Emma leaned over and hugged him. “What are we going to do?” She could see her reflection in the brass tabletop. Even in its honey colour, she could see the dark patches that shaded her eye sockets and hollowed her face. That morning she had brushed her hair and been mortified to find a hank in the bristles the size of a tennis ball. I know what I shall look like in the coffin, she had thought, inspecting the mirror. It had not taken a gigantic leap of the imagination to see how she would appear when she was old. And only ten years previously she would have been unable to legally buy a drink in this bar. All that tautness, that sass, was gone. All that pink.
Sean noticed Emma slump and reached out, stroking the back of her wrist. When he had opened his eyes in the bath to find her sitting by him, waiting, he had been overcome with a surge of need and affection for her and knew then that he loved her. He had recognised their link, at a level too deep for him to comprehend, and believed she did too. Making flesh what had until now been some kind of forgotten knowledge made things between them awkward. But they had both found de Fleche’s house and the strange flame within it. They had both peeked through to see what lay on the other side of the portal before Sean pulled them out as the door locked, the flame solidifying and crumbling to dust as they staggered back. But this whole experience was obviously debiting her reserves of energy. He could see it in the pallor of her skin and the lines that grooved her forehead. The way she looked at him now, for example, over the rim of her glass, an expectant look in her eyes. And a resignation too. Slow fright. He knew that she was building up a defence against the fantastic events that were invading their lives. If he wasn’t careful, she would shore herself up so completely that he would have a hard time getting her to speak to him about anything. She was slowly closing all the doors, all the windows. Switching off all the lights.
“I’ve always dreamt of that place—” they both said.
IT WASN’T TELEPATHY, but Emma understood him, and trusted him, more than anybody else she had known. She had dreamed of the hill and its strange population ever since childhood, but she had never credited it with much thought beyond her sleeping hours. She had no idea what it signified, if anything, nor did she pay much heed to it, until now, when Sean confessed of his own awareness of the place.
Sean said, “Pardoe told me that Inserts were agents who were trained to work in unusual territories. Under unusual conditions.”
Emma shook her head. “But I don’t recall being trained for anything.”
He wasn’t fazed by that. “You know I’m telling you the truth. We share the same dreams. I don’t remember being trained either. I just know something happened when I was younger. Something bad.”
She shrugged. “Race memory. Coincidence. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not because I’m an Insert, or a Pervert or whatever jargon it is that you’re trying to sell me.”
“Pardoe says that we are in danger if we stay here. Anywhere, more than a few days at a time.”
“Oh really? Why?”
“He says that we’ll be tracked down and destroyed.”
Losing patience now. “By whom?”
“Whoever it was that trained us in the first place, when we were kids. They thought we weren’t fully formed when we escaped, that we couldn’t have any sway on what happened. But obviously we can. He says that the same ripple that alerted him could also alert the people who got us involved.”
He made to take another swig of his whisky, but he had finished it. The bartender noticed and brought a bottle over.
“You saw that thing, that doorway in Myddleton Lane,” Sean continued when the bartender had taken up his original position. “We almost went through, for God’s sake.”
Emma nodded. “What is that place?”
“Pardoe kept referring to it as the Zoo. I don’t know.” Sean rubbed the back of her neck with his fingers. He noticed that the guys playing pool had picked up on the bandages covering his wrists. The bandages that were staining heavily.
“Look, Emma, do you think you could help me staunch some of this blood? It’s getting a bit too obvious. I mean, do you think I’ll ever stop bleeding?”
Emma rummaged in her coat pockets and pulled out some fresh packets of gauze. “What’s the Zoo? And how can we influence what happens in it?”
“I don’t know what the Zoo is. I suppose it’s the area we dream of. And I don’t know how we affect what goes on in there. But someone thinks we do. And feels threatened enough to do something about it.”
Sean was looking tired. She felt sorry for giving him such a hard time, but she couldn’t accept the way things were panning out. Her entire life so far had been dangerous, but predictable. It was when events started getting so that she couldn’t second-guess them that she became worried.
Sean said, “I need this. It might help me to find who killed my parents. Who killed Naomi. Naomi was a part of it. She was like us. They want us dead.” His face was set and she could see this was something he had been patiently waiting for all his life. He was hooked. He said, “You’re not convinced, are you?”
She shook her head, a little sad smile trying to soften the blow. And then: “I don’t know.”
“Let’s get back,” he said. He said: “I love you.”
RAIN, AND LOTS of it.
Marshall left a dent in a corrugated fence, failing to stop as he barrelled out of the alleyway opposite the tower block. He hardly felt his knee smarting. All he could think about was the gun in his hand and the need to get up the stairwell without expiring. The smell of toasted car and petrol hung around his clothes and clogged his nostrils, flooding his throat with a burn that at least kept him awake.
He had never seen anyone move like that before. He looked back. She was nowhere to be seen.
He wiped his face with a soaking handkerchief. Okay. Up ahead, losing itself to the sheet of rain above the streetlamps, stood Bagg Tower, one of the less savoury estate buildings in this part of the city. He picked up his pace, splashing out into the main road, having to climb over the bumpers of the parked cars clogging the street. As he stepped onto the road a shot rang out and he watched his left hand turn to mist at the end of his arm.
It’s not hurting, he thought, a moment before the pain exploded up his side and swamped his mind. Gritting his teeth, he dashed into the shadows beneath the punched-in forecourt of the estate, grateful that the streetlamps were smashed and the windows on the first two floors dead or boarded up. He chanced another look back from the safety of the dark but still couldn’t see anything. Another shot: the shell scorched his cheek as it screamed by and embedded itself in the wall.
He took the stairs at a canter, trying to listen above the clatter of his heart and the static hiss of rain for her noise as she pursued him. Pain flooded his body and he greyed out, only regaining his senses when he clouted his head against a drain pipe. He could smell the wetness of his flesh where the shell had torn him open.
Here she came. Here she came. He could hear her moving through the rain. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see her dodging the drops, mindful of how the water in her clothes might slow her down. The way she moved… in his delirium, Marshall almost laughed with the grace of it. He managed to lever himself up to look over the edge of the balcony, and as soon as he did so about a square foot of masonry disappeared, inches away from his face. She was shooting on the lam and she’d be here in about thirty seconds to mop up. He knew he was dead. It was just a matter of timing.