Trespassers

by Claire McFall

  I came to be with you.

  The words were on the tip of her tongue, but they wouldn’t come out. This wasn’t going at all like she planned. In her mind, Tristan was thrilled to see her, hugging her and smiling. He wanted to take her under his wing, show her this new world where they could actually live; where they could actually have a life.

  Instead, she could feel the disapproval – disappointment? – rolling off Tristan in waves. And the frostiness from his soul was palpable. Susanna chewed on her lip.

  It was Jack who answered.

  “We’re stuck together,” he said, speaking fast. “Since we came back through, we can’t go more than ten metres from each other. Susanna said you’d know how to fix it.” He stared hard at Tristan. “Do you?”

  “No.” Tristan shook his head. “The same thing happened to us. Every time we separate, it’s like Dylan’s dying all over again. Only this time, I feel it too.”

  “You haven’t figured out how to cut it?” Jack’s temper was rising.

  “No,” Tristan repeated, eyes narrowing on Jack, “I haven’t.”

  Susanna’s nerves skittered to life at the power, the menace, in Tristan’s tone. But in typical Jack style, he either didn’t notice it, or blithely ignored it. He rounded on Susanna.

  “You told me!” he snapped. “You told me he’d be able to help! But that was just another lie. You don’t have a clue, do you?” Jack was getting into full rant mode, but this time, Susanna didn’t feel scared. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tristan take his hand from Dylan’s and shift his body weight. Still, Jack went on. “Well, you know what? You’re the one who doesn’t belong here! If I just get rid of you—”

  Whatever threat Jack had been about to deliver was silenced as Tristan grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and propelled him backwards until his shoulders smacked off the stone edge of the cliff beside the tunnel mouth.

  “Stop,” he snarled. “Not another word.”

  “Get off me!” Jack tried to fight, to rip Tristan’s grip from his jacket, but he couldn’t. “Get your bloody hands off me!”

  “You should be dead,” Tristan hissed. “Do you get that? You should be dead. And if you were really lucky you’d be across the wasteland by now. If not, you’d be one of the wraiths. Did you see them in the wasteland? Do you know what they are? They’re souls who were too stupid to keep their traps shut and do what they were told.” Pulling back, Tristan let go of Jack’s jacket.

  To Susanna’s astonishment, Jack stayed exactly where he was. Even more shockingly, he stayed silent.

  “You’d be a wraith, I reckon,” Tristan went on. “You’ve got that look about you. You think you know best, but guess what? In the wasteland, we know best. You’re not dead, are you?” He waited until Jack gave a tiny shake of his head. “Be grateful, then. Got it?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Tristan turned his back on Jack. When Jack didn’t react, didn’t move a muscle, Susanna released the breath she’d been holding. She watched as Tristan went straight back to his soul and enfolded her in his arms.

  “We don’t know how to break the soul bond, Susanna,” he said, “but the Inquisitor might.”

  “The Inquisitor?” she managed to ask. “Who the hell is that?”

  “It’s the reason we’re here,” Tristan replied. “It’s from the wasteland. Two days ago it cornered us, told me it was going to pass judgement on me. It’s got powers, strong ones. It had me frozen in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t even speak unless it let me.” At that, Susanna felt icy dread grip her own gut. Anything that frightened Tristan was something to be terrified of. “It made a deal with us, told me that if we want to stay we need to undo the damage we caused crossing over. Close the hole, kill the wraith that came through.” Tristan paused. “That’s how you came through, right? You saw me go – and followed me?”

  No. That was the truthful answer. No, Susanna had found a soul and convinced him to fall back into his dead body and – according to Tristan – ripped her own hole in the veil between the wasteland and the real world.

  Which meant an Inquisitor thing might be hunting for her now, too.

  She needed to tell Tristan. Tell him and ask for his help. He’d closed theirs; he could close hers too, or at least tell her how it was done. Susanna opened her mouth to confess, but she couldn’t do it. It just wouldn’t come out.

  She didn’t want to be a burden to Tristan. She didn’t want to admit to the deceit, the manipulation she’d had to do to convince a soul to take her back. If Tristan believed she’d merely followed him through, taken the soul she had with her at the time…

  That didn’t seem so bad.

  That didn’t seem so devious.

  Glancing back, she saw Jack was ignoring them, staring off across the countryside, fuming. Seething over his damaged pride. She turned back, gave Tristan her most winning smile, the one she reserved for the trickiest of souls.

  “Yes,” she lied. “I saw you go and followed.” She took a deep breath. “I wanted a chance at life too – and so did Jack of course. He was too young to go.”

  Tristan nodded – his face hard to read again.

  “You said you had to kill a wraith,” Susanna continued. “That wraith?” She pointed back into the tunnel.

  “No,” Dylan spoke up this time. “We think there might be more, because the gap has been open a while. One of them murdered four men in the train tunnel days ago. We saw it on the news.”

  “But,” Susanna shook her head. “They could be anywhere by now. How on earth are you meant to find them?”

  “We will,” Tristan said, squeezing Dylan, who had paled considerably. “We will because we have to. I can sense them if we get close, so we just have to figure out where to look.”

  “Why?” Jack asked, daring to step back into the circle, although he deliberately kept his distance from Tristan. “What happens if you don’t?”

  Dylan’s words were soft, haunted. “The Inquisitor will kill us both.”

  Dylan’s words hit Susanna as a punch to the stomach. What had she done? Followed Tristan to the same awful fate, and doomed Jack’s life too, in the process. She couldn’t tell them the truth now – but she could learn from Tristan. And save his life in the process.

  “We’ll help you,” she stuttered. “Come with us – we’ve got a car. We’ll find your wraiths and kill them together.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  As Susanna and Jack led them to the car, Dylan pulled at Tristan’s arm to slow him down. She could tell he didn’t want to talk, but she had to know.

  “Tristan—”

  “Yeah?” he mumbled, his voice rough with worry.

  “Who is she?” Dylan asked.

  “You know who she is,” Tristan said, lifting his shoulders in a small shrug. “A ferryman.”

  “You know what I mean, Tristan. Who is she – to you?”

  “We worked together,” he offered, but Dylan shook her head.

  “You work alone,” she said. “That’s what you told me. Only ever meeting souls, and transporting them through the wasteland.” She swallowed past the glass that had lodged in her throat. “So how do you know her? Is she – are you and her—”

  “Me and her?” Tristan leaned closer, frowning. “There’s no me and her. Past tense or present. Each ferryman works alone, but we have set routes, and hers was alongside mine. When our souls’ journeys overlapped, we’d see each other and we’d know we weren’t quite so alone. That’s all.” He gave Dylan a sympathetic smile and reached out to hold her hand.

  “Don’t.” Dylan shifted back out of easy reach, putting her hands up to ward him off. “Don’t make me out to be some jealous girlfriend.” OK, she was. But that wasn’t all there was to this. She kept her voice low. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

  Tristan sighed. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Which part are you sorry about? Dylan waited but Tristan didn’t say anything more. “You knew she was here, didn�
�t you? You didn’t seem surprised she’d crossed over.”

  She’d intended to stay calm and rational about things. But then, she’d never been calm or rational where Tristan was concerned, not even in the beginning – when his surly attitude had driven her nuts – and she just couldn’t keep the accusation out of her voice.

  Dylan watched Tristan’s reaction carefully. She could see his face working. Whatever expression he was going for – nonchalance? innocence? – it wasn’t working. He just looked guilty.

  “I knew,” he admitted. “I sensed her as soon as she came through. A few days ago.”

  “A few days ago?”

  “Dylan, that’s the thing. I knew it was a ferryman – it felt different to when the Inquisitor was watching us. It wasn’t malevolent, so I didn’t want to worry you. It was more like a resonance. A harmony.”

  Dylan didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. “Could you tell it was Susanna? Before you saw her, I mean.”

  “Yes,” Tristan said. “I recognised her straight away. I didn’t know why she was here, but I knew it was her.”

  It all came back to that, for Dylan. He’d lied to her – an omission was as bad as a lie. It felt like a betrayal. Like he didn’t trust her. That hurt.

  “And you chose not to tell me?” That, that was the real problem. If Susanna was nothing to him, why not tell her? Another ferryman had crossed over! Of course she should have known about it!

  “I don’t know.” Tristan fixed his eyes forward to where Susanna and Jack were reaching the car.

  “You don’t know,” Dylan echoed. She stared at him, hard, waiting for more than that non-answer.

  “I just…” he gave another shrug, one that made Dylan want to strangle him. “What with everything that had happened. Your injury, the murders, the wraith at the tunnel, your dad… I just, I just figured you had enough to worry about.”

  It was a good answer, sensible. Rational. But—

  “You should have told me,” Dylan said quietly. “After you lied about the wraiths, and then wouldn’t talk about it when you were feeling watched… I can’t believe you would do this to me again!” Her voice raised with every accusation, so much so that Susanna turned to look at them as she and Jack waited.

  Tristan blew out a breath through his nose, then acceded the point with a sharp jerk of his chin. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know I’ve said it before. I know I promised I wouldn’t keep things from you.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, a tiny gesture. “It was stupid.” Another tiny gesture, this time a grin, there and gone in a flash. “I’m used to operating on my own. Making decisions alone. I’m not used to opening up to someone else. This is new to me – I’m not very good at it yet, but I want to be, Dylan.”

  Dylan believed it; his sincerity, the regret in his eyes, was impossible to doubt. But the hurt of another betrayal was too raw, and they were about to get in a car with the girl he had lied about – the girl he had shared his whole life with, who knew what it was like to be…

  The only other ferryman in the whole world.

  THIRTY

  It didn’t take long for Dylan to realise Jack’s car wasn’t exactly Jack’s car. She watched him fiddling about under the dash, hot-wiring it.

  But getting in a stolen car was the least of her worries. She was finding it hard to breathe past the cold, hard lump in her chest. Every time Susanna spoke to Tristan, every warm look she sent his way, made that lump throb in a painful spasm.

  It felt like her heart was breaking, but with the Inquisitor’s deadline hanging over their heads, and the wraiths still out there, getting hungrier with every moment that passed, she had to swallow it back. She had to.

  She could fall apart later. Right now, they had wraiths to kill.

  They set off, Dylan in the passenger seat while Jack drove. Tristan and Susanna sat in the back, their eyes closed, concentrating. Apart from a slight frown furrowing Susanna’s forehead, their faces were expressionless, which was good – because they were holding hands.

  Tristan and Susanna could just barely feel the presence of the wraith, the presence of evil, and they’d discovered that their sense of it was amplified if they were touching. The discussion about how to find the wraiths had been awkward for everyone, but Dylan had a sense that Susanna had enjoyed that particular discovery. Especially now they were squashed together in the back seat, fingers entwined, while Dylan and Jack tried to navigate with directions as vague and unhelpful as “north”, “that way” and “over there”. Dylan tried to keep her gaze ahead, but she couldn’t resist turning every ten seconds – checking to see if they’d shifted any closer, checking for signs that they were enjoying the closeness – because Dylan certainly wasn’t.

  Eventually, Jack drove them into a village called Bridge of Allan, and Tristan snapped his eyes open. Gaze snagging with Dylan’s, the first thing he did was take his hand from Susanna’s. Good. Dylan watched him as he looked around them, taking in the location.

  “This is it,” he said. “I can feel the wraith is close by even on my own.”

  “Me too,” Susanna agreed.

  Teacher’s pet.

  Jack parked in front of a café, the outside seating area deserted, tables filled with puddles of rainwater. Through the steamed-up windows, Dylan could see clusters of what looked like University of Stirling students staring at their laptops, oblivious to this carload and their deadly task.

  “Do you know exactly where it is?” Dylan asked Tristan, sitting forward in her seat so that she could pull off her jacket.

  “No,” Tristan shook his head. “We’ll keep searching. It can’t come out during the day of course, so it will have found somewhere safe to hide. Like a cave or a drain or something like that.”

  “Somewhere dark and creepy, you mean?”

  “Exactly that. The closer we get to it, the easier it should be to find.” Tristan turned to Susanna. “Like when you were searching for me.”

  “Brilliant.” This time Dylan didn’t bother to disguise her caustic tone. “Where do you suggest we start?”

  “Those woods.” Tristan nodded to a patch of evergreens, rising moodily up the hill that hid the University of Stirling campus from their view. “I can sense darkness coming from there.”

  “Pain and death,” Susanna agreed. “And hunger. We need to move fast.”

  “Yes, we know.” Dylan took a deep breath. “Lead on, Macduff.”

  Tristan sent her a confused look, but he started walking, and Dylan and Susanna plodded along in the rain behind him. Jack took up the rear.

  It took less than ten minutes to reach the wooded area. Tristan and Susanna climbed over the waist-high wire fence at once, but Dylan paused. She really, really didn’t want to go in there. Into the dark, where shadows stretched out like reaching fingers and roots rose up out of the ground to trip her, bring her to her knees. Oh yes, and where a wraith was probably hiding, hungry to feast on human prey.

  If it wasn’t for the sight of Tristan and Susanna walking away from her, shoulder to shoulder, looking like a pair, a couple, she might have stayed there. But as she watched, Susanna turned to say something to Tristan, and he crooked his head and smiled.

  “Right,” Dylan mumbled under her breath, and scrambled over. Jack followed. Rushing a little, she strode ahead of him until she was just a step behind Susanna and Tristan.

  “Remember how I told you in the wasteland that I hated hiking?” Dylan huffed, out of breath after just a minute or so of following the two ferrymen uphill. “And hills?”

  Tristan grunted. Turned to flash her a quick, sympathetic look.

  “Well, it’s still true. Know what else I hate?” She swiped at a low-hanging hank of Douglas fir. “Trees! And mud. And rain. Nature,” she finished, her trainer squelching into the boggy ground.

  “I’m sorry,” Tristan replied, turning to walk backwards, his feet annoyingly confident and secure on the rough terrain. “If I could, I’d leave you down in the town. Nice and w
arm in a café, with cake.”

  That sounded unbelievably good at that moment. It didn’t matter that Dylan was literally tied to Tristan’s side, though. She wouldn’t have let him leave her behind anyway – not with Susanna.

  “After,” she told him. “You can buy me cake after. A big slice.”

  Of course, Tristan didn’t actually have any money of his own, so it would be Dylan paying with her rapidly decreasing funds, but it’s the thought that counts.

  “Promise,” Tristan told her. “Now… shush! This wraith will be a lot easier to deal with if we can take it by surprise.”

  Dylan did as she was told, though it smarted to be told off in front of Susanna. For ten, then fifteen minutes, they traipsed about the woods in silence.

  Between the heavy cloud cover and the thick overhang of the trees, the light was dimming fast. That wasn’t good – if wraiths were here, they would wake soon…

  “Tristan,” she whimpered. “It’s getting dark. Maybe we should just come back tomorrow.”

  Never mind that they were going to be in almighty trouble for skipping school and likely grounded for eternity. The Inquisitor could fight it out with Joan over who had the right to damn their immortal souls.

  Dylan’s money was on Joan.

  “Tristan.” She stumbled over a thick tree root.

  “Shhhh!” He stopped dead, held out a hand for silence. Hurrying the last few paces, Dylan stopped just behind him, next to Susanna, and peered over his shoulder.

  A leaf-covered mound, the front face oddly made of brick with an entrance built into it, no more than a metre high. The door was broken, the rotten wood hanging at a drunken angle. It looked like a bird hide, or maybe an old bomb shelter.

  “You think it’s in there?” Dylan breathed.

  “Yes,” Susanna whispered. “It’s practically pulsing.” She gave a tiny, delicate shudder.

  “What do we do?”

  “You go and stand over there. With Jack.” Tristan nodded with his head towards an oak tree just to the left of the bunker. “I’ll go in and see if the wraith’s there. Susanna, you wait here and if it gets past me, grab it!”