“Ernest? Are you here?”
Chris climbed the glass steps of the modern staircase to the second floor and checked the entire room. Ernest wasn’t there, nor was he anywhere to be found on the top floor. Certain by now that he was on his own, Chris walked up to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall and looked out at the impressive views of Hunter’s mind to see if he could spot Ernest approaching, but the city was silent and still and it suddenly occurred to him that he would have no idea what to do next if Ernest didn’t show up. Eventually, with still no sign of Ernest, Chris sat down on the cold, smooth floor facing the window and prepared himself for a wait.
Without a watch or any clock in Hunter’s mind, Chris began to lose sense of time. It could have been five minutes or thirty—he had no idea. All he did know was that if Hunter stood up and left, he would be shot back into reality without any answers. The frustration of that, coupled with his growing boredom, infuriated Chris so he stood up and started to pace the room. Back and forth, back and forth, glancing constantly at the entrance to Hunter’s mind until, suddenly, something in the far distance moving caught his eye.
Running back over the wall and cupping his face against the glass, Chris squinted to get a better view and saw a small figure emerge from Hunter’s Reception.
Ernest.
Chris watched as the figure in the distance ran down the grassy knoll and then disappeared behind the cover of the buildings on the street. Chris’s eyes darted along the route he knew Ernest must be taking until he saw Ernest appear at exactly the same spot where he himself had stood earlier. Ernest looked ahead and began to run.
Chris rushed down the stairs, taking two at a time, and ducked quickly into the first aisle. Through the glass wall at the front, Chris could see Ernest cautiously climbing the steps, trying to get a view of the inside. Chris held his breath and inched forward until he came to the end of the row.
“Chris?”
Chris took a deep breath and then stepped out from the aisle.
“Where is she?”
Ernest didn’t answer. Instead, the two boys stared at each other, each uncertain if the other was about to do anything unexpected until, finally, Chris walked out on the open floor and approached Ernest. When he was within a few feet of him, he stopped.
“I said, where’s my mother?”
Chris could see, by the glint in Ernest’s eyes, that he was enjoying having the upper hand.
“She’s alive, and if you want her to stay that way, you need to listen to me.”
A wave of anger rose up inside of Chris, but he forced himself to ignore it. “Fine. What do you want?”
“First, if you give the thumbs-up to the goons guarding you to tell them that I’m here, you can forget about seeing your mother again.”
Chris nodded.
“Every day,” continued Ernest, “when you were in your house, looking for me in your wardrobe, I was watching. Every single time you stepped out of your school’s front door, I was watching. I was watching when you left in the car this morning, and I was watching—”
“I get it,” said Chris, irritated, “you were watching me. So if you’ve been following me all these months, why didn’t you get to me before?”
Ernest smiled. “Because I could see how much you were suffering. And that’s the whole point of revenge, isn’t it?”
“And my mum? What’s she got to do with it?”
“She’s the reason you’re going to do exactly what I want.”
Chris thought about this for a moment. “What makes you think I care? You don’t know anything about her.”
“I know a lot more than you think. I watched you at home, remember? It takes a lot more than what she’s done to you to stop loving your own mother. I should know.”
Chris saw a brief flicker of sadness cross Ernest’s face before being quickly replaced by a cold, hard look.
“I want you to come to my house tonight. Alone.”
“Why?” said Chris. “Why not do whatever you want to do here?”
Ernest shrugged his shoulders. “Too many people. Too many things to go wrong.”
“So you want me to come to your house so that you can kill me?”
Ernest gave a small nod.
“It’s not the best offer I’ve had,” said Chris.
“You want your mother back safe. I want you to die. We both have something to fight for.”
“And what makes you think that you’ll win? We both know my Ability is stronger than yours.”
“Maybe. What I do know for sure is that tonight, whatever happens, someone is going to die. If it’s your mum, you’ll suffer. If it’s you, you’ll, well, be dead. And if it’s me, at least I died trying to keep my promise to my brother. Two out of three is good enough odds for me.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot,” said Chris.
Ernest nodded. “Not much to distract me these days—not since my brother was murdered.”
Chris sighed. “I didn’t mean to kill your brother—I’ve told you before it was a horrible accident. I was just trying to stop him from hurting anyone else.”
Ernest stared at him for a moment, his face hardening with anger.
“I made a promise at my brother’s grave,” said Ernest, his voice like ice, “and I don’t break my promises.” He held up a piece of paper with a set of coordinates written on it in black ink.
“Your house?” asked Chris, committing the location to memory.
“If you turn up with anybody—anyone at all—your mother will be dead before you can get to the front door.”
Chris nodded.
“Midnight,” said Ernest, putting the note back into his pocket. Then, before Chris had a chance to say anything else, he turned and ran out the door.
Chris followed him out without running. There was no point, he thought. There was no way he was going to find him in the crowds. He was walking along Language Lane, wondering if there was anything he could do to prepare for their meeting later when, suddenly, he felt himself flying forward with a sudden whoosh.
• • •
Chris blinked and saw that he was back in the room. Ahead of him, completely unaware of what had just happened in his own head, Hunter was walking away from the table, waving at the screaming girls, many of whom appeared to be crying. Chris wasn’t sure why.
“You see him?” asked John, suddenly noticing that Chris’s blank stare had disappeared.
Chris knew what he had to say.
“No,” he said, “he never showed up.”
“What are we going to do now?” asked Ron, looking exasperated as he watched Hunter disappear through the side door. “Shall we follow him?”
Chris shook his head. “There’s no point. He’s not coming.”
He noticed Ron and John give each other a funny look and realized that he wasn’t acting with the concern they would have expected. He wished, once more, that he were a better actor.
“I hope Mum’s okay.” It was the best he could do.
John looked down at Chris, and his face softened. “It’s all right, son. The boy will show up. Something must have happened, but he’ll get in touch—maybe even today—and we can get this whole thing worked out.”
Chris nodded and kept his head down to hide his face, remembering how Ron had once told him that he could spot a liar from fifty feet away.
“Come on, let’s get you back to the car,” said John, leading Chris out from under the escalator.
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR •
Although it hadn’t been intentional—there had just been so much on his mind—Chris’s silence since discovering his mother’s disappearance meant that he didn’t have to do much to avoid raising suspicions. As everybody fussed around him, and Maura tried to fill him full of food—the best medicine, she said—Daisy, who seemed to have an unsettling way of noticing when something was amiss, watched him from a distance. If she had her suspicions that he was lying, however, she said nothing.
“You want to ch
oose the film tonight?” asked Rex.
Chris shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lexi push Rex back in his direction.
“Um, what about a game of pool?”
Chris shook his head again. “No, thanks,” he said.
Rex raised both his hands in exasperation, and Chris, seeing this, lost his temper.
“What do you want from me?” asked Chris. Everybody looked at him in shock—it was the first time they’d heard his voice in days. “Isn’t it obvious that I don’t want to join in?”
“Come on,” said Philip quietly to the others, “I think he just wants to be left alone. We’ll talk later, Chris.”
“What’s the point? None of you ever believed anything I told you about that boy. Maybe if you had, this wouldn’t be happening.” Chris hadn’t really thought about this until now, but as soon as he said it, he knew it made sense.
“That’s not fair,” said Lexi.
“It’s true,” said Chris.
“Chris—please. We’re your friends,” said Sebastian.
“No, Sebastian. Maybe you don’t understand the word ‘friend,’ ” said Chris, his whole body shaking. “Friends support each other. Friends believe in their friends. Do you understand what I’m saying? I have no friends.”
Chris stormed past everybody as they stood open-mouthed and watched him leave the room. Chris slammed the door behind him and went to hide in his bedroom. Two hours left, he thought as he climbed up onto his bunk bed. Two hours and he would be gone. Now he just needed to put away any thoughts about what had just happened and concentrate on the only thing that mattered—his plan for that night.
There was a knock on the door. Before Chris had a chance to tell her to go away, Daisy had opened it and stepped inside.
“You saw him, didn’t you?” she asked.
Chris sighed and closed his eyes. She was the only person who had ever believed anything he’d said. For a moment, he considered telling her, but then he remembered what Ernest had said: Come alone. If Daisy knew the danger he was about to place himself in, there was no way she would let him leave Myers Holt by himself.
“There’s nothing to tell,” he said finally. “I’ve already told you what happened.”
There was a brief moment of silence between them.
“Fine,” she said at last, “don’t tell me, then.”
She walked away, and Chris put his head in his hands. Sometimes, he thought, having friends only made things harder. It wasn’t something he would have to worry about anymore.
• • •
The day had been a busy one, and by eleven o’clock, the whole of Myers Holt had shut down for the night. Chris pulled the covers back and climbed down from his bed, fully clothed, keeping as quiet as possible so as not to wake Philip from his sleep. The light from the moon of their artificial sky cast a dim, silver glow over the room—enough for Chris to be able to see where he was going—and he tiptoed over to the dressing area. The door of the bathroom was open, and the wall of jellyfish, pulsating softly in the purple light, swirled about gently as Chris reached into his sock drawer and fumbled about until he found the piece of paper he had hidden there earlier. He padded back over to his bed, reached up, and placed the note with the coordinates on it under his pillow before making his way quickly over to the door.
He found the entrance foyer empty and the lights off leading down to Ron and John’s quarters. Chris looked over at the far wall, let his eyes lose focus, and watched as his mind suddenly transported him to the room on the other side.
The lights were off, but the room was lit by the gray glow coming from the bank of screens that displayed the empty rooms and corridors of Myers Holt and the street outside. Through an open door on the other side, Chris could see Ron and John asleep in their bunk beds—John at the bottom, a large framed photograph of Fifi, his poodle, on the bedside table, and Ron, who appeared to be cuddling a teddy bear, on the top.
Chris turned his attention back to the security panel, over to the elevator alarm. His eyes moved to the back of the black box and then focused on the power cord. It began to strain, then it suddenly popped out and fell to the table with a small plonk. He glanced over at the security cameras and decided not to bother tampering with them. Whatever happened, he was almost certainly going to be found out—all that mattered was that he had enough time to get out of the school.
This is it, thought Chris, blinking until he was back looking around the entrance foyer. He walked over to the open doors of the elevator, stepped inside, and pressed his thumb to the kettle’s switch.
• • •
The good thing about living in central London was that the city was almost as busy in the nighttime as it was during the day. Tonight was no different, and before Chris had even reached the bottom of the steps of his school, he saw the bright orange light of an empty taxi turning onto the square. Chris rushed down and put his hand out to call it.
“Where are you going?” asked the taxi driver in a gruff voice.
Chris gave him Ernest’s address.
The driver shook his head. “Forget about it—I’m not going that far.” Before Chris had a chance to say anything, the driver pressed a button and the window began to roll up.
Chris quickly looked past the glass and stared at the driver.
You want to take this fare. . . . You want to take this fare. . . . You want to take this fare.
The driver rolled his window back down.
“Where did you say you were going?” he asked. Chris gave him the address.
“Good—I fancy a bit of a drive. Jump in.”
Chris opened the door and climbed inside. The driver switched on his indicator and pulled out slowly as Chris looked up at the front door of Myers Holt and wondered if he would ever see it again.
• • •
“You sure you want me to leave you here?” asked the driver as they pulled up outside the closed wrought-iron gates set back off the unlit country road. The driver leaned forward to try to work out where the house was. “Must be behind that forest. It’s going to be a long walk—why don’t I drive you up to the door?”
“Here’s fine,” said Chris, thanking the driver as he jumped out. He had already suggested to the driver that he had been paid. He had done this before and had not only felt terrible for it but had also had to write to the drivers and apologize, paying his fare back with money that Sir Bentley had made him earn doing chores around the school. Tonight, however, he had no time for guilt. He checked the number plate as it drove off, resolved to make amends at another time, and walked up to the gates, which creaked before slowly beginning to open. Chris took a deep breath and walked through them, into the still black night ahead.
• • •
Chris hadn’t thought of taking a flashlight with him, but his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and he made his way along the overgrown path until, a few slow minutes later, the thick canopy of trees above him disappeared, revealing Darkwhisper Manor ahead in the distance.
The first thing Chris noticed about the building was its sheer size, so huge and magnificent that Chris was sure it must have been the home of royalty at some point in its history. Unlike any palace he had ever seen, however, this building was flat roofed and rectangular, with two vast stone columns that flanked the entrance and rows of tall windows placed perfectly symmetrically on either side of them.
The second thing he noticed was that the roof appeared to be on fire. As he approached, however, he saw that the flat roof was in fact lit up by flaming stone torches that rose up from the stone balcony running along its perimeter, each torch set only a few feet from the next. Ernest was waiting for him.
Chris broke into a run across the wide, uncut lawn, passing between two empty fountains before he reached the foot of the stone steps that led up to the entrance. He stopped and, heart beating wildly, began to walk slowly up the stairs toward the closed wooden doors.
Chris knew that Ernest would be watching him, b
ut the sound of Ernest’s voice suddenly appearing in his head as he pulled down the door’s iron handle nevertheless made him jump.
“Follow the lanterns.”
Chris didn’t say anything, not certain what that meant. Instead, he opened the door and stepped inside.
As soon as Chris walked into the vast entrance foyer, he understood. All the lights in the room had been turned off, but the whole place was aglow with the flickering light coming from identical glass box lanterns placed along both sides of the grand staircase, a path of fire leading up to the first floor, across the landing, and up another set of stairs, then disappeared from view. Chris walked across the marble floor, and as he did so he looked around at his surroundings in awe: He had never seen anything like it. In front of him, the red-carpeted staircase with gold railings ran down to two enormous stone plinths, on top of which were a pair of identical wolf statues that looked as if they had been frozen in midattack—their fangs bared, their claws out. Chris turned to his left and stared up at a tapestry bigger than the front of his own house depicting a violent battle scene, and then over to the row of paintings on the other side, all of them of other battles and each one more gruesome and bloody than the one before. No wonder this family was so messed up, thought Chris, passing a pair of stuffed vultures on his way over to the bottom of the stairs.
Chris was halfway up the first flight of steps when he noticed the shiny object glistening in the flickering light above him. Curious, he quickened his pace up the stairs, only to find that it was a discarded empty packet of cheese-and-onion crisps. He also noticed as he kicked it out of the way how dirty the carpet was, and for the first time, Chris realized that Ernest must be living here on his own.
Chris continued to follow the pathway of glowing lanterns, which led him across the first-floor landing, up another smaller set of stairs, and along a corridor lined with oil paintings of severe-looking aristocrats that seemed to be watching him in disapproval. The lanterns continued up a spiral staircase, and Chris wondered how long it must have taken for Ernest to light them all as he followed them up, round and round, until, finally, he reached a small wooden door.
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