“Oh, dear.”
She was dead. She knew it. Temper had seen that look before, that doomed expression on a slackening face. In his experience, there were only three possible options open to her at this point. The first was to run, but Lethe had a Teleporter on his side, which kind of ruled that out. The second was to give up: to accept what was coming or start begging. But begging wasn’t Quibble’s style. Quibble was an Option Three kind of girl.
She raised the gun, aimed it straight at Lethe’s face. Immediately, Memphis raised his, pressing the muzzle to Quibble’s temple.
“Don’t,” Memphis whispered. “Don’t you do it.”
“This is exciting,” Razzia said, and clapped her hands. The young woman slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“This is unfortunate,” said Lethe. “Very, hugely, unfortunate.”
“I can’t murder a baby,” Quibble said.
“Babies are just people who haven’t grown up yet. You’ve killed loads of people. Loads.”
“So let’s wait eighteen years and I’ll kill this one,” said Quibble.
“Oh,” said Lethe. “Oh, this is one of those … principle things, isn’t it? That’s … that’s sad. I’m sad now. You’ve made me sad. Because now I’ll have to kill you, Quibble, and … and I would prefer not to.”
His hands flashed, stripping the gun from Quibble’s grip and turning it back on her, pulling the trigger before she knew what was happening.
Her body toppled backwards. The wailing from the other room got louder, and Lethe handed the gun to Razzia. She looked at it like it was a piece of rotting fruit, and tossed it away.
“I’m sorry,” Lethe said to Memphis. “I know you were close.”
“She was my sister,” Memphis said.
“Oh,” said Lethe. “Didn’t know you were that close. I feel I have to ask, though, Memphis, and please, try not to take offence. Are you going to try and kill me for this? To exact revenge?”
Memphis looked down at Quibble’s body. “No, I guess I’m not,” he said at last.
“Good,” said Lethe. “That’s good. It’s best, after a family tragedy, that everyone tries to move on, and put the past where it belongs. In the past.”
“Do you want me to kill the baby?” Razzia asked hopefully.
“What baby?” Lethe said, and turned back to Temper. “You’re coming with us, Mr Fray. We have questions to ask.”
Another man entered the room, a guy with a braided goatee. Temper tried to keep him away but one touch was all it took, and all the bad thoughts Temper had ever had swirled and swarmed and swamped his mind.
When the bad thoughts crept up on her, and they did, they came slowly and quietly, slipping in unbidden to the back of her mind, and there they waited, patiently, for her to notice them.
She viewed them as if from the corner of her eye, hesitant to acknowledge their arrival and powerless to make them leave. They stayed like unwelcome guests, filling the space they occupied and spreading outwards. They slowed her down. They dragged on her, made her heavy. When she walked, her feet clumped. When she sat, her body collapsed. It was hard getting out of bed most days. Some days she didn’t even try. She knew what was coming.
She was going to die. And she was going to be on her knees when it happened.
She couldn’t see her death, but she could feel it. Kneeling down to change a car tyre, she had felt it. Kneeling down to clean up after she’d dropped a plate, she had felt it. Kneeling down to play with the dog, she had felt it.
This is how I’m going to die, she’d realised. On my knees.
And always, always, after this had occurred to her there came another thought, the thought that it had already happened, that she was already dead, that her body was growing colder and her blood wasn’t pumping any more. She experienced moments of pure terror when she believed, believed with everything she had, that she was trapped in her own corpse, that nothing worked and that no one could hear her screaming.
And then she moved, or she breathed, or she blinked, and with each new act of living she clawed her way back to the realisation that no, she wasn’t dead. Not yet.
It was mid-afternoon, and it was cold. The cold meant something. It was the last bite of the beast called winter, a beast that had stayed too long already. She could feel it on her face, on her ears; she could feel it seeping through her clothes. It meant she still had a spark of life flickering inside her. That was good. She needed that. But it also signalled a loss of focus, as she found it increasingly difficult to summon the crackling white lightning to her fingertips.
Eventually, she just sat on the tree stump on which she’d placed the tin cans she’d been using as targets. Three of them were scorched. Two were brazenly untouched. Still, three out of five meant that at least her aim was improving.
She hugged herself. It was an old hoody, but she liked well-worn clothes. Her jeans were a state, and she’d forgotten what colour her trainers had once been, but they were comfortable, and more importantly they were her. Lately she’d needed reminding of just who that was.
She looked at the trees. Looked at the sky. Got her mind away from her thoughts. Her thoughts weren’t kind to her. They hadn’t been for quite some time now. She looked at the twigs on the ground. They were dry. It hadn’t rained in two weeks. A rarity for an Ireland still locked in winter’s jaws. She watched a beetle scurry beneath a leaf, caught up in its own little life. To the beetle, she must be a vast, unknowable thing, a hazard to be avoided but not overly concerned about. If a god is going to step on you, it’s going to step on you. You’re not going to waste your little beetle-life worrying about something you have no control over.
She looked up, half expecting to see a giant foot descending, but the sky was blue and clear and free of gods. She waited, nonetheless.
Then she stood, and took the trail back through the trees. She used to walk this path as a child, side by side with her uncle. They talked about nature and history and family and he told her stories and she did likewise. They competed as to who had the goriest imagination, but even when he conceded defeat, with a look of mock-horror on his face, she knew he was holding back. Of course he was. Gordon was the writer of the family.
She remembered walking through this woodland with him. She could recall, quite distinctly, as if looking at a photograph, the angle at which she’d seen him. She was small and he was a grown-up, and his hair was brown and thinning where hers was long and black, but they had the same eyes, the same brown eyes, and when he laughed he had a single dimple, just like she did. It had been twelve years since Gordon had been murdered, twelve years since she’d tumbled into this twilight world of sorcerers and monsters and magic. She’d been twelve when it happened, not even a teenager when she’d started her training. The years, they had thundered by, heavy and unstoppable, a boulder rolling downhill. Bruises and broken bones and bloody knuckles and screams and laughs and tears. A lot of tears. Too many tears.
The house Gordon had left her sat on the hill, visible through the trees ahead. Even after it had officially passed into her ownership, she had been unable to think of it as anything other than Gordon’s house. Every room, and there were many, reminded her of him. Every Gothic painting on the walls, and they were plentiful, brought to mind some comment or other he had once made about it. Every brick and piece of furniture and bookcase and floorboard. It was Gordon’s house, and it would always be Gordon’s house.
Then