Circle of Arms (The Shades of Northwood 2)

by Wendy Maddocks

  All along the cliff edge were dark shapes. They edged the crumbling precipice as far as the eye could see and were lined up a dozen deep. Just waiting in line to take a dive.

  Which one of these writhing masses of shadow was Dina? They all looked the same. But their voices were oh so different. Some cried, some screamed and some sang. And some didn’t make a sound. It felt as though Katie had been half-jogging past these figures all day but the sky never darkened and she never got tired. That was undoubtedly a bonus but it also meant that there were thousands more souls trapped here than she had ever imagined. Unless, and Katie was already hoping, she had been walking around in circles and was seeing the same Shades over and over again.

  At one patch of grass that looked identical to every other patch of grass on this slope, Katie stopped to suck in more empty air, figuring that the more lifeless oxygen she took in, the more chance there was of shaking her lungs back into life. Pulse was still racing. Muscles felt stretched to breaking point. Only the ache deep inside was easing. The bathroom was becoming a significant problem now. Katie was starting to feel uncomfortable. She looked behind her, fumbled in her pocket for tissue and headed for a tree to go behind.

  You’re still too far away. You won’t make it. But you should keep trying.

  She yelped and whipped around. Of course there was nobody there. The voice, loud as it had been, had not come from any flesh and blood person but from inside her head. Or, more philosophically, from one of the souls near the edge. Dina.

  I tried to hold on. This pull is too strong.

  The pull? It had to be whatever was below the drop, maybe a physical tug, maybe just a promise of an end to all the suffering. Either option sounded tempting at the moment.

  I can sense you, Katie. Your energy burns so bright it’s like a flare. A flame of violent, vital life and it gets brighter, hotter, with every step you take. I can’t see the others here, their energy is dead, but I can see how hard you’re trying, everything you are risking. But you can’t save me. I’m nearly there.

  “I’m not giving up on you, Dina. Not now.”

  We thought there was a way.

  “There is a way.”

  It won’t be soon enough. You might be able to save the others. Hug my dad for me?

  That, Katie thought, was the cruellest goodbye ever. Her last thought was her father. No tears, no protest, nothing. Just one last request and then Dina was gone.

  NO! Katie roared it at herself. Those wouldn’t be Dina’s last words. She’d eat worms before that happened. Fuelled by a sudden rage, Katie stormed up to the slope of the cliff and started to thunder through the dark shapes, back the way she had come. They all reached for her, dark energy curling out to touch her and Katie didn’t want those things anywhere near her. Yes they had saved her once and yes she was meant to be returning the favour but suddenly, being touched by dead things, not fit to be ghosts and too weak to be corpses, sent shivers right through. So she tore her way through. Pushing through this suffocating black mass where she could and clawing her way through, dark tangles ripping free and being shaken to the ground, when necessary. She hated these things for keeping hold of Dina. It was wrong. Deeply and desperately wrong. What gave them the right to keep people against their will? What made them think they had to end everything and just resign themselves to that fate? It was weakness. Sheer bloody weakness and Katie had seen way too much of that.

  In the middle of the group, one dark shape twisted to her, seeming to perform a perfect Exorcist spin. These things might have been human once but any shred of human behaviour was long gone. It opened its’ mouth, or something moved slightly where a mouth should be.

  You promised.

  “No, I didn’t.” Had she though? Katie did not remember making any vows – only being told that there was a way to get them away from here, and that she would find it. Even the coming here hadn’t been her choice. “I told you I couldn’t do it. I told you that but you were insistent.” Were they taking her mere presence as some kind of promise?

  We suffer and you stand there.

  Said with a venom Katie had never heard from the Shades before. Perhaps they could tell how close to rescue they were and were simply not going to accept that their freedom would never happen. She’d be angry too if someone had taunted her with the prospect of saviour and then turned their back. “I’m not abandoning you. None of you. But there are lives at stake here – lives that still belong in the human world. And, whether you like it or not, I’m saving those first.” She turned to the black lined clifftop and took a step towards it. Then one thready figure shoved out and sent Katie thudding to the ground. Obviously, they didn’t like it. For bundles of dark energy and shadow, they were sure solid enough to hurt. Okay, I’m going to pretend that was an accident.

  It was no accident. Shape after shape crowded around her until everything was a squirming purple-black blanket. The sky was black, the ground dark, and they were everywhere. For a second, an awful, eternal second, she waited for one of them to make a move. It felt as if the world was holding its’ breath. Nothing stirred. No breeze rustling the distant trees, no insects or birds scurrying around. It was not until now, lying flat on the floor with the wind knocked out of her and with darkness surrounding her completely, that the strangeness of this place hit home.

  This is the End Place.

  The end of everything. The cliff and the figures stepping over it didn’t just represent the end of the world, the end of their time in purgatory, but the end of life itself. It was the one place no-one could survive. And that begged the question – why was Katie still alive? Thinking too hard about that was irrelevant. Her body in the real world was a walking, talking corpse – likely all it took. She was alive and active for the moment – a small blessing but hey. Katie braced her hands under her back and pushed up. “This is not my fault! If I can fix it, I will, but you can’t blame me for any of this. I’m trying to help. Maybe you should appreciate it.” Quickly, she thought of home, of her friends and family, of her budding athletics career, and it made her smile. God, she wanted to be back in the arms of people who loved her and damn if she wasn’t getting back there. However she did it, whatever it took, Katie was going home.

  Apparently, no-one else was like minded. She began her way through the surging masses but they kept closing her down. Kept trying to touch her. They weren’t outright trying to attack but they were pulling together. Cutting Katie off at every turn. Letting dark tendrils brush living flesh, recoil from it as though it they no longer recalled warm, solid skin, then pushed and prodded once more. Not gently. That might have been dealable, maybe even soothing if she could fool herself into thinking they were just curious, but they were uncaring about whether they caused her harm. Katie glanced towards the cliff edge and could just about make out a line of still black shape, not joining this mass movement. They were right on the brink. She glared at the Shade nearest her. “I can see why you’re here. You don’t deserve peace or heaven or even a second chance to live. You deserve to die. You deserve everything that’s coming to you.”

  It – there was no way to define the thing as male or female – backed off for one moment, and Katie used it to shove it to the side the only way she had ever touched a non-solid Shade – by sinking her hand through its’ chest and bodily fork-lifting it – and try for the edge once more. They seemed to be trying everything in their power to stop her getting to the top. God only knew why but it was suddenly important to find out what they were keeping her from. It was like wading through toffee sauce. It happened to be a feeling Katie knew well, and hitting The Wall was something she was confident she could beat. Then the shit hit the fan.

  You will stay! It whispered the words but they bounced around Katie’s head like pinballs. It launched itself at her. Katie danced away from it so it only grazed the backs of her trainers (the trainers
with blood on them) but it was enough to bring her crashing down to her knees. One Shade jumped on her, then another, and another, until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. All pulling at her clothes, pawing her face and every inch of exposed skin, trying to hold her down and press their dead spirits ever closer to hers. That sent alarm bells ringing. Having yet more darkness poured in… yeesh! It made Katie shudder to think about what that might do. And that made it even more important that she was as far away from this ghostly attacking force. There were too many of them pressed in to get up and run. Katie wrenched herself up to her knees, feeling the crushing weight of these should-be weightless shadows. “Get the hell off me or I will Tazer the whole God damn lot of you,” she managed to huff out as she crawled a few precious inches forward.

  A slow hand-clap rang out from behind. All as one, the shapes fell away from her and stood still, looking at the ground. Evidently, who- or whatever was waiting there was scary enough to cow these things. Katie should be scared too. And she was. Beyond terrified was probably the right phrase. But the need to know what horror lurked won out.

  The waiting terror didn’t look threatening in the least.

  The waiting terror looked like Jaye. Dressed in black and sitting cross legged on the ground like an innocent child, drawing patterns in the soil. She glanced up and seen at the distance, her baby blue eyes were so hollow, so devoid of humanity that the tiny girl was, for the present, the most frightening thing on the planet. “You think you can hurt me?”

  Katie said nothing.

  “I am eternal. I am unkillable. Your mortal weapons won’t work. You can’t hurt me. Noting of nature can touch me.”

  “I’m guessing your last experience of human weaponry was round about the time they discovered fire. We’ve upgrade since. Tazers run on electricity, not nature. You have heard of electricity right?” she goaded.

  Jaye went silent for a moment. “Ah, yes. It makes the lights go on and off. It’s most dreadful.”

  I love you, Jaye. You rock. And if Katie had needed proof that her friend was still clinging on in there, that was it. She had yielded to the memory search just enough to tell her body snatcher one of the things electricity could do. Just not the use She wanted to know about. “Trust me. It gets better.”

  “I must say, I applaud you for trying. I never really thought you’d get this far without giving up.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Hmm, no. But I think we could become great friends. Well, business partners. You seem like a determined young girl.” Where was this going? Katie had a feeling she didn’t want to hear the rest of this but fear told her to keep her mouth shut. Jaye, or her body, rose and began pacing as she spoke. “See, people die all the time. And some people are meant to die and they don’t. Which is annoying, you know. Maybe you can, I don’t know, see that they do.”

  “You’re asking me to kill for you?”

  “Only when necessary, Katie, only when necessary. People trust you, they open up to you. You could subtly encourage them to-“

  “Shit! That’s just as bad. You know what you’re suggesting? Some kind of suicide campaign. That’s – well, I was going to say sick but it’s probably normal for you. What made you think I’d even think about it?”

  “You’re thinking about it now,” She pointed out with a satisfied grin.

  Christ, She was right. Katie was thinking bout it. Not seriously, not about accepting the proposal, but about how guilty she would feel at having held so many lives in her hand and snuffed them all. Surely, that was not the only argument. but it was, heart breakingly, the first one to come to mind.

  “On another note, where’s your dead lover got to? We must have words.”

  “About?”

  “He missed an appointment. I don’t tolerate truancy.”

  “You make it sound so schoolyard.”

  “Oh, this is much more serious. But,” She sighed and shrugged, “later always comes.”

  “I know Dina’s here somewhere and Jack’s trying to find her too, so I know you won’t hurt either of us until you have the chance to get her.”

  “You think too much of me, babe, you really do. I won’t kill you. I never said a little bloodshed was beyond the rules.”

  The dark things around her looked slowly up, interest tingeing the air where there had been nothing. The Shades weren’t bad people. They had never said a mean word to her until - Oh, crap. They moved when Jaye instructed them to, did what She ordered of them, and now She was instructing them to kill her. Or, at the very least, draw her precious lifeblood, the only thing Katie had that was still her own. But their reactions were slow. A little worried but mostly annoyed that this was coming down to a life or death battle again, Katie looked up at Jaye. You’re controlling them.

  She just grinned in an answer, and sent her a cheeky wink that was pure Jaye.

  “Don’t do that.” She raised an eyebrow and the gesture was all too human. She was playing with Kate, messing with her head… and She thought it was funny. “Don’t look like Jaye. Don’t act like Jaye. You’re not her!”

  “Oh, it upsets the child. Another life you couldn’t save.”

  “Give me time. I’m trying to do what you want. If it’s the only way I can go home… Just give me time.”

  “It’s always time with you people. Guess what, babe. It’s running out.”

  And then the girl was gone, hidden behind the slowly moving masses of energy.

  Nothing survived this onslaught of absolute nothingness. Nerves flared and then died. Lungs inflated then didn’t move again. Hormones flowed and then froze. Eardrums vibrated to breaking point with the songs of agony and accusations. And somewhere, muffled and lifetimes away, an apology.

  You’re stronger than this. Stronger than She thinks.

  The voice hadn’t come from any of the Shades next to Katie, who were all too busy trying to break her skin and bones, but she heard it as though it were right beside her. Eyes closed against the terrible and featureless faces surrounding her, she visualised a strong and sure hand and reached out to the purple-black stream of sound in her head. A Shade who had not yet been affected by Jaye? Stranger things had happened. She held onto it and wrapped her fingers in the dark power, using it to pull herself out of this blissful numbness. Staying here, drifting forever in this vacuum, this void, would be so easy. If Katie wasn’t careful, she could get used to it. Whilst she could remain here and know pain would never penetrate, she would also never feel the good things – love and winning and working for a living. None of the things she wanted to miss out on. The hair-thin but steel-strong thread of shiny jet pulled her up and up and the pressure started bearing down, but Katie couldn’t break the surface.

  Let go.

  She loosed the thread, dimly aware that she had pulled that source of (hopefully) help closer, maybe deep into herself, and opened her eyes just a crack. The bodies were everywhere, nudging her, staring down at her, dangerously close to probing her alien abduction style. There was a weight on her ribs, pressing down and threatening to crush the structure. It was getting difficult to breathe. Her vision was blurring at the edges. They were only ghosts but so so heavy… Maybe it’s all the chains, she thought bizarrely. Random.

  With the dregs if her energy, Katie brought herself into the tightest ball she could manage and then flung her limbs out as forcefully as she could, letting out a soul-ripping scream as she did so. Every single Shade that had been on her was blown backwards at least a foot. She felt strong, invincible; wonderful and frightful in equal measure. Glancing around, this End Place took on swirling, vibrant colours that couldn’t be more different from the flat blue and green land with the occasional clump of weeping willows. The songs of suffrage and sorrow were purple-black streams of sound; each Shade was alive with blue sparks, a sick, yellow power misted over the cliff edge; the ground was a patc
hwork of greens and browns and golden patches where the sun should have bleached it. The sky was still a calm blue but the echoes of squawking birds cut through the endless day. Katie tilted her head to the side, seeing everything tinged with blood and resignation. It was bitter and now she could feel it corrupting her, blackening her soul. Slowly, the Shades regarded her and sent a silent thank you spinning through the air and returned to their positions on the grass. One tried to touch her as it passed and, although Katie knew there was no longer anything to be frightened of, it thought the better of it, turned the touch into a mangled thumbs up gesture and took its own place.

  “How d’you do that?”

  Katie made her way through the rest of the black shapes – they moved aside and allowed her straight through – and headed for Jack who was standing, coincidentally she hoped, in the exact spot Jaye had been sat in. God, he was so beautiful in this new kind of sight. A transparent image of him was covered with black shadows and silver spirals ran through him like the letters on Blackpool rock. They looked hot – a fire of oil and ice. Angry red lines lanced his back, writhing and twisting with hate his killer had whipped into him. And the sound… a steady buzz of life and ambition. It hurt to be in the presence of such an old yet innocent soul.

  She pulled out of the pain; let herself bask in the cool sea of acceptance that surrounded Jack for a second and then retreated until only the strange surface world existed.

  “How’d you do that?” he repeated, his human transparency frowning and concern coming off his other self in waves.

  “I don’t even know what that was.”

  “You look pale. I don’t like you looking like this.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. She was anything but fine. Nothing seemed to obey the rules of logic around here.

  “Come on, I know when you’re lying to me.”

  He didn’t. Or if he really did, he had not shown it until now. Kate had lied to him quite a few times - mostly over the last day or two and been unchallenged. Promising to call if she needed him; she had not kept that one. Telling him the shot to her head had been nothing; it was still making its’ presence felt. And she sure wasn’t planning to tell him about the business proposal Jaye had made; it was simply idiotic to even consider it.

  “I found Dina.”

  “Where is she?”

  “There’s a bit of a problem.” Wasn’t there always? “She tracked me there. Jaye. I can’t think of her as Jaye – I’ll stick to She okay.”

  “Do you always ramble when you have bad news?” Katie forced a smile. As far as she was concerned, Jack could ramble as long as he liked to put off the words she was dreading.

  “She has her.”

  “Didn’t see that one coming.” Katie glanced up at the ranks of Shades ahead of her and knew what she had to do. Where she had to go. Something burrowing deep inside her told her. It was driven right into her core. “One way in, one way out, right?”

  “You’re not thinkin’ straight. What about Dina? Wasn’t the whole point of being here to rescue her?”

  “Jack, She doesn’t have her. All She has is a shadow. And if we stay here much longer, she’ll have ours too. I’m dying, Jack.”

  He followed her sad brown eyes as they skimmed the tops of the black shapes and settled on the perfect blue that stretched beyond them. Perhaps she was seeing something different. “No! You can’t.” It was going to be useless to try reasoning with this kid but he had to try. “You don’t know where you’ll end up. You don’t even know if you’ll get there in one piece.”

  Katie shrugged. He was speaking perfect sense. It would be madness to try it. Oh well. “Trust me?” She offered her hand to him, tried to turn this warm, human feel of him into a memory and knew that she would never feel it again, and ran up the grass slope and dove off the edge.

  If they were together when they died, when they jumped from the cliff and ended up in some other hell then that was okay. Katie looked down at the hand she was holding, saw it turn to mist and steam and then it was gone. Alone. One girl falling through this sizzling hot air, trying not to scream. Flesh was one degree away from peeling from her bones. Something icy cold and blurred beyond recognition cooled her core to an almost normal temperature. Whatever she had brought with her, it was keeping her from burning to death. Hopefully, she wasn’t taking it to meet a fiery end itself.

  There was a ripple and then a young man staggered through a green fire exit with his friends and threw up more alcohol than any sane person would drink. He looked up, knowing himself that he had drunk way too much and yet also knowing he would carry on until midnight. Maybe longer if they didn’t cut him off. A shiver ran through him. Something was happening. There was a movement in the air and the barrier of fluorescent lights and late evening dusk in the doorway was shimmering. Definitely laying off the tequila tonight. A thin circle of purple light hung, pulsing, before him. He stared at it.

  “Come on, man. Let’s get some air.”

  Wordlessly, the boy let his friends take him by the shoulders and propel him outside. The owner of the building, Shimma – no last name – watched the young man leave. He didn’t like people in his club with too much drink in them. The people on the bar would have booted the lad if he had started getting rowdy but a lot of his clientele tended to police themselves. He wasn’t the guy you wanted on your bad side.

  Katie touched ground and scared at Shimma. He was looking right at her but didn’t seem to see her at all.

  “He can’t see you. You’re just energy. Until you find your body, no-one can see you or hear you.” Whatever had happened to Jack during that journey from the End Place to here had not been permanent. He was standing at her side, blazing even brighter than he had before.

  In fact, everything was bursting with colour and sound and energy. People had energy; the same silvery threads of it Katie had once had deep inside, but Shimma… Shimma was a beacon of it. Thick beams of pure silver-white light shot out of his mouth as he yelled orders to a back room boy. It poured from his chest and thinly rimmed his entire body. “He’s gorgeous. So powerful.” She moved forward to touch him but Jack moved until he stood between them.

  “No! You can’t touch him.”

  “I have to. Just once. Just to know.”

  He put his hand out to stop her and then stopped. Katie wasn’t a physical being yet. His touch would not hold her back – if she even felt it. “It’ll kill you.”

  She stopped short and just froze, scared to move in case she touched something.

  “Energy as raw as yours and energy as strong as his. In this state, it’d be like wrapping your hand aroun’ a live wire.”

  As soon as she turned her attention away from Shimma – who helped by frowning and wandering off – she discovered something was missing. There was a big whole inside. The darkness that had regulated her temperature when she thought she might be on fire, the string of utter trust and hope – gone. Just drifted out of her somewhere between here and there and God only knew where it was now. “Fuck!” The force of her silent words made the strip lights overhead flick and spark. It hurt. She had never imagined a pain quite this intense. It wasn’t the burn that followed a whip lash – she remembered that agony vividly – or the itch that came from knowing you had a scab that you really shouldn’t pick at. This was an empty kind of feeling.

  “Let it go, Lady Katie. Whatever’s wrong, just let go.”

  “You feel this every day?” Everything was so intense, so present. There was no ignoring any of it or pretending it wasn’t there. “How do you stand it? I feel like this is eating me up.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Everything.” Vague, true, but… true. “I hate it. The whole world… inanimate objects have this energy, like a residue of people who touched them or even went near them. And I think that’s bad and then I look at you – you know, people – and it’s worse.
Or better. I can’t decide. Because I can see inside.” And the sight would haunt Katie until the day she died.

  “It’s okay. It’ll go away when you get back in your body.” Jack hoped. Certainty had become something of a luxury but he didn’t need Katie to know that. There were a few things he needed to investigate first. “Call for her. Touch her with your mind and she will come.”

  “I better listen to myself this time.”

  Katie closed her eyes and pictured herself and zeroed in. The physical Katie was at her desk doing homework. Something good had come from her temporary death, or whatever – could it be called death if she was still moving around? – because tackling maths and science textbooks before bed really held no appeal. Touching the empty mind and bidding her come was easy enough – just a brush of her soul to the shell it belonged n – and she pulled back, letting the solid Katie do whatever was necessary to get out. It wouldn’t be instant.

  “She’s coming?”

  “Oh, yes. Wait, you’re not talking about Jaye She, are you?”

  “I wasn’t but I sure am now. She’s comin’? Here?”

  A nod. She was hesitant to make this into a problem when it might never turn into one. But that was a foolish hope and they both knew it. Fear was radiating from Jack in waves, not of colour or sound this time but more a slow wave through the frigid, air-conditioned corridor. “I stole Dina away and I brought her back with me. She was inside me. You remember I said Jaye only had a shadow? Well, sooner or later, she’s going to figure that out and she’ll be pissed. And then she’ll come looking for us. For her.” For revenge, she suddenly knew.

  Jack weighed up his options and opened his mouth to speak. “Can we go into the club? I want to be there when I get here.” Which was probably the strangest sentence eve uttered.

  It was only a minute or two before the physical Katie became visible through the crowd by the door, saw a shimmer of energy near the far wall, glowing through the dimly lit building, and made her way over. She had brought a tail with her. Ghost Katie could see a familiar head of dark stubble bobbing just behind one of scruffy blond locks. Adam and Leo. Obviously not here as a welcome home party. They were a problem to deal with later. The two Katies stood side by side and wondered what to do next. Well, brute force had a tendency to work.

  “Wait!” Jack shouted out. “You can’t do this. I risked you going through that thing and I’m not doing it again.”

  “I jumped, I’m home, I’m fine. It’s my risk.”

  “It’s Dina’s too. You might be playing with her life too. If you try to squash her spirit in with yours… who knows what’ll happen?”

  Just then, a girl tripped on killer heels about five inches high – about four and a half inches too high for clubbing – and bumped into Katie, knocking her into Ghost Katie. And, just like that, they were one complete person. No pain, no squeezing. She just fitted.

  She held her hand out to Jack, seeing him just as waves of colour and tornadoes of emotion, felt him take it and watched every new dimension she was experiencing fade as he solidified. “Wow. That was a rush!”

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  “Have to get my kicks where I can.” The music was synth and electric, sounded like eighties night, the worst of the eighties. Katie pulled away from the corner and headed for the bar. “I need a drink.”

  When they were sat down with glasses of juice, Katie scanned the crowd for her housemates. They were still looking for her near the bathrooms but she was hardly going to wave and shout. Not that she needed to because Adam found her through a badly timed break between surges and started moving her way.

  “Promise me you’re okay. I-“

  “Jack, things are fine. It’s us I’m worried about. We’ve been through hell recently and, even though I know I’ve known you ages, I don’t know you well enough to guess how you feel. I’ve scared you. I made you think you were losing me.”

  “You thrill me, Lady Katie. I only came back once or twice since I died. Both times were,” he touched the scar on his head. Katie unconsciously touched hers. “Less than pleasant. I thought mortals were brutal and angry and I was better off out of the whole thing. So I stayed in my world.”

  “You never came back?”

  “There was never anyone worth coming back for.”

  “Sweet. Bullshit, but sweet.”

  “The best things grow out of horse crap.”

  “That line ever work?”

  First time tonight.

  She caught the thought and blushed. Jack brushed her hair out of her eyes, cupped her cheek in one cool hand and pulled her close for a kiss. They were dangerously close to making out like any other couple when a voice cut through the dark.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” God yes… no… who cares? “So this is where you skipped off to.”

  “Adam. Never had you down as a voyeur.”

  “Hidden depths. Actually, Lainy wanted me to ‘discretely’ follow and make sure you were okay. I mean, it is a school night and you’re underage.”

  “A little louder next time? It’s okay, I work here. Officially, I start tomorrow but I figure I might as well see what a normal night here is like.”

  “At the club? You’re a brave puppy.” He creased his brown and chewed the inside of his cheek. Man, it was cute. Hadn’t the horny hormone spike faded yet? Whatever Adam had been contemplating saying never made it out of his mouth because his phone rang just then. “Hello? Lainy, calm down. Speak slower. More tests? What kind of tests? Uh-huh. What does abnormal readings mean? Brain activity. Does it matter if it’s low level? It’s something. Okay, I’m on my way. Yeah, she’s here, she’s fine, just go. I’ll meet you at the hospital in five.” Adam was already moving when he signed off but, almost an afterthought he pointed to Leo then at Katie. “You two. Watch each other. Home by eight. Dina’s showing signs of waking up.”

  Okay. The knowledge should have surprised at least one of the trio but it didn’t. Maybe the boys were a tiny bit taken aback and just too macho to show it. Katie, though… in some part of her that was still linked to the End Place, she had expected it. What had the Shades said when she first found their world? Then your world will begin to mend. It will start to heal. Perhaps they meant everything would start to go back the way it was. She doubted it was going to be that easy. The huge void inside where she had secreted that darkness had disappeared. In this world Dina didn’t belong in any body but her own. So the transition had knocked the other girl free and some connection had reeled her back to the hospital. And now there was a hole in Katie where Dina had hidden. But it would heal. They had told her that much and even though they had tried to kill her, whether under Jaye’s control or not, she still believed them.

  You know you’re crazy?

  Completely.

  Good job I got a thing for psycho girls with a death wish.

  Hey, I never said I was a normal girlfriend.

  And yet here I am. Normal girls… just too boring.

  “Yo! Us mere mortals use words.”

  Being able to converse with only their minds was amazing. It was as though everything Katie and Jack were sharing was a secret only they knew. It was an ability leftover from their time in the End Place so she was positive it would soon begin to disappear like her multi-sensory world view.

  “You were acting all weird at home. Not that I expect anything else but seriously.”

  “Weird how?”

  “I dunno,” Leo shrugged. “Just like you weren’t you. Plus you didn’t swear at me when I came in your room.”

  “You’re right. Doesn’t sound like me. Maybe I’ve finally realised-“ and she bit off these last words with a flare of passion she didn’t like. At all. “You’re just not worth it.” But she didn’t really mean it. Not that Leo was a waste of breath sometimes. That part was true enough. But she couldn’
t bring herself to hate him as much as her voice told. Leo might be kind of a dick, but he was just a kid. Like her. He was probably still as scared as her, lonely, stressed out, confused. The only problem was that where Leo should have been more mature and example-setting, he wore a foot-deep cloak of attitude and bile.

  “Don’t screw with me, bitch. You weren’t there. Where were you?”

  So she told him. spent the rest of her drink and the walk home – Jack had elected to hang back in case Jaye showed up although it was much more likely to get out of the line of fire – info-dumping him with her stories. Where she had been, who she had seen, how she had kept the Shades at bay when they turned on her, how she had brought Dina back and that was why she was showing signs of life. It didn’t look like he believed a word of it.

  Fuck it. That’s his problem.

  Chapter twelve