“Looks alright,” he said, “different to how I remember.”
It was strange; Bury resembled a compressed version of Cambridge. Almost like a toy town imitation. The Market Square contained most of the shops, and the cobbles of Abbeygate Street led from there to the Abbey Gardens. It was a small town with quirky lanes and not a single skyscraper, not counting the spire of St Mary’s Church.
As he eyed a flinty shape within the Abbey Gardens, Nicholas felt a pang of… what? Grief? The last time he’d been to Bury, he’d come with his parents. He must have been about seven. The thought unsettled him, reminded him of the loss. The thought that, one day, he’d be without his parents would never have occurred to his seven-year-old self. He wished he could be seven again.
“It’s a park,” he murmured, his eye drawn to the watchtower-like edifice. “They turned the Abbey ruins into a park for kids.”
Isabel hopped onto the windowsill.
“A strange township,” she mused. “Whatever possessed them to turn ruins into a park?”
“People like them,” Nicholas said. “Makes them feel, I don’t know… Part of something, I guess.”
He noticed the cat peering up at him. The depths of her eyes sparkled like gems. Nicholas remembered there was a crystal called ‘tiger’s eye’, and thought the name apt. Then, in a flick of her ears, she was staring out of the window again; had dismissed whatever she’d been thinking.
Nicholas gazed longingly at the freshly-made bed and wanted nothing more than to collapse into it. His stomach grumbled and he decided he’d offer Aileen a hand in putting some of her air raid supplies to good use.
Downstairs, a kettle whistled on the hob and Aileen bustled about, crashing crockery onto the kitchen table and mopping up with a green dishcloth. She even performed a little hop as she went from the table to the sideboard, humming as she went. Nicholas thought of Tabitha, the neighbour who’d looked after him after his parents died. Aileen and Tabitha would probably get along famously.
“I’m sorry about your son,” Sam was saying.
Aileen nodded, busying herself at the counter.
Something had happened to Aileen’s son? When the landlady offered no further response, Sam lowered himself into a chair at the kitchen table. Nicholas noticed that the top button of his shirt was undone. It struck him immediately because to Sam, unbuttoned shirts were for youths and tramps. It was hot in here, though. The temperature seemed to have risen again and Nicholas felt weak with the heat.
As he joined Sam at the table, he caught movement out the corner of his eye. An immense shag of tabby fur unfurled in a basket on the windowsill. A squashed, fanged face surveyed them. It was the ugliest cat Nicholas had ever seen.
When the creature spotted Isabel, who was sitting by the pantry, it emitted a bleak hiss.
“Rudy, stop that,” Aileen said in a horrified whisper. “Excuse him, thinks he’s king of his own castle.”
“I was just informing Aileen of the reason for our visit,” Sam told Nicholas, ignoring the cats.
“Never heard of a Snelling,” the landlady contributed from the hob. The kettle sang and she plucked it from its perch, pouring their tea. “I know most names in Bury, but that’s a new one.”
She eased herself into her chair. Her bosom rested on the tabletop as she daintily stirred her brew.
“No,” she mused. “Definitely never been a Snelling around here.”
“We’re not sure if that was his real name,” Sam explained. “But there’s definitely a house here owned by a Snelling.” He gave Nicholas a wary look. “Or, at least, there used to be.”
A bang resounded as the front door slammed. Nicholas and Sam both jumped.
“Dawn?” Aileen called to the ceiling. “Dawn is that you? Come and say hello!”
A shadow appeared on the wall in the hallway. Large and long. Nicholas just caught sight of a purple-clad elbow before the shadow disappeared and he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. Whoever it was had gone upstairs – not to the hidden safehouse through the pantry, but to the first floor of Aileen’s garish home.
“Dawn!” Aileen called again, an edge of annoyance in her voice. “We have company!”
A door slammed upstairs.
“She’s not been the same since...” Aileen murmured apologetically, sharing a look with Sam. She seized her tea cup and sipped through pursed lips that, now Nicholas thought of it, seemed to have acquired a fresh application of rouge since Aileen left them to their rooms.
Recomposing herself, the landlady added: “What’s this Snelling got to do with anything?”
“We’ve yet to find that out,” Sam said. “Harvester, perhaps.”
Aileen sucked in a breath as if he’d sworn.
“You’ve heard about the school,” she said.
“School?” Sam ventured.
Aileen was on her feet again. She went to the recycling box by the back door and fished out a newspaper. The Bury Free Press.
“It was a couple of days ago. Made the front page. Terrible business.” She slapped the paper down in front of them.
SCHOOL MASSACRE HORROR.
Nicholas craned across the table to get a better look.
“Seven teachers, all butchered in a classroom,” Aileen surmised for them. “And the headteacher’s missing. Meredith Fink. They think she did it, though I don’t see how; she was almost seventy. I had to have a lie down after I heard about it. Poor Vicky was a teacher there. Dreadful business. Dreadful.”
“Vicky was...” Sam ventured.
“One of ours,” Aileen nodded.
Nicholas detected a familiar glint in the old man’s eye. He had a feeling they wouldn’t be leaving Bury for a while.
Another low hiss resounded through the kitchen. Rudy had taken to the floor. The cat hunched low and stared intently at Isabel, its hackles raised. There were barely three feet between them.
“If you continue to stare I shall be forced to teach you some manners,” Isabel said tartly.
The other cat growled deep in its throat.
“Cretinous nuisance,” Isabel spat. She swiped a paw at the tabby. “Be gone!”
Rudy yowled and his tail doubled in size. He scuttled out of the kitchen and disappeared down the hall.
“Where were we?” Isabel asked.
*
Rae Walker flipped through a magazine she’d read a hundred times and tried to ignore the grumble in her belly. The magazine was water-damaged and brown, like everything in Retro Threads. Tossing it aside, she surveyed her empire. The old boutique had been condemned and the windows were boarded up. The mannequins struck poses under transparent plastic sheets and monster cobwebs swayed in the corners.
Condemned buildings were notoriously difficult to break into, but somebody hadn’t done their job properly on Retro Threads. Rae had easily pried away the board covering a small latch window in the alley. Now it was her home and despite the stink of mould, the shop was cosy. It was exactly what she needed after the year she’d had. A cave to swallow her up. A place to forget.
She checked the shop to make sure she was alone, then she retrieved a crumple of white tissue paper from her pocket. Carefully, she extracted something silver from the paper and held it up.
The power had been cut when Retro Threads closed, so she relied on the candles that she’d pinched from the market for light. The silver pendant in her fingers glittered. The raven figurine spun lazily on its chain and Rae studied it intently. It was the only thing she had of her mother’s; the only thing they had left her with. Something about the necklace weakened her. Confronted her with the fact that her parents were long gone and she would never know them. She didn’t even have a picture. Perhaps that was for the best. Better to leave them as insubstantial phantoms; things that were never flesh and blood to begin with and couldn’t be again.
Rae heard a shuffling sound and stiffened. She stuffed the pendant back into her pocket just as a scruffy shape scrabbled through the latch window and dropped sil
ently to the floor.
“Where you been?” she asked.
“Out.”
Twig was small for a twelve year old, but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in wiles. He moved like a fox; sharp-boned and wide-eyed. From what she’d gathered about his past, he’d been on the streets for even longer than she had, and she often teased that he was half feral. The grubby pair of school shorts and green hoody only completed the look. Twig refused to wash in the sink in the back office, which still had running water. She didn’t care. He could do what he wanted.
“You stink,” Rae said, noticing that a pungent stench of garbage had followed Twig into the shop.
“Hats saw me lifting these,” the boy said, chucking a small box at her. “Had to hide in a bin.”
Rae examined the sandwich box. From the look of the bread, the sell-by date printed on it had long gone. She’d not checked a newspaper in ages.
“Welcome,” Twig said, stuffing his sandwich into his mouth.
Rae glared at him.
“Just cos you’ve got a new set of togs doesn’t make you any better’n me,” Twig chewed out between mouthfuls.
She looked down at her baggy jumper and tight-fitting jeans. Retro Threads had served her well, providing her with shelter and a new set of clothes. The shop didn’t have any boy’s things, though, so Twig had to make do with the shorts and hoody he’d been wearing for the past six months. She’d never seen him in anything else, but he didn’t seem to mind. They were like a second skin now.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t try on the skirts,” she shot back.
Twig merely gulped down the sandwich in response. Rae’s stomach grumbled loudly and she tore open her own box.
“I’ve decided,” Twig said, standing by a mottled mirror trying on silly hats. “I like this place better’n the last.”
The last place had been London. That’s where Rae had found Twig. A territorial street gang called the Cronies had set on him and she had saved him. She hadn’t meant to, but she had a soft spot for the underdog. There hadn’t been time to consider what might happen if she helped him out.
He shadowed her for a week. For a week she ignored him. She had a set of rules to live by. The first was Don’t make friends. When her attempts to ignore him failed to shake him loose, he’d offered her an overripe pear and she’d accepted it. They were together from then on.
It had worked so far. He was good at stealing. She was good at finding shelter. London had been overcrowded, though, and after the run-in with the Cronies, they’d snuck onto a late-night train and woken up in some town called Bury St Edmunds.
Rae watched Twig as he tried on a lady’s hat with a peacock feather. Sometimes he had nightmares. She didn’t sleep much – she was used to being on the street, half-dozing, always alert – and she’d heard him calling out for somebody called Mark. She didn’t ask him about it.
That was rule number two. Don’t talk about your past. It was the only way to survive. Secrecy was her armour.
They’d made a home in Retro Threads, but Rae was restless. She’d not stayed in the same place for more than a year, and she was moving more frequently. They’d been in Bury three weeks and already her feet were itching. She couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t relax.
“Who was that girl?” Twig asked.
Rae threw the empty sandwich box into a pile of rubbish in the corner and rested her back against the shop’s glass counter. The girl. The chubby one with purple hair who’d been following her. At first, Rae had thought she was imagining it. Bury was small and you saw the same faces every day. The girl was good, too. It was five days before Rae realised she was being followed. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t care why, but the question nagged, making her insides twitch.
Hopefully she’d scared her enough in the park to shake her off.
“Dunno,” Rae said.
“She know you?”
“No.”
Rae wanted to change the subject. Or not talk at all. She liked quiet. She rested her head against the counter and closed her eyes.
“What’s that?”
She barely felt Twig’s fingers brush her pocket and then he was holding the pendant up to the candlelight. Rae jumped to her feet.
“Give it back,” she yelled.
Twig gave her a mischievous look and hopped onto the glass counter.
“Where’d you get it?” he asked. “D’you lift it?”
Rae swiped at him, anger bubbling through her, but he easily dodged her blows. “Give it back!”
Twig cackled and skipped over the counter.
“S’pretty,” he said. “We could sell it.”
Rae felt the rage churning dangerously inside. If she let it build any further, they’d be in trouble. She told herself to breathe; to settle the volatile churning. It wanted to be unleashed. She felt it edging at her mind; a strange, seductive probing that was desperate for her to let go.
“You scrawny rat,” she shouted. “Give it back!” She clambered onto the counter and hurled herself at him. Twig yelped and they both toppled to the floor. Rae landed on top of him and for a moment, she saw red. The heat pleaded to be released and she wanted to release it.
It was only the look in Twig’s eyes that subdued her. She drew a sharp breath and snatched the necklace from him. On her feet, she shoved it back into her pocket and climbed up to the latch window, pushing her way through.
The reedy evening light afforded Bury St Edmunds a ghostly quality that she’d grown accustomed to. The streets were surprisingly empty and she paced them feverishly, clenching her fists and attempting to calm down. She’d been wrong to let Twig tag along; she should have left him in London. He wasn’t her responsibility. It was better when she was alone. She couldn’t hurt anybody that way.
She had to move on. The thought of spending nights out on the street again, though, filled her with dread. Retro Threads wasn’t exactly a palace, but it was preferable to a cardboard box in a traffic tunnel.
An image of Kay flashed in her mind and Rae felt sick. She tried to blot it out, to think of something else, but she couldn’t. Kay’d had the same look on her face as Twig. The surprise. The sudden fear.
A reversing lorry emerged from a side street and she jumped out of the way.
“Watch it, love,” the driver called down from his cab. When he saw her, his frown brightened into a cheeky grin. “Wouldn’t want to steamroller a face like that, eh?”
Rae ignored him and stormed down another cobbled side street. Was everybody an idiot? This town seemed to be full of them. She felt caged. They had no idea what life was really like. They wouldn’t last a week on the streets. Hell, she’d like to see them try a day.
Renewed hatred prickled through her and she kicked a dustbin, scattering the contents across the pavement. She went up Abbeygate Street. As the sun began its gradual descent, the rooftops made peaked shadows rotate across the tarmac. Restaurants were only just opening their doors and putting out signs in preparation for the evening punters. The smells were a divine torture. The stale sandwich sat heavily in her stomach and she wondered what real food tasted like.
In the market square, the Moyse’s Hall Museum clock chimed and Rae looked at the flint-stone building. Resting at the end of a row of high street shops, it seemed out of place. Out of time. One of the last vestiges of a world that no longer belonged in Bury St Edmunds. Small stained glass windows squinted out onto the market square and there was a high bell tower with a double-peaked roof shaped like a witch’s hat.
Rae frowned.
A man was locking up the museum. He was tall. Blond. Attractive, though he was of course ancient. At least forty. He pocketed his keys, then he turned and looked directly at her. Her stomach shrivelled up. It was an alien feeling; an uncertain nervousness.
The man smiled as he strolled down the pavement. “Evening,” he said, pausing on his way.
Rae nodded, squinting at him.
“You ought to be getting home, I’d say.
It’ll be dark soon.”
“I’m not afraid,” Rae said. He was even more alluring up close. Those eyes. A strong jaw bristled with fair stubble. He laughed and he had perfect teeth.
“I’m going this way,” he said. “If you want to walk next to me that’s fine. Don’t want anybody taking advantage.”
Rae considered him. He was smart in a midnight-blue jacket and dark jeans. His skin was like satin. He wasn’t offering to walk her home, but near enough. She didn’t want him to know where she lived. Not because she was ashamed, though she was, but because there was something dangerous about him. This perfect specimen.
“Alright,” the man said, seeming to note her unimpressed expression. “G’night.”
He raised his hand in a little wave – an effeminate gesture that he somehow managed to make look masculine – and walked off down the street.
Rae wondered if he expected her to follow him. She’d encountered plenty of guys just like him. The cities were full of them and she’d seen her share of those. No, he was different. There had been a whiff of danger intermingled with his aftershave. Despite his friendliness, he couldn’t hide the hardness in his eyes.
She watched the museum man go. Most guys were easy to read, but she couldn’t read him at all. She had a feeling that he had his own games – and if she attempted to play him at them, she might just lose.
CHAPTER SIX
Seeing
SENTINEL TRAINING OFFICIALLY COMMENCED THAT EVENING. Nicholas felt battered and bruised after the incident at Snelling’s house, but his eyes were agleam as he sat with Sam at a round table in Aileen’s cosy study. Isabel positioned herself on the tabletop among the books, scrutinising them like a snooty librarian.
“A Harvester won’t hesitate to strike,” Sam said darkly. “A Harvester exists only to eradicate Sentinels. It won’t stop until it sees blood, and perhaps not even then.”
“Are all Harvesters just Sentinels that have been turned?” Nicholas asked. Sketches of nasty-looking weapons filled the page in front of him. Curved daggers with serrated edges, a crossbow, even a razor-sharp ball and chain.
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