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My stamina gave out long before we caught the Demon.

I’d never been very fit. Scrawny legs, no real strength. Hadn’t gotten any serious exercise since childhood.

Raine had insisted we not run. Hurrying along Sharrowford’s canted, hilly streets for over an hour was more than enough to drain what little reserves I had. I gave in on the corner of Harries Road, slowed and stumbled to a stop and doubled over with my hands on my thighs, sucking air through a raw throat. The ache in my diaphragm burned and throbbed like a punched bruise.

The promise of Maisie’s message had kept me going far beyond empty. My knees shook, I was ravenously hungry, and I knew I’d pay for this tomorrow.

Raine hooked an arm under my shoulders and helped me stand straight.

“You have to take a moment,” she said. “Stop and rest.”

“I- I- can’t-” I panted.

“You’re not gonna corral a big scary monster if I have to princess carry you the rest of the way, right?” She sneaked a sidelong grin at me. It almost worked, almost got me to sit down and take care of myself.

I couldn’t. I levered myself off Raine’s support and pointed ahead, to where the houses ran out before the bridge over Samter Street, Sharrowford’s abortive excuse for a ring road. A flopping amalgamation of white rubber flesh and wings made of broken light lay in distress across the bridge, downed by the Messenger’s passing. The spirit shredded its own feathers with talons made of glass and lightning, screeching at the sky. Cars passed through its pneuma-somatic flesh, drivers oblivious to the spirit world all around them.

I took a step forward and one knee gave out.

Raine caught me and held me up. “Heather, you’re tapped out. Sit.”

“Yup, looks about ready to drop,” Twil said. “That’s it then? You gonna take her home and put her to bed? We done?”

“No, no I have to- to carry on- have to-”

I put up a token struggle, but Raine was right; I was done. She helped me wobble over to one of the low garden walls which fronted the dilapidated semi-detached houses lining Harries Road.

We’d just turned off one of the tiny high streets in this end of Sharrowford, studded with Indian takeaways and shuttered storefronts. A few evening pedestrians glanced at us from across the road, one of them shouted something ugly. Twil stuck both middle fingers up at him. Nobody cared enough to pay attention to three strung-out college girls. The silver lining of England in the 21st century, I suppose.

Raine sat me down on the wall.

“Please, I have keep going. I have to catch it. I-”

“I know. And we can. We will. But you need to rest or you’re gonna do yourself an injury.”

Damn it all, I knew she was right. I was running on fumes, helpless and frustrated. Raine smiled and spoke soothing words, but I clenched my jaw, wringing my fingers together, nowhere to lash out but at her. I almost did.

“I can catch it,” Twil said.

We both looked at her. She was one hundred percent human now, had been since the moment we left Willow House, right down to the tips of her fingers and the ends of her curly black hair. She shrugged. “I can follow the scent a lot faster without you two in tow. You’re both slow as shit.”

“You’re serious?” I asked. “You can?”

“Sure can,” Twil drawled through a lazy, smug smile. “I could cross the whole city in half an hour and be back before you got time to worry. Nobody’ll see me either.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Yes, do it, please, please. You’ll be straight back?”

Raine held up a hand and fixed Twil with that intense, uncompromising stare. “If this is a setup-”

“Raine!” I said, horrified.

“Oh fuck off. What, you think I rigged that bigass fuckboy to lead us out here? This lovebird drama is sad, that’s what it is. I’m not gonna steal your girl, okay? I’m not even interested.” Twil put her hands on her hips. “We’re chasing major bad mojo, right? I don’t get half of what’s going on but screw it, we’re on a hunt, right? It’s got my blood itching. You can’t set me to find prey and expect me to drop it.”

Raine and Twil stared each other down for a heartbeat.

“Raine,” I hissed.

“Alright, go.”

Twil sketched a mock-salute – to me, not Raine – and then she was gone, off at a dead run. When she got far enough ahead of the streetlights, beyond view of casual observers, she slipped into a long, loping, rolling gait. I caught a flash of clawed wolfish foot kicking off the paving slabs.

My goodness, she could move.

Raine watched her go. She puffed out a long sigh and rolled her shoulders.

“Anyone approaches us, says anything, pretend you’re drunk. Student hijinks, yeah?”

I nodded and rubbed at the burning ache in my chest, wishing I could massage my own diaphragm. Raine stood as if on guard over me, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, glancing up and down the street.

A feeling of embattled, bitter defiance fought up from my heart, because I thought I knew what she was thinking.

Getting my breath back broke my single-minded focus, gave me the mental space to feel truly and fully awful, really ramp up the self-loathing. I’d never felt so pathetic and useless. Maisie was right there, on the other side of reality, alive and alone and cold, and I was too weak and broken to drag my sorry carcass halfway across a provincial English city. Pampered, atrophied, useless. I called myself far worse things in the privacy of my own mind. The ache in my chest was not entirely physical.

Was this what Raine wanted? A damsel in distress? Because I felt like living filth.

I was endlessly thankful to her, yes, for believing me, for following me, even for the little things like the borrowed scarf and the one remaining mitten. The first shades of night had fallen over the city streets, chill wind in the air leeching residual heat from the concrete and asphalt. If it wasn’t for the extra layers, I’d have been shivering after a few moments sitting still.

Maybe this was what Evelyn had warned me about.

Raine looked down at me with a thoughtful expression and a gentle smile. I was doing a fantastic job of hiding my turmoil behind the veil of exhaustion, but I just couldn’t bear that smile.

“Don’t say it. Not right now.”

Raine raised her eyebrows. “Say what?”

“I … I don’t know, exactly. Whatever you were thinking.” I had to look down at the pavement. “Maybe we can talk about it later. Right now I don’t care, I can’t deal with it. I have to … have to … ”

“Heather?”

“Just don’t. Don’t say it. Don’t treat me like this.”

A pause, one of those dreadful heartbeats where history could have gone either way; if Raine had been anybody else, we’d have derailed.

She crouched down so we were eye to eye. I tried to avert my gaze.

“Not even gonna ask what you meant by that. Totally doesn’t matter,” she said, and I felt myself shrink, ashamed and trapped. “But I am gonna take an executive decision.”

I looked up at her and saw the smile. Not the usual rakish flash but a more subtle quirk to her lips, the confidence of certain knowledge.

“W-what? Raine, what?”

“When I was looking at you, I was thinking how I can’t possibly imagine what’s going through your head right now.”

“ … I … okay?”

Raine hesitated so slightly, gave her words a little emotional push. “I’m an only child, no brothers, no sisters. You probably could have guessed that. My parents – I’ve not told you this, but my parents hate me. Haven’t spoken to either of them in two years. So this,” Raine touched the tshirt still clutched in my hands, Maisie’s pajama top, then folded her fingers over mine. “I can’t imagine.”

“Raine, there’s no need-”

“But I do get it, how much this matters to you, what it must be doing to you. If I’m not showing it, that’s only because we’re on the hunt. We can figure all the details out later, over a nice curry in a warm kitchen, with all of Evee’s expert headspace to help. But right now, right here, we’re after our big spiky boy. You can do this. I’ve got your back.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, and had to look down and wipe my eyes on my sleeve.

More shame, but such relief. I was such a fool. I carefully folded up Maisie’s tshirt and put it away in my coat pocket, just to move my hands for a moment, just to think. I put my arms out toward Raine, stiff and awkward.

“Give me a hug,” I demanded.

She did, and it was good.

Raine laughed softly. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. Come on, can you stand yet?”

“Yes, yes I think so.”

Twil – all human once more – came jogging back down the street as Raine helped me to my feet. She pulled a face and frowned at us. “Get a room, you two.”

I didn’t care about the implications right then. Raine was correct: we were on the hunt.

How exciting. How cliche. How very Raine to frame it that way.

Didn’t do us any good in the end.

“Did you find it or not?” I asked.

“You best believe I did.” Twil broke into a huge shit-eating grin. “Guess what? It’s gone to ground.”


==


Sharrowford dribbles out north of the Samter bridge. Not into fields or moorland, but into one of the worst unfinished developments in the whole country, two dozen rows of glass-fronted luxury flats, wreathed for years with industrial tarpaulin and temporary cladding, protected by twelve-foot chicken wire fence and decayed plyboard. Toward the west, these apartments had been finished, a few filled and lit up against the night sky, but down this end they towered in darkness, shabby monuments to the absurdity of the English housing market.

Twil led the way between the unfinished buildings. Streetlights thinned out and we walked through increasingly wider patches of shadow. Nobody else braved these half-made streets in the dark. Nothing to be here for.

I would never come to this sort of place at night. If I’d been on my own, I suspect I’d have been scared witless, though the most dangerous inhabitants were probably just rats. Raine held my hand and this time I didn’t let go.

Twil nodded toward one of the apartment blocks, one that had never sprouted more than a couple of floors. She kicked to a halt next to a locked and chained gate in the security fence, then pointed at the yawning dark mouth of an entrance ramp leading down, into an underground basement car-park.

“It’s down there, no doubt.”

“Are you certain?” I asked.

“Yeah. Circled the block twice, scent doesn’t lead anywhere else. Either it’s in there somewhere or it flew straight up and didn’t come back down.” She pointed at the sky and shrugged.

I tried sniffing the air like Twil, but all I could smell was damp concrete and mouldy wood.

“What do we do when we catch it then?” Twil asked. “Hog-tie it and ask it questions?”

“Heather touches it first,” Raine said.

“ … uh, you sure about that, skipper?” Twil said.

“Heather touches it first.”

“It’ll be fine,” I said.

I didn’t believe my own words. Now we were close, I realised how ad-hoc this was. I wished Evelyn was here, or that we had time to call her, to ask advice, but she was still back in the Medieval Metaphysics room. God alone knows what our mad dash across Sharrowford would have done to her legs. I tried to trust my instincts, and Maisie.

“It’s locked, how are we going to get in?”

“Fancy a little breaking and entering?” Raine asked, in the same tone one might ask if it was time for a cup of tea.

Twil grinned wide and toothy, grabbed the chain around the gate in both hands, and tore the links apart with a sound of wrenching metal. I flinched, then blinked at her as she rattled the chain free and swung the gate open. “After you, ladies and … uh, ladies.”

“Show off,” Raine said.

“Flaunt it if you got it.” Twil winked. “Not like I get many chances to do that.”

“Werewolf nonsense,” I muttered.

A shallow ramp of asphalt led down into the only finished, accessible part of the structure, an underground parking garage. As we approached, I realised it wasn’t as dark as it had seemed from the street; orange work-lights glowed down there, reflected off the pitted concrete and puddles of rainwater.

Twil stepped ahead to go first.

“Hold up,” Raine said.

I thought for a moment she was going to quibble about who got to lead us, some stupid chest-thumping conflict with Twil. I turned and opened my mouth to tell her off, to say Raine, we need to hurry, it’s right there, it might get away.

The complaint died on my lips. Raine was frowning hard. She looked left and right down the the length of the structure, then stared at the mouth of the parking garage.

“I smell a rat,” she said. “Why are the lights on?”

“ … I’m sorry?”

“Twil, you smell anything else round here except our big demon lad?”

Twil squinted in confusion, sniffed the air and shrugged.

“Raine, come on!” I said, lost for a moment, the reason for delay escaping me. “I have to-”

“It was heading for the city centre.” Raine spoke quickly and quietly. “Maybe for one of the old canals, maybe to hide, I don’t know. Then it turned, hell of a right angle, and made a bee-line for here, for this. Why change direction? No. Somebody called it. We need to leave.”

“Raine!” I couldn’t believe those last four words.

Comprehension crept over Twil’s face. She jerked a thumb down the dark ramp. “You think-”

“Maybe,” Raine murmured.

“I don’t believe this,” I said. “What? You think somebody else is down there, talking to it? You think somebody’s beaten us to the punch? You can’t be serious.”

Raine met my eyes, serious as a head wound. No joy in an upcoming confrontation. No Knight Errant play-acting.

“Yes,” she said.

“I-I still want to go down. This is so important, Raine.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“I know.”

“ … stay behind Twil and I. Don’t make a sound. Do exactly what I say.”

I nodded.

Twil walked back over to the gate and lifted the length of broken steel chain. She offered it to Raine, but Raine shook her head. Twil shrugged, held one end of the chain in her hand, and wrapped it around her forearm.

Oh great, I thought, we’re onto the improvised weapons already.

Hardly the worst cause for alarm I’d seen today.


==


We crept down the ramp in silence, enclosed by concrete. Twil led us over a pair of never-used speed bumps in the road. An arm-barrier loomed out of the shadows and we slipped around the side of an empty toll machine. The ramp seemed to go down and down and down, deeper underground than necessary.

I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

“Stop,” Raine hissed, just before we reached the end of the wall which separated the entrance ramp from the car park itself. I could see a little of the floor beyond: bare concrete, support pillars, breeze block walls. The builders had never gotten around to painting the parking spaces.

Raine was right – the lights shouldn’t have been here, or been on. Pools of stagnant rainwater, lichen colonies, rat droppings in the gutters. This place was all but abandoned except on some hedge fund balance sheet. The orange work-site lighting shone from an unseen source far across the floor, casting strange shadows up the walls, dancing across the sodden concrete.

Twil raised an eyebrow. Raine held up a hand for quiet.

Water dripped. I tried to control the thudding of my heart, one hand pressed to my chest. Rats scurried in the shadows.

Whispered voices echoed in the dark.

Not us.

Twil bared her teeth in a horrible predator’s grin as her wolf-muzzle formed out of thin air and snapped shut. I was suddenly very glad she was on our side.

“Wait here,” Raine mouthed.

I nodded. “Oka-”

“Screw that,” Twil hissed. “I can take them-”

Raine rounded on her, angry – genuine anger, the like of which I’d never seen from her before. Tightly controlled by the need for silence, spoken more in the language of muscle and posture, there was no question who was top dog. She grabbed Twil by the front of her hoodie and spoke through clenched teeth.

“Wait.”

“Okay, okay, shit.” Twil pulled herself free and straightened her clothes. “Bloody hell.”

“And stay quiet.”

Raine crept out of cover, keeping low through the deep shadows as she searched for an angle to see what was happening out there. She stopped about twenty feet away and peered around a pillar.

A distant, methodical part of my mind filed that mental image away in a folder marked ‘Raine’, and I told it to shut up. Now was not the time to admire her.

Twil leaned over my shoulder for a better look. A shiver went up my spine at that werewolf muzzle so close. Raine stared across the car park for a moment, then quickly crept back. She straightened up, stony faced and tense, every part of her wired to spring.

“Is it there?” I whispered.

“Yes, but no. I’m so sorry, Heather. We need to leave. This is a lost cause.”

“What?” My voice cracked. “No- no, the message, my-”

“Shhh.” Raine put a finger to her lips, then took my hand. “We can’t. We need to go.”

Twil straightened up, flexing her hands into claws. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

“Twil, be quiet,” Raine hissed.

“Them – who?” I asked. “Who?”

“I can’t be certain, but I think they might be from the Sharrowford Cult. We have to leave.”

“I … no, I have to see.”

I needed to know who was stealing Maisie’s message from me.

Raine started to say something sensible, something with my safety in mind, something realistic and sane and smart.

I jerked my hand out of hers and slipped forward into the shadows before Raine could stop me. I’d done this a thousand times before in far worse places, on the other side of a Slip, made myself silent and small and hidden, Outside, avoided the attention of far worse creatures than anything Sharrowford could hold. This was one thing I was good at – hiding. Raine hissed my name and followed. I crept to the pillar she’d peered around, braced myself, and looked.

We weren’t the only ones interested in a wayward specimen of Noctis Macer.

No time to process what I saw.

Twil bounded past me, all teeth and claws, full wolf-woman form. She slammed a foot into the concrete so hard it cracked, and roared “Hey bitches!” through a mouth full of fangs.

A flashlight swirled in our direction. Raine bundled into me and shoved me behind herself, then turned and reached one hand into her leather jacket.

“Nobody move!” she yelled.

Pretty sure she was bluffing. Could have convinced me.

I’d never been in a Mexican Standoff before.

That makes it sound an awful lot more glamorous than it was. Mostly it was just frightening, that moment of explosive meeting and tension, eye contact and hands reaching for concealed weapons. The dim work-site lights, the filthy concrete, the multiplying echoes. Four people caught in a tableau around the towering form of the Messenger Demon stretched to its full height, twelve feet of dark night-flesh and unfurled wings like a woodcut demon gleaming in the torchlight glow.

It stood in the centre of magic circle easily twenty feet across, drawn in red paint on the concrete floor.

Certainly made for an appropriate introduction to Sharrowford’s most dangerous people.

They didn’t look anything like my mental image of cultists, not the way Evelyn and Raine had used the word, and for a split-second my brain struggled to catch up. I’d expected robes, ceremonial knives, stone altars in the woods.

Four of them. Two men, two women.

The men could have passed for normal.

An older gentleman with stringy grey hair and wire-frame glasses held some kind of jury-rigged electronic device in one hand, all exposed circuit board and twisted wire and a tiny LCD screen. He blinked at us in naked surprise, a mole-rat blinded by searchlights, and patted at the pockets of his waxed coat.

The other man looked for all the world like a very misplaced librarian. Younger, maybe mid-twenties, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and wearing a waistcoat and tie, wellington boots over immaculate trousers, a flashlight in one hand.

No shock from him. Little surprise. Cold regard.

The third figure – a woman – could not have walked down a Sharrowford street without comment. Tall, six and a half feet at least, wrapped from head to toe in a trench coat, hands in her pockets and a heavy hood pulled up to shadow her face. A scarf concealed her nose and mouth, left only her eyes exposed. Not an extra inch of skin showed. She turned to regard us with robotic slowness.

Then there was Lozzie.

Of course, I didn’t know her name then, but I’d learn it soon enough.

Stood in the centre of the group, inside the magic circle, we’d interrupted her in the act of reaching up to touch the Messenger Demon’s faceless head, to cradle it as one might a favourite pet.

Small and slight, she was dressed in a dark purple-and-grey striped hoodie with the ends of the sleeves pulled over her hands. Messy blonde hair reached all the way to the backs of her knees.

She wore a goat skull over her head, like a helmet, complete with horns. Except, goat skulls didn’t grow that large.

For a moment I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at – she was covered in motion, tentacles waving, obscene shapes attached to her body.

She writhed with spirit life.

It was all over her, actually touching her flesh and clothes. A tentacled squid-blob clung to one shoulder, a twisted lizard lay flush against an arm. A mass of slender plant-like roots had wrapped around her midsection and jellyfish feelers floated out behind her. A pair of hounds sat at her heels, fever-dream direwolves crossed with deep-sea fishes. Huge plate eyes, skin like old leather.

She turned and looked right at me, tilted her goat-skull mask.

I was so shocked I almost forgot to be outraged. How dare she take Maisie’s message?

The Standoff collapsed all at once.

“You will leave now,” the younger man called in crisp clear tones. “You saw nothing.”

Twil laughed, picked up her feet and rushed at them, unwrapping the chain from her arm.

The older man with the straggly hair and the wire-frame glasses clicked his fingers at the tall woman in the trench coat. She shrugged, but the younger man glanced at her and spoke a few words. Loud, blunt, cut-off words in no human language. The tall woman rolled her shoulders and strode toward Twil.

The girl in the goat-skull withdrew her hands from the Messenger and waved at me with the end of one sleeve.

“Bye bye!” she called.

The Messenger folded itself out of reality, as if sliding through an invisible doorway. It burned the eye to see.

“No!” I shouted.

Twil leapt.

I didn’t see what happened next, because Raine grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and almost picked me up off my feet, pushed me toward the ramp and made me run. We scrambled back toward the entrance as the most awful noises came from below, animal screeches and cracking concrete and the sound of meat hitting meat. I stumbled and flinched, terrified and hiccuping. Raine pulled me on and up, and didn’t stop moving when we burst out into the clean night air above.

“What- what-”

“Time for that later.” Raine hustled me through the gate and into the street. “Just walk, breathe. We’re in the open. They won’t do anything. They won’t follow.”

“What just happened? What-”

“Don’t think about it. We need to leave here, quick as we can. One foot in front of the other, keep moving.”

I was too frazzled to resist. Raine took me back up the street in the shadow of the unfinished luxury flats. The noises from the parking garage had long-since faded, muffled by concrete and asphalt. I turned to look, half-expecting to see Twil stumbling along behind us. The road was empty.

We crossed back over the Samter bridge. The normal streetlights and passing pedestrians of a Sharrowford evening didn’t feel real, not after what I’d witnessed back there, not after those sounds and that bizarre girl and-

“Is she- Twil, she’s-”

“She’ll be fine, she’s practically invincible. And they’ll be clearing out ASAP.” Raine turned and shot me a grin, a dose of that boundless confidence. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. Here, gotta mess with them.”

Raine halted next to a battered old pay phone by a bus stop, covered in graffiti and spotted with dried up chewing gum. I found I was shaking, partly from the cold and partly from a burst of adrenaline, too confused to process experience right now. Raine lifted the receiver and dialled 999, then held her nose and spoke in an old-lady voice.

“Yes, police please. Yes, yes, I saw these three young lads trying to set a fire. These young fellows, yes, yes, yes of course.” She gave the address of the building site. “They had boards for a bonfire and I swear I saw wires sticking out all over the place. Oh no, dear, I can’t stay on the line.”

Raine hung up without another word, cleared her throat, then grabbed my hand and walked on.

“Did you just spoof call the police?”

“Bailing Twil out. Probably doesn’t need it though. Sirens’ll light a fire under the crazies.”

“What if she’s hurt? Raine, you left her behind! We left her there!”

Raine caught the look on my face, the distress, the connections I was making, if only subconsciously. “Twil is literally unstoppable. Believe me, I’ve seen her shrug off a lot worse than anything those wannabees can throw at her. They could cut her head off and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. She’ll be bruised and sore and angry, but she’ll crack some heads and get out. I promise.”

“Did you know those … people, back there?”

“Never seen them before, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognise it when you see it. Kinda like porn, I guess, know it when you see it.”

“W-what-”

She flashed me a grin. I realised she was trying to keep me from freezing up. I nodded and forced a tiny laugh, the best I could manage. As we walked, she fished out her mobile phone and called Evelyn. Under the circumstances I didn’t feel guilty for listening in.

“We need to go to the mattress,” Raine said down the phone. “Yeah, right now, luck of the draw. No, just bumped into them. Twil went off on one. Yeah it was dark, I doubt they got a good look at us, but does that matter? I think they’ve got one of those bastard zombies up again. You wanna take the risk?” She paused, then answered with a laugh in her voice. “Of course I’m bringing her, Evee, what do you take me for?”

She killed the call and glanced at me. “Do you have class tomorrow?”

“I … uh … no, I don’t think-”

“Good.” Raine squeezed my hand and grinned, that brilliant rakish flash she could have used to convince me to do anything. “Fancy a friendly little sleepover at Evee’s place? Lazy day in tomorrow, call it two nights maybe. All three of us.”

Any other time, any other place, I’d have thrown myself onto that baited hook.

“I-I mean I wouldn’t say no, but, Raine, what, all this-”

“Just to be on the safe side.”

My mind caught up.

Evelyn’s house, of course, was the most supernaturally defensible position in Sharrowford.

Raine called it a sleepover. I knew a better word.

Siege.

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The mitten saved me. Raine helped.

The Dark Hand gripped my wrist, but simple screaming terror wrapped around my heart. No need for paralysing supernatural force to immobilise me. Here was an unspoken fear from the darkest nights of my ruined childhood: Wonderland reaching out to snatch me away.

Bone-freezing cold soaked through the mitten and into my flesh.

The Dark Hand pulled.

Raine already had me, arms hooked under my shoulders from behind.

She’d reacted first, faster even than the Hand. Beating my reaction times isn’t exactly a challenge, but I’d thought we were all slow and sluggish after the soul-battering from the Eye.

She held on, planted her feet and tried to haul me back as the Dark Hand tightened its grip.

It was much, much stronger than Raine. For one heart-stopping moment I became the rope in a tug of war, shoulder wrenched near out of the socket. I snapped out of paralysis, kicking and screaming, trying to scramble away.

Then my hand slipped out of the borrowed purple mitten. I yanked my arm back, left the Dark Hand clutching nothing but the glove.

Raine and I won the tug of war and crashed into an armchair. I elbowed her in the stomach and our heads cracked together. She let out a winded oof of breath, but didn’t stop, quickly disentangled our legs and jumped to her feet. I stayed half-collapsed in the chair, too shaken to get up.

The Dark Hand snapped open and dropped the mitten.

“What the fuck is that? What the fuck is that?” Twil shouted from behind us. Evelyn backed away in panic, shaking her head.

A Dark Arm followed the Dark Hand, reaching across the table until it found a grip on the edge. A shoulder emerged, made of glistening black night.

The owner of the Dark Hand began to climb through into our reality.

Raine slid something slender and sharp out of her jacket pocket. I wasn’t paying much attention to her, or the yelp from Twil. I only figured out much later that Raine had palmed a silver letter opener. Didn’t matter much anymore.

“Evee,” Raine raised her voice. “Hope I don’t need to say this, you should probably close that gate.”

“I can’t!” Evelyn said. “There’s no gate, there’s nothing to close! I don’t … I don’t understand.”

Our uninvited guest slid out of the aqua vitae in the silver plate, inch by slow inch of dark oil-slicked flesh, contorting itself to fit through the eighteen-inch opening, like a rodent cramming itself through a crack in the wall.

A nightmare parody straight from the imagination of any medieval diabolist.

No face, no sense organs, no skin – just one flowing surface of pure darkness, without blemish or break. No claws, no hairs or rough patches, no knobbly joints or bunched muscle. Humanoid, but gangly and so tall it assumed a crouch atop the table as it emerged. Limbs as long as my entire body. Head a blank tapering ovoid big as an anvil, topped with a pair of curved horns. Huge wings stretched from its back and a long sinuous tail lashed behind it, thick as a mooring cable.

This was nothing like the Bone-thing Raine had killed in Evelyn’s house. That had originated Outside, belonged to some alien taxonomy, but it had been material. It had bones and skin and a mouth. It had bled and it had died.

The Dark Visitor wasn’t even remotely biological.

Not eyes, but I knew it was staring at me.

“Nuh-uh,” Raine said to it. “She’s not for you.”

She put herself between me and the nightmare, and slid into a knife-fighter’s stance. Until that moment, I couldn’t have told you what a knife-fighting pose was meant to look like, but Raine made it seem second nature. She raised the silver knife in one hand and thrust her other palm forward.

A grin played across her lips. Tension in every muscle. I couldn’t believe she wanted to fight this thing; it was simply too large, too other, too intimidating. Her knife looked so small.

In that moment, I loved her for it.

The Demon – I couldn’t think of it as anything but a classical demon – finished climbing through into our reality, planting both slab-like feet on the table and squatting in a gargoyle’s crouch. The wood creaked under its weight. It leaned forward and craned its head to look around Raine, to look at me.

“Back off,” Raine said, loud and clear.

An echo of alien thought brushed against my mind.

I swallowed a gasp, but the thought slipped off, like an oil-soaked hand trying to grip my consciousness.

Raine shifted her balance onto her back foot; I scrambled up and cringed away from the impending violence.

“No, no, don’t touch it, don’t touch it!” Evelyn cried. “I think I know what it is. Do not touch it.”

Raine froze. Didn’t take her eyes off the demon. It bobbed its head to stare at me over Raine’s other shoulder.

“It’s-” Evelyn swallowed hard. “Kerykeion nichta, uh … Noctis macer. I’ve seen one before. Once. I think.”

“Don’t care what it is,” Raine almost growled. “It needs to leave.”

“Yes, yes, I think it will! It’s a messenger, that’s what they do. Look, it’s not attacking us. Don’t touch it.”

Another phantom thought skimmed the surface of my brain, wordless impulse and sense-impression: crushing cold, bone-shattering, blood-freezing cold; entrapment and imprisonment, such a tiny, tiny space and no way out, no way out; the human mind turned inside out and put back together piece by piece. Loneliness, abandonment, darkness.

“I-it’s in my head,” I stammered. “It’s trying to get in my head.”

“A message, it’s trying to deliver a message,” Evelyn said. “Maybe we let it, maybe it-”

“Bugger that,” Raine said. “Take your message and shove it up your arse. Get out of my girl’s head.”

Evelyn swore under her breath. “From The Eye? There was no gate! I don’t understand!”

“Fuck this,” Twil said. “Just fucking kill it already.”

The Messenger made its move.

With one huge hand wrapped around the edge of the table, it leaned forward and reached out for me. I squealed and stumbled backward from the grasping fingers.

Raine lashed out so fast I don’t think even the Demon knew what happened.

She rammed the knife into the Messenger’s night-black arm and twisted the blade on the way back out. Three times in quick succession. She made it look effortless, a quick repeated motion, practised a thousand times, executed with perfect precision. On a human being she’d have opened arteries and veins, torn flesh and cracked off bone.

She may as well have stabbed a bucket of sand.

The night-flesh didn’t even need to suck back together, it closed seamlessly after the blade. No wounds, no response, no sound greater than a gentle hiss.

The Demon stopped reaching for me and paused for a moment, as if trying to work out what just happened. Raine yanked the knife out a final time, grinning in full flow. She rocked back in a sort of predictive feint and then went for the Demon’s throat.

It took the knife from her. Plucked it right out of her fingers and made it vanish. Raine was so surprised she almost baffed at it with her empty hand.

“Raine!” I yelled.

She snapped back, quickly hopped away from the creature, one arm out to shield me. She took a great shuddering breath, still grinning but now shaking her head in disbelief. Evelyn was reciting words in Latin, shouting commands, instructions, insults. Inviting it to afternoon tea for all I knew.

“Okay, back up, keep away from it-” Raine got out, before before Twil bounded past us.

Twil didn’t look very human, but I didn’t exactly have the presence of mind to catalogue her wolf-form. All I saw was a blur of fur and teeth, mid-leap.

The Demon Messenger travelled without moving, two feet to the left. The trick made my eyes hurt, drew a pained gasp from Evelyn and a wince from Raine. Twil flew right through the spot it had occupied a moment before. She crashed headfirst into the old bookcases on the other side with a horrible thwack of snapped bones.

“Exitus. R-revertere, a-a quo f-factum est.” Evelyn’s voice shook and stumbled.

The Demon reached for me again. Raine, in one of the bravest and stupidest gestures I would ever witness from her, put her fists up.

It moved her aside.

The motion was impossible to comprehend, at least with human senses. One moment Raine was between me and it, then the Messenger reached out with a dark hand and adjusted her position. Suddenly she was fifteen feet away, on the other side of the room.

Raine reacted instantly, picked up her feet and ran for me.

That dark hand reached for my face.

The backs of my legs hit the chair and I very almost fell over in blind panic. Nowhere left to go, nobody left to stand behind, only a split-second to think. I’d never had to defend myself before. I was weak and slow and unarmed. Best I could manage was to bat ineffectually at the Demon’s hand, probably invite the awful freezing grip around my arm once more.

Oh.

My arm.

The mitten hadn’t saved me; Raine hadn’t broken the creature’s grip in a tug of war; my solitary resistance to the Eye had not come from prior experience or presence of mind.

The Noctis Macer’s hand closed around my face, inches from my skin. Alien thoughts found purchase on my mind, sick, freezing sense-impressions screamed the loneliness of the void into my heart.

I tugged my sleeve down with shaking fingers and held up my forearm.

Showed it the Fractal.

The Demon stopped, statue-still.

“Go away,” I hissed in a rush of panic and fear, more an animal sound than real words, but it did the trick.

The Demon, the Messenger, Noctis Macer, whatever it was and whatever it intended, retracted its hand and rocked back on its heels, as if considering a polite request. The probing thoughts withdrew. Evelyn’s stream of Latin and Greek and worse stuttered to a halt, and Twil hauled herself up against the bookcase, shaking herself like a dog.

Raine almost slammed into me, skidding to a halt and brandishing a heavy book she’d pulled off the shelves in lieu of a real weapon. She gaped at the Fractal on my arm, then broke into a huge grin at the creature.

“Yeah, that’s right, go on, off with you!” she shouted.

Raine put her free hand on my elbow, her other around my waist, held me and propped me up. I’d never been so glad for the support.

She gently eased me forward.

“Raine, no!” I hissed.

The Noctis Macer flexed like a cat rising from a nap, unlimbering gangly limbs and unfolding itself from the table, too tall to stretch to full height indoors. Its other hand uncurled and flicked a crumpled ball of fabric onto the floor at my feet.

We all watched in razor-sharp silence as the Demon stepped down from the table and backed away from me – from the Fractal.

“It’s okay, it’s shit-scared of you, see?” Raine muttered. I managed a terrified nod. I don’t think it was scared at all.

Raine and I backed it all the way to the windows. The creature’s tail probed behind, tapping at the floor and the heavy blankets over the windows, finding no egress. It paused and flexed its wings.

Twil growled through a mouth not all human. “Don’t corner it, for fucks sake.”

“It’s not animal, you idiot,” Evelyn said.

“Twil, pull the curtains down.” Raine said softly.

“What?”

“Just do it. Rip them if you have to.”

Twil grunted as she understood what Raine was getting at. She slid down the edge of the room, at the boundary of my peripheral vision, a hunched figure with far too many teeth in her snout. She reached out slowly with a fist made of claws, took a good handful of the blankets over the windows, then jerked it sideways with one swift tug. Thumbtacks and pins popped out of the thin plasterboard wall and the whole mass of makeshift curtain tore away.

The last dying rays of the day’s sunlight bathed the room in deep orange glow. The Messenger turned to look outside, across the deep concrete shadows of the campus and the city beyond. Its tail tapped and slid across the surface of the glass. Could it even sense light? A tiny, ever-curious part of me filed that question away for later.

Most of me, however, just wanted it gone.

“Twil, get the window latch,” Raine said.

“Are you mental?”

“Stop whining. You’re the most robust here.”

“Look,” I said.

The Demon Messenger fumbled with the window, as if it didn’t know how glass worked. Which, to be fair, it probably didn’t. Huge hands roved across the edges of the window, looking for a catch or mechanism. When it found the latch it paused, touched, paused again, those horrible long fingers cupping and pinching and probing the metal.

“It’s going to break the window,” Evelyn huffed, as if this was any concern at all.

“It can break the wall for all I care,” I said. “As long as it goes away.”

Finally, it figured out the latch, clacked it down and spent another moment sliding the window wide. Cold evening air flooded the room, blew past the Messenger and touched my face. The Demon mounted the windowsill with one huge toe-less foot and paused again, turned its head to look at me one last time.

“Shoo,” Raine shouted, and threw the book at it.

The Demon leapt into the air and fell like a brick. The book sailed out the window. A moment later a crack of leather sounded below – unfurling wings catching the air – and the Demon Messenger soared off between the spires of Sharrowford university, toward the heart of the city, an ungainly, heavy smudge of darker colour against the dimming sky.

I let out one long shaky breath, my whole body a lightning rod of tension and disbelief.

“Heather, hey, it’s gone, it’s gone,” Raine said.

“I know. I can see that.”

Raine eased my elbow back down. My arm ached terribly, despite her support. I’d clenched my fist so hard my nails had drawn blood from my palm.

“Are you okay?” Raine asked.

I was about to say no, obviously, I’m not okay, we just faced down a true monster, some unthinkable thing from Outside, sent by the Eye to kidnap me or wipe my brain or do God alone knows what. I was shaking and exhausted and far beyond fear. Twil slammed the window shut and Evelyn sagged as she examined the broken magic circle on the table.

Raine had thrown a book at it. For me.

I sketched a very shaky smile, the best I could manage under the circumstances. “Actually, yes. Yes. We won, yes?”

“That we did.” Raine grinned. “Sure you’re okay? You should sit down.”

“Well, no, but … ” I glanced around the room, unable to phrase it while so emotionally drained. Turned out facing down your darkest fears was a lot easier with a little help from your friends. Even if Twil wasn’t quite a friend. Yet.

“Where the hell is it going?” Twil asked. She peered out of the window after the dwindling dot. “I can’t believe you did this, Saye. Let something like that loose in the city. What were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t me.” Evelyn sounded as exhausted as I felt. She gestured at the silver plate, the aqua vitae, now inert. “There was no gate. The window was already closed. Somebody or something else opened that, sent it through.”

“Yeah, right.” Twil squinted at her in disbelief. “You lost control. Face it, you’re not the hot shit you think you are.”

Evelyn sighed and shook her head.

“What are you gonna do about it, huh? This is your fault. You can’t leave that thing out there, it-”

“It will leave reality by itself,” Evelyn raised her voice. “That’s what they do. Noctis Macer. Messenger of Darkness. Unbekante Orte has a dozen such names for them. Bigger, more powerful beings use them as messengers, errand-runners. I’ve seen one once before, I told you.”

Raine put a hand on my back, steadying, warm, here. “What if it doesn’t leave?” she asked. “What if it comes back for Heather again?”

“It won’t.” Evelyn almost spat. “It’s a messenger, not an assassin. It’s been refused. Quite comprehensively.”

Twil raised her voice again. Raine told her to shut up. Evelyn started in about ritual process and gates and magic, but I wasn’t following. Past the shaking exhaustion and the after-shocks of fear, I realised that Evelyn was right. If that demon – the Noctis Macer – had really wanted to hurt me or kidnap me, it probably could have, Fractal on my arm or no. If it needed skin contact, it could have snuck that tail up from behind and wrapped it around my throat.

I remembered, all of a sudden, that the Demon Messenger had delivered something after all: it had dropped a piece of fabric.

Amid the argument and the blame and the yelling, I looked down and found it. I stepped away from Raine and bent to pick it up.

Intellectually, I recognised the item of clothing before I touched it.

My mind fled from the implication.

I lifted the child-sized tshirt off the floor and stared at the faded strawberry design.

Maisie and I had this game we played as children. We had a lot of games. All kids who grow up close have private, secret games, but the games twins play with each other are built on a special understanding, that unique bond between two people who the world confuses with each other. Sometimes even mum and dad couldn’t tell us apart. Mum tried all sorts of techniques: different haircuts, dressing us differently, even clothes with our initials on the front or back. Nothing worked because we swapped everything, shared everything, became each other.

One day – I think when we were six or seven years old, I didn’t remember exactly because I’d spent so many years convinced those memories weren’t real – we decided to finger-paint our names on our tshirts. Mum was furious so we produced crocodile tears and giggled about it later. We kept the ruined tshirts and used them to have silent conversations across the room, writing more and more words in every blank space. We swapped them back and forth, so my words became Maisie’s and Maisie’s words became mine and in the end we couldn’t remember whose thoughts had belonged to who.

A child’s pajama top. Thin and faded. Collar and cuffs ragged.

A single word was written on the front, letters daubed with a fingertip dipped in a dark and tarry substance, still sticky-fresh.

HELP

“Heather?”

Her tshirt. The one she wore that night. Some details, you never forget. I brought it to my face and sniffed, but there was nothing of her – of me – left there, only the black ash and ruin stench of Wonderland.

“Heather?”

I blinked back slow tears, numb to my core.

“Heather? Hey, Heather?”

I jerked my head up, shaking all over. Raine stared at me with naked concern. Evelyn and Twil were still yelling at each other. How did the world continue to turn, how did we not all simply fly apart into atoms, if this thing in my hands was real? The most horrible promise, the worst kind of proof.

“Look.” I held the tshirt up, to her, to the room, to reality. My hands shook, my voice did worse. “Look. Look at this. What is this? How- how-”

Raine looked down at the thing in my hands, this obscene, beautiful living proof in my grasp. I imagined ugly thoughts in her head. I’d spent so long, so many years denying Maisie even existed that now I projected that outward, confused and lashing and incoherent.

It wasn’t real, it was a trick, you can’t be certain, Heather. You can’t be certain of anything, can you? You little damsel in distress, you let Raine deal with it for you. Keep your head down and stay safe. Forget what you saw. Coward. Coward. Coward. You left her behind, you left her behind and she’s not dead.

Raine met my eyes. She reached out and folded her fingers around my hand, held on hard. Nodded once.

“We will,” Raine said.

Her meaning failed to penetrate my survivor’s guilt. I blinked at her, shook my head. “I-I don’t-”

“Help.”

I let out a huge, choking breath and scrubbed my tears on one arm. I hadn’t realised how badly I’d needed Raine to believe, in that moment. She gave me so much more than bare belief.

“How- how- how can we possibly-”

“Don’t think about that part yet. We’ll figure it out.” Raine cracked a smile, a notch down from her usual rakish grin. “I doubt it’s something we can do in an afternoon.”

Evelyn and Twil had fallen quiet, my distress cut through their argument.

“Look.” I held the tshirt out to them as well, my hands shaking.

“ … ah,” Evelyn murmured.

“What?” Twil frowned. “What am I looking at? What the hell’s wrong with her now?”

“Long story. Shut up,” Raine said.

The full meaning of the Demon Messenger’s visit began to weigh on me, as I realised what had just happened.

“How do they deliver their messages?” I asked Evelyn.

She shook her head. “I don’t … there’s only speculation.”

“How? Just tell me, I don’t care if it’s speculation. How?”

“I don’t know,” Evelyn said, frowning at the proof in my hand. “Some kind of mind-to-mind contact, I assume. Communication means different things to different orders of being. It could-”

“It was trying to touch me,” I muttered. “It needed to touch, because of the Fractal, blocking. It had a message from her and we chased it away.”

That crushing cold, that endless isolation, that darkness. Was that Maisie?

“Heather?” Raine wrapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed, to keep me here, keep me grounded. It didn’t work. “It doesn’t matter what-”

I pulled away from her and hurried over to the window, clutching the soiled old tshirt to my chest. Raine joined me, but I had no attention left for her, too busy peering out after the Messenger – Maisie’s Messenger. It had vanished into the light pollution and shadows of a Sharrowford evening. I scanned the sky with mounting frustration greater than I’d ever felt, gritting my teeth, the thread slipping through my fingers.

“Heather, hey, look at me for a second.”

“I can’t- I-I have to find it.”

“There are easier ways to track than with the naked eye.”

I turned to her and got a full-face blast of Raine at her most focused. No grin, no patronising I-know-better, no humouring the hysterical poorly-adjusted girl. Not even a please-calm-down. Here to solve problems. It was beautiful. I could have thrown my arms around her, kissed her, if I wasn’t so messed up.

She nodded sideways at Twil.

“Oh, tracker dog,” I said.

“Hey!” said Twil.

“Stuff your pride,” Raine said to her. “You’re so worried about Heather, well then, it’s time to help. You can track that thing by scent, right?”

“What?” Twil was still lost, way behind. “I guess so. Shit, I don’t want to, it reeked like a chemical factory.”

“Yes or no,” Raine barked. “Can you do it?”

“Why are we after it now? We only just got rid of the thing.”

I thrust the tshirt toward Twil, holding up Maisie’s message. “My sister isn’t dead! Maisie isn’t dead!”

Without a doubt, the most beautiful and terrible words I’d ever spoken. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. I made a compromise and hiccuped.

“Okay, yeah, sure, that explains everything,” Twil said.

Evelyn spoke up. Two words.

“It’s bait.”

My mind edited them out, unwilling to hear. I was too busy glancing out the window again, along the route the Messenger took toward the heart of Sharrowford.

The exact route.

I broke for the door without a second thought, pulled at the latch and stumbled out into the top floor corridor of Willow House before the others realised what I was doing. I wasn’t trying to leave them behind; the only thing I cared about was getting out there before the aftershocks passed, before the trail went cold. Raine called my name, right on my heels.

Lucky for us – and my dignity – that Willow house was almost empty this late in the day. Classroom doors yawned open onto the darkness outside. The stairwell lights flickered on as I plunged down the steps two and three at a time.

“Heather, slow down, you’ll trip.”

I didn’t stop until I hit the ground floor and pushed my way through the brown glass double-doors. Cold evening air ran whispering fingers through my hair as I craned up at the sky. I must have made quite a sight there in the middle of campus, wearing one purple mitten and a half-unravelled scarf, flushed in the face and out of breath, eyes red from crying. Raine and Twil bundled out of the building behind me.

“Want me to grab her?” Twil said.

“Heather, speak to me. Tell me what you’re doing. If you have plan, I need in.”

“There. Right there.” I pointed across campus.

The Messenger’s wake had driven the spirit world into a frenzy. Where it had passed, pneuma-somatic life writhed and twitched like bugs in wet earth under a lifted stone.

A blue-and-red lizard the size of a house lay curled around itself in a protective dome, huge swivel-eyes dilated in fear. Bone-faced figures hunched along the campus walkways, clutching their heads and wailing, tripping over each other and sprawling across the ground. One of the insectoid leviathans on the library roof kicked and jerked limbs in the air, as if fighting ghosts. In the sky, a Roc of fire and stone flapped and hissed and spat, hurling sparks and trailing loose feathers of flame.

Then I remembered nobody else could see them.

Falling prey to one of my lifelong fears; here was the crazy girl gesturing at invisible monsters in public, imbuing them with private meaning, following their secret ways.

I realised I didn’t care anymore. Maisie was more important.

“The spirits, they’re reacting to it. It went that way.”

Twil looked at me, then at Raine, as if we were both mad.

“Just trust her,” Raine said. “She knows what she’s doing.”

They couldn’t have held me back. I’d have hissed and spat and clawed just to be allowed to follow that spirit trail across the sky. A near-fugue state gripped my mind and heart, and we followed a track that would have been schizophrenic delusion a month prior.

We left campus quickly, heading west into Sharrowford proper.

Bluebell Road roiled with spirit life, howling at the sky and clawing at each other in overstimulated distress. A thousand scuttling shapes mobbed and packed in the shadows and dusk between the pools of orange streetlight.

I led us down into the student quarter, across suburban streets littered with spine-covered mollusk shells, their inhabitants retracted inside to shelter from the Messenger’s passing.

On Downtruff road, a giant form shifted uneasily against the sky overhead, adjusting pillar-legs and plates of chitin to carry it away from the Noctis Macer’s destination.

We climbed cobblestone streets up Mercy Hill where I spotted a nightmare of eyes and tentacles clutching the distant spires of Sharrowford Cathedral, against the backdrop of the city centre lights.

My knowledge of the city ran dry beyond the student quarter, but Raine knew Sharrowford inside out. Our leadership began to switch back and forth. I’d point, she’d forge the way, then I’d change direction and she’d know a shortcut, a better route. When the tortured spirit life gave out and the trail ran cold, Twil sniffed the air and bounded down the streets until she caught the scent on the night wind.

Raine did her best to hold my hand but I wasn’t the most affectionate partner right then, always pulling free to point in the next direction, my other hand too busy clutching Maisie’s soiled tshirt to my chest.

I only realised much later that Raine was trying to minimise our bizarre spectacle, to make sure my behaviour didn’t draw the attention of the curtain-twitchers or a passing police car. A crazy girl staring and gesticulating at the air, leading the way as two other college girls hustled after her, hanging on her every move.

It was a miracle nobody stopped us.

On the edge of the city centre the Demon Messenger had turned north, skirted the shopping district and the ring of roundabouts, brushed up against the fringe of industrial development walled off with red brick and razor wire. For a long moment I stood on the edge of a pedestrian crossing, next to one of the larger roundabouts, cars passing and lights changing from red to green, because I couldn’t work out where the Messenger had gone.

Raine laid a hand on my shoulder. “Heather? Take a moment, you’re out of breath. We’re going to catch it, one way or the other, I swear.”

She was right – I was out of breath. The ache in my chest, the soul-gap below my diaphragm, was on fire. I rubbed at my sternum, but the pain didn’t matter. I’d never felt so driven in my entire life.

“We look like a bunch of fucking nutters,” Twil said. “Bet this’ll do wonders for my rep.”

“Let Heather do her thing,” Raine warned.

We were about to look much worse.

A spirit squatted on the concrete island of the roundabout.

A gorilla crossed with slime mold, leaning on fists the size of wrecking balls. A mouth of slab teeth hung open, drooling black mist onto the ground. Long thin fleshy tendrils sprouted from its back and waved in the air. A few tendrils had gripped the roundabout’s signage, rooted there and begun to spread a kind of throbbing meat-moss across the metal.

It was disgusting, the exact sort of thing I’d spent ten years going out of my way to avoid. If it had stared at the sky, I could simply have followed the direction of its gaze, but its bull-shoulders were hunched tight at the Messenger’s passing, head down.

Any other day, any other cause, and my courage would have failed me.

I hurried over the road onto the roundabout; hardly green cross code compliant. Raine dashed along after me. Twil was a second too slow, got stuck waiting for traffic to pass.

“Heather, holy shit, slow down!” Raine called.

“It’s fine, I looked both ways.”

I walked right up to the hunched Gorilla-spirit.

Raine caught up, put one hand on my waist and looked around, waiting for the inevitable shout from a confused motorist. Two college girls standing in the middle of a roundabout, obviously drunk or playing some immature prank – or insane. She didn’t hurry me.

I opened my mouth, closed it again, hiccuped twice.

Let the world think what it wanted. I pushed away a decade’s worth of taboo. My sister was alive.

I spoke to the spirit.

“Where did it go? What direction?”

A shudder passed through the Gorilla-plant-thing, a reluctant quiver of muscle and tendon. Those giant shiny black eyes swivelled to look at me. It was a huge, hulking beast of intimidating power, ugly as sin, ridged and gnarled. An instinctive animal part of me screamed about running away and climbing trees. I shook very badly. Raine spoke my name and squeezed my shoulder.

It didn’t matter. It was immaterial, literally. I had flesh. It didn’t.

I stared back.

The me of a month ago would be mortified beyond thought. That other, younger Heather, she still clung to the safety blanket of insanity in the back of my mind, the little voice which still denied that all this was real. I think that moment finally ended her. Here I was, standing in the middle of a traffic roundabout under the streetlights, demanding answers from a monster that nobody else could see, clutching to my chest a message from my kidnapped twin.

Yes, sceptic Heather gave up on that concrete island. I told her it was all going to be okay.

“I demand you tell me where it went. Point.” I tried to sound commanding, to summon up a little of Evelyn’s tone of unquestionable contempt. My voice emerged in a squeak.

The spirit lifted one wrecking ball paw toward the north.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Thirty minutes.

That was Raine’s estimate.

Thirty minutes stuck in a room with two very angry people who hated each other for reasons I didn’t understand, waiting for Raine to return before either of them felt well enough for attempted murder. Thankfully, neither seemed inclined to get up yet. Twil had hunched tighter around her imaginary stomach wound, while Evelyn brooded, her eyes barely open and fixed on Twil with dark intensity.

I did as I’d promised, positioned myself behind one of the three armchairs, casually as I could, a nice safe distance from the firing line. Raine’s anti-werewolf punching glove still felt warm from her hand, but even with that enticement I couldn’t bring myself to put it on. I slipped it into my pocket.

Raine’s instructions gave me focus, though I didn’t believe they were necessary.

No, I was more concerned with Twil and Evelyn trying to pull each others’ faces off again.

Seconds ticked by, each one worse than the last, and neither of them made a sound. Couldn’t bear the tension. Made me want to rake at my scalp, scratch my back, crack my toes, anything. I chewed my lip and couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

Two blank faces turned my way.

I’d tried to muster a gentle, conversational tone, as if we were all friends here, but I sounded like a school mistress about to lose control of her class.

“It’s not exactly an unexpected or untoward question.” I spoke too quickly. “You were hocus-pocused into a tomato,” I said to Twil. “And, well, you, Evelyn, I don’t know. Can you walk or not?”

Twil rolled her shoulders and shot me a toothy smile. “I’ve walked off worse.”

“Of course I can walk,” Evelyn said. “That was nothing, hardly real magic at all.”

“Well. Well, yes, that’s good then, isn’t it? Good.” Had to stall. Must stall. Pleasantries, everyday things, small talk. “Why don’t you- why not stretch your … uh-” I stammered to a stop on the gaffe.

“Leg? Singular?” Twil finished for me. She showed Evelyn her teeth.

Evelyn stared at her, very blank and very cold. “Why, I don’t understand the joke. Care to explain?”

“So, Twil.” I spoke loud and bright, clapped my hands together. “You’re from this … this … group?”

Oh goodness, why didn’t I just shove my entire foot down my throat? Good job, Heather, keep digging. Maybe Raine will bring you a spade.

“Cult,” Evelyn corrected. Her voice was free of malice, just tired and certain.

“It’s a Church.” Twil glared at Evelyn. “Look, sorry Heather, I’m not going to talk about my religion with Saye here.”

Evelyn cocked an eyebrow. “Religion? Don’t try to legitimise yourself, it’s sad.”

“Oh go swivel. You talk about it like we’re baby-eating monsters, sacrificing people on altars in the woods and having orgies with the devil. It’s nothing like that, Saye, and you know it.”

“That describes your grandfather quite well.”

“You shut your mouth,” Twil said through clenched teeth. “My grandfather gave me the greatest gift a girl could ever want. This.”

Twil yanked her sleeve up and held out one toned forearm.

In the blink of an eye, she wore a werewolf.

Air and light solidified around her flesh, like coalescing mist. Twil’s pale forearm was encased in an overlaid ghostly image, of thick grey-white fur with a rich reddish brown under-layer, muscle and tendon flexing like steel cables beneath. Sharp claws of ghostly matter extended from her fingers, the palm of her hand shadowed by a padded canine paw. Human skin resumed just above her elbow.

She closed her fist and the ghostly layer vanished. “I won’t hear a single fucking word against my family. You get me?”

Evelyn huffed. “Your grandfather made you into a foot-solider. You’re lucky he died before you could be put to use.”

Twil growled and bared her teeth.

I didn’t have time for that.

I was fascinated.

“Do that again,” I said.

“What?”

“Your arm. Show me. Do that again.”

Twil frowned at me and started to jerk her sleeve back down.

“I’m serious,” I said. “You can’t flash that around and not expect attention. Do it again, show me, I insist. You were so proud of it a moment ago, too.”

“Bloody hell, I’m not a zoo animal.”

“No, you’re a werewolf.” I resisted a mean-spirited urge to roll my eyes. “Perhaps this is normal for you, but try to appreciate this is a matter of some interest for me, to put it lightly. Please, Twil, may I see your … gift, once more? Perhaps for a moment or two longer than it took you to threaten Evelyn?”

Evelyn snorted, but luckily Twil was too busy frowning at me – a very normal, human frown. I’d irritated her on a perfectly safe level, by accident.

“Ugh, fine.”

Twil stuck her arm out again.

I didn’t realise until a moment later that I’d broken my promise to Raine. I half slid out from behind my covert chair barricade and leaned in close, for a good look, a lot closer to Twil than the recommended six feet minimum safe distance.

Twil’s werewolf arm was one of the most fascinating sights I’d ever laid eyes on.

I’d spent my whole life seeing and hearing and – heaven forbid, sometimes – feeling the unnatural, but Twil’s ghostly arm seemed clean and normal in a way that no spirit had ever quite managed. Or perhaps I’d never looked closely enough before.

It was corporeal too, solid and material enough to touch. The fur sprang back up after the slightest pressure, thick and glossy and velvet soft, as if she’d come straight from a doggy shampoo and blow-dry. Maybe she had.

A sleazy smirk crept across Twil’s face. “Didn’t say you could touch, you know?”

I started and jerked back, hand to my chest in mortified embarrassment. “I-I’m sorry, I don’t know what- I didn’t realise I was touching you. I’m sorry.”

“S’fine. Can’t blame you.” She turned her arm over a couple of times, smiling at the sight of herself

“I didn’t- I-” I took a surreptitious step back behind the armchair, curiously lightheaded and blushing badly. Evelyn watched me with an unimpressed look. “Sorry, I just- it looked very soft. I’m not used to animals. Never had any pets.”

“Is there some fetish we should know about here?” Evelyn drawled. “Are you a secret furry, Heather?”

“A-a what?”

“Hey, back off,” Twil snapped at her. Evelyn shrugged, radiating boredom.

“So- so-” I stammered, trying to regain control of the situation. “No full moon? You don’t need that, you just transform at will?”

Twil flicked her wolf-arm as if shaking off water. It blurred back to human again. She pulled her sleeve down and shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Why not, huh? Wouldn’t be very fun if I just wigged out at the moon, would it?”

A question caught in the back of my throat. Twil didn’t exactly seem like the damsel in distress type. My imagination, gorged on poor self esteem and affection-starved paranoia, fed itself an elaborate fiction about supernatural exoticism. I compared myself to Twil and found myself wanting, plain, boring, cowardly.

Pure projection.

“Is that why Raine went out with you?” I asked. “The whole werewolf thing?”

In the dark recesses of my mind I’d expected Twil to grin and toss her head back, like a temptress from some bad 50s noir film.

Instead, she spluttered.

“Eh? What? No. We never went out. What? What kinda bullshit has she been feeding you?”

“You had a remarkable interest in her,” Evelyn said. “Following her around like a puppy.”

Twil rolled her eyes and shrugged, but I could clearly see the kernel of old disappointment. She’d wanted. Not gotten. “Yeah, in your dreams, maybe. We never did anything, okay? I dunno where you even get the idea.”

I felt the most selfish, satisfying flush of relief, laced through with guilt. I was acting ridiculous.

“Well, that’s- yes, yes.” I stammered and flustered. “I see. I’m sorry. I mean, I apologise for bringing it up.”

Twil eyed me with an odd sort of frown.

“W-what? What is it?” I asked.

“Missing piece of the puzzle is what.” Another sleazy grin spread across her face. “I get it now, I get what you’re doing here. You’re Raine’s little femmy girlfriend.”

“I’m what? Excuse me?”

“Apparently not,” Evelyn added.

Twil turned to her. “Eh?”

“Mmhmm. Apparently.”

“Nah, no way.” Twil grinned and slapped her own thigh. “You’re having me on. The way Raine was all over her? Yeeeeah. Obvious, now I think about it. How did I not notice that?”

“I know, right?” Evelyn purred.

I’d gone bright red in the face. “We’re- she’s- we’re not! You’re completely wrong. We’re not together. I’ve already had this conversation once today, for goodness sake.”

Twil barked a laugh and Evelyn snorted. I fought down an urge to stamp my foot.

“Least you seem pretty straight up and down,” Twil said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Means you’re better than the last few.” She turned to Evelyn. “Am I right?”

“Mmhmm. An insult to Heather to even compare.”

“Compare me to what? Who?”

By slow, wary degrees at first, then blooming into a full-on gossip session, Twil and Evelyn talked about Raine behind her back.

I hung on every word and learnt a lot more than I’d bargained for. The ‘pity project’ before me had been a girl in the history department, by the name of May. She’d started out very promising until Raine had discovered she’d believed in lizard people and UN mind-control satellites.

As they spoke, Evelyn dug around in her bag and produced a little packet of wet-wipes. She set about cleaning Twil’s blood off her fingers and the mirror.

That would have been too surreal for me, if I wasn’t dying to hear more.

The girl prior to May had been a classical goth called Christie, all dark makeup and heavy eyeshadow and emotionally needy, a snippet of history which made me bristle with brief jealousy, until conversation turned to how Christie had been utterly convinced she was a vampire, and made herself sick drinking cow’s blood she’d gotten from a Sharrowford butcher’s shop. Apparently she’d locked herself in Raine’s bathroom for most of a day and sobbed about ‘the dark pact’ until Evelyn driven her off by pretending to be Raine’s obsessive, spurned admirer.

The tension dialled down as Twil and Evelyn laughed over that last one, as if they weren’t a werewolf and a mage and … whatever I was.

I couldn’t take it. I loved every detail, but I couldn’t take it.

“Will you stop talking about her like that?” I said. “We really shouldn’t be bad-mouthing her.”

“It’s only the truth,” Evelyn muttered.

I frowned, painfully aware she knew Raine a lot better than I did.

“Ahh, don’t worry about it.” Twil leaned back and cracked her knuckles. “You’re sore ‘cos you think she’s gonna get bored of you, but Raine’s a hopeless romantic.”

“I already told you, we’re not even together.”

Twil shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

I did my best not to sulk. Evelyn had developed this smug little smile. Twil pulled an old, battered flip-phone out of her pocket and checked the screen.

“Fuck knows why I’m even here at this point,” she said. “It’s almost four, I’m supposed to be on the train home. I’m gonna miss Bake Off.”

“You watch that tripe?” Evelyn asked.

“Go suck a fart. You don’t even own a telly.”

“I do, actually, for your information.”

“I don’t,” I said, feeling peevish, a proxy defence for Raine. “I much prefer reading.”

Twil rolled her eyes.


==


Raine returned with all the drama and impact of a commando raid. And on time, thankfully. I didn’t know how much longer the truce would hold.

She all but burst in the door, carrying a big sports bag over one shoulder and waving a silver plate above her head. Twil scrambled to her feet and backed away. Raine froze and grinned.

“Yo, did I interrupt something?”

“You could say that,” I muttered, but internally sighed with relief. “Hey Raine.”

“Yeah, my fucking personal space.” Twil pointed at the silver plate. “The hell are you doing with that?”

“Uh, just, you know, if I was wrong. Like I said.” Raine shoved the silver plate back in the sports bag and closed the door behind her.

“You got everything?” Evelyn asked.

“Sure did, plus a few party favours.” Raine dumped the sports bag on the table and heaved out an armful of winter clothes. Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “For Heather. Figured you wouldn’t mind. It’s all there, when you’re ready.”

“Alright,” Evelyn grumbled. “Let’s get this over with. Help me up.”

Evelyn eased herself out of the chair with a hand from Raine, then set about extracting her ritual tools from the sports bag. She unfolded a big sheet of paper and spread it across the table, carefully centred the silver plate in the middle, and then shuffled around the edge with a marker pen.

First she drew a triple layer of circles, followed by flowing script of esoteric symbols and interlinked geometric designs. She referenced her notebook as she worked, turning it this way and that, double and triple checking. Toward the end, she pulled a big leatherbound book from the sports bag and carefully read several passages before adding more symbols to her work.

It took an awful lot longer than the blood-magic she’d used to hurt Twil.

As Evelyn worked, our werewolf visitor lounged against the wall, clearly enjoying a safe distance from the silver plate. Raine presented me with the armful of winter clothes.

“Glad I was wrong, Heather. Here, for you.”

“Presents are lovely, but is this really the moment?”

“You’ll wanna wear these, trust me.”

I spied comfy looking mittens in berry purple, a huge fluffy scarf, and a woollen hat with floppy rabbit ears. “Um, why?”

“Trust me.”

Evelyn tutted. “She’s not made of spun glass.” She glanced up from her work. “That- Raine, that’s my- my hat!”

“It was the closest one to hand, that’s all. Seriously, Evee, it’s Heather’s first time. Cut me some slack.”

“First time for what?” I picked up on of the mittens.

“Magic.”

“What about earlier? That wasn’t magic?”

“That was just a little thermodynamics,” Evelyn drawled, already concentrating on her sigil once more. “This may indeed be an experiment, but it’s the real thing.”

“It’ll probably get real cold, real fast. Please, Heather?” Raine held out the scarf.

After a moment’s hesitation, I allowed her to wrap me up. I felt like a small child about to venture outside to play in the snow. She looped the scarf around my neck as I pulled the mittens on. At least they were nice and soft inside.

If I hadn’t felt so terribly guilty for all the gossip about Raine earlier, then I probably would have resisted more, listened to that little voice in my head whispering that I enjoyed the damsel in distress role, enjoyed being treated like this.

How could I not? It was such a sweet gesture, it almost hurt.

I tugged the woollen hat down over my hair. Raine reached up and tweaked the floppy rabbit ears.

“Suits you.”

“Oh, shush,” I said.

“What did you three get up to, then? Feels lot less tense in here than when I left.”

I glanced at the other two, but they weren’t listening. I pitched my voice low. “They were talking about you, in fact.”

Raine’s eyebrows tried to leave the atmosphere. She grinned. “My reputation proceeds me. All good, I hope?”

My eyes answered for me, whether I wanted them to or not. I don’t know if she saw guilt or curiosity or jealousy or worse.

“Ah? Heather?”

“Stop flirting, you two,” Evelyn called. She tapped the table with the end of her pen. “It’s ready and it won’t wait for anybody. Get over here.”

Raine’s attentions had distracted me from the worst phase of Evelyn’s work.

My stomach tightened at the obscenity on the table.

Black ink crawled and writhed over every inch of paper, except for the area directly underneath the high-lipped silver plate. The three circles were clear and stark, untouched by any other lines, but between them and around them the symbols seemed to recur into each other over and over again, vanishing into an optical illusion of infinity on the flat surface.

The design looked a little like a funnel, with an opening on one side.

“You stand here.” Evelyn jerked her walking stick at the opening.

“What- ugh, sorry.” I had to avert my eyes and take a deep breath. “Makes me feel sick.”

Raine put a hand on my back. “You can sit down if you want.”

“No she can’t,” Evelyn said. “She doesn’t have to look at it. Just stand.”

“It’s okay, I’ll be okay,” I murmured, mostly for myself. “I can do this.”

I did as Evelyn asked. I kept my eyes open, but stared at the blankets pinned over the windows. The setting sun had dimmed the air to a murky orange. The lamp at the back now provided most of the light in the room.

“Raine, you stand clear over here,” Evelyn said. I felt Raine’s hand squeeze my shoulder, then leave. “Twil, don’t interrupt. Whatever happens, nobody is to touch the three circles. Anything else should be fair game in an emergency.”

“How safe is this?” I asked.

Evelyn shrugged. She took up the bottle of aqua vitae, the last unused ritual ingredient, and wiggled the cork out. “Should be safe. You’re only a reference point, carrying the scent for my bloodhound here. I’m not actually opening a gate, just a sort of window, I need a good look.”

My blood ran cold.

I knew the answer to my next question.

No, she couldn’t do this, this was insanity. She didn’t know what it meant, she’d never seen it, never felt it sifting through her mind. Evelyn was already pouring the clear alcohol into the silver plate, creating a transparent layer above the mirror-finish.

“Good look at what?” I hiccuped, voice caught with sudden terror. “Evelyn, good look at what?”

Twil levered herself off the wall. “Woah, what-”

“Heather?” Raine piped up. “Yeah, Evee, wait-”

Evelyn slapped the cork back into the bottle. “At your Eye, what else?”

I took a step back and started to form a denial, shake my head, tell her no, stop, don’t do this, not here, not to me.

Evelyn spoke a word that no human mouth was built to speak.

The aqua vitae shimmered like mercury.

Too late.

I screwed my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears.


==


Gasping in the dark.

Then I felt Raine’s hands on my arms and heard her muffled voice beyond the mittens I’d shoved against my ears.

“Heather? Heather, it’s okay. It’s okay, we’re safe. Heather, open your eyes, look at me.”

Raine was alive and standing and talking, so I assumed we hadn’t all been obliterated. I found myself blinking at her, shaking and struggling to breathe through a blast of adrenaline. She met my eyes and and nodded slow and held me by the shoulders. I blinked back panic tears.

“I-it’s okay,” I repeated after her. “It’s okay, I’m okay. I’m okay.”

She smiled, but tense and stiff.

“That was some fucking major-league bullshit right there, Saye. What the fuck?” Twil almost shouted. For once, I agreed with her.

She looked like she wanted to strangle Evelyn, but dared not approach the table. Evelyn was bent over the silver mirror, staring into the surface of the aqua vitae. The liquid had blackened into a rich, rolling darkness.

I pulled the stupid rabbit hat off my head.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do!?” I yelled.

“Because you wouldn’t have agreed to it,” Evelyn croaked.

About to shoot back with words I’d probably regret later, I realised Evelyn was literally spitting blood. She held a tissue wadded up in one hand, already speckled with crimson spit, then hawked up a gob of bloody mucus. She caught me staring and glanced up from the magical window.

“The activation word. Damages the throat.”

I cast about at a loss, then shoved the hat at Raine. “Were you in on this?”

“No. I wish I had been.”

“You wouldn’t have agreed either.” Evelyn croaked and coughed and spat again.

“Bloody right I wouldn’t have,” Raine said. “Between terrifying Heather and hurting yourself, are you kidding?”

Twil shook her head and tapped her temple. I was inclined to agree, but too angry to think straight. Evelyn didn’t even bother with a response. She was utterly intent on the dark window in the silver mirror.

With the hat off, cold air quickly soaked through my hair and pinched at my nose. The temperature had indeed dropped sharply, colder than outdoors. I exhaled a white plume and shivered, wrapped my arms around myself. “This cold can’t be good for the books.”

“What, those?” Raine nodded at the bookcases along wall of the Medieval Metaphysics room. “They’re just nonsense, remember? Here, put your hat back on.”

“They’re still books.”

“They’ll be fine,” Evelyn muttered. “This won’t take long.”

She was touching the surface of the liquid window with two fingers, sliding and twitching them ever so gently. The viewpoint swung across a landscape that had haunted me half my life.

Wonderland.

My breath stilled.

“Evee,” Raine warned.

“It’s perfectly safe. It’s one-way,” Evelyn said as she panned across the landscape. “Anything there can’t see us, can’t touch us. Don’t watch if you don’t want to. Step outside if you must. Just don’t interrupt me.”

The liquid rippled as Evelyn moved her fingers. Despite the barely eighteen inches diameter of the silver plate, the image was strikingly clear. If it was any other place, I would have marvelled at the magic. My complaint died on my lips. I couldn’t look away.

Wonderland, exactly as I recalled, except from half a mile up.

Rubble and ruin stretched away to a horizon of broken teeth, monoliths of masonry embedded in the ground and cracked apart by unthinkable forces. Dark mists scudded across the acres of wreckage, drifting with more than a hint of intention. Wherever a wall stood intact, every inch of brick and stone was scrawled with tiny devotional script. Even at such a distance, from outside reality, the words made my eyes water.

Bio-luminescent jellyfish creatures bobbed and weaved through the air, each as big as a bus, their disgusting inner organs pulsing and throbbing to some unheard beat, meaty and wet.

Malformed life picked through the ruins, not even remotely humanoid. None of us could look at them for long. Twil made a gagging sound. Raine was silent. Evelyn quickly panned away.

In the distance, watchers stared up at the sky in mute worship. Some were vaguely simian, hunched over on their knuckles. Others squatted or crouched, toad-like, but most were unidentifiable combinations or phylum with no earthly analogue. I knew from memory each of them was the size of a mountain. One did not risk their attention lightly.

Raine murmured my name. She gently tried to ease me away, hands on my back. I was shaking, shivering, on the verge of tears but not sad, not afraid. “Heather, you don’t have to look. Come on, let’s go out into the corridor. Hell, we can go down the campus canteen. Heather?”

“No,” I hissed. Couldn’t look away. “I want to see.”

“You don’t have-”

“I need to see,” I said, almost pushed her away with a jerk of my elbow.

“Okay, okay. I’m right here.”

Evelyn grunted. “Thought you might.”

She panned the view until she’d circled the horizon. Frozen grey static filled the edge of the sky, as if the sun had exploded and forced iron filings across the firmament.

Twil muttered about how messed up this was, but Raine shushed her.

This was futile, I knew. I had nothing to gain by subjecting myself to this.

But I felt such release.

“This is the place you went?” Evelyn asked.

“ … yes.”

“Hm.” Evelyn flicked her fingers, swung the viewpoint up toward the sky.

I realised a second too late why the perspective was half a mile up from the ground. My heart leapt into my throat as the window filled with dark ridges and folds, cleft by a horizontal line across the middle, like a mountain range of puckered flesh. Bigger than any mountain, like a planet hung in low orbit.

“No, turn it away! Turn it away!” I cried.

Evelyn frowned into the dish. “What is-”

The eyelid cracked open.

It was in the sky and it was the sky and it was everything and all and so large it filled all creation with itself and forced out all thought and reason and demanded one look back into it and acknowledge its gaze with one’s own and never think of anything else ever again.

Open by the slimmest crack. On a true abyss.

More than enough.

It saw us.

All of Evelyn’s assurances of safety and one-way glass meant nothing. The Eye could reach across dimensions and rewrite physics with a thought. Of course it could see us. I’d hidden from it for two weeks and now it had found me.

I felt it in my head. All of our heads.

Noxious light spilt from the mirror-window and underlit Evelyn’s face, casting nightmare shadows across the ceiling. She was paralysed, frozen horror in her eyes. Raine wrapped her arms around her own head, bent forward as if trying to walk into a gale. Somewhere, Twil was yowling.

The first feelers of alien thought stroked at the edges of my mind, a familiar old fumbling and probing, prelude to a lesson. I swallowed a scream.

I was shaking, tears streaming down my face. For ten years this had been confined to dreams. Now I was wide awake.

I was also the only one who’d been here before.

The only one to retain my wits.

I scrambled forward and crashed into the table, slid across the paper sigils and magic circles. The Eye’s tendrils tightened around my thoughts, pulled and teased them apart. My vision swam. My skin crawled and my mind cringed away from what I had to do.

I reached out skimmed my mittened hand across the surface of the window, spun the viewpoint away from the Eye.

The spell broke instantly with a crackling discharge of static.

The image in the dish flickered, greyed out, cleared as the liquid returned to normal.

Evelyn sat down on the floor with a loud thump, both hands to her chest. Raine gasped and straightened up, heaving in great gulps of air. Twil, not exactly human right now, shook herself all over and huffed through a snout of razor-sharp teeth.

“Fuck me sideways,” Raine said.

We all took a moment to enjoy the absence of alien thought-tentacles in our brains. My whole body felt numb. Raine swung her arms and bounced on the spot. Twil rose from a tight, canine crouch and looked mostly human again as she rubbed her face, but even she was out of insults and complaints.

“Heather?” Raine said.

“Mm?”

“Good. Good call.” She nodded at the dish. I was still touching it. I think she wanted to come over to me, hold me, but she looked as stunned and numb as I felt.

“I guess.”

“What in bloody arsefuck Jesus Christ was that?” Twil said.

“The thing that haunts me.”

Evelyn shook her head slowly, looked between Raine and I, then looked away and sighed a deep, heavy sigh of defeat and shame.

“Fucking idiot,” Twil grumbled.

“Now’s not the time.” Raine took a deep breath. “This is all safe now, right? Evee?”

“Yes, Heather broke the connection. I won’t make it again.” Evelyn glanced up from her spot on the floor. “I didn’t expect a-”

She froze and her eyes widened just a fraction, just enough for panic. She stared at me.

“What? Evee, what now?” Raine said.

“Heather, did you touch the circles? Did you break the circles?”

I was too numb for blood chills or dramatic pit-of-the-stomach feelings. I think we all were. But when I looked down at my arm, where I’d slid across the table, I knew on an instinctive level that I’d made a mistake. Raine hurried to my side.

My impact had scrunched and torn the paper, breaking all three of Evelyn’s clean, precise magic circles. My arm lay right across them.

Evelyn heaved herself to her feet, suppressed a wince of pain.

“Don’t move,” she was saying – as I pulled my arm back.

The surface of the aqua vitae rippled and parted.

A hand made of solid night shot out from the liquid. Dark and shiny as if covered in a sheen of oil, each many-jointed finger six inches long, tapering points with no nails or claws.

It snapped shut around my wrist.

This time I screamed.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Raine didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to.

She stood up, the change in attitude evident in every shift of muscle and posture, instant and electric. She flexed her right hand, the one in the modified glove, curling and uncurling a fist.

From anybody else it would have seemed empty showboating. A ridiculous, playground gesture. Except I’d seen Raine beat a monster to death once before, grinning and flushed and loving the violence. My mouth went dry and my heart hammered all the faster. A tiny, squirming part of me acknowledged how attractive I found her when she did this.

Another part of me laid down the law: that response was deeply unhealthy.

“Let me in, Saye!” a voice called through the door, unmistakably petulant. Twil jerked the handle. The lock held.

“You’re not talking to Evelyn, you’re talking to me,” Raine said, voice rock steady.

“Let her break it down,” Evelyn hissed.

“Yeah, I know. I know you’re all in there. Open the door, we need to talk, face to face, right now.”

“Like earlier?” Evelyn called out. “Go get knotted, Twil.”

Raine grimaced. “Evee, ugh. Sick.”

Twil growled, long and low. She rattled the handle again, then thumped the door. “Open up or I’ll pull the hinges out of the wall.”

“Be my guest, please. Huff and puff and blow the door in,” Evelyn said. “We’ll get you thrown off campus and the university will charge you with property damage. This is the real world, you addled mutt.”

“Quite right. Go away, you … you horrible person!” I said.

Raine shot me a suppressed grin. I shrugged, desperate to contribute.

“Yes, hear hear.” Evelyn said. “Go away, Twil, you’re not wanted. Sod off back to your kennel.”

Twil whacked the door again. The impact shook the frame, the floor, and my nerves.

Raine stuck out a hand and lowered a voice to a whisper. “Hey, Evee, hold up, hold up.” She tiptoed to the door and reached for the latch, every muscle wound tight and ready to spring. The tip of her tongue poked from the corner of her mouth.

“Are you mad!?” I hissed and scrambled to my feet. “You can’t be serious. Yes, go ahead and let the werewolf in here, great plan! Raine, stop!”

“You’re in the way,” Evelyn added.

Raine inched toward the handle. “Twil? Tell me what you want, maybe we can talk. Gimme an explanation, gimme something to work with here.”

A second of silence, then Twil spoke again, but her voice carried less confidence. “ … save a life, maybe. Saye, the girl with you earlier, what have you done to her head-”

Raine burst into motion.

She slapped the latch down and whipped the door open, jammed her arm through the gap and yanked Twil inside by a fistful of her collar. Twil yelped in surprise, all wide eyes and windmilling arms, and I thought she was about to sprawl onto the floor or crack her head off the edge of the table, but Raine wasn’t even remotely finished with her.

Raine kicked the door shut, pulled Twil around before she had time to recover her balance, and slammed her against the wood, almost lifting her off her feet. Twil grunted, a deep oof of air forced out of her lungs.

Raine shoved the exercise glove in Twil’s face, silver wire an inch from her eyes.

Twil yowled. The most awful noise I’d ever heard from a human throat, inside or outside of a psychiatric hospital. She flailed and thrashed, hands scraping at the door as if trying to dig through the wood and away from the silver.

“You think I don’t come loaded for bear?” Raine said.

Zero aggression. Blank and flat.

Then Twil twisted like a fish, jackknifed a leg up, and booted Raine in the chest.

Raine staggered back winded and wrong-footed, her grip dislodged. Twil sagged and shook herself from head to toe, then growled and flexed both hands, fingers open wide like claws.

Between her hanging curtain of hair and her hunched posture, Twil looked the picture of a comic-book savage, halfway to animal already – but the effect was more than mere acting; a second figure was overlaid on her, ghostly half-flesh enveloping her own like an afterimage, fingers too long, bared teeth too sharp and too numerous, the front of her face too snout-like. From a distance one might mistake Twil’s additions as figments of a stressed imagination, a half-glimpsed hallucination.

Up close there was no mistake.

Raine grinned, flushed and bouncing on the balls of her feet. She raised her hands in a classic boxing stance.

Violence is never easy to watch. One is pulled between a very sensible desire to hide, and a desperate need to help one’s friends. I’d mythologised Raine for two weeks straight. She was unstoppable, she was invincible; she’d killed a monster and she’d done it for me and here she was after a kick to the chest, her opponent easily as frightening as she was. Incensed, shaken, confused, I almost broke – which way, I never found out.

Absurdity saved me, as I pushed the last puzzle piece into place.

They both tensed, ready to bash each other senseless over a stupid misunderstanding.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Stop, both of you. Oh my goodness, stop fighting.”

I forced myself to step forward, shaking, palms sweaty, dismayed to find that I’d unconsciously slid behind the armchair.

Raine spared me a sidelong glance and Twil blinked at me, teeth bared. I had only seconds to de-escalate this. I focused on Twil.

“They haven’t done anything to me.” I spoke fast, concentrated on not tripping over my words. “You called me a zombie in the library, but I’m not being mind controlled or coerced or seduced or anything like that. You asked what Evelyn has on me? Absolutely nothing. I saved her life, not the other way around. I’m Evelyn’s friend, and I’m Raine’s … friend, too. My name’s Heather Morell and I know what you are and I can probably mind-zap you into another dimension if I try hard enough, and if I’m completely wrong about what you’re thinking and instead you’re determined to hurt my friends, then I will do exactly that.”

For a split-second I thought I’d got this all terribly wrong. Staring Twil down was like trying to intimidate an actual wolf. I shook so hard I was certain my knees would give way.

Twil lowered her hands; the fight went out of her. She straightened up and swept her hair out of her face. Human again, as if those bestial additions had been a trick of the light. She narrowed her eyes at me, an intense scrutiny that shifted in turn to Raine and then Evelyn – who had gone very quiet and pale.

“Yeah, what she said,” Raine added. She shook her arms out and rubbed her chest where she’d been kicked, then shot me a questioning look.

“It was pretty obvious once I thought about it,” I said. “She thinks I’m a victim here.”

“You’re sharp,” Twil said. “That is why I came up here. Look, I don’t … I don’t wanna fight, I just wanted to … ” She gestured at me, as if for help. “I thought … ”

“You ever threaten my friends again,” Raine said. “I’ve got a lot more silver with your name on it.”

“Oh fuck off. You started it.”

“Raine,” I said, gently as I could. “Less of that, please, for me? This is all a misunderstanding.”

Twil scowled at me. “It might not be. How do I know you’re not too scared to speak up? Heather, that’s your name, right?”

“Scared? Of what?” Raine asked.

Raine spoke with a smile, but she did a poor job of hiding her tension. She was ready to throw down at the slightest wrong move from Twil. I could tell she wanted to, she enjoyed it on a level I didn’t understand, and I had to keep talking unless I wanted to witness an actual fistfight.

“I think you should explain this in your own words, Twil.” I injected just enough scold into my voice to make it clear what I thought of all this. I put my hands on my hips and did my best to look stern and unimpressed despite the pounding adrenaline in my head and the painful ache in my chest and the fact I was standing in front of a bloody werewolf. The alternative was sit down in a hurry.

Twil grumbled and crossed her arms, looking for all the world like a moody teenager.

“I saw you and Saye go into the library together, down to her … stuff. What was I supposed to think?”

Evelyn and Raine both opened their mouths at the same moment.

“Ah!” I held up my hands. “Stop, stop, just listen. Listen, please. What did you think, Twil?”

She squinted at me, as if she thought I was an idiot. It wasn’t an easy look to take from such a stunningly beautiful face, but I was too shaken to care much right now.

“I’m new to all of this,” I said. “Humour me. What did you think?”

“ … that Saye had recruited a minion. An easy fool to … I don’t know, sacrifice, use for magic. Something worse.” She shrugged. “Wasn’t gonna let her get away with it. Still won’t.” She shot a dark look at Evelyn.

“There we go. That’s what I thought. Well, I’m not. I’m here of my own free will. Very happily, in fact.”

“Should have said that in the first place, shouldn’t you?”

“You made it quite difficult,” I said.

Raine grinned and shook her head. “You absolute spanner, Twil.”

“Sacrifice?” Evelyn finally piped up, scowling like thunder. “That’s the sort of thing your lot do. This is all so much bullshit, Twil. Why on earth were you watching me in the first place?”

“I just happened to be in the library, alright? It’s a free country, last I checked.”

“No, I don’t believe a word of this. A very creative excuse, that’s what this is. You shouldn’t even be in the city.”

Twil bared her teeth and growled. Raine raised her fists. Evelyn flinched and almost squeaked. I felt an uncontrollable urge to duck behind the chair. All my hard work undone.

Then Twil jammed a hand into her blue-and-lime coat pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She shoved it toward Raine, a faint blush in her cheeks.

“That’s why I’m here, alright? My life doesn’t revolve around you lot all the time. Go on, open it. Fucking wasters.”

Raine took the paper, unfolded it, and snorted a suppressed laugh. I peered over her shoulder.

A Sharrowford University Open Day flyer.

Come all ye prospective undergrads; see the departments, talk to professors, wander around the campus. No exclusion for secret werewolves.

“Yeah go on, yuk it up,” Twil said. “You’ll see, I’ll get in and I’ll beat all your marks as well. I’m getting a fucking first. You think I’m just some idiot living in the woods.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Raine said. She showed the flyer to Evelyn.

“You so are. Bitch.”

“What course are you applying to? And stop being so rude,” I said. Twil blinked at me in a frowny-squint. “It’s a serious question,” I added.

“ … bio-med science.”

“What were your A-level results?”

“Three As.” She jutted her chin high, then wavered and lowered her gaze. “Okay, one A, two Bs. Predicted.”

“Predicted? Wait a moment, how old are you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m eighteen. I’m an adult.”

“I had assumed you were a little older.” I spread my hands in a silent apology. “With those A-level grades, you’ll probably get accepted. Next year?”

“Yeah, keeping my hopes up. Here, maybe Manchester. You know, get a little further away from home.” She frowned at me. “Why the hell are we talking about this?”

I shrugged. “Because a little normality goes a long way. Because not everything needs to revolve around supernatural nonsense and … werewolves.” I struggled to keep my voice free of pique. Twil smirked, showing too many teeth.

“Told you all about me, did they? Good.”

“That we did,” Raine said. “Didn’t think you’d developed a white knight complex though. Impressive.”

“Oh fuck you, you saddo. You can talk.”

Raine laughed. “It was a compliment, dumbass.”

“From Raine, it probably was,” I muttered.

Twil snorted, barely a laugh at all.

“Sorry about the old rough and tumble, you know?” Raine mimed throwing punches. She didn’t sound sorry. “Got a little too carried away, I guess.”

“Got you good too, didn’t I?”

“Meant what I said though. Don’t hurt my friends.”

“If I wanted to hurt anybody – and I don’t – who’s gonna stop me? You and what army?”

Raine shrugged, expansive and theatrical, playing to the crowd. “Silver runs about fifteen quid an ounce these days, I think.”

I knew it was unhealthy, chest-thumping nonsense, but the way Raine stared her down, that casual look, as if the outcome would never be in doubt, was far too attractive for me to deal with right now. Raine could use that look for evil if she wanted, I knew she could, and if she ever turned it on me in private I doubt I’d last long.

Too bad Twil was staring right back.

I was jealous.

What on earth did I have to be jealous of? They were ready to knock each other black and blue, and on Raine’s side that was at least partly in my defence. But I didn’t like them looking at each other, butting heads with familiarity behind their words.

I knew it was petty and stupid but I couldn’t help myself. Raine wasn’t my lover or my partner and I’d known her for less than a whole month. I felt like a hormonal teenager, and I knew why: because I’d never been allowed to be one before.

I told myself off and resolved to be sensible, measured, and diplomatic.

And to remind Twil I’d already scored a point against her.

“I apologise for slapping you earlier,” I said.

Twil shrugged. “Hardly matters, does it? S’cool, whatever.”

I opened my mouth to request an apology for her attempted punch, but the words died on the way up.

There wasn’t a scratch on her.

No bruise, no slapped face, no broken nose.

The only evidence of our clumsy slapfight was the red stain down the front of her hoodie, diluted and smeared about. She must have scrubbed at it with a wet paper towel in one of the toilets.

Twil cocked an eyebrow at me. I realised I’d been staring.

“Werewolf, right.” I huffed a sigh. It just wasn’t fair. “Broken noses shouldn’t heal in thirty minutes.”

Twil barked a laugh.

Even sullen and rude, she was far, far too pretty.

How could I, frumpy shapeless pullovers and daytime pajamas and sallow stress-ruined complexion, compete with that?

Twil watched me watch her, slow and thoughtful. I shrugged at her in silent question, not trusting myself to speak in case I snapped out jealous teenage nonsense.

“So why are you here?” she asked.

“In general?” Too much mocking hostility in my voice. I tamped it down. “Or you mean Sharrowford, or here in this specific room?”

“I mean what the hell are you doing hanging out with these two? What’s your deal?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Raine said quietly.

I crossed my arms. “Quite right. Any answer to that is long and complex and very personal. I’m not comfortable talking about it, except with close friends.”

“Oh, uh, right.” Twil blinked and looked lost. I felt a little sorry for her. She did mean well, after all. My jealousy wasn’t her fault. “Can I like, talk to you alone for a minute?” she asked. “Out in the hallway?”

“Twil,” Raine said, a warning note in her voice.

“Whatever for?” I asked.

“Without these two listening in.” She indicated Raine and Evelyn with a jerk of her chin. “How can I be sure you’re not getting conned?”

I was about to say sure, why not? Twil’s only real desire here was to make sure a timid-looking college girl wasn’t being exploited by a pair of scary clued-up supernatural types. Well, that, and she probably wanted to irritate Evelyn. She was awkward and slightly intimidating, but I had a hard time imagining her actually wanting to hurt me. Also, that lost expression made her look even prettier. I wasn’t immune to that.

Raine spoke before I could open my mouth. “No way, no how, Twil. Absolutely not.”

“Raine.” I heard an unintentional whine in my voice. I killed it, not liking where that was going. “I can make my own decisions.”

“Yeah, maybe you should listen to her?” Twil narrowed her eyes at Raine.

“I’m not trying to control your decisions,” Raine said. She stepped over to my side. “My danger senses are still tingling, really.”

“Danger? Talking with her in the corridor for five minutes? Twil just wants to make sure I’m not being coerced.” I glanced past Raine. “Am I correct?”

“Right,” Twil said. “This ain’t convincing me, by the way.”

Raine leaned in close, cupped my ear, and whispered. Her warm breath tingled on my scalp.

“Heather, this could be a set up for a snatch job. Everything out of Twil’s mouth is suspect.”

“What?” I said out loud.

“It’s not impossible that the Brinkwood cult knows about you somehow. I didn’t mention it before, didn’t want to scare you. Do not let Twil get you alone. I was skating on thin ice earlier; without the silver, she could pull my head off if she wanted. Kidnapping you would be easy.”

Raine straightened up and squeezed my shoulder. I knew that look. I’d trusted it on a sick and lonely morning in a dirty Sharrowford cafe, and it had saved me.

“I-I think you’re wrong,” I said. “But I trust you. Okay.”

“Well?” Twil growled.

I shook my head.

“Fine, whatever. S’your funeral. Can’t say I didn’t try.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, it’s very sweet of you, but I’m fine, I’m safe. I don’t need saving. Probably for the first time in my life.”

“Yeah, I think we’re done here,” Raine said. “Time to go, hey Twil? You leave us alone, we’ll leave you alone. Non-aggression pact, all that good stuff?”

Twil grunted, then looked hard at me. “I don’t trust anything these two do. Like, I dunno what exactly they told you about me and mine, but Saye’s infinitely more fucked up than I am.”

I felt myself bristle at the implied insult. “That’s hardly a mark against her, even if true.”

“Whatever. Don’t let her do any magic to you, that’s for sure.”

Twil must have seen the silent question in my expression. She frowned and glanced between Evelyn and I.

“Woah, shit, that’s not why you went down to the books, was it?”

I cleared my throat. “Well-”

“Was it?” Raine asked. “Evee?”

“Oh no fucking way,” Twil said. She unfolded her arms and flexed her hands, glowering and baring her teeth. “Nuh uh, not letting you mindfuck this girl.”

“For pity’s sake,” I said, cursing my own open-book face. “It’s fine, it’s to help me.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Raine stepped forward, raising her gloved fist again. “Hold up, Twil.”

Evelyn cleared her throat.

“This is all very dramatic and edifying, I’m sure,” she said. “But you seem to have forgotten something, you dense mongrel.”

Twil frowned at her. “What?”

“Yeah, what?” Raine said.

“Your reasons are irrelevant,” Evelyn spat. “Apologise and leave. One chance.”

“What? Fuck you Saye, you-”

Twil’s eyes went wide. She lunged for Evelyn. Raine yelled and leapt for her. I jumped so badly that my heart achieved escape velocity.

“Oh,” I mouthed, before Evelyn cast the spell we’d all forgotten about.

She twisted her fingers against the blood-smeared mirror, completed her infernal circuit, and spoke a rush of words which sounded like they hurt to pronounce, all throaty consonants and hard inhalation. Her maimed left hand thrust forward and squeezed into a fist.

The air temperature plummeted several degrees in an instant, enough to draw a gasp and shiver from me.

Static electricity sparked off my fingers and crackled across my jumper.

And Twil slammed to a halt.

She froze mid-step, fists clenched, mouth half-open on an unfinished snarl. Her eyes bulged with blinding rage. The muscles on her face twitched. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she vibrated all over, as if fighting to fill her lungs. Her right arm jerked up, millimetre by painful millimetre.

Raine caught herself on the edge of the table to avoid touching Twil. Static jumped from her hands to the metal table legs and she swore under her breath.

Evelyn shook and panted, dripping with sudden cold sweat. She grinned at Twil, ugly and triumphant.

“You forgot what I can do,” she said, effort in every word.

Disgust and fascination fought in my heart. I stared at Twil and then at the blood-thing in Evelyn’s lap. This was impossible, my mind said, but there it was, evidence of my own eyes. And Evelyn was enjoying it far too much.

“Evee, you’ve made your point,” Raine said. “We don’t want a body on our hands. Let it go.”

“Body?” Evelyn choked out a laugh. “Oh, I think our doggy friend can take a lot more than this.”

Twil was gritting her teeth, hissing a sound halfway between a broken gas pipe and a dentist’s drill.

“Yeah, but maybe you can’t,” Raine said.

That snapped me back to the moment. “She can’t- Evelyn, she can’t breathe,” I said.

“That’s the point.”

She clenched her fist tighter, knuckles white. Twil was so red in the face she looked ready to burst. Evelyn shook and quivered, a flu patient with the chills, about to collapse, blinking rapidly just to stay conscious. Raine looked wary of touching either of them, as if they carried live current. For all I knew, they did.

“Evelyn, stop!” I cried. “I won’t let you do this to somebody over me. It’s not worth it! I won’t have it. Not even a rude, ridiculous person like Twil. Stop!”

“Not about you.” Evelyn had to force every word. “About respect.”

“I don’t care! I won’t have much respect left for you or myself if I stand by and let you commit torture. Stop!”

The tug of war collapsed.

Evelyn sagged and her fingers slipped on the bloody mirror. Twil crashed to the floor. Her chin bounced off the ground and she yelped like a kicked dog. I flinched, my own tension pulled piano-wire tight. Evelyn slumped and started to slide out of her chair, but Raine ducked forward and held her under the armpits, pushed her back into the seat. She was coated with sweat and shivering all over. Her eyes found mine, guilty and ashamed for a split-second before they fluttered shut.

“Raine, what- what do I-” I stammered, hands half-raised in a please-let-me-help gesture.

“It’s okay, I’ve got her, I’ve got her,” Raine said. She clicked her fingers in front of Evelyn’s face. “Evee. Evee, open you eyes. Don’t go to sleep. Evelyn, open your eyes.”

Evelyn coughed and grunted. “I’m fine. Stop clicking at me.”

“Dammit, Evee.”

Twil struggled to her knees, sucking in air like she’d run a marathon. “Oh yeah, nobody worry about me, just over here getting my guts fried. You shower of utter bitches.”

“Come off it, you’re basically invincible,” Raine said, but she stood up and offered Twil a hand.

“Yeah, but I can still feel pain. Fucking hate you, Saye.”

“Good,” Evelyn grumbled, eyes still closed. “Perhaps you’ll show some respect.”

“Evelyn, shush,” I said, an unfamiliar lash in my voice. She opened bleary, confused eyes on me.

“Bet you’re out of ammo now, you-” Twil started.

“And you,” I rounded on Twil. “Sit.”

“Yeah yeah, don’t have to tell me twice.” Twil winced as Raine helped her into one of our armchairs.

Even in the heat of the moment, it wasn’t an easy sight for my fragile self-esteem: Twil with her arm over Raine’s shoulders to help her stand, Raine frowning at her with at least a modicum of care and attention. I told myself it didn’t matter. We had bigger things to deal with now. I could be immature later. In private. Alone.

“Can’t believe I have to be the adult in the room,” I said, and took a deep breath. My hands were shaking, quite badly, and I clasped them together to get myself under control. It was over, I told myself. It was done. We could all pretend to be sensible adults now.

The room temperature had returned to normal, and none of us seemed charged with static anymore.

Twil was hunched up as if around a stomach wound, though there was no visible mark on her, and Evelyn looked like she was asleep, her frowning, conflicted expression the only evidence to the contrary.

“Right, I think we’ve all had enough for one day,” Raine said. “We are going the hell home, and you’re going to sleep, Evee.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

Evelyn’s frown darkened. She knew I was talking to her.

“Heather, maybe leave it for now?” Raine murmured.

“Standards have to be maintained,” Evelyn said. “Debts paid.”

Twil growled, either at Evelyn or just to get our attention. “You’re kidding if you think I’m going anywhere now. So desperate to stop me seeing what you’re gonna do to this poor girl, huh? No way, Saye. You’re doing magic, so I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither of you are in any state to do anything right now,” Raine said.

Evelyn scoffed. “Watch me.”

“Sure thing, bitch,” Twil shot back.

Raine rubbed the bridge of her nose. I sighed and hugged myself, feeling like I was under siege.

“I’m haunted,” I said.

Twil blinked at me. “What?”

“Hey, you don’t have to do this, Heather,” Raine said. I shook my head, didn’t matter now.

“Haunted. By something much bigger and scarier than you, and Evelyn’s going to help me with it. Raine’s been helping me with it. You, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I suppose you’ve at least earned an answer, after Evelyn hit you with the magical version of live battery clamps to your sensitive parts.”

“S’this true?” Twil said.

I nodded.

Evelyn turned bleary eyes to stare level at our curious werewolf. “Quite. Heather’s got the attention of something much worse than the sad little god your cult worships.”

“Hey, don’t call it a cult.”

“I’ll call it whatever I bloody well like. I could take it apart if I wanted.”

Twil bared her teeth and growled.

“Girls, calm the hell down.” Raine raised her voice and rapped her knuckles on the table. Evelyn winced at the noise and Twil jerked her head back.

“Why can’t we just act like reasonable adults, instead of extras from a bad drama?” I asked. “Let’s compromise, so we don’t end up doing this all again? I assume, Twil, that if you’re not satisfied, then you’re going to start following me around? Or go after Evelyn again?”

Twil blinked at me as if I had mind reading powers.

“And Evelyn,” I continued. “If we’re still on for your magical experiment today, do you object to Twil watching?”

Evelyn sucked her teeth in thought. “We’d have to go back to my house.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” Twil said.

“Over my dead body.”

“I gotta agree. Though not the dead part,” Raine said. “You ain’t coming back there.”

“The security would eat you alive,” Evelyn said.

Twil flexed her back and arms, rolling muscles like a wrestler. “We can find out.”

“No,” Evelyn said.

“Why don’t we do the spell here?” I asked. Three pairs of eyes looked to me. “Well, why not? You two have manoeuvred yourselves into a stalemate, and I am deeply uncomfortable at being at the heart of it. I’m not thanking you for your concern, Twil, or you, Evelyn, for … whatever ego-trip nonsense that spell was.”

Evelyn held my gaze for a long moment. I was too wiped out to worry about looking away. Bitter damage lurked behind her eyes, and I promised myself that after this day was over and we all did go home again, I was going to give her a hug. I would be her friend. A real one.

“It’s possible. No reason why not,” she said. “But I need tools from home. Somebody will have to fetch them.”

“Ah,” Raine said.

The impasse was obvious: Twil was barred from Evelyn’s house; Evelyn couldn’t go alone; Raine didn’t want to leave us here with Twil.

“I’ll go,” I said. “It’s for my benefit anyway. And to be honest I need some fresh air after that.”

Raine shook her head. “No, not by yourself.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s fine. I’m hardly going to get snatched off the street.”

“You might,” Raine muttered.

She guided me a few steps toward the back of the room, out of earshot. I didn’t mind – it was a very reassuring way to be handled, but a tiny voice in the black pit of my self-esteem giggled those damnable words again: damsel in distress.

Raine dropped her voice to a whisper. “Heather, look, I don’t like this.”

“It’s fine.” I said, whispering back despite myself. “I trust you, but I think you’re wrong, Twil’s just concerned.”

“And if I’m right, she might have others waiting for you. I dunno. It’ll have to be me, I’ll have to go. Here.”

Raine tugged off the silver-wire exercise glove and held it out to me.

“Oh, I can’t. No, Raine.”

“All you gotta do is wave it in Twil’s general direction and she’ll get back right sharpish. She’s weak at the moment. I dunno how long it’ll take her to recover but I can get to Evee’s and back in under half an hour.”

“It’ll be fine, I don’t need-”

Raine pressed a finger to my lips. The intimate gesture made my heart skip. “No, I am only doing this if you promise to do what I say. The alternative is I knock Twil’s lights out, then carry Evee home, and you sleep at my place until we’re sure Twil’s gone.”

“ … Raine, really,” I hissed, unimpressed, trying to ignore the bait. Sleep at Raine’s? Yes please. She’d not taken me there yet.

She didn’t even blink.

“Hey, this is what I do.”

I sighed and took the glove. “Fine.”

“Promise.”

“To what?”

“Don’t get within six feet of Twil. Keep a chair between you and her. Don’t answer the door to anybody but me. And whatever you do, do not, absolutely do not go outside with her. Promise me.”

“If you think she’s so dangerous, why leave in the first place?”

“Hey, you took the wheel here, Heather. You’re in charge right now. This is your compromise. I’m just interpreting orders.”

“Alright, I promise.”

Raine smiled, relief obvious, and I took selfish comfort in her absolute trust in my promises. Then she pulled me into a hug, and I took comfort in that too.

Maybe I didn’t need Maisie. Maybe I had Raine now.

Or maybe I was just kidding myself.

Or dependent.

When Raine let go I wished we were anywhere but here, anywhere but in the Medieval Metaphysics room with an angry werewolf and Evelyn. Raine took a deep breath and crossed the room, whirling into action. All she needed was a long trench coat billowing out behind her to complete the look.

“Right, Evelyn, what do you need? List me.”

“Hmm. Paper. The silver plate underneath the stairs. The bottle of aqua vitae. That’s still in the kitchen cupboard, has a picture of unicorn on it, you can’t miss it. Inprencibilis Vermis from my library, third shelf up on the left hand wall, you know the one.”

“That’s it?”

Evelyn nodded.

“S’not much.”

“It’s an experiment. Probably won’t even work.”

“Got it, no probs. And you.” Raine turned to our grumpy werewolf visitor. Twil was still hunched up like a brooding teenager with her hair half down in front of her face.

She shot a dark look at Raine. “What?”

“Heather trusts you. I don’t. If she’s wrong and I’m right, I’ll kill you.”

Her voice sent a cold hand crawling up my spine. That wasn’t the Raine who hugged me a moment ago. That wasn’t my Raine.

Twil just grunted.

Raine turned to me one last time, winked, and then she was out of the door. The latch clicked shut behind her, followed by the sound of her footsteps receding down the corridor, walking fast.

I made a conscious effort to smile, but nobody was paying attention. Evelyn lay in her chair, watching Twil through half-open eyes. Twil stared back, the very picture of a wolf waiting for prey to slip up.

“Well then,” I said. “Won’t be long, I hope.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ten minutes later, behind the locked door of the Medieval Metaphysics room, Evelyn provided a practical answer to ‘what is magic?’

Magic, in this quick and dirty example, started when she noticed the smear of Twil’s blood on her walking stick. She was still shaking, but her lips curled into that sharp, devious smile.

“Evee?”

She grunted in reply. That’s all I got.

I was too busy crashing out on adrenaline.

Raine would get here any minute. She’d had to skip straight out of a lecture. From the tone in her voice down the phone, she’d probably cross campus in record time. A twinge of guilt plucked at my gut.

Guilt, however, paled in comparison to the high still racing through my heart and pounding in my head.

I’d acted tough and won. Was this what Raine felt like all the time? Powerful but spent, shaky and winded? I suspected not. I leaned against the back of a chair and focused on my breathing, one hand wandering up to rub at the bruise inside my chest.

Evelyn slapped her walking stick onto the table and dug around in her tote bag, pulling out odds and ends – a box of cotton buds, a hand mirror, a tub of Vaseline and a black marker pen. She dumped it all on the table. Her hands still quivered as she found an unlabelled bottle of pills and popped two slender white tablets into her mouth, swallowed them dry.

“What are those?” I asked.

Evelyn stared at the detritus on the table, her lips moving in silent thought.

“Evelyn? What did you just take?”

“Nothing. Painkillers.”

She grabbed the mirror and the marker pen, sat down in her chair facing the door, and got to work.

A visible, focused calm settled over Evelyn as she drew curved symbols around the edge of the mirror, her hands steady and working fast after the first minute. The bottle of painkillers tempted me too, but the bruise inside was immune to ibuprofen and paracetamol and codeine. Not to mention the pills probably weren’t painkillers at all.

Evelyn finished drawing and grabbed her walking stick, then wiped at the sticky red patch with cotton buds.

With painstaking attention to detail, eyes tightly focused, fingers braced against the bare glass, she drew a spiral design in the centre of the mirror – in Twil’s blood.

A deep sense of unreality crept over me, in silence half born of sudden exhaustion, half fear of violating Evelyn’s unspoken ritual quiet, broken only by the scuff of the cotton buds and her constant stream of low muttering. The room was soaked in a deep twilight, with the lights off and blankets pinned over the back windows, the overstuffed bookshelves towering over us in the gloom.

I stepped over to the windows and the big desk along the back, flicked the switch on one of the lamps. Soft orange glow chased the shadows away, into the corners and under the bookcases.

Evelyn’s head snapped up. She stared at me.

“It was dark.” I hiccuped.

Expressionless, she bent to her work once more.

I sat down and rubbed my sternum. The ache and the adrenaline crash fogged the inside of my head.

“There,” Evelyn said. She straightened up, tugged the blanket off the back of the armchair to settle it over her knees, and placed the finished mirror-design on her lap. She braced her right hand against the surface, thumb and two fingers resting at what seemed like very specific points of the design. “Not my greatest working, but it’ll do. I hope Twil tries it on again, I really hope she does.”

“I assume that’s magic?”

“Just a slapdash job. Very little range, and it’s only good for one use, but it’ll give Twil a nasty little surprise.”

“Evelyn, what just happened?” I picked through my adrenaline-fuzzed memories. “What was that all about? Who is Twil, exactly?”

“An idiot and an irritation. Really, there wasn’t any need to muck about calling Raine. Twil is essentially harmless. That was all so much guff and drama.”

“You use magic on harmless people?”

“This is to remind her not to fuck with me.” Evelyn hesitated. “Us,” she added. “I mean us.”

I opened my mouth again but Evelyn whipped around to glare at the door. She waved me into expectant silence. My heart caught in my throat.

“Someone’s-”

Then the triple-knock, the key in the door, the breathless rush.

Raine barrelled into the room, flushed and wild eyed, thankfully faster than Evelyn could panic-cast the blood-mirror bear trap in her lap. Raine jerked to a halt, as if she’d expected to throw herself headfirst into the middle of a fight. I admit, the look rather suited her.

“You’re both alright?” she asked.

“Yes, we’re fine, we’re okay.” I smiled in relief. “Hey Raine.”

“Hey yourself.”

“Close the bloody door!” Evelyn snapped.

“Don’t look so happy to see me then.” Raine winked, but she did close the door and throw the latch. “It was Twil, right? On her own? What happened, where is she now?”

“Lurking, I suspect,” Evelyn said.

I nodded. “Yes, on her own. I’d never seen her before. We were in the library, I-”

Evelyn raised her voice. “I suggest you get out of the way of the door.”

Raine quirked an eyebrow at the mirror-and-blood construction in Evelyn’s lap. “Oooh, Evee, you got some voodoo brewing down there?”

“No, I thought I’d expend all the effort just for fun. What does it look like?”

“What are you gonna do, blast the door into Twil’s face?”

“Something along those lines.”

“Can she actually do that?” I asked. “Is that possible?”

“Of course I can’t,” Evelyn snapped, as Raine shrugged and said “Sure, why not?”

They shared a look. Raine cracked a grin and Evelyn scowled before she resumed staring daggers at the door. Raine glanced between the two of us, wiggled her eyebrows, and stepped out of the way of the firing line with a flourish of one arm.

“So, you two were having a girls’ morning out together, doing some bonding over library books, when Twil rocked up and ruined your day?”

Evelyn grunted.

“I’m sorry,” I said. The guilt twisted in my chest.

Raine pointed two finger-guns in my direction, struck a dramatic pose, and grinned. It worked. I almost giggled, despite everything.

Raine was wearing a thick black polo-neck underneath her leather jacket. Her boots – not the faded rose ones today – looked sturdy enough to see off any foe all on their own. She had her hair swept back, as if she’d just run a hand through it, an effortless artful disarray.

There’s a unique emotional spice, when you’ve met a person you like an awful lot, and they arrive in your day. You notice every detail, every little change, every minor adjustment of gesture.

Raine had a glove on her right hand. An exercise glove, old and tatty, with silvery wire wrapped around the plastic knuckle brace.

I’d never seen it before.

“It’s really good to see you,” I said, for more than one reason.

“Heather, I am not mad at you. You’ve done nothing wrong. Thank you, for calling me for help.” The finger-guns swivelled to Evelyn, who steadfastly ignored the show. “I’m not actually mad at you either, Evee, just totally mystified.”

“As usual, then,” Evelyn grunted.

“Like, hey, don’t we have this, you know, arrangement where you let me know where you’re at, ask me to come with you, organise things in advance, because otherwise spooky ghost lizards and super-zombies from dimension X might kidnap you and eat your brains. Ring a bell at all, Evee?”

Raine’s good humour seemed genuine. Simple relief, perhaps, but from anybody else I’d have expected shouting, anger, or passive aggression at the very least.

“Yes, yes, I haven’t suddenly gone senile,” Evelyn said. “Ever consider that perhaps I’ve grown out of it at last? Don’t you have other things to worry about now?”

“That’s not what you sounded like earlier,” I said.

I regretted speaking up; Evelyn turned the full force of her frown on me, silent reminder of the day I’d surprised her in this very same room. I resisted a gut-strong urge to curl up and vanish into the chair, forced myself to look her in the eye, get this nonsense under control.

“You were as scared as I was,” I said.

Evelyn opened her mouth to snap at me – but then blinked and swallowed, her expression softening. “I … yes, Heather. I … you helped me. Thank you. I needed … ” She glanced at Raine with obvious discomfort.

“Don’t mind me,” Raine said, barely suppressing a grin.

“And don’t you pull a silly face at this! It’s important. Heather and I shared a … moment. We came to an understanding.” She sighed heavily. “And yes, she’s right. You’re right, Heather. I was scared, but only because Twil caught us off guard. She won’t be doing that again.”

Raine clapped her hands together and beamed at us. “Look, you’re both safe, and that’s all that matters. Please, Evee, if you need to rush out somewhere, just call me, yeah? You know I don’t mind. Ever.”

Evelyn grunted and returned to watching the door.

I wished I understood their relationship. Maybe with Evelyn, in private, maybe I could get her to talk about it, if I approached the subject the right way? I cursed myself for such intrusive thoughts, but I felt a burning need to know. Why was Raine so devoted?

Raine leaned down to peer at my face, her hair hanging sideways and her grin at an angle.

“You are far from alright, Heather. I can tell, you know, especially with you.”

“I’m … shaken. We both were. The ache is really bad. I think it was all the adrenaline.”

Raine perched on the arm of the chair. She started rubbing my back in exactly the right way.

No idea how she’d learnt so fast. In the space of two weeks, she’d already figured out the precise way to melt my muscles. For a long few minutes she didn’t say a word, just kneaded the tension out of my shoulders. Adrenaline and panic drained away. Raine was here. Safe now.

A little voice in my mind whispered those damnable words; ‘damsel in distress’. I told it to shut up.

“So what did Twil do?” Raine said.

I told her.

The more I spoke, the further Raine sharpened into rapt attention, focused and listening, asking no questions. I recognised the change coming over her. Tense, quiet, ready. I found it deeply, astoundingly attractive.

Or rather, I would have, if the puzzle pieces weren’t slotting into place.

No longer buzzing with adrenaline and jumping at shadows, I hesitated at the clues in my own memory. I couldn’t be right, it was too absurd. If I was correct then the world was dumber and more annoying than I’d dared imagine. I let my explanation trail off as I stared at Raine. She raised her eyebrows.

“Heather? It’s okay, you-”

“What is Twil, exactly?”

Raine paused, split-second hesitation. Any other time, any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have noticed. “Okay so, Twil Hopton, that’s her name, here’s the 101. She’s not that hard to deal with, but she does represent some potentially dangerous people, depending-”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” My throat tightened. “What is she?”

Raine glanced at Evelyn for help. “Uh, Evee, this didn’t come up?”

My friends shared a look for just a moment too long. Evelyn shrugged and Raine bit her lower lip.

I felt myself bristle, left on the outside of some secret communication. Is that what they thought of me? The hesitation all but confirmed my worst suspicions, that the world was bonkers. I couldn’t believe this. Absurdity.

“I can put two and two together,” I said. Raine raised a placating hand but I forged on. “The growling noises Twil made. The dog jokes you were throwing at her, Evelyn, which seemed to strike such a nerve. And you,” I frowned at Raine. “Do you think I don’t notice things? You’ve got silver wire wrapped around a weightlifting glove.”

“Uh, that I have. Well spotted, yeah.” At least Raine had the sense to look guilty. She raised the makeshift knuckle-duster and gave me a sheepish smile.

“I’m not completely culturally ignorant.”

“I knew you’d get it, Heather, I just wanted to be gentle and-”

“She’s a werewolf.” I said. “Twil’s a werewolf.”

The word didn’t seem real. I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Werewolf is hardly the right term,” Evelyn said. “But you’re basically correct. Don’t be so surprised, I thought it was obvious.”

“Werewolf.” I jammed as much scorn into my voice as I could muster, which at that exact moment was rather a lot. “I can’t believe this. This is nonsense.”

“She doesn’t actually turn into a wolf,” Raine said. “She just … summons it. Kind of.”

“Oh yes, because that makes all the difference, great.”

“You’ve dealt with far worse. It’s not that wacky.”

Memories of the confrontation in the library basement repeated in my mind, slotted into a new context, but one shone out above all the others. A cold hand crept up my spine.

“Evelyn,” I said. “What exactly did you mean when you told Twil she needs to ‘get over Raine’?”

“Ah.” Raine winced.

Evelyn snorted with dark amusement. “This is what you get, Raine, your chickens come home to roost. Or wolves. Whatever.”

“You have a werewolf ex-girlfriend.” I gaped at Raine.

“No, no!” Raine put her hands up. “No, it was like, a week, or maybe two. And it was all her.”

“You have a jealous werewolf ex-girlfriend and you thought this wasn’t relevant information that I needed to know?”

“I didn’t even know she still came up to Sharrowford. I thought she was gone for good.”

“And she smelled you on me,” I said.

Raine frowned, hair-trigger switch to serious. “She said that?”

“She said I reeked of both of you. She probably thinks you and I are … you know.” I threw up my hands, too exasperated for embarrassment.

“A safe assumption,” Evelyn muttered.

I closed my eyes and put my head in my hands. I felt a headache coming on, and this time it had nothing to do with impossible math.

“Heather, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you,” Raine said. Her hands found my shoulders again and squeezed. “I really didn’t think she was even around any more. If I thought you were in the slightest amount of danger, I would have warned you. I’d knock her lights out if she threatened you.”

I knew I didn’t have any right to be mad at Raine. After all, we weren’t lovers. Just friends. Right? This was her ex, her past, her business. None of my concern. I had no right to demand anything.

Her ex-girlfriend also happened to be an insupportable break with even my tenuous standards of acceptable reality.

“Magic and monsters and other dimensions I can just about deal with. Werewolves are a step too far. Let alone jealous werewolf ex-girlfriends. When did I end up in a bad supernatural romance novel?”

“Romance?” Raine’s voice kinked with amusement.

I blushed furiously, amazed she had the audacity right now.

She kept rubbing my shoulders and I kept my face hidden, trying to accept this incredibly stupid addition to my incomplete model of the world.

“Do you want the full lowdown on her?” Raine asked.

“Oh, why not? I suppose I should at least try to understand. Can hardly make less sense at this point.”

“You got it, Heather. Like I was saying, Twil represents some potentially dangerous people, depending on what they’re after right now.”

Evelyn snorted a derisive laugh. “Idiots and amateurs, begging to get their minds eaten by an Outsider.”

“A cult?” I asked, looking up again. “She’s in a cult as well? Oh, great, this gets better and better.”

“Not actually from Sharrowford,” Raine said. “There’s a cult up in Brinkwood, two train stops north of the city. Pokey little village on the edge of the woods. You ever been past there?”

I recalled a rotting ex-mill town seen from dirty train windows, trees marching down to a valley in the mid-distance. “I think so.”

“It’s a run down place. They’ve got some fancy name for themselves, but we just call them the Brinkwood cult. They’re a bit mad, but not screaming avocado batshit level like the Masonic-lodge wannabees in Sharrowford itself.”

“’Screaming avocado batshit’?”

“Let’s just say the Sharrowford cult is real bad news. The Brinkwood weirdos, eh, I’d rather we never have to deal with them again, but they’re not stab-happy.”

“Probably because they’re much older,” Evelyn supplied without looking away from the door. “A little stability goes a long way.”

That piqued my interest for real. These people had history, local history? “How old?”

“Approximately three hundred years, at an educated guess,” Evelyn said. “My grandmother had them well-documented, from a safe distance. They probably started as a group of Quakers, tried to rebuild the abandoned church out in the woods, where Lowdon village used to be. That’s about three miles north of Brinkwood. They found something there in the basement, hibernating, and they’ve been worshipping it ever since. At least, that’s what they tell themselves.”

“What did they find?”

Evelyn shrugged. “Something washed up from Outside. Stranded and crippled and half-dead, I suspect.”

“Well,” Raine said after Evelyn fell silent. “Cut a long story short, Twil’s the cult’s greatest success story. The reason I know all this is we were friends for a bit.”

“Friends,” I echoed.

“Yeah, friends, really. I mean, yes, she had a crush on me, I think?”

“You encouraged her enough,” Evelyn said.

“Ahem, well.” Raine spread her hands in an apologetic shrug. “I may have. Poor decision, I know, yeah. Fair cop, I admit that.”

“I don’t want to know,” I lied. I was dying to know.

“Twil wasn’t born a werewolf,” Evelyn said. “As far as I know, werewolves don’t even exist. She’s the product of a experiment a few years back, to bind a demon or a spirit or some other Godforsaken thing to human flesh, without displacing the human soul. Her back’s covered with a mural of binding tattoos. Keeps them carefully hidden, but Raine saw.”

Raine winced again.

“Right,” I said, voice tight.

“She showed me!” Raine said. “I wasn’t getting her naked, I swear.”

“Lucky for us, the Brinkwood cult had some kind of internal power struggle right after they made themselves a werewolf foot soldier. Since then – nothing. Twil’s basically been left to have a mostly normal life. Her grandfather died, which I suspect meant a change of cult leadership. They seem more concerned with tending to their crippled God these days. They took some interest in my library about a year ago, but I sent them packing. That’s how we met Twil, she’s developed a bee in her bonnet about us. Blame Raine.”

“She hasn’t been around in at least six months,” Raine said. “She’s probably here on actual cult business. They could be up to anything. Including spying on us. Wish I knew why. Maybe I should beat it out of her.”

“So what do we do? Break out the wolfsbane? Wait for a full moon?” I couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“I need to find her and shoo her back to the sticks, that’s all. Seriously Heather, I won’t let her hurt you, even if she did smell my scent on you. She can take it up with me.”

“Oh, I can’t sit here and listen to this nonsense,” Evelyn snapped. “Stop trying to scare her, Raine, it’s not going to help you get into her knickers any faster.”

“Evelyn, please!” I said. Raine laughed and ruffled my hair.

“Twil’s not going to bother Heather one bit,” Evelyn continued. “She’s going to come here, to finish up what she started, with me. Why in hell would she bother Heather? She doesn’t even know her. She was on the same old hobby horse as usual, pissing and moaning about the books. This time I’m going to teach her a lesson. This is the last time, last time she does this.”

“Evee, you’re my friend and I love you, but why didn’t you call me the moment you saw her?”

“Certainly, I should have taken out my mobile phone while trapped in a corridor with her. ‘Just a moment, Twil old dear, I’m going to call Raine to come punch you in the face for me.’ That would have diffused the situation very handily, wouldn’t it?”

“Better than breaking her nose with your stick. She might have hurt you. Or Heather. I wish I’d been there.”

“Oh, nonsense.” Evelyn pulled herself around to face the door again. “She wouldn’t have dared. It was all front and bluster. You know her, Raine. You know she’s not dangerous, not really.”

I raised my hand. “I do seem to recall her winding up a punch at me.”

“See, Evee?” Raine turned back to me. “Damn, she didn’t actually hit you, did she?”

“No. And to be fair, I did slap her first.”

“You … what? You slapped her?” A grin crept across Raine’s face. “You slapped her? You slapped Twil?”

“I know! I don’t know what came over me. It’s not a behaviour that should be encouraged, please.”

Raine raised her hand for a high-five. I blushed and hesitated.

“Come on, Heather, you earned it.”

“F-fine.” I touched my hand to Raine’s. Not much of a high-five. “It does complicate things though. She was provoked. I struck first. I slapped a werewolf. Oh, that’s such an intolerable word.”

“From the sound of things, she deserved it.”

“It makes absolutely zero difference,” Evelyn said, punctuating her words by jabbing the arm of her chair. “She wouldn’t bother with Heather, she’s waiting outside for me to leave. But I have more patience.”

Raine sighed and spread her hands in a wide shrug, a good-natured grin on her face. “Can’t leave you two alone for five minutes, can I?”

“Believe what you want. Perhaps you should listen to-”

A knock shook the door of the Medieval Metaphysics room. Three sharp raps. My heart jumped.

“Ha! I told you so,” Evelyn said.

She stared at the door with an evil glint in her eye and re-oriented her fingertips against the bloodied glass once more.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Evelyn wound up the parable of The Castle, watching me with faint hope in her eyes.

“That’s … very comforting,” I said. I hadn’t yet constructed my own far less optimistic version. She nodded and smiled a sad kind of smile.

“It does make some sense of things, even if it’s a bad metaphor. Map isn’t the territory and all that. The other way to think of it, which my mother was fond of, is that God was a poor workman who left a lot of holes in reality, but, eh.”

All my two-week-long suppressed curiosity was leading up to one unthinkable prospect, a concept so tender and fragile that I couldn’t approach it head-on. I needed every piece laid out, accounted for and examined, before I could form the question.

“So I can do magic with my mind,” I said.

“No.”

“No?”

“Self-implementing hyperdimensional mathematics. That’s what you did. I think.” Evelyn paused and looked at me with a funny frown. “Can we talk about this without making you vomit? These floorboards are no fun to clean.”

I blushed a little. “As long as you don’t expect me to write the maths down.”

“Mm. Well. Your ‘Eye’, I think it’s been feeding you hyperdimensional mathematics, an access method for the layer of reality which underpins everything, the stuff magic manipulates. When you transported yourself to that world of rock and stone, Outside, it took you minutes. Raine told me. No tools. No knowledge. No books. That spell took me over an hour. You skipped magic, went straight to the result.”

Her voice was low, serious. Admiring? It left me deeply uncomfortable.

“And lost a lot of blood. And my lunch.”

“Mm, I don’t recommend you make a habit of it. The human mind was never meant to jam itself into the gears of reality so unprotected.”

“You hardly have to tell me that.” I sighed. “Look, this contradicts everything you said before about it being impossible to apply the scientific method.”

Evelyn sighed and waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s a just a theory, one my mother dabbled in. She didn’t believe it though. There’s no way of testing it or proving it. The human mind can’t perform the necessary operations. Until you. I think this ‘Eye’ has tried to make you capable of direct access to the mathematical substrate.” A strange smile crept onto her lips. “You proved my mother wrong. Living evidence it’s possible. Though not desirable, I suppose.”

“No kidding,” I muttered.

Evelyn didn’t say anything further on the subject, but watched me with cold calculation in her eyes, one crooked finger to her lips.

This would have been the perfect moment to ask the question. We were on the subject, Evelyn was taking me seriously. Ask it, do it, I willed myself. But I circled away to safer waters.

Coward.

“Can Raine do any magic?” I asked, forcing down the lump in my throat.

Evelyn scoffed. “Nothing that I don’t hand her ready to point and pull the trigger. Even the most simple magic takes long study, mental discipline, attention to detail. And you have to be a little bit broken to even start, be exposed and survive, put your mind back together. There’s a reason most mages are insane, or worse. Raine just sees everything as a problem to be solved, usually by punching it.”

“I don’t mind that about her.” I smiled and shrugged and edged closer to the core of my curiosity, trying to stay calm. “Why study magic at all, if it messes you up so badly?”

“Who knows? I’m under no illusions about myself. I know I’d make a clinical psychologist’s career if you got me in front of one. For other mages, I can only guess.” Evelyn shrugged. “Power. Knowledge. Some people just want to know the mind of God. Cultists, people messed up by things from Outside, I suspect they have less human motives. Present company excluded.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“I meant it.”

“Why do you keep going with magic? Because of your family?”

“My reasons are deeply personal,” Evelyn said in the same tone one might deliver news of a terminal disease. I waited a beat, expecting her to add ‘so I’d rather not talk about it’, or ‘you wouldn’t understand’, but that was apparently her last word on the subject. The silence lingered.

I came to learn that between Evelyn and I, much could pass without discomfort that between others would be cause for awkward feelings. Those shared minutes in an alien world, lost Outside, bleeding from my eyes and plucking her from the pit of absolute terror, counted for quite a lot. Despite her rough edges and my own poorly managed responses, our shared silences defaulted to comfortable.

“Evelyn,” I said, much softer than I’d intended. I cleared my throat. “Evee, do you think I could learn magic?”

She raised a questioning eyebrow. I wish I could tell her how much that wasn’t what I needed right now.

I could no longer avoid the reason for all my curiosity, no longer hide behind what I dressed up as grief.

“I-I think I could try. If nothing else I know I’m at least a little intellectual, I can think clearly this last week, I can get some focus. Maybe if I read the books seriously. Or maybe if I could learn to c-control the … the math … ” I tapped my forehead and trailed off. What absurdity. What an unthinkable idea. Who was I kidding?

“Why?”

Oh, the question, the worst question.

“Third stage of grief,” I said. “I can’t accept she’s dead. If I learned … if I … I want to find my twin. I want to find Maisie.”

My voice died as I spoke, quieter and quieter, until I whispered her name.

“Oh,” Evelyn said. “Mm. That’s-“

“Stupid notion, I know.” I shook my head and looked up. Evelyn frowned at me.

“Not stupid, no. But- oh dammit all, Heather. If I was a less ethical person, I would say yes, seek out your sister, you can do it, let’s go rescue a lost child. Let’s all aspire to be bloody heroes. That would certainly further my own aims. Having another mage on my side. But no. Absolutely not.”

The spark of hope guttered into darkness. I sniffed, suddenly aware I was holding back tears. “Why- why not?”

“Because I won’t mislead you. I won’t do that. You’re talking about going up against an alien god. Something so powerful it can reach across dimensions to alter your mind. It can’t be fought, not by either of us, not by anybody. The best we can do is wall you off and hide you from it. This isn’t what you want to hear, and it’s not what Raine will tell you: your sister is dead. She’s been dead for ten years. There’s nothing to rescue. Nothing human can survive out there for long.”

“I know,” I murmured.

Evelyn was not like Raine. In fact, I don’t think she was wired for physical comfort at all. She got up and gave me a few moments privacy to pull myself back together, and I think that moment was when I began to grieve for real.

Maisie was gone, and I was no hero.

Evelyn returned with a slender paperback book held to her chest, more a pamphlet really, a few dozen pages bound with staples. Her eyes searched mine. I sniffed and wiped my nose in embarrassment, but she didn’t seem to care.

“I’m not sure I should give you this,” she said.

“What- what is it?” I did my best to sound normal again.

She turned the pamphlet to show me the title: Notes Toward a Unified Cosmology, by Professor Wilson Stout. It looked cheaply printed, faded and battered.

“This is by one of the men who was involved in the Sharrowford coven, here at the university, the secret group of academics responsible for the Medieval Metaphysics department. Stout must have been a young man when the department existed, because he wrote this in 1974. Very small print run, for sycophants and acolytes only. And my grandmother.”

“No relation?” I asked, half suspecting some juicy tale of romantic liaison.

“No. Ha.” Evelyn barked a laugh and actually smiled in amusement. I was glad her earlier fake gravitas was long forgotten. “She tried to have him killed, actually. Long story.”

She placed the pamphlet on the table, slowly and carefully, like live ordinance.

“He put forward the theory. Self-implementing hyperdimensional mathematics. It’s not an easy read, he was pretty far gone when he wrote it. Maybe he met your Eye too, who knows. Never made a lot of sense to me, but you might get something out of it. Also might make you chuck your guts up, but it might be worth the pain.”

In her eyes, I saw something much more complicated than pity or sympathy. I didn’t understand why she was doing this, but I didn’t care. I swallowed, about to thank her.

“He vanished,” she said. “Went missing in strange circumstances, from inside a locked office. Maybe dabbled with the maths a little too much. Understand?”

I nodded. “Thank you. I’ll-”

“Don’t. Don’t get yourself killed. Don’t try to fight a god. Just … learn, if you must.”

“Okay. I will.”

I reached out for the pamphlet, hesitated, then took it. Evelyn sighed as if she’d been holding her breath, and wandered back over to her chair, leaning heavily on her walking stick.

She could not have found better bait for me in all the world.

The pamphlet felt dry and brittle between my fingers. I peeked inside the front cover and found a line in faded, looping handwriting: ‘To Miss Laurissa Saye, I hope you will find this illuminating.’

History bled from the page, soaked into my fingers and stole into my heart. Here was proof, written down and printed and distributed, that I was not mad. I felt a strange kinship with this long-dead, vanished man. Professor Wilson, whoever he had been, had known a Saye as well, and maybe, just maybe, known the Eye.

I glanced from the pamphlet at the rest of the shelves, the row of twentieth-century hardbacks and the older volumes packed in their moisture-proof bags, and realised just how much temptation this room held.

“Is it safe to take this outside?” I asked. Evelyn sat back down with visible relief and sucked her teeth in thought.

“Probably. Nobody’ll know you have it and nobody else could ever understand the context.”

“Oh.” I frowned at myself as I realised what I was suggesting. “Oh, oh dear, no, I shouldn’t be trying to sneak rare books out of the library, that’s terrible of me.”

Evelyn laughed, a dry cough. “And here I thought you were worried about cultists trying to steal it.”

“Is that a real prospect? Could that happen?”

Evelyn shrugged. “My mother thought so. Only a small fraction of this collection is actively dangerous, and then you have to know where to look. Mostly the older stuff, the magic circles and techniques and whatnot. The most lethal stuff is all at my house.” She gestured at the book in my hands. “That’s pure theory, you couldn’t use anything in there to punch a hole in reality unless you already knew how. Which, well, I suppose you do.”

I tried to shrug off that last comment. “There’s another occult library at your house?”

“Hardly a library. Four books, to be precise, plus a few odds and ends, and unpublished notes.”

“Why not keep it all in one place, if you need a guard like Mister Spider out there in the corridor?”

The corner of Evelyn’s mouth turned up in the slightest smug satisfied smile. “My home is a damn-sight more secure than this blasted library.”

“ … magically speaking?”

“Mmhmm.”

It still felt bizarre to say ‘magic’ out loud, as if we were children playing make-believe.

“Also, I do have to consider the university,” Evelyn was saying. “Nepotism only gets me so far. I can’t up and steal all these rare books. Plus, splitting the dangerous stuff up helps me keep things under control if something goes wrong – this place is so well-known, at least in rumours, that the fact I have a small collection at my own house is unthinkable. Why would the Saye family risk it?” She smiled to herself.

Evelyn left me with the pamphlet. She busied herself with the reason we came down here in the first place, digging up the details she needed for her magical experiment.

I flicked through a few pages, scanned the long introduction and mentally filed away some of the technical terms for later consideration, then ran headfirst into three pages of densely packed mathematical notation. My stomach clenched and a wave of nausea passed through me. I averted my eyes. Yes, Evelyn was right, perhaps I needed to read this on an empty stomach, with a sick bucket nearby. I slipped the pamphlet into my coat pocket.

My gaze wandered over to where my new and difficult friend poked through the books.

I watched her for a long moment, openly, though she was unaware. It was innocent – I couldn’t have stared with anything less than honest thoughts.

Despite everything, I found Evelyn very endearing. Nothing remained of my initial impression, a cuddly girl tucked away with her books. She’d dispelled that in scant moments on that rainy morning in the Medieval Metaphysics room.

But watching her now, her serious expression, the way she gently handled the old, cracked books, every motion of her hands compensating for the missing fingers on her left, her posture bent around her kinked spine – I felt a connection I couldn’t define.

I liked that. A connection.

“Evee,” I said her name softly. She glanced at me across the room and I smiled. “I couldn’t help but notice earlier, you mentioned your mother several times. She’s a magician too? Did she teach you?”

“Was.”

She turned back to the books.

Evelyn crammed a lifetime of bitterness into that one word. I stared in shock, until she huffed and shot a dark look at me.

“Your face was like an open book. Whatever ridiculous, faux-pastoral notions you have about my family, they’re wrong.”

“I-I was only-”

“My mother is dead, a fact for which I am thankful every day I live. I mentioned her only because I have to, because what little I have on magic is whatever I pulled from her grip.”

I realised she was shaking.

“Evelyn, I-I’m sorry, sorry, it was just a passing thought.” I raised my hands in surrender, shaking my head. “I’m sorry.”

She turned back to the books without another word. I let out a shuddering breath. My heart fluttered in mortified horror. Evelyn shoved a book back onto the shelf and stood staring at it for far too long. The silence hurt. Words stuck in my throat.

Our connection had curdled. I gathered myself to stand up, apologise, and let myself out, legs itching to run away, already planning a cold walk home, alone.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Evelyn muttered.

She couldn’t meet my eyes. She faced me but looked sidelong at the books, expression drawn and exhausted.

“Evelyn- I-I mean, Evee, it’s okay-”

“It’s not okay. You deserve better than Evelyn Saye the hair-trigger bitch. You saved my fucking life from my own idiot decisions and I can’t even control myself.” She swallowed, hard and dry. “I don’t want you to have to walk on eggshells around me. I know, I know, Raine’s told me, you’re tougher than you look, but … still.”

I smiled, a little sadly. “I’m not tough at all. Don’t know where Raine got that idea.”

Evelyn nodded, sighed, and went back to the books. “I won’t be much longer with this.”

“I forgive you,” I said.

I don’t know where it came from. I’d tried to think of something profound or comforting or friendly, something Raine might say. The words just popped out.

Evelyn blinked at me like a deer in headlights. For a moment she seemed lost, then turned away.


==


Trouble found us on the way out – scowling, angry, rabid trouble.

We left room K-11 and passed back underneath the Spider-servitor. It ignored us, much to my relief, but Evelyn had barely spoken since her outburst and apology.

I tried to imagine what Raine would say. She’d know what to do. A joke or a quip or a few murmured words of comfort, to pull Evelyn back out of this dark hole. But I wasn’t Raine, however much I admired her, and all I could do was sneak glances at Evelyn’s sunken expression and thank her again for the pamphlet. She grunted in reply, locked the Rare and Restricted books door behind us, and that was that. We plodded back through the library basement corridors.

A young woman, another student, was lounging against the wall just beyond the dividing line between age-worn wood and concrete breeze blocks.

For a split-second I felt a familiar old shock and guilt; the library basement levels were usually so unfrequented, too easy to forget they weren’t some cloistered private domain.

Evelyn grabbed my elbow. “Wait,” she hissed.

The girl at the end of the corridor was death-glaring at us.

She was small and slight, maybe even a little shorter than me, with a mane of dark curls spilling down over her shoulders. She wore a white hoodie underneath a clashing blue and lime green coat.

Her posture, arms crossed, leaning on the wall, was a masterpiece in studied boredom and eloquent silence.

One did not have to be an expert in body language to read that statement. I felt it in my gut, on an animal level; she blocked our way out.

She raised her voice and turned Evelyn’s name into a sneer.

“Saye,” she called down the corridor. “What the hell are you doing, Saye?” She pushed off the wall, unfolded her arms, and stalked toward us.

“What? What’s going on? Who is this?” I hissed back at Evelyn – and caught the look on her face. Gone was dark melancholy withdrawal, replaced with naked contempt, head high. But she’d shuffled closer to my side. Her hand had tightened into a white-knuckle grip on her walking stick. She shook slightly, her breathing not as steady as her voice.

I’d once been the target of that look from Evelyn, when I’d surprised her in the Medieval Metaphysics room.

When I could have been anybody.

When I was a possible threat.

A ball of cold lead settled in my stomach. “Is this- are we-”

“That is Twil,” Evelyn muttered without taking her eyes off the girl. “And no, to your unspoken questions. She’s not dangerous, just an irritant. God alone knows what’s put sand up her arse this time.”

Twil made a show of cracking her knuckles as she advanced. I couldn’t believe my eyes at such a playground gesture.

“What do we do? This doesn’t look like nothing to me,” I hissed, then glanced over my shoulder toward the door we’d just locked. I itched to retreat, avoid, run away, but I was also painfully aware how Evelyn had closed the gap between us. She was relying on me. I could hardly flee while she stayed.

“Don’t give her an inch. Twil’s bark is much worse than her bite, but we should still get out of here before she gets any ideas. We need to reach the stairwell, that has CCTV coverage, she won’t risk anything there.”

“Risk? Risk what?” I whispered, but then Twil was upon us.

To my incredible surprise, I felt Evelyn’s maimed left hand slip into mine, palm clammy and fingers cold. I squeezed back.

Twil walked right up to us and got in Evelyn’s face, personal space be damned. She planted her feet wide, hands in the front pocket of her hoodie, chin tilted up. Her gaze flicked to me, probed and jabbed, made me want to shrink away, then slid back to Evelyn.

“Who the fuck is this?” Twil said, indicating me with a nod. “I thought we had a deal, Saye.”

Until that moment, for all of Raine’s protective gestures and Evelyn’s doom-mongering, the reality hadn’t hit home, of physical danger from cultists or mages or other semi-fictional people. Danger was monsters in the places I Slipped to, danger was the threat of choking on my own vomit, danger was my nightmares. People? People were white noise.

I’d never been in a fight. Not so much as a minor confrontation in all those long months of psychiatric hospitals, which was quite an achievement. I’d forgotten, during our little jaunt under the library, what it meant that Raine wasn’t with us.

It didn’t matter that Twil was barely as tall as me, or that there were two of us to one of her, or that she had her hands in her pockets.

Adrenaline hit me like a sledgehammer.

“I’d sooner drink piss than make a deal with you,” Evelyn snapped back. “What exactly did we agree on, Twil? Favourite flavour of dog food? Don’t flatter yourself, you know you can’t convince me of anything.”

“Oh yeah?” Twil drawled, voice slow and dripping venom. “Wanna bet?”

“Certainly, what’s the stake? Let’s put your money where your mouth is, shall we? Fifty pounds?”

Twil scowled harder. “Stop mocking me, this is serious. What are you doing taking other people back there? Who is this? What are you pulling?”

“Of course, fifty pounds wouldn’t be enough to shut your trap, would it? Can you even scrape that much together? Do a whip-round for it?”

Twil gritted her teeth.

And growled.

I flinched. The sound vibrated the air, guttural and barrel-chested, not at all like an edgy teenager imitating an animal.

Up close, the effect clashed, because Twil was shockingly beautiful. She was blessed with the sort of porcelain-skinned, angelic face that launched child actor careers or got married to royalty.

Or could bite your head off.

Under other circumstances I’d have spent a day or two weaving guilty daydreams about a girl like Twil. I’d have noticed details that only came back to me later – the slow tilt of her head as she spoke, her sharp amber eyes, the way she had her hood drawn up about her neck to keep warm.

But not after that sound from human vocal chords.

She spoke like a suburban middle class girl doing her best to sound dangerous, and looked the part too, athletic and well-fed and young. I was so used to years of my own haggard face in the mirror, exhaustion-wracked, eyebags and sallow skin, that I could tell Twil never stayed up past bedtime and always ate her vegetables. And was going to punch one of us.

I had no idea what to do. I was frozen, heart going a million miles an hour.

Evelyn glanced at me. ”You know how Yorkshire terriers or sausage dogs will bite your at heels, because they still think they’re 400-pound direwolves? That’s Twil.”

“Hey!”

“This is my friend,” Evelyn said to her. “And we are going home. Now shove off.”

Twil narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have friends.”

“She certainly does. Don’t be so rude.”

Twil scowled my way. A heartbeat passed before I realised I’d spoken.

She jerked her face toward me and I recoiled, not at all brave or confident but trying very hard not to show fear. Twil sniffed the air – sniffed me, such a bizarre gesture that I just blinked at her.

“You reek like both of them,” she said.

“Excuse me, what?”

“Yeah, ‘friend’, whatever. I wasn’t born yesterday. What’s Saye got on you? What’s she done to your head?”

“Um, I’m … Heather? Yes. Hello. Twil, is it? Why are you acting like we’re all twelve?”

Twil squinted at me in confusion. Not the response she’d expected.

“Are you going to let us past, then?” Evelyn barked. “Or are you just going to yap until you get bored?”

Twil grinned a nasty little smile and made a show of looking up and down the corridor. She shrugged. “I don’t see Raine anywhere. What is this then, a sneaky trip to show off your collection of obscenities back there?”

Evelyn sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, there it is. You really must get over Raine.”

“Hey! Fuck off! I don’t-”

“Let’s get to the point. What are you going to do, Twil? Beat me up on university property?”

Finally, Twil backed up a step and stared at Evelyn, as if thinking this over. I tried to breathe, feeling myself shake. Evelyn squeezed my hand.

Was she serious? I had visions of a stupid, messy slapfight down here. Or worse? My mind couldn’t keep up with the pounding of my heart. Twil knew about the books – ‘obscenities’? – which meant she was in the know. But Evelyn had said she wasn’t dangerous, right?

Twil looked like she wanted to spit. Instead she gave Evelyn a stinkeye stare and said, “You’re lucky you’re a cripple.”

“How dare you,” I heard myself say.

Twil blinked at me, cheeks flushing. She had almost enough sense to look ashamed. As she should do, I thought. I was as surprised as her. I’d never spoken to anybody like that before.

“S-shut up, you zombie. You-”

“You think you’re so intimidating,” I said, the floodgates open now. “Swaggering over here and acting like a playground bully. Well, it’s not working. I’ve seen scarier things than you every day of my life. I deal with them before breakfast. You are not scary.” I pointed over my shoulder, behind Evelyn and I. “The thing guarding Evelyn’s wonderful little collection of books – that, that is scary, and I faced that down not an hour ago. Now kindly move out of the way, or-” Or what? My tongue had outrun my brain. I was running out of steam. “Or I shall insult you some more, you nasty little goblin.”

Twil looked as if I’d slapped her with a fish. Her mouth staggered over a comeback.

For one of the first times in my life, I felt big and clever and strong. I knew it was adrenaline-fuelled bravado.

Evelyn laughed, dirty and mean. “You always were thin-skinned. Go on, shoo, run back home. Let the adults do the real work.”

Twil lost her temper in a flash and rounded on Evelyn, teeth bared. She grabbed a handful of Evelyn’s jumper, fingers snapping shut like claws, and all my quick easy confidence vanished in a dash of cold water.

“Hope I don’t have to burn the library down to stop your nonsense,” Twil all but spat in Evelyn’s face.

“You can’t burn books!” I said, flailing for anything to throw her off-kilter, get her to let go of Evelyn, to slow things down – but why? Who was going to save us? Raine wasn’t about to turn the corner and chase this foe away. It was just us. “Who on earth do you think you are? You utter barbarian.”

Twil blinked at me and said “What?” in a most befuddled tone of voice, scrunching up her eyes in a frown of disbelief.

I was out of verbal ammunition, on the edge of panic.

I slapped her.

It stung my hand. Didn’t work like in the movies. I think I got the angle wrong, too far back on her face, catching her jaw-bone rather than the full-on flat of her cheek. It made such a loud sound in the concrete corridor.

Twil jerked back and let go of Evelyn, blinking at me, face burning red with my hand print.

I had no follow up, too shocked at myself.

“I-I-” I raised my hands in surrender.

Twil bared her teeth, growled like an animal, and pulled her fist back.

Evelyn saved me from having to come up with a next step of the plan. Which was good, because the next step was ‘get punched in the face’.

She belted Twil across the head with her walking stick.

Not once, but twice. It was clumsy and poorly aimed and weak, but it did the trick. The first strike bounced off Twil’s skull with a loud thwack of wood on bone. She yelped and staggered back in swirl-eyed shock.

The second hit broke her nose.

At least, I think it did. A crunchy, gristly crack heralded a spurt of blood, down her face and spotting the front of that immaculate white hoodie. She doubled-up, hands over her nose and mouth, groaning in pain behind a veil of hair. I gaped at the sight, until Evelyn grabbed me and pulled me forward, forcing me to put one foot in front of the other. Evelyn couldn’t run, but she marched us toward the stairwell.

“You fucking bitch, Saye!” A muffled cry followed us.

“Keep your eyes forward, don’t look back, don’t give her anything,” Evelyn muttered.

“You broke her nose!” I hissed.

“Hey!” Twil shouted. “Don’t ignore me. We’re not done here!”

“She’ll be fine,” Evelyn murmured.

“I slapped her. I slapped her.”

“She’ll be fine.”

Evelyn, however, was not fine. We got up the stairwell and onto the library floor and then out under the open skies. Her expression gave nothing away but she couldn’t stop shaking. The wind plucked loose strands from her ponytail.

“Twil will follow us, it’s what she does. We should … should go … ”

“She’s got a broken nose and there’s blood on your walking stick. She’s going to go to campus security.” Visions of real-world consequences flooded my mind.

Evelyn shook her head in irritation. “Don’t be absurd. Can’t have her follow me home. We need, uh … ”

We made for the nearest safe place – the Medieval Metaphysics room. By the time we crossed campus and reached the stairs up to Willow House, Twil was following us, a small figure framed against the concrete walkways, lime green coat flapping in the wind. She held one hand over her nose.

I called Raine.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Between her prosthetic leg and her walking stick, Evelyn put me to shame. Our route took us along Bluebell Road, a twisty humpbacked residential street on the edge of the student quarter, which led up to the university drive. The name was deceptive, not a single bluebell in sight. Defeated looking trees lined the pavement, a half-finished attempt at re-greening.

The blustery day plucked at my hair and the hem of Evelyn’s skirt. This was the first time I’d seen her walk any real distance and I was ashamed by my own assumptions, that she’d be slow or awkward or have to stop to rest on the way to campus. Her limp was only apparent if you watched for it, and I was too busy keeping up.

And rubbing the base of my ribs.

The urge to rub a bruise is almost universal; pressure and compression feel good. But I couldn’t reach the supernatural bruise inside. Walking and breathing harder made it worse, a throb at a deeper level than mere muscle and bone.

“I’m fine, really, I’m fine,” I said as Evelyn gave me the third questioning look in as many minutes. I forced myself put my hands in my coat pockets.

“You don’t sound fine.”

“It’s just this ache, since that night, since the … brain math.”

“Mm.”

We had to wait at the zebra crossing opposite university drive. I took the opportunity to lean against the guardrail, taking deep steady breaths for a few moments, doing my best to will the ache away.

“Look around you,” Evelyn said. She was staring at the pigeons perched on an overhead power line.

“At what? What are we looking at?”

“Anything, everything. It’s good practice. Who’s watching us? Look around.”

I did as she asked, feeling silly and sceptical as I glanced up and down the street, like we were little girls playing spies. Cars passed in ones and twos. A six-limbed beast of bristles and spines lumbered along the end of of a side-street. A couple of other students plodded up the opposite pavement. A pack of things half-wolf and half-ape picked their way across the suburban rooftops. Pigeons cooed.

I shrugged. “Nobody suspicious around here.”

“What about the pneuma-somatic fauna?”

“Quite normal, for a given value of normal. Evelyn, this feels absurd.”

“What about them?” She nodded at the pigeons.

I stared at her for a moment and hoped I’d misheard.

“The pigeons,” I said.

“Yes, the pigeons.”

“ … they’re watching us. Right. Pigeons.”

Evelyn spoke softly. “We’re perfectly safe right now, yes, but this is part of being safe without always relying on Raine. Watchfulness, care, attention. Any of those animals could be carrying a little demonic passenger, birdbrain scooped out and replaced, relaying information back to the mage who put it there. I can’t tell just by looking at them, any more than you can. You can’t, right? No? There you go then. We must be aware of the ever-present possibility of being watched. Like with the Servitor following Raine the morning she found you. We’ve no way of telling who or what sent that. Pay attention. The habit will help.”

I sighed, a big heavy puff, and Evelyn hiked an eyebrow at me as if expecting a challenge.

“You’re as bad as Raine,” I muttered.

She frowned, perplexed. “What? What does that mean?”

“You don’t get it. You can’t. I’m trying to unlearn a decade of behaviour based on the incorrect assumption I had schizophrenia. The last thing I need right now is to suspect I’m being watched by birds.”

She stared at me for longer than was comfortable, but I stared back until she grunted. “Mm. Fair point.”


==


Sharrowford university library was a hybrid monster, a chimera of brutalist block-tower welded to an aborted neoclassical facade, wrapped around a spun glass kernel of abused Gothic revival, all built on ancient stone foundations. It had begun life as a fortified manor house in 1456, pounded into gravel two centuries later by Parliamentarian cannon, gifted to the university and rebuilt, ‘restored’ by arrogant Victorians, wounded by stray Luftwaffe bombs on their way to Manchester, and at long last shored up with 1960s concrete. Birds strutted and preened across the rooftops, their nests wedged between air conditioning units, blissfully unaware of the insectoid leviathans which only I could see, clinging to the library’s spires.

Inside was a sprawling labyrinth of modern racks rubbing shoulders with carved wooden shelves, vomit brown carpet rubber-stripped to worn oak floorboards, creaking century old staircases and concrete stairwells that reeked of industrial cleaner. The Dewey Decimal System fought an endless siege against the privations of Resource Description and Access standards, one that I suspect would degenerate into an insurgency to make any Vietcong commander proud. With a catalogue of nearly 10 million books, it certainly didn’t rival the British Library for size, but more than made up for that with the number of small-print run, rare books, and strange subject areas tucked away in its hidden bowels.

Of course I’d fallen in love with the library. This was the primary reason I’d picked Sharrowford university in the first place.

I refused to tolerate the idea I’d been influenced by The Eye in this respect. This love was mine.

Thankfully the library was quiet this time of morning, at least once Evelyn and I passed the front desks. Few spirits stalked the tangle of the library stacks themselves, a mere handful of lurking multi-armed grazers. At last now they’d keep their distance entirely.

“Down?” I asked once we were alone in the stairwell.

“Where else?”

Evelyn led the way, her gait more awkward on the wide steps.

We descended together into the basement levels, concrete shelters for the rolling stacks stuffed with decades of obscure PhD theses. The long corridor was stapled to a much older hallway panelled in dark polished wood, and we passed over the threshold into the buried strata of previous eras. Our footsteps returned strange echoes.

I’d been down here twice before by myself, just to bask in the glow of the all those books and the enclosed silence – despite the modern no-smoking signs and air vents.

“I’m going to take a guess,” I said. “You hide an occult library in plain sight, in the rolling stacks?”

Evelyn frowned sidelong at me. “If I wanted to invite disaster. Don’t be ridiculous.”

I flushed with embarrassment, but Evelyn didn’t seem to notice. We turned a corner and found the corridor terminated by a very solid wooden door, strong enough to withstand a battering ram. A small brass plaque was bolted to the front.

‘Rare and Restricted books – no student admittance without staff permission.’

Evelyn produced a keyring and unlocked the door.

“Are we breaking the rules? Is that key legitimate?”

She gave me the thinnest of satisfied smiles. “Oh, I’m allowed to be here. The wonders of nepotism.”

Ceiling strip lights flickered to life, rolled back the shadows on doorways to reading rooms and secure stacks. The air felt dry and cool on my face, conditioned for long term book storage.

Evelyn turned the latch to lock the door behind us, then led the way past a treasure trove of crumbling texts and vacuum-packed manuscripts. Nothing occult about any of this. My head was on a swivel. I wanted to ask her to stop, pause a while so I could dip into each of these rooms and read for five minutes, a minute, just one glance. An undergrad never got into places like this. We turned a corner and I opened my mouth to ask if she would let me down here again.

And I slammed to a halt, breath caught in my throat.

Evelyn raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh, I guess you can see it, right?”

I thought I’d be used to this by now.

A monster barred our way.

A glossy black arachnid nightmare hung from the ceiling ahead, big as a horse. Arm-thick glistening spider-silk webbed the upper half of the corridor, leaving just enough space for a tall person to pass beneath.

Far too many legs, body segmented and armoured and wrapped with bio-mechanical tubes and pipes, vent stacks rising from its back like a miniature nuclear reactor. The head was a solid mass of unblinking crystal eyes. Several giant stingers waved lazily in the air, tipped with points the size of railway spikes.

I felt it stare at me, a probing searchlight.

Very slowly, as if the slightest twitch would set it scuttling toward me, I turned my eyes away and looked at Evelyn. My voice came out in a strangled whisper.

“What do you mean, I can see it? You can see it too?”

“Well, no, of course not, but I know it’s there.” She waved an arm down the corridor. “You think the most dangerous occult collection outside of the British Library would be unguarded? Hide them among the stacks, really.” She rolled her eyes.

“You could have warned me,” I hissed. “What on earth is it?”

“I don’t know, you tell me. All I know is it’s some kind of spider. I’d be fascinated, actually, if you could describe it?”

“Terrifying.”

Evelyn blinked several times and cleared her throat. “It’s a Servitor, like the thing that was following Raine. A sort of artificial pneuma-somatic robot, not a summoned demon or a bound spirit. Though that thing spying on Raine was about as complex and robust as a roomba compared to this.”

“Artificial? You made this thing?”

“No. No, of course not.” Evelyn looked oddly embarrassed. “It’s practically a family heirloom. My great grandmother made it and left it here. Look, it’s perfectly safe, it can only do what it was programmed to. It triggers off recognition and intent, I think. I’m inherently trusted and so is anybody in my bloodline, as well as those I bring with me. It leaves the library staff alone because they only enter as part of their normal routine, though I don’t think anything down here gets cleaned or checked very often. Unless you’re planning on knocking me out and stealing the books, it won’t pay you the slightest bit of attention.”

“It is definitely paying me attention.”

Evelyn sighed and strode forward. I fought down an embarrassing urge to grab her by the arm; I didn’t want to be alone in front of this monster. She passed under the spider web, stopped by the last door leading off the corridor, and looked back at me as if I was being a fool.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” I said, and forced myself to walk, concentrating on my feet.

I almost made it.

On the step which would place me directly under the spider, it moved. A sudden spasm of motion, ratcheting limbs and whirring eyes. It dropped on the webbing and unfurled all those legs, poised like a bear trap. The stingers whip-cracked out to full extension and curved back toward me. I choked down a scream and froze on the spot.

“Heather? What is it doing?” Evelyn said, her voice suddenly serious and urgent.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. I swallowed, throat like sandpaper. “It doesn’t like me. I think it’s angry.”

“It can’t get angry. It’s triggering off something. What is it doing? Describe it.”

I could barely make myself form words, let alone follow instructions. Instead, I took a half-step back.

Wrong choice.

The spider followed, inching forward with muscles tensed and stingers quivering. I halted again and stood very, very still indeed. My throat clenched tight and cold sweat ran down my back and I was almost on the verge of tears. Light glinted off the clustered crystalline eyes. This close up I could see tiny imperfections in the black chitin carapace, bumps and abrasions and rough patches, old scars and deep gouges.

“Evelyn, call it off,” I whispered.

“I shouldn’t need to. It’s not going to attack you-”

“Call. It. Off.”

The terror on my face finally got through to her. Evelyn raised her chin and spoke quickly and confidently. “Discedant et agnoscis, ex auctoritate dei Evelyn Saye.”

Nothing happened.

I stayed very still.

“Well?” Evelyn prompted.

“I don’t think it’s listening.”

“What? There’s no reason it shouldn’t.” She huffed in exasperation. “Per quod … terminus … dammit, no, that’s not it. Uh … desine plura et reditus ad formam tenens, ex auctoritate dei Evelyn Saye.”

The spider-servitor remained exceedingly ready to murder me. I said this to Evelyn, in not so many words. She grit her teeth and looked frustrated enough to belt the spider over the head with her walking stick.

“Finis, terminus, exitus. Nova anima agnoscis, God dammit!”

Latin finally worked as actual magic words, or perhaps Evelyn’s swearing did the trick; the spider surged back into its original position with a flickering of limbs, and I felt that cold, mechanical attention switch away from me at last. I scurried under it as fast as I could, shoulder blades itching, until I stood safely next to Evelyn again. I let out a long shaking breath and tried to force my muscles to unclench, heart hammering in my chest.

“I take it that worked?” Evelyn asked.

I nodded and leaned against the wall, hands on my knees to keep myself on my feet.

“Well, what did it do then? I assume it stood down?”

I turned a very unimpressed look on her. “Yes. Eventually.”

She rolled her eyes. Though I could tell it was mostly to cover her own embarrassment, the gesture still made me bristle with anger.

“It’s a good thing you and Raine never went into the attic in my house, when you were looking for me,” she said.

“ … there’s more of these things?”

“Of course. My family’s historical paranoia has to be worth something. God alone knows what triggered it to treat you as a threat though.”

“The fractal?” I gestured with my forearm. “Maybe?”

“No, it’s far too robust to be bothered by that. Regardless, it should be calibrated to recognise you now. I had to make it register you as trusted, it didn’t want you inside otherwise.”

“Evelyn.” I tried to keep my voice steady and quiet, to overcome a lifetime of conflict-avoidance. “I really do want to be your friend, but you have to warn me in advance when you are going to surprise me with a spring-loaded monster. I am very serious.”

She avoided my eyes. “It’s never done that before. I … I only know a fraction of the command interface language for it. I can’t even make it move to a new post. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

An awkward moment of silence passed over us.

“I … I apologise,” Evelyn said softly.

I straightened up and gave her the best smile I could muster. She was trying, she really was, and that meant a lot. “Apology accepted.”

“Mm.”

Evelyn busied herself unlocking the door. It bore another understated brass plaque.

‘Special collection and sensitive storage room K-11.’

“Why do you need such a lethal guard dog?” I asked.

Evelyn snorted a humourless laugh. “At least two cults operate in Sharrowford, that I know of. They’d love to get their hands on my books.”

“Cults?”

“Small-time idiots, worshipping things they don’t understand.” She waved a dismissive hand. “But they’re still dangerous. Not to mention my mother’s and grandmother’s old rivals elsewhere, and any other mages who know about this collection.”

Not for the first time, I wondered if I’d be happier and safer in ignorance.

Evelyn led me over the threshold.

What had I been expecting, if only subconsciously? Books bound in human skin and chained to lecterns? Flickering torches, stone walls, leering gargoyles? A little, I confess.

It was a small dusty room, with no windows and two strip lights in the ceiling. Sickly light illuminated a pair of battered reading desks and a row of plain, functional bookcases.

Empty bookcases.

Evelyn closed the door behind us and dumped her tote bag on one of the desks. I looked closer.

Not quite empty, I corrected myself.

Only two of the shelves held anything – one was lined with sixteen books. Sixteen exactly, I counted them. Most of them were aged and leather bound, though a few looked at least twentieth century, in modern hardback covers. Three much older volumes were packed inside transparent protective plastic bags, lying flat on the shelf below, next to a stack of bound photocopies. A cardboard storage box sat at the foot of the one occupied bookcase.

“Is this it?”

Evelyn raised an eyebrow at me in silent question. I shrugged, unsure what to say, painfully conscious of my silly assumptions. She crossed to the books and gently eased one of the modern looking volumes off the shelf.

“In the right hands, every one of these is more lethal than an atomic bomb,” she said. “Personally, I’m glad there’s so few of them. And that they’re mine.”

“Are you being serious?”

Evelyn cleared her throat. “Sort of. Sit down, if you like. I need to look up some details.”


==


“What is magic?”

I didn’t want to distract Evelyn, but I couldn’t hold the question back anymore. She’d been making notes and muttering to herself as she read from one of the grimoires propped open on the desk. Her pen paused as she looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve been thinking about it all week, but I couldn’t articulate it until this.” I gestured at the books, the tiny occult library, the incomplete magic circle Evelyn had drawn on a notebook page. “I took it on trust. Magic is magic, but that’s a tautology. You did magic with esoteric symbols and circles and books, but I did the same thing by … ” I swallowed and fought down a stab of nausea. Recalling impossible equations was still dangerous. “By thinking maths. I thought the books might give me some answers, some context, but I suppose it’s not going to work that way.”

I offered Evelyn an apologetic smile. She sucked on her teeth in thought.

We’d been in the reading room – Special Collection and Sensitive Storage room K-11 – for about twenty minutes. I’d parked myself in a chair and tried to sit still, but nearly bounced from foot to foot in excitement at all these wonderful old books, even if there were only nineteen of them.

Evelyn had noticed and directed me toward one of the less fragile volumes, a huge blank-faced hardback entitled The Diaries of Richard Barker and his great working, reprinted with commentary, by one James Oston. Despite the relatively modern binding the inside pages informed me of only the printing date – 1932. No publisher’s mark, location, nothing.

“Just don’t read any Latin or Greek out loud,” Evelyn had said. “Even under your breath.”

Whoever mister Barker was, he was very 17th century, and his ‘diaries’ consisted of a lot of magical experiments, summoning demons, communing with ‘angels’, and when I read between the lines, several brutal murders.

The symbols he included made my head hurt. They looked wrong.

My fascination had curdled, returned to the cold reality of academic rigour as I’d flicked past pages of regurgitated medieval mythology. The commentary was worse, an unreadable jumble of concepts – somatic-transfer membranes, cellular resonance, the dangers of astral voyaging, whatever all that meant.

I flipped the book shut to illustrate my point. “None of this means anything to me. None of it seems real. What is magic? How does it work?”

Evelyn nodded slowly. She put her pen down and folded her hands together.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“ … you don’t know?”

“Is there an echo in here?”

I goggled at her, unsure of her sincerity. “You’re the magician, Evelyn. What do you mean, you don’t know?”

Evelyn raised her chin and stared at me in silence, like a professor waiting for a bright but slow student to comprehend the point under their own intellectual steam. I felt like I was the butt of a joke I didn’t get.

I shook my head at her, lost for words.

“I’m not much of a teacher, you understand?” she said. “I’m not going to be good at this, and this is not going to make sense to you.”

A note in Evelyn’s voice rang false. She was putting on a role, the wizened master of occult secrets. I never would have noticed the artifice if I’d been my usual sleep-deprived self. I couldn’t fathom why she was acting like this.

“And I’m not an idiot, Evelyn. Please don’t treat me as one.”

She inclined her head. “I’m not. Here, let’s say you’re a metalsmith in 2500BC.”

“ … okay?”

“You know how to make iron weapons and armour. You know how to smelt the metal, how to get it from the ore, where the deposits are underground. Every part of the smelting and smithing process is done by eye, by feel. You know how hot the fire should feel at every stage, what colour the metal should be, and that’s how you judge when to hammer it and when to quench it. Do you know the temperatures involved? Can you put specific numbers to those temperatures? Can you measure them, with iron-age tools?”

I nodded, following in an instant. “Right. Of course you can’t.”

“You don’t know what iron atoms are, or how they reform and bond during the smelting process. You don’t know the chemical composition of metal. You just know how to get the results.” She rummaged in her tote bag and produced the white quartz invisibility stone, the one she’d used on me. “A result. I don’t know how it works. I don’t know how magic works. I suspect nobody does.”

“Nobody at all?”

Evelyn shook her head.

“Surely somebody has tried. You say there’s more mages out there, there’s a whole magical ecosystem, cults, people, right?”

“Yes, but it’s not straightforward.”

“Then someone must have tried to apply modern science, done systematic experiments, come up with some first principles. This isn’t the Dark Ages, this is the twenty first century.” I glanced over at the books, frowning now, my mind chewing on issues I’d ignored. “Why is this stuff hidden down here in the first place? How could an entire branch of reality, physics, whatever you want to call it, go hidden for centuries? This is making less sense the more I think about it.”

Evelyn levelled a very cold gaze at me and started to speak.

“Imagine a field of study in which too much progress, too fast, results in one’s madness or death; in which any attempt to contact one’s peers risks them murdering you to steal what secrets and power you’ve amassed; in which the best way to experiment is to commit unimaginable atrocities; in which, for hundreds of years, any public attention would have you burned at the stake, and in modern times will see you locked in a mental asylum. There is no pipeline of talent. No safe harbour. No peer review. No civilian applications.”

“That speech sounded very well-rehearsed.”

Evelyn’s whole act fell apart.

She shrugged and hunched her shoulders. Her air of superiority dropped away. Suddenly she seemed very small and weak, curled up to protect herself from the world. I felt so mortified by the impact of my words I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to reach over and take her hand, cross the table and hug her.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

Evelyn waved a hand. “You’re right, completely right. It’s just a version of what I got drummed into me as a child. Except I had it less as a warning, more a justification.”

“That’s okay, I didn’t mean to knock you off your flow. You just seemed so … ”

“Fake. Pretending to be somebody I’m not. Forget it. Better to call me out on it than let it fester.”

“Well, okay, if you say so.”

I sketched a smile and hoped it looked reassuring, accepting, kind – instead of shaken and insecure. Was I supposed to reassure her here? I’d touched a nerve of personal history and wasn’t sure I should dig any further.

Evelyn didn’t seem bothered. She tapped a finger against the tabletop, lost in real thought, no longer playing the role.

“I meant everything I said, even if my delivery was bloody awful. I really don’t know how magic works.” Evelyn sighed and waved a hand, as if trying to summon an idea she’d shooed away. “What I do have is various working theories, things I learnt as a child, the scraps my mother left in her notebooks.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes,” Evelyn said, and shifted uncomfortably. “She never put anything in print herself. No reason to. But I have most of her notebooks. I can share what little I know.”

“Please. Please do. I can’t express how hungry I am to understand, Evelyn. Please, anything you have.”

“Don’t beg.” Evelyn shot a strange frown at me. “You’re better than that.”

I blinked at her in surprise, but she continued before I could say anything.

“Magic,” Evelyn began. “Magic is manipulation of the underlying structure of reality, via the directed application of human willpower. That willpower requires shaping, it needs conduits to flow through, tools to access the controls – magic circles, symbols, bits of Latin and Ancient Greek. You can break the laws of thermodynamics, for example, in limited, local ways, but they always reassert themselves. Physical effects are more difficult the larger they are. Mental effects are damn near impossible, hypnosis or mind control or implanting ideas. The human mind is largely tamper-proof to direct magic. Summon things from Outside, though, and all bets are off. They break all the rules. That’s the basic 101, best I can do.”

“That’s … surprisingly straightforward, but it doesn’t really explain anything. Somebody would know about magic. There would be a … I don’t know, a secret government department. Ministry for mages?”

Evelyn half-smiled, a minimalist laugh. “That would make life easier.” She spread her hands, hesitated, then seemed to withdraw into her her thoughts, resigned to something she didn’t want to face.

“Evelyn? Evelyn? … Evee?”

That made her look up. Our eyes met and I flushed with embarrassment at using the diminutive version of her name.

“I’m sorry, you looked like you needing snapping out of that.”

She nodded and half-shrugged. “Call me Evee if you want. It’s fine.”

“I will then. Thank you.”

“Our reality is auto-correcting and self-enforcing.” Evelyn paused and sighed. “My mother’s words, for what they’re worth. I don’t have a better way to phrase it. Think of reality like a big rubber sheet. You can deform it for a second by throwing a bowling ball against it, but it springs back right away. You can break the laws of thermodynamics, to a point, or bend light, or do a million other things, but reality snaps back.” She clicked her fingers. The sound echoed off the empty reading room shelves. “Sometimes right in your face.”

“What goes up must come down?”

“To a point, yes. Self-enforcement applies up here, too.” She tapped her temple.

“ … meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning I need an example. Let’s say I draw a magic circle on the floor right here, do a lot of things I shouldn’t do, and summon a monster from Outside. Let’s say it goes upstairs into the library and kills a couple of people. What do you think happens afterward?”

“Uh, mass panic? It would be on the evening news. Everywhere.”

“Exactly. Except that doesn’t happen, does it? Instead of an unimaginable demon, witnesses will remember a madman with a axe, or a crazed homeless person, or whatever else their prejudices and assumptions provide. Unless you’re already broken in by exposure to magic, or Outside, or worse, then your mind self-edits, reality cushions the blow.”

“People would film it on their mobile phones, there’d be evidence.”

Evelyn gave me a knowing smile. “Would you believe it was real? Or CGI?”

“ … I … I can’t … Evelyn, I don’t like this idea about the ‘self-editing’ mind.” I swallowed, struggling to find a way to say this, to make her understand why that concept made my guts churn. “I can’t go from ten years of distrusting my senses, to being told I’m not crazy to … to back again. How can I trust my own memories, if that’s accurate?”

Evelyn shook her head. “Once you’re in, you’re in. You’ve been exposed, and you didn’t deny it or go mad.”

I understood what she was getting at, and I suspected my ‘exposure’ – to the Eye – was more than enough to acclimatise my soul to all this. But it still sat heavy in my stomach.

“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” I muttered to myself.

Evelyn frowned at me. “What?”

“Misquoting Shakespeare.” I gave her a little embarrassed smile. “Just a line I’ve always liked, from Hamlet. The concept helps.”

“Mm. If that’s what you need.”

“I still don’t get it, how do you deform reality in the first place? If the laws of thermodynamics are breakable then nothing around us should work.”

Evelyn nodded slowly. “Yes, you’re a child of the post-Enlightenment age. The scientific method, causality, the heliocentric model, they’re all still correct. I’m not going to ask you to believe in magical particles or spirit energy or that the earth is flat.”

What Evelyn did ask me to believe in was the parable of The Castle.

It didn’t resonate with me, over that long slow hour under the one dull strip lights in that secret reading room.

Evelyn wove a complex metaphor, one I suspected she’d been fed as a little girl, a child’s fairy tale to make sense of an impossible universe for an impressionable, frightened mind. I didn’t mention that feeling, it seemed too cruel to point out how she slipped into a child’s cadence and rote repetition as she related the tale. I just let her run through it, for whatever comfort it gave her.

Over time, I built my own version of Evelyn’s metaphor, one much less charitable than what her family had left her.


==


Imagine you live in a castle.

You were born enclosed by walls so thick and so high that they seem the limit of the world. No gate or drawbridge or window leads out. Nobody has ever been outside, and those who suggest such a feat is even possible are dismissed as madmen or charlatans or dangerous zealots.

Inside the castle, life makes sense. Rooms connect to each other at proper ninety-degree angles. The grass and trees of the inner courtyards are neat and orderly, regularly cut and trimmed. If you throw a ball up, it will come down. If you do not eat, you will starve. Human behaviour is sane, if not always kind. If you observe a physical law, and test it, you can create a theory to accurately describe how it works.

Then, one day, you find a way up onto the walls. A secret way, hidden in a place nobody goes. You are curious, so you step inside, and the door slams shut behind you. It will not open, no matter how much you pound on it, how long or loud you scream, how afraid your tears. There is no way out.

Except up.

You climb the stairs. They are dark and cramped and you hear horrible sounds from above. For the first time in your life, perhaps for the first time in any life, you emerge into the daylight on the battlements.

What you see ruins you.

The castle is not all. The walls do not demarcate the edge of the world. Your castle is merely a tiny keep, set in the middle of a much larger curtain wall. In the space between the keep and the curtain wall live such inhuman things. They do not obey the laws that govern inside the castle, they bend them into impossible shapes. They caper and dance and go about their bizarre alien business and sometimes look up at you and make eye contact, or hoot strange sounds to you, watch you and follow you and surround you.

Perhaps you do your best to ignore them.

But they – the pneuma-somatic life outside our comfortable castle of reality – are not the worst thing you see from atop the battlements. Oh no. Because next your sight is dragged up, beyond the outer curtain wall, to outside the castle entirely.

To Outside.

Out there the laws of the castle are nought but a whispered suggestion. Giant shapes move on the horizon, in their own domains, with different laws, other rules, rules that produce only screaming insanity for a human being, rules that will break you if you try to comprehend them, rules which once understood, cannot be forgotten, and will worm their way inside your soul and wreck you for knowing them.

Let’s say you manage to get back down, inside the castle. Maybe you try to forget what you saw. Maybe you pretend to be normal.

But then you discover you’re not the only one. Others have been up on the battlements.

Some have found cracks in the walls.

Been Outside.

Brought things back.

And those things they bring back – magic – can break the laws inside the castle, make it more like Outside, if only for brief moments before the laws of reality reassert themselves, before the human mind rebels against what it witnesses, before the mob tears them apart in sheer outrage.

To do this they need tools, protection from the searing truth of the Outside, a framework through which the fragile human mind can operate: magic circles and symbols, dead languages, rituals, bloody knives and stained altars. And these things do not always work, do not always protect so well.

And then, last and most terrible of all, you realise that you are unique. That you alone can bring things back from Outside merely by thinking them.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Two weeks and a day after the night which altered my life forever, I did a new and brave thing: I answered my front door at eleven in the morning.

Might not seem like much, unless you’re used to seeing monsters around every corner.

A month ago, I wouldn’t even have acknowledged the knock. That would risk opening the door to a leering skeletal face, or six hundred pounds of fur and blubber covered in mouths, or inviting a nightmare to spend days gibbering and whispering in the corner of my bedroom. Better not to answer, pretend I wasn’t home, hide.

But now I was safe. Now things made sense, in a limited fashion. I was still adjusting to the fact that I wasn’t mentally ill, at least not in the way I’d believed; the world really was demon-haunted. So I left my book and carried my mug of coffee to the door. An unbidden smile tugged at my lips.

The smile froze when I opened the door and found Evelyn waiting there, by herself.

My mouth stalled in a greeting for the wrong person. I was suddenly conscious of my messy hair and my slept-in pajama bottoms and the unmade bed behind me.

“Good morning, Heather?”

“Good … ” I took a deep breath and gathered my composure. “I’m sorry, yes. Good morning, Evelyn. You— you surprised me. Being here. On my doorstep. I mean.”

Evelyn nodded, as if my loss for words explained everything. “Expecting Raine, were you?”

“Actually, yes, I was. It’s okay, I’m sorry. Come in, please.”

I stepped aside and closed the door as Evelyn made her way across my tiny flat, her walking stick tapping on the floorboards. My face flushed as I felt her eyes rove across the detritus of my disorganised life. Stacked books all over the place, unwashed dishes piled up in the sink, the mound of laundry at the foot of my bed, notes from class spread out across my desk.

“Please, do try to overlook the mess,” I said. “If I’d known you were planning on visiting, then I’d have cleaned up a bit. Or a lot.”

Evelyn eased herself onto her good leg. “A little mess is nothing. Don’t bother yourself over it.”

I flopped my arms in defeat. “But there is mess. There’s always mess. Even sane and sleeping I’m—” I swallowed back the rest and forced a smile. She didn’t want to hear me whine. “Sit down, please. Take my desk chair.”

Evelyn thanked me and sat down carefully. She put her tote bag on the floor between her feet and did her best to return my smile. Neither of us was very good at that expression, but Evelyn’s case was due to a permanent tightness around the eyes. Stone-cold sober came easily to her. Natural and unguarded joy did not.

She looked an awful lot better than the last time I’d seen her. She’d twisted her great mass of hair up into a ponytail, the rest of her wrapped in a huge dark-grey woollen sweater and a thick ankle-length skirt, with cosy ugg boots on her feet. She looked warm and comfortable, her oaken walking stick ready for a hike down a leafy country lane or across some picturesque village green, instead of sitting in a dirty Sharrowford bedsit with the likes of me.

Evelyn frowned and tutted. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Being nervous about me. It might be a rational response, yes, but don’t. I would like it very much if you considered me as a … if we could be … ” She waved a hand in the air and grunted. “Mm.”

I blinked at her several times. “Evelyn, this isn’t nervousness. I feel like a disgusting grease troll right now. It’s not doing wonders for my dignity.”

“I … don’t understand?”

“This is the first time we’ve seen each other since our unscheduled dimension-hopping accident. I wasn’t exactly in top form then, between the vomiting and the bleeding. And now I haven’t showered yet this morning. I’m still in the clothes I slept in, my hair is a rat’s nest. Not to mention the state of my flat. I can only imagine what you must think. You could have called me before visiting, given me warning. I’m wearing pajama bottoms, for crying out loud.”

“Oh … well … so am I.” Evelyn tugged up the corner of her skirt to show the ankle of plaid pajama bottoms underneath.

“Yes, but you’re clean and well put together. You can get away with that.”

Even as I spoke I realised that was hardly fair. Evelyn had heavy, dark bags under her eyes. Her hair was clean, but it probably hadn’t seen a brush this morning, and certainly no touch of the hairdresser’s scissors for many months. Her clothes were fresh but old and well worn, the collar of her sweater darned and mended with different-coloured thread.

Evelyn started to respond, then sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. She drew herself up as straight as she could with her crooked back, and I felt a sudden desire to shrink away, certain she was about to yell at me.

“You’re right,” she said. She swallowed and looked at the floorboards, shoulders tense, face stiff. “I should have called, I should have acted normal. I’ve gone and made you uncomfortable.”

That made me want to hug her.

I didn’t, of course. Sane and sleeping I may have been, but boldness was not in my nature.

“No, I’m sorry,” I said, and felt lame. “Forget it, I was rude to mention it. Do you want something to drink? If you don’t like coffee I have some tea as well.”

Evelyn kept her gaze fixed on the floor. “I am not very good at socialising. Not very good at maintaining friendships.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Evelyn, neither am I.”

She finally looked up. A mote of understanding passed between us, and Evelyn nodded slowly.

I brewed a cup of peppermint tea for her, then left her with the run of my books while I squeezed myself into my flat’s tiny bathroom with a clean change of clothes. Only once I was under the shower did I realise that I hadn’t asked her why she was here in the first place.

When I returned I was delighted to find Evelyn had made herself quite at home. She’d settled back in the chair, with her cup of tea perched in a clear spot on my desk. A real smile crossed my face as I recognised my copy of Paradise Lost, propped open in her lap.

“Have you had the pleasure of reading that before?” I asked.

I sat down on the bed to dry my hair and resisted the urge to rub my sternum—to massage the untouchable bruise inside my chest.

That strange bruise had pained me since that night, since Outside, wounded internally in some obscure manner I couldn’t pinpoint. Raine had plied me with good food, guilty food, fried chicken and supermarket sushi, fresh fruit and scrambled eggs, but all the protein in the world didn’t help the bruise to heal.

Evelyn closed the book. “No. No, I haven’t had a lot of time in my life to read for fun.”

“Feel free to borrow it if you like. Milton’s one of my favourites. I know poetry isn’t for everybody, especially old poetry. It’s not a popular form anymore, but I love it.”

“Mm, perhaps.” Evelyn raised an eyebrow at me. “So, I take it you wouldn’t have minded if it was Raine at your doorstep this morning, seeing you unshowered and unclean?”

“That’s … different.”

“Is it really?”

“She’s already seen me at my absolute worst. There’s not much more for her imagination to fill in.”

“I’ve seen you at your worst,” Evelyn said. “Such states are badges of honour, not sources of shame.”

I couldn’t keep the incredulous frown off my face.

Evelyn sighed and gestured around the room. “This is hardly the worst condition to which a human being can sink. You should be proud of how quickly you’ve accepted reality. Most people who have to be introduced to magic spend the rest of their lives trying to refute it or forget it, or go mad in the process. You’re not smearing your own excrement on the walls, are you?”

A lump formed in my throat. She didn’t get it. “Well … no, but—”

“You’re doing better than I did.”

I struggled with a moment of pain and frustration, then pulled a false smile to control myself. “Evelyn, my state has nothing to do with monsters and magic. It’s because of Maisie. I’m not struggling to accept reality, I’m grieving for my twin sister.”

“Ah, well, hm.” Evelyn cleared her throat. “That’s different, yes. Yes, of course. I … yes.”

“It’s fine,” I lied.

To grieve would be such a relief.

I’d dealt with Maisie’s absence for years by telling myself she was always with me; an imaginary friend plus. Except she’d been real, so now she wasn’t here. I was incomplete.

Evelyn raised her chin and assumed an air of importance. “Regardless, I didn’t come here to lecture you, Heather. I came here to apologise.”

“Whatever for?”

“For the way I spoke to you when we first met. I was an uncharitable ratty bitch. Raine’s cried wolf so many times, when she finally brought home a real one I wasn’t ready.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors.” I almost giggled at the absurdity. “Me, a wolf?”

Evelyn waved a hand. “You get what I mean.”

“I do, and thank you. You were … ”

“I am a difficult person, I know. You can say it, I won’t be offended.”

I shook my head. “You don’t need to be so formal about this. We already made up, didn’t we?”

“Accounting for one’s mistakes, one’s debts, I find it important. It can be a matter of life and death. And I do not like to make mistakes.” Evelyn’s voice carried a razor edge I didn’t much like, but then she took a deep breath and the feeling passed. “Anyway, there’s another reason I’m here. I have the first steps of a possible solution to your unique problem.”

I perked up, everything else briefly forgotten. “Yes? Go on? I did wonder why you’d come all this way. A solution?”

“Indeed. It’s taken a little bit of thought and some questionable research, but I believe I’ve come up with a place to start. An experiment, to figure out how this ‘Eye’—” She waved a hand. Total dismissal, as if the Eye didn’t even matter. I liked that. I liked that a lot. “How this thing is contacting your mind. We can go from there.”

“How soon can we begin?”

Evelyn inclined her chin. “If you’re not busy? Today. We need to visit the library, there’s some details I must check before we begin. Then back to my house, to do some real magic.”

“The library? For books?”

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “No, for video games and Chinese food,” she said, but not unkindly. “Of course for books.”

“Magical books, right, yes.” I nodded. “I admit, I’m fascinated. By the prospect, I mean.”

My words stalled and stuttered in time with my uncertain excitement. So many questions, no way to phrase them. But books, they would teach me everything.

Evelyn held me with a steady gaze, as if measuring me.

“Evelyn?”

“The books I have do not make easy reading. Real magical grimoires can be … demanding, on the mind. Try, please do, you deserve the chance, but temper your curiosity.”

“I will, I will. I’ll be careful.” I nodded.

“Mm, good. Remember that.”

“Thank you, Evelyn. Really, thank you.”

“Hmm.” She grunted and looked away. I detected a hint of embarrassment, almost bashful. I was about to tell her it was okay, but Evelyn continued before I could speak. “Raine tells me the warding sign is on your left arm now. Show me.”

I rolled up my sleeve to show off one of the best presents I’d ever received. This version of the Fractal was much larger than the one Raine had drawn on my hand. Thick black lines wrapped around the pale curve of my forearm, a tree of folded angles spilling from a kinked central trunk, clean and precise.

Evelyn leaned forward with a professional frown. She grunted approval and I felt a flush of pride. Raine had dedicated half an hour of delicate work to the Fractal, so intimate with my arm lying across her lap, this little fragment of irrationality which kept my nightmares at bay and the terrors off my doorstep. She’d bought a body-art marker pen for the task, and left it on my desk so I could refresh the design if it started to fade. The ink was supposed to last up to six weeks, but I checked the integrity every night.

Evelyn straightened up and shook her head. “Raine was an idiot to draw it on your hand the first time, out in the open like that. You are keeping it concealed, yes? She was clear about that much, at least?”

“It’s always under my sleeve. Nobody’s going to see it.”

“Get used to that. Doing everything we hoped it would?”

“Absolutely. No more nightmares. I’m sleeping. Real sleep. I even had a couple of actual dreams, normal dreams.”

“No lingering effects? Nothing at all?”

“Well, there’s a sort of pressure in my head after I wake up, like a distant ringing in my ears. It goes off after an hour or two.”

Evelyn stared at me and nodded slowly, as if this made perfect sense.

“Is that supposed to happen?” I asked.

Evelyn laughed, a humourless, dry sound.

“I have no idea,” she said. “We’re miles beyond precedent here.” She looked down at her lap and tapped her fingers on the closed cover of Paradise Lost. “An educated guess says your ‘Eye’ ”—she actually did little air quotes with her good hand—“is probably still trying to get through. It’s not discouraged by a firewall. For our purposes, that’s a good thing.”

“It is?”

“Yes. For now. How about the … ” She sighed and gestured with one hand. “ … spirits?”

“Oh, no more haunted apartment!” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “They’re keeping their distance like never before. They don’t completely ignore me, but I don’t feel like a beacon for horrible weird monsters anymore. I can’t tell you how much that means to me, how much less messed up the world feels.”

“Good, good. I didn’t know exactly what it would do left on human skin for days on end.” Evelyn’s eyes took on a distant look. I rubbed the skin around the Fractal and asked one of the questions I’d avoided thinking about these last two weeks.

“What is it? The Fractal, I mean. You call it a warding sign, but what is it, how does it work?”

Evelyn’s eyes snapped back to the present and she stared with sudden cold precision. “How much do you want to know, really?”

I couldn’t answer that. I took the low road.

“You’ve been practising that line, haven’t you?” I asked.

Evelyn huffed. “I may have done. I find unrehearsed interaction more difficult than most people, and I had considered you might ask that question.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s actually quite sweet. You have a flair for certain kinds of dramatic delivery, that’s all.”

Evelyn looked as if she was sucking a lemon. “Well, how much do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.” My shield of good humour crumpled, and I cast it aside. “I need answers.”

“To what?”

I shrugged, at a loss. “Everything. I know, I know, magic is real and unicorns exist and I’m not schizophrenic, but those are facts, not answers. Not the ones I need. Why me? Why Maisie? What happened to us? What should I do now?”

Evelyn nodded and thought for a moment before speaking.

“The warding sign is part of something much larger, my family’s … inheritance. My inheritance. The warding sign’s particular set of angles generate a kind of repulsion or firewall effect, as far as I can tell. It’s one of the very few things I have which works consistently. Which is bloody useful, because otherwise it would be impossible to keep my home shielded, or keep you hidden, or really do much of anything without attracting unwanted attention.”

As she spoke, Evelyn stared at the exposed Fractal on my arm. I rolled my sleeve back down, feeling protective and self-conscious.

“I think I understand,” I said.

“I suppose Raine did the actual penwork for you, yes?”

“Uh, yes. She did.”

“And she’s been visiting you every day, has she? Spending a lot of time together?”

“Not— not every day.” I shook my head and forced a laugh.

Just most days; an edge in Evelyn’s voice prompted me to edit the truth.

Raine had eased herself into my life with shameless familiarity. She turned up unannounced when she didn’t have classes and learnt my schedule so she could find me on campus after lectures. She sent me text messages and silly pictures, and she told me good morning and good night and take care. At first I hadn’t known how to respond, but after so long without a friend it felt good to let her take the lead. She took me out to eat greasy burgers and chips, made food on my cramped bedsit oven, and watched movies and cartoons with me on my ancient laptop. I’d lent her my copy of Watership Down and she was trying to get me to read some Kant. We talked about everything and anything—except for magic and spirits and demons.

Evelyn saw straight through the fake laugh, stony-faced. “She slept with you yet?”

“W-what? Evelyn, excuse me?”

“Well, has she?”

“No! No, we haven’t— she hasn’t even— we— it’s not like that. I don’t think it is, anyway.”

“With Raine, it always is.”

“I wouldn’t know how to judge that.” An old frustration surfaced for the first time in a long time, fed by indignation and a yawning pit of uncertainty. “I don’t have any experience with romance. None whatsoever. Maybe you don’t appreciate that about me. I spent a significant chunk of my teenage years in psychiatric hospitals, and the rest of it as the weird mentally ill girl who might go catatonic or start screaming at any moment. Not to even mention the whole lesbian thing, that’s a minor blip compared to the rest, but it doesn’t help my odds. I’ve never even kissed anybody. Raine is nice, yes. I don’t know what that means. We’ve hugged a few times. That’s it, that’s all.”

I shrugged and looked down at the floorboards, embarrassed more by my loss of control than the intimate details.

“Well,” Evelyn said at length, “that makes two of us.”

I expected a cruel joke, but lowered my defensive hackles when I saw she was dead serious. “I’m sorry?”

“Yes, Heather. I too am a kissless virgin. What did you expect? Look at me. Nothing wrong with that, especially under the circumstances.”

“Kissless virgin?” I echoed. “You shouldn’t put yourself down like that.”

“It’s a meme.” Evelyn waved the question away.

“ … ‘meme’?”

Evelyn cleared her throat. “An internet joke, never mind. Point is, we’re not so different, you and I, and that is fine. All the more reason not to let Raine take advantage of you.”

“I don’t feel taken advantage of. If anything, it feels like the opposite. She’s been … ”

The words too kind died on the way to my lips, blotted out by the memory of Raine’s ecstatic grin as she beat a monster to death with a truncheon. She was kind to me. Beyond that, I didn’t really know, did I?

Evelyn did not look impressed. I took a deep breath and steeled myself; may as well get this out of the way.

“Okay, let me put all my cards on the table,” I said. “Are you jealous, Evelyn? If I understand correctly, you’ve been close with Raine for years. Have I intruded on something? I’d rather we be open about this.”

“Jealous?” Evelyn’s eyebrows climbed in surprise. “No, most certainly not. Whatever Raine has said about me, I’m not interested.”

“You’re not—”

“No.”

Final word. I nodded. Okay then.

“Look, Heather, I’d advise you not to get too close to Raine. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”

My turn to raise my eyebrows.

Raine Philomena Haynes. She loved that middle name, and I liked it too, though I did wonder if she’d adopted it herself in a pretentious act of self-creation. It had taken me a long, winding evening to weasel out her family name, which she hated for reasons I didn’t understand. Twenty years old to my nineteen, which seemed a more significant gap at that age.

I knew her now—but not enough about her, and I told myself it was subconscious behaviour on her part. She’d happily spend hours extolling the finer points of any book I handed to her, and share her favourite foods—chicken korma and pomegranate—or about where she’d grown up in leafy Suffolk, what she thought of every movie from Dambusters to Shrek, and a growing litany of teenage japes and hijinks, but they were all oddly unconnected to concrete people, her family, or any personal history with Evelyn.

Evelyn put down her tea, steepled her fingers, and gave me a sober look.

“Raine requires a damsel in distress for whom she can play the knight errant. And let’s be honest, you do fit the bill. That’s why she shows so much interest in you. I used to fill that role, but I changed. If you fail to remain dependent, her attitude toward you will deteriorate.”

I struggled to keep a straight face. Maybe Evelyn was jealous after all, even if she didn’t know so.

“Did she treat you the same way she treats me now?” I asked.

“Not exactly. With us, the reality-shock was the other way around, or should have been. But she’s the same as always. Don’t get me wrong, Raine is … ” Evelyn gestured, searching for a word. “Once she’s made a decision, she will fight in your corner even if it kills her. She is loyal, and she means what she says, and one could not ask for a better … You get the picture. But she’ll hurt you in the long run, if you let her.”

I didn’t want to think about this. Was I just filling in a role? It didn’t feel that way. I chewed my bottom lip.

Then I realised what was wrong with this whole picture; what had been wrong since the moment I’d found Evelyn on my doorstep, alone.

“Wait a second,” I said. “Isn’t … isn’t Raine supposed to accompany you almost everywhere?”

Evelyn smiled. The first real smile I’d drawn out of her, and it made me deeply uncomfortable. Sharp and devious and smug. “Indeed, indeed she is. I thought it was past time I engaged in some creative disobedience.”

“But— but— you keep implying that Sharrowford is dangerous, that—”

“Heather, I am more than capable of defending myself.”

“I saw how Raine reacted, when she couldn’t reach you by phone. Genuine fear for you! For your safety.” I cast about for my mobile phone. “I have to call her.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Evelyn snapped.

I spread my arms, intimidated by her tone but unwilling to bend. “What? You can’t seriously expect me to betray her trust.”

Evelyn huffed and hunched a little in the chair. “Some things have to be done without Raine hovering over our shoulders all the time. You saw how she reacted, that night. She wants to coddle you. I’d prefer you retain a little independence—and me too, perhaps, dare I bloody well hope. She won’t like you getting into the books, the grimoires, if that’s what you want. Go ahead, call her if you like, it’s your choice.”

I hesitated. Just enough.

That smile crept back onto Evelyn’s face. “Come on, then, it’s past time we went and did some serious work, before she spoils our fun.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“We—” I croaked. “We should leave before I pass out.”

I was trying very hard not to look at the twitching skeletal shapes descending from the ridge, creeping toward us through the mist.

“Leave?” Evelyn’s voice shook. She took a deep breath and used the stone pillar at her back to pull herself up. She was unsteady on her feet, all her weight on her right leg. “Yes, you can do that, can’t you? You—”

Thunder interrupted us.

A rolling crash shook the ground, so deep and so loud it rattled my bones. Evelyn slammed her hands over her ears. I winced and screwed up my eyes. The rotten-apricot sky boiled and bubbled, clouds like sea-tossed oil. The stalking figures in the fog stopped and crouched, as if the skin of the world threatened to buck them off.

Evelyn lowered her hands as we both watched the sky.

“That wasn’t happening earlier,” she whispered. “You can get us out?”

I opened my mouth to explain and a wave of dizziness passed through me. My vision swam, black around the edges. My knees gave out, my feet slipped out from under me, and I struck out with one blood-smeared hand to break my fall.

Evelyn lurched forward and caught me under the armpits.

She hissed with pain as her left leg buckled and we fell together on our knees. At least we weren’t face down in the rocks.

I clung to her shoulders and squeezed my eyes shut as my consciousness ebbed back, along with the throb of pain in my head. Evelyn did her best to hold me up as I sagged, but she wasn’t very strong.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I let go,” I babbled, gripped by an urge to explain myself, explain why we were here, like I was embarrassed to be rescuing her from this nowhere-place. “This morning, when I felt your hand, I wasn’t strong enough. I-I didn’t know I could do this, I thought it was all insanity, I wasn’t— didn’t think it was real.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I probably wouldn’t have saved me either.” Evelyn’s voice quivered beneath the veneer of cynicism. I pulled back and she looked at me with mouth agape.

“What? What is it?” I asked.

“Are you aware you’re bleeding from around your eyes?”

I wiped my face. My sleeve came away smeared with sticky crimson. “Huh. That’s new.”

Evelyn looked at me like I was mad. Which I wasn’t. Not anymore. Too numb to panic over blood from the eyes. One more misfiring bodily process wasn’t worth my attention right then.

We had to get out.

I had to do it all over again, in reverse.

A second peal of thunder ripped through the landscape, juddering our bones and shaking my brain. Evelyn suppressed a scream and dug her fingers into my upper arms. The rotten-apricot clouds bulged downward, a swell in an inverted ocean, surrounded by a churning vortex widening by the second.

“Something knows we’re here,” Evelyn said. She nodded toward the creatures in the mist. They were less than forty feet from us now, frozen again in the wake of the thunder, clutching at the ground. “They certainly do.”

“It’s okay, it’s fine, it’s—”

What was I going to say? It’s not real?

Evelyn stared at me, wide-eyed. “We are most certainly not fine.”

“Yes, yes, I know, I know.”

“Then do it, get us out of here, before—”

Thunder, deeper and longer and louder, the voice of an angry god. We clung to each other, two tiny, soft, vulnerable apes surrounded by stone and metal and sharp blades. The thunder rolled and rolled, for ten seconds, twenty seconds, and just when I thought it was never going to stop, it began to ebb away.

Evelyn wasn’t looking up. She didn’t see the sky.

The cloud bulge parted; a black rope of tentacle reached through.

The distance, the scale. That tentacle was wide as a train tunnel.

I tore my eyes away.

“Okay, okay.” I felt sick as my mind touched the Eye’s lessons. “Just hold on to me. I think I can move both of us. W-well actually I don’t know but it’s—”

“You think? Oh god, can you or can’t you?”

“I can. I know I can. It just hurts so much and—”

I never got to finish that sentence, because the world reared up and shook us from its back.

The thunder roared and the ground shuddered. Evelyn and I scrambled to find something to hold on to, slipping and sliding across the floor of the pit, barely clinging to each other. The great black tentacle rushed down toward us. Displaced air washed away the mist, revealing the knife-and-bone creatures all around. They were screeching, screaming as they crouched low to the ground, long claws dug into the rock, hind legs locked against the stone. They’d anchored themselves, like fleas in the hide of a dog.

I realised, in that moment of clarity, exactly what we’d been standing on.

Whatever it was, it was scratching its back.

The ground shook side to side in a sudden burst of motion, so fast that neither of us had time to brace. The first shake threw us against the floor, bruised my hip and the side of my ribs and drew a sharp cry of pain from Evelyn.

The second shake sent us flying.

The ground spun beneath us. The motion tossed our bodies out of the dip in the landscape like rag dolls. It was a miracle neither of us passed out or suffered whiplash. Evelyn’s hands clawed my arm and she screamed over the rush of air as we fell, her hair loose and streaming out in the wind.

But I wasn’t letting her go this time. I tightened a death-grip around her shoulders.

People with much more courage than me don’t have time to think while they’re falling from the sky. I certainly didn’t think. That might be what saved us. I groped with my mind for the right formula, the correct equation to take us back home.

Out.

My head exploded. For a second I thought we’d hit the ground and this was death, but Evelyn was still screaming.

Then I saw it, grasped it, had it. Not with my eyes, but with my soul, or what passes for a soul in creatures as small as us, compared to the black, dripping truth of the engines and gears of reality I was trying to manipulate.

“Close your eyes!” I screamed, hoping Evelyn could still hear me.

Reality folded up.

 

* * *

 

Evelyn and I landed with a soft thump on the floorboards of her front room.

We didn’t let go of each other for a very, very long moment, even when Raine scrambled to her feet nearby.

“Evee! Heather! Fuck yes!” She laughed with relief. “How … what … ? Actually, screw it, you know what? I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. This is amazing, I don’t care how you did it.”

I managed to meet her eyes but I couldn’t form any words. My body felt distant, a shell I inhabited on a whim. Evelyn gingerly rolled off me and sat up in a heap.

“You two, holy shit,” Raine continued. “I can’t believe that worked. Heather, wow, I—”

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” Evelyn said. Her voice croaked, thin and strained, but she cleared her throat, and out came the barbed tongue. “This is all your fault, you realise that?”

“What?” Raine blinked, a goofy smile on her face.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, you know perfectly well what you’ve done.”

“Me?” Raine spread her arms. “Evee, come off it, you’re the one who decided to try untested magic without me here.”

“Well you should have been here to stop me, shouldn’t you?”

Evelyn turned to look down at me. She dropped the scorn she’d used on Raine and met my eyes with naked concern. I tried to blink, but my eyelids felt heavy as iron.

Raine laughed. “I don’t believe you. Come off—”

“This is no time for arguing.” Evelyn clicked her fingers at Raine. “Get a glass of water, the chocolate in the tin, and painkillers. The good stuff, the co-codamol, and be quick about it.”

Raine opened her mouth to argue but then finally realised I wasn’t sitting up or saying anything, or indeed moving at all. She ran out of the room. Good Raine, could always rely on her. Shouldn’t have distrusted her. It was all real, wasn’t it? All of it.

“And you did kill the thing that came through in my place, yes?” Evelyn called after her.

“It’s under the bin bags!”

Evelyn returned her attention to me. “Heather, Heather, can you hear me? What you did there was very brave. Oh dear,” she whispered. “Please don’t die now.” She reached down and awkwardly patted my cheek. I realised she was trying to slap me to keep me conscious.

With great effort I managed to turn my head to one side, then heaved with every last ounce of energy I had and rolled myself over into the recovery position. The world went dark for a moment.

Directly across from me lay the dead monster, underneath some black bin liners Raine had draped over its shattered corpse. Poor thing, lost thing, transported to another dimension where nothing made sense, unable to go home, then confronted by two terrifying apes and beaten to death when it had responded in fear. Not fair, was it?

Raine returned and helped pull me into a sitting position, though I whined and resisted. I just wanted to lie down and sleep forever. She held a glass to my lips and made me drink small, sharp sips of cold water. I stared into the middle distance. She broke off a piece of dark chocolate and held it up.

“It’s okay, Heather, you don’t have to eat a lot.”

“You need it for the serotonin,” Evelyn said, breaking off several squares for herself. “Best medicine after too much exposure.”

I just stared at it. Didn’t register as food. Raine shot a wordless glance at Evelyn.

“No, Raine, I have no idea what’s wrong with her,” Evelyn said. “She did all that with nothing except her own brain. Even my mother couldn’t do that. Heather, open your mouth.”

I accepted being fed, too heavily dissociated for embarrassment. Sip water, nibble chocolate, repeat; the process went on for ten or fifteen minutes until I began to feel merely exhausted instead of actually dead.

“The … ” I croaked, coughed with a spike of headache pain, then tried again. “The painkillers would be nice.”

Raine lit up and sighed with relief.

“She’s back, she’ll be fine,” Evelyn said.

Raine grinned. “I’ll bet. Here, courtesy of Evee’s supply.”

I swallowed the pills with a mouthful of water, then realised I was still smeared with my own blood. I made a half-hearted attempt to wipe my face on my sleeve. “What … what—”

“Shhh, don’t worry about it right now.”

“Go run her a bath, we’re both filthy,” Evelyn said. “And fetch my stick, I’m sick of cowering on the floor.”

 

* * *

 

By the time I woke, night had fallen on Sharrowford.

The hour after we’d returned from the Stone-world was a soft blur of bodily need and bare consciousness. Raine had helped me up the stairs and into the bathroom. I was barely able to undress myself, all my movements slow and stiff, clothes stuck to skin with half-dry cold sweat. I’d pushed away Raine’s well-intentioned help, far too embarrassed to let her strip me. In the end it took me ten minutes just to get my clothes off while she waited in the hallway.

In the bath, I’d drifted off for a long time, soaking in the hot water. Couldn’t recall the last time I’d had a bath. Always showers. Less dangerous when you believe you’re prone to passing out. Eventually I summoned the energy to wash the blood off my face and the iron tang of that other world off my body. Raine had left me clean clothes, a baggy t-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, which I assumed belonged to Evelyn. Took an awfully long time to get into them.

I let Raine guide me to Evelyn’s bedroom, where she told me to lie down on the bed. She draped a blanket over me and said to sleep as long as I needed. If I’d been tucked into bed by a girl like Raine a few days ago, I would have been over the moon, too excited for sleep, but I passed out the moment my head touched the pillow.

Nothing like a supernatural near-death experience to disarm anxiety disorders. I wouldn’t recommend it, though.

Only afterward, sitting up on the mass of Evelyn’s quilts and sheets, did I feel a distant twinge of embarrassment about sleeping in another girl’s bed.

Streetlight glow filtered around the edge of the curtains, but otherwise the room was dark. The door had been left ajar. I tested the strength in my legs, then wobbled over and peered out into the upstairs hallway. A light shone from downstairs.

I descended the stairs slowly, one at a time like a small child, clutching the old wooden banister to hold myself upright. My head still ached with echoes of pain and my legs trembled as I walked, but that was nothing; weakness radiated from my core, as if I’d pulled a muscle I hadn’t known about. Halfway down I smelled greasy food and my stomach grumbled. Muttered conversation broke off as the stairs creaked.

In the front room the magic circle was gone. Cleaned away. A dark stain lingered nearby.

I found Evelyn and Raine sitting at the kitchen table.

“Heather!” Raine stood up and took my hands. “How do you feel? You slept okay, yeah?”

“I’ve been better,” I mumbled.

“I bet, I bet. Come on, sit down. You hungry?”

“ … extremely.”

Evelyn sipped from a mug of tea and met my eyes with quiet regard. She was freshly scrubbed, hair washed and pinned up behind her head. She had a fluffy blanket draped over her shoulders, t-shirt and shorts underneath.

I tried not to stare at her scars.

The kitchen was all cracked tiles, wooden counters, and a massive metal stove, rustic and cosy and very much my kind of place. An antiquated survival in the modern world. Heat poured from a naked iron radiator bolted to the back wall. Raine settled me in a chair and set about reheating some of the chicken stew they’d been eating.

Sitting hurt. I took a moment to probe my left hip and the side of my ribs, left elbow and shoulder. Bruises from Outside.

“Feeling the aftermath, are you?” Evelyn said. “It’ll be worse in the morning.”

She was bruised too, a nasty purple welt on her chin, and I assumed more underneath her clothes. I tried to give her a smile.

“You can look, if you want,” she said. “No need to pretend you don’t see.”

“Wait ’til she’s got some food in her, hey Evee?” Raine said, spooning rice into a bowl of chicken and setting it in front of me. The greasy smell made my mouth water.

“I think Heather is more than capable of fending for herself.” Evelyn gave me an expression much softer than the one she kept for Raine. “I don’t let people see me like this, but I assume our relationship is rather past that point.”

“Nothing like saving a girl’s life to break the ice,” Raine said. Evelyn shot her a withering look.

In a tiny, selfish way, I agreed with Raine; I felt guilty, as if I’d taken a dirty shortcut to Evelyn’s heart.

“I was only being polite,” I said. “It’s rude to stare at … ” I gestured with my eyes at her bare legs.

Well, at what remained of them.

Evelyn’s left leg was twisted at the knee and ankle, the muscles thin and withered, as if it had once been broken in multiple places and healed at the wrong angles. She flexed her left foot to show me it still worked.

Her right leg, the good one, was artificial.

A pale rubber socket ringed the stump of her thigh, attached to the matte black curve of a modern prosthetic limb. It terminated in a blade-shaped support structure inside a plastic foot. It looked wrong, a blunt piece of machinery attached to soft flesh, but it was far less weird than anything else so far today.

“It’s carbon fiber,” she said.

“State-of-the-art stuff. Costs an arm and a leg,” Raine said, and cracked a huge grin. Evelyn rolled her eyes, and I could tell by her expression she’d heard that joke a million times before. A tiny pang of jealousy pricked at me, but I was too hungry to care.

“I have to eat,” I said.

Evelyn just stared level at me, so I dug in.

Rice and chicken. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was the first proper home-cooked food I’d eaten in weeks. Not a cereal bar or a microwavable ready meal or instant coffee. The empty, bruised space inside me responded with the most intense hunger of my life, and I had to force myself to slow down. A wave of animal gratitude passed through me. I asked who made it. Raine had. Salt and pepper, oregano and cumin. Real food, made by a friend?

Raine busied herself clearing up the table, but Evelyn watched me and sipped her cold tea. Raine kept giving her meaningful looks, which drew worse and worse counter-glares from Evelyn, until I was sitting in the firing line of an emotional cold war.

“I have not forgotten, Raine,” Evelyn said eventually, thumping her mug down. “The severity of my—” She bit the words back and took a sharp breath. “The moment requires significantly more gravity.”

“ … iiiiif you say so.” Raine sat back at the table. She turned a smile on me and touched my arm. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? There’s brownies in the fridge, if you fancy one for afters.”

“Do you really think I’m that callous?” Evelyn carried on. “That much of a bitch? Your confidence in me is touching. We’ve both been through rather a traumatic experience today, Heather and I. Give me a moment.”

Raine held up both hands in surrender, a barely controlled smile on her lips. “I didn’t say anything.”

I swallowed a mouthful of food and put my spoon down with a clack. “Will you two stop it? Please? I can’t deal with you bickering on top of … everything else. Not right now.”

Raine had the good grace to look sheepish. Evelyn nodded and took a deep breath. She tried to sit up straight, but a suppressed wince passed over her face as she struggled with her posture. She sighed, caught my eye, and spoke.

“Heather, I want to thank you, for rescuing me. You have my gratitude, and I am in your debt.”

I blinked at her.

“That’s Evee’s way of being friendly,” Raine said.

Evelyn rolled her eyes. “You have no sense of gravitas, Raine. Absolutely none.”

“Uh, sure, you’re— you’re very welcome?” I shrugged. “I don’t even know what I did, not really.”

“Mm, yes, so you say.” Evelyn leaned back in her chair with obvious physical relief.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m not interested in the what. I know what you did. You breached the membrane between here and Outside, and you did so without any magical tools or devices, no access to the relevant books, no knowledge, no training, no history. Your mind, alone. I want to know how.”

I held up a hand—the how presented itself to me in a flash of the Eye’s lessons, and suddenly the food in my belly turned to lead. “I can’t— it’s very difficult for me to talk about this. I-I—”

“Hey, Evee, maybe drop this?” Raine said softly.

“Raine filled me in on the basics, the things you told her about,” Evelyn said. “But I need more, I need the details. Yes, there’s some entity out there feeding you hyperdimensional mathematics in your dreams, but—”

I curled up, cold sweat beading on my forehead, nausea roiling in my belly. “E-Evelyn, I—”

“—but what I don’t understand is how you executed it, any of it—”

“Evee, drop it, seriously.” Raine raised her voice. “She’s exhausted and I told you this makes her ill.”

“Will you stop babying her?” Evelyn turned on Raine. “Not everybody needs your bloody ministrations twenty-four seven.”

I lurched out of my chair, shoved my face over the kitchen sink, and vomited.

The edges of my vision throbbed black. My knees buckled. My body had nothing more to give. Gentle hands touched my back and Raine murmured in my ear, talked me through each deep breath. Clear my mind. Don’t think. Just breathe.

I groped for the tap and washed my mouth out, then turned on Evelyn. She was frowning at me, confused. The same expression I’d seen on a dozen would-be friends in my early teens: Oh dear, turns out little Heather Morell is crazy. Better handle her like spun glass.

“I don’t know anything,” I snapped. “This is what happens, when I try to think about it. Well done, thank you for that, Evelyn, thank you. Why do you think I was bleeding so much when I came for you? Bleeding from my eyeballs? It’s not supposed to be in my head, it’s alien, and it’s killing me.”

I forced myself to hold her gaze, to stand straight, hanging on to Raine for support. I wasn’t really angry at Evelyn. I was angry at everything, life, reality, the Eye, all my certainties crumbling beneath me. No outlet for the frustration.

Evelyn swallowed and looked away.

“Heather, hey, let’s get you sat down again, okay?” Raine purred.

I allowed myself to be sat back down, rubbing my tender stomach muscles. Raine put a glass of water in front of me. I drank slowly.

“Some of us never had the luxury of fragility,” Evelyn said.

“Evee, for fuck’s sake,” said Raine.

I gave Evelyn a very unimpressed look. She cleared her throat. “What I mean to say is, it’s difficult for me to place myself in your shoes, Heather. I’m quite used to all of this.”

“What, almost dying in other dimensions?”

“Well, no, not that, that part was new.” Evelyn looked awkward and took a long sip from her mug. She settled it back on the table and stared at it for a moment before she continued. “I suppose you need it right from the top. Very well. I am a magician, and Raine is my bodyguard.”

Raine slapped the table. “Come on, at least upgrade me to companion. Champion, even! Childhood friend, at the very least?”

“You might not believe in what you’ve seen today—”

“She’s been practising this for hours,” Raine stage-whispered. Evelyn stopped and glared daggers at her.

I glanced between their faces, trying to gauge if this was serious. But of course it was. Did I doubt everything I’d seen today? The blood, the sweat, the choice I’d made to save Evelyn?

A tiny, screaming part of me refused to accept that this was real.

I’d ignored the most important implication.

If this was real, then—

No.

A great tightness seized my chest.

Had to distract myself. Deny, deny, deny.

“Magician?” I repeated, struggling to keep my voice level.

“Yes,” Evelyn replied. “Magician. Mage. Wizard. Whatever term makes the most sense to you.”

“So, what, you … ” An unbidden laugh entered my voice, the leading edge of hysteria. “Throw fireballs and talk to black cats? Do you have a cauldron in the basement? Dancing brooms?” A hiccup slipped out as I fought to control myself. “Is that what the Medieval Metaphysics Department is all about? A secret magic school in Sharrowford University?”

Evelyn sighed and sagged heavily in her chair.

“Not that sort of magic,” Raine said with a sad kind of smile. “It’s a bit more difficult than that.”

“The department is a convenient bureaucratic fiction,” Evelyn explained. “Protective colouration. It did exist, from 1902 to 1954, for the study of the sorts of things I do. But it wasn’t out in the open, you understand? Respectable academia was cover for a tiny coven of men from the university—professors Ambleworth and Wakeley, with a few hangers-on. They founded the department when they encountered certain books they shouldn’t have been in possession of, things they shouldn’t have seen. Ambleworth went mad in 1948 and died in a mental hospital. Wakeley blew out his own brains two years later. The others limped on for a little while, but there was another suicide and a scandal. That ended it. All that’s left now is the book collection in the university library. Rare things, things you can’t find anywhere else unless you’re part of the right clandestine cliques. I know all this because my family was involved—is involved.” She gave a humourless puff of laughter. “I’m still here, after all. Now the department is just me. When one’s family has donated as much money to an academic institution as mine has, they sort of let you do what you want, as long as you keep it quiet and appear respectable.” She pulled herself up and looked me in the eye. “And what I do there is study the books. Officially I’m getting a degree in classics.”

A battered spark flickered inside me. “Classics? You’re learning Latin and Ancient Greek?”

“I don’t need to learn them, I was taught them as a child. Came with the family obligations. I turn in a few essays every term and the university turns a blind eye. I’m even lined up for a postgraduate program afterward. They don’t have a clue, it’s just me and Raine. If you meet any other mages in this city then it’s too late, you’re already dead.”

The way she spoke those last few words made my skin crawl.

“Yeah, it’s more Hannibal Lecter than Harry Potter out there,” Raine said, then caught the look on my face and put her hand over mine. “Hey, that’s why I’m here.”

“There is no community of mages,” Evelyn went on. “There’s my … family.” She made the word sound like an insult. “There’s a few dangerous cults worshipping things they shouldn’t—a couple of them right here in Sharrowford. There’s lone madmen, maybe even one or two others like me, and there’s things out there in the world we try to avoid. And you, apparently.”

I shook my head slowly.

“No, no, this isn’t real.” My voice quivered. I had to convince myself. The alternative was unthinkable. “You’re just … this is just a story. This is some fantasy nonsense play-acting. It’s not real.”

Evelyn frowned. “You need more proof than what happened today? You provided your own proof quite handily, I thought. And you’ve already adapted to it.”

“She is taking it well,” Raine said.

“Yes, but what if I’m crazy?” I had to bite my lips for a moment to control my voice. “What if you two have been watching me and stalking me, cataloguing and recording my behaviour, and you’re both perfect improvisational actors pulling some sick joke on me, riffing off whatever I’ve hallucinated today?” Evelyn blinked in surprise but Raine nodded sagely. She understood. “These are the sorts of questions I have to ask myself.”

“Didn’t Raine kill the tick in front of you?” Evelyn asked. “Wasn’t that real enough?”

“The what, sorry?”

“The tick, the thing which came through in my place, when I completed the swap. That’s what I’ve decided to call it, unless I find it properly described and categorised elsewhere. I think that’s what those things were. That, or fleas. The proof is still right over there.” Evelyn gestured at the kitchen doorway.

I looked round and saw what I’d missed in the front room. Several black bin bags bulged next to the stairs, double-wrapped, sealed with duct tape.

Dissociation washed over me as I imagined the contents of those bags. I looked back at my new friends and noticed other details I’d missed earlier: the shiny clean nightstick on the kitchen sink draining board, next to a butcher’s cleaver.

“Hey, somebody’s gotta do it,” Raine said, smiling awkwardly. “Don’t be scared of me, yeah?”

“That’s okay, I’m not scared.”

Raine’s violence had turned me on earlier, the rush and the romance of it, but the thought of her chopping up a body and stuffing it into rubbish bags left me ice-cold.

This couldn’t be real, because if it was—

Traitor, weakling, coward.

The void yawned wider.

“It’s not real,” I whispered.

Evelyn steepled her fingers and considered for a moment. “Raine, pass me the fade stone.”

Raine fetched something from the kitchen counter and pressed it into Evelyn’s palm—the chunk of white quartz I’d seen her holding twice before.

“Pay close attention,” said Evelyn.

I stared at her, not sure what to expect. She held the piece of quartz in her lap and closed her fist around it, then lowered her eyes in concentration.

She wasn’t there.

Oh, I thought, did I miss her standing up and going into the other room? I looked around and caught Raine smirking at me. I cleared my throat and frowned with mounting confusion. “Wait, wait, I was supposed to be watching Evelyn. Wasn’t I?”

“Heather, look at the chair,” Raine said, barely able to hold back a laugh.

“And don’t laugh at me. I still haven’t forgiven you for earlier, Raine, laughing at me when I was on the verge of a panic attack.”

She cleared her throat, sheepish now. “Take a look at the chair, seriously.”

I glanced back at Evelyn’s chair. The blanket she’d had wrapped around her shoulders lay draped over the wooden back. Her walking stick was propped against the armrest.

“And?” I asked.

“And nothing,” Evelyn said.

She was sitting exactly where she’d been before. Somehow I simply hadn’t seen her there. The blanket was wrapped around her shoulders again.

I blinked at her, felt a dislocation of time and space, like reality had just failed and glitched out.

“Where— where did you go? What just happened? Don’t— don’t try to confuse me, I … ”

Evelyn held up the chunk of white quartz. “This stone is a small piece of my inheritance. The right sequence of thoughts, personal silence, a little practice, and the user is edited from the sight of an observer. I don’t quite know where it came from, but I suspect my family made it somehow. You’ve seen it before—I was using it Outside, to hide from the ticks. And from you, when you barged into the Medieval Metaphysics room.”

“Hiding from me? I’m not exactly threatening.”

“I told you. There are things and people in this city we want to avoid. You could have been anybody.”

“Okay, that was … okay.” I swallowed on a dry throat. My hands were shaking.

Raine stood up, stepped behind my chair, and started to rub my shoulders. I shrugged her off and pushed her away.

“Heather, hey, it’s good for you, I promise I’m not—”

I turned on her as the ground began to crumble beneath my feet. I groped for a way out, anything to hold back that one thought.

“Are you even real?” I demanded.

“ … Heather? Of course I’m real.” Raine grinned and spread her arms. “I’m flesh and blood, you can touch me as much as you like.”

“No, this isn’t real, neither of you are real. You!” I clamped down on the lump in my throat, the wrenching in my chest. “You’re too good to be true, Raine. You’re everything I need. You’re a walking, talking fantasy, my brain telling itself a fairy tale about being accepted and wanted. About a cool older girl taking me under her wing. You’re not real.”

“Heather—”

Tears were rolling down my cheeks. I fought to keep speaking.

“No! How can you be real? What a coincidence, that you’re here in Sharrowford, that you happen to go to the Aardvark on the exact morning I did, at the exact time I did. What a coincidence that I have a breakdown and you just happen to see me. You’re not real. This is my fantasy and I’m sitting in an empty house in the dark, talking to myself.”

Evelyn and Raine shared a glance. Evelyn looked like a deer in headlights.

I knew I was being unfair, scrabbling for the slimmest handhold I had left to deny, deny, deny.

“Heather,” Evelyn said. “You performed a technical miracle today. You can’t—”

I rounded on her. “And you, you’re even worse. You’re the unspoken promise that my insanity means something. That being crazy has a purpose. You’re the beginning of paranoid schizophrenia, persecution complexes, banging my head against a padded cell wall for the rest of my life.”

“Have you finished?” Evelyn asked. I tried to stare her down, but I felt like a sick child.

“Why Sharrowford? Why are you even here?” I said. “Can either of you answer that?”

“The ‘Eye’—whatever it is—has been feeding you knowledge for a decade,” Evelyn said. “The most likely explanation is that it wanted you in Sharrowford, so it nudged you to choose the university. I’m not surprised, considering the nature of the city, the sorts of things that happen here.”

“Heather, it’s okay.” Raine tried to take my hand but I flinched away from her.

“That still doesn’t explain you two,” I said.

Raine leaned down so I couldn’t avoid her face. “Heather, hey. Sometimes you get lucky. The nightmares stopped, didn’t they? Even if we’re not real, that’s a pretty good trade-off.”

That look on her face—the kindness, the understanding, the bloody-minded stubborn refusal to give up on me—shattered my last line of defence. I lost control.

I wrapped my arms around my head and rocked in place on the chair, great big wet sobs ripping out of my throat. Ten years of nonsense and lies. Ten years of being this, and the whole thing fell apart around me and I couldn’t keep it out anymore. I scrubbed at my eyes, hid my face behind my hands, drew my feet up onto the chair and tried to curl into a ball.

“It can’t be real it can’t be real it can’t be real—”

Raine put her arms around me and held on tight. I tried to push her off but I didn’t care anymore, gave up and buried my face in her shoulder. She could cut me up and shove me in bin liners like the monster if she wanted, because I was living rubbish.

“Shhhhh, it’s okay,” she murmured. “Heather, it’s okay.”

“It’s not, it’s not, it’s never okay.”

“It will be, it—”

Couldn’t deny it any longer. The truth came out in a wail, at long, long last.

“I left her behind.”

Neither Raine or Evelyn said anything for a long moment, but I could picture their faces. The shared look over my head, Evelyn’s frown, Raine’s realisation. I kept going, pouring it all out between the wracking sobs and the horrible pain in my chest.

“My sister. Maisie. My twin. I left her behind in Wonderland. If this is real then she was real and I left her behind. I left my sister behind.”

 

* * *

 

“Here, Heather? Try to keep something down, yeah? You really need it.”

“I don’t feel like eating.”

I’d cried until empty but the wound still ached. Twin-shaped hole in my chest, ten years in the making.

Evelyn had brooded in silence as Raine held me and hugged me and brought me tissues to blow my nose. Eventually I’d uncurled, sat up, and tried not to feel like the worst traitor and coward in the world. A glass of water and long minutes to calm down and think did help, but time fixed nothing.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think I’d—”

“Heather,” Raine said before I could bury myself under a mountain of apologies. “It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to let it all out. That’s some serious burden, you don’t have to bear it alone.”

“Mm.”

“ … so, are we real now? Gotta start somewhere.”

I shrugged. “What choice do I have? At least I’m not lonely. Imaginary friends are better than dying of a brain aneurysm.”

Raine put her hand over mine and gave me an it’s-going-to-be-okay smile. “Real friends are even better. Promise you that.”

I shook my head. My throat tightened but I had no more tears to cry. “I left her behind.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Raine said. “Right, Evee? Could that have been her fault?”

“ … no, of course not,” Evelyn answered. “A child, Outside, in a face-to-face encounter with a … with something beyond our comprehension. No. Raine is correct.”

“Survivor’s guilt,” I said. “I know. A ten-year dose all at once. Knowing what I’m feeling doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Difficult, yes. I understand,” Evelyn said, with such conviction.

I looked up at Evelyn, this mage with her fluffy golden hair and missing fingers, her stolen limbs and spinal problems. I wondered what her history was. What could she do, what were her limits?

The seed of an idea took root in my mind. A seed only possible after a day like today. I didn’t dare feed it light or water. Not yet.

But I started to ask the questions anyway.

“Why were you even over in … wherever that was?” I gestured at the air, at the Outside places. “You did a spell, took yourself there?”

Evelyn looked away, failing to conceal her discomfort. “In a manner of speaking. You saw the circle, the methods I used. Yes, that was magic. Of a kind.”

“Why go there?”

“She was jealous,” Raine said.

“Oh for pity’s sake, Raine, that is such an ugly word.” Evelyn turned back to me. “I was … intrigued by what Raine said about your ‘Slipping’ episodes. I didn’t believe it was possible. There were a few relevant passages I recalled from Unbekannte Orte, and an incantation in Stellhoff’s Unfinished Book, but I’d never risked the procedures before. And … well, as it turned out, there was no way to bring myself back again. That’s why nobody had written more about that particular method. Nobody who goes through with it comes back to record anything. I should have known. Too easy, too good to be true. Hubris and arrogance. Raine should have been here to stop me.”

“There’s nothing about me to be jealous of,” I muttered.

“Heroism, perhaps.”

“That wasn’t heroism. I’m a coward. I just had to know if it was all real.”

Raine opened her mouth, probably to stop me beating myself up, but Evelyn spoke first.

“Hardly the act of a coward, to voluntarily put oneself through such a test. I should know.”

I said nothing, took up my food again, just to fill the roaring silence inside my head, but it tasted bland and chewy now. Raine kept trying to catch my eye with another smile, and after a few moments I allowed her to find me.

At least I had that. At least Raine was real.

If a bit weird.

Raine was busy saying something about a permanent solution to my nightmares—but I paid another sliver of attention to the dangerous seed in my mind.

“Evelyn,” I said. “Tell me about magic, please.”

Evelyn started to speak, but Raine raised her voice and took my hand.

“Look, Heather, you’ve been through a lot today. You can worry about all that tomorrow.”

“No,” I said, and pulled my hand away. Raine was pretty and Raine was dashing, and the memory of her earlier violence still sent a thrill through me at the sight of her, but not like this. “I won’t be treated like a child. If you’re going to treat me like that, I’m going to just go home and … and forget about both of you.”

It was an obvious bluff, but I kept my poker face. Raine smiled all the same. Evelyn let out a dark laugh.

“Perhaps you were right, Raine,” she said. “Heather and I are a little alike.”

For the next hour, with the wind picking up outside, my new friends told me truths.

Magic, according to Evelyn, was not throwing fireballs or waving wands, it was not casting the runes or reading the future in tea leaves. It was blood and bone and the application of human willpower to the secret workings of the cosmos. It was half-remembered scraps of stolen Latin and Greek and older inhuman languages from a time best left forgotten. It was to scream the names of alien gods and their unseen workings in the hope that a fragment of knowledge would yield a result. It was frequently unclean and often dangerous and potentially obscene.

As I would come to learn, her words did not do it justice. No words can.

Raine and Evelyn had known each other for years. Evelyn became terse and evasive over the details, but I gathered that she’d had problems with her family’s expectations of her, and Raine had stepped in to help. I found out later what exactly those expectations were, but at the time I left Evelyn to her privacy.

Raine convinced me to eat again as we talked, and this time I kept it all down. She fixed me a mug of hot chocolate and offered to add a slug of vodka from the fridge.

“No, thank you.”

“It’ll help, promise. It’s hardly the devil’s juice, it’s not even Tesco Value, and I’m only gonna give you a little drop. You’re not allergic or anything?”

”No, no, I’m not.” I sighed. Why not abandon another foundation? “Oh, why not? Go ahead.”

Peer pressure. Not something I ever experienced back in school. Never went to parties, never had any real close friends, never got offered a cigarette or stolen alcohol. That had always been for bad girls, people going off the rails, and I hardly needed any extra help to do that.

The hot chocolate went down smooth, chased with a sharp aftertaste and a slow warmth radiating out from my chest. I drank more, sighed, and realised I’d never done this either—sat in a cosy, comfy room with people my age. Friends? My soul was weak and sputtering, but I felt almost good. I wanted more.

“Where do I fit in to all this? What happened to me? To Maisie and I?”

My throat caught when I said her name, but I had to say it now.

“I don’t know,” Evelyn said, shaking her head. “I could make an educated guess, but I don’t know what it was that took you, or what it wanted, anything about it. This ‘Eye,’ hmm, I guarantee we’re all much happier in ignorance of the motivations of such a being.”

Raine got up and crossed behind my chair as Evelyn spoke. She went in for a shoulder rub again. This time I let her touch me, stiff and tense at first, wincing as she melted the knots out of my muscles. Evelyn looked on with barely concealed distaste. I wondered if it was jealousy, but I didn’t have the extra mental bandwidth for that right now.

“Why do I see the things I do?” I asked. “If they’re not hallucinations, then … ”

Evelyn studied me for a quiet moment. “I have a theory.”

“Our Evee’s got theories for everything,” Raine said. “One for every day of the year.”

Evelyn fixed Raine with a dagger-stare. “Will you stop that? And I am usually correct.” Raine held up one hand in surrender and Evelyn continued. “I suspect your waking visions are an ability to see pneuma-somatic fauna, without aid of any trance state or device, likely an intention or perhaps a side-effect of the Eye’s changes to your mind. I’ve never heard of it before, I have no idea if it’s possible, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Pneuma-somatic fauna,” I echoed, deadpan. “That means what, exactly?”

“Well … a less technical term … that is—”

“Say iiiiiiit,” Raine said, lighting up with a grin. “You know you want to.”

Evelyn rolled her eyes and huffed. “Spirits. You can see spirits, anima, kami, whatever you want to call them. Though I suspect you of all people don’t need to be told that doesn’t mean bedsheet ghosts and headless ladies.”

My menagerie of horrors? I nodded.

“And there was that servitor following me, don’t forget,” Raine said, a hint of smug pride in her voice.

“Yes, yes, we’ll have to look into that.” Evelyn waved her down and fixed me with a penetrating gaze. “More importantly, Heather, as Raine has made abundantly clear to me, you want the nightmares and the visions to stop, to go away. Correct?”

Yes died on my lips. Evelyn saw more than she let on.

She saw the seed, growing.

“Heather?” Raine prompted.

“Because that is not the only option,” Evelyn continued. “You deserve to know that. You did things today, with nothing but your mind, and that—”

“I think now’s a little too late at night, Evee,” Raine said. “And, uh, practical issues first, right?”

“You see?” Evelyn asked me. “Raine would have me coddle you.”

“Evee, come on, you promised,” Raine said.

“I did no such thing.”

“You did! And hey, she saved your life today, don’t be a shit about this. You’re not the only one who can sulk.”

“Stop it. Both of you,” I hissed, and shrugged Raine’s hands off my shoulders. “Stop talking past me and over me like I’m not here. Promised what?”

“I’m gonna put the warding sign back on your hand,” Raine said. “And under your pillow, and on your door. And Evelyn here, my lifelong friend and ally,” she said with an unexpected twist to her tone, “is going to help look into a more permanent solution. Aren’t you?”

Evelyn looked unimpressed, arms folded.

“If you can make the nightmares stop, then … ” I swallowed hard.

It had been ten years. One night in Wonderland had ruined me and torn out half my soul.

Not the only option?

Revenge?

Rescue?

I dared not touch the idea too closely. White-hot and impossible. Ten years? I couldn’t think that way, I’d drive myself over the edge. My resolution must have shown on my face, though, because Evelyn took a deep breath and answered me.

“Yes, yes, I do believe we can stop the nightmares. Using the warding sign will buy us time for a more permanent solution. We’ll have to see.”

“There you go, wasn’t so hard, was it?” Raine asked. Evelyn huffed.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I muttered. “In more ways than one.”

“It’ll be okay, I promise,” Raine said, and squeezed my shoulders.

“Says you.”

“Yeah, damn right, says me. Welcome to the real world, Heather.”

And then there were three.

 

* * *

 

I suppose you want to hear about the rest of it, don’t you? About the events in Sharrowford the following year, the ones which made the national news, the ones you don’t know half the truth about. And after, about how we turned back the clawing at the rim of reality.

But first, about those in Sharrowford my new friends were so eager to avoid.

And about my twin sister. About Maisie.

Don’t come here.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

I halted at the front gate to Evelyn’s house as Raine stepped onto the garden path. When she realised I wasn’t following, she turned and raised her eyebrows at me.

“You have got to be joking,” I said. “Evelyn lives here? Alone?”

“Her family owns the house. It’s complicated. Come on, it’ll be fine, she won’t bite, not this time.”

We’d left campus about twenty minutes ago, skirted the northern side of the student quarter, and crossed over into Sharrowford’s frayed eastern edge. Overlarge houses from another era squatted between weed-choked empty lots. Further west, toward the city’s core, these sorts of hulks got redeveloped, but out here they were home to the occasional student squat, older people unable to move away, and those poor fools hanging on to second homes in the vain hope of selling them one day. It wasn’t unsafe, but it wasn’t pretty either.

My hallucinations loved this place. Shaggy mammoths of hide and scale strode across the horizon, ghoulish forms watched us from dark corners but whipped away as we approached, and prowling canine shapes flowed back into the streets behind us as we passed, padding after me with pack curiosity.

I tried to ignore the itch between my shoulder blades, the feeling of being cut off, my retreat blocked.

Raine held my hand nearly the whole way. I hadn’t known what to do about that, hadn’t wanted to risk commenting on it in case she stopped. At first I was self-conscious. What if somebody saw us? But as we settled into a rhythm of walking, I allowed myself to enjoy the moments of peace and quiet, alongside a person I wanted to trust so badly.

When we stopped in front of Number 12 Barnslow Drive, I wondered for an abstracted moment if Raine was a serial killer, and if this was where she hid the bodies.

Evelyn’s house was a late Victorian red-brick monster draped with a mantle of overgrown ivy. A few tiny sash windows peered out into the street, all of them with curtains drawn. Blue tarpaulin patches peeked out from the damaged slate roof. The garden had gone to seed, grass matted and crowded out by moss, one huge tree in the back rustling in the wind. The garden path was at least clear of debris, but the paving stones were cracked and weathered. Framed by the overcast sky above Sharrowford that afternoon, this house was the last place I wanted to be.

Raine’s own obvious trepidation didn’t help. She wore her usual encouraging smile as she squeezed my hand and coaxed me over the garden threshold, but a tightness had seized her eyes, a thrumming expectation in her movements.

She’d tried to call Evelyn three more times on the way here. Straight to voice mail. Text messages too, no response.

She finally let go of my hand once we reached the front door, and shot me an attempt at a reassuring look. “Seriously, Heather, take a deep breath, it’s gonna be fine this time, I swear.”

I nodded and reminded myself that I wasn’t doing anything that crazy. A girl I sort of liked was trying to get me to be friends with her best friend, that was all. A little social effort and risk. They also both believed in the occult. Oh well.

What was the alternative? I glanced down the street at the swarm of hallucinations blocking my way out. Didn’t fancy walking back alone, shouldering my way through the claws and reeking fur and alien drool. I guessed that was my subconscious telling me I wanted this.

Raine pulled out her bunch of keys and fitted one into the lock.

“You have her door key?” I asked.

“Yeah. Like I said, she’s kinda the whole reason I’m here in Sharrowford. You know, look after her, keep certain kinds of people away from her, make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.” Raine tensed up as she swung the door inward, then relaxed when nothing jumped out at us. She took a step inside and called out. “Evee! Evee, s’me.”

I crossed the threshold. Raine closed the door behind us.

I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I was smitten with that house’s interior from the first step.

The large, open entrance hall probably used to be grand and fancy, a place to impress social callers. But it had since been hollowed out, re-filled and reused, like a hermit crab’s shell. Bare floorboards, cracked plaster, exposed ceiling beams. Less-faded rectangles of cream paint showed where paintings had once hung. Boxes were piled up against one wall, some of them crammed with stacks of paperback books, others filled with odd bric-a-brac, little pewter statues, painted wooden masks, all sorts of strange things I could have spent hours wondering at.

A grandfather clock stood opposite, ticking away the seconds, a beautiful oak and brass relic of the nineteenth century. I’d never seen a real grandfather clock; they were for haunted houses in old movies. I found the sound calming and unwavering. Several thick rugs covered the floor and the heating was turned up against the gathering cold, pumping from a wall-mounted iron radiator, another real relic. I could see the kitchen through one open doorway. A set of creaky-looking stairs vanished up into the darkness of the second floor. Half the room was cast into shadows by the soft ceiling light.

It was so cosy. No manufactured anonymity in sight. The sort of place I wish I dreamed about. I had to remind myself this house belonged to Evelyn, who had been very rude to me. Perhaps we had some taste in common, at least.

Raine cupped her hands to her mouth. “Evee!”

Silence.

“Hmm, well, all her shoes are here, so she must be in.” Raine puffed out a long breath. “Evelyn!”

I noticed the shoes scattered by the doorway—old trainers, some big weatherproof boots, a pair of fluffy uggs—along with a coat and an anorak hung up on hooks nearby. A wooden walking stick was propped next to the door. Then I noticed two of the rugs had been rolled up and pushed against the walls to clear a space.

“Are the carpets meant to be like that? … Raine, what is that?”

We hadn’t seen it at first, in the gloom. Raine quickly kicked her shoes off and went for a better look. I slipped my shoes off too and followed her.

It was a magic circle.

Exactly like you might see in those silly books about pagan rituals and summoning demons, all multiple interlocking rings and esoteric symbols, with a few words written in Greek around the edges.

It was drawn with a mixture of chalk and dry-erase marker, straight onto the bare floorboards. The chalk and pens lay nearby, along with a sports bottle full of water and a bag of cheese snacks. A big leather-bound book was open on the floor, showing a diagram which looked very much like the magic circle, next to a smaller modern notebook with additions and redesigns of the symbols.

One of my hallucinations brooded in the darkest corner, a hunched, emaciated thing with tiny pinpoint black eyes and thin bones, skin stretched over bulging ribs, twitching to itself and plucking at the ground with blunt claws. A product of my private tension. I did my best not to look.

“Ahh jeez, Evee, what the hell have you been doing without me?” Raine muttered as she looked down at the circle.

Bile rose in my throat. I had to avert my eyes. The symbols around the edge of the magic circle gave me a terrible sense of déjà vu, as if I’d seen them in a nightmare. Great, now new-agey nonsense had become a brand new schizophrenic trigger. Just what I wanted, thank you, Raine.

“This isn’t exactly helping my scepticism,” I said.

Raine looked up and cracked a grin for me. She gestured at the circle. “I don’t even know what this is for. I wish Evee had let me know what she was up to. Could be anything.”

“Such as pulling a prank on a mentally ill girl she doesn’t like much?” I gave a sad little smile and shook my head to let Raine know I wasn’t entirely serious. Wouldn’t surprise me, though.

“She’d never do that. I mean it, she’s really not that bad if you get to know—”

The bone-thing in the corner stood up and stretched itself as Raine spoke, slow and sinuous, like a cat, clicking and grinding its joints. I couldn’t help but glance at it for a moment. Raine followed my gaze.

Her grin died. Her eyes went wide.

“R-Raine?”

“Heather, you see that, right?”

Raine didn’t wait for an answer. She grabbed my arm and pulled me away, hard enough to make me stumble, and put herself between me and the creature.

The bone-thing stared at us, flexing its claws and unfurling another pair of limbs from its back, delicate arched blade structures tipped with razor-sharp hooks. It clicked and clacked as it whirred its head back and forth, dark grey skin bunching and stretching. The air filled with the scent of acid-etched metal, iron filings, and blood. All in my head.

“Raine, there’s n-nothing there.”

Raine bit the tip of her tongue in concentration. She stared it down. A bullfighter ready for the charge.

The bone-thing swayed one way, then the other, testing its own weight. I tried to slow my breathing.

“Y-you can’t see that,” I stammered. “You’re f-faking it, you just followed the direction of my eyes. Raine, stop—”

The bone-monster screamed and leapt.

It sprang toward us on kangaroo legs, claw-tipped arms hissing through the air, screeching through a lamprey mouth of ringed teeth. The sound felt like blades rubbing together inside my head, the too-thin bones of its face and naked chest vibrating under pressure.

I’d like to think that under other circumstances I could have ignored it. I’d ignored hallucinations doing much worse before. Instead I squealed and flinched and fell down on my arse with a thump.

In that moment I hated Raine. I hated her for making me suspect a figment of my diseased mind was real, for exploiting my illness, for humiliating me, for terrifying me with my own brain-ghosts.

Raine was ready for it.

That’s kind of what Raine does; she takes the impossible in her stride.

She yanked the nightstick out of her jacket, flipped it in her hand, wound up—and smashed the bone-thing’s charge to a dead stop.

I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. I sat there like a lemon, unable to process my own sensory data. To be fair, Raine hardly needed any help.

Her first strike caught the bone-thing across the chest. Apparently those thin ribs weren’t very robust, because they shattered under the stainless steel club, along with my sense of reality. Raine followed through as the monster’s screech warbled out and it crumpled up around its ruined chest, spurs of grey rib poking from ragged holes. One bone-tipped limb groped for Raine as she ducked out of the way. She whacked it in the back of the head and it flopped down in a heap, twitching and jerking on the floorboards. She aimed a good hard kick at the thing’s neck, connected with a wet crunch, then hopped back a couple of steps.

“Wooo!” Raine let out a victory whoop and shook herself all over, heaving deep shuddering breaths in and out.

When she turned to me, she was grinning. She’d been grinning the whole time.

My hallucination was real and my cute new friend was high on violence. A small, dutiful, still-functioning part of my mind managed to file these facts away for later before the rest of me succumbed to numb panic.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “Make sure it’s dead first!”

“What? Oh, yeah.” Raine laughed and turned back to the bone-thing. She flipped the nightstick over in one hand and broke the monster’s fragile spine. At least, I assumed it had a spine. It stopped twitching a few moments later. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Raine ran her free hand through her hair and blew out a long, slow breath. She forced herself down from whatever psychological precipice she was flirting with. I tried to get up but found my legs were made of jelly.

“Hey, hey, lemme help.” Raine took my hand, pulled me to my feet, and braced me against her side until we were both sure I could stand unaided. She squeezed my shoulder. “I remember the way it felt, my first time seeing weird shit. Take a moment, okay? Take your time.”

“I’m fine, I’m okay … Thank you.” All I could do was stare at the dead monster on the floor. Raine frowned in my peripheral vision.

“Sure about that, Heather?”

The world seemed very far away. The dead monster on the floor expanded to fill all my senses—the grainy, pitted texture of the grey skin, the smell of acid and metal in the air, the folded and crimped flesh around the claws, the spurs of bone poking through the ripped meat of the ruined ribcage, the pooling blood leaving awful stains on the floorboards.

“Heather? Hey, Heather, look at me.” I ignored Raine and gently pushed away from her, then stepped forward and poked the dead monster with my shoe.

It was solid enough. Weighty. It had mass. I pushed harder, felt the flesh yield and the bones resist.

Then, I gave it a little kick.

“How is this real?” I asked, and the hysteria gripped me at last. “How is this real, Raine?” I turned on her and spread my arms in a shrug, as if this was all her fault. “This thing even looks stupid, it looks like a rubber-suit monster from a horror film. And it’s real. It’s real. I can touch it. How can this be a real thing?”

I was breathing too hard, my chest tight and my throat constricted.

“This is nonsense,” I said.

Raine laughed. “You’re gonna be fine, Heather. You know, I thought you’d go into a full-on crying jag. This is pretty much the last way I wanted to introduce you to the real world, but you’re taking this great. Good on you.”

I shot her a dark look. This was, in a way, still her fault. Ignorance was not bliss, but it was better than this.

Raine smiled at me, and I almost couldn’t deal with that. She still held the nightstick, smeared with the creature’s oily black blood. It was right there, dead on the floor a few feet from the magic circle, and she’d killed it. Ten seconds ago she’d committed the most brutal act of physical violence I’d ever witnessed. Wasn’t anything like reading about it. I felt shaky and numb.

And I found her irresistible.

My brain didn’t have any spare bandwidth to deal with the implications of Raine’s violence high or my gut response. I quietly filed away a question—Am I attracted to dangerous people, or just likely psychopaths? How did I not know this before?—then crashed back to reality as the adrenaline drained away.

“Quick and really important question,” Raine was saying. “I’m guessing you don’t see any other hallucinations in here, right?”

“No, no, I haven’t done. I mean I don’t. And I better not do.”

“And you didn’t in Willow House, either?”

“How do you know that?” I frowned at her.

“Sneaking suspicion. We’ve got both here and Willow warded against intrusion by various things, and I think it’s dampening whatever causes your visions. So, if you see anything, it’s probably really here. Shout if you see something, yeah?”

I raised both hands in surrender, still teetering on the edge of hysteria. A strange laugh entered my voice. “I can’t— Raine, I can’t— I can’t process this. Okay? I can’t process this. What does this mean?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you. It means you’re not crazy.”

“Yes, I am. One monster—which, okay, I’ll admit it’s probably not made of paper-mache and chicken wire—does not explain a lifetime of hallucinations and blackouts. One dead freakshow does not negate schizophrenia.”

“You’re not schizophrenic. I mean, you’re probably not. You might have a touch of it anyway, I don’t know for sure, but that’s not the point. You ain’t crazy, Heather. You’re touched, you’re haunted, and it’s not your fault.”

“What even is this thing?” I gestured down at the monster. “Where did it come from? What’s it doing here? These are basic things that make no sense, Raine!”

“Oh, I have no idea.” Raine laughed. “Evelyn, she … uh.” Raine’s smile died as realisation returned. “Evelyn might. Ahh, fuck.” She turned and raised her voice, calling to the empty spaces of the cavernous old house. “Evelyn! Evee!”

“Maybe she’s hiding?”

“Maybe.” Raine glanced down at the monster’s corpse. “No red blood on it, that’s a good sign. Right.”

“ … right, yes.” I swallowed, hard and involuntary.

Raine grabbed my hand. “Come on, stick with me, in case there’s more of them.”

The frantic search for Evelyn acted as a firebreak on my mounting hysteria, gave me a task to focus on, even if I was just tagging along. Raine’s panic helped as well, raw and real and turned to practical ends. She checked corners and slammed doors open and shouted for Evelyn.

Half the light switches in the place didn’t work. The floorboards creaked and the windows let in precious little light. The rooms were a jumble of old, stately furniture and junk piled up in crates and under sheets, except for Evelyn’s comfy, pastel-filled bedroom, where the bed was piled with layers and a laptop lay abandoned in the middle of a huge slab desk. Raine darted into a study packed with books, then took the stairs back to the ground floor three at a time. She leapt the last half dozen. I struggled to keep up.

I wish my first impression of Evelyn’s house had been less tainted by the circumstances. I could have spent days going through those books and peering at the mysterious contents of all those crates. So many nooks and crannies, hidden secrets, rooms full of surprises.

Evelyn wasn’t there.

Back in the front room Raine seemed lost. We’d covered the whole house. She looked at the nightstick in her hands and stared at the bone-thing’s corpse for a moment. Then she started toward the front door before thinking better of it. I struggled not to look at either the dead body or the magic circle on the floor. The circle tickled at the edge of my mind, taunting me to pay attention.

“Maybe she went outside?” I tried.

“Nah, not without her cane.” Raine jerked a thumb at the wooden walking stick propped up against the wall. “She wouldn’t get very far.”

“She needs a cane?”

“Fuck, why can’t I find her mobile phone anywhere?”

“She must … must be here somewhere,” I said. Which was a lie. I did not believe I was correct.

Because Evelyn wasn’t here, was she? She was wherever those ethereal winds had taken her. That unmistakable disfigured hand clutching at my wrist, desperate to hold on.

In a dream, in a hallucination.

In a place only I could go.

Raine’s panic, the distraught look on her face, allowed me to entertain a line of thought I had kept locked and bottled and shuttered for a decade, since I was a scared little girl crying for a twin sister who had never existed.

What if all this was real?

Evelyn had insulted and humiliated me. She was a clear competitor for Raine’s attention. I owed her nothing. What sense was there in risking myself for her? That’s what a sane person would have thought, a self-interested rational actor with a healthy sense of caution.

You know what I thought?

Nobody deserves Wonderland.

I forced my eyes down to the magic circle on the floor. The interlocking design and the symbols meant nothing to me, but my subconscious understood. All those buried lessons from the Eye. The magic circle described more than words; it was a species of mathematics.

The inside of my skull tingled with pressure pain and my stomach clenched with tension.

I squinted and concentrated. The pain climbed as I dredged my memory, trying to connect the circle to the underlying principles I’d been taught over and over again. I hunched up around my chest, my mouth bone-dry, back drenched with sudden cold sweat.

Raine stared at me. “ … Heather?”

My eyes teared up, stinging and aching as a great wave built behind them. I hiccuped and tasted bile in my throat, acid reflux as my body rebelled. I wrapped my arms around myself to control the shaking.

“Heather? What’s wrong?”

The relevant lesson burst into my conscious mind, a nightmare-ghost, a present from the Eye.

It was the mental equivalent of plunging my hand into boiling water; I whipped my mind back and howled in pain, gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut as the pressure in my head slammed to a blinding spike.

I made it into Evelyn’s kitchen and got my face over the sink before I vomited, once, twice, three times, until my stomach muscles clenched shut on nothing. My vision blurred and a high-pitched whine invaded my hearing as a nosebleed started. I coughed and snorted out blood and pinched the bridge of my nose.

Raine joined me at the sink, hands on my back. “Heather! Shit, what happened?”

“I can do this,” I said between heaving breaths, and wiped my mouth on my hand. I turned the tap on and splashed my face with water. It ran pink with blood. “I can do it.”

“Do what? What? What are you talking about?”

“I can— I can— don’t— don’t touch me, it might not work.” I pushed Raine away and stumbled back into the front room as fast as I could. Raine grabbed my arm.

“Heather, hey, whoa, come—”

“Don’t!” I yanked my arm out of her grip and almost fell over as I lurched back toward the magic circle.

“Heather, now is not— I need to find Evelyn, please.”

“I’m trying! I know where she went!”

I forced myself to stare at the circle. For a moment I shied away from both the pain and the implication of what I was trying to do.

I owed Raine. She’d saved me, in a way, that morning in a sad little Sharrowford cafe. She’d given me a sliver of hope and kept me from giving up on life, made me try for one more day, then one more week, and here she was with her best friend—her girlfriend? I didn’t care anymore—lost and gone like I had been. On the other side of nowhere. Elsewhere. Outside.

I plunged my mind back into the boiling water, back into the Eye’s lesson.

My nose streamed with blood and my head pounded as my mind ran impossible pathways. I curled up as my body tried to vomit again, but my stomach was empty. Each piece of the equation burned like molten metal, but I forced myself to picture every one with perfect clarity. I was shaking all over, my knees felt ready to collapse, my fingers and toes were numb with pins and needles.

Raine stood at arm’s length, one hand outstretched as she hesitated to touch me.

The pain in my head rose to a crescendo as I slotted the last number into place.

Reality collapsed.

I screwed my eyes shut as the angles of the world twisted and inverted and Raine’s face ran into a kaleidoscope of colours, certain that I’d be rendered truly, irreversibly insane if I watched the process happen.

A whisper of alien wind brushed my face and left the taste of iron and ozone on my tongue. Grit and stone shifted under my feet. I opened my eyes and saw sky like rotten apricot. The Stone-world from this morning.

I’d Slipped, on purpose. I’d made it happen. It worked.

At least it wasn’t Wonderland.

Every muscle ached like I’d been worked over by a gorilla with a rolling pin. My head pounded with an expanding band of red-hot steel inside my skull, and there was a razor-sharp stabbing behind my eyes. I had to lean forward to stop the nosebleed draining down my throat. I’d also drained myself in some other way, some less easily definable way. I was trembling all over, felt weak and bruised inside, in a core place I’d never felt before. A phantom organ.

I squinted through blurred vision across the bleak grey rock of this Outside place. It was so ugly, barren and broken, with towers of stone like arthritic fingers reaching upward. I stood in a natural dip in the landscape, filled with foul-smelling ground fog and surrounded by a jagged ridge.

Shapes prowled that ridge, jerky things with knife-bodies and thin bones, hidden in the mist.

“Evelyn?” I tried to call out, but had to hack and cough and spit to clear my throat. “Evelyn?”

And there she was.

Evelyn sat with her back against the base of a stone pillar, her knees drawn up to her chest, small and shaking. She gaped at me, speechless, a lump of white quartz held in one hand. Her loose bun of blonde hair was lank and damp from the soaking, sucking fog, and her palms were scuffed, clothes dusted with gravel, eyes red-rimmed from crying.

“ … You? H-how … ?” she managed to ask, then glanced up at the figures on the ridge. They’d heard our voices, peering and clicking and creeping down into the dip to find us.

“I felt your hand, this morning,” I said. I struggled to stay standing, hands on my knees to hold myself steady.

Evelyn frowned at me. “What? That was you?”

We stared at each other, the magician and the schizophrenic.

Except I wasn’t, was I? I wasn’t crazy.

No more safety blanket.

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