frowned. “No time for that, gotta keep your eyes peeled. Come on, help me out here.”

I stared at the moving flows of people. “Why- why here? Why not wait in the alley?”

Twil pointed all her fingers out at the crowds. “Sight-lines, duh. You can’t see? This is the best place to watch for her, she can only come from there, there, or there,” Twil pointed.

“ … I don’t follow.”

Twil glanced sidelong at me, obviously unimpressed.

“I spend most of my life reading books, not environments,” I said.

She shrugged. “Short version: we’ll see her in a sec, cos’ if she tries to go all the way around behind us, she’ll risk losing your tail. Unless she’s doing some weird magic shit.” Twil muttered the last two words under her breath.

Waiting was impossible. My fingers itched, my head felt light with adrenaline. I glanced down at my phone, began to call Raine.

“Got her,” Twil said.

“What? Where?” I expected her to point, but she just nodded vaguely, eyes fixed and staring hard.

“There.”

“Where?”

“Between the fat old guy with the awful shirt and the front of that coffee place. Right there, she’s looking up the street now. Amateur, totally lost us in the crowd.” Twil tutted and shook her head.

My blood froze; it was her.

Shaved head and whipcord tight. She was dressed differently from in the Willow House Loop, jeans and an open raincoat. Ears full of metal piercings, a tattoo crawling up the side of her neck. She turned and looked the other way down the street, not a subtle stalker.

“You know her?” asked Twil.

I swallowed, found I was shaking slightly, and forced myself to take a deep breath. “She tried to shoot Raine three weeks ago.”

Twil’s amusement did not linger. Her face darkened. “You serious?”

I nodded.

The Skinhead Girl turned and started up the street. At that angle, she’d miss us completely. She’d lost us. Twil turned and stared, wolfish predation in her eyes.

“Wanna fuck her up?” she muttered.

An unnameable, alien emotion burst into my chest in full colour. That woman, she’d tried to kill Raine. She’d very nearly succeeded, if not for my brain-math hell-magic that hurt my soul to use. I didn’t even know who she was, what she believed in, why she’d done it. She’d tried to kill Raine. I was afraid, almost shaking, but I’d lived with fear all my life, in a million different subtle shades and flavours. I lived fear inside out. It couldn’t stop me.

This was new.

Anger, bright and sparking.

“ … yes,” I hissed.


==


What’s worse than being stalked?

Being bait.

Twil did the planning, quickly and without explanation.

I didn’t fully trust her, but I also didn’t have time to second-guess. The Skinhead was going to get away. She’d walk to the end of Sharrowford high street and disappear for another three weeks or three months, and then maybe she’d come back and I wouldn’t have a convenient werewolf to sniff her out, and she would do something horrible to somebody I loved.

A small voice screamed panic in the back of my head, wailed that I needed to call Raine. I needed to call my knight in shining armour. I needed to get out of here, get back to the house – to home, and tell Evelyn what I’d seen. Call the cavalry and hide. Leave. Get Raine.

Instead I let a cultist werewolf girl tell me to walk down the street in plain view of a woman who’d tried to murder my lover.

“Try not to look back, it’ll tip her off. Just walk straight into the place.”

“What if you’re not- what if-”

“I’ll be there ten times faster than you. Go, before she reaches the lights,” Twil hissed. She pushed me forward. I staggered, feet and legs resisting this insane plan.

Then I put my head down, crossed my arms, and walked.

The first part was the hardest, to the pedestrian crossing and over the road with the trickle of foot traffic, knowing that the Skinhead girl would notice me at any moment. She’d see me in profile and recognise me, turn to follow, stalk me. The moment one comes under the eye of a watcher is always the worst.

I realised, with a slowly dawning shred of confidence, that’d I’d done this before, dozens of times, Outside. I’d slipped below the notice of terrible things a hundred or a thousand times my size, had to hold my nerve and creep past the gaze of much scarier creatures than one murderous bitch.

At least that’s what I told myself, as I turned my back on her line of sight and walked up the high street.

The pavement rose with a shallow incline, toward the cluster of roundabouts at the end of the high street. The shops thinned out and I took a left, exactly as Twil had told me, onto Grimmer Street. Fewer people here. Sad, leafless greenery wilted on a bank in the middle of the road. A multi-story car-park loomed in the middle distance.

A pub – The Dog and Duck – squatted another hundred paces ahead, tiny metal-latticed windows looking out between black beamwork and redbrick.

I’d never seen the place before. I walked up to the faux-rustic wooden door and pushed my way inside, over the scruffy old welcome mat and into the dark, warm interior, into the smell of stale beer and slate floor tiles. Shadows washed over me as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. I’d been into pubs with my parents a few times, when they dared take their unstable daughter out for the occasional nice meal of fish and chips, and I had vague memories of much happier meals with Maisie too, gastropub beer gardens in summer evenings in the south.

The Dog and Duck was not a gastropub.

It was rough and dingy and smelly, stained by decades of tobacco smoke and spilt beer. A couple of grey weathered old men propped up the bar, watching a football match.

Twil sprang to her feet from the nearest table and grabbed my hand.

“H-how did you get here so fast?” I asked

“Ran, didn’t I?” She grinned, a touch smug. “She behind you?”

“I assume so. I didn’t turn around to look.” My shoulder blades itched. I stepped away from the door. Twil got the hint and hustled me deeper into the pub. The bloke behind the bar raised his eyebrows at us.

“You two want a drink?” he called.

“We’re waiting for a mate!” Twil called back with a wink and a real laugh in her voice.

“Fair enough,” the barman said.

He wouldn’t have been half as friendly if he knew what we were planning to do in his pub.

“Here, you sit there and watch the door,” Twil said when we reached the booth table furthest in back. She hopped onto the opposite bench – hard, uncomfortable wood – and slid down so her head was below the level of the backrest.

“What … what are you doing?”

Twil rolled her eyes and smirked. “I’m hidden, duh. She’ll walk in, see you in the corner, and walk right up to you. Then I’ll clock her one and drag her out the back. It’s perfect!”

I lowered myself into the seat and pulled out my phone, hands still shaking and heart in my throat. My pulse was all over the place. The table stuck to my elbows, probably not cleaned in years.

“ … I need to call Raine.”

“Yeah yeah, good idea.” Twil nodded.

A figure stepped through pub’s door and I almost jumped out of my seat and dropped my phone again. Black tar-flesh and waving tentacles; I breathed out and rubbed at my chest, adrenaline strong enough to make my heart hurt. Tenny stalked halfway toward us and then circled the pub’s tables, as if looking for the right angle to help me watch.

The moment I’d jumped, Twil had peered over at the door. Now she frowned at me as if I was crazy.

“What is your deal, anyway?” she said. “I never got to ask proper, before.”

“I can see spirits.”

“Like … for real?”

“‘For real’,” I echoed carefully, then sighed and tried to steady my breathing. My chest felt tight and my head hurt. “I’m not cut out for this.”

“You gonna call Raine or what?” Twil asked.

“I … yes. I’m going to be in enough trouble as it is without further delay.”

Twil frowned. “Trouble?”

“With Raine.” I waved her down and focused on thumbing open my contact list. Pitifully few entries – my parents, Raine, Evelyn, the university medical centre.

“She giving you shit?”

“What?”

“She’s treating you right, yeah? You and her are bumping uglies, aren’t you? She’s not like … a shit, is she?”

“No, no, she’s perfect. I’m just an idiot, I-”

The Skinhead girl walked into the Dog and Duck.

To my surprise, I didn’t jump this time. Some buried animal instinct of self-preservation told me to stay very quiet and very still, though I was sat right in her line of sight.

“She there?” Twil hissed in a stage whisper. I nodded, cold sweat down my back, pulse racing in my throat.

The Skinhead girl glanced around the pub. Her gaze slid over me, uninterested. She nodded to the barman, walked over to him and spoke, dropping a few pound coins on the counter. He poured her a half-pint and slid a packet of crisps toward her.

“ … what’s she doing?” Twil whispered.

“Uh … ” I swallowed; could I be wrong? “At the bar. She’s got a drink.”

Twil squinted in confusion. “You sure it’s her?”

I nodded. It was the woman who had shot at Raine, no mistake. Flint-eyed and cold-lipped, body like a marathon runner, all hard corded muscle. She picked up her half-pint and turned toward me; eye contact at last.

Her gaze asked a silent question: are you going to run?

“Ah, fuck it,” Twil grunted.

Before I could say another word, Twil pulled herself up and leapt out of the booth, skidding across the tiled floor. The Skinhead girl took a step back, surprised and wary but not shocked. Twil straightened up and growled.

All eyes in the place – the barman and the two old men – turned to look at Twil, startled and blinking.

“Gotcha, slag!” Twil shouted at the top of her lungs. She grabbed a barstool and swung it wide.

The Skinhead girl bowled her beer at Twil’s head. Glass shattered, Twil howled, blood splattered across the floor and down her face, but it took more than a barroom glassing to slow Twil down. She wound up the bar stool and hurled it after the Skinhead, who was already fleeing for the door. Twil slammed outside in pursuit before the stool had even finished clattering to the floor. The barman and the two regulars gaped after them.

It was all over in seconds, so fast I couldn’t react. Tenny flowed over to guard me like a faithful hound, I had to squeeze and bumble past her to get out, almost tripping over my feet with panic as I trotted for the door.

“What the blazes was that about?” The barman called after me. “Hey, you need a hand, love? Want me to call the police?”

“It’s fine.” I hiccuped as I pushed my way back outside into the Sharrowford afternoon.

Twil was already a hundred meters down the road, feet slamming the pavement, heading the opposite way from the high street. The Skinhead girl slid out of sight ahead of her, ducking into an alleyway.

“Twil!” I shouted, suddenly scared to be left alone, even though it was the middle of the day and the busy Sharrowford high street was barely two minutes walk away. A few pedestrians glanced at me, at the crazy shouting girl in the middle of the street, but Twil didn’t look back – she chased the Skinhead into the alleyway.

I picked up my feet, a few hesitant fast steps, then a trot, then ran as best I could, clumsy and heavy-footed.

Twil was so fast, there was no way the Skinhead could escape. She’d catch her in that alleyway and then-

And then what?

The alleyway was empty except for some metal rubbish bins and back doors. Twil was already hurling herself out the other end. I called her name again, hoping any witnesses would ignore me as I slipped in after her.

Seconds, minutes, no clue how long the chase took; after the first few heaving breaths I lost track of both time and my body, struggled to haul myself around these backstreet corners and across roads stuffed with parked cars. We plunged between iron-fenced industrial lots and dark moldering office spaces.

I finally caught up with Twil as she was dropping down the other side of a tall spiked fence. The Skinhead girl sprinted away from her, deeper inside the industrial property they’d both broken into. She ducked around a corner and vanished.

No way I could follow in there.

“Twil!” I shouted again and ran up to the fence, but she was off at top speed, bouncing around the corner after the Skinhead. I caught a final flash of wolfish claw and wondered how she dare use her transformation out in public.

In public?

Heaving to catch my breath, lungs pumping like bellows, I turned on the spot. Redbrick walls and dark windows stared down at me, damp pitted concrete spotted with lichen and moss, secluded from the world outside. A tangled conjunction of back alleys and abandoned buildings converged here in a wider space. Tenny padded up to me and stared – apparently pneuma-somatic life doesn’t suffer the vulgarity of an overtaxed respiratory system – but other than her and a few spirits on the rooftops, I was utterly alone.

And I had no idea where I was.

“Ah, oh God.” I put one hand on my aching chest and struggled to stay on my feet, reaching out blindly to grip the fence. “Twil, you idiot.”

Tenny nosed in closer. I raised my eyebrows at her.

“You think-” I started, then froze.

Running footsteps echoed down the tangle of alleyways, impossible to judge distance – then a young man burst into the little makeshift back-alley courtyard. He skidded to a halt at the sight of me, opened his mouth, and held up a hand.

He didn’t look threatening. Perhaps the same age as me. Perhaps a university student, with floppy hair and a compact build running to flab.

“Wait,” he said, pointing a shaking finger at me. “Wait right there, you, uh, just wait right there. You’re … you’re not supposed to be here. Yeah, that’s right, you’re in trouble. Just stay there.” He spoke with a slight lisp. He held a phone up to his ear, call already connected. “I’ve caught up to her, what do I do?”

Unathletic and permanently exhausted, with a supernatural bruise throbbing in my chest, out of breath and terrified, I found hidden reserves at the sound of those words. I picked a direction, any alleyway out of the tangle, and hurled myself away from the fence, away from this man.

“Oi, fuck, I said stay put!” he yelled and barrelled after me.

He grabbed a fistful of my coat.

Physical struggle is difficult to control, unless one is trained, and trained well – or like Raine. One becomes an animal, pure instinct and adrenaline, kicking, hissing, biting, clawing, even if one is naturally timid. Or you go limp, you can’t believe it’s happening to you, too shocked to react.

Luckily, I turned out to be the former, but I barely recall the details.

He stopped me, yanked me back. Didn’t hit me, but tried to hold me still, pin my arms. I gave him a bad time of it, I think, went for his eyes and his throat without thinking. He seemed reluctant to hurt me, awkward and unsure of himself at first.

Then he realised how much stronger he was than me, and started to laugh.

“Give it up, hey, he only wants to talk to you. I can’t let you run off now, don’t be stupid.”

Like this was all some big joke, as he grabbed my wrists and almost pulled me off my feet. I think I screamed, kicking and pushing and trying to get him off me. I landed a flailing knee between his legs. He let out a noise like a steam-whistle and wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Ooof, you fucking bitch, ow, Jesus Christ, fuck-”

He shoved me at the floor, sent me sprawling and pinned me down with a knee in my gut.

He was shouting into his phone when Tenny stabbed him in the head.

That I remember, very clearly.

She reared up behind him like an angry squid, tentacles bunched and arced back for a strike. Relief filled me, before despair as I remembered she couldn’t touch him, couldn’t touch any flesh, she was literally bodiless. She jabbed all her tentacles together at once, spikes and stingers and suckers passing right through the back of his skull like the touch of a ghost.

He jerked up and sneezed, shook his head. “What was that?” he blurted out.

Tenny’s distraction gave me the split-second I needed to muster a reaction beyond the pure animal – and to yank my arm free. I mashed my hand into his ugly, stupid face.

His eyes went wide.

“Oh shi-”

Hyperdimensional math slotted into place, a spinning puzzle box in my mind, ratcheting spikes of pain behind my eyes. My stomach clenched, my body rebelled, but with my brain I gripped the black levers of reality and twisted them toward my own ends, along the angles of extra-dimensional physics.

The man vanished.

Instantly I rolled over and vomited, spewed my guts across the concrete and felt a nosebleed run down my face, coughing and spluttering. My chest was on fire and my head pounded like an expanding ring of red-hot steel lay beneath the surface of my skull.

No time to whine, no time for pain.

With more effort than I’d thought myself capable of, I struggled to my knees, then to my feet. Retching and staggering, I wiped my bleeding nose on my sleeve. My hands shook, my chest shook, everything shook. I spat vomit-flavoured saliva onto the floor. Over everything, absurdly, I felt terrible about my new pink hoodie getting spotted with stomach acid and flecked with blood.

My vision throbbed, edged with black, and I had to keep squeezing my eyes shut. Tenny stared at me like a concerned dog.

“It’s okay,” I mumbled through numb lips. “It’s- it’ll b-be okay.”

I fumbled my phone out more by touch than sight, and curled up around my aching chest as I listened to the ring.

“Heather?” The sound of Raine’s voice down the phone almost made me sob. “Hey, you heading home? Everything-”

“Raine,” I whined her name, couldn’t stop myself. “I need help.” I snorted back the nosebleed, then staggered as weakness gripped my knees. Had to hold myself against the wall.

“Heather? What happened? Heather?”

“I’m … I’m okay now, I’m okay. I had to … I think I killed a man … come get me, Raine? Please?”

“Where are you? Where are you exactly, right now?”

“I was- Twil showed up. It’s not- not her fault. It’s not. I-”

A hand plucked my phone from shaking fingers. Barely needed to fight me for it. I turned and gaped, so wracked with pain and nausea that I hadn’t even heard the footsteps approach. Raine’s voice, tinny and distorted, was carried away from me.

The Skinhead girl pressed the end call button.

She took a step back, away from me, beyond arm’s reach. We stared at each other, me bloody-nosed and wide-eyed, her cold and dispassionate.

“Heather Lavinia Morell?” she said. “My boss wants a word with you.”

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“Show me,” Evelyn said.

“Now? In here?”

“No reason to wait. I thought you’d be eager, what with your sister’s time limit.”

“Of course, yes, of course. I … ” I glanced past Evelyn to the calendar I’d pinned up on the kitchen wall. Dawn cast a rectangle of sickly grey through the windows, but hours would pass yet before the light touched those days.

Evelyn cleared her throat and pulled a face. “I know, I’ve hardly been upholding my end of our debt. I need to get a better idea of what you’re doing. Please, show me.”

“It’s not a debt, Evee. We’re friends.”

She shrugged bland acquiescence. “Please, Heather?”

“It’s far from perfect, and I don’t want to make a mess.” I looked to Raine for support. She was leaning against the fridge, stuffing a half stale pastry into her face.

“You won’t mess it up,” she said. “You can do it, you’re ace. You’ve got this bastard right under your thumb now.”

“That’s not true. Not even close. You had to carry me home.”

Evelyn eased back in her chair, nursing a cup of tea with both hands. Neither of them said anything, a silent double-team. They surrounded me without even communicating.

“ … alright, okay,” I said with a sigh. “Let me go get my notebook, I can’t do it blind.”

Three weeks after Raine had moved into Evelyn’s house, and one day after my greatest experiment yet, we were all gathered once more in the kitchen, once more discussing matters of supernatural import, once more all very hungry.

Wrapped in a dressing gown and half-awake, Evelyn had stumbled onto Raine and I still recovering. My rain-spattered coat still lay by the front door where I’d dropped it, next to Raine’s mud-covered boots. We’d slept fitfully last night after a long shower. Raine had wanted me to sleep in, but I still felt queasy and a headache hovered at the back of my skull, so I’d dragged myself downstairs to sit and contemplate the effort required to keep down a sad plate of buttered toast. Evelyn had appeared, frowned at both of us, then asked why I looked wiped out and why Raine looked like I’d borne her a litter of kittens.

Now it was time for show and tell.

I trudged upstairs and fetched my notebook. Raine had a steaming mug of coffee ready when I returned, but I politely pushed it away, already regretting the breakfast which now sat like lead in my stomach.

“I’ll just bring it back up, you know that.”

“You won’t,” Raine said. “You didn’t last night.” I shook my head and sat down, flipped my notebook open and cast around for a likely candidate. Coffee mug? Used spoon? Evelyn’s plate?

“You need to be bloody careful with that.” Evelyn stared hard at my notebook. “You leave it in the wrong place … ”

“I won’t. Besides, who’s going to understand it but me?”

She grimaced at the cheap, spiral-bound notebook in my hands. I’d picked it up from the university bookshop two weeks ago and already filled it cover to cover, with endless mathematical notation stamped as neatly as I could between the ruled lines. To be fair, I’d had to rip a few pages out, paper flecked with vomit or blood, whenever I’d begun to transcribe concepts too incendiary for my fragile brain and stomach.

“Okay, so, I’m going to need-”

I glanced down at the math unprepared, winced, and averted my eyes. Big mistake.

Raine recognised the signs instantly. She grabbed my shoulders and dug her thumbs into the muscles, kneaded me hard to pull my mind away from the equations. She rubbed my neck, my scalp, smoothed my hair back from my forehead. She’d had plenty of practice these last three weeks. We’d discovered this early on; touch worked. Between her help and a few deep breaths, I fought down the wave of nausea.

“You good?”

“Yes. Thank you,” I breathed. She eased off. “So, right, let’s get this over with. I need an object we’re not going to miss.”

Evelyn frowned. “You mean you can’t bring it back?”

“Not always. I told you, it’s not perfect.”

“Not yet, maybe,” said Raine. “Should have seen her last night. Like that.” She clicked her fingers. “She doesn’t actually need all this prep, she’s just psyching herself up. She could stop a speeding train if she tried. Regular comic book superhero, our Heather.”

“Don’t, Raine. I’m- I’m honestly not comfortable doing this in here. What if I get it wrong?”

“You won’t.”

Raine rummaged in the kitchen drawers and found an old spoon, spotted with rust. She clacked it down before me with a dramatic flourish.

I stared at it for a moment, then back up at Evelyn, then at the figure behind her.

“Are you sure she should see this?” I asked.

Evelyn raised a curious eyebrow and glanced over her shoulder at Praem Number Two, standing prim and proper, silent and motionless, in the corner of the kitchen. Praem Number One was out, running some errand for Evelyn’s secret war, closing another Cult rabbit hole. Praem Number Two was identical to the first, right down to the brand of doll. Evelyn had explained they were actually the same demon, breaking causality in ways decent people like us shouldn’t think about too much.

The only way to tell One and Two apart was how Evelyn dressed them. Two wore cargo trousers and a puffy coat, totally at odds with her ice-blue skin and hair. Her blank white eyes stared at nothing.

“Why?” Evelyn asked. “Does she still make you nervous?”

“I think we’re beyond that, aren’t we? No, I just thought … I don’t know. Forget it.”

I took a deep breath, then reached out to touch the spoon. One fingertip was sufficient.

Raine was correct in some aspects of her praise. I didn’t actually need to do any of this mental prep. I could fumble through the equations at the speed of thought, though at the cost of a nosebleed and probably my breakfast.

Proper breathing helped. Preparation helped, to aid quick mental execution. The faster I self-implemented the equation, the less time I had to spend with the numbers.

I think that’s what Maisie meant, in her message: the numbers, what they do to you.

I skimmed my notebook for the necessary line. Bile rose in my throat and my stomach contracted as I slotted each piece of the equation into place, fast as I could, mind shaking as if playing with electricity and fire and radioactive waste, the Eye’s impossible principles rearing up and crashing down in a wave I had to outrun and-

Out.

The spoon vanished.

“Ahhhhh.” I let out a groan, grabbed my head in both hands, and tried to curl up into a ball around the ice-pick behind my eyes.

Raine was ready with a wad of tissues for my bleeding nose. Her other hand was already kneading the side of my ribs, trying her best to bring me back. I held onto the roiling in my stomach, forced slow steady breaths. Not going to be sick, not going to be sick. Neither of us could do anything about the ache in my chest, the throbbing, humming pain. I sat very still and breathed very carefully, until the pain ebbed away.

Evelyn got to her feet and inspected the place the spoon had existed a moment earlier.

“Impressive,” she murmured, running her hand over the table. “Didn’t take a chunk out of the wood either. Not even any varnish. Remarkable.”

“At least I’m precise.” I managed a weak laugh. Raine handed me a glass of water and resumed rubbing my back. Her hands made it easier to forget.

“Does size make any difference?”

“Hell no,” Raine answered for me as I was drinking, a proud smile on her face. “Why do you think we went down the junkyard last night? She did the same thing to an entire wrecked car.”

“And nearly passed out,” I said. “Yes, size makes a difference. And I haven’t tried it on a living thing, not since you, Evee.”

“Mm, yes.” Evelyn arched an eyebrow. “And you’ve no idea where it’s gone?”

“Not really, no. Outside. Some random dimension, I guess. I can’t target. There’s no frame of reference. Can’t even get to Wonderland yet.”

Maisie felt as far away as ever. What had I imagined, if only subconsciously? That we’d all go on a magical journey to Wonderland in the space of a week or two? Raine would punch out the Eye, I’d save my sister, and we’d all be home in time for Christmas? The real world did not work that way. Raine was a hero, but this was more logistics than heroics, especially with the lion’s share of Evelyn’s attention consumed by her shadow war against the Sharrowford Cult.

I’d bought a calendar and numbered the days, backward from the date in Maisie’s message. A countdown. Evelyn didn’t seem to mind when I pinned it up in the kitchen to remind me, to remind us. We had a year. A year to save my twin.

Or what was left of her.

Three weeks ago, before Raine even finished moving into Evelyn’s house, I’d begun my study of the pamphlet, with a sick bucket and an empty stomach.

My first attempt ended in sobbing, retching failure. I’d sat on the floor of my flat with Raine by my side in case the worst happened. It hadn’t, but I’d barely been able to struggle through a single line of formulae in the Notes.

Each mathematical principle dredged up old lessons from the Eye, nightmares I’d tried to forget and bury, ways of looking at physics and reality not meant for the human brain. I’d vomited bile and blood, suffered a migraine to end thought, almost choked on nosebleed. Three hours of trying to comprehend a single line; I gave up. Raine had to drag me into the shower and hold up me under the hot water, half-conscious and swearing I’d never try it again, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t. Part of me swore I’d give the pamphlet back to Evee. I couldn’t do this. I wasn’t strong enough.

The next attempt went a little better.

The third, not as messy. I didn’t miss the bucket that time.

Little by little, night by night, I read the first three pages of maths in Notes Toward a Unified Cosmology.

I began my own notebook. Somehow that came easier – finding ways to transcribe the Eye’s impossible physics. Capture, define, limit and categorise. Centring my thoughts on specific tasks bounded the maths, made it possible to control, if only just. I borrowed math textbooks from the library, started to collate, understand the tiniest sliver of what this alien god had fed into my mind for the last decade.

Through nosebleeds and pain and herculean concentration, certain limited feats became possible.

Raine took my empty glass and walked over to the sink. “Heather’s a lot faster if you surprise her though. It’s kind of impressive.”

Evelyn frowned. “ … I don’t want to hear the details of your sex life.”

“E-Evee, that’s n-not-” I blushed; Raine laughed.

“Also true.”

“Raine!”

“But also not what I meant.” Raine clacked the glass down on the kitchen counter, turned in a flash, and whipped her arm out.

She’d flubbed the delivery: I knew it was coming, which defeated the point. I didn’t bother to try.

The ping-pong ball bounced square off my forehead. I blinked.

“Oh! Oh shit, I’m sorry!” Raine raised her hands, caught between laughter and mortified horror. “Heather, I’m so sorry.”

“Duly forgiven.”

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “You two can do this in the privacy of Raine’s room, you know?”

I fought down further embarrassment and kicked the ball back toward Raine. “Do it again.”

“You sure? S’not a surprise now.”

“I may as well show Evee. Go on, try to hit me again.”

Raine wound up a pitch, then held back. Perhaps she was trying to introduce an element of uncertainty, regardless of how much I was prepared. At least this was easier than banishing objects to other dimensions.

“Get on with it, then,” Evee said.

Raine tooted little fanfare from the corner of her mouth, took a step back, and bowled the ping-pong ball at me overarm, probably hard enough to sting.

I deflected it with my mind, with maths, a swat of reality-bending physics.

The ball hit the ceiling instead of me, then rebounded and bounced off the floor at an angle. Evelyn ducked and the ball hit Praem Two in the face, then landed in the kitchen sink with a sharp metallic ting. Raine put on a one-woman round of applause, Evelyn frowned in fascination, and Praem didn’t react in the slightest.

I stemmed my resurgent nosebleed with the wad of tissues, wincing around a spike of renewed headache.

“Interesting demonstration,” Evelyn murmured.

“I got the idea from the … ” I had to pause, take a deep breath, concentrate on not being sick. “The … the bullet. If I could … ” I waved a hand vaguely, withdrawing into my pain and discomfort. Raine touched me before I had to call for her, hands kneading my back and scalp, taking me away from the monsters inside my mind.

“We got the idea from the bullet-stopping trick,” Raine finished for me. “Turns out it’s pretty easy, especially if Heather’s surprised.” She leaned down to me. “You holding up okay?”

I nodded and made an effort to relax as Raine coaxed me back to normal. She reheated my coffee and slid a freshly toasted chocolate pop-tart in front of me. I sighed, gave in, and nibbled around the edges of the chocolate as the last of the nausea abated. Evelyn sat back down and considered me slowly over her cup of tea.

“You’ve been doing all this back at your little flat? Why?” she asked. “There’s more than enough space here. It’s not as if I care about ruined floorboards.”

“Psychological quarantine, perhaps. I felt self-conscious, didn’t want to make too much noise. You’ve been so busy, so stressed, I didn’t want to distract you further.”

“You two make more than enough noise anyway.”

I blushed furiously and took a bite of pop-tart. In the corner of my eye, Raine grinned, smug beyond words.

“She’s a real screamer, ain’t she?” said Raine.

“Raine!”

“One night I did wonder if you’d snuggled a hippopotamus into your bedroom,” Evelyn added.

“Evelyn! Oh my God, shut up.” I put my head on the table and buried myself underneath my arms, blushing red as a beetroot. Raine ruffled my hair and I half-heartedly squirmed out of the way, trying not to feel absolutely mortified.

“I’m joking,” Evelyn deadpanned. “Worst I hear is bedsprings.”

“Mmm.”

“You deserve to be proud, Heather,” Evelyn said. “Hold your head high.”

“W-what?” I uncovered my head and stammered at her. “E-Evee, I mean, that’s sweet of you but-”

She waved a hand and huffed. “I’m not talking about you and Raine. I’m talking about self-implementing hyperdimensional mathematics. No magic or magecraft can stop a bullet in the air without significant preparation. Not from a standing start. You’re performing miracles.”

“Don’t say that. It doesn’t feel like miracles, it feels like … barely enough progress at all.”

“Hey, Heather,” Raine said, ruffling my hair. “You’ve only been at it for three weeks, cut yourself some slack.”

“Maisie has less than a year.”

We all lapsed into silence for a long moment. Raine stroked my head.

“Targeting the dimension-hopping,” she said. “There’s a way, isn’t there, Evee?”

Evelyn stared back at Raine with a sudden hard look in her eyes.

“There is?” I asked.

“Sure is,” Raine said. “Evee knows what I’m talking about. Same place the Fractal came from.”

“You want me to expose her to that, Raine? You’re seriously suggesting that? You want me to blast your girlfriend’s mind into pieces? It might leave her a gibbering wreck.”

Raine laughed. “I’ve seen it and I turned out alright.”

“Yes, by certain metrics.”

“Expose me to what? What are you talking about?”

Raine cracked a grin. “Evee’s got a map of the universe.”

Evelyn shot a darkly withering look at Raine. “Both parts of that statement are incorrect. It is not a map of the universe, and I do not have it. It is a hundred and fifty miles away in a basement in Sussex, where it belongs.”

“Yeah, but we could go take a look at it. We could make a trip of it over the Christmas break, proper road-trip down south, stop off somewhere along the way, stay overnight. We’ll have plenty of time.”

“Oh, certainly.” Evelyn lashed the sarcasm. “I’ll just leave Sharrowford for a week, shall I? Let the freaks take over.”

“What if that’s all over by Christmas?” Raine asked. “We could all go together. We’ll make it fun.”

Evelyn’s irritation drained away to reveal a layer of naked discomfort. She looked around the kitchen, as if searching for purchase.

“Evee?” I said. She focused on me, hesitated, and nodded.

“Raine is correct. It’s not a map of the universe, but … it might help you. Might give you a frame of reference. It’s a difficult thing to face, but it won’t fry your brain. I suppose you’ve seen worse, haven’t you?”

“Suppose I have.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Raine.

Evelyn swallowed. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

“This … map,” I said. “It’s at your house, where you grew up, isn’t it?”

Evelyn nodded and looked away. “I don’t want to, Raine. I don’t want visit, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to go. You and Heather can go, if you must. I’ll call ahead, let my father know, but I am not coming.”

“Don’t be daft,” Raine said. “I can’t leave you here alone. It’s all of us or none of us.”

“All for one and one for all,” I said. I’d meant it as a joke, to lighten the mood, but the words seemed too real as I spoke them.

“Even if I did want to, I can’t leave Sharrowford. You think I was joking?” Evelyn gestured behind her, past Praem Two, toward the ex-drawing room. “I have miles to go, much more to do in there before this is under control.”

I hadn’t set foot in the drawing room in three weeks. She’d turned it into a mage’s atelier, and Raine had done her best to keep me away from the worst of what Evelyn was up to. The rest of the house was free game, from Raine’s new bedroom and the delights of the study, to the abandoned old sitting room on the opposite side of the house and the dank cellar filled to the brim with boxes and cobwebs.

“When it’s all over then,” Raine said. “We’ll take a trip, together.”

Evelyn stared into her tea. “I’ll think about it.”

We all had class today. Evelyn grumbled about the need to keep up a front of normality. She downed some breakfast and stood up to vanish into the ex-drawing room for a couple of hours.

“Evee?” I stopped her before she left. She turned and raised an eyebrow at me.

“I know, Heather, I know. Your quest takes first priority once I’m-”

“No, it’s not that.” I shook my head. “Are you okay?”

She regarded me for a long, silent moment. “I’m used to this.”

Raine told me not to worry about Evee. Raine certainly didn’t seem to be doing so. I sat at the kitchen table for a long time, working my slow way through a second pop-tart. I tried to focus on the essay I needed to write over the next week. Sixteenth century poetry and Shakespearean dialogue served as a weak bastion against the lessons of the Eye. By the time I’d made my way back upstairs for a morning shower, I had to pause and brace myself against the wall with one hand, scraps of impossible math struggling to the surface of my mind.

Breathe. Steady. Focus on breathing, in and out, in and out. Only breathing.

I didn’t hear Raine climb the stairs behind me, didn’t know she was there until she grabbed me by the shoulders. I squeaked in surprise.

“Raine-”

She pushed me against the wall, firm but gentle, smug look on her face as she held me there and leaned in.

Raine flushed the impossible math from my consciousness far more completely than I ever could alone, when she clamped her mouth over mine and shoved a hand down the front of my pajama bottoms.

“You need it?” she purred when we broke apart.

I managed a nod.

Turned out the trick to beating the Eye’s lessons was to bonk like rabbits. We’d done so for the last three weeks.

Intimacy was incredible. Not since Maisie had I felt so close to another person. Raine taught me the reality of many things I’d spent years fantasising over. What surprised me the most, after a week or two, is that it didn’t change me, not really. Intimacy healed wounds, lifted me up, but sex isn’t magic. ‘Eating pussy’ – as Raine so crudely phrased it – did not rewire my personality. In the morning, I was always the same Heather. I was more Heather. More me.

She hadn’t let me move in though.


==


Raine had moved into Evelyn’s house – simply ‘the house’ in our increasingly shared vernacular – the following day after Evelyn had extended the invitation. She moved back into what I took to be her old bedroom, quickly filled it with posters and her stacks of philosophy books and a few other odds and ends wrangled from the squat, including the game console, set up with a ‘borrowed’ television. Raine and I had taken the last journey from her old place together, piled into her tiny, rickety car, a miniature adventure down Sharrowford’s streets.

Her new – old – room was much bigger and comfier, with space to push armchairs up against one wall and roll off either side of the double-bed as one pleased. She dragged an old desk from one of the other upstairs rooms. Really spread out. No need for me to take another room. We could share this one, together. Evelyn made obscure jokes about lesbian second dates, which I totally didn’t understand, but to my incredible surprise she made Raine blush.

Instead, we had our first real argument.

Not a blazing row. Neither of us was capable of that.

“This place is going to fill up with monsters, Heather. Evee could turn this into ground zero,” she’d said.

“Nothing’s happened! It’s been nearly a week, nothing has happened. And if we’re all going to die suddenly, I’d rather do that in the same bed as you.”

“We’re not going to die-”

“Then why can’t I move in?”

“Because it’s too dangerous. I don’t think anybody is after you, and I’d rather keep it that way. I just want you to be safe.”

“Oh, so it’s safer to just visit here every day instead? Walk back and forth where anybody could see me, without you?”

“Heather, I’m with you as much as I can be-”

“Then I may as well be here all the time!”

We never really resolved the argument, practicality and hormones did that for us. Evelyn scolded Raine terribly for it and told me to ignore her, but I didn’t need to; Raine wanted me over all the time anyway. I spent almost every day there and vanishingly little time at my own flat, which felt cold and alien and empty whenever I went back, mostly to pursue brain-math and read from the Notes. In those three weeks, I spent every night but two in Raine’s bed, and slept better than I had in my whole life.

She was used to this impermanence, moving from place to place, but for me it was a huge change, one I could barely contain. At first I felt guilty about the way my clothes and books and the thin detritus of my life began to colonise Raine’s new bedroom, but then I realised she liked it, despite what she said, so I let it happen.

She was right though; the house did fill up with monsters.

Evelyn had been busy, up at strange hours of the night, reading and making notes from her disturbing tomes, locked away in the ex-drawing room scribbling magic circles on the floor and peering into her giant scrying pool. Praem One and Praem Two were out more often than not, and sometimes returned with torn clothes and oddly bloodless physical damage, woodgrain visible inside their wounds, from fighting monsters inside the Cult’s rabbit holes. Evelyn repaired them with magic and poly-filler.

She summoned three monsters. Outsiders, not spirits, hard and corporeal. The first one was quickly confined to the basement. I never saw it, but Raine assured me it was down there, contained and bound for a future purpose.

She called up the second monster in the dead of night on a Friday, and only emerged from the drawing room twelve gruelling hours later, wan and exhausted but smug and victorious. Raine and I had heard her talking and debating in at least four different languages that entire time, replies and questions addressed to her in an unspeakable, twisted voice from the pit.

The third monster she sent out into the city, a new front in her secret war. I caught a glimpse of it, unintentionally, coming downstairs as Raine had stood by while Evelyn directed it out of the back door and into the night. A gangly ape demon, knobbly joints and knuckles like cricket balls, jaw running vertically down its entire head.

I’d seen worse. At least it left the house.

“What can I do, then?” I’d asked Evelyn the next day.

“You can keep doing what you’re doing, work through the pamphlet I gave you. Learn. Focus on your sister.”

“ … I mean to help you, Evee. To help.”

She’d stared at me. “This isn’t your fight.”

Every day I looked at Maisie’s tshirt message, now carefully laundered and cleaned after being transcribed and photographed, though the tarry black finger-writing refused to vanish.


==


For pity’s sake, sit down, I willed. Sit down before you fall over.

Tenny wouldn’t sit.

I doubted bubbling-goo spirit-life understood busses anyway. I suffered in silence and fought a most irritating urge to whisper to her, tell her off, but I could hardly raise my voice in public to speak with a monster nobody else could see. That was beyond the pale.

The Tentacled Woman swayed and staggered in the middle aisle of the Number 37 bus, on the route from Sharrowford University to the city centre. There were plenty of open seats. I had almost the entire left side to myself.

I hadn’t grown comfortable with pneuma-somatic life. One does not get ‘comfortable’ about decade-old taboos and traumas in the space of three weeks, or even three months, even when a flash of the Fractal on my left arm was more than enough to clear my path.

But the Tentacled Woman had never left. I named her Tenny. A name made her less upsetting.

She’d hung around Barnslow Drive like a stray cat, prowling the street and the back garden, following me to campus and my flat, but she never again risked coming closer than a few feet, no matter how much I coaxed and cooed in private. I’d told Raine and Evelyn, received unhelpful jokes and a terrifying magical suggestion respectively. Evelyn had taken steps to confirm Tenny wasn’t a Servitor, and I’d settled on just letting her follow me around. After a week, I almost managed to forget she was there.

Tenny did not appear to comprehend chairs. The bus rounded another corner and she staggered, lost her balance, tentacles reaching up to anchor herself against the roof of the bus.

At least she was a good distraction from the lump in my throat.

I glanced down at my phone, at the text-message conversation with Raine.

Raine is typing …

I’d waited until I was on the bus, fare paid, sat down and committed, before I’d sent Raine a text message to let her know where I was going. I’d hoped for a ‘be safe, have fun’, but my mind had played out an embarrassing scene of her dropping everything and sprinting across campus to catch up. The reality was only marginally less upsetting. I couldn’t stop myself rereading the message log and making myself feel guilty.

‘What do you mean, into town? You’re on your own? Where are you now?’

‘Already on the bus! It’s fine, I’m going to the bookshop. I’ll only be a couple of hours.’

‘It’s not safe!!!’ Three exclamation points, I’d never seen Raine do that before. ‘I can come with you. What bus are you on?’

‘It’s fine, I’m fine, it’ll be fine. Please, it’s fine.’

Fine, fine, fine. I swallowed and forced myself to turn the phone screen off.

Two days after my demonstration to Evelyn, I was seeking a much-needed psychological balm: book shopping.

It was the middle of the day and Sharrowford’s main high street thronged with shoppers, nothing to be scared of amid the busy crowds, except for the spirits and monsters hunched atop the rows of buildings, snapping at each other as they skirmished for territory. The press of humanity somehow kept them mostly away from the busy road, the passing busses, the traffic lights and the bright window displays pretending to be clean amid the city’s grime. I stepped off the bus and Tenny followed, tentacles probing passers-by.

My phone vibrated – kept vibrating. I stepped out of the pedestrian flow next to a shop front, then sighed in exasperation when I saw Raine was calling me. I answered.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” I tried to keep my voice steady, tamp down the guilt.

“Hey, Heather,” said Raine. “You don’t need to go out alone-”

“You’re supposed to be in a lecture, Raine.”

“Ahhh, it doesn’t matter. Come on, where are you at? I’ll come join you.”

“And you have to walk Evelyn home after class, don’t you?”

Raine had spent the last three weeks juggling both of us. I don’t know how she did it. She walked me to and from campus, and she walked Evelyn everywhere. She turned up after lectures and raced back home to pick whoever was alone. She split herself both ways and somehow never seemed to tire, on top of a part-time evening job behind the bar in the student union.

But over time, inevitably, she came to prioritise Evelyn. I don’t know if it was years-old habit, or merely because she thought Evelyn was in more danger, despite the intimacy she shared with me, intimacy I was certain she didn’t share with Evee.

Which is why I was off to browse books on my own, with only pneuma-somatic stalkers for company.

Raine paused for a long moment on the other end of the phone. In my mind’s eye I saw her struggling with the decision: keep it light, or get serious?

“Evee can wait in the Medieval Metaphysics room,” Raine said, choosing the latter as her voice hardened. “It’s not safe out on your own. Let me come get you.”

I sighed, a tightness gripping my chest. “Raine, it’s the middle of the day. There are dozens of people around. Nothing has happened in three weeks. Nobody is going to clock me over the head in broad daylight. Go back to class.”

“You never-”

“Didn’t Evelyn already clear out the city centre?” I lowered my voice.

“Yeah, but-”

“Raine, I love it when you’re my knight in shining armour, but you don’t need to be right now.” Saying no to Raine was difficult. Refusing her care and attention and endless doting affection was not easy. I swallowed a hiccup. “I’ve got the charm in my pocket. It’s broad daylight.”

Evelyn had given Raine and I slips of stiff paper, stamped with a symbol very much like the Fractal, told us to keep them on ourselves. A sort of lock against wandering into another concealed entrance to the Cult’s shadow-city.

“ … Heather, please?”

“I’m fine, I’ll be fine. I’ll be home in under two hours. Please relax. I’ll see you later.”

“Okay, okay.” Raine’s tone made it clear she was fighting with herself. “Be safe, okay? Call me if anything happens. I’ll see you at home. Take care.”

We said goodbye and I ended the call; my mood was in the toilet. Tenny hovered nearby, peering at me. Pedestrians walked right through her.

The city centre was perfectly safe, nothing to be scared of. I believed every word I’d said to Raine, otherwise I wouldn’t be down here, but I still hated crowds.

I felt stiff and awkward out in public, around so many people, already regretting the decision to do this alone even without the impact of Raine’s worry. Even well-rested and together, cared for and sane, I was still a jittery mess.

Raine had first taken me down here two weeks back, to shop for clothes. That trip had been bliss.

We’d visited one of the bigger department stores together. Raine had coaxed me into trying on clothes I’d never normally have dared, things that felt like they weren’t for me, weren’t meant for somebody like me, were meant for people far more comfortable, not incomplete phantoms missing half their souls.

She’d bought me a high-waisted skirt and coloured tights – things I could never bring myself to wear in public – along with a new jumper and a wonderfully comfortable pink hoodie. Hoodies weren’t me, let alone pink – or so I’d thought. Wearing it made me feel oddly self-conscious but also safe and enclosed, feminine and warm, ways I’d always wanted to be allowed to feel. Raine’s gift helped me feel more like me.

I wore the hoodie now, under my coat for extra layers in the growing winter cold, along with one of Raine’s tshirts against my skin, plucked still warm from her bed this morning.

Down the high street and off through a side road, past The Coachman’s Arms and the tiny video game store where Raine knew the staff by name. Another turn, another, and then finally down an alleyway, thin and crooked and paved a hundred years ago.

All my trepidation and jitters fell away at the sight of Mount Emei Secondhand Books.

Sharrowford boasted three bookshops, if one did not count the obligatory student bookshop on the university campus, which mostly stocked overpriced set texts for naive undergrads such as myself. The big chain store in the shopping mall was too bright and too new, books crowded out by DVDs and endless special offers, colourful displays and unnervingly jolly staff. A charity bookshop sat like a boil at the top end of the high street, stuffed with the dregs of popular hardbacks.

And then there was Emei, tucked away like a hidden gem. Raine had shown me it as a gift.

I had to duck slightly as I entered, the doorway cramped even for me. Tenny followed, whipping her tentacles in behind and then stilling at the atmosphere inside. Even a spirit felt this.

Emei Secondhand Books was a rickety four-story structure, carved out of what had once been a terrace tenement house a century ago. Bare wooden floors, leaning racks stuffed with all manner of books, low ceilings and narrow aisles. The shop smelled of incense and paper, dry and clean, despite the huge peace lilies and spider plants on every tilted creaking floor.

The owner was a tiny old Chinese lady made out of leather and steel wool. She could often be found pottering between the stacks, attempting to impose some order on this endless mass of texts. If you engaged her in conversation – as Raine had – one discovered a sharp mind and a dirty sense of humour. The lad behind the counter this morning, pierced and tattooed like a punk band front-man, nodded and smiled a hello to me as I shuffled inside, and I actually smiled back.

Heaven. Second only to the library.

I had little money to spare, but in here five pounds could net me two or three paperbacks. I figured I’d earned it, I’d earned a moment’s respite from brain-math and horror and university essay writing. I’d be no good to Maisie if I burnt out.

I spent a lovely half-hour browsing through the books, discovering strange titles I’d never heard of, thumbing through fifty-year-old copies of classics with creased spines and dented corners. I found a second edition of Watership Down and almost purchased it right then, but forced myself to leave it behind for now and worked my way up the staircases, to the even more cramped fourth floor with the low ceiling beams and tottering stacks of specialist literature: religion and philosophy.

Raine would understand these books. Half of them went over my head. I plucked Hegel off a shelf and peered inside, lost in the text as a few other would-be antiquarians shuffled books and sniffed and departed back down the stairs to the lower floors.

My phone buzzed with a text message. Raine again.

‘Just got out of class. Please tell me you’re okay?’

Oh, she was so sweet it hurt. I felt terribly guilty. Now I’d had time to unwind, I questioned why on earth I’d done this, why had I come alone? I could have waited until later this afternoon, gone together with her. I loved doing things with Raine. Was this passive-aggressive behaviour on my part? Getting back at her for prioritising Evelyn?

It was, wasn’t it?

I need to apologise. In person. I sighed to myself and sent a reply, along with a quick picture of the row of philosophy books. ‘I am fine! All is well! Look what I found!’

A moment later, Raine sent me a huge ASCII art image of worried face. I almost giggled and felt even worse – it even looked a tiny bit like her. Had she made that?

As I puzzled over a reply, or perhaps a resolution to head home already, Tenny reappeared.

She’d followed me out of the stairwell onto to the fourth floor, but then she’d stalked off around the opposite side of the room, like an inquisitive dog sniffing for interesting scents. She’d vanished behind the shelves, perhaps to investigate the other customers in the bookshop or for some unfathomable ends of her own. I’d put her from my mind, but now I looked up as she slid around the side of the nearest bookcase.

“What do you think?” I whispered to her. “Shall I buy a book for Raine? A present to go with my apology … ”

I froze.

Tenny was pointing back down the stairs with all her tentacles.

She bobbed and weaved her strange wiry body, staring at me with those huge deep-sea eyes, black tar-flesh quivering. One tentacle whipped over her head to point in the other direction, into the depths of the bookshop shelves, then whirled back to jab down the stairs.

“ … oh that’s definitely communication,” I murmured, wide-eyed. “Hello you.”

I glanced around quick, made sure no other customers were close by. Tenny pointed again, the mass of ropey black tentacles retracting and bunching up like a squid before arcing toward the stairs.

“Trying to suggest a book I missed?” I whispered. “What do you-”

Tenny shook herself, tentacles flexing and vibrating. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn she was expressing frustration.

She stepped closer to me than she’d risked in weeks and stuck out the tip of one tentacle. I blinked at her.

“You want to talk?” I said out loud, then caught myself and looked around again in embarrassed paranoia. Nobody had heard; nobody cared. She and I were alone in this corner, secluded behind a wall of old books. I smiled at my strange spirit stalker, almost delighted, confused at my own reaction. All my life I’d hated these things.

The centre of her chest split open into that black, lipless mouth I’d seen before, slapping and flapping. A drumming noise echoed from the limits of perception.

She flicked the tentacle-tip closer, all caution apparently abandoned. A dripping tarry black pseudopod, covered in suckers. Too shocked for disgust, I reached out a finger, fought with a moment’s hesitation, and touched Tenny.

Contact.

The distant drumming sharpened in time with the slurping of her chest-mouth, first into mere sound, sucking and wet like thick mud – then into words. Non-human words through a non-human mind. I waited a beat, but they made no sense, mud-words, tar-words, wet and liquid.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“-person here master leave.”

I blinked in shock.

“Bad follow person here master leave,” Tenny said through the mouth in her chest.

It wasn’t English, the shapes, the sounds, the motion of the mouth. But that was what I heard, in a slopping mud-voice, unmistakably feminine and – perhaps it was mere projection – in a tone which made me think of an eager hound.

“Bad follow person here-”

“I heard. I heard you,” I whispered, my every nerve on edge. “What- master? Me?”

“Bad follow. Leave. Leave.”

My stomach tightened. The mere fact of communication had dazzled me; the meaning had sailed right over my head at first. I pulled my finger away from the tentacle and slowly looked around, peeking through the gaps in the shelves. How many other people were up here on the fourth floor with me? Two? Three? A blob of pneuma-somatic tar dripped from my fingers and turned to smoke as it hit the floorboards.

Tenny was jabbing and pointing down the stairs again.

What did she mean, ‘bad follow person’?

I inferred the worst.

Tenny’s suggestion was easily followed and cost me nothing, except peace of mind and a sliver of my sanity. I walked stiffly down the stairs to the third floor, holding the handrail the whole way. She brought up the rear, guarding my back.

Absurdity and paranoia. On the third floor I took a deep breath and steadied myself. Tenny could have been reacting to anything – another spirit, a person she didn’t like, a figment of her imagination. Could she imagine? Do tar-flesh spirits dream of pneuma-somatic sheep?

A couple of other customers were browsing the military history and cooking sections. A harmless grey-haired man and a rotund middle aged lady. I was in a bookshop, in the middle of the day. Nobody was following me, that would be absurd. I slipped between the shelves and glanced up at the books. In public. Perfectly safe.

Tenny was having none of it. She surged around me, bobbing and weaving like a pouting octopus made of tar and rubber. A tentacle-tip touched my shoulder.

“Bad follow. Bad follow.”

“What does that mean?” I hissed, mortified that somebody might hear me talking to thin air. I pulled down a book, cracked it open and stared at the words.

“Bad. Bad. Lozzie say get you out before find.”

“ … Lozzie?” I blinked at my tentacled friend.

Why did I know that name?

Who was Lozzie?

Footsteps creaked on the stairs, descending from the fourth floor.

I kept my face buried in the book, forced myself not to turn and watch the doorway. A person entered, crossed behind me into the stacks. I waited a minute, then turned and left, shoulder blades crawling as I took to the stairs again.

Footsteps followed me, down to the second floor, then to the first.

Tenny was right.

I was being stalked.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

She of the Many Tentacles was exactly where I’d left her – just like Praem.

Out in Evelyn’s front garden, I hugged myself against the hint of winter in the air, as I walked down the cracked pathway in the lowering afternoon sunlight, to the low boundary wall. I’d slipped my shoes on but not bothered with my coat, Raine’s borrowed polo neck kept out the worst of the chill. This would only take a minute.

Nothing remained of my earlier entourage, dispersed to the winds and replaced with the usual spirit life. Scuttling ghoul-faced hounds and apish pack creatures lurked down the alleyways and mobbed in the street. Dark faces and staring eyes peered my way, but with mere fleeting curiosity, there and gone again. Back to normal.

Normal. Right.

Barnslow Drive was a desolate place. I suspect that’s why I’d come to like it so much. The house to the left of Evelyn’s was truly abandoned, windows boarded, front door chained shut. To the right lay a hundred feet of weed-choked lot before the next house, occupied but quiet and dark. The road was old tarmac, no potholes, but ridged and riven from beneath by unseen questing roots, from the trees on the far side of the street, covered with rain-matted leaves and puddles of standing water.

The Tentacled Woman still sat on the opposite pavement, in the shade of a gnarled oak tree. The tentacles from her back waved and bobbed in the air, like a human twiddling her fingers. I stared, and realised with an odd shock of recognition that she had her chin in her hands.

“That better not be an act,” I murmured.

She was staring right back at me, with those huge glassy black eyes.

I took a deep breath, looked up and down the street one last time for casual observers, then twitched my left sleeve back to expose the edge of the Fractal. One step carried me through the boundary of the open garden gate.

Many reasons should have kept me in the house – random witnesses, unseen watchers from the Cult, potential disaster, the simple cold and being alone, fear.

Fear. That was the one I wouldn’t give into anymore. That was why I’d come out here, alone and unsupported.

I wet my lips, tilted my chin up, and raised my voice.

“Come here.”

The Tentacled Woman obeyed.

She rose to her feet in a single sinuous slide, nothing like a human standing up. I assumed no actual muscles were involved. She peered at me from deep-sea eyes set in a face of slow roiling tar, then crossed the road toward me.

I risked a quick glance left and right; no other spirits were responding to my order, which was a relief. If they had, I would have freaked out and scurried back indoors, forever regretted my lack of courage. With one – this one – the Fractal was enough. I kept the fingers of my right hand on my left sleeve cuff, the edge of the Fractal peeking out from underneath, like a gunslinger with a hand on her revolver.

What a joke.

I struggled to stand my ground. My pulse throbbed in my throat and my heart fluttered against my ribs, cold sweat broke out on my forehead and I badly wanted to sit down.

The Tentacled Woman mounted the pavement, her tentacles waving and winding through the air, tracing unseen contours above her head. The mouth in her chest sucked open, lip-less hole forming words heard as drumming echoes at the limit of perception.

“Shut up,” I snapped, then told myself to breathe and control the tone of my voice. Command. “Stop there.”

She obeyed again, the mouth pausing along with her stride, about five feet from me. A nice safe distance. She turned her head and looked away; on any human that would be a haughty pout.

Right then … now … oh.

What now?

What the hell was I doing? What was my aim here? Proof of concept? I’d mounted this experiment on a whim of courage, without a proper plan, and now I was too deep to back out.

“Why … ” I swallowed and let out a slow breath. “Why have you been following me?”

She dropped the haughty pout. The mouth in her chest resumed flapping and sucking, whispering drumbeats on the far side of nowhere. I frowned and concentrated but couldn’t make out a single word.

“We can’t actually communicate, can we?” I said.

Her chest-mouth slurped to a halt. She stared, face more inscrutable than the most stoic human mask. Praem had nothing on Miss Tentacles.

I sighed. This experiment was probably a wash. Talking to a spirit in the middle of the day, absent a crisis or real reason, was making me jittery and jumpy. What if somebody drove past, or looked out of a window, saw the crazy girl speaking to herself?

At least I could do it. Small victories, Heather, small victories.

“I suppose we’re done-”

She whipped one of her tentacles through the air, a lash and coil of dripping black, scything for my face. I flinched and swallowed a yelp, yanked my sleeve up on the Fractal as I stumbled backward into the garden gate.

She froze. The tentacle-tip – a slick sucker-covered rope of flesh – hung in the air, pointed at me.

“W-what?” I heaved to get my breath back, right hand half-concealing the exposed Fractal on my forearm.

She wiggled the tentacle in a little circle, then pointed it back at me again.

“ … you … you want me to touch? Shake hands?”

I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I had with Maisie’s messenger. I raised one finger. She waited, tentacle-tip steady.

“If this is a trap, or something, I will mind-zap you into some hell dimension. Take that as a warning.”

She pulled the tentacle back and slid away from me.

“No, no, wait,” I said. “If it’s not a trap, that’s fine. I … I think I want to communicate. Please?”

The Tentacled Woman did not accept my invitation. She backed away to her own safe distance, then simply watched me.

“Ahh shoot.” Stupid, stupid Heather. You’re trying to make friends, not threaten. “Look, I’m sorry, I’m just scared. You don’t understand that, do you? I’ve been scared of things like you since I was a child. Talk, please?”

I offered her my hand. She backed away, like a spooked cat.

“Heather?” Raine called from the front door. “Oh thank God, there you are.”

I turned to find Raine hurrying down the garden path, as if I was a confused old person who’d wandered off. I lowered my hand, feeling silly and oddly guilty.

“It’s fine, it’s okay, I’m fine.”

“What are you even doing out here?” Raine touched my shoulder, brow creased with concern. She looked up and down the street. “What did you see? Did something happen?”

“I’m- I’m talking to a spirit. Or, I was trying to.” I gestured at the road, at the figure Raine couldn’t see. A blush coloured my cheeks. “Everything’s fine, nothing happened. I’m sorry- I mean, I just wanted- … needed to do this.”

Raine’s face lit up. “Oooh, any success?”

“ … uh … a little, yes. I think I scared her off though.”

“Her?” Raine smirked. “You making special friends without me?”

I rolled my eyes, then cast a glance at the Tentacled Woman. She’d backed up beyond safe distance, settled down in a squat, black ichor dripping from her tentacles. “Oh don’t be silly, you have nothing to be jealous of.”


==


Raine insisted I come back indoors because of the cold, but I wasn’t stupid. I saw the way she watched the ends of the street like a hawk, the ready tension in her shoulders, the hard flint in her eyes. She was no good at hiding that from me, and I liked the sense I had a protector. But was that necessary here? Surely nobody would come to the house.

“Did you two make up?” I asked, once we were back inside the warm wooden womb of Evelyn’s house.

“Uh, mostly. Mostly, yeah. Gonna go with yeah.”

“ … and what does that mean?”

She spread her arms in an expansive shrug. “It means we’re all yelled out for the moment.”

We discovered Evelyn had fallen asleep, sat at her map in the ex-drawing room. Cheek in hand, elbow on table, eyes closed – snoring softly. Raine started to laugh but I put a finger to my lips.

“She’s exhausted,” I mouthed.

“Sleeping there’ll mess up her back worse than usual,” Raine whispered, then spoke out loud. “Wakey wakey, sleepo.”

Evelyn jerked and gasped, blinking her eyes and clearing her throat. My heart went out to her; I knew that feeling too well. She grabbed at her walking stick and directed bleary, bloodshot eyes at us.

“What?” she croaked, then rubbed her forehead. “What? I nodded off. What are you staring at? Oh God, sod this, I need coffee or something. I have so much to do.”

“No, no I don’t think you do,” I said, surprised myself.

“What?” Evelyn’s eyes emerged squinting from behind her hand.

“I’ve seen that look on my own face a thousand times. How long have you been awake?”

“Since … I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping track. Maybe four, this morning.”

“On how much sleep?”

Evelyn grumbled under her breath and averted her eyes. She rubbed at her thigh, approximately where the socket of her prosthetic attached.

“How much sleep, Evee?”

“Three hours. Give or take.”

“Three hours? Three hours. Okay. Do you need to shore up a front that’s about to collapse out there?”

“ … what? Wha-”

“Are we in imminent danger of being undermined and detonated from below? No? Is this all going to collapse if you leave it alone for a few hours?”

“Well … no, not at all, but-”

“No buts. You need a proper meal and a long sleep. You can’t fight a war exhausted.”

“Zhukov did.”

Raine burst out laughing. “Evee, shut the hell up. Heather’s got you on this one. You’re wiped out. I haven’t seen you this tired in years.”

I turned on Raine, hands on my hips. “And you should have said this to her earlier. She’s your friend too, Raine. You should have noticed.”

Raine blinked at me. “Ah, well, I-”

“What do we have in the fridge?”

“I- sorry?”

“Food. Food! What do we have? Evee, what do you have on hand?”

Evelyn visibly attempted to rouse herself, pinching the bridge of her nose and inhaling deeply. “Not much. Not much at all. I’ve been snacking through it.”

“Right then, Raine,” I snapped back to my now slightly-taken-aback girlfriend. “There’s that corner shop about five minutes away. Go get some curry or something. And a jar of instant hot chocolate”

Raine hesitated a beat, then grinned and saluted me. “Yes ma’am.”

I blushed. “Don’t. I’m just … you two seem incapable right now. We can’t all carry guns and summon monsters. Some of us have to remain normal.” I shooed Raine toward the door. She laughed on the way out, caught my hand and kissed my fingers.


==


By the time Raine returned carrying a shopping bag full of comfort food, the sun had crept low to the horizon, wan late afternoon light sneaking shadows into the kitchen’s nooks and crannies. I’d herded Evelyn into a chair, just to get her out of the occult workshop she’d made of the old drawing room. She’d almost limped, heavy on her walking-stick, and winced when she sat down.

“Oh, bugger it all,” she’d muttered, rolled up her pajamas, and started to remove her leg.

I busied myself by rummaging for a snack in the cupboard, washed out my coffee mug, and checked on Praem in the front room. Three days ago I’d watched Evelyn put on her leg, but that had been at invitation, a moment of recovery and regeneration. No sordid routine of pain. She grumbled and massaged her stump, and I offered her an awkward hug.

Raine raised her eyebrows at the sight of Evelyn’s prosthetic stood up in the corner of the kitchen, but she didn’t comment, hustling and bustling and slinging microwave curries at us, clearing the table and acting like the world’s most athletic waitress. I puttered around the edges, trying to help, until Raine sat me down by the shoulders and took over.

Dinner – a little early – was chicken curry and microwave rice, followed by three packets of chocolate chip cookies, far more than I thought we could hope to put away between us. I was wrong. Evelyn picked at her food at first, and I worried she was nauseous, but she gathered speed and slowly slipped into a satisfied, full-belly slouch, half-awake as we chattered about inconsequential things, university and literature and the state of her old house.

Praem didn’t need to eat. I asked about that and got a very clear answer.

“Raine told me you were having trouble with the pneuma-somatic life on your way here.”

I shrugged, mouth full of chocolate chip cookie. The sun bled orange dusk through the window, and we’d long ago turned the kitchen lights on, our empty plates pushed toward the middle of the table.

“Seems a little academic now,” I said. “I think I got rid of them.”

“Did the Fractal drive them off?”

“Mmhmm.”

“You should have seen her,” Raine said. “If she’d threatened me like that, I’d have run away too.”

I blushed a little and shook my head.

“Well, there you go then,” said Evelyn. “Nothing else to do, unless you want to live inside a sealing circle all the … time … ” She drifted away on a private train of thought, sucking her teeth. “There’s an idea.”

Raine cleared her throat and put her elbows on the table. “Maybe we should lay low.”

Evee snapped back in an instant, eyes narrowed and hard, though dogged by a full stomach and shared warmth.

Still, I needed to head this off.

“No arguing.” I raised my voice. “Be civil.”

Evelyn held Raine’s gaze for a moment, then sighed and shrugged. “Let’s hear it then.”

“Maybe it makes mutual sense,” Raine said. She spread her hands. “Maybe Heather and I managed to scare them off. We nailed their hired thugs, we duelled their assassins or kidnappers or whatever, and we got away, then you’ve started picking at the edges of their project. Maybe they want to lay low too. Maybe we back off, let things calm down, don’t push our luck.”

Evelyn shook her head slowly.

“They had a firearm,” Raine continued. “They had hired local muscle. If you keep pushing it they might come for the house.”

“Thats-” I started, then swallowed as they both turned to look at me. A cold feeling crept up my back, a violation of all the safety of this afternoon. “That’s a good point, actually. The … zombie woman, the tall one, whatever she was, what if they just send her here?”

“I’ll gut and skin her before I’d let her touch a hair on your head,” Raine said. It wasn’t a joke. “Either of you.”

Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Well, there you go then. What are you bellyaching about? You can just play the big strong protector and we’re all good.”

“I’d rather not take the risk in the first place.”

“A serious, practical answer to your question, Heather,” Evelyn said, ignoring Raine “Is that this house is a deathtrap for anything opposing me, opposing the Saye family. Those Spiders are not for show. The Cult’s zombie, golem, whatever that was, this place would take her apart. I don’t care if she’s an emissary from Hell itself, she won’t last five minutes.”

“I thought you said the spiders were senile?”

Evelyn waved my concern away.

“Alright, so, we’re gonna do this?” Raine said. She put both hands flat on the table. “We’re really gonna do this, this is what you want, Evee?”

Evelyn fixed her with a tired gaze, but behind her eyes lay a steely determination. “Yes. Sharrowford is mine, people like this have to be kept under control. It’s just me, my mother and grandmother are gone.”

“It’s not just you,” I said. “It’s us too.”

“I- yes, yes, Heather. It is. I-”

“What about getting some outside help?” Raine said.

Evelyn directed a blast of contempt at her. Raine laughed and spread her arms.

“Come on, Evee, if this is for real, you may as well ask for help. How about calling Aaron? He’s alright, isn’t he? Or Fliss, if you can stomach her for five minutes?”

“No.” Evelyn’s mouth twisted. “No other mages. Not here. Not in Sharrowford. This is my territory. Mine.”

She spoke softly and quietly, but with all the conviction of a fist slammed on the table. I began, in that moment, to understand what the Cult’s intrusion meant to Evelyn. An ideology lurked behind her words, one which worried me so much more than the worst shouting match.

“That doesn’t sound healthy,” I said, and expected to regret my words, but Evelyn just shrugged..

“It’s no big shame to ask for help.” Raine sighed, apparently surrendering at last.

“No, no of course it isn’t,” Evelyn agreed. “That’s why I want you to move back in.”

Raine paused – a real, long, frozen pause, rare and unfamiliar to her. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and broke into a confused grin, gesturing helplessly. “I … Evee.”

“Heather too,” Evelyn said, and I blinked.

“Me?”

“For safety. In many ways, this house is the safest place in the city. Maybe in the whole north of England.”

“And rapidly filling up with monsters,” Raine said, then laughed and shook her head. She glanced at me, genuine discomfort in her eyes. “I guess, if they’re after Heather?”

“No. That closed loop was a strike aimed at me,” said Evelyn. “It was planned and executed to kill a mage. You won out because they didn’t expect a violent lunatic, and nobody could account for Heather.”

“Bit of the old ultraviolence works wonders,” Raine murmured through a smirk.

“Quite.”

“I’d love to live here,” I said before I had time to really think. “That … ” Living with friends? With Raine? In this wonderful – if slightly spooky – old house? It was a longer walk from campus, but it would be miles better than my anonymous concrete box. To live with people, to be together. I felt myself lighting up inside – and then dimming again. “Oh, I’d have to explain to my parents. I mean, they pay my rent, but we’d only need one bedroom and- oh!” I froze and looked up at Evee.

She rolled her eyes. “Told you so, didn’t I? It’s always that way, with Raine.”

“Told her what?” Raine asked. I shot an embarrassed frown at her, but for once she seemed genuinely innocent of the implied meaning.

“N-nothing,” I muttered. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You are wearing Raine’s jumper. I am aware of that.”

Raine lit up and started laughing. I couldn’t keep the blush from my face, stammering out a terrible excuse even as I smiled like an idiot.

“And you’re going to need a safe workspace,” Evelyn continued right over us. “Somewhere you can concentrate, somewhere close to me in case of emergencies, close to Raine, simply for comfort. A place you can pass out, ruin the floorboards if you need to.”

My self-indulgent embarrassment slammed to a halt. A ball of lead settled in my gut.

“Heather?” Raine murmured my name.

“I … yes, of course. I’d managed to … almost forget, you know?”

Evelyn nodded, sober and serious. “I understand. I was there too, once.”

I shook my head. “No, no, you never had a sister to rescue. I have to start on it, don’t I? Self-implementing-”

“- hyperdimensional mathematics,” Evelyn and I finished together.


==


Lozzie giggled and slid another blunt plastic knife into the board game.

“Your turn! Heather, it’s your turn! You have to put a knife in.”

“ … do I? I don’t think I really want to play this.”

On every side the dream landscape unrolled in desert dunes, ochre and cinnamon, terminated by a line of mountains so large they were impossible under earth gravity. I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut, considered for the millionth time the need to wake up.

Lozzie pouted. She wound loops of her long blonde hair around her hand and chewed on the ends. “Don’t be like that. We’re having fun, aren’t we?”

We sat in the shade of a clutch of bulbous, creaking trees, on beautiful carved wooden chairs. I rummaged through half-remembered dream impressions that Lozzie had summoned them from somewhere, along with the dozens of board games abandoned in the sand around us. Dice and chess pieces lay on the ground, counters and chips had rolled away, boards and manuals dumped off the spindly table between us.

Lozzie had hung onto a chess piece, the white Queen. She fiddled with it as I pondered where to put the little plastic knife for the board game, or if I should simply give up playing altogether.

“You picked the game,” she said. “Don’t be sore now because you lost at chess.”

“I’ve never been good at games. Chess is too difficult. Too strategic. Also, I’m not sore.” I looked up and offered her a smile. It was easy. After all, this was a dream. I may as well enjoy the company, even if she was a bit erratic and difficult to deal with.

I’d noticed things about Lozzie as the dreams had recurred: the freckles, the crooked front teeth, the way she bit at her fingernails. She cocked her head at my reply and slowly broke into a fascinated smile, eyes widening.

“W-what?”

“You’re different,” she said. “Oh wow, Heather, oh wow, you’ve been fucking, haven’t you!?”

I just blinked at her. “Uh … I … I did lose my virginity. To- to a girl.”

Lozzie bounced out of her chair, took me by both hands, and dragged me to my feet, the board game forgotten as we knocked the table over. Laughing and whirling, she spun us both around, kicking at the sand, hugging me, swinging my hands back and forth until we both fell over onto our backsides. I let myself flop onto the sand as Lozzie sat up. Shade cooled my face, sun warmed my feet. Dreaming wasn’t so bad, even if I never remembered these ones.

“That’s awesome. You’re so cool. I wish I could do that,” Lozzie said. She produced the white Queen chess piece from somewhere, turned it over in one hand and stared at it. “But you’re going to have to learn strategy, you know? Can’t be all cuddles and shagging.”

“What? Learn strategy? Why?”

“He’s after you now. He doesn’t always get what he wants, but he’s going to try. He didn’t know about you before, I didn’t tell him. Please don’t think it was me.” Lozzie met my eyes, a little sad, a lot worried. “He knows because you did that thing with the bullet, because you escaped. He’s working it out, he’s going to work it out.”

“What?” I sat up and stared at her. “Lozzie, what are you talking about? Who’s after me?”

“My brother.”

“Your-” I swallowed and took a deep breath, reminded myself where I was. “You’re a dream, Lozzie. You’re kinda cute, but you’re a dream. Stop scaring me.”

“You should kill him if you can,” she whispered. “Kill him.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Monsters. Monsters everywhere. Everywhere I turned, more monsters. I’d spent ten years seeing monsters around every corner and lurking in every shadow, convinced they weren’t real, trying to unsee them, forget them, ignore them. Now I’d accepted they were real, and I seemed to be getting to know them a lot more intimately than I’d ever wanted. In my dreams, in the street – in my bed too, I suspected, a very different kind of monster.

Another waited for us in Evelyn’s house.

At least this one was cute.

Raine helped me to the door and unlocked it without bothering to knock. The ache throbbed tight in my chest, like the worst case of heartburn in the world. A wave of comfortable indoor heat greeted us. Raine shut the door as I stepped gingerly out of my shoes. Floorboards creaked from deeper in the house, followed by the clack of a chair and the muffled but unmistakable sound of Evelyn’s voice.

I had to steady myself against the wall and rub my sternum, massage the ache down. With adrenaline draining away I realised once more how brain-math afterglow and two days of sleepwalking had taken a lot out of me, left me weak and shaky. I needed to sit down. I wanted a nap.

“Evee, it’s us,” Raine called as she walked across the front room. She stepped over the stain on the floorboards, from where she’d killed the Bone-thing. I wondered if it would ever fade.

A woman stepped primly and smartly through the kitchen doorway.

Not Evelyn.

Blue.

Skin and shoulder-length hair shaded in the most subtle blue of glacial ice. Perfect skin, no expression, spine ramrod straight. Heels together, shoulders back, hands clasped daintily in front of her like a 19th-century maid. She was dressed in Evelyn’s clothes, a thick soft pullover and long comfy skirt, huge army boots on her feet. Age impossible to guess, anywhere from fifteen to thirty.

Blank eyes; no pupil, no iris, no veins. Only milk-white sclera.

Despite the obvious artificiality, my first thought was how darned cuddly she looked. She filled out Evelyn’s clothes very substantially.

Raine didn’t agree. Her eyes widened in disbelief, muscles tensed, feet backpedaled.

“Hello?” I ventured.

“Evee!” Raine yelled at the top of her lungs. She reached into her jacket and drew the handgun.

“Raine! Oh my God.”

I’d managed to briefly forget about that little nugget of illegality. Certainly didn’t suspect she was carrying the thing. It looked so wrong and blunt in Raine’s hands, weird stubby twist of black metal. She pointed it at the Blue Lady.

“Back up,” Raine said.

No reaction. The Blue Lady stood stock-still and unresponsive, a servant awaiting orders.

“Back. Up.”

“Stop shouting, you absolute bonehead,” Evelyn called.

She thumped out of the kitchen doorway and into the front room; Raine jerked the gun away and pointed it at the floor. Evelyn tapped the Blue Lady’s leg with her walking stick and muttered ‘shift yourself’. Words proved more powerful than Raine’s pistol; the Blue Lady sidestepped from Evelyn’s path.

“Put that nonsense away before you blow a hole in the floorboards.” Evelyn frowned at the gun. For me, her expression softened. “Heather, I’m so glad to see you up and about. I never doubted your constitution for a moment.”

“Uh … thank you? Evee, who is this?”

“This?” Evelyn side-eyed the Blue Lady, then snapped at Raine. “Close your mouth, you look gormless.”

Raine shook her head in disbelief and puffed out an unimpressed laugh. “Evee, have you lost your mind? Did I step into backwards universe this morning?”

“Apparently. You seem to think that spud gun would make a blind bit of difference. Put it away. Makes me nervous, you’ll do one of us an injury.”

“I never took the safety off. It was a … bluff … ” Raine frowned hard at the Blue Lady, as if expecting sudden movement, but then she sighed and shrugged and tucked the pistol back into her jacket. “I hope I’m not gonna have to do more than bluff.”

Evelyn walked over to peer at my face. Dark bags ringed her bloodshot eyes. “You do look pretty rosy-cheeked. I’m going to assume that’s a good sign?”

“Oh, um, I think so? I-”

“Any lingering effects?”

“I do feel quite fragile. My chest aches more than before … Evee, who is this?” I opened a hand toward the Blue Lady. Evelyn used the tip of her walking stick to poke our discarded shoes into a neater position by the front door.

The Blue Lady stood stock still, unmoved by all.

Raine put hands on her hips. “Evee-”

“What? Well, what, Raine? I needed help, didn’t I? You’ve been busy – rightfully,” Evelyn added an aside nod to me. “I needed muscle, protection. I had to send something out there to figure out what those bastards are doing to my city. In my back yard. What was I meant to do? Sit and wait for you, pretend everything was normal? Is that what you’re going to tell me? The same sort of thing you’ve been feeding Heather?”

Raine blinked at her. “I didn’t think you’d make a zombie though.”

I cleared my throat. “When you two have quite finished, can one of you please explain who … this … zombie?” Exasperation crept in at the sides of my head and I let out a huge involuntary sigh. I met the Blue Lady’s eyes – no small feat, eye contact with blank white. “You did not just say that word.”

Raine winced. “Best not do that. Don’t get its attention.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous.” Evelyn marched back over to the Blue Lady and pinched her cheek like she was a small child. Zero reaction. “If it was at all dangerous, we’d already be dead. You think I would make that sort of mistake? Your confidence in me is touching, Raine, thank you.”

“It?” I echoed, faintly disgusted. “She looks like a human being to me.”

“Believe me, it’s an it,” Raine said. “If I’m right about what I’m looking at here, Evee?”

“Oh, stop being so bloody dramatic,” Evelyn said. “And no, it’s not a zombie. Nothing so crude. Where on earth would I even get the corpse? Can you see me slipping into a morgue and dragging a body out? I’d end up on the evening news.”

“Will you two stop pulling another Twil on me? Who-” I bit down and huffed out a sigh. “What is this woman?”

Raine smirked. “Pull a Twil?”

“Keeping important facts from me.”

“Over to you, Frankenstein’s daughter.” Raine deferred to Evelyn with a raised eyebrow.

“I used a mannequin,” Evee said. She stared hard at Raine, as if daring defiance, then glanced at me. “It’s a demon, from Outside, bound in a shop window display dummy. I know what you want to say, Raine. I’m getting more like my mother every day.”

“Hey, no, never.” Raine’s voice softened, the same voice she used for me. “I’d never say that. You know that.”

Evelyn sighed and looked away, suddenly interested in the pile of old cardboard boxes along the edge of the front room.

A demon?

“Does she have a name?” I asked.

Raine opened her mouth, then paused and raised an eyebrow. “Does it? Evee?”

“Her,” I insisted.

Evelyn frowned at both of us. “What?”

“Did you name it – her?” Raine caught the look in my eyes and corrected herself.

“W-what? No, of course not. Don’t be obscene.”

Raine laughed and raised her hands in surrender. “It’s not such a leap. You’ve made an anime character, Evee. You even gave her blue hair.”

“I thought it was comforting, alright?” Evelyn stared at the floor and poked a box with the tip of her stick. “I have enough bad memories of these damned things without making them like my mother did, understand?”

“ … you made an anime girl. I mean, no shame no blame. Whatever floats your boat.”

“What? You think I’m going to sleep with the dammed thing?”

Three days deprived of Raine, and Evelyn had made herself a new companion. Literally. A soft, feminine, cuddly companion, bound at her will. Guilt and embarrassment fought in my chest – second hand embarrassment on Evelyn’s behalf, and guilt on my part for monopolising Raine’s time and attention.

All through the escalating argument, the Blue Lady – the bound demon – hadn’t moved a single muscle or blinked once, though she did appear to breathe, heavy chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. I peered at her, then stepped closer for a better look. She didn’t seem anything like a mannequin.

Raine broke off. “Hold up, Heather, don’t get too close to it.”

“Your doubts really do wonders for my self-esteem, too,” Evelyn carried right on. “Thank you for this constant stream of support. You … I … ” Evelyn juddered to a halt along with Raine. Probably at the very unimpressed look on my face.

“So, she’s a demon, an Outsider, whatever,” I said. “Possessing a life-sized doll?”

“Yes, a very minor demon,” Evelyn said. “The technical term for this thing is a Gelus Praeministra. The demon doesn’t look like that in its natural state, it’s bound and piloting the vessel at my command. It follows my orders, but it has some room for creative interpretation and problem solving. It’s quite a feat, actually, perfecting this sort of work on dead wood or plastic.”

“Gelus? Gelus. Or … Praem. That’s a good enough name. Praem. Sounds a little French.” I shook my head, trying to assimilate all this.

Raine and Evelyn both spoke at once.

“You can’t give it a name-”

“Please don’t-”

I folded my arms and waited for the complaints to subside, spoke into the opening of silence which followed. “You cannot have something that looks like a person and treat it as an object. I refuse. Tends to be a rather bad idea? Tends to lead to treating other people like objects too? Bad things happen?” My other protest went unsaid: Evelyn didn’t need a doll, she needed friends.

Raine shrugged and nodded. “Fair enough. She’s got a point, Evee. That is sort of unhealthy.”

“It’s not a person,” Evelyn said with a grimace. “It’s from Outside.”

“But you said it thinks, right?” I asked. “It … you’ve enslaved this thing and-”

“It’s not slavery. I commend your sense of ethics, but it’s not slavery.”

“Was last time I checked.” Raine began to laugh, but the laugh died young. “Evee … it is, right?”

“This one wants to be here. I made sure.”

Raine’s expression froze.

“We made a bargain,” Evelyn said.

“Evee-”

“You think I’d sign my soul away? I’m no idiot. I am a Saye, after all, we know how to do these things. I made a specific, limited bargain. Cheap and easily fulfilled.”

“Feed me a cat,” Praem said.

We all stared at her – at it – at such an inhuman voice. High, whispering, icebound, like the rustling of snowflakes on winter wind. She stared straight ahead, hands folded in perfect poise.

“It’s winding us up,” Evelyn said. “Wait here.”

She stomped off into the kitchen and returned with an open plastic tub of supermarket strawberries. She fingered one out and held it up. “Hand.”

Praem raised one hand with mechanical precision, palm up. Evelyn gave her the strawberry. Praem paused, then very slowly and very carefully she placed the strawberry in her own mouth.

This was a wooden mannequin? I saw lips, teeth, a tongue – all tinted that same ice-blue – and she certainly seemed to relish the taste of strawberry, chewing with measured slowness until a visible bob of her throat indicated she was done.

“See?” Evelyn allowed herself a smug smile. “You try finding a demon that wants to eat strawberries. I think I’ve outdone myself.”

“Where did you get the mannequin from?” I asked. Evelyn gestured at a very big amazon delivery box flattened out by the door.

“Evee, that was … crazy cute,” Raine said. “I’m still not convinced you aren’t sleeping with it-”

Evelyn made an angry grumbling noise.

“- but for real, there’s no way this thing is safe to have around.”

“Pity’s sake, see for yourself.”

Evelyn grabbed the hem of Praem’s sweater and hiked it up over a soft human belly – a belly covered in looping, winding Arabic script which surrounded a magic circle, all drawn in marker pen. The circle contained a set of angular symbols painful to the eye. The doll, the demon, whatever she was, didn’t react. I turned away, suffering terrible second hand embarrassment.

“The binding is perfect,” Evelyn was saying. “Any interruption and it gets sent right back where it came from.”

“I dunno. Don’t these things get … twitchy?” asked Raine.

“Yes, of course, when you use real flesh and live subjects. My mother’s corpse-puppets had a much greater range of sensory input and expressive output, but she had far less control over them.”

Raine laughed, humourless and dark. “I remember that part.”

Evelyn tapped the side of Praem’s head. “This is still just wood underneath the glamour. It’s got barely a better sensory setup than a normal human. Slow speed of thought, too. My control is perfect. I wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”

“I-I’m sorry, Evee,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “I’m really sorry.”

Evelyn looked blank. “What?”

I stumbled on, caught between mortified embarrassment and heart-aching sympathy. “I mean, this. You didn’t have Raine, she was busy with me and you … you made a friend … I … ”

Evelyn blinked tired eyes at me, utterly lost. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I trailed off and felt exceedingly small, muttered a tiny apology.

“That’s not what this is about, Heather. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got you, haven’t I? We’re friends.

“We are, yes, yes. Why- why make Praem at all? What … ”

To my surprise, Evelyn’s lips creased in a knowing smile, back in her element.

“I’ve been busy.”

Praem the demon-maid stayed on guard in the front room. We circled through the kitchen and the back of the house to the ex-drawing room where I’d spent an exhausted night asleep on the sofa. Seemed like only yesterday. Lost time ghosted on the edge of my consciousness. I barely felt coherent enough for this, even less so when Evelyn stopped short of the door to tell me a giant spring-loaded spider lurked inside.

“You made it very clear I am to warn you. I wish to honour that request.”

“ … do you think it’ll jump out at me like the other one?”

“No, no I don’t think so. Took six hours of shouting just to wrangle it down from the attic. Can’t get the blasted thing to go back. I don’t think it gives a damn what goes on around it. Might have gone senile.”

“You moved it here on purpose?”

Evelyn shrugged.

“Giant spider?” Raine grinned.

“You won’t be able to see it,” Evelyn waved her away and hustled me into the ex-drawing room. “Just don’t stand in the circle unless you want a nasty shock.”

She’d turned the space into a war-room.

Both the sofas had been pushed back against the walls, the floor cleared for a half-full inflatable paddling pool and two magic circles drawn on huge sheets of stiff card. One circle was very complex and contained a sort of entry port on one side, corners weighed down with bricks. The other was only half-finished, attended by a detritus of candles, a ritual knife, two bottles of strange powder and what looked like a human femur bone. I recognised Evelyn’s books – both Unbekannte Orte and Inprencibilis Vermis – lying open on one of the sofas, copious notes scattered on the cushions.

The state of the far wall left no question as to what piece of magic took pride of place. Evelyn had mutilated the wall with a screwdriver, scored the outline of a doorway into the paint and plaster.

Surrounding the imaginary door in a fan shape, like a madhouse mandala, she’d covered the wall with magical symbols, bits of Latin, scraps of non-human language, interlocking magic circles, sprawling mathematical formulae, and a dozen other unclassifiable additions. All seemed to refer back to the blank space of the doorway.

I had to look away. My head swam.

A giant Spider-servitor was indeed clinging to the ceiling, wedged in a corner. Smaller than the one in the library basement, more dog-sized, it shared the same clustered head of crystalline eyes and body of hard black chitin, studded with heat-exchanger stacks, though this one was free from scars and old battle-damage. It seemed somehow distressed, legs drawn up tight at an awkward angle.

I suppose I’d have been distressed too if Evelyn had shouted at me for six hours.

“Poor thing,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Sorry.”

Evelyn walked over to the table, gait unsteady. She put more weight on her withered leg than her prosthetic, and leaned heavily on her walking stick.

How many hours had she been awake?

Gone were the piles of books on the table, unceremoniously shuffled off into the corner under the spider. In their place, a huge ordinance survey map of Sharrowford lay unfolded on the table. A date printed in the corner proclaimed the map was about twenty years old, so Evelyn had pencilled in corrections and missing housing developments, but the real work she’d done on the map was in red highlighter pen.

Evelyn tapped the map. “That closed space you two walked into was not an isolated aberration.”

City centre landmarks highlighted in red, linked by kinking lines that corresponded to no physical roads. Entire suburban streets circled and numbered, cross-referenced on a nearby pad full to bursting with scribbled notes. Odd twists and turns down Sharrowford’s back alleyways, seedy estates, industrial wastelands, all traced with red highlighter, question marks, no entry signs. Red for danger. Red for blood.

The whole mass of map-work was crowned by a great question mark hovering over the south of the city.

“Why red?” I asked.

“Seemed appropriate, under the circumstances,” Evelyn muttered.

“What are we looking at here?” Raine asked.

“I think I can take a guess,” I said.

“It’s a whole network.” Evelyn jabbed at the map, at one of the spiderwebs of interconnected red highlighter.

“Of what?” asked Raine.

“I don’t know. Extra-temporal, extra-dimensional spaces. I don’t have the language for it. This is new, undocumented. It’s a fucking nightmare, is what it is.” Evelyn shrugged as her earlier gloss of smug satisfaction fell to exhaustion and disgust. “Portions of the city copied into looping spaces. Buildings, streets, but imperfectly, out of different materials, and they lead somewhere deeper.” She tapped the huge question mark to the south. “I haven’t been able to get down there, not through the loops. They keep shutting me out, pinching routes off, shoving monsters in my way.”

“You’ve been investigating this alone?” Raine asked. “Going out, alone?”

Evelyn gave her the sort of withering stare which only comes with hard sleep deprivation. “Yes, after what happened to you two, I thought the best course of action was to wander around by myself and poke my head into magical rabbit traps.”

“Ah, uh.” Raine cleared her throat and smirked. “Sorry, sorry.”

How could Raine smirk, in front of this? I couldn’t look away. The map was a nightmare. A shadow-city.

“Of course I didn’t go out myself. What do you think the huge bloody scrying pool is for?” Evelyn waved a hand at the half-full paddling pool. “I’ve had the Gelus Praeministra remote sending.”

“Praem,” I corrected her softly, more to have a handhold to clutch than to insist on names.

Evelyn suppressed a tight huff. I left it at that, but already felt guilty.

“Is that what you were trying to use the Spider-servitor for?” I pointed into the corner, at the awkwardly cowering spider.

“Um … yes. Sort of.”

Raine followed my finger. She looked at the corner, then down at the circle with the entry port on one side.

“I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” Evelyn said. Raine grinned and stepped into the circle, then furrowed her brow and squinted.

“He’s a bit … fuzzy, isn’t he?” she said.

“It took me four hours of meditating just to see the outline. I told you not to bother.”

“Evee, why not just make a Servitor?” I asked. “Why make a … Praem?”

Evelyn looked awkward, then sighed and shrugged. “I barely know where to start with Servitors. I can make one that would fall apart in a strong wind, but I needed something physical, mobile, capable of independent thought. I can’t even make that blasted spider move outside.”

“Hmm. That does make sense.”

“I started on … on ‘Praem’ the minute after Raine called me, after you and her escaped. It- … she can sense more than I can, and faster. Sent her to Willow House as soon as I got the first couple of strawberries down her. No trace. Nothing there. So I had her walk about.” Evelyn gestured at the map, traced some of the circled streets. “Imagine my bloody surprise. Lots of these lead nowhere, but some of them are linked into a greater whole, a warren that runs deeper than I’ve reached. Not all of them are properly concealed either. That car-park you two blundered into, chasing your sister’s message, that was one of them. You’re lucky you didn’t go any deeper, you may never have come back out. Likely there’s been an uptick in missing persons cases, homeless people vanishing, that sort of thing.”

“Is this … ” I started, then trailed off, an idea tugging at the back of my mind. “Is … I mean … is this naturally occurring?”

“Absolutely not. This is the Sharrowford Cult’s doing. Didn’t Raine tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Yeah, tell her what?” Raine added, genuinely mystified.

“The woman who shot at Raine, we’ve seen her before.”

“Hey now,” said Raine. “I didn’t exactly get a good look at her. I was too busy duelling a giant zombie.”

“How many murderous psychopathic women with shaved heads do we know?” Evelyn asked. “Take a wild guess.”

“If the answer is more than one, I want out,” I said. I’d intended it as a joke, but my own dry swallow undermined any humour.

“Exactly,” said Evelyn. “We had trouble with the Cult when we moved to Sharrowford. Raine butchered some zombies, put a few other things down. The woman with the shaved head, she was there, as were some others. She’s the link. It’s the Cult.”

“So … so w-what do we do?” I asked. My voice felt so small, out of my depth.

“I’ve started shutting down the entrances I can, closing them off or collapsing them, but some of the principles … escape me. It’s like an excavated space behind the real Sharrowford, in the existing bedrock of Outside.” Evelyn gritted her teeth in disgust and anger as she stared down at the map, at the shadow city. “These people, these fucking vermin should not be able to do things like this. This is a major working, a huge project, the kind of thing a mage could spend a lifetime bringing to fruition, and they’ve slipped it under my nose in the space of months. I don’t even know how long. In my city.”

“Evee,” Raine said, a little too bright and loud. She stuck out her thumb and little finger, waggled them in the universal telephone gesture. “Did you … ?”

“Yes, I called my father. No break-ins. Nobody’s been down there since us.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I blinked at Evelyn.

“Don’t worry about it, Heather, ancient history,” said Raine. That earned her a miniature glare from Evelyn.

“She has a right, Raine, she’s as involved as either of us.” Evelyn turned to me. “Raine told me the thugs you met inside the loop had vests with the warding sign on.”

“Oh! Yes, the Fractal. But it wasn’t the Fractal.”

“I know. It wasn’t the warding sign, but it came from the same source. Which meant either somebody burglarised my childhood home and stole my mother’s … legacy, or the Cult has done to some poor sod what my mother did to me.”

“Ah. Uh, okay.”

“I don’t know which is worse.” Evelyn shook her head. “That kind of magic, the kind on your left arm, it’s extremely stable and very useful. That’s the only way I can explain what they’ve achieved.”

A thought teased at the edge of my mind. What if the Cult had a person like me? A brain-math dimension-jumper, to dig out their shadow-city behind Sharrowford?

“Heather?”

I blinked, frozen verge of speaking. “Ah, s-sorry.”

Raine peered at my face. “You holding up okay, Heather? Wanna sit down? Hell, this is pretty heavy stuff, shall we go make some coffee, have a snack, take a break?”

“I’m … fine.” I shook my head.

A person like me? Where had I gotten that idea?

Evelyn was working herself up again, staring down at the map with a darkness behind her eyes. “Bastards, utter bastards. Could have left us all well alone after you stumbled onto them in that underground car-park, but no, they decided to try their hands at assassination, bump me out of the way so they could complete this insane work. Bit off more than they could chew when they met you though, didn’t they?” She shot me an approving glance.

“I didn’t do anything, Evee.”

“Raine told me you stopped a bullet with your mind. That’s not nothing.”

“It mostly just hurt.” I didn’t want the approving glance. I didn’t want to think about what I’d done with my mind.

“Well, now I’ve got them. All this has been going on right under my nose, like rats in the walls, but I’ve got them now. No more hiding, eh?” She spoke to the map, not to us.

I felt terminally out of my depth. I hadn’t bargained on any of this. Evelyn was fighting the opening moves of a shadow war and Raine was treating it like an everyday occurrence. Terrifying people had tried to kill all of us; in the world I grew up in, that meant you called the police, probably? I’d never called the police for anything.

Raine was staring at the ceiling in thought, arms folded. She nodded to herself as Evelyn spoke, apparently arriving at a conclusion.

“Maybe we should leave Sharrowford for a week or two,” she said.

“What?”

“Oh, maybe that’s a good idea,” I said – but they were off.

“You cannot be serious,” Evelyn snapped at Raine.

“Well, we could skip town, or call your dad again, ask for help?”

Evelyn looked at Raine like she’d suggested we all join the circus. “So he can do what, come up here and cluck at me?”

“What’s your suggestion then? Lay it out for me.”

Evelyn jabbed her walking stick at the far wall, at the madhouse mandala and the fake doorway, the great unfinished work. “That. That is my suggestion. The more of their intrusions I shut down, the more I learn, and that is going to take me straight to the heart of whatever nonsense they’re building down there.” She tapped the big question mark on the map, over the south of the city.

“Straight to the source? Decapitation strike? Kill all their leadership and blow up their shit?”

“Exactly!”

“You and what army?”

Evelyn narrowed her eyes. Raine didn’t say a word, just fixed her with that genuine-question, zero-judgement look she’d deployed so accurately against me, used to batter down all my resistances.

It didn’t work the same way on Evelyn. She glared back.

Raine sighed. “I know what you’re thinking of doing.”

“You haven’t the faintest idea.”

“I can take an educated guess.” Raine nodded at the half-finished magic circle. “I don’t know the jazz voodoo half as well as you do, but even I can guess what that’s for.”

“You-”

“Disco gorilla or Mister teeth?” Raine asked. Evelyn shut her mouth and swallowed. “Come on, Evee, gotta share your plans, even if they’re crazy. What are you gonna summon?”

“ … Haeretis decollatio,” Evelyn muttered, guilty and averting her eyes.

Raine pulled a face. “The thing with the huge scissors? Damn.”

“Probably more than one.”

“Evee.”

“I don’t know what’s in there.” Evelyn gestured at the door again. “You don’t get it, this has to be shut down before it gets worse, before-”

“It’s too dangerous. You know that. You know I’m only trying to stop you from hurting your-”

“Oh, you want me to send you through, with your pop gun and swear words?”

And like that, the argument was off to the races. I sighed inside and stepped back from the table, out of the firing line as Evelyn snapped and shouted and stamped with her walking stick, as Raine laughed and shook her head and did, indeed, try to coddle, slowly losing her own steadfast temper.

“I’ll go make some coffee, shall I?”

Neither of them paid the slightest bit of attention as I left the room, even when I closed the door to keep their argument contained. I wandered back into Evelyn’s kitchen, into the dusky light of a Sharrowford afternoon falling through the window.

I could still hear them. I sighed and ran my hands over my face.

Too many things to think about, on top of listening to those two argue: the spirits, my magical coma, the loop, scary cult people, brain-math, Maisie.

Yes, that’s why I was here, who I was here for. My twin sister.

Well, the fact I’d slept with Raine did factor into my decisions too. And I did have a friendship with Evelyn, she was right. But I’d had enough of intervening in arguments, in wondering when those two were going to finally break at each other. Raine didn’t seem to need my support on this. They needed to work this one out for themselves.

True to my word, I did brew up some coffee, from the ancient tin of instant tucked away in the back of a cupboard. I reminded myself I must buy Evelyn some real stuff, if we’re going to be friends. Boiling the kettle at least drowned out the noise of the shouting match for a minute – still raging back there, but now punctuated by short, brooding silences.

For the sake of peace and quiet, I took my mug of coffee into the front room. I half intended to go upstairs and browse the collection in the study, centre my mind with the help of Shakespeare and whoever else I might discover.

Praem stood right where we’d left her.

I stopped and looked at her. Really looked at her – at it? At her blue-ice complexion and all-white eyes and perfect proper prim poise.

“Uh, hello again.” I waved awkwardly.

No reply, of course.

“Praem,” I said. “That’s your name now. If you can understand what I’m saying?”

Silence.

“Do you have any idea how I can get those two to stop clawing at each other? It feels like herding cats.”

Praem did not have any suggestions, about that or any other matter.

I hadn’t any time for a good look earlier, not with the hustle and bustle and Raine pulling a gun, but now I peered a little closer. As close as was polite. She did have doll-like ball-and-socket seams, under her chin and on her hands, but only when examined very carefully.

“I’m … I’m going to poke your cheek, is that okay? Okay then.”

I reached up and pressed a fingertip gently against one cheek. Very soft, very smooth, very human. I pulled my hand back and muttered an apology.

My musings turned uncharitable. Praem was built so very voluptuously, with wide hips and a rather heavy chest. Had Evelyn used the word ‘mannequin’ to avoid other, more accurate connotations? I decided not to check the details on that amazon box.

“You know, those are really impressive,” I said, staring at her chest and shaking my head. I caught myself, blushed and blinked and turned away, asked myself what the hell I was saying.

What had come over me? Was it because I’d lost my virginity last night, or because I wasn’t treating this demon-possessed doll as a human being?

Odd to stand in front a person who doesn’t react at all. An immature, horrible, weaselly little part of me wanted to hug it – her – give it a nice big squeeze, consequence free. The comfy clothes didn’t help. I frowned and told myself off. She was a person, sort of. There was a thinking, sentient being in there. Which was neither human nor strictly alive.

My carnal reaction raised a far more important question.

“Is Evee a lesbian?” I asked out loud. Praem offered no opinion.

I knew Raine was. She’d proved that last night with her head between my thighs. A goofy smile worked it’s way onto my face again.

But what about Evelyn?

I’d assumed not, after she’d assured me she wasn’t into Raine. Perhaps subconsciously, I’d drawn a line between ‘not into Raine’ and ‘not into girls’, which raised some interesting avenues of inquiry about my own tastes, but Praem’s appearance made me reconsider.

Evee had made herself a soft, thick, motherly cuddle-doll. Motherly? Oh dear. On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t think about this. That wasn’t a depth I wished to plumb, not without permission and a dry-suit.

“Is she sleeping with you? Does she hug you?”

Praem did not reply.

“Suppose you only take orders from Evee, hmm?”

“Feed me.”

I blinked in surprise and almost fell over.

Oh, but that voice. That was not a human voice, no fool could mistake it for one. She whispered in the rustle of ice crystals and the tickle of wind.

Two minutes later I held the tub of strawberries in front of Praem. I took one out, then paused and pricked up my ears, listening carefully to the sounds of the ongoing argument in the front room; Raine and Evelyn had stopped shouting but the house still murmured with a background of angry conversation.

“Alright, give me your hand.”

Praem didn’t move.

“You have to hold your hand out.”

I asked myself what I was doing. Having fun? A bit of harmless play? I clamped down on that thought. Bad Heather. This wasn’t harming anybody. She’d asked to be fed, she’d made the request.

“At least open your mouth. Hurry up.”

Praem obeyed that one. She parted her lips with a soft click. I frowned at her. Was she-? No, she couldn’t possibly be. She was an Outsider. Not human.

I reached up and fed her the strawberry. Pushed it past her lips with a fingertip. A fleeting moment of contact.

When I finished, I was blushing and flushed.

“Oh,” I muttered. “Oh dear. Well, uh-”

Praem chewed and swallowed.

“Oh, I don’t think I should do that again.” I swallowed on a dry throat and focused on closing the lid of the plastic tub, a tremor in my hands. I was terrible. Absolutely terrible. Why couldn’t I stop blushing?

Why was I aroused by feeding a strawberry to a demon?

“Are you at least going to answer the question? Does Evee hug you and … stuff?”

Praem answered with a smile.

That smile was a bucket of cold water over my arousal. A mere tugging of muscles and curve of mouth. Nothing in the eyes; cold and empty.

“ … right. You’re not human. Right.”

“Heather?”

Raine spoke my name and I almost jumped out of my skin, fumbling the box of strawberries. I narrowly avoided dropping them all over the floor. She tilted her head at me from the doorway. I hadn’t noticed the argument wind down, but now I could hear Evelyn grumbling to herself and thumping about.

“Oh, oh goodness you made me jump.”

Raine half-grinned and nodded at the box of strawberries. “That thing isn’t a pet, you know? It might look cute, but it would eat you if it could.”

I blushed all the harder and let out a huff. Raine was exactly the sight I needed right now. She was much more attractive than some unrealistically thick doll.

“I’ve just learnt that, I think. Thank you.”

Raine cocked an eyebrow in silent question, but I didn’t want to elaborate. Explaining to my girlfriend of literally one day that I’d been turned on by feeding a strawberry to her physical opposite was not a smart course of action. Even I knew that, as inexperienced as I was.

“So,” I started instead. “Have you and Evee patched things up? Come to some kind of … ” I trailed off. Raine’s face made her answer plain. “You haven’t, have you?”

“I just wanted to come check on you.”

“Raine, I’m fine. You need to go talk to Evee.”

“Ah? Heather?”

I did the only thing which made sense; I put the box of strawberries down and marched right up to Raine, took her by the shoulders and tried to turn her around. She laughed but offered only token resistance.

“Heather, what? What- what is this?”

I put my hands on her back and steered her toward the front room. I felt like a Terrier pushing a Great Dane. “You and Evee need to talk. Talk.”

Raine sighed, her amusement flagging. “We did, we-”

“Raine, you’re wonderful and I think I might be falling in love with you.” Goodness me, did I really just say that? “But you and Evelyn need to stop arguing. Deal with each other. Right now. Go back in there and sort this out. You’re old friends and she needs your support and … go. Back in there. Go. Go!”

I shoved Raine the rest of the way, under no illusion that I’d be able to if she’d resisted. She grinned and shook her head as I pushed her through the door. I caught a glimpse of Evelyn’s thunderous frown and deep confusion, then shut the door on them.

“Don’t come out until you’re friends again!”

I waited a beat, my heart hammering, but neither of them burst back out to tell me off or shout at me.

Had I just done that? Where had that courage come from? Was this me?

I think it was.

I sighed and rubbed my sternum, then wandered back into the sitting room to return the tub of strawberries to the fridge, then picked up my lukewarm coffee and took a sip, frowning at Praem.

“So, orders from Evee only,” I muttered.

I froze on a crazy thought, mug halfway to my mouth. Did I have enough courage to try that? Was it even a worthwhile experiment? If Evee needed an army to take on the Cult, what might I need to rescue my sister?

Because I did know a monster or two which might listen to me, didn’t I?

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Raine had already decided I wasn’t going home that day.

I nibbled at more chocolate cookie in a vain attempt to recapture normality, as much normality as one could feel after a frank discussion of terminal violence, but we weren’t over the hump quite yet. An intimate question, an inevitable question, forced its way up and out of my mouth.

“Do you have a body count?”

Raine stopped mid-bite, lowered her own food, and spoke very softly. “You sure you wanna know?”

“Yes. I think. If you and I are going to be together, I can’t pretend not to see the real you.”

“Good point, fair enough. Well, not counting the two I may or may not have put down inside the loop?”

“For now, okay.”

She nodded for a long moment, sober and calm.

“Three and a half.”

“Three and … ?” Relief and horror fought in my chest: Raine had only killed three people. Also, Raine had killed three people. “Half?”

“The one Evee and I did together. Shared responsibility. Not my place to talk about that.”

“O-oh.”

“I can tell you all about the others though, if you really wanna hear.” Raine broke into an awkward grin. “Not exactly what I imagined for pillow talk with the cutest girl I’ve ever wrangled in my bed, though.”

I blushed, despite the topic. My first time in another girl’s bed – except for Maisie’s – and we were discussing homicide instead of bonking like rabbits.

“At least … the first?”

“Ahhh, that was the messiest one.” Raine leaned back on her hands and relaxed. “Happened a few days after I ran away from home, weeks before I met Evee. I was outside a train station, some half empty town in the London commuter belt.” She pointed at the big map of the UK over her desk, with the highlights and thumbtacks. “S’up there somewhere, but one of the few places I don’t remember the name. It was night, I was alone, looking for somewhere to kip, and this guy just attacked me. Grabbed me from behind. I probably looked like an easy target, fourteen year old girl wandering about by herself at night.”

“Oh, Raine.”

“S’fine. Didn’t bother me. Didn’t even really scare me, he never had a chance. I knocked his brains out with a spanner I’d been carrying in my pocket, just in case. Left him there on the pavement, thought he was unconscious. Next day the corpse was in the news. Oops.”

“That- that definitely does sound like legitimate self-defence.” I nodded, felt my heart go out to her, to that fourteen year old Raine alone on a dark street.

But sympathy smuggled danger through my better sensibilities. Raine liked me, I wanted her; of course I was going to accept her justifications.

It was self-defence though, right?

“They’ve all been self-defence,” she said. “That first one for me, the other two for Evee. Those were later on, after we got thick as thieves, part of the power struggle after her mother’s death.”

“Bet that’s quite a story.”

“Yeah, and maybe one for another day. I think you’ve had enough excitement for the moment. You need food, rest, and probably a back rub.”

“Raine, why did you run away from home?”

She shrugged. “Parents.”

We ate for a while and I finally let talk turn to inconsequential matters. Raine sat cross-legged opposite me as I propped pillows behind my back, to take the edge off the lingering full-body ache.

I asked about the posters on her bedroom walls. Raine acted all mock-embarrassed and apologetic about the video game pinup girls, but I honestly thought they didn’t look too bad, except for the huge boobs. She told me about the thumbtacks and highlights on the map of the UK, a visual history of everywhere she’d been. The line snaked from a Suffolk town to meander through Essex and Kent, then snapped into the heart of London before swooping down across Surrey and into Sussex. Pins clustered around a post-it note which read ‘Here be Dragons’ – the Saye estate, Evelyn’s real home. Wild, unconnected excursions marked a couple of far-flung spots – Cumbria, Devon, neither of them good times according to Raine. The main route jumped halfway up the length of England – one long train journey, apparently – and finally settled in Sharrowford.

“What about you?” Raine nodded me toward the map. “Where have you been? Wanna draw your history up on there?”

I sighed and raised my eyebrows at her to cover for the small lump in my throat. “Mine would be very sparse. I’ve only ever lived in three places, and one of those was a children’s mental hospital. You know that by now.”

“Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.” Raine stood up and rummaged around on her desk. She held up a fist of highlighter pens, yellow and blue and green. “Pick a colour.”

“I’d really rather not.”

“Go on, pick a colour, you have to. We can fill in the rest of the map, as much as you like. Got a whole lifetime to do it in.”

My sceptical frown carried little conviction. That was one of the sweetest things anybody had ever said to me. For years I’d not really expected to reach thirty, let alone plan a future.

A future alone, without my other half, without Maisie. Now I’d been awake for a few hours, my mind bent inexorably toward her once more.

Raine climbed onto her desk chair and slapped the map with one hand. “Right, ‘fess up, where do you wanna go?”

I blinked at her, certain I’d heard those words before, recently: ‘Where do you want to go?’ Who had said that to me?

“Heather? Come on, don’t just gape at me.”

“Uh- careful, don’t fall.”

“Me, fall?” Raine cracked a grin and planted a foot on the chair’s backrest. She shifted her weight, rocked the chair so far that my heart tightened in my chest.

“Raine!”

She winked at me, then landed the chair safely on four legs once more. “Heather, I’m dead serious. I can take you anywhere you want.”

“No, you can’t. You have responsibilities.”

Raine cleared her throat. “I mean, in the future. Come on, anywhere you like, what do you wanna see?”

“ … castles.”

“Castles?”

“And Cathedrals.”

“Castles?”

Raine was blissfully unaware of the Pandora’s box she’d opened by pressing that question. Over the better part of the next hour I regaled her with a long, winding list of all the most beautiful castles I wanted to visit, from little islet keeps in Scotland to the well-known London tourist traps of The Tower and Westminster, to the great sprawling monster castles in Eastern Europe that I could never hope to scrape together enough money to see.

She lugged her laptop over to the bed and looked up each one as I went, our heads close together as we peered at stonework I’d admired for years. Every now and again Raine reached over and squeezed my thigh or rubbed my knee, and I did my best to concentrate on what I was saying.

Somewhere along the way, she made the fatal mistake of getting me started on architecture.

“I mean, that looks plenty gothic to me. Look at those towers.”

I huffed and shook my head. “Gothic is a specific style, not just a feeling. Go back to the previous page. Yes, that, that’s Gothic. The other one was just a shell keep, that’s a … R-Raine?”

A twinkle had entered her eye, a subtle smile on her lips.

“Go on!” she said. “This is the kinda Heather lore I crave.”

I tutted and blushed and managed to forge on into the differences between early Norman castles and Concentric designs. Raine nodded along, apparently fascinated by my amateur flailing. My right hand kept creeping up to rub at my sternum, the ache inside suppressed only briefly by talking.

“Good job distracting me, by the way,” I said.

“Ah, am I that obvious?”

“A little. I needed it, I guess. Better to talk about castles than … well. Everything yesterday. Uh, two days ago.” I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. Lost time was biting hard.

“Everybody’s gotta decompress sometime. I think we earned it.”

“What happened, Raine? In that loop, what was that all about? Are we supposed to … run? Hide? What do we do now?”

“What do we do now?” Raine cracked a grin. “I think video games are in order, and there’s a Chinese takeaway place one street over, opens at five. If you feel like some fresh air and you’re well enough for a little walk, then we could pop down there together, or I could just call in delivery. I think we’ve got a menu downstairs in a kitchen drawer somewhere.”

I sighed, impressed by her gall but not her angle. “That’s not what I meant.”

Raine laughed in defeat. “I know, I know, but can’t we just take one day off? You need it, you’ve earned a break, we can think about serious stuff tomorrow.”

“What if we don’t have time for that? What if they’re looking for us now?”

“They’re not. Evee’s dealing with it.”

“She is?”

“Really really.” Raine wet her lips and let out a little sigh. “Trust me, she’s gone off on one, if you know what I mean. She’s taken this personally, big time. Whoever they were, Sharrowford Cult or not, Evee’s giving them much bigger fish to fry right now. In fact, uh, we should totally go check on her tomorrow, make sure she’s not burning her fingertips too badly.”

“Mm.” That worried me too. What I’d seen of Evelyn’s track record with magic was unfortunately terrible.

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll meet up with Evee. I don’t want to risk anything happening to you while you’re still feeling so rough. We’re perfectly safe here, I promise.”

I felt a fragile smile peek through. “Okay, okay. I guess I’m still frightened.”

“Hey, nothing wrong with that. I was scared too.”

“I even dreamed about one of them. One of the cultists, I mean.”

“Oh yeah?” Raine stretched her legs out and hooked one of her ankles over mine.

“Briefly, before I woke up. I think it was about the girl in the skull mask. Do you remember her too?”

“Yeah, that was weird, wasn’t it? I gave Evee descriptions of all of them over the phone, best I could, but she didn’t recognise any. That girl could have been anybody.” Raine chewed her way slowly through a cookie as she spoke. “Heather? Was it a bad dream?”

“Hm?” I looked up, realised I’d been frowning to myself. “Oh, no. She didn’t have much to say, I think. I don’t really recall the details, it’s all slipped away … ”

“I’ll take your mind off your dreams.”

“What?”

Raine cleared her throat and wiped the smirk off her face. “I think you should stay here tonight. Take it easy. Rest up. Have some nice food. Nobody’s getting through me. Tomorrow, we can get back to some kind of normal routine-”

“Oh! I’ve missed class.” The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I put a hand to my mouth. “Oh, God. Oh.”

“It’ll be fine.” Raine laughed and raised her hands. “You were ill, I was looking after you. Don’t sweat it. Damn, Heather, people miss class all the time, and with much crappier excuses than yours.”

“If you say so.” I had sudden visions of disappointed professors. There was little worse than the disapproval of those you looked up to intellectually.

“Don’t mind another night in my bed, do you?” Raine cracked a grin.

That snapped me back to the present, back to sharing a bedroom with the girl I’d been crushing on hard for weeks now, the girl I’d made out with two days ago. I opened my mouth but no words came out. Raine raised her eyebrows. I swallowed and forced myself to take a nice deep breath.

Maybe serious magic nonsense could wait a day.

“Please tell me this house has a shower.”

“Sure does. You wanna … ?” Raine gestured between me and her.

I blushed heavily. Embarrassment beat temptation. “Raine, I’m filthy, I stink like a pig. I-I just need to shower … thank you for the offer. Just shower.”

The rest of the day was a gift. I half-expected the spirit life to show up and ruin everything, creeping down the corridor or lurking in the bathroom, but apparently my message earlier had gotten through to them. I caught sight of a few in the street, but oddly enough they left the house alone.

I showered and changed into the spare clothes Raine had fetched from my flat. She took me downstairs to the dilapidated sitting room, where threadbare sofas squatted before a game console hooked up to a stolen telly, where I spent a very pleasant few hours curled up on the sofa, a blanket around my shoulders, while Raine sat cross-legged on the floor so she could show me a video game she was playing. Something about alchemists. The characters were all cute girls, so I wasn’t entirely out of my depth, but there was a lot of dialogue and running about. I barely paid attention, more intent on Raine’s reactions, delighted to be shown something she enjoyed.

And intent on the house.

The place was pretty run down, and not in a charming way like Evelyn’s house. Badly scuffed door frames and thin partition walls, ancient floral wallpaper peeling and cracked, carpets worn down to almost nothing. Clean, but poorly maintained.

“So, where are we exactly? I didn’t recognise the street when I looked outside.”

Raine glanced up from the game. “I’d be worried if you did. We’re off Dereham Road.”

I frowned and pursed my lips, cleared my throat gently. “I don’t actually know where that is.”

“Past the south end of the student quarter.”

“ … oh, next to the council estate, yes?”

“Ex-council estate,” Raine said as she clicked through the game menus. “Wouldn’t be so bad if not for the ex part. It’s not like, stab-happy land out there, but it’s not great either.”

“Oh.”

“But hey, you can’t beat free.”

“ … free?” I blinked, lost.

“Zero rent.”

“I … don’t understand? Zero rent? How?”

Raine turned a grin on me, unaccountably smug. “It’s a student squat. Abandoned property. Bunch of us did the place up and put locks on the doors. You’re on stolen land, Heather. How’s that feel?”

Raine’s housemates turned up later in the evening, after darkness began to creep down the streets. I felt terribly self-conscious but none of them paid me much attention, or seemed to care that Raine was monopolising the television.

After Raine’s sneaky revelation about this house being a student squat, I expected druggies and drop-outs and dangerous people, the sort of people Raine could deflect with practised ease, but would put the wind up me like nothing else.

My prejudices ashamed me. Two of the other occupants turned out to be a pair of extremely flamboyant gay men – a couple? I asked Raine and she shrugged. The third was a tiny redhead law student who talked about vegan cooking and high-fived Raine when I was introduced as a ‘girlfriend’, and the fourth was the law student’s very tall boyfriend, who was studying environmental science. He hung out with us for an unexpected hour to discuss the finer points of Raine’s video game.

Raine ordered the promised Chinese food and we sat around on the sofas and old chairs, eating straight out of the plastic takeaway boxes. I had to use a fork like a normal person but Raine showed off with a pair of chopsticks.

It all felt so different, to my life. Normal.

I could almost imagine the events of two days ago hadn’t happened. Almost convince myself, for the span of one evening, that Maisie’s tshirt was not crammed into a bag in my coat pocket.


==


Night came, and so did the inevitable.

I’d started to nod off in the sitting room, so Raine had pressed a fresh toothbrush into my hand and steered me upstairs to the bathroom. She’d asked if I wanted a change of pajamas and I’d said no, I’d only showered a few hours ago. I felt clean enough, through very groggy and slow, the ache in my chest still sending its slow throb through my diaphragm with every breath. Raine had excused herself and left me to finish up. I flushed the toilet, washed my hands, and made my way back to Raine’s bedroom.

She was waiting for me half under the bedcovers with the lights off, on her side, the sheets turned down to invite me in.

Thankfully, she was still dressed. Otherwise I would have died right there.

“Oh, oh Raine no, I don’t t-think I can handle that. I-I just- I just- I don’t know if I- if I-” I stammered and swallowed, red as a tomato, hands out as if to ward her off.

Raine laughed and sat up. “Woah, Heather, Heather, slow down, slow down. It’s fine, it’s cool, it’s just me. It’s just getting in bed together.” She held out a hand. “I don’t bite, I promise.”

I let out a huge breath and managed to shut the door properly, my hands clammy and shaking, plunging us into the comfortable shadows. I stepped closer but I absolutely could not take Raine’s hand. Part of me wanted to. Part of me wanted to do a comedy dive into the bed and shove my face into her chest, but that part of me was very small and easily vetoed, by the executive council of sensible Heather, repressed Heather, and nervous Heather.

“Raine, I- uh … I don’t know.” I had no idea what to do with my hands, wringing my fingers together. “I don’t know. We- we barely- we’ve barely been properly together for three days. I’ve been unconscious for most of that time. I- … ”

To my surprise, Raine stopped laughing. She nodded and sat up properly, knees tenting the covers. “Heather, I am inviting you to cuddle in bed. Nothing more.”

“It’s your bed! With you! We haven’t even … even … ”

“Even what?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t there supposed to be some step between kissing and … and sharing a bed?”

“Maybe. Does it matter?”

I didn’t know. My mouth was dry and my heart was fluttering like an escaped bird. I shrugged.

“We don’t have to take each traditional step one by one,” Raine said. “There’s no proper order. Do what feels good with each other. If you want to come cuddle, come cuddle. Otherwise, I can sleep on floor again, I really don’t mind doing that.”

“Just … just cuddling?”

“I promise.” Raine’s smile crept back. “I’m not going to rub you off under the covers unless you very specifically ask for it.”

“Raine!” I blushed harder than I’d thought possible, could have sworn steam shot from my ears. She laughed again and held up both hands.

“My hands stay above your waist,” she said.

I was shaking, my knees ready to give way. I was certain this kind of stress was not good for me after breaking my brain with hyperdimensional math, but my goodness did I want this.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Tentative, my hands freezing cold and my heart in my throat, I slipped into bed next to Raine, on my side, sliding my legs down into the warm cocoon of the covers until our bare feet found each other. Raine tucked an ankle between mine, pulled the covers over our shoulders, and wrapped an arm around my waist. She purred and shifted her entire body against me, close, soft. I shivered at the feeling of her breath on my neck and her hand on my stomach.

This was not exactly relaxing.

“Good, huh?” she murmured.

“Very,” I managed.

Minutes later – a few or two dozen, warm and together – Raine’s breathing had softened, quietened.

“Are you awake?” I whispered into the warm darkness.

“Mmhmm.”

“Maybe … maybe do that thing you said.” My chest tightened up. Breathless. Heart racing.

“Hmm? Thing I said?”

I would have rolled my eyes in exasperation if we’d been facing each other. My throat almost closed up on the words. “The thing you said you wouldn’t do unless I specifically asked for it.”

A long, long pause. Raine’s hand moved against my stomach.

“You sure?” she purred.


==


“ … so then the bear exploded! It just keeled over and boom! Blood and guts, everywhere, all up the walls, on the ceiling, the silly little benches, the podium thing, everything. Isn’t that amazing?!”

Lozzie rocked back in her chair, howling with laughter and kicking her legs in the air. She was laughing so hard she started to cry. I was laughing too, giggling with a hand over my mouth. Her story was just so funny, so ridiculous, I couldn’t believe it had really happened to her. I-

I stopped laughing

Another dream.

Lucidity washed over me like a wave of Arctic seawater, dousing me with sudden sober clarity. A heartbeat passed and I couldn’t remember the story Lozzie had been telling, couldn’t remember how we’d gotten here, couldn’t remember a thing.

Lozzie wiped tears of laughter off her mushroom pale, elfin face. I stared for another heartbeat, then turned, and saw.

A wave of vertigo punched the breath from my lungs. I would have fallen over, if I hadn’t been sat down nice and safe in this ancient wooden armchair.

We sat atop the battlements of a truly titanic castle. Snow-capped mountains to awe any romantic reared up on either side of us, the castle itself wedged into the valley between, walls marching away in giant stone blocks to meet the mountainsides. Towers rose in solid, square vaults to our rear, stone and painted wood, wind-whipped by freezing air and linked by covered walkways. Distant figures passed here and there, some armoured in strange uniforms. I heard the crack of leather wings, distant and heavy, the bellow of creatures that might live in a place like this. Snow whirled in the valley beyond, coating a landscape hundreds of feet below.

Lozzie and I sheltered under a stonework overhang held up by pillars, sat on chairs and bundled up in comfy layers and huge fur hoods. Between us lay a small but merry fire burning in a grate, next to a pitcher of dark liquid and two glasses.

Tears welled in my eyes. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.

“Is this a real place?” I whispered.

“Yeah, of course it is.” Lozzie smiled at me in the afterglow of her laughter. “What did you think it was?”

“Isn’t this a dream?” I turned to her, barely able to tear my eyes away from the castle which surrounded us.

“Duh.” She rolled her eyes. “But it’s gotta be a real place, right? Belo-whatsit. I forget what it’s called. Who cares! You love castles, right?”

“I do. I-” My blood froze, all my lovestruck awe turned to venom in an instant. “Wait. How do you know that? Were you listening? Were you spying on us, on me and Raine?”

“You told me! You told me all about it. We were having so much fun, don’t get moody now. Anyway, I wasn’t finished. So the bear is dead, right, and the priest turns to me and-”

“I’m not going to remember this, am I?” I muttered to myself and ran a mittened hand over my face. “It’s a dream, of course you know I love castles, you’re a dream.”

“What? … Heather?” Lozzie looked crestfallen. “What do you mean, you won’t remember it?”

I stood up from the chair and cast about. “Of course dreams aren’t real,” I snapped, to myself, not Lozzie. “You’re schizophrenic, Heather, you-”

I slammed to a halt. I wasn’t crazy, not anymore. I blinked and swallowed and reminded myself of that, hard as I could, reminded myself of the last few weeks of my life, of Raine and Evelyn and Maisie and magic and demons.

Lozzie stood up too, almost bouncing to her feet, face worried and panicky. “Heather, Heather don’t go again, we were having so much fun! Please!”

I screwed my eyes shut, held them hard, clamped down and tensed every muscle and grit my teeth.

And woke up.


==


Darkness – but not silence, and not cold. I lay in Raine’s arms, on the edge of awareness, listening to her breathing. Another bad dream? The details drifted away.

Raine shifted against me and murmured in her sleep. My goodness, this did feel good. I still ached a little, in new and interesting ways.

Closed my eyes, went back to sleep.

Maybe I’d dream about castles.


==


We both had class the next morning. Raine decided it was best we try to have a normal day before we visited Evelyn.

How could anything ever be normal again?

“Heather? What are you grinning about?”

“Nothing, nothing! Just … I feel good.”

Goofy smiles kept sneaking onto my face all morning, as we woke up and ate breakfast and got dressed. I had sex last night, with a girl! I felt like a dopey teenager. I wanted to do it again.

From the moment I woke up in Raine’s arms the whole world felt different – and yet also the same. Raine and I shared constant touches, now imbued with secret meaning: the way she steadied me when I struggled out of my socks, the hesitant way I put my hand to her elbow, the gentle scratch of her fingers through my hair.

She got changed in front of me; I nearly lost my mind, hid behind my hands and peered out through my fingers, blushing terribly – then marvelling over her.

“You have abs.”

“Sure do,” Raine said. “Didn’t you feel them last night?”

“I wasn’t really paying much attention to your stomach.”

“Wanna touch?”

I thought I was going to have actual heart palpitations. I screwed up my courage and did what I must. I had the most unaccountable, uncouth urge to honk her boobs.

“I-I’m going to blow a gasket, Raine. Please, please, put some clothes on.”

Raine was the most smug I’d ever seen her. She relented and finished getting dressed while I swung my feet back and forth on her bed.

“Did that-” I stopped, afraid of sounding silly.

“Hm?”

“ … did that count as having sex?”

Raine raised an amused, puzzled eyebrow at me. “What else would it be?”

“I-I don’t know.” Another goofy grin took over my face and I had to hide it behind my sleeve.

Happy did not last the length of the road.

My own clothes seemed insufficient after last night, like squeezing back into shed skin. I didn’t say as much to Raine, concerned she might take that sentiment a little too seriously – but she saw the hesitation in my eyes as I picked up my own jumper. She offered me one of her polo necks, ever so slightly too large for me, and I felt the sweetest comfort as I pulled it on over my head and snuggled my face against her scent in the fabric. Swapping clothes carried a strange, unbounded intimacy I’d never thought possible before. I was wearing Raine’s things, in public.

We left the house together and once again I balked at the condition of the street: large untreated potholes and discarded cigarette ends, moss between the pavement slabs and empty beer cans in the gutter. The quiet of early morning rendered this place as placid as a wilderness.

Except for the spirit life.

As soon as we’d stepped from the front door and down the stubby little garden path – not much of a garden, scraggly untended weeds – twisted creatures had begun peering around corners and over brick walls, staring at me. I avoided eye contact with the tree-legged thing leaning over the opposite row of houses, ignored the trio of headless armless women floating in the next-door garden, turned my face away from the ape-like raw-red hooting ghouls gathering at the end of the road.

Raine must have seen the look on my face. “You holding up okay? We don’t have to walk if you’re not feeling up to it.”

“I’m fine, it’s not the ache.” I shook my head, one hand drifting unconsciously to my sternum. “How would we not walk, anyway?”

Raine gestured to one of the beaten-up old cars parked by the side of the road.

I frowned at her. “You’re suggesting stealing a car?”

“What?” She smirked and laughed. “No, what do you take me for? That’s mine.”

“Oh,” I managed, distracted by a clutch of pneuma-somatic tentacles waving from a nearby garden. “I didn’t know you could drive.”

“We can, if-”

“No. I need to walk.”

I would not be intimidated.

The spirit life did at least keep a respectable distance, as Raine and I walked hand-in-hand along the route to campus. The Fractal still worked. But apparently now I was the focus of utter fascination, in a way I had not been for almost a decade. All manner of unspeakable things paused and turned to watch us pass.

A few broke off from their ineffable routines, to follow.

“Heather?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I was seething with growing frustration, my earlier happiness turning to lead in my stomach.

“It’s the ghoolies, isn’t it?”

“ … yes. Since … since I spoke to that spirit on the roundabout, when we chased the Messenger, they’ve been … I don’t know. More curious than before. There’s a small crowd following us. Following me.”

I whispered the words, afraid any random passer-by would think me mad. Likely nobody cared. Not about me or Raine, or the fact we were holding hands, and certainly not whatever I muttered under my breath, but I couldn’t shake that decade-old injunction to not appear like a madwoman.

Raine stopped and looked over her shoulder, as if she could see them too.

“Off with you,” she said out loud.

“Raine!” I hissed.

She winked at me. “It’s the only way they’ll learn.”

“They won’t listen to- oh, for goodness sake.” I grit my teeth and stopped halfway down Barner’s street, between an Indian grocer’s and a shuttered hardware store. I turned around slowly.

My unwanted entourage had grown to five strong.

None of the really big ones. I wondered if that was related to mobility, or perhaps level of intelligence, then reminded myself they weren’t even biological. They didn’t have brains. Or did they? I knew nothing about pneuma-somatic life, how they worked, how they thought, what they were for. Evelyn didn’t know, so what chance did I have?

Two wolf-like things with lizard hindquarters and shaggy snouts formed the core, flanked by a big lumbering anteater-analogue made of crystal and nails. In the rear lurked a floating gas-bag, like a jellyfish, trailing venomous looking tentacles in a rainbow of sickly colours.

They had a leader, up front.

She – I instantly thought of it as a she, despite the absence of visible breasts or hips – was slender and poised like a dancer, humanoid figure cast in pitch-black flesh made from slick protoplasmic tar, bubbling and roiling, faintly luminous. A mass of thick tentacles rose from her back, waving in the air, tipped with pincers and stingers, sucking orifices and coiling fingers.

She had no facial features except for huge black eyes. Deep-sea fish eyes.

I squeezed Raine’s hand and fought to stare back.

“Heather?”

“Is there anybody around?” I hissed. Raine glanced up and down the street.

“Couple of blokes down the road. Not close enough to give a toss.”

I summoned every ounce of acting power I had, not much. Tilted my chin up, like Evelyn in her worst – or best – moments. Slid one foot out, widened my stance. Straightened my back, attempted to channel Raine’s confidence via sexual osmosis, as imperious as I could.

“Leave me alone.” I raised my voice. “Tell your friends to do the same.”

It worked. The spirit life dispersed. The wolf-things loped away under the pressure of my disapproval, while the gas-bag jellyfish just dissolved into thin air. The anteater monster lumbered away and slumped against a nearby traffic bollard. The Leader stared longer than her fellows, with those pelagic eyes, then seemed to incline her head and slink back off the way she’d came.

I breathed out and almost fell down, my knees shaking. Raine rubbed my back and asked if they were gone.

We went to class.


==


When her own seminar was finished, Raine waited for me outside two separate lecture halls for most of the morning, walking me between them, eating overcooked chips together in the too-bright, too-clean campus canteen. I made my apologies to bored professors for missing classes. They didn’t care. The university knew my medical history.

We went to see Evelyn, and my entourage returned.

Not the same spirits as before. Stilt-stalking watchers and pustulant bears and skittering balls of chitin, a crowd behind Raine and I as we took the route to Evelyn’s house. I kept my backward glances to a minimum, hid my growing nerves and my bitter, biting frustration.

“They’re back, aren’t they?” Raine murmured softly.

“ … you can tell?” I sighed. “I’m sorry, I wanted to relax with you. I felt so good this morning, best in years. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, Heather, it’s not your fault. Why not wave the warding sign at them?”

“I-I don’t know, Evee told me to keep it covered and I-”

Raine’s mobile phone rang and she fished it out of her jacket pocket. “Huh, speak of the devil.” She answered the call. “Hey Evee, we’re almost there.”

I sneaked a backward glance.

The Leader was back. She of the many tentacles and the roiling black protoplasmic tar-flesh. Staring at me. A mouth slopped open in what on a human would be her chest. No teeth. No lips. Just a hole. It wavered and wobbled and began to form silent words.

“Uh, Raine?” I tugged at her hand.

“Heather? Wait a sec, Evee, she’s- yeah, yeah okay, bye.” Raine killed the call and frowned down at me, concern written on her face. “Heather, uh, I don’t really understand this, but Evee- … Heather, what’s wrong?”

“Just walk faster.” I did my best not to look back.

“Heather, they can’t hurt you. Not with the warding sign on you. Not with me here.”

“You can’t even touch them,” I hissed.

I looked back. The Tentacled woman had pulled ahead of the crowd, closing the distance between us. The mouth in her chest sucked and slapped, speaking at me.

“Quick, before we get to Evee’s,” Raine said. “She said to tell you to be careful about spiders. She wasn’t really very clear, but said you’d made her promise to warn you?”

“What?” I blinked at her, trying not to look behind us. “Oh, uh, r-right-”

The Tentacled Woman reached out toward me with one of those sucker-covered tentacles.

“Walk- walk faster,” I hissed.

“ … we can run, if you like?” Raine said.

I shook my head, set my lips in a tight line. “No. No more running. I refuse to run.”

By the time we reached Evelyn’s front gate, I was panting and out of breath, the ache in my chest throbbing like a migraine in my diaphragm. Raine kept trying to get me to either slow down or run the rest of the way, and even offered to just pick me up and carry me. That last prospect was painfully tempting, but I would not run from this thing, or any other spirit, ever again.

I’d made no resolution, couldn’t pinpoint the moment my attitude had changed, surprised even myself.

Behind the apparently safe barrier of Evelyn’s low garden wall, bent over with my hands on my knees, I watched the Tentacled Woman walk right up to the boundary, staring at me and mouthing unwords from the dripping hole in her chest.

Other spirits clustered behind her, flapping pseudopods against the wall, yawning their drooling maws at me, snapping beaks shut on the air, until a crowd of pneuma-somatic life roiled and rioted.

I’d give them something worth seeing. Oh yes. Yes I would.

“Heather, woah, take a deep breath, okay?” Raine wedged her arm under my shoulders to help me stand straight. I nodded my thanks but didn’t look away from the spirit, the leader, whatever on earth she was. “What is it? Heather, talk to me, tell me about it.”

I told her. She followed my gaze.

“And what’s it doing?” she asked.

“Waiting.”

“Let’s go inside, we can get Evee to-”

I pushed away from Raine, gently peeled myself off her and forced my spine straight. I walked back down the garden path. I’d like to say I walked right up to within arm’s reach, but I didn’t. I stopped a nice safe distance away from the Tentacled Woman and my crowd of abhorrent admirers. Raine shadowed me the whole way, ready to catch me if my weakened knees gave out.

I rolled up my left sleeve and held out the Fractal.

The crowd recoiled as one. The Tentacled Woman backed up a step. The mouth in her chest continued flapping.

“Shut up!” I snapped.

The mouth stopped.

I took a deep breath, teetering on the verge of hysteria. Hadn’t wanted to snap like that, needed to be calm, contained, careful.

“Don’t follow me,” I said, my voice rising. Anybody who saw me could go file a complaint. “Don’t watch me. Don’t haunt me. Leave me alone. Or I shall begin to consider ways to hurt you.” I paused, had to ignore the pounding of my heart. “I don’t know if I can teleport you Outside, but I will find a way to try. I got laid! Go away!”

With Raine’s hand on my shoulder and the brooding hulk of Evelyn’s house at my back, standing in the weak grey autumn sunlight dappling the street, I waited as the crowd of pneuma-somatic life finally got the message. They loped and flopped and skittered and hurried away, scattering wide across the street and into the shadows and down the alleyways. I told myself I was defiant and powerful, protected and untouchable, but I just felt scared and confused.

The Tentacled Woman did not leave. She crossed to the far side of the road and sat down.

If she’d been a human, I’d have sworn she was sulking.

“Good enough,” I muttered. “They’re gone.”

Raine smirked. “You got laid, huh? That’s your big scary anti-demon weapon?”

I turned a mortified blush to Raine. “I’m sorry, I just- it slipped out- it seemed- It made sense in the moment.”

“Done wonders for your self-confidence.”

I sighed. “I think I need a hug.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Peace.

Such infinite tranquillity.

Obviously, I was meant to be here.

Lying on my back on a hillside of soft yellow grass, beneath a sky whorled with the most beautiful bruised purple, shaded by an unrolling blanket of night. Warm wind caressed my face and I dug bare toes into the dry soil. Muscles soft as butter, skin tingling, clear-eyed.

How had I gotten here?

Memory moved at the speed of cold honey. I flexed my legs and smiled at nothing.

The last thing I remembered was … staying the night at Evelyn’s house? No, after that, Raine and I had gone off together, and talked a lot, and she made me feel good and wanted and believed and all sorts of other emotions far too complicated for the Heather on the yellow grass hillside.

Then we’d decided to visit her place, to …

To have sex?

I should have felt embarrassed, or at least self-conscious, but the thought wafted by without affect, a notion I could chose to observe from a distance, or not at all.

Not at all. Yes, I let the idea go and watched it float away on the humid air, wisps of spun glass fluttering on the warm wind. Why hold onto anything, in this place? I sighed and rolled the back of my head against the soft grass.

Where was Raine, anyway?

Ah.

No.

Something else had happened. Something bad.

The veil of calm dropped away and I sat up, blinking and squinting and rubbing my eyes. My vision blurred, as if the image was lagging, as if too much attention had revealed the artifice of the world around me. Yet I felt no panic, no dislocation, no sense of being lost somewhere Outside, only a vague confusion. Even my emotions crawled at a snail’s pace.

Dark yellow hillsides unrolled to the horizon. The sky extended forever, lit from below in soft glowing purple. No sun. Two moons.

And sitting to my left, her.

The girl in the goat-skull mask.

She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, head tilted back to gaze up at the sky, so the curled horns of her mask pointed at the ground. No spirits attended her now, not like in that dirty, stagnant Sharrowford car park. She wore the same clothes, a dark striped hoodie with the sleeves pulled over her hands. Her long blonde hair trailed out over the grass.

“Where is this?” I asked. “Who are you?”

She turned to me. The skull’s eye holes showed only darkness. Then she reached up and removed the mask.

For a split-second, in my heart of hearts, I expected to see Maisie.

It wasn’t my sister.

An impish smile greeted me, set in a delicate featured, mushroom pale face. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, as if half asleep. I realised she was younger than me, perhaps only sixteen or seventeen. She brushed stray strands of that endless wispy hair out of her face and held the goat skull up again, pantomimed hiding behind it, then giggled and tossed it on the ground.

Fey and elfin, like some faerie apparition from a cautionary fireside tale.

I’d learn soon enough, I wasn’t far off the mark.

“You’re in a dream, dumbo,” she said.

“ … okay? I am?”

“We’ve been here for hours. Are you only just coming round? Jeeze, you’re so slow.” She let out a big theatrical sigh and flapped the loose ends of her sleeves. Her voice was high and light, perpetually amused. “Whatever.”

Through the thick, cloying blanket of numb emotion, I decided she was probably telling the truth.

This did feel like a dream. No idea where I was, no idea if Raine was safe, sitting with a nightmare figure from the Sharrowford Cult, but all I mustered was a detached floaty frustration.

“You can call me Lozzie.” She offered me her hand, pale white fingers poking from the end of her sleeve. “Or Loz. Or Lorrie. Lorry? Or late for dinner.”

“You want me to … ”

She sighed again, took my hand and shook it up and down. “There. That’s all proper and sealed then. This is the first time we’re meeting and all. Last time didn’t count.”

“Last time? Oh.”

More memory returned. I squinted as the heavy ropes of deadened affect lifted from my shoulders and worry snagged in the top of my chest. My head swam: Raine and I in Willow House, endless repeating corridors. Dead dogs and a baseball bat and stairwells and dead dogs and Raine kissing me and dead dogs and-

“Where’s- w-we were trapped. I- I have to find Raine-” I stared at the bizarre, elf-like girl next to me. “Where the hell is this?”

“I told you, it’s a dream!” Lozzie laughed and kicked her legs. “Did you forget already?”

“No-”

“Tell me your name before you wander off and wake up again? Hanging out here is cool and all, but I’d rather, you know, do stuff.”

“ … Heather,” I muttered. “Yes, this is a dream, isn’t it? Which means I’m asleep? Safe?”

“Heather! Wow. You’re named after a bush!”

Lozzie found this hilarious. She flopped forward in a bone-defying stretch, palms flat out in front of her as she laughed. She trailed off into a big sigh and looked almost sad for a second. “I did try to warn you, but getting through was kinda hard. I’m so glad you didn’t die and all that. I heard they even tried to shoot one of you.” She tutted. “Should have known that doesn’t work anymore. And thanks for not hurting Zheng. It’s not her fault when they tell her to do things. I’m so fond of her, please don’t be angry with her.”

I blinked at her, trying to process her words. If this was a dream, then she wasn’t real, right?

Lozzie hopped to her feet and bounced on one foot, full of energy. She bit her bottom lip. Almost cute, if I wasn’t so confused.

“So, Heather. Heather. Hey-ther. Where do you wanna go?”

“Go?”

“Yeah! Where do you wanna go? The whole universe is at our fingertips, you know? Here.” She held out her hand to me.

“Home. Or- Wherever Raine is. Awake. How do I wake up?”

Lozzie puffed out her cheeks in a moment of teenage sulk. “Boring.”

Before I could mount a defence, she pounced on me, bundled into me and knocked the air out of my lungs. She grabbed my hand, interlacing her fingers with my own. She was laughing and giggling, long hair everywhere. Her other hand wrapped around my waist and held on tight.

“Chocks away!” she yelled.

Reality blinked in slow motion.

Awake, I would have screamed. Dream-logic threw a protective barrier around my sanity, so I was spared witness to the truth of the process. When the blink finished, dark dusty red plains stretched off in every direction, under a high milky grey sky.

Still laughing, Lozzie picked herself up and dusted her hoodie off. I got to my knees, shaking and breathless from the transition.

“There, wow.” She broke into an innocent smile and waved her arms at the horizon. “It’s sort of barren and … dumb, but there it is. Who else gets to see this?”

“What? See what?”

“Mars. We’re on Mars. You’ve never been?”

“I … no. I’ve never been to Mars.”

Sluggish thought finally dropped away like a crust of dried tar. Great engine-plates of cognition revolved back to speed inside my mind. I stumbled to my feet and backed away from Lozzie, if that was even her real name, if she was even real. My breath caught as panic set in.

Her face fell with genuine disappointment.

“Awwww, come on, don’t go,” she said. “I thought you were … you know. Like me.”

“Like you?”

My heartbeat thudded in my chest. A pulse ran through living veins. Skin flexed. Breath flowed.

The dream shattered into a million shards.


==


For reasons which may be obvious I was never much of a morning person, but waking up from the dream of Lozzie was difficult on a whole new level.

Physically I was awake, the slow reanimational alchemy of bodily function and firing synapse, but for a long time I could not have moved if the Devil himself had shouted in my face. Awareness dawned with tentative creeping fingers, of bed covers bunched up around my stomach and a pillow underneath my head, and a familiar smell all around me.

I let out a very long groan. Then another.

Everything hurt.

A half-hearted attempt to roll onto my side transformed into a slow journey to a sitting position. I still couldn’t open my eyes, but I flopped at the covers to extract one arm so I could rub at the ache behind my sternum, a dull throbbing pain which seemed now to fill my entire chest cavity.

By slow degrees, I knuckled my eye sockets and cleared my vision.

“ … what.”

I was wearing a tshirt a size too large, with a logo on the front for a band called ‘Bikini Kill’. I’d never heard of them. Smelled like I’d worn it a little too long. Also shorts, but no underwear.

This wasn’t my room.

I’d never been here before.

Panic had only a split-second to work its magic, because I didn’t take long to figure out where I was. It wasn’t rocket science.

The double bed – new and plush and very comfortable – was by far the nicest thing in the room, except for the pile of philosophy books on the floor, but I’m biased when it comes to the merits and attractions of piles of books. One small window let in sunlight around a tatty curtain, which fell on ghastly old peeling wallpaper. The bedroom’s usual occupant had covered the walls with posters, mostly for bands, along with a pair of questionable saucy pinups of video game girls, and a huge map of the UK studded with thumbtacks and towns circled in pink highlighter.

A cute little set of coloured hand-weights lay in the corner, along with resistance bands and discarded exercise clothes. The room’s desk was made of bare MDF and fronted by a very battered swivel-chair, but on the desk itself sat a small laptop and some dog-eared college textbooks, next to a gigantic plush dinosaur, a hairbrush, and some nail files.

Raine’s leather jacket was draped over the chair.

I relaxed instantly.

I’m so easy.

“Raine?”

Raising my voice was a mistake; some joker had replaced my throat with sandpaper. I coughed and cast about for water, found none and attempted to get out of bed.

A singularly bad idea. I almost fell on my face. My legs worked, but not as I recalled legs were meant to. I sat on the edge of the bed and kneaded feeling back into my thighs for several minutes before I could stand. I checked myself over and found nothing amiss: no blood caked on my face, no missing fingers, no shaved head. The Fractal looked reassuringly fresh on my left forearm. My hair felt greasy and my bladder was full.

As I shuffled away from the bed, I almost tripped up a second time, on a tangled mess of blankets and cushions. Somebody had been sleeping on the floor. No prizes for guessing who.

I cracked the bedroom door and peered out into a stubby corridor, dotted with several other closed doors and terminated by a right angle turn to carpeted stairs, going down.

“Raine?” I croaked again, and kept one hand on the wall as I tiptoed forward.

The thin old carpet scratched at my bare feet. Somewhere down below a washing machine was thumping through a spin cycle. I reached the only window in the corridor and looked out on a street lined with terraced houses, half of them with windows boarded up. Potholes pockmarked the road. A sad, abandoned fridge stood on the pavement corner. Spirit life flitted and leapt across the old red slate rooftops, and on the other side of the road a sort of bulging ambulatory mushroom was busy climbing one of the houses.

I didn’t recognise this part of Sharrowford. A rough part. My earlier relief was wearing thin. Where was Raine? A dozen dark possibilities presented themselves.

A spirit flopped against the window.

I flinched, too wiped out and groggy for real shock. It was an ugly thing, like a bat but many times too large, face stuffed with dozens of eyeballs pointing in every direction. It scrabbled along the window glass and hissed at me.

“Shoo.” I showed it the Fractal. It took off sharpish.

When I looked round, another spirit was watching me too – inside the house. A bald green head, with six tiny pinprick eyes, peering around the edge of the wall where the corridor turned into stairs.

“You can go away too,” I said out loud.

It did.

It ducked back. When I reached the stairs, it had vanished back from whence it came. Thankfully.

“Raine?” I called down the stairs, then coughed and hacked and clutched at the ache in my chest.

She found me before I got much further.

Footsteps hurried up the stairs, taking three or four at a time, and Raine appeared in breathless rush. She was in tshirt and pajama bottoms, bare feet and a big smile.

“Heather, hey! You’re up? You’re actually up?”

I felt the sweetest wave of relief, so strong I sagged against the wall and smiled back at her. Raine was whole and not shot in the back of the head or pulled apart by tall women in trench coats. I stumbled forward and all but fell into her arms, pulled myself into a very selfish hug and buried my face in her shoulder.

God, but she smelled good. Warm faint body-scent. I put my arms around her middle and let out a groan. Raine laughed and rubbed my shoulders and let me flop against her for a minute before she eased me upright and peered at my face.

Her expression told me all was not right.

“W-what?” I managed.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“ … ”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” she repeated, exact same easy tone to her voice.

“Three.”

“And now?”

“Two.”

“And how about now?”

“You’re making a fist. Raine, what?”

She breathed a sigh, but it didn’t sound like relief. Wetting her lips with a flick of her tongue, she gently guided me back into what I’d correctly guessed was her bedroom. Raine sat me down on the bed again and gently touched my hair.

“Heather, stay right there, okay? Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

“I saw a spirit indoors,” I croaked.

“You saw what?”

“I saw a spirit.”

“Oh, yeah. This room is warded, but the rest of the house is free-range. Best just sit there now, okay?”

“Mm.”

“I’ll be right back. I promise.”

She was gone for only a minute, rapid footsteps down the stairs and back up again, and returned with a glass of water and a flashlight. She waited as I drank the water, then shined the flashlight in my eyes and peered at my pupils. I squinted and grumbled.

“Okay, right, that’s good,” Raine muttered more to herself than me. “Heather, what’s your full name? Say it for me, please?”

“Heather Lavinia Morell. I’m nineteen years old. I have a twin sister called Maisie. You’re Raine and I’m in your bed.”

A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. “That you are. Not in the way I wanted you though.”

“Oh, shush.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like hell.”

Raine held up three fingers again. “How many?”

“I’m not concussed. Just unspeakably groggy.”

“Yeah, of course. But I have to make sure you’re actually back this time.”

“ … what?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

I furrowed my brow. This was too hard right now. “I had a weird dream. Uh, before that … I did brain-math again. You were fighting a scary tall woman. I grabbed you and … we went poof. I assume I passed out?”

Raine sat down on the bed and touched my knee. I liked that very much. I would have liked it more without the expression as if she was about to deliver news of a terminal illness.

“Heather, you’ve been out cold for two days.”

“What? Raine, what?” I gaped, suddenly a lot more awake. A sinking feeling pulled at the base of my stomach. “And you didn’t take me to a hospital?”

“You told me not to.”

I blinked at her. She shrugged and smiled in sheepish apology. “Out cold is probably a little dramatic, I admit. You were waking up to use the toilet, and you’d eat or drink anything I put in your hands, but you were like a sleepwalker. You barely spoke. Your eyes were unfocused all the time, lights on but nobody home. You just slept and slept. And you said no hospital. You don’t remember any of that?”

A horrible sense of lost time and missing memory settled over me. “I don’t remember a thing.”

Raine put her arm around my shoulders. She smelled so good, I wanted to lean into her. “I doubt the NHS has standard treatment guidelines for supernatural brain-strain.”

“I guess so.”

“Hey, Heather.” Raine spoke quieter than before, intense and serious. “Thank you.”

“W-wha-”

“That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anybody do, including myself.” She broke into a grin. “Just don’t do it again, okay?”

I shrugged and averted my eyes. Found it very hard to feel like I’d done a brave or clever thing. I was just glad she wasn’t hurt. “I might not wake up next time. Yes, I get it.”

“You’ll wake up and knock ‘em dead next time.” Raine kissed my forehead. I felt myself start to blush; everything was still in working order then. “I need to call Evee, let her know you’re awake.” She got up and found her phone on the desk.

Their conversation didn’t last long.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Trust me, Evee’s glad you’re okay,” Raine said, and I heard a sigh behind her voice. “She’s uh, busy. Her particular way of showing she cares. Don’t worry about it right now.”

I should have had a million questions, should have been buzzing with tension and fears, but before I had time to think about anything else, we discovered I was hungry enough to eat a live horse.

“I’ve got microwave chicken nuggets downstairs,” Raine offered. “Chocolate cookies too, or I can whip you up a killer sandwich or two. If you want something more, there’s a Greggs like five minutes away, but I don’t really want to leave you alone.”

“Please don’t.”

The ache in my chest felt so bad that walking to the bathroom and back was quite a challenge. Apparently Raine’s housemates were all out at the moment, but I was more concerned about the spirit life which might be hanging out in her kitchen. She suggested I lie back down and nap while she made food.

“No. I’ve slept enough.”

“D’you want coffee then?”

“That would be heavenly.”

She left me with another affectionate kiss on the forehead.

“Shout if you need me. Feel free to rummage, if you get bored.” She nodded at the pile of books on the floor, winked at me, and gently eased the bedroom door shut. A couple of minutes later I heard her bustling around in the kitchen.

For a while I simply sat and soaked in my aches and pains, but then decided I needed a distraction. I pulled myself slowly out of the bed covers again to poke through Raine’s philosophy books. They were all second-hand, battered old paperbacks and ex-library books, filled with highlighter lines and pencil notes. Critique of Pure Reason lay on her desk, the same one I’d seen her reading on the morning we first met. It was filled with torn post-it note bookmarks. Next to it lurked a dog-eared copy of The Conquest of Bread, only slightly less inundated with yellow tags.

My bare feet felt freezing. An anaemic trickle of warmth ran from the modern radiator underneath the window. I padded over to Raine’s cheap chest of drawers, told myself I wasn’t intruding, and went diving for a pair of socks.

She owned a lot of band tshirts, some very comfy looking polo neck sweaters, and a pair of highly impractical leather trousers which I marvelled at for a moment. I blinked past underwear and bras and reached into the back of the top drawer for a pair of thick black socks.

My hand brushed cold metal. I peered underneath the socks.

A handgun.

Raine had a pistol stuffed in the back of her sock drawer.

A weird little snub-nosed thing, black and metallic. I stared at it for a long moment, then selected a pair of socks and closed the drawer.

Raine returned a few minutes later with the promised double plateful of chicken nuggets and chocolate cookies. She ducked back downstairs to fetch coffee for both of us, came back and handed me a steaming mug, kissed my forehead again, touched my hair.

I tried to imagine her holding a gun, shooting a person.

It was surprisingly easy.

She sat crossed legged on the bed, opposite where I’d tucked the covers up around my knees, told me to eat and take it slow, take it easy, we didn’t have anywhere to be today. She didn’t have to encourage me, I was so hungry my stomach growled at the smell of food.

“Borrowed your socks,” I said, and poked one foot out from the covers to show her.

“Oh yeah?” Raine leaned forward to goose my toes. I giggled involuntarily and jerked my foot back.

“Raine! No tickling!”

“That is one promise I am unable to make.”

“I couldn’t help … I mean … I saw your … Raine, there’s a gun in your sock drawer.”

“Is there?” She raised her eyebrows and paused in thought. “Oh yeah, there is, isn’t there. Forgot where I put that.”

“You forgot where you hid an illegal firearm? Raine, truncheons and knives are one thing, but that gun is illegal to even own. You could go to prison. Where on earth did you get it?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve had it for years. It’s fine, Heather, it’s just insurance.”

“That’s what you said about the truncheon. Not two hours later you beat a monster to death in front of me. Don’t jinx us again.”

Raine nodded, as if my paranoia made sense.

“I mean,” I tried to explain. “I’m not scared by it, I just don’t understand why … ”

Oh, but I did understand why Raine owned a gun.

Three days ago I wouldn’t have, but I did now. Exhaustion and hunger and chest pains had conspired together to smother the emotional impact of the Willow House Loop, but with food in my belly and caffeine in my veins and socks on my feet, the weight of memory landed on me like a ton of bricks. I put down a half eaten cookie and swallowed, suddenly short of breath. Yes, I understood very well why Raine might need a gun.

Raine recognised my reaction before I figured out what was happening. She scooted over next to me and put her arm around my shoulders, forced me to meet her eyes. “Hey, Heather, Heather, it’s fine. We’re safe, it’s over. It’s over. And hey, if it happens again, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

I nodded at her. Forced myself to take big deep breaths. “I’m fine, I’m fine, just … shock. Finally hit me.”

“I wish I’d had the gun. Haven’t carried it around in years.” She cracked a grin. “Could have just shot tall dark and bitch-face in the head and be done with her.”

I rallied a small laugh. Big effort. “Have you done that before? Have you ever used it?”

“Couple of times. Long story. Didn’t go well, but better than the alternative.”

“Thank you, yes, thank you.” I eased away from her arm. “I need some space to breathe. This is a lot to process. It just … hit me all at once, that’s all.”

Raine stood up and pulled over the chair from her desk. She sat on it sideways, facing me. “Don’t think about it for now, yeah? We’re just two girls hanging out, nothing more to worry about. Eat some junk food, then we can go downstairs and play video games. We’ve got a PS4 hooked up to the telly in the sitting room, s’pretty cool, I’ve actually got this one game I think you’ll love.”

“What happened after I passed out?” I asked. “Did you carry me here? This is your place, right?”

Raine winced and cleared her throat. “Yeah, it is my place. Long story short, I had to think real fast. You were out cold, we were both covered in blood, I needed to clear your airways. We popped out right in the middle of the street, miles from campus.” She blinked. “Uh, weird, weird feeling, your dimension-hopping voodoo. Span my head right around.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be! You saved us. Anyway, miracle I even got you back here without getting stopped and questioned. No princess carry, sadly, so you didn’t miss any fun. Managed to avoid awkward questions from my housemates too. Once you were here, I didn’t want to risk moving you. They probably think I’ve been keeping a sex slave up here the last two days.”

“Oh! Oh, your leg!” It came back to me in a rush of concern, a tightness in my chest. “You were bleeding so much. You-”

“Ahhh it’s fine, barely a scratch.”

Raine tugged down the waistband of her pajama bottoms and cocked one leg toward me. I swear, my eyes almost popped out of my head. I didn’t know where to look – the curve of her hip, the soft white of her underwear, the edge of her pubic mound, or the extensive bandage-and-gauze wound dressing wrapped around her lower thigh.

“W-w-what about, uh, um i-infection?” I completely failed to keep my cool.

“Once you were safe, I just rocked up to A&E at Sharrowford general, told them I’d been bitten by a strange dog. Cleaned it out and gave me a shot and some antibiotics. Muscle’s a bit stiff but the scar’ll look cool as hell.” She grinned, then caught the look on my face. “Heather?”

“M-maybe don’t flash your panties at me?” I blushed furiously. “I mean, do, yes, please, but warn me first?”

Raine laughed and pulled her pajama bottoms back up with a snap of waistband elastic. “Oops. Bit too much stimulation, yeah?”

I shook my head and huffed. “Oh shut up.”

I couldn’t bring myself to voice the other obvious question, whether I had stripped and dressed myself in Raine’s old clothes or if she’d had to do it for me. My dignity already lay in tatters but I clung to what I could. She’d laundered my other stuff and my coat, and found my apartment key to fetch me a spare set, but I couldn’t summon the energy to get changed yet. Raine also presented me with Maisie’s tshirt, carefully sealed inside an extra-large food bag. I thanked her but asked her to put it away, I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for that right now.

“Where did you get the gun, really?” I asked, an effort to occupy my thoughts. “I thought it was supposed to be impossible to get handguns in England?”

Raine bit a chicken nugget in half and raised her eyebrows at me. “Serious question?”

“Yes.”

“It’s easy if you’ve got the right connections. I don’t anymore, but I did for a couple of years. Round when I met Evee. I bought it off a dodgy man in a pub in Crawley, down in Sussex, for about two hundred quid.” She ate the rest of the nugget and shrugged. “Strictly speaking, Evee bought it. Was her money. Or, uh, her dad’s. Haven’t thought about that in a while. Weird, huh?” She raised an eyebrow at me, then smirked. “Heather? See something you like?”

I realised I’d been staring.

“I’d never seen anybody do that before.” The truth behind my feelings slipped out.

“Do what?”

I opened my mouth, struggled to put it into words, tripped over the few points of reference I had. “Fight. What you did, I … ”

She was beautiful, muscle in motion like poetry. I clutched memories to me, of her swinging that length of metal pipe, her flushed face, grinning and loving every second of it. She gave me a terrible case of the shivers, and not in a bad way.

God help me, Raine was irresistible.

I felt in my chest, in my gut, and – forgive my crudity – in my crotch.

If I hadn’t been wiped out and stuffing myself with food, if I wasn’t three days unwashed and brain-strained by hyperdimensional math, if my chest didn’t ache like a abused drum, I would have been powerless to resist the urge. I was in her house, her room, her bed, wearing her clothes. I had no courage, of course, couldn’t have jumped her myself even if well and whole, but I doubt she would have given me much choice in the matter.

On some instinctive, animal level I knew her concern and care for my wretched state was the only reason she wasn’t trying to screw my tiny little brains out of my head right now. I felt it in the way she touched me, the unadorned sensuality of the way she looked at me, the closeness of our bodies. Simple, blunt, universal things I’d never experienced before. Felt like my nerves were wired with electrical current. Only the weight of exhaustion and chest pains kept me from dissolving into a blushing, stuttering mess of sexual tension.

The fact she wasn’t even trying made it so much worse.

Raine was nothing like the sort of girl I’d spent my teenage years assuming I’d be attracted to. She wasn’t my ‘type’, though I’d barely had the psychological freedom to spend much time thinking about personal preferences. I’d always imagined a girl more like Evelyn, or at least how Evelyn had first seemed to me, fluffy and cuddly and tucked away with her books. Raine was the polar opposite of everything I’d ever expected of myself.

I was turned on by her violence; I finally faced that fact.

“Hey, everybody’s good at something,” Raine was saying, a sheepish grin on her face. “I just happen to be good at kicking arse and taking names.”

“You killed those people,” I said softly.

Raine sobered up in a heartbeat. Her grin died and she nodded at me. “They were going to hurt us, Heather, or hand us over to people who would. It was us or them.”

“I know that. I know that, rationally. But they must have had … I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Parents, families, friends. They were people, and now they’re not. I don’t know how to feel about that.”

“It’s my responsibility,” Raine said. “I made the choice. Not you.”

I sighed and almost said that wasn’t helpful, but then I realised: Raine had done this before, hadn’t she? She’d been protecting Evelyn for years before she even met me.

“Would you have killed Twil?”

Raine grimaced and shrugged. “I don’t think I could. I mean, I could have a silver bullet made, but honestly? I ain’t sure even that would put her down.”

“In principle, would you?”

“If she was going to hurt you or Evee? Absolutely. No question.” Raine took a deep breath. “But it turns out she’s not. I was wrong about her. And hey, I wouldn’t have just bumped her off without being sure. I’m not a cold blooded murderer.”

I stared at her and thought very carefully. Stared at those big warm brown eyes and the soft curve of her cheekbones, the rich chestnut hair and the way her hips curved under her pajamas.

“Do I scare you?” Raine asked. I looked up and expected a touch of swagger on her face, but instead found straight laced sincerity.

“No, no you don’t. That’s what worries me,” I said.

Raine raised her eyebrows in silent question.

“It … I find it attractive,” I admitted. “Not the killing itself, I’m not that broken, and I don’t think you genuinely enjoy that part either?” I spoke those last few words slowly, haltingly, one eye fixed on Raine. She shook her head. “Right, well. I don’t know what it means. I never liked action girls or anything before. This is entirely your fault.”

Raine couldn’t keep a stupid grin off her face. She pantomimed a bow with a flourish of one hand. “A blame I am destined to shoulder.”

“Oh, shush.”

She straightened up again, most of the tension gone. “Look, seriously, Heather. I don’t want my, uh, talents to mess with your head. Beating up those guys, maybe I did kill a couple of them, but it was my responsibility. If that makes you uncomfortable, we can talk about it, I respect that. But it was not – and will not ever be – your fault. It’s mine.”

“Does it bother you?”

She shrugged. “Not really.”

Not for the first time, I wondered if Raine was a psychopath.

I also decided I didn’t care.

I never claimed to be smart.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

First, we retraced our steps.

More accurately, Raine retraced our steps and led me in her wake. She left no question as to who was going first, back through the double-doors to the corridor of Not-Willow-House.

A familiar transformation came over her – watchful, alert, tense. My hand felt clammy in hers, my heart in my throat. In the fake corridors she eased each set of doors open with the tip of her boot, waited for any nasty surprises to jump out at us before proceeding.

The Medieval Metaphysics room was gone. As was the back staircase and all the windows; each set of internal double-doors led to another identical stretch of whitewashed corridor, with four classroom doors on each wall and a noticeboard full of philosophy department flyers. Raine tried the door handles, but they didn’t even turn.

After seven identical corridors, the doorway to the main stairwell appeared on the left again. We checked, same endless abyss up and down.

“ … is this the same set of stairs?” I asked. “We went in a straight line, how can we be back here?”

“Time for an experiment, I think.” Raine pulled a Swiss Army Knife and a pen from her jacket.

“We don’t have time to muck about, Raine, we need to get out of here.”

She held up a finger and smiled, beamed that endless confidence directly into my brain. “When lost in the woods, the most important thing is … ?”

I shrugged. “Shout for help? Oh, no, pick a direction and stick to it?”

“Good guess, but not quite enough for the biscuit. Most important thing is: don’t panic. Take a drink, eat a cereal bar, calm down, get your bearings.”

“We don’t have any of those things. Also this isn’t the woods.”

“Yeah, but it’s basically the same principle. Thank Ray Mears for that one. I’m dead serious, the most important thing is don’t panic.”

“I’m … actually not panicking now.” I frowned at myself, took a deep breath. “I’ve done this too many times before, it may as well be routine. At least I’m not alone this time.”

Raine reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “Like a Slip?”

“I guess. This doesn’t feel like one though.”

“Here, time for science.”

Raine cut a big X on the inside of the stairwell door with her knife. I grimaced, because it still looked exactly like Willow House. Vandalism irked all my well raised sensibilities.

Back in the looping corridor, Raine tugged one of the flyers off the noticeboard.

“Ah, weird.”

“What? What is it?”

Raine showed me the flyer. “Guess they can’t copy fine detail.”

“What are you talking about … ”

I blinked at the flyer. Total gobbledygook. Backward letters, jumbled words, sentences on top of each other. A photocopy error from hell, as if an alien had seen human writing upside down and from a distance, then recreated it with no understanding of form or purpose. Every flyer showed the same manic mash of text.

Somehow that disturbed me far more than being trapped.

“Put- p-put it away.”

Raine tore down the rest of the flyers. In the next stretch of identical corridor they were pinned back on the noticeboard, but in the seventh – next to the stairwell entrance again – they lay scattered on the ground. Raine’s minor vandalism had not been magically repaired.

We checked the stairwell; X still marked the spot.

“We’re inside a loop?”

“Right, don’t worry.” Raine squeezed my hand. “Evee’s working on this. If I can’t find a way out, she’ll have it solved in no time. Like being stuck in an lift together, just with far less opportunity for necking in secret, eh?”

Raine flashed me a cheeky grin. I tried to smile back and enjoy the joke, but my damnable curiosity had lighted on a point of principle, perhaps to distract myself and keep the panic tamped down.

How does a physical loop work?

“Like a … mobius strip,” I murmured.

My imagination summoned an image of the structure, ruminated on how a corridor could follow a straight line yet also loop around to the same point. The implications of a closed spacial loop teased at dangling threads in the back of my mind. A physical impossibility, but one I could just about picture, if I dug hard enough.

Raine was saying something, as the answer bubbled up from the oily depths of my subconscious.

“Oh,” I said. “I think I know how they made this-”

A blinding spike of pain rammed into my head, right behind my eyes. I let go of Raine’s hand and doubled up, chucked the contents of my guts onto the carpet. Lucky I’d barely eaten anything this morning.

Of course I knew how this loop worked – the Eye had taught me.

Stupid, stupid Heather. Those concepts are radioactive waste, poison, death.

“Heather? Heather, what’s wrong? Heather?”

I sucked in air and clutched my aching stomach as I forced the thought back down. Raine’s helping hands pulled me upright and held on hard as I clutched at her for support.

“Are you Slipping?”

“No, no.” I shook my head and wiped my mouth on the back of my sleeve. Disgusting, but I had no other choice right now. Hardly the best time to need a bathroom, while stuck in a pocket dimensional loop set up by dangerous people. “I- ugh, my head.”

“Take a moment. Breathe.”

“I know how this place works. I think. The math- the principles underlying it. The Eye’s lessons, it’s in there somewhere.” I tapped my head and groaned again.

“Hey, it’ll be okay, I’m gonna get you out of here.”

“I think-” I swallowed. “I-I think I can get us out, but-”

Another wave of nausea slammed into my gut. I leaned forward and struggled to force the thoughts down, don’t touch, don’t touch them. Buried deep in the layers upon layers of the Eye’s lessons lurked the exact mathematical operation required to translate Raine and I out of this space, but it was white-hot to the touch.

I cringed, terrified of pain, of my own suggestion.

When I’d saved Evelyn, dragged her back from Outside, that had been life or death. This? We were just lost.

“Heather, no, don’t try it.”

“But I can,” I whined. “You said you wouldn’t stop me from being strong. Y-you-”

“And you will be.” She rubbed my back, helped ease the nausea out. “But right now you’re untrained or unpractised or un-whatever-you’re-going-to-be, and this is a trap. If you try the mind-magic and it doesn’t work, I’ll have to carry you. Even if it does work, we don’t know what it’ll do to you. Start small, remember?”

“What if we can’t get out?”

“Keep it as an emergency back-up option. In the meantime, you can rely on me, okay? It’s okay to rely on me.”

I nodded, and felt such secret relief and secret shame both together.

“Think about all the things we’re gonna do later today,” Raine said. “When we get out of here, yeah?”

“How about bathe and sleep? And wash my mouth out.”

Raine laughed. “Sure thing.”

She waited until I was steady on my feet, then set about phase two of her experiment to get us out. She flicked open the screwdriver head on her Swiss Army Knife and set to work unscrewing the hinges from one of the locked classroom doors in the fake corridor. I watched her wiggle the screws out as I tried to clean the taste of vomit from my mouth, occupying my mind with anything except how this place worked.

“Raine? Do you think this is about me?”

“Can’t speak for anybody else, but most things I do lately are about you.” She cracked a grin and I warmed inside, even if I didn’t have the energy to blush.

“Oh don’t, not right now.” I tutted. “I mean this place. This trap. Is this for me?”

Raine frowned, took my question very seriously. My thoughts were already racing.

“I mean, those people yesterday, the cultists,” I said. “They did this, right? They lured the Demon Messenger for some reason. Is this revenge for interrupting them or … or what?”

Raine shook her head slowly. “Smart money says the Sharrowford Cult has no idea who you are, and I aim to keep it that way. Last night, my guess is they knew precisely zip until we were already in deep.”

“What makes you so confident?”

“This kinda thing?” She gestured at the corridor, the loop, the trap. “This is why I’m here. My guess is this was meant for Evee.”

“ … if you say so.” I mulled over the idea as Raine finished dismantling the door’s lower hinge. She dusted off her hands and stood up.

“Job’s a good’un. Let’s find out what’s behind door number one.” Raine grinned at her own dumb joke and waggled the door hinges free. She wedged her fingertips into the thin gap around the frame.

I had a sudden terrifying vision of a howling void on the other side, of Raine sucked through by decompression, of a hand reaching for us from the darkness revealed.

None of those things happened.

Behind the door was a blank brick wall.

“Goddamn.” Raine grunted and let the door fall with a clatter. The noise set my teeth on edge. “Guess we’re in a cartoon now. Huh.”

“Great.”

Raine tapped the bricks with her knife, but for all we knew the wall was a mile deep. She shrugged and shot me an ironic smile, then unfolded the blunt bottle-opener attachment on her knife and dug it into part of the door-frame. She ran it up and down, wiggled it back and forth, until she yanked part of the frame away – a length of steel rod. She weighed it in one hand, swished it through the air, and nodded approval.

My chest tightened. “Do you really think you’re going to need that?”

“Never know. Better safe than sorry.”

Raine had an idea. She took my hand and we walked back out to the endless stairwell. I averted my eyes from the sight as she stared into the abyss.

“Up or down?” she asked.

“ … you’re asking me to choose? What’s to choose?”

“Serious answer? On one hand, your guess is as good as mine, but on the other, you’ve been outside reality on the regular, I haven’t. So, considering everything you know – up, or down?”

I sighed at Raine and held her gaze for a moment, but she seemed completely serious. “Um … down gets dark, and that’s not good. Obviously not fit for human habitation. Up is at least slightly less unsettling.”

“Up it is then. Just focus on your feet, or on mine, don’t look over the side. We’re gonna be fine.”

She led the way up the flight of stairs to the next floor, my clammy little hand tight in hers. I was fairly certain that Raine had no idea how to escape this place, and I was also fairly certain all this activity was just to keep me occupied, stop me from panicking while Evelyn did the real work to get us out. I appreciated it all the same.

“How are you not scared?” I asked.

“Ahhh, I’ve been in far worse places than this. Like Evelyn’s house, the one she grew up in. At least this place isn’t full of monsters.”

“Don’t tempt fate, please.”

“Fate can taste my boot leather. We’ll be fine.”

The next floor was identical to the previous, the same entrance to the same repeating corridors, the same flickering strip lights, the same X Raine had marked on the door with her knife. A perfect loop.

Except for one rather significant addition.

No monsters.

Worse: people.

Five young men waited with their backs to us as we emerged into the fake corridor. Alerted by the sound of the door swinging open, they all jumped and turned and stared. One put his fists up, then shook himself and lowered them again. They looked almost as confused as I felt.

“Stay behind me,” Raine whispered.

As if I would have done anything else. Groups of strange men were not at the top of my list of approachables even in normal situations. What did she think I was going to do, ask for directions?

They didn’t seem anything like the sort of people one might encounter inside a dimensional pocket trap; they’d have been more at home standing around on a street corner in one of the rougher parts of Sharrowford, admiring a blinged-out car, all baseball caps and pints of hair gel and too much gold jewelry.

Each one wore a high-vis vest, stretched over a puffer jacket or shrugged on around a hoodie. One of them had draped it over his shoulders like a cape, and another had wrapped his around his arm.

On every vest, the Fractal.

Evee’s cavalry?

No, I quickly corrected myself. The symbol only looked like the Fractal. Different design. I’d memorised every last angle of the Fractal by now, refreshing it on my left arm every night. The symbols on the vests had been scrawled in a hurry, with marker pen, a different arrangement of lines from a branch shaped the wrong way.

One of the men turned to the others and thumbed over his shoulder. “I thought she was meant to come from that way?”

“Definitely not her.”

“Yeah, there’s two of them for a start.”

“Shitshow already, this job.”

“Everyone shut up,” one shouted over the rest. He stepped toward us. A habitual leader, I guessed. Chunky fellow, overweight but not sagging, stubble on his chin and big blunt fingers raised in an open-handed gesture. He turned an easy, friendly smile on us. “Alright, you two? Lost like we are, yeah? Funny old bloody place, innit? You uh … just you two, yeah? Seen anybody else around here?”

“Yeah,” Raine said. “There’s a girl passed out downstairs, actually.”

The fat guy’s forehead creased into a frown. One of his friends in the back piped up. “She’s having you on, Mark.”

“Fuck’s sake, no names. No fucking names,” the fat guy snapped over his shoulder.

“Where’s the way out?” Raine asked, low and soft.

The fat guy shot a glance back at his posse. One of them shrugged, another suggested telling us, a third one had a disgusting glint in his eye. Even with Raine holding my hand, with her by my side, with my knowledge of what she could do, I felt an animal need to be elsewhere, not stuck in a confined space with several large, threatening people. My heartbeat pulsed in my throat and cold sweat broke out down my back.

“Raine,” I whispered, barely able to raise my voice above a trickle. She ignored me as the men conferred. My throat tightened. “Raine.”

“Who’s gonna miss two kids, Mark?” the wise guy in back said.

He pulled his weapon first. That broke whatever inhibition had held them back. They were all armed – three big knives, a baseball bat, and an optimistic pair of knuckle dusters.

Raine grinned and idly raised the steel rod she’d pulled off the broken door.

“Alright love, come on,” fat guy said, same easy smile as he opened his arms wide, despite holding a knife. “Put that down now, don’t be silly, we just need to make sure you’re not hiding anything. Then you can be on your way, yeah?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He lunged at Raine.

I think I screamed.

Five seconds, maybe ten, and it was all over. Too fast for me to think about. This was nothing like killing the monster in Evelyn’s house two weeks ago, or the scuffles with Twil yesterday, or even Raine’s brave attempts to do violence on the Messenger. This was a real fight, nothing like in books or films, no flourishes or heroics.

Blood, the sound of impacted meat, the strangely soft crack of broken bones.

I think Raine killed two of them. She didn’t seem to care. We didn’t hang around long enough to find out.

She was very, very good at it.

They barely touched her, a glancing blow to her upper shoulder and a brief handful of her jacket, which she punished with broken fingers and a shattered collarbone. When it was done, four of the men lay on the floor, two of them not moving. The fat man, the leader, was slumped face down with the back of his skull caved in like an egg. Blood soaked into the thin carpet. The last man standing backed away and dropped his knife, knuckles bleeding and split from where Raine had smashed his hand.

“Alright, alright, okay, yeah, okay, alright,” he was repeating, over and over.

Raine grinned.

She was flushed and breathing hard, bobbing from foot to foot like a boxer, weighing the metal rod in her hand again. She stooped down and pulled the baseball bat out of one of the men’s hands, kicking away his limp attempt to stop her. She hefted the bat and let out a long, shuddering breath.

I was shaking all over, hand to my mouth. I’d unconsciously backed away until I’d hit the door, adrenaline and panic clawing at my stomach and chest.

“Raine?” I squeaked. At least one corpse blocked my route to her.

“I’ll be right there. Promise. Gotta finish this,” she said.

“No, no you don’t have to,” the last survivor said, his hands out to ward her off. He backed away toward the rear double-doors. “It’s cool, we’re done. They’re not paying us enough for this, you’re not even the kid we’re meant to find. Alright? Alright?”

“Who are you meant to find?” Raine snapped off.

He frowned and thought it over for a second, so Raine raised the metal rod and grinned all the wider.

“Okay, okay! Fuck! Fucking hell, you- okay, shit. A blonde girl, uni student, uh, one leg, missing hand, uh, I-I-” He kept backing up as he spoke, one hand groping for the doors behind him.

“Who sent you?”

“Ugh, Adam Gore. He’s just a fixer though. I don’t know who this job is for, okay? I swear, I don’t know. Don’t fucking hit me.”

“How do we get out?” Raine said.

He pointed at his high-vis vest. “They gave us these, right-”

The double-doors behind him burst open and a hand swatted him aside with the power of a wrecking ball. His head bounced off the wall with a sickening crack and he collapsed to the floor

I realised in a rush of horror that these men had been a mere layer of ablative meat, to slow Evelyn down, until the real killers could arrive.

The tall woman in the full-body trench coat, from last night, stepped through the doors and lowered the hand she’d used to murder our would-be attacker. She moved with robotic slowness. She was even taller up close. I revised my estimate, perhaps almost seven feet from tip to toe. Only her eyes showed, between a scarf around her face and a hood pulled low over her head. She fixed on us with cold empty precision.

“Uh, Heather.” Raine took a step back. “Back up, through the door, now.”

I couldn’t move, not without Raine.

The tall woman was not alone.

Nightmare hounds nosed through the door behind her, gathered at her ankles, amalgamations from the worst depths of my pneuma-somatic visions, built along canine principles but from parts of the wrong creatures; some showed metal rivets and stitching between grey lizard-flesh and shaggy hide, plastic hinges at komodo-dragon jawlines, steel-reinforced legs and eyeballs of incorrect size rolling loose in their sockets. Dripping stingers whipped through the air and drool looped from muzzles unable to close properly.

The tall woman jabbed a gloved finger at Raine and then at the floor.

“You want me to drop these?” Raine hefted the metal rod and her stolen baseball bat.

A nod.

“Think I’ll hold onto little slugger here, but you can have the other one, sure.”

Raine span and hurled the metal rod at the tall woman’s face, a full-body javelin throw with every ounce of her strength. She overbalanced and caught herself at the last moment.

The tall woman jerked her head aside in a sudden flicker of speed. The metal rod clattered against the door. The hounds surged forward.

Raine span on her heels, leapt the corpse or two between her and I, and bundled me through the door so hard I almost went sprawling in the stairwell.

“Heather, up, up the stairs!”

“Where- where do we even go?!” I cried.

“Just up!”

Raine pushed me and I went, but we didn’t get more than three paces before the first hound burst through the doors and went for Raine, snapping and growling. She turned and dashed its brains out with a swing of the baseball bat. The hound yelped, a pitiful, terrible sound, and went down in a heap of limp meat and muscle.

I tripped on the stairs, shaking with fear and adrenaline. The next couple of minutes descended into a blur of terror.

I could barely keep my head on straight, let alone form a coherent plan. If you’ve never been in the middle of a genuine melee then you can’t imagine what it feels like. Everything happens too fast, no time to think and react. I scrambled up the stairs, banging my knee and scuffing my hands.

Raine held the hounds off, setting about herself with the bat and her boots, kicking heads and breaking legs and smashing rib cages. She caught one hound by the throat with her free hand and shoved it bodily over the railing, sending it tumbling into the abyssal stairwell. Another one she hit so hard it bowled down two of its fellows. The stairwell filled with the sound of wood hitting meat and twisted canine yelping.

Raine didn’t come away unscathed this time – the nightmare hounds took a couple of chunks out of her, a bite in the leg and another in her forearm, leather jacket turning away the worst of the teeth.

In the heat of the moment I thought her brave.

No, it wasn’t bravery. It was joy.

She was grinning and covered with sweat and one hundred percent in her element. Totally focused, a state of perfect flow, like this was what she was made for. After six hounds dead or wounded, they backed off, slinking away and growling from the corridor.

Raine swept a hand through her hair and let out a long breath.

“Y-your leg.” I pointed. She was bleeding badly from the bite wound, the thigh of her jeans soaked through with crimson.

“Just a scratch,” she said with an ear-to-ear grin. “Heather, I’m loving this, but even I can’t keep it up forever. We uh, we gotta leave.”

I knew what she was asking me to do.

Inside, I cringed away from the Eye’s lessons, but we had no choice. The wound in her leg made it real, raw, life-threatening. We had to leave, right now.

I can do this, I told myself. I’d done it before, in equally as dangerous circumstances, twice in a row, while brain-numb and bleeding. This time I was much more in control, right? Right. Breathe, focus, get us out.

My stomach clenched with anxiety as I summoned a mental image of the loop, pictured in my mind the mathematics to punch an exit back to reality. Nausea rolled through me and a spike of headache pain tingled on the edge of my scalp. I reached out to touch Raine.

A metallic click from above us interrupted my thoughts. It interrupted everything. I looked up.

Several floors above us, a woman aimed a rifle down at Raine.

Whipcord-tight, shaved head, dressed in outdoor hiking gear. The rifle was an old bolt-action thing, her eye to the scope, stock tucked tight against her shoulder. I’d never seen a gun in person before. It didn’t seem real.

Raine began to turn, to follow my gaze. Too slow, much too slow.

The woman pulled the trigger.

From a standing start, I’d have been useless. But I was already knee-deep into the Eye’s impossible equations, my mind on the verge of plunging in. If I’d had time to think, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. The Eye’s lessons offered me a hundred ways, a million ways, and choice would paralyse me with fear of pain, fear of failure, fear of loss.

The very urgency of a bullet in motion allowed me to act at the speed of thought.

I ran through a dozen equations in a split-second, principles I’d never dared touched before, concepts which burned my mind with white-hot searing fire even as I put them into action. I broke physics and gravity and a dozen laws human science had no names for, and paid for it with a bleeding, quivering of my own mind. Momentum, velocity, mass, speed, all deformed like putty. It was clumsy, brute force, inelegant and wasteful and incredibly painful.

So much for starting small.

I turned the bullet away from Raine.

It hit the stairwell wall with a puff of pulverised concrete.

My vision fogged black and I doubled up, vomited onto the stairs, my head pounding like I’d driven a railroad spike into my forehead. My nose streamed with blood and a sticky feeling gummed at my eyes. My knees gave out a second later. Urgent hands caught me, held me up and dragged me. I twitched and kicked, almost insensible.

My chest throbbed inside like my lungs had burst. I fought for breath, gasping and spluttering and vomiting a second time. I tried to say Raine’s name. We had to get away from here, because the woman with the rifle was going to shoot at us again and I had nothing left, I was spent, on the verge of unconscious oblivion.

Raine – I knew it was her, somehow – propped me against a wall on my backside. I forced my eyes open as she spoke, as she tried to speak comforting words, but then she broke off and spun, baseball bat raised for a swing.

The Tall Woman stepped past the reluctant hounds and came for us herself.

Raine did not fare well.

The Tall Woman moved like quicksilver, ducked and weaved and jabbed too fast to follow. Even if I hadn’t been mind-screwed from emergency hyperdimensional mathematics, her motions would have left me dizzy. Raine’s baseball bat bounced off her like she was made of granite, though Raine hit her enough times to extract a deep grunt of acknowledgement. She landed a glancing punch to Raine’s stomach, which made her hunch and wheeze and slow down.

I heard the metal click of the bolt-action rifle again, echoing in the endless stairwell.

Half-conscious, propped up against a wall next to the corpses of terrifying monster dogs, with Raine bleeding and hurt, there was no decision to make. I did not think, I merely acted.

If we left, at least Raine would live.

I summoned everything I had left, hurled myself at Raine and tackled her from behind. Too weak to do more than unbalance her, but I only had to make contact.

“Close your eyes!” I shouted.

“Heather, no!”

The Eye’s impossible equations jabbed molten fingers into my brain. Neurons burnt out. My chest wrenched like my ribs were shattering.

Reality folded up.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

For the first couple of years after Wonderland, after my trip down the rabbit-hole, after losing my twin, after the doctors and the hospitals and the drugs and the dislocation, I did speak to spirits.

Mostly I screamed at them to go away. Twelve-foot figures of dripping neon had stalked the nighttime hallways of Cygnet Children’s Hospital. Often they’d wander into my room, ghosting through the door and crawling up the walls and watching me in bed, too terrified to sleep. I’d scream and rave and the night duty nurse would ask what was wrong, then I’d get sedated and wake up to the same monsters in the hospital’s dark corners the next day.

By the time I returned to school, I’d learnt to believe the monsters weren’t real. Difficult, to listen to a doctor tell you the hallucinations aren’t real, as they leer at you over his shoulder.

I trained myself not to look, not to pay them the slightest shred of attention, to keep my distance. They weren’t real. Don’t address them. They’re not real. Don’t look. Not real.

But once, one time, I held my nerve.

So many years ago, I’d almost forgotten.

It happened at home, on the day after discharge from hospital following a period of ‘improved mental cohesion’, encouraged by my parents’ desire to have me in a familiar environment, to have me with them, to let me be normal.

I was drugged up to the gills on anti-psychotics, and trying very hard to hide that I still saw monsters in the street outside, in the family sitting room, lurking in the kitchen, lurching past my bed as I slept. They hovered around me and clutched at my clothes and I could not make them go away, not so much as squeak, because I’d get told off for being insane.

I held myself together all day long, desperate not to get sent back to hospital. Maisie had never been real – so I thought, back then – but at least if I was at home then I could pretend, I could remember, I could have something to hold onto.

My parents had put me to bed that night, I’d faked sleep, then cried under the covers in silence the way only a lonely, sick child can.

Of course, I had to get up to use the toilet. In the dark. A universal childhood trial by fire.

Except my monsters weren’t only under the bed – they were everywhere.

The spirit in question lounged across the corridor outside my bedroom door, more mouth than body or head, a maw large enough to swallow a cow, stuffed with a dozen different sizes and shapes of teeth. It breathed out fire-fed wind, hot and fetid. Tiny beady eyes had turned to regard me as I’d crept out in front of it, pillow held across my body in the only way I knew how to protect myself.

“Go away. You’re not real,” I’d whispered.

It had.

It had humped and slithered and slid like sandpaper on rock, along the corridor and down the stairs, thump, thump, wack, wack – and gone.

I’d never repeated the feat.

Until now.


==


“Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the way to your place,” Raine said.

“Not going home.”

“Okay, where we off to then?”

“ … ”

“Heather?”

“I’m not talking to you right now.”

I was more angry at myself than Raine, but I didn’t know how to reverse gear.

Between the fear and my crippling teenage under-socialisation, I had no idea what to do except put one foot in front of the other, until I reached a place I could think clearly. Raine tagging along like a determined hound dog made me feel awful, guilty, but also so relieved, and then guilty again for feeling the relief.

A vicious circle. Bad, under-socialised, self-contradictory Heather. I told myself off, told myself I had to stop and talk to her.

Pneuma-somatic attention did not help matters.

Since the moment I’d shouted at the spirits outside Evelyn’s house, it seemed every twisted monstrosity in Sharrowford had decided to come pay me a visit. Giant slack faces peered over the rooftops at us, packs of wolf-hogs and lizard-foxes raced past as if trying to spook me, malformed limbs unfolded from manhole covers and drain gates to wave in the wind like branches of flesh.

Without the Fractal on my arm, I suspect they would have mobbed me.

“Ahhh, the old silent treatment.” I heard the grin in Raine’s voice. “Say no more, I respect the urge, I know the deal. Been here a few times before.”

I shot her a side-eye glare. “Upset a lot of girls, do you?”

“Oho, silent treatment didn’t last long.” She grinned over at me.

I huffed and folded my arms tighter. My feet led me along the northern length of the student quarter, slow and steady, still achy and wobbly from yesterday’s city-crossing trek. Raine started to whistle, utterly tuneless. No handholding on this trip.

Indigo and cerulean spirit-wisps whipped overhead, the tail-feathers and trailing tentacles of house-sized floaters. Charred, blackened heads of gristle and grit paused in their scurrying to watch me pass. A monster gestured to me from across the street, a combination of sloth and lizard, speaking alien sign-language with paws the size of dinner plates.

“The ghosts and ghoulies are givin’ you lip, aren’t they?” Raine said.

“Ghosts and ghoulies?”

She shrugged, then very gently tried to take my hand again. This time, I let her.

“They are,” I admitted. “It’s … really bad. I think I stirred them up.”

Raine cracked a grin, not at me, but at the dozens of monsters she couldn’t see. “I’ll chase them off with a baseball bat if I have to. Go on, bugger off, the lot of you! She’s mine, you can’t have her!”

The spirit life paid no attention, but an old man looked up from his garden down the street. I flushed with embarrassment.

“Raine!” I hissed, jerked my hand out of hers. “I don’t need your- I don’t-”

Raine raised her eyebrows, genuine curiosity, not a shred of hurt or offence. I swallowed, put my head down, and forged on.


==


Raine followed me all the way between the library stacks before she made her move.

To be fair, surrounding me with books is one of the more reliable ways to calm me down, which is why I’d walked to the library in the first place. Despite Evelyn’s Spider-servitor lurking in the basement, Sharrowford University Library was still a source of instant comfort and reassurance for me. Most of the spirit life stayed firmly outside, though a few multi-limbed climbers nosed at us in the third floor stacks, bodies like elongated wingless dragonflies as they clambered and peered. I glared at them in turn and they retreated, slunk back to their hidey-holes.

“Even in here?” Raine asked.

“ … what in here?”

“Spirits. Right? They bothering you right now?”

I paused and half-turned to Raine, not sure what to do with her. She’d followed me into a sort of nook at the back of the third floor, at the end of a pathway between two long sets of book racking. The library’s architecture pinched tight before opening out again into a reading area full of low tables and book-return trolleys. Almost empty this time of day, only a few students sitting there, reading and studying. None faced us. Brutalist concrete wall-support blocked the view in the other direction.

“No,” I said. “They … I think I got them to leave. Peace and quiet, except for you.”

Raine stood with her hands on her hips, her head tilted slightly to one side. A strange ghost of a smile played across her lips, as if she knew a secret I didn’t.

“Feeling any better?” she asked.

I shrugged, then stopped and realised what that look on her face meant. My chest tightened.

“Ah, don’t-” I managed to get out. Raine took a step forward, so close I edged back, mouth suddenly dry and heart hammering. She looked left and right as if for eavesdroppers before turning a knowing, teasing smile on me.

“Raine, not here!” I hissed.

“Where else, then?” she murmured. “I can follow you around all day. Unless you straight up tell me to leave, and mean it. Say it if you want, I’ll go. I promise.”

“You’re violating the sanctity of the library!” I whispered. Raine struggled not to giggle. “Don’t laugh!”

She cleared her throat – softly, at least. “Heather, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d never, ever call you useless. Never even think it.”

I dropped my gaze to her boots. “But that’s what you like, isn’t it?”

Silence.

I glanced back up and got a face full of extremely confused Raine. She blinked at me, all her smooth words derailed.

“Uh, what?” she said, far too loud.

One of the students in the reading area looked over at us with a frown. I grabbed Raine’s sleeve and pulled her deeper into the private nook, out of sight of irritated library users. Raine apparently found all this extremely amusing, couldn’t keep a grin off her face. I put a finger to my lips.

“Shh!”

“Heather, please, please explain, where did that come from? I promise I’m not going to be mad, when- how- how did I ever give you that impression?”

I averted my eyes and bit down on the guilt. “Evelyn, uh, Evee, visited me yesterday morning before we went to the library. We talked. About you. A bit.”

Raine raised her eyebrows and waited. I felt like a terrible friend and a far worse lover.

“She said, and I quote.” I swallowed, needed real effort to squeeze the words out. “That you need a damsel in distress so you can play at being a knight errant.”

“ … ow.”

Raine puffed out a breath and put a hand over her heart. A flicker of genuine hurt passed across her face, the power of her usual grin showing through but battered out of shape.

“Raine? I-I’m sorry, I-”

“Ow, geeze, Evee. That smarts. Damn.” Raine mock-winced between her teeth. “Maybe don’t take everything Evelyn says at face value, yeah?”

I was mortified by the power of my own words.

Apology wouldn’t cut it now. Radical measures were required.

“Oh for pity’s sake, we can’t do this in the library.” I grabbed Raine’s hand and set about dragging her off somewhere I could actually speak my mind.


==


“Hey, Heather, just breathe, just take a moment, okay? We have all the time in the world.”

I was terribly out of breath. I’d pulled Raine all the way from the library, blushing and flustered at my own decision, and led us up every one of the hundred and seventy six steps of the back staircase in Willow House, to the pokey concrete landing outside the Medieval Metaphysics room. I’d intended to head inside, but had to stop and let go of Raine to put my hands on my knees and concentrate on getting my breath back.

Raine rubbed my back until I could stand straight, but I made a conscious effort to step away from her. She deserved my unencumbered honesty. I did my best to push my hair out of my face and into an approximation of decent order. Raine watched me patiently, thumbs hooked into the pockets of her leather jacket, a curious look on her face.

“I … I don’t even know how to phrase this.” I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. “I’ve never had a conversation like this before.”

“Start wherever you like. I’ll keep up.”

“Why do you like me?” I blurted out. A grin fought to surface on Raine’s face as I raced to cover my tracks. I held up a hand. “Don’t- don’t answer that yet.”

“Okay. I could write an essay on it if you want though.”

“What Evee said – is it just because I’m vulnerable? I don’t want to think that, but I don’t understand what you see in me, Raine. I’m not pretty, or particularly well turned-out. I’m small and scrawny. I’m a coward-”

“You’re not.”

“Let me finish. I’m not a very interesting person, either. I suppose I’m not a complete idiot but that’s about all I have going for me. I’m no fun to be around. I’m hard work. Look what I’ve done this morning. I don’t get you, Raine.”

Raine nodded, sagely and understanding, taking me very, very seriously. That look on her face was enough to start me on the road to feeling better. I managed a shaky smile, was about to admit I knew I was being unfair on myself, unfair on her, I knew there must be things in me that I couldn’t see. I began to compose an apology.

“Evee’s right,” Raine said.

“ … what?”

She met my eyes without a hint of shame. “I know what I’m into, I know what I find attractive. I can’t help that. I guess it’s a little bit messed up, but likely not in the way you’re thinking. I’d never force a role onto you, Heather.”

My mouth hung open. Couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“You mean you … ” I gulped. A bitter, borderline hysterical smile twitched onto my lips. I hiccuped. “I knew it. You don’t want me to be brave, or-”

Raine shook her head. “Uh-uh. My turn.”

“Wha-”

“I’m scared for you,” she said, and put up both hands in surrender. “Regardless of whether or not we make out after this, or never touch each other again, I’m scared for you. I know what the message from Maisie means to you. I mean, hell, Heather, if I was in your shoes I’d do the same. I’d probably already be throwing myself at the Eye. Elbow-deep in it. Probably be dead. I get it – and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She cut through every extraneous detail, right to the heart. Raine was a miracle, and I was not worthy.

“I’m scared too,” I admitted, sniffed, and realised I was almost tearing up. Raine reached forward but I put a hand out. I had to say this stuff. “But I can’t- I don’t want to be weak anymore, hide anymore. That’s worse than fear of pain. Much worse.”

“It nearly killed you the first time. The brain-math stuff.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to! Maybe it can be mine, instead of inflicted on me. This isn’t all about Maisie. It’s about me, too.”

A change came over Raine. She raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Ah. Ahhhh. There it is. Thereeee it is. You know what, Heather?”

I was trash, I was awful, a coward and a traitor, I left Maisie behind, I didn’t deserve Raine, I didn’t have it in me to hold any of this together.

“W-what?”

Raine cracked a grin. “You’ve convinced me. I’m in. I’m on board.”

I shook my head at her, lost.

“Count me in. I’m still scared for you, I don’t want you to bleed from your eyes or chuck your guts up, or worse. But, if I tried to stop you? I think that would hurt you more. So, I’m in.” She shrugged. “After all, protection is what I do. If you’ll have me.”

“That … thank you … ” I sniffed and wiped away the transient tears. “I do, Raine, I want … I like us. I really, really like you, but I still don’t understand what you see in me.”

Raine wet her lips, slowly, and took a step toward me. An aspect of her posture cut me off, the set of her shoulders, the way she moved, a new angle to her I’d never seen before.

“Slow it down, Heather. Lemme explain.”

“O-okay?”

“Yes, your vulnerability is part of the reason I like you. Not the only part. Not in the sense I want to exercise power over you or dominate your life. That would just make me a scumbag, and pretty unremarkable.” She cracked a grin, leaned in closer, her voice softer and softer. “And hey, I know I’m nothing if not remarkable.”

“R-Raine, what-”

Raine put her hand against the wall next to my shoulder, boxed me in, emphasised the height advantage she had over me.

“Look at you.” She smiled, bit her lower lip, really looked at me in a way that made me blush hard and bright red. “You’re small and mousy, you’re so careful with what you say, you’re so nervous about almost everything around you. It’s so cute I could eat you. I think I will.”

I spluttered. Very elegant.

“But I won’t stop you from being strong,” Raine said, quieter and softer. She leaned in, dangerously close now. “No matter how much you change, you’re always going to be Heather. Yeah, so maybe you learn to cut through solid steel with your mind, or command demons, or fight a god, but at the end of the day you’re still gonna need a hug. You’re still going to be shorter than me, and I’m still going to be able to pick you up and princess carry you, and you can’t do a thing about it.”

Raine winked – and swept me off my feet.

Literally, she ducked and grabbed me behind the knees too fast for me to react, tipped me back and lifted me up. I yelped in surprise, caught between a put-me-down wriggle and clinging to her for support. Raine laughed and held me up easily, grinning like a mad woman.

“And I would be honoured, lady Morell,” she said. “If even after you have ascended to Time Lord status, you still look to me for that hug.”

I’d never blushed so hard or felt so flustered. One arm around Raine’s neck, the other flailing for outside support, I goggled at her, barely able to catch my breath.

“Oh my God, put me down!”

She laughed again but did exactly as I said, tipping and then depositing me straight onto my feet. I shook all over, but not with fear or adrenaline. A bizarre species of arousal gripped me even when Raine took half a step back, gave me space.

I didn’t know what to do with my hands. One of them had fluttered to my chest, over my heart, but the other seemed this useless blob of meat, fingertips tingling as I gaped at Raine.

“Don’t do that again without warning me,” I managed.

“Can’t make any promises there.” She cracked a grin and I gave her a death-glare. “You loved it, come on.”

No response there. I had, despite my better judgement. She’d made her point incredibly well. She could see it in the way I averted my eyes, the way I swallowed down my growing arousal, the way she made me feel when she handled me like that.

“So, Heather, are we together or not?”

“ … can we be?”

“Why not?”

“Because our relationship is off to such a great start, isn’t it? First kiss to first blazing row in under three hours. That’s gotta be some kind of record.”

“You’d have to do a lot worse than that to put me off.”

Raine waited, apparently nothing left to say. I hesitated, still terribly flushed, one moment forcing myself to look at her, the next unable to even contemplate the smug, in-control expression on her face. Was this how relationships worked?

“I … well, I do want to … ”

“Say it. Tell me what you’re thinking. Put it into words, Heather. As clumsy as you like.”

I looked at her. Really looked at her, let out all the stuff I’d barely been able to express even in the privacy of my own mind.

Raine was a masterpiece of athletic femininity. I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off her these last two weeks. How could she possibly feel the same way about me? From her collarbone to the way she flexed her calf muscles, from the subtle curve of her hips to the feathery chestnut of her hair, she was like something out of one of my teenage fantasies.

She could have anybody she wanted – it was terrible and wrong to think, but a weird, jealous, bitter part of me was convinced she could have any straight girl she wanted, let alone the eager partners she’d find in any lesbian bar. The city did have those, right? I had no idea, I was so isolated and behind and cast adrift.

Anybody she wanted. Big boobs, big laugh, big heart, any quality she desired. But instead, Raine had picked me, a scrawny weird little disaster lesbian with a supernatural sword of Damocles hanging over my head and a growing desire to dedicate myself to a lost cause.

“I’m not exactly a low maintenance girlfriend,” I said.

Raine shrugged. “I don’t give a shit.”

“And you deserve better. I’m not fun, I’m not attractive-”

“You are! Hey, don’t put yourself down like that.” Raine pointed a finger-gun at me. “If we’re going to be together, I’m making an executive decision. Every time you say something bad about yourself, I’ll tickle you for sixty seconds.”

I frowned at her. “Absolutely not.”

She broke into a grin. “Are you ticklish? I haven’t had a chance to test yet.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said, feeling that odd aroused pull in the pit of my stomach again. “Look, Raine, I’m ugly and I’m scrawny, there’s nothing of me, at least not compared to you.”

Raine cocked an eyebrow and looked down at herself, grinned and puffed her chest out. “What, you jealous of my bomb-ass rack? S’yours if you want.”

I gaped at her, blushing terribly, totally overwhelmed. After what felt like an eternity I managed to look away. “I … Raine, take this seriously. I want you, I really do, but I-”

Raine touched my chin. I looked up at her. “If I’ve been taking things too slow for you, too slow to show you what I think of you, we can go as fast as you like.”

She kissed me.

It wasn’t gentle this time.

She all but pushed me against the wall. Raine wasn’t crude enough to shove her tongue down my throat, it wasn’t like that. It was the way she handled me, moved me into position, took charge.

Nobody was around to see, but I was mortified anyway. Mortified and powerfully turned on. When she let me go, I put a hand to my chest and hiccuped twice.

“T-that wasn’t like this morning,” I squeaked. Raine smiled, warm and confident, back to normal.

“Different kind of kiss,” she said.

“I gathered.”

She gave me a moment to recover. Rubbed my back. Tucked my hair behind my ears for me, gentle fingers against my cheeks.

“Wanna go back to your place?” Raine asked. “Breakfast can wait, Evee can entertain herself for an hour. Or three.”

“Raine, neither of us has showered since yesterday. We’re both disgusting. I need to go home and shower, not … not do anything sexy.”

Raine’s smile turned smug and teasing. “You’re saying we both need to shower?”

“Yes, yes we do.” I almost huffed.

“I can think of a way to save time doing that.”

My heart stopped. I swear, my heart stopped. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to slap her or let her pick me up again.

“ … my-” I squeaked, took a deep breath, and put up as much token resistance as I could muster. “M-my flat’s shower is too small for two people.”

“Showering together?” Raine mimed mock-shock. “Heather, so bold!”

“You-”

“You said it, not me.” Raine raised both hands.

“You were heavily implying it. You insufferable wind-up.”

Raine laughed, a big good-natured belly laugh. “Well, the shower at my place isn’t the best, but it’s one hundred percent big enough. Fancy a walk?”

My hands shook like doves and my heart was gearing up to fly out of my chest. My face must have been bright tomato red. I’d never done this as a teenager, never fumbled through the first few steps of physical romance, had no idea what the proper etiquette was or how I was supposed to act toward Raine. Weren’t we supposed to, I don’t know, go on a date first?

My body said no. No wait. Now. Now.

I nodded. That was all I could manage. Raine slipped her hand around mine and squeezed.

“Hey, relax. It’s just a shower,” she said.

“Oh, shut up.”

We didn’t even make it out of Willow House before last night caught up with us.

I was far too busy imagining a million embarrassing things involving Raine in the shower, to notice how many steps we took and how many sets of double-doors we passed through. Too preoccupied with the feeling of her hand in mine, my own palms sweating, my heart ready to leap out of my chest, to notice the lack of other students or the eerie quiet in the top floor corridor of Willow House.

Raine stopped before the doors to the main stairwell. I looked up, expecting a flirtatious joke or a teasing wink.

She was staring back the way we’d walked, a frown on her face.

“Uh?” was all I could manage.

“That’s odd,” she muttered.

“What, what’s odd?”

“Corridor seemed longer. Stairwell should have been back there, one set of fire doors back.”

“Oh, Raine,” I sighed. “What are you talking about, it’s right here.” I let out a nervous, breathy laugh. She was as excited as me, losing track of space and time.

She didn’t laugh.

In the stairwell, I stopped laughing too.

“Where are the windows?” I murmured.

Willow House’s main stairwell should have been walled with a bank of windows on every floor, grubby brown glass set in concrete surroundings, gazing down across the main square on campus. At this time of day the stairwell should be flooded with at least weak sunlight and echoing with the distant sounds of other students shuffling or hurrying up and down the building.

Blank white breeze-block wall. No windows. Strip lights hummed.

“Did we get turned around?” I said. A veil of dislocation floated down over my brain.

Raine let go of my hand and stepped forward to peer over the railing. My heart almost missed a beat, and not in a good way. I scurried along after her.

“Huh,” Raine grunted. “Ain’t that unique.”

I looked down, over the railing.

Big mistake.

A wave of vertigo rocked me on my feet and swirled through my head. I clutched Raine’s hand and held on tight.

The stairwell extended forever in an endless spiral, down and down and down, until the flickering strip lights gave out and darkness swallowed an impossible depth. Mile after mile of identical repeating steps and banisters. I looked up – the same, a dizzying height repeating into infinity. I closed my eyes and my breath came out in sudden ragged gasps.

“Hey, Heather.” Raine squeezed my hand. She was so calm, so collected, so together. Held me back from the brink. I opened my eyes and saw her perfect confidence. How was she not shaking in panic, how did she deal with that abyss above and below? “Ease down.”

“I-I can’t-”

“You can. Hundred percent. When weird shit happens, the best thing to do is stay calm.”

I nodded. I knew that, in theory. “I’ll try.”

She gestured at the alien stairwell around us. “Did you uh, dimension hop us by accident? Got a little too excited?”

“ … do you see blood coming out of my eyes? This wasn’t me.”

“Right.” Raine pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket and looked at the screen. “Okay, good news, we’re still in Sharrowford.”

“We are?”

She showed me the phone screen: full signal.

I fumbled out my own phone and opened Google maps. It showed us located in Willow House, exactly where we should be.

“The other best thing to do when weird shit happens is call Evee.” Raine held her phone to her ear. I shuffled on my feet and tried not to look at the yawning, impossible abyss as we waited for Evelyn to answer.

“Evee, it- yeah, yeah, it’s fine, I- listen, listen, Heather and I have stumbled into some kind of … loop, in Willow House. Closed space, I dunno, like- yeah. Is this the surprise you left last night, for our cult friends?”

A flush of relief washed over me. This was Evelyn’s magic. Just a mistake. We’d stumbled into a trick meant for other people. She’d wave her hands and mutter some Latin and everything would be back to normal.

I heard some very exasperated noises from the phone. Raine winced.

“Yeah, okay. No, no don’t come here, no.” A long pause. “Yeah. Don’t keep us waiting. Bye for now.”

“What did she say?” I asked. Raine stared at the phone, and I realised she was psyching herself up. She shot me a grin, overlaid on tension.

“This isn’t Evee’s doing. She rigged the door of the Medieval Metaphysics room to give any intruders instant explosive gut pain. Not uh … not this.”

“ … where are we then? Raine, where are we? What is this?”

Raine’s smile died. She fixed me with a serious expression. She didn’t let go of my hand. “You know how I said I’d probably over-reacted last night? That those weirdos probably didn’t even know who we were?”

“Yes?”

“Think I may have been wrong. We’re in a trap.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

If a team of expert psychologists drew up a list of the worst people from whom to seek stable emotional support, then after the obvious abusers and narcissists and sociopaths, I would rank pretty high on that list.

Evelyn did not have anybody else in that study with her. She had me. I did what I could.

My first instinct – were I capable of such courage – was to throw myself at her, hug her, tell her it was okay, whatever it was; Evelyn was my friend and she was in pain, and I felt it too. But I had a distinct impression she would lash out like a wounded animal.

“ … I … I’m not here to yell at you, Evee.”

She narrowed her eyes, confused, lost. A half-shake of her head.

“I came up here to look at the books, actually,” I said. “I thought you were still asleep.”

“I don’t deserve sleep.” She jerked a hand at the notes on the desk, gritting her teeth and grimacing. “At least this way I’m not a complete waste of skin.”

“Evee, no, you … ” I groped for the right words. I had only Raine to imitate. “J-just take a deep breath. Breathe slowly. It’ll be okay. Start at the beginning, tell me what’s wrong? D-did something happen?”

“Did something happen?” she echoed, voice dripping with bitter mockery. She didn’t take that deep breath. “You saw it all. Where am I supposed to begin? You want an itemised list of my failures? Want to rub it in?”

“Evelyn,” I snapped her name, scared by her distress. “Stop talking like that about yourself. Stop it. Right now.”

She blinked at me as if slapped, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. “Why?”

“Because … ” I swallowed. “Because it’s not healthy.”

“Why should that matter? I’m a useless waste of effort, and I know it. I can’t get a single thing right. I messed up everything, I always do.”

“Evee, no-”

“I’m just a leftover shell. I should have been there last night with you and Raine, I could have prevented- but I couldn’t, could I? I couldn’t even follow, because I’m a cripple with a stump.” She thumped at her own thigh, and only then did I realise she wasn’t wearing her prosthetic.

The right leg of her pajama bottoms flapped lose and flat. She’d hobbled here from her bedroom on her stick and withered left leg.

Self-harm.

She’d probably been hurting herself all night.

“I screwed up, okay?” she snapped. “I know it, I know I screwed up. I always screw up. Can’t get anything right, can’t do a single thing correct. You warned me about the Eye, oh yes, I but thought I knew better, smart little Evelyn Saye with her twisted education and her need to prove herself right and her fucking mother issues.”

She shouted the last three words and slammed one hand across the desk, scattering papers into the air, sending a notebook flying, almost toppling the lamp. I flinched. Stray pencils clattered to the floor.

Evelyn began to sob. She hid her eyes behind a hand, sagging, defeated, spent. “Go away, for fuck’s sake. Leave me alone.”

“ … no. Evee, no, I won’t. I- I can’t leave you like this.”

“Go away,” she whined out between sobs. She threw a balled-up sheet of note paper at me. It bounced off the floor and rolled to a stop against my foot.

I’d never dealt with a crying person. A crying friend. I’d listened to a fair share of weeping and wailing in psychiatric hospitals, often much worse than this, but I’d never had to comfort somebody. I’d never wanted to before, never wanted to make a friend’s pain stop.

My mouth worked silently through a double-dozen empty platitudes, words Raine would have made brilliant and meaningful, but in my head they all rang hollow.

“Y-you know, this house is really amazing,” I said. “It’s- it’s not like anywhere else I’ve ever been.”

Evelyn peered out from behind her hand, eyes red and full of tears. “What?”

“I mean, it’s so old and it’s not been renovated. It’s full of these cosy little corners and decades of stuff. I-it’s amazing, I love it. I’m sort of jealous, in a way. You’ve seen my flat, it sucks, it’s horrible, a concrete box. I grew up in this awful modern semi-detached, freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer. Tiny, tiny square-footage compared to this place. You could fit five, six people in this house and it’d never feel cramped. There’s a basement and an attic too, isn’t there?”

“ … uh, yes, yes there is.” Evelyn sniffed and wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve.

I kept rambling.

“Take this room. A study! You have an actual study. A personal library. I’d kill for a study, a room just for reading. It’s the sort of thing I used to fantasise about having one day, my own study. Professor Morell and all that nonsense, it’ll likely never happen.” I shrugged and forced a little laugh. “It’s incredible. You could probably do with a more comfortable chair than that though.” I nodded at the ancient wooden swivel-chair, no wheels on the feet. “And … um … do you have blueprints, floor plans of the house? I’d love to see them sometime, if you do. Often those get kept, for older buildings like this, if you’re lucky.”

Evelyn blinked at me. I thought I’d lost her, gone too far, but then she waved a limp hand. “Top shelf, one of the box files, I think.”

“That’s great. I’ll take a look later. Thank you.”

Evelyn’s tears had stopped. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Score one for distraction Heather.

I looked away as she blew her nose and dried her eyes, then I patted her shoulder, careful, gentle. Besides her circa-1950s desk chair, only a tiny stepladder and a rickety old wooden chair offered anywhere to sit. I pulled up the chair – cast adrift from a kitchen table, probably – and sat down, my knees weak from tension.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” Evelyn said. She stared at the floorboards, voice low and dull. “Years since I cried in front of anybody. Pathetic.”

“No, Evee, please. It’s so bad to keep it bottled up. I know I’m hardly one to talk, but it’s fine to cry. You’re only human.”

Evelyn shrugged. “I barely count as human.”

“Evee-”

Evelyn continued before I could tell her off. She looked up into my eyes with a sad, defeated expression. “That makes three times. Twice you’ve rescued me from my own idiotic mistakes, and now you’ve dealt with me having a tantrum.”

“Don’t call it that, that’s not fair on yourself.”

“I couldn’t even call the Noctis Macer back. Couldn’t keep up. Evelyn Saye, her mother the best in a generation, having a tantrum. You keep helping me, Heather, and I can’t repay you because I can’t get anything right. Because I keep failing. I am a failure.”

“You shouldn’t say those things about yourself.”

Evelyn sighed. “Why not? It’s true.”

“Well … well, I don’t actually know, but I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t.”

She puffed out the faintest imitation of a laugh. “At least you’re honest. I know it’s unhealthy. Everything I do is unhealthy.”

At least she’d calmed down. I’d snapped her out of the emotional crisis, but I had no idea how to help. I wasn’t Raine, I didn’t possess the right words.

We were, however, in a library.

Bookcases lined the walls of the study, full to bursting, with space left for only the door, the desk, and a small high window which admitted a shaft of grey dawn light across the ceiling. The study was a shade closer to my imaginary picture of an occult library, except ninety-nine percent of the literature here was completely mundane.

I glanced up and saw textbooks of natural history wedged next to modern novels, collections of plays stacked with back issues of mid-century magazines and comic books. Leatherbound, hardbound, floppy dog-eared paperbacks. Some shelves had been left to gather dust for years, but cleaner patches showed through where Evelyn had cleared space, re-organised, re-colonised.

An emotional handhold presented itself with the clarity of a light bulb illuminating above my head: a three-volume complete works of Shakespeare. I stood up and eased one of the books out from between its siblings, blew the film of dust off the top, and cracked it open.

“What are you doing?” Evelyn asked.

“One … one second. Ah, here … ” I wet my lips and raised my chin, muttered the first few words of the passage I’d located, then warmed as I went, into full, flowing speech as I quoted: “But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty, to strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up …”

I trailed off, looked up, and bottled it completely at Evelyn’s puzzled frown. At least my antics had banished her surface depression.

“Was that meant to be a comment on me?” she asked.

“No. On myself, actually.” I shook my head and closed the book. “That’s Richard the third, talking about his deformity. I used to … I still do, sort of, identify with that. It’s comforting. Sorry, that probably made zero sense to you.”

Evelyn shook her head. “No, I get it. I do.”

I smiled at her. “Evelyn, Evee, I was actually ready to be a little angry with you. But not for the reasons you think. Mistakes don’t matter, we’re friends. I was angry when you sprung Wonderland on me without warning.”

Evelyn stared at me for a long moment, mouth half-open, then looked down at her hands and let out a huge sigh. “I’m just like my mother.”

Oh dear. No, reverse course, wrong direction, back up, back up.

“I very much doubt that,” I said quickly. “And you can make it right, by apologising. I would like an apology, for that, specifically.”

She jerked her head up, blinking, frowning, only halfway there, as if I’d presented some radical, alien concept. For a moment I thought I’d lost her, that she’d shuffle back into her pit and never come out. But then she swallowed and nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Heather. I know, it was … disrespectful. I don’t want to treat you like my mother treated me. I’m sorry.”

“Then I forgive you.”

She looked at me as if I’d slapped her, vulnerable and blinking.

We shared one of the most awkward hugs humanly possible. I don’t think Evelyn was made for comforting embraces. I put my arms around her shoulders and she hesitated to do the same, stiff and cold, but it seemed to do the trick. When we let go of each other, she took a deep breath and nodded slowly.

“Would you do me a very big favour, Heather?”

“What is it?”

She cleared her throat and gestured at the door. “Would you please fetch my leg? It’s on the floor in my bedroom.”

“Of course I will. Don’t, um, don’t self-harm while I’m gone.”

“I won’t.”

Evelyn’s prosthetic wasn’t difficult to find. It lay just inside her bedroom door, below a small dent in the wall, the source of the loud thump I’d heard last night, the final word in Raine and Evelyn’s argument.

Heavier than I’d expected, six or seven pounds of matte-black carbon fiber and shiny articulated knee. White rubber thigh-socket stuck out from the open end. I tried not to stare, equal parts embarrassed for Evelyn and overcome with delicate care as I cradled her leg. This was one of the most intimate things I’d ever held. This was, in a way, part of her body.

Evelyn’s bedroom spoke of a very different side to her; I’d not gotten a good look the first time I was here, half conscious as I’d been.

Pastel sheets and blankets turned the bed into a den of pink and lilac. Plush animals conferred together on the chest of drawers, some of them old and tatty, childhood memories perhaps, but several of them new and expensive-looking, along with a handful of stylised anime figurines, all girl superheroes with candy-coloured hair and outfits. Not something I’d expect Evelyn to enjoy.

Back in the study, Evelyn accepted her prosthetic with both hands, murmured a thank you, and began to roll up her loose pajama leg.

I gestured to the door. “I’ll just … ”

“Watch if you want.” She shrugged. “Raine’s seen it often enough. I don’t care.”

Leaving felt ruder than staying, so I watched with mounting fascination as Evelyn reattached her leg. It was quite a process.

Her stump was an ugly gnarled knot of old scar tissue, crisscrossed by angry red stitch-marks and indents from surgical staples. Not a clean amputation. She rolled her pajama leg up to the middle of her thigh, then reached into the socket on the prosthetic and extracted a sort of thick truncated sock. She pulled the sock onto her stump.

“Did-” I started, then stopped. “Sorry. I’m curious, but I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re going to ask how I lost it.”

“Oh, no, not at all. I assume that wasn’t … normal. Actually I was surprised by the scarring. Did they try to save it and make it worse?”

A smile tugged at the corners of Evelyn’s mouth – that’s when I knew she was going to be okay. “Could put it like that. The doctor was drunk.”

“ … I’m sorry, what?”

Evelyn leaned back, the unattached prosthetic held across her lap. She tapped her stump. “This wasn’t done in a hospital. No NHS guidelines for me. I was nine, and the last thing my mother wanted to do was present me for treatment. She’d have been arrested in a heartbeat, I’d have been taken into care. But the leg had to come off. Gangrene, mostly. The doctor was an old associate of my grandmother, good at keeping her mouth shut, willing to take payment under the table. They pumped me full of morphine, got me to hold a pillow up so I wouldn’t see the bone-saw going back and forth.”

“Oh Evee, I can’t even imagine … ”

She waved me down. “I don’t need pity. I took my revenge, for that and worse. It’s just the way it was.” She rapped a knuckle against the carbon fiber prosthetic. “I’m lucky, in fact. My father paid for this, for previous versions of it, for physical rehab. Not everyone who loses a limb gets to be a cyborg, you know? Some make do.”

“Your dad? Is … I mean, I don’t want to pry again.”

Evelyn considered, then sighed and shrugged. “A weak fool who couldn’t stand up to my mother. It’s mostly his way of dealing with the guilt, but at least he tries to do right. I don’t talk to him very much.”

She set the prosthetic on the floor and wriggled the rubber socket up around her stump, making a dozen minor adjustments as she pulled the contraption snug.

“Do you want me to ask?” I said. “Why you lost the leg?”

“Why do you think?” She set her artificial foot down with a clack. “Same reason I can’t straighten my spine. Same reason the muscles are withered in my other leg. Same reason I’m short a few fingers and hooked on painkillers. My mother did not merely teach me magic, she used me for it. I … I don’t want to talk about it. Ask Raine if you must, she knows.”

I smiled a little. “She told me to ask you. Said it wasn’t her place to divulge.”

Evelyn’s eyebrows attempted to leave her face. “Really? Well, fancy that. What have you been doing to her, Heather?”

“I-I think it was because I told her off.” I almost blushed. “Nothing else.”

“And she listened to you?”

“Yes. I think. Maybe. It’s hard to tell with Raine.”

“Mm. I’m sorry I left you two to your own devices last night. I take it she put you up in her old room?”

“Her … old … room?”

“Ah, that didn’t come up? Never mind, forget I said anything.”

“Oh, not on your life, Evee.” I almost laughed. “Raine used to live with you, here? Are you absolutely sure you and her didn’t have a thing together?”

“Absolutely.” Evelyn made it sound very final. “Living together was only sensible, when we first came to Sharrowford. She had the room on the other side of the hall, out there. Then we had a … ” She struggled, grimaced. “A disagreement, about six months back. She moved out. I thought she’d told you all this.”

“Not a word, no.”

“Typical.”

“Typical Raine.” I smiled involuntarily. “What was the disagreement about?”

“ … I didn’t want her around.” Evelyn paused and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Possibly a mistake. Maybe I should have people in my life more, not less. It goes against every instinct I have, but here you are.”

I smiled, felt blessed, flattered. “I have it on pretty good authority that’s what friends are meant to be for.”

Evelyn huffed a minimalist laugh and we shared a glance. We weren’t so different.

“Maybe yesterday didn’t go exactly to plan,” I said, before she could shore up her self-loathing again. “But one way or the other it delivered to me the first proof in ten years that my sister might be alive. You did that. Thank you, Evee.”

Evelyn’s expression frosted over. “The tshirt.”

“Yes, the tshirt.”

“It-”

“Wait,” I held up one hand. “I found more words inside it this morning. The rest of her message. I think I should show you, you need to see.”

Evelyn squinted, then sighed heavily and nodded.

“It’s downstairs, I’ll go fetch it.” I rose from my chair.

“No, I’ll come down with you,” Evelyn said. “I can’t fester in here forever. Besides, I have something to show you as well.” She reached over and slid a bookmark into one of the crumbling leatherbound tomes on the desk, then folded it shut. “Help me up, will you? My hips are sore as hell.”


==


Maisie’s tshirt caused a huge argument. I hadn’t prepared myself for that.

Downstairs, we found Raine had just woken up. She was stretching in the kitchen, halfway through a routine, yawning as she pressed both hands against the kitchen table, muscles tensed and one leg braced out behind her. She carried on while we talked and it was exquisitely distracting, but I wasn’t about to complain.

“Hey!” She straightened up and flashed a smile as we appeared, rolling her neck and shoulders. “I was just coming to find you. Surprised you’d gotten up, everything okay?”

“Sorry I left you there on the sofa,” I said. “I had a thought. I had to do … a thing.”

Evelyn stomped past me, the big leatherbound book clutched to her chest with one hand. She grunted.

“S’fine, I needed the sleep,” Raine said. She pantomimed a duck-and-cover as Evelyn passed her. “So uh, Evee, am I still in the firing line?”

Evelyn avoided her gaze, filled a glass of water and muttered a barely audible apology.

“Don’t gimme the grumbly face.” Raine grinned. “I can tell you’re in a better mood.”

“Oh, I suppose I am,” Evelyn said. “Look, Raine, I’m sorry I blew up at you last night.”

Raine blinked as if Evelyn had grown an extra head. Her mouth fell open. I almost giggled.

“We had a bit of a heart to heart,” I said.

Evelyn winced. “Don’t call it that.”

Raine grinned from ear to ear. She carried on through her stretching routine, hooked one arm and then the other behind her head, pulling on alternate wrists to stretch her deltoids. I stared.

“And wipe that stupid grin off your face,” Evelyn told her.

“No chance!” Raine laughed as she stretched both arms over her head, side to side. “How’d both of you fancy going out for some breakfast? My treat.”

“Wouldn’t say no,” I muttered, far more concerned with the way that pose showed off Raine’s hips and waist.

Our kiss earlier seemed to have knocked a screw loose in my head. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t looked at Raine before, admired the way she moved, appreciated her toned athleticism and clean-limbed flexibility, but I hadn’t felt exactly like … this. Whatever this was. She stretched her quad muscles, by lifting each ankle in turn and grabbing it behind her backside with one hand, balancing herself against the kitchen table with her other. I felt the most unaccountable urge to reach out and goose her hipbone.

Clarifying the nature of our relationship had awakened an aspect of myself I wasn’t very familiar with. I turned away to hide a rising blush.

We had bigger things to deal with right now than my libido.

“I thought we needed to play at being hermits for a day or two?” Evelyn said.

Raine shrugged and pulled a self-mocking face. “I think I jumped the gun. My fault, my bad. Nothing’s happened. Odds are they had no idea who we were. Might not even have been the Cult. Also, I could eat a horse. What do you say?”

“I assume dog-brain made it out alright?” Evelyn asked.

“Twil? Yeah, she’s fine. Sore head’s about the worst of her problems.”

“I have something I need to show you, Raine,” I said. “Both of you.”


==


We gathered around the table in the ex-drawing room. The big overhead light was missing a few bulbs, lost to the ages, casting fuzzy illumination up the walls and across the floor. Evelyn munched her way through a cereal bar, but Raine was too focused on me to eat anything. She’d picked up on my tension.

I unfolded the filthy tshirt on the table, hiked up the front, showed them Maisie’s hidden message.

I didn’t need to say a word.

Raine’s lips moved as she read the first line, then she trailed off and shook her head. Evelyn stared in silence, sucking on her teeth.

“Bloody hell,” Raine muttered. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Surprisingly enough, yes. Maybe I’m just numb, or maybe nothing shocks me after yesterday.”

The truth was too hard to phrase: I felt a steel ball of resolve in my chest. Pain had been transmuted. Raine shook her head again and swore softly as she stared at Maisie’s message, at the crazed scrawl, the plea for my help.

“You’re absolutely certain it’s hers? ‘Maisie’?” Evelyn pronounced my twin’s name with exaggerated care.

I nodded. “Some things you never forget.”

“Bloody hell,” Raine repeated. She hooked her hands behind her head and started to pace up and down. Evelyn levelled a very steady gaze at me, and I knew what she was thinking. For a moment I thought she might not say it, might try to be gentle with me, hold back.

She came through, respected my intelligence.

“It’s bait,” Evelyn said.

“I know.”

“It- what?”

“I accept that possibility. It’s not hard for me. You forget, Evee, I’ve spent ten years intentionally crushing my own hopes on a semi-regular basis. I’m quite used to the psychological discipline.”

“Oh, well, good-”

“But I still want my sister back.” I took a deep breath as my veneer of stability cracked, as a lump formed in my throat. “You can’t know how it feels. Nobody else even remembers her. She’s not in any photos, it took her bed, her clothes, everything. My parents they- … they didn’t forget, but the Eye made it so they never knew. As far as the world is concerned, Maisie Morell never existed. Except for me. I’m the only link she’s got. I miss her so much. I miss my twin. I owe it to her, even if this is bait.”

Evelyn thumped the book she was carrying down on the table, almost glaring at me.

I tried to steady my voice. “And if it’s not bait-”

“The Eye knows your mind inside out, Heather. It knows your desires, your needs, your darkest secrets and fears, it knows the exact object with which to bait you into throwing yourself onto its hook.”

“Hear her out,” Raine said.

“What’s to hear?” Evelyn spread her hands in a dismissive shrug. “What I said yesterday still stands, we can’t fight this thing. My idiotic mistake should have proved that, at the very least, or have you already forgotten what it felt like to have that thing rooting around in your skull? It didn’t even need a stable gate to do that.”

Raine raised her hands. “But what if-”

Evelyn ignored Raine, turned to me. “I know its name.”

“… I’m sorry?”

“Your ‘Eye’. It has a name. The experiment yesterday was an abject failure, yes. I’d intended to find out how it was contacting you, find a way to close off those pipelines, identify and categorise and lock down. That fell apart when it saw us – God alone knows how it did that. But now I know what it is. I sat up all night trying to salvage something from my own failure, trying to figure out how it sent the Noctis Macer through, trying to find anything, anything at all. And I found it.” She tapped the huge leatherbound book. “It’s in Unbekannte Orte.”

She flipped the tome open and turned the page toward me, jabbing a finger at the relevant passage. “There’s your Eye.”

The book was a horrible thing.

I didn’t think it possible for a book to feel wrong; it seemed so lovely. Heavy yellowed parchment pages, many repaired and held together with special tape, between cracked leather covers so very old and strangely pale, with handwritten notes in the margins and beautiful illustrated initial letters. There was only one problem.

“I can’t read German,” I said.

“Oh, right, yes.”

Evelyn cleared her throat and began to translate.

“Of the seventh and final inhabitant of the outer rim I have little to tell,” she read, finger tracing the words. “For such a thing is terrible and awesome to behold and left me bedridden with shaking and sweating for weeks thereafter. Though Malthus carried me swiftly through that place, his wings beat upon such a thinness of air and could not find purchase to leave once more and the very Earl of Hell himself dared not look upward upon the countenance which fixed us with its gaze. Malthus-”

“Who’s Malthus?” I interrupted. “And who’s the speaker here?”

She shrugged. “Malthus is the name of a demon, probably not a true name though. This part of Unbekannte Orte is an account by a medieval monk, claimed to have bound a demon to show him the limits of creation. The book is generally pretty sound about most things, but I’m not just working on trust. Here.” She continued.

“Malthus put aside his usual attempts to tempt me from the safer path, and advised me not to look upon the lord of this realm, for he knew well as I that neither man nor damnation could escape this place alone. I made a mistake of such grave proportions that to this day of writing I often dream of a giant eye, not of the godly ordained form of man but rather akin to a vast beast of the sea, Leviathan itself in the waters before the word. I can only be thankful to God almighty that in my terror and haste, I failed to apprehend the form of a body behind the single eye. Like those I have summoned to teach my poor mind natural law, this eye whispers the secrets of mathematics to me and I must purge myself after any such visitations.”

“Oh,” I breathed. “Oh. Right. I-”

“There’s more,” Evelyn said. She wet her lips and spoke slowly. “Malthus informs me that the being is properly named-”

It was not a word.

It was an un-sound that made my eyes water and my ears pop. The temperature dropped by a perceptible few degrees and a crackle passed through the air at the edge of hearing. Raine flinched shook her head like a startled dog. Evelyn coughed and winced.

“A true name,” Evelyn said.

“Does that give us power over it?” I asked. “Somewhere to start?”

Evelyn shook her head slowly. “No. But I can use it for the next step of what I was planning in the first place. Sealing you off from the Eye. It won’t be as elegant as what I had in mind, but it will work.” She watched me, the implication plain.

“That’s not as important to me anymore,” I said very quietly.

Evelyn sighed and leaned heavily on her walking stick, fixing me with the sort of look one gave to a child who wanted to play in traffic.

“This isn’t the kind of monster you summon to do your bidding,” she said. “It’s the kind people build religions around, the kind that ends civilisations. I felt that stare on me yesterday, we all did. Across the membrane, from Outside, and it still almost scooped our minds out on a whim, in a second. I had the strongest, most complex magic circles I know, the fruits of my mother’s work and more. Magic is not enough, magic is pissing into the wind.” Evelyn punctuated her words by rapping her walking stick against the side of the table. “This. thing. cannot. be. fought.”

“What about by me?” I said.

Evelyn halted and narrowed her eyes.

“Self-implementing hyperdimensional mathematics,” I said. “What do you imagine I’ve been thinking about all morning?”

“What’s this?” Raine asked.

“My uh, brain-math.” I gave her an awkward, guilty look as I tapped the side of my head. “Apparently that’s the technical term.”

Evelyn frowned up a thunderstorm. I managed to hold her gaze, but then my eyes flickered over to where I’d left the pamphlet on the table. She followed my look.

“You’d need a lot more than that,” she said with a huge sigh.

“Probably.” My voice shook far worse than I’d hoped it would, gave away how frightened this line of thought made me. I touched my fingers to my forehead. “But it’s all up here, isn’t it? You say the Eye is like a god, that it can reach from one dimension to another? Well, so can I. It taught me everything, a million things I didn’t want to know. I can dimension-hop. Who knows what else it showed me how to do?”

Evelyn ran a hand over her face. “I shouldn’t have told you anything. Should have kept you at arm’s length.”

“I deserved to know.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Not if you help me, Evee.”

Evelyn opened her mouth on harsher words, but stalled out, emotions fighting across her face. She looked away and scowled, then closed Unbekannte Orte and tugged at the bookmarks as she thought. Raine picked up the pamphlet, flicked it open and peered inside.

“I’m not talking about rushing into this,” I said. “Even if … even if there is a time limit.” I eyed the last line of Maisie’s secret message: her deadline, a year from now. “I mean … it seems absurd right now, but I have an essay due next week. The real world moves on without us, I can’t just abandon university for magic. Besides, I have you and Raine, don’t I?”

“I can hardly refuse you,” Evelyn said. “You saved me twice already.”

I felt a spike of terrible guilt. “That’s not-”

“Shut up. Let me think.”

I did. I looked to Raine for support, but she stared at Evelyn in equally deep thought, arms folded, the pamphlet in one hand. I was rapidly sinking beyond my depth, once again painfully aware of how much better these two knew each other than I ever could. I was on the verge of a minor outburst, of saying forget it, I’m sorry, I’ll drop it, I’ll do it myself, and a hundred other excuses.

“Assuming the tshirt is genuine, and therefore your twin is alive, we are presented with three problems,” Evelyn said. She stared at the tabletop as she talked, then paced to the head of the table, pushed a stack of books aside, and sat down with her chin in her hands. “One is the Eye itself. It can’t be defeated or killed, not in the way we define such concepts. I would need to find – or more likely, develop from scratch – a way to avoid the thing’s gaze, to hide, to be unseen.”

I nodded. “R-right.”

“Second.” She counted off on her fingers. “Is locating your sister. Which will either be incredibly easy or incredibly hard.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because of the third problem. Nothing human can survive out there for long.”

I blinked at her. “What … what do you mean?”

Evelyn sucked on her teeth. “It’s not impossible that Maisie sent the Noctis Macer herself. I’m not entirely sure what that would imply about the state of her humanity.”

I nodded, slowly. “Okay. I understand. I still want to try.”

Evelyn pulled a funny expression at me, half-smile, half resigned fatalism. “I don’t even know where to begin. This is beyond uncharted territory. Beyond anything … anything my mother ever did. I suppose I need to hit the books, do some experiments, but the heavy lifting will be on you, on self-implementing hyperdimensional mathematics.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not even in a state to begin.” She jerked a finger at Maisie’s shirt. “It’s lucky we have a year, because you’re going to have to do that part yourself, and I don’t really know how to help you.”

“I can start small, read that,” I pointed at the pamphlet – still in Raine’s hand – and forced a smile, forced myself to feel confidence I didn’t have. “And … and face some of the things in the back of my head, m-maybe.” I swallowed down a bubble of nausea. The Eye’s impossible equations reared their many-mawed heads inside my mind.

Back down, I told them, I’ll deal with you later.

“Hold up,” Raine said. “You’re suggesting Heather root around in more of this shit the Eye crammed into her head?”

“Hardly my suggestion,” Evelyn said. “Perhaps you should listen to her.”

Raine turned a concerned frown on me, all worry. I stumbled over my words, over my own forced enthusiasm.

“Yes, yes. Fight fire with fire,” I said. “It’s given me all the tools, even if they’re awful to use. I can try- I-I have to try, I can’t just leave Maisie out there. I can’t.”

Raine waited for me to finish, then smiled as gently as she could.

“Last time you did it, it nearly killed you,” she said. “You didn’t see yourself, you were dead on the floor. I’ve … well,” her smiled turned self-conscious. “I have been that worried before, about a certain other person.” She nodded toward Evelyn. “But it’s not an experience I wanna repeat, not with you, Heather, you get me?”

“M-maybe that doesn’t have to happen again,” I said. “I can start small, I can-”

Raine said the worst possible words. The last thing I ever wanted to hear from her. The culmination of all my paranoia and repressed self-loathing.

If I hadn’t spent the last 16 hours dealing with one of the worst shocks of my life, I probably would have been able to talk it through. But I was still emotionally exhausted, the ache throbbing through my diaphragm in the background, hungry and in need of real food, probably a little dehydrated as well. My legs were weak and I needed a shower, sticky and greasy and stressed and holding myself together with the power of my friends’ support, masking the most terrifying suggestion of my life with bland optimism that I didn’t really believe.

“Let Evee and I deal with this. Leave it to us,” Raine said.

“I-I can’t, Raine. She’s my sister, my twin. She needs me. I-I can’t just-”

“Oh dear,” Evelyn muttered under her breath.

“Evee, I thought you had my back on this one?” Raine said.

“Excuse me?” I said, horrified at Raine’s tone.

“I owe her, Raine,” Evelyn said. “She’s saved me twice so far, clearly her judgement’s sounder than mine.”

Raine sighed and turned back to me. “You heard what Evee said, we can cut this thing off, give you your life back. Leave it to us.” Raine smiled and reached out for my hands. Comforting Raine, safe Raine, all the support in the world I’d ever needed.

I pulled away from her.

“Is that what I am to you?” I swallowed hard, lump in my throat.

“Heather? Evee and I can handle this-”

Evelyn huffed a laugh. “No we bloody well can’t.”

“- there’s no need to hurt yourself for this.”

“Some things are worth it,” I said, drawing myself up straight, gathering my battered dignity. “Some things in life you try even if they might kill you.”

”I sure as hell know that,” Raine laughed. “But you’re hardly out of options. Your back isn’t up against the wall here. You don’t have to blow up your own head to get this done.”

“I’m sick of being useless! I’ve run away and hidden for ten years!” I snapped. “I’m sick of it, I’m sick of hiding! I left her behind, Raine! I’m scum. I can’t just let other people do this for me. It’s not- it’s not just about-”

It’s not just about Maisie.

I couldn’t say that, of course. I could barely face it myself.

I needed this.

For me.

Raine tried to smile, explain herself, but I didn’t give her time. In my own private hell of paranoia and pressure, I didn’t give her time.

“You called me brave,” I spoke over her. “Was that a lie?”

“No! Heather, no, not at all. I just don’t want you to get-”

“It doesn’t matter what you want me to do. I’m not your damsel in distress.”

I marched over to the sofa and grabbed my coat, but ruined my hasty retreat by my need to scoop up Maisie’s tshirt from the table. I crammed it into my coat pocket and turned to Evelyn, trying as hard as I could to control the lump in my throat and the heat in my face and my eyes.

“Evelyn, t-thank you, for-”

“Heather, hey-” Raine moved to take my arm, to put a comforting hand on me, but I jerked away from her.

“Oh bloody hell, the pair of you,” Evelyn snapped. “Don’t do this.”

I all but ran for the front door, mortified and humiliated. Raine followed me the whole way, only a few steps behind as I stamped into my shoes and burst out into the wan grey Sharrowford morning. Raine struggled into her boots and shut the door behind us, hurrying up the broken garden path to catch me.

Out in the street, spirit-life roiled in the thin morning fog, a mirror up to my heart. Wolf-things snapped and prowled and stretched snake-necks to the sky, gibbering tentacled slop lurked in the alleyways between the houses, packs of ghoulish creatures furred in burnt moss and topped with skull-faces danced and capered. They seemed reluctant to cross the wall of Evelyn’s overgrown front garden.

Raine reached for my shoulder. I folded my arms and turned away from her.

“Where are you going? I’ll come with.”

“Home,” I grunted. “Alone.”

She hadn’t meant half the things my own mind had supplied, I knew that.

Didn’t I like it when she treated me as vulnerable, in need of protection, saving, to be looked after and helped and supported? I did. I loved it. She cared. She was afraid I’d hurt myself – and she was right. Digging up the Eye’s lessons and playing with impossible physics did mean hurting myself. Badly. Perhaps irreversibly. Maybe I’d die choking on my own vomit, or pulled apart inside by the impossible black machinery of reality, or maybe my head would explode.

The kiss, the romance, had made it that much worse – had given me something to hold onto, filled me with a hundred new doubts.

I was scared, and I’d lashed out at the nearest target.

“I wish they’d all just move,” I said.

“Eh?”

“Not you,” I frowned at Raine, then looked back at the monsters, the ghouls, the faces of bone and flesh and staring eyes, the lizard-heads and dripping ichor. “Them. My hallucinations. I wish they’d just get out of the way,” I snapped, raised my voice on the last few words.

They did. Parted. Scattered. At my command.

For a long moment I just stared at the street, shocked out of everything by the effect of my own words. My anger. My will.

Raine took my hand. I shook her off.

“Leave me alone.”

“Do you really mean that?” she asked softly.

I shrugged, then shook my head.

I’m so easy.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Anticlimax is often far more challenging to accept than the release of action. All the best stories build up and up, then explode from sheer pressure. We expect our lives to work that way.

For years I believed in my own special susceptibility to that lure, the temptation to see one’s life as a story, with myself cast in the role of the hounded, persecuted protagonist; paranoid schizophrenics slide down that slippery slope with such ease. But we all do it, contort ourselves into narratives, each of us our own hero, expecting the dramatic climax which never comes.

Which was my theory for why Raine couldn’t sleep that night.

After the standoff in the underground car-park, Raine had route-marched me back to campus to pick up Evelyn. Her cheery exterior and borderline dirty jokes failed to cover up the backward glances, the firm grip on my hand, the wire-tightness in her every muscle. My adrenaline ran out, spent, dissipated by the regular pedestrians and streetlights and the sounds of early evening drinking on campus.

I was dead on my feet by the time we got back to the Medieval Metaphysics room. I’d half thought to sit down for five minutes, rest my legs and my mind together, but Evelyn was ready to leave and Raine made sure we didn’t linger. She hurried us out into the corridor, then paused before locking the door.

“You’ve booby trapped this, right Evee? In case-”

Evelyn turned a cold shoulder. “Of course I did,” she snapped.

Down the stairwell and back out into the night, my hand in Raine’s and my reserves sputtering on empty, eyelids heavy and feet like lead. We left campus and skirted the northern edge of the student quarter, past old redbrick Victorian houses and flickering streetlights. The second time I’d taken this route hand-in-hand with Raine. Exhausted notions flittered through my head. Didn’t I need clothes, a shower, my toothbrush? I felt unclean, sweat-soaked, stinking.

But I was too tired to care – physically, emotionally, spiritually. My other hand gripped Maisie’s tshirt, stuffed in my coat pocket.

Raine noticed, bless her. She squeezed my hand. “You holding up okay?”

I almost said ‘what do you think?’, but restrained my exhausted sarcasm. She’d asked a practical question. Raine was nothing if not practical that night.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’ve gone real quiet, that’s all.”

“I’m tired.”

It was the truth.

I had a companion in sullen silence. Evelyn had barely spoken since we’d picked her up. Stormy faced and shoulders hunched, she stomped on a few paces ahead of us, walking stick clacking against the pavement. Was she used to this panic and flight, this interruption of routine? Or was it my fault again, an imposition, a threat brought down on us by my stupid, needy naivety?

Spirit life ebbed and flowed through these rotten streets, wolf-faced monsters and ghoul-limbed apes and worse, lurking at the ends of the roads. They trailed us, closed ranks as we passed, watched and followed and stalked – but at a further distance. A respectful distance, I thought.

They still left me queasy. Ingrained habit and discipline made me avert my eyes. But the old fear bothered me less than ever.

Just exhaustion, I told myself. Too tired to care.

Evelyn’s house, at least, offered sanctuary. Number 12 Barnslow Drive loomed out of the night, as weed-choked and leering as I remembered, dark and brooding in grand disrepair.

She unlocked the front door, slapped the lights on, and almost slammed her walking stick down against the wall. Raine steered me inside and deposited me, wobbly legs and all, as she slipped back outdoors.

“Just to check,” she said.

Evelyn slipped off her shoes and stomped over toward the stairs, saying nothing as I struggled to unlace my trainers. Raine returned, locked the front door, checked the locks twice, then turned to both of us and clapped her hands together.

“Right, we- Evee? Where are you going?”

“My room.” She did not turn around.

“Evee, we need to prep the place.”

“This house looks after itself well enough.”

“Evee-”

“Leave me alone. Wake me if they drive a car bomb up the garden path.”

She waved a hand over her shoulder in dismissal, then mounted the stairs. Raine sighed and flashed an apologetic smile at me. She actually looked a bit lost, for once.

“I’m going to sit down before I fall down,” I said.

“Yeah, good, good, you do that. Drink some water, hydrate. I need to … go deal.” Raine nodded at Evelyn’s retreating back.

I had zero energy to act as peacemaker or indulge my immature curiosity about their relationship. Taking my shoes off presented challenge enough. Raine ruffled my hair and then hurried upstairs.

Rudderless and aching, I wandered across the junk-filled front room, past the stain on the floorboards from two weeks ago, through the darkness in the kitchen, and into the most comfortable place in the house besides Evelyn’s bedroom.

Once a drawing room or dining room, it had since gone to seed and fossilised, but remained warm and cosy. Two radiators worked hard against the encroaching evening cold. A huge, ancient CRT television lay dead in one corner, probably last switched off in the 1980s, joined in retro-junk aesthetic by the fossilised lava lamp on the mantelpiece, over the very empty and very bricked-up fireplace.

Two cramped bay windows peered out across the front garden, both heavily curtained, one wide windowsill filled with the disinterred contents of a nearby box, mostly wooden masks and weird little soapstone figurines.

A brave soul had mounted a half-finished attempt to re-colonise the room, sometime in the last year. She’d cleaned away the worst of the dust and piled some books on the wide slab of table, half-finished physical reading lists both academic and otherwise. Handwritten Latin translation projects lay next to stacks of Japanese manga. I swear the table was some kind of antique, probably worth thousands. And Evelyn used it as an overflow bookshelf.

Two battered sofas formed a shallow L-shape either side of the door, draped with blankets to hide their sorry state. I sank down into one, then used the last of my energy to peel my coat off and fling it over the sofa’s arm.

My feet ached like bruises. I sat cross-legged and rubbed my arches, wincing and grumbling to myself. Upstairs, Evelyn was shouting at Raine – at least, I assume she was; I couldn’t make out the words, just the tone. A shout, a slammed door, some knocking, another shout.

Raine came back downstairs and popped her head around the door-frame.

I remember that clearly. She asked if I was alright, if I needed anything. I said yes and no, and then she was off again, I think to check the windows were locked. The last thing I heard was her rattling about in the kitchen, through the fog of oncoming sleep.


==


I woke with a gasp, in darkness and silence.

For one very dehydrated moment, I could summon no memory of where I was or how I’d gotten there. Jagged alien shapes loomed out of the shadows, ghostly fingers brushed my throat, and my legs hurt like they’d been squeezed through a clothes press.

Tick, tick, tick.

The slow, regular echo of the grandfather clock in the front hall brought me back. I rubbed my eyes and sat up on the sofa, swallowing on a dry throat. All the lights were off, the room illuminated by ghostly streetlight glow leaking in around the edges of the curtains.

A mystery admirer – no prizes for a correct guess who – had tucked a blanket over me and propped a pillow behind my head. I rummaged in my coat for my mobile phone. The screen backlight almost blinded me.

5.47 in the morning. I’d slept all night.

Filthy and fuzzy-mouthed, I stood up and stretched – and discovered the unbelievable muscle ache in my legs, punishment for the trek across the city yesterday. I sat back down and gingerly probed my thighs, wincing and hissing. Wonderful. My stomach added a complaint too. Hadn’t eaten a bite since yesterday morning.

My mysterious benefactor had also left a tall glass of water on the table, along with a sandwich wrapped in cling-film. I downed the water and unwrapped the sandwich – peanut butter – and silently thanked Raine as I all but inhaled it in four bites.

Delicious quiet and calm enveloped the house, ordered by the regular ticking of the grandfather clock and the distant passing of cars deeper in the city. After the frantic rush of yesterday, I loved the comfortable darkness. No spirits to bother me. Space to think, decompress. I closed my eyes for a minute and just soaked in the feeling, as I flexed my aching calf muscles.

I wasn’t the only early riser, apparently. The other sofa cradled the remains of a second makeshift bed, a couple of cushions and a crumpled blanket. Cold and empty now.

“Raine?” I said out loud, but she was elsewhere.

The womb-like enclosing heat of the house had ebbed away, but I didn’t want to put my coat back on, didn’t want to banish this comfy feeling and start thinking practical thoughts just yet. I kept yesterday at mental arm’s length. Time enough later. I pulled the blanket off the sofa and wrapped it around my shoulders.

Number 12 Barnslow Drive was laid out in a big interconnected circle with a few rooms jutting off as dead ends. I wandered into the front room, poked my head into the disused sitting room, peered around in the kitchen. Was I alone? Had Raine and Evelyn been abducted by space aliens or werewolves or creatures from dimension X?

I raided the fridge. A couple of cheese sticks and a piece of bread kept me going, washed down with apple juice. I unearthed a bottle of mouthwash in the downstairs bathroom, did the best I could without a toothbrush.

At last, I found Raine, in the long back room behind the kitchen, a hiding place for a few modern appliances and exposed plumbing. A long window and a glass-filled door looked out on the jungle of the back garden and the huge tree rustling in the wind.

Raine was sat on an old brokenbacked sofa, staring outside.

“Morning,” I murmured.

Raine looked up in surprise, then brightened into a smile. “Morning yourself. Can’t sleep?”

My word, did she look good. Perhaps it was the low light, or my own state of mind; maybe for Raine it really was that effortless. She’d shed her jacket and left the black polo-neck on underneath, trim and athletic. She ran a hand through her chestnut hair, took a deep breath, stretched. I enjoyed the sight very much. Didn’t say that out loud though.

“Just woke up,” I said. “Quite well rested, actually, I think. Legs ache like crazy though.”

“You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning, have you?”

“I found the sandwich, thank you. What are you doing in here?”

Raine’s smile turned self-mocking with a sideways slide of the eyes. “Watching the back garden in case somebody climbs over the fence.”

“Are we really in danger?”

“No, no I don’t think so. I probably overreacted. But, hey.” She shrugged. “That’s what I’m for.”

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

Raine started to rise. “We should go back to the sitting room, it’s warmer in there.”

“No. I want to sit here, with you. In secret.”

Raine raised her eyebrows. “Sure thing.”

She scooted over to make room. I joined her on the sofa and screwed up my courage.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“Mm? No, I’m fine. I’ve been up and walking about, and I did nap a couple of hours. Don’t you worry about me.”

“I mean, would you like some blanket?” I flapped a corner of my blanket-wrap at her, heart in my throat.

“Oh! Oh yeah, yeah of course.” Raine failed to suppress a cheeky grin.

I hid my rising blush as Raine shuffled in close, a token amount of blanket draped over her shoulders. She kept an inch or two of personal space between us. A bold, needy part of me wanted to ask her to cuddle, to hug me, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted physical comfort, but I needed something else, something I couldn’t put words to.

“Those people yesterday,” I said instead. “They weren’t dangerous then?”

“Oh, they totally were.” Raine leaned into the sofa and hooked an arm over the back, behind my head. “But they didn’t get a good look at us, and Evee and I have been flying under the radar for long enough they wouldn’t know where to start, whoever they are, Cultists or another mage or whatever. Our local knob-head altar-boys probably know about this house, but knowing doesn’t get you in.”

I shook my head. “So, what now? We all just go back to normal? Forget we saw that?”

“Pretty much, yeah. That’s the name of the game, don’t get involved. Bottom line: you see any of those people again, you don’t approach them. Leave, call me, whatever. Especially the thing in the trench coat, though the smart money says they never let that out in public.”

“What was she?”

Raine shrugged. “Some kinda monster. Bet Twil gave it something to think about. That’s the other reason I reckon we’re alright – Twil’s like the local rabid dog. They’ll be fixated on her, not us.”

“Oh! Twil, she-”

“She’s fine.” Raine fished her mobile phone out of her pocket, thumbed the screen and showed me the call log.

“‘Furry trash bait’?” I read the contact name out loud: the last call, several hours ago.

“That’s Twil. She bit my head off.” Raine grinned. “Guess I deserved it, but she’s fine. She’s back home already, walked the whole way down the motorway embankment and along the train tracks. Totally hardcore, gotta hand that to her.”

“I still can’t deal with the whole ‘werewolf’ thing. It’s so … unnecessary.”

“Don’t think about it too hard. You’ll get used to it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I muttered. “How’s Evelyn?”

Raine turned her eyes to the ceiling, as if she could see through brick and wood and plaster into Evelyn’s bedroom. “Honest truth, I’m not really sure. I’ve known her long enough, seen her beat herself up over mistakes before, but this is different. She wouldn’t even talk to me. Threw her leg at me and all.”

“She … I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah. She hasn’t done that since we first met.”

“ … excuse me? Did I hear that correctly? The first time you and Evelyn met, she threw her prosthetic leg at you?”

Raine turned a grin on me. “Yeah! Bit smaller back then of course, we were only fourteen.”

I looked away and back again, trying not to say anything rude.

“Heather?”

“What on earth did you do to her to warrant that?”

Raine laughed. “Why have I gotta be the baddie? Maybe she overreacted, you don’t know.”

I gave her a look.

“Okay, you got me. I broke into her house.”

“You did what? This house?”

“No, where she grew up, down in Sussex. To be fair, it wasn’t the first time we met, though it was the first time we spoke. Long story short, I saw her outside – one of the few times she was allowed outside, anyway – because I’d climbed the wall of the Saye estate for a peek. I was actually looking to nick stuff from the garden. It’s this great big old farmhouse, sort of thing you’d be into.”

“What were you doing in Sussex? I thought you grew up in East Anglia.”

“Running away from home. Story for another time.”

“I … ” Curiosity grabbed me. “O-okay?”

“So after I saw Evee outside, I had to know more, I had to know who she was. It’s not every day you see a girl with one leg missing. She wasn’t like she is now, either. She looked a lot more … well, messed up. I didn’t have anything better to do right then, and just the sight of her, made me want to help, you know?” Raine patted her own chest, over her heart. “Stirred my noble spirit and all that.”

“And you broke in?”

“I broke right in, yeah. Dodged her family and the uh, things they kept in that house, and found her. Bit of a crash course.”

“Let me guess. She screamed her head off and threw her leg at you?”

Raine laughed. “Yeah, spot on!”

“I think I would have done the same,” I lied. If Raine had appeared in my bedroom when I was fourteen I’d have thought she was a walking fantasy. “What happened after that?”

“That, well, that’s not really my tale to tell.”

“Oh, Raine, come on, you can’t leave me hanging there.”

“I’m serious.” She spread her hands. “You told me off once before, for breaking your trust, for spilling the beans about you in front of Evee. And you were totally correct, hundred percent, had me dead to rights. I’m trying not to be a hypocrite here. I don’t want to lose your respect.”

“Oh … yes, yes. That’s a good point.”

I was such an awful, intrusive gossip. Raine must have seen it on my face, because she hesitated and smiled. “Short version is I helped her with her family issues, and she helped me not, you know, end up on the streets.”

“I want to know more about you,” I blurted out, then blushed and rushed to correct myself. “I-I mean, about your past, you two. I feel like I don’t have a way into it.”

“You’re already in, Heather.”

I sighed. “Evee said some things about her mother yesterday, I made the mistake of asking a question.”

“Oho. She blew up at you?”

“Thought she was done with me for good. For a moment.”

“She hates her mum. Maybe start smaller than that?”

I eyed Raine, her bright look, her fluffy hair, the way she sat so comfortable and obviously not aching all over like I did. “Aren’t you exhausted? Yesterday afternoon was far too much for me. Is this what you and Evelyn get up to?”

Raine laughed with genuine amusement. “No. Totally not. That’s the sort of thing we try to avoid.” Her amusement faded quickly as she studied my face. “I’m so sorry we messed up, Heather. What I said yesterday, I meant it. I know what that all meant to you.”

I shook my head. “Feels difficult to process now. My sister might be alive, yes, but what does that mean? Grief was one thing. This is … uncharted territory.”

“Your first instinct was rescue,” Raine said. “I’d say that’s pretty damn well charted.”

“Survivor’s guilt. Panic. I don’t know. I left her behind. If … if there’s anything left to rescue … ”

“What’s she like?”

Present tense. Thank you, Raine. Thank you.

“Like me, I guess. We were-” I took a breath. “We are, twins. I was very different, before Wonderland. I guess she’ll be different too, now.”

“Can I see that tshirt again? The one with the writing on it?”

“Later. I don’t want to get up, this is too comfy.”

Raine held my hand under the blanket. She didn’t need to speak. Everything I’d ever wanted in a friend. A partner?

What was I to her?

I was useless, by any comparison I cared to make. Raine was the quintessential action girl, capable and practical, good in a crisis. She was violent, a fact which still sent a strange sexual thrill through me when I thought about it in private. And Evelyn? Evelyn could do magic. She was half-crippled and spiky and acid-tongued and took no nonsense from anybody.

What was I? Weak. I whined about pain and got scared of a little adversity.

“Yesterday, I was worried you might … think poorly of me.” I struggled to express myself. “I could barely keep up. Maisie – she reached out. Evelyn did the magic. You’re heroic-”

“Heroic?” Raine broke her silence. “I’m just an overconfident dyke with a Robin Hood complex. But thanks, that’s sweet.”

I cleared my throat and tried to focus, tried not to blush. “Compared to that, what do I have to offer?”

“Everything,” Raine said.

I looked up into her eyes. No guile there. No humouring me. I shrugged and felt lame, no answer to her sincerity.

“I’m gonna break my word now,” Raine said. “When I first met Evee, she was resigned to her own death. She was terrified of me, of course, but once I broke her shell, I realised there was very little left inside. She was absolutely convinced she was dead within a year, two at most, and she was probably right.”

“ … what? What was happening to her?”

“That’s the long story, the part I won’t go into. It’s her business to share or not. But the important part is that I didn’t save her. I’m just a catalyst. Sure, I might be a hero.” Raine cracked a grin. “It’s cool that you think so, but you’re just as heroic as me.”

“That’s nonsense,” I said. “You did actually save me. Maybe you don’t realise-”

“Heather. Read my lips: I think you’re cool.”

“ … don’t be silly.” I had to look away, blushing and confused. I wasn’t strong, or useful, or cool, or anything else Raine wanted to call me.

Raine was right about one thing: she was a catalyst, for a question I’d lacked courage to ask. I had no more guts this morning than over last two weeks, but now all my defences lay in ruins, frazzled by the last 24 hours and besieged by Raine’s attitude toward me.

With clarity came the risk of rejection. I glanced at her and away again, twice, before I managed the words.

“Raine … do you- do you like me?”

She blinked at me in mock-innocence. “Do I like you?”

I sighed and almost rolled my eyes. “I mean, a-are you into me? I can’t figure it out. Figure you out, I mean. I’m not used to it, used to other people in my life. I never had teenage years to figure any of this out, figure out other girls, navigate … you know. When you told me about Twil, when I thought she was your ex-girlfriend, I … I felt jealous. I-I don’t know what that means.”

A unstoppable, badly suppressed smile crept onto her face. “Do you want me to be into you?”

My heart tripped over itself. “Oh, don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That. You know what. Don’t tease me.”

“I can’t help myself.”

Raine leaned in close and slid her arm across my shoulders, bringing her face inches from mine. I caught her scent, of leather and hand soap and the subtle spice of her body. My mouth went slack, my heart fluttering.

“R-raine-”

“Heather, I have spent almost every day for two weeks as close to you as I can get without freaking you out. We cuddled on your bed while watching movies. That didn’t give you a clue?”

I felt frozen, hypnotised, heart going a million miles an hour. I managed a strangled whisper. “I … I’m not sure.”

“Yes, you huge idiot, I like you a lot. I find you fascinating, from your face to your earnest, unguarded intellectualism, from the way you tuck one foot up under your lap when you’re concentrating, to the well of courage I don’t think you know you possess. Part of me … ” Raine looked off to one side and wet her lips with her tongue. I felt like a mouse before a snake. I had visions of us doing it – it – right here on this battered old sofa in the soft darkness. My chest tightened. I couldn’t breathe properly. “Part of me wants to show you how good I could be for you.”

She leaned back and straightened up, took a deep breath and smiled. Normal Raine again.

“But I’m not going to,” she said.

“W-what?” I spluttered at the anti-climax, slightly offended in a new and bizarre fashion. “Why? Why not?”

Raine laughed and held up her hands. “Heather, I’m not going to fingerbang you on this sofa, because of exactly what you just said. You never had teenage years. We can take it slow. Know your own heart first. I ain’t gonna take advantage of you.”

“Don’t be so absolutely ridiculous.”

There is no other point in my life, I believe, when I could have done what I did next. Exhaustion made me capable – not sleep deprivation like I was used to, that bone-shattering tiredness which robbed me of all decision making power, but an emotional exhaustion, a lack of any more will to care, a knife through my inhibition and trepidation.

I jerked forward and kissed Raine on the lips.

It was bad. Really bad. Clumsy and short, a fumbling moment of mashing my lips against hers, lucky we didn’t clack teeth. I ended the kiss as fast as I’d started, blushing beetroot red and unable to breathe. Raine stared at me in blinking surprise.

“Well.” My voice trembled. “There you go. Deal with that.”

Raine did. She leaned over me and cupped my cheek. My heart was ready to burst out of my chest. I thought I was going to have a panic attack right there.

“Like this, Heather,” she said.

She was much better at kissing.

When Raine pulled back I had to put a hand to my heart. My breath came out in a shudder. I blinked rapidly at her, then hiccuped. She laughed softly.

“Hey, take it easy, Heather, easy. Breathe, yeah?”

“I am breathing, dammit. Didn’t expect it to feel like that.”

“You sure do know how to inflate my ego.”

“Shut up. Shut up and do it again.”

Afterward, we cuddled on that sofa for a long time, talking about everything and nothing, my head on Raine’s shoulder. We talked about that old house, all of Evelyn’s bric-a-brac, and how Raine wanted to take me clothes shopping. She confessed she’d been up most of the night, prowling the house, checking the windows, waiting for the assault which never came. I told her how much I enjoyed the comfortable darkness, she told me how cute I looked while asleep.

And told me she thought I was brave.

“I don’t know about that,” I said.

“You managed to surprise me just now.”

“I keep surprising myself. I … I think I don’t know myself very well, in a way. I don’t feel very brave though. I don’t think that’s in me.”

By the time the first grey fingers of dawn reached across the sky, Raine had fallen asleep with her head tilted back on the sofa.

What had I done to deserve her?

If I’d believed in karma, I’d have rationalised this as payback for all those years of horror. I snuggled closer, but didn’t have the courage to reach up and run my fingers through that beautiful thick hair. She was warm and toned and strong. I recalled her body in motion: Raine with a nightstick in her hands; Raine slamming Twil up against the door; Raine creeping through the shadows last night.

I was attracted to the violence, on some level. Perhaps merely that she could.

Sleep did not return. I snuggled with Raine as dawn struggled to break, but caffeine dependency and my bladder conspired to keep me awake. Wriggling out of her embrace and the blanket was easy, but leaving her behind was not. I tucked the blanket over her legs and up around her chin. She would know, if she woke without me.

Raine hadn’t actually answered my question earlier. She’d kissed me, but were we an item? Did she really like me, or was she just humouring me? What on earth did she see in me? Compared to her I was scrawny and small, weird and pallid, permanent bags under my eyes and more baggage in my soul.

Her damsel in distress. In need of saving.

“You’re far too hot for me,” I whispered.

There would be time for snuggles later, and more if she pushed me. All the time in the world. Right now, I felt strong and empowered, lifted up by oxytocin and serotonin, warm and right and supported.

I could do this.

Raine had my back.

I found a jar of instant coffee in one of the kitchen cupboards, so old it had probably belonged to Evelyn’s dead mother. It sufficed for now, along with another cheese stick. Back in the ex-drawing room, I needed light, so I cracked one of the curtains on the grey morning. Spirit life churned all the way down the road, a hundred unnameable ghoulish forms, mouths full of teeth, ratchet-limbs and slavering jaws, canine packs and slippery lizards. Perhaps this was part of what made the house the most supernaturally defensible place in the city, a vortex of pneuma-somatic life.

The old fear had faded. A decade of terror, gone pale.

I knew why. I’d spoken to one of them, made demands, been obeyed.

Well, that spirit had been largely immobile, frightened of the Demon Messenger. Not some slinking, stalking thing which made my shoulderblades crawl.

I switched on one of the lamps on the drawing room mantelpiece and angled the bulb toward the table, where I shifted some books to clear a space. Evelyn owned some tempting titles between the comic books and old paperbacks: The Conquest of Gaul in Caesar’s original Latin, and a beautiful hardback copy of The Iliad. Time for those later, as well.

I extracted Maisie’s tshirt from my coat pocket. Cradling it in both hands, like the relic of a saint, I carried it to the table and carefully unfolded it, laid it out, tried to think clearly.

HELP

How, sister? How?

Maisie’s tshirt did not smell of her, or of me. I sniffed it again to confirm.

Neither did it seem like it had been subjected to ten years of washing machines and dresser drawers, which at least made sense. The strawberry design was not faded with wear, just utterly filthy. I rubbed the fabric between my fingers. It felt real enough, pills and thin patches and all. The washing instructions on the collar label were clear as day, in English. Tumble dry low, do not bleach, wash with like colours.

HELP, written in black.

Blood? No. It didn’t smell of iron. It had dried hard, more like tar than heart-blood. Were those Maisie’s fingerprints whorled in the substance? Couldn’t tell.

HELP

I lifted the hem of the tshirt and peered inside. A scrap of black caught my eye. I lifted further, turned it inside out.

Found the rest of the message.

Half-mangled in a child’s fingerprint scrawl, nowhere near as large and neat as the single stark word on the front. Horror grew in my chest as I read, tears brimming in my eyes.

‘I want come come out now. please come back and let me out. heather. heather I miss you. heather. where did you go? I want to see the sun again. I want to eat food. I want to stop thinking. stop thinking stop thinking. please heather. please reach. please I love you please. I miss you I miss life I want to leave please let me die stop thinking stop’

The message resumed in a different hand, as if picked up again in a period of stability. A more mature hand?

‘I don’t know how much time I have left. I can’t think clearly when I’m not using the numbers, but with the numbers I know there’s less and less of me every time I think. you probably killed yourself years ago. or maybe you’re in a nuthouse. if you’re not, you’re the last link I kept. no time left.’

Maisie had added a date below the message, 364 days from now, a year from yesterday. Was this her time limit?

It was. I knew. Deep inside, I knew.

I scrubbed at my tears and stopped crying.

HELP

“Okay,” I whispered.

How, I didn’t know yet.

But I knew where to start.

Stuffed in the same pocket as the tshirt was the pamphlet Evelyn had given me earlier yesterday, Notes Toward a Unified Cosmology. If I’d believed in fate, I’d have taken that as a sign, but I required no further encouragement.

That pamphlet was the water and sunlight to the seed of an idea planted in my mind two weeks ago, when I’d Slipped on purpose, when for just a moment I’d forced my spongy, delicate human mind to comprehend the levers of power behind reality’s surface, and yank them toward my own ends.

I couldn’t do that again, I knew. The bruise in my chest would split me in two. To even think it was to invite nausea and pain and icepick headache twinges behind my eyes.

But the pamphlet gave me somewhere to start.

Cracking the pamphlet open right there was a terrible idea. Even a glance at the equations inside stirred terrible nausea. I began to half-plan a strategy of empty stomach and sick bucket. A difficult and disgusting task, but the Fractal protected me from real danger. If I took it slowly, I knew I could do it, for Maisie.

But I was hungry for knowledge now, for a foothold now, and the first time I’d visited Evelyn’s house I’d gotten one short look at a lure designed exactly for somebody like me: the study upstairs, full of books.

Darkness still lay heavy in the upstairs hallway, some of the windows shuttered as well as curtained. Floorboards threatened to creak, and I dared not fumble for the light switch. I didn’t want to wake Evelyn. Not because I felt guilty, but because I figured she really needed the sleep.

I picked the wrong room at first, opened the door on a barren bedroom, just a frame with a mattress, quite sad and lonely. I crept further along the hallway and located the correct door, the one with a brass handle.

Light flooded out as I pushed it open.

Evelyn looked up from the desk. Furtive, blinking, flinching.

“Oh! I- sorry.”

I’d surprised her in our shared natural environment, surrounded by tightly packed bookshelves along every wall, the smell of print and paper in the air. The desk, a meaty slab of wood large enough to sleep on, was littered with notes and old tomes and Evelyn’s notebooks open on page after page of shorthand and diagrams. Two small reading lamps haloed her with light. She was wearing pajama bottoms and a huge shapeless jumper.

“Evee?” The pet name slipped out. She looked like absolute hell.

She sniffed. Her eyes were dry but rimmed with the raw red that only comes from a whole sleepless night of torment. I knew, I’d seen that look in the mirror often enough. She avoided my gaze, showed me a shoulder and shuffled notes around on the desk, just to occupy her hands. She glanced back at me, defeated and sagging.

“Do your worst,” she muttered.

I was completely lost. “ … excuse me?”

“You’re here to yell at me, I know. Get it over with. I don’t deserve any better.”

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