“It’ll only take a minute. Promise.”
Jessica shrugged and followed Alison to the basement stairs. Within moments, she had brought her phone out again and was staring at it as she walked. Behind them, Aaron-Byhagthn found a second wind, and their eldritch voice continued to float across the silence like a boat on a calm sea.
71
In the dungeon, Alison held open the door to cell 5. “Just in here,” she said. “I need you to . . .”
On the way down the stairs she had come up with a cunning lie to get Jessica into the cell that she was quietly proud of, so she was slightly disappointed when Jessica wandered straight in without so much as a glance up. But Alison wasn’t about to raise a fuss about it. She slammed the door closed and fumbled for the deadbolt. When her shaking fingers had finally slid it home, a blanket of relief settled on her so heavily that her legs very nearly gave out.
That was the easy part out of the way; the fluidics were safe. Things would only get tricky again when she went back upstairs and had to explain to her colleagues that they were going to need a new main event on the fly.
She looked over at the door to cell 6, where Diablerie was still contained. Well, she thought, still buzzing from adrenaline. Now that we’re in, might as well be in all the way. She slid back the bolt on cell 6.
Diablerie had been sitting on the side of his bed with his arms around his stomach, hunched so far forward that his cheeks were resting on his knees. He looked up when the door opened and an instant later was upright and posing impressively. Then his neck began to loll, and he promptly collapsed into Alison’s arms. “Aha,” he slurred, muffled by her shoulder. “What futile torments am I to defy now, lackey of Lawrence? Peanut butter can be used to counteract biological weapons.”
She was able to smoothly pivot on one foot and prop him up against the door. “It’s all right,” she said. “I know you’re not the Fluidic Killer. Jessica Weatherby’s the Fluidic Killer.”
He squinted, struggling to focus on her face. “Is she.”
“You already knew, right?” said Alison, leaning exhaustedly on the door frame. “ ‘The Fluidic Killer strikes again.’ That’s what you said when you showed up here. But you weren’t talking about yourself.”
“That’s certainly one interpretation,” said Diablerie warily.
“And we talked about her sweating back in Doncaster. You know that that can lead to salt elementalism, right?”
“What an intriguing logical path you seem to have taken.” Diablerie straightened up into his condescending pose, keeping one hand on the wall to steady himself. “But presume not to dictate to Diablerie what Diablerie knows, girl. The full extent of what Diablerie knows would overflow that cavernous mind of yours with thorns and blood. So you seek to enlist Diablerie in the mending of this affair?”
“No, it’s all right,” said Alison, sliding to the floor. “Everything’s sorted out now. I’ve already got Jessica in the next cell. The fluidics are safe.”
“Well. As long as the mildew stains are safe.” He tottered past her, keeping one hand on the wall as he went, and pressed his eye against the peephole in door 5. “Hm,” he said, after a pause. “This affair may not be as fully mended as you imagine it to be, girl.”
Alison tensed. “What?”
“There’s nobody in there.”
Diablerie politely stood aside as Alison rapidly rose and flew to the peephole as if she were being drawn in by a high-powered winch. “Yes, there . . .” she began when she saw Jessica standing in the middle of the cell, but her words swiftly died. Now that Diablerie had planted the seed of doubt, the illusion began to break. The edges of Jessica’s image flickered and lost focus, like there was a drop of water on the peephole, or . . .
. . . or like one of Aaron Weatherby’s illusions. The image of Jessica promptly vanished; either Aaron-Byhagthn had somehow realized that the game was up, or becoming aware of the trick had reinforced Alison’s senses against it.
There was something inside Diablerie’s mind that blocked telepaths and drove them insane. Did that same something make him immune to illusions? If a fire power can be retrained into an ice power, then telepathy and illusions were probably from the same group as well. And back when they had first encountered Aaron, hadn’t Diablerie walked straight into the room of blood without a care in the world?
She turned away from the peephole. “Are you . . .” she said, before discovering that Diablerie had vanished. From above her, she heard a faint round of applause.
72
Onstage, Aaron-Byhagthn was hugging Jessica, to the delight of an applauding audience. It soon became clear that they were intent on keeping the hug going for as long as the applause did, and the audience were showing no sign of letting them break off.
Several photographers were on their feet, competing for the best shot of the moment. One of them, in the fourth row, looked at the screen on the back of his camera and saw that the picture he’d taken appeared to be of Aaron-Byhagthn standing alone in the middle of the stage, arms embracing empty air.
He glanced up, confused, and made eye contact with Aaron-Byhagthn over Jessica’s shoulder. There was a flash of something indistinct in Aaron-Byhagthn’s discolored eye, and the photographer felt the sensation of a weight settling onto his brain, as if he’d suddenly risen from a hot bath. When he looked down again, the picture was as it should have been, of the Weatherbys hugging. It seemed the color and lighting had been slightly corrected, too.
The Weatherbys disentangled, and Jessica came to the microphone stand. “Thank you,” she said, as the crowd quietened down. There was a subtle strangeness to the sound of her voice. It was perfectly audible, but at the same time, somehow seemed to be coming from a long way away. “I just know, with all the people here today, we can make the right kind of impact.”
The curtains flew apart and Alison Arkin leapt onto the stage, cracking Aaron-Byhagthn around the head with an iron ladle she had hastily grabbed from the kitchen. He went down, tentacles fluttering like the tail of a comet, and the Jessica phantom disappeared from the senses of every person present.
Alison looked up, panting, and met several hundred shocked gazes. “Erm, sorry,” she said, unconsciously hiding the ladle behind her back. “She wasn’t actually real.”
An arm like a greasy side of beef appeared through the curtains, fastened around her neck, and gently dragged her back inside. Moments later, Nita Pavani appeared and helped the dazed Aaron-Byhagthn crawl out of sight. “Please don’t go anywhere!” she called, before disappearing herself.
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Elizabeth, backstage, as Anderson held Alison as inescapably as a roller coaster safety harness.
“That wasn’t Jessica!” gasped Alison, pulling herself up until her mouth was free of Anderson’s bicep. “Aaron was creating an illusion!”
“She’s right, you know,” said Archibald, who was peering around the stage curtain. “I saw her disappear when the boy went down.”
“So?” said Nita angrily, checking Aaron-Byhagthn’s pupils as he sat against a wall. “Just because she’s got a little stage fright, that’s not an invitation to start braining people!”
“Where is she?! She’s the Fluidic Killer!”
That gave everyone pause. Anderson’s arm untensed and Alison dropped to the floor, red in the face.
Elizabeth knelt beside her. “Why do you think that?”
“She sweats,” sputtered Alison, before taking a vast gulp of air and trying again. “Mr. Brooke-Stodgeley told me. She’s got the sweating power, and that means she can create salt.”
“What?” said Archibald. “Is this what you were so worked up about? She can’t be the Fluidic Killer if she’s still at the sweating stage.”
Alison looked up at him as she felt several angry looks intensifying in her direction. “But . . .”
“I’m sure if our man is a salt elemental, they must have been a sweater at one point, but they’d have left that stage be
hind long ago. It would take years of practice to have the kind of fine control the Fluidic Killer has.”
“A-are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I’d stake my reputation on it. There’s no way a sweater could be manifesting like that right out of school.” His expression suddenly changed, brows dropping and mouth pouting thoughtfully. Everyone present kept their eyes on him as they sensed an unless speeding towards his lips. “Unless she’s possessed, of course.”
73
xxreaverxx: Well, it’s been fun, but I’m afraid this is where we part ways.
jess: good
xxreaverxx: Much as I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of your company, all these lovely fluidics that have been laid out for me is too good an opportunity to miss.
xxreaverxx: I’ve been very good at cutting down my murder diet since the first two, so I think I’ve earned a cheat day.
xxreaverxx: Oh, hell, let’s go mad and treat myself to a few in a row. Why not? I’m celebrating.
jess: just go away
xxreaverxx: Hm?
xxreaverxx: I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the logistics of the situation, dear.
xxreaverxx: Look down. Look at the bottom of the screen.
xxreaverxx: See those thumbs working away at the keypad? They’re yours. Your thumbs are typing this.
xxreaverxx: They’ve always been typing this. But now I’m bored of the joke. There are so many more important things I could be accomplishing with these thumbs.
xxreaverxx: And the rest of you, of course.
xxreaverxx: What’s the saying? Change comes from within?
xxreaverxx: I think I speak for all your internal components when I say it’s time for a change. Your digestive system is going to scream if it has to process one more delivery pizza.
xxreaverxx: I take it from your silence that you agree.
xxreaverxx: What’s that? You think I should take over on a permanent basis?
xxreaverxx: How unexpected. I’m so honored by your gracious offer. I can only promise to be worthy of it.
74
“. . . can only promise to be worthy of it,” read Alison from the smartphone she had found among the half-digested garbage covering the floor of the former “green room.” A room which was mysteriously devoid of fluidics, but suddenly abundant with tense civil servants, as well as several clumps of magically conjured salt.
“Interesting,” said Archibald Brooke-Stodgeley, peering over Alison’s shoulder. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen possession like this. I’ve seen the imaginary-friend scenario in children a few times, but never in young adults. Indictment of the generation, perhaps. No offense meant, my dear.”
“Take her brother into custody,” commanded Elizabeth.
“No!” said Nita, protectively moving between her and Aaron-Byhagthn. “They didn’t know about this!”
“All she told me was she wasn’t feeling up to coming onstage,” said Aaron-Byhagthn. The human side of his voice was full of innocence and protest, but the other side had the measured tone of a wary gangster in a police interview room.
“We only have his word for this,” said Elizabeth.
“And another thing,” said Nita, placing her hands on hips. “Why is it, just because we’ve found out Jessica has a dual consciousness, you’ve all taken this as confirmation that she must be the killer? I think there’s some prejudice being laid bare here.”
The entrance doors flew open and Richard Danvers entered, with Casin and Hesketh trailing behind like baby ducks following their mother. Several other Department agents were visible in the courtyard outside, asking each other if they knew what was going on. “I’ve just been informed,” said Danvers, with military urgency. “Any sign of where they went?”
“Not yet,” said Elizabeth, nodding meaningfully to Hesketh.
Realizing his cue, Adam took on the slightly idiotic squint that meant he was turning his extra senses up to full power. “Got something. Definitely the same signal I was picking up back at the mine.”
“Where?” asked Danvers.
Adam looked confused for a moment, his eyes following the curves of an invisible shape, before his gaze settled on a nearby broom cupboard. He walked over, nodded meaningfully to Victor, then threw the door open.
Henry Wollstone was as firmly sealed within a column of magically conjured salt as an expensive action figure in plastic packaging. He was suspended a foot off the ground in the midst of a cluster of glistening white spikes and cylinders, all his hands and feet fully encased. The crystals that held his neck in place extended around to the front of his face and filled his mouth entirely. His eyes were wide and frightened, and he was attempting to bellow through his nose.
Victor clapped his hands to dispel the flames he had prepared. “Someone’s gonna need a glass of water.”
“Now this is what I call fine control,” said Archibald admiringly, rubbing the end of an extruding salt stalagmite between his fingers.
“Hey, Liz, just to let you know, I’m willing to take command of the situation,” said Anderson, hands behind back. “If you don’t think your lot are up to it.”
Alison realized that her time with DEDA had made her more cynical, because she picked up on the subtext of the offer even before he waggled his eyebrows. Elizabeth gave him a brief blast of her most scornful look, then turned to Danvers. “Send agents with Hesketh. Follow her trail and stop her.”
“If it is her!” added Nita.
“Take Casin, Black, and Rawlins,” said Danvers to Adam, pointing to the relevant agents like a conductor. “Tell everyone else to shore up the perimeter on the grounds. Don’t let anyone in or out. And if you find the girl with the fluidics, do whatever you have to do to protect them.”
“If they need protecting!” said Nita, stepping forward as Hesketh’s party turned to leave. “In fact, make sure to open some kind of dialogue before you do anything. And consider the larger societal context of her actions.”
“Use your discretion,” translated Danvers.
“Got it,” said Victor as the agents left, squeezing a surprisingly large amount of sarcasm into two words.
Danvers turned to Elizabeth. “I’ll go outside and supervise the perimeter. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll stay with the brother,” she replied, offering Aaron-Byhagthn a brief look that made his tentacles draw up like the legs of a defensive spider. “There may be further insights to be gained on Jessica’s condition.”
“Then I’ll help you,” said Nita sharply, stepping up until she was almost chest to chest with the other woman. “In case you . . . forget to write them down.”
“As you wish.”
Danvers cocked an ear. The distant murmur from the crowd in the playing field had been growing in volume and was starting to graduate from a murmur to a rumble. “Someone’s going to have to distract the media.”
Anderson clapped his hands with a noise like sudden thunder. “Ah! The call of destiny. Leave it to me, big man. This is my specialty.” He snapped his fingers towards Alison. “You. Ladle girl. Find the nearest off-licence and bring back six crates of the first thing you can find with a German-sounding name.”
75
Alison bounded down the steps from the entrance door into the monastery courtyard, keys at the ready. But when she was halfway to her hired car, she was stopped in her tracks by a familiar smell, one reminiscent of a goat throwing up over a pile of grass clippings. She followed her nose and saw a brown trail leading north from the monastery.
The school was largely protected from prying eyes by wild forest, but on the north side there was only a few hundred yards of rolling, grassy hills before the rocky Devonshire coastline crashed spectacularly into the Bristol Channel. Alison could see a fluidic making its way up the first slope. A fluidic she had now learned to recognize as “her” fluidic.
Shgshthx could slither at a decent pace, so by the time Alison had entered conversation range, he was close to the top of the hill. “Sh
gshthx!” she called.
He continued slithering, showing no sign of acknowledgment. There was an anxious quiver to his movement. Alison had to jog alongside him to keep up.
“Dennis?” she tried. If anything, he started moving even faster. She ran ahead a few steps and planted her feet firmly in his path. “What are you doing?”
Dennishthx finally stopped and began to cringe and fold himself the way a human would fidget with a crumpled tissue while trying to explain why they’ve been crying. “I been wewy bad,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I was being an indiwidual and now I’ve wost the others.” He attempted to move around her, but she sidestepped back into his path.
“The others have been taken by the Fluidic Killer!”
“Yesh, I know.” He made another failed attempt to slip past, then tried to go between her legs, but she smartly snapped the heels of her trainers together. “I should get taken by Shgshthx too. I been wewy bad.”
“It’s not Shgshthx, it’s Jessica Weatherby,” insisted Alison.
Dennis finally stopped, and curved the center part of his mass up and back until it was as coiled as a question mark. “Weally?”
“Yes!”
“How do oo know?”
Alison produced Jessica’s phone. “Look. She’s been talking to her Ancient without realizing it. It’s got salt elemental powers. It must have been taking over her body to do the murders.”
Shgshthx cocked his mass curiously. “Why’d she give oo her phone?”
“She didn’t . . .”
Her statement was sidetracked by a blossoming thought. Why had Jessica dropped her phone? Alison had seen plenty of films and video games where characters left trails of devices and diaries, all conveniently displaying the most recent, most relevant contents for the benefit of pursuers, but people didn’t actually do that.
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