For a split second, it looked as if, in his high spirits, Jasper was going to hug Persephone as well. She had quickly moved within hugging distance, but at that moment, precisely when a new song, the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” began, Arthur came into the room and attracted everyone’s attention. He had three six-packs under his arm and looked like an angel in a cool ad for beer. Presumably that was why everyone was so pleased to see him.
Everyone except Grayson, Henry, and me, of course. We instinctively drew closer together, and as Henry reached for my hand, he said reproachfully, “Don’t say you went and invited him, Jasper!”
Jasper spread his arms wide. “Hey, guys, what do I keep trying to tell you? About friendship, and what I found out about it in France? Friends matter more than anything! I think you’ve all been at cross-purposes too long.”
“Did you lose your memory in France as well? Have you forgotten what Arthur did?” Grayson was watching grimly as Arthur, like Santa Claus in person, handed out beer cans left and right, coming closer all the time. Mick Jagger was singing, Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name. But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.
“Oh, come on, make an effort,” said Jasper. “Forget all that silly, childish stuff about demons and dreams, and grow up! Arthur has been friends with us since we started school. Okay, so he’s made mistakes, but first, who hasn’t, and second, most of what happened last fall was due to Anabel’s mischief-making.…”
“Really?” exclaimed Persephone, her eyes wide as she followed this exchange. “I knew she had something to do with it. Only, with what, exactly?” She was beginning to mumble. I took a moment to pull up the zipper of her dress, although unfortunately that meant letting go of Henry’s hand. Persephone thanked me with a little hiccup.
“It does no one any good to keep harping on about it,” stated Jasper, ignoring both Henry’s look of annoyance and the way Grayson was rolling his eyes. “You just have to break the habit and begin again. Real friendship lasts forever. And we’re the best friends who ever were, back then and now as well. Isn’t that so, Arthur?”
“He’s right. You were the Four Mosquitoes.” Persephone was mumbling like anything now that she joined in again. “And you may not be the nicest mosquito, but you’re the best-looking, Arthur. Because of your hair. And that amazing skin. Like porcelain.”
“Thanks, Persephone.” Arthur was right in front of us now. He had handed out all the beer cans and was smiling almost shyly. “Hi, everyone.”
No one returned Arthur’s smile except Jasper. We just stared at Arthur in silence: Persephone wide-eyed with curiosity, the rest of us with as much cold indifference as we could summon up. The last thing we wanted was for Arthur to think we were afraid of him.
Although unfortunately we were—or at least, I was. I thought of poor Theo Ellis again, and how Arthur had punished him for daring to stand up to him.
Just call me Lucifer, ’cause I’m in need of some restraint, sang Mick Jagger, and Henry raised one eyebrow and said, “Your signature tune, Arthur?”
Jasper gave him a reproachful nudge, went over to Arthur, and ostentatiously put an arm around his shoulders. “Good to see you back, man. Grayson and Henry are glad too; they just don’t like to show it. But deep down inside, they know that a friendship like ours can get over a few differences of opinion. Come on, everyone, do make up your quarrel.”
“Give them a bit of time,” said Arthur indulgently. “Sometimes you don’t realize how much you need your old friends until things get serious. Which might be before the rest of you think.” He leaned forward slightly, and the shy smile he’d assumed had given way to his usual self-confident expression. “All I’ll say is Saros Cycle.”
We stuck with our tactic of indifferent glances and didn’t reply. I for one couldn’t think of anything to say except “Er?” or “What?” I’d never heard of any Saros Cycle. And my attention was diverted because now of all times Persephone was moving away from us. I watched as she left the living room in a hurry. Had the alcohol made her feel sick? Or had her sister turned up sooner than expected, and Persephone needed to hide herself and the dress from her?
Arthur interpreted our silence correctly. “Oh, didn’t Anabel let you guys into the secret of her”—here he drew quote marks in the air with both hands—“‘mysterious death threats’? Didn’t she mention that you probably won’t survive the coming eclipse of the sun?”
No, she hadn’t. But she might well do so yet.
“She’s been back in touch with him again for some time,” Arthur went on, while familiar goose bumps stood up all over my arms. “Back in touch with her demon, I mean. The Lord of Darkness. Or maybe it was the demon who got in touch with her.” He gave a little laugh. “And the demon isn’t very well disposed to us, if Anabel is to be believed.”
“But he must really have taken you to his heart,” said Grayson, sounding pretty cool about it, as I felt for Henry’s hand, because I had remembered that there really was to be an eclipse of the sun in two weeks’ time. We were going to observe it from the schoolyard, wearing protective glasses and using measuring instruments that we were putting together out of cardboard in physics class.
Arthur smiled faintly. “Seriously—it might be more sensible to remember the old days and stick together again. The situation could come to a head sooner than we’d like.”
“What do you…,” Henry began, but he then fell silent and held his breath. He wasn’t the only one. Everyone stopped talking at once, and people who were dancing froze in the most unlikely positions. If the music hadn’t still been booming out, there would have been a deathly hush. And it was all because Persephone was back again, standing in the doorway.
My friend Persephone, the girl whose only interests were good-looking boys, fashion, and makeup, who could spend hours talking about lipstick colors and the choice between “dark raspberry” and “pearly mauve.” The thing she was holding as she stood there was so out of place that I had to stare for at least five seconds before I realized my eyes were not deceiving me. Persephone really was standing in the doorway with a gun in her hand. A very large and very genuine-looking gun.
And Persephone looked as if she knew just how to handle it, too, as she slowly raised it and pointed the barrel at us. The sheer terror that had frozen everyone else in the room came over me as well, with a few seconds’ delay.
What scared me most wasn’t the gun itself, but the weird, dreamy, glazed look in Persephone’s eyes. Mrs. Lawrence had looked exactly like that.
Arthur laughed quietly. “Sooner than we’d like,” he repeated.
9
EMILY TURNED THE music off. That made her the only one who stirred. The rest of us were still incapable of any movement. We simply stared at Persephone.
And she stared back.
Without the music, it was perfectly quiet in the room. All we could hear were scraps of words and laughter from the kitchen, where they obviously didn’t yet know what was going on in here.
Not so long ago, we’d been told in school what to do if someone ran amok. It could be reduced to a simple formula: run away, hide, wait. We were simply waiting. Maybe waiting for the whole thing to turn out to be a bad joke.
I’d lost all sense of time, but presumably it was only seconds since Persephone came back. However, it already felt like eternity. Henry’s hand lay cold as ice in mine.
Finally Jasper managed to break the silence. “Is that … one of my father’s shotguns?” His voice was faltering.
“Yes,” said Persephone, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Your father keeps the key to the gun cabinet under an old flowerpot in the laundry room. Second shelf from the top.”
Old flowerpot. Laundry room. My brain was clinging to separate words, but I couldn’t make the connection between them.
What was going on here?
Grayson took a step forward, which made Persephone move the gun a little way. Somewhere behind me a girl sti
fled a scream, and Grayson stopped moving.
“Better put that thing down, Penelope.” Jasper gave a nervous smile. “I know it’s not loaded, but all the same…”
“Persephone,” she corrected him. Her voice expressed no emotion at all. “My name is Persephone. And you reload a repeating rifle by pulling back the bolt of the barrel so that spent cartridges are ejected. If the magazine is empty, you open the bolt of the barrel, let new cartridges slide into the cartridge chamber, and turn the locking lever to one side. It’s really simple.” She took a couple of steps into the room and raised the gun with both arms. “Then the gun is ready to use. Breathe calmly.”
She was clearly doing that better than the rest of us, who were either holding our breath or gasping with horror. And the barrel was pointing our way.
Or to be precise, my way.
“The stock has to be properly held against your shoulder. Relax your hand, forearm, and upper arm, at the same time keeping your wrist firmly braced. Take off the safety catch, aim carefully, with your forefinger outstretched,” Persephone went on. She sounded as if she was quoting straight from the Proceedings of the Fiftieth Anniversary Jubilee of the Duck-Shooting Association. Except that I wasn’t a duck. And I didn’t like the idea of shooting anything.
“Persephone!” I couldn’t get out anything but a hoarse whisper. And I couldn’t think of anything else to say either, not at the moment. I knew I must do something, but it all felt like one of those nightmares when you can move only in slow motion because the ground beneath your feet and even the air feel like sticky syrup. I was thinking so slowly that my brain seemed to be stuck in the syrup as well. Or alternatively, everything was happening far, far faster than my brain could take it in.
Persephone wasn’t paying attention to me anyway; she was too busy aiming at my heart. Judging by the expression on his face, Grayson, who was closest to her, seemed to be desperately working out how much time it would take him to reach her. But however fast he moved, a bullet would be faster.
“Place your fingertip on the trigger. Now begin slowly crooking your finger,” said Persephone. I was sure now that this was all happening in some weird kind of slow motion. I mean, how long could it take someone to crook her finger?
There can’t have been much color left in my face. Anyway, it felt as if most of my blood had gone down into my legs.
“Persephone! Stop it!” cried Henry beside me. He had let go of my hand, and now he moved so that his whole body was in front of me. “Bloody hell, stop that stupid stuff!” I admired his ability to move and speak. I couldn’t even bat an eyelash, let alone do anything sensible.
But it was no use. Persephone didn’t even seem aware of us. She just went on with what she was doing.
“Keep your finger steady,” I heard her saying. “Go on breathing calmly, and don’t blink or you can easily miss the target.”
This was clearly the moment for me to scream, but I couldn’t even manage to open my mouth. Any moment the shot would be fired and hit Henry.…
Arthur (whose presence I’d entirely forgotten for the moment) cleared his throat. Then he said, quietly but firmly, “Persephone Prudence Porter-Peregrin! Put the gun on the floor at once.”
I still couldn’t see Persephone because Henry had planted himself in front of me like a rock, but I could tell, from the reaction of the others, that Arthur’s words were taking effect.
Everyone started breathing again. The air was no longer like syrup. I could move properly.
Then an uproar broke out. All the party guests began talking and laughing hysterically at the same time. One girl burst into tears, and it seemed as if the flight reflex had been activated only now in many of the guests. They ran through the terrace door and out into the garden.
But what about Persephone? Oh my God, Persephone! I pushed Henry aside and hurried to her as fast as my knees, which felt soft as butter, would carry me. She had collapsed on the floor with the gun and was kneeling on the floorboards, her eyes wide open.
“What…? Why…?” she stammered, just like Mrs. Lawrence. “The process of taking aim must not take more than five seconds,” she went on, “or your eyes will begin to water … why is everyone looking at us?”
I knelt down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Everything’s all right,” I said, hating myself for not thinking of anything better. What’s more, nothing was all right. Not even a bit. I glanced at Arthur, who was surrounded by people clapping him on the back. The hero of the hour who had persuaded Persephone to put down the gun.
“What are we doing on the floor?” asked Persephone. “Have you lost a contact lens again?” Then she saw the gun and flinched. “What’s that? Is it loaded?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Henry picked it up carefully and handed it to Jasper, who put the safety catch back on. His hands were visibly shaking.
“That was close!” he said, looking down incredulously at Persephone. “Good heavens, girl, what put a crazy idea like that in your head? And how did you know where my father hides the key to the gun cabinet?”
“I don’t,” faltered Persephone. “Take it away. I hate guns.”
“You really ought to put the thing somewhere safe right away, Jas,” said Henry, indicating the gun. “Take the cartridges out first. And listen…” He let his eyes wander around the room, where small groups had gathered and were whispering excitedly in low voices. “We ought to be able to tell the police a convincing story if someone happened to call them just now. For instance, we could say Persephone was drunk and playing a practical joke, but of course the gun wasn’t loaded.”
Jasper nodded in agreement with Henry. I could tell how grateful he was that someone had taken control.
“You’re right,” he said to everything Henry suggested, and then he left the room quickly, with the gun under his arm like a badly behaved tiger cub.
“What have I done? I don’t remember.…” Persephone put both hands to her burning red cheeks. “I must have blacked out. Did I really drink all that much? And how come … what was I doing with that gun? I don’t understand.” She began crying.
“You know alcohol has a bad effect on you,” I said.
“That’s right.” Persephone sniffed. “Even in makeup remover.”
“We’ll get you home. Wait and see, tomorrow morning you’ll be…” I hesitated. What would she be tomorrow morning? Perfectly all right again? Probably not. And we certainly wouldn’t be laughing at this incident. Ever.
“Tomorrow is another day,” I said at last. It sounded lame and didn’t really console Persephone. She just cried even harder.
“Is your middle name really Prudence?” I asked. Anything to change the subject. And for a few seconds, it worked.
“What?” She looked at me indignantly. “Prudence? Who’s called Prudence? I don’t have a middle name. A double-barreled surname is quite enough.” She let Henry help her up and blew her nose on the tissue I gave her. But then, unfortunately, she began crying again.
“What did I do? Everyone’s looking at me as if I was some kind of monster.”
“No, they aren’t,” I said quickly. “If anything, they’re feeling sorry for you.” Okay, so that was a lie, considering the way most of them had put their heads together and were enjoying the sensational details, but luckily Persephone was too exhausted to notice. Over by the bookshelves, Arthur was accepting congratulations for saving the day, while Grayson, who still hadn’t moved from the spot, stared at him furiously.
“He must have been controlling her somehow. Maybe by what he said.” I drew Henry a little way away from Persephone.
“A word or phrase to set it off?” Henry nodded. “Yes, that shot through … er, crossed my mind too.” He frowned. “Persephone went off to get the gun when he was talking about Anabel, right?”
Exactly right. “And she stopped aiming it at us when he called her by her middle name. The one she doesn’t have. So Prudence was probably the word programmed to m
ake her stop.”
“And the word to start her off could have been Saros Cy—” Henry began, but I hastily interrupted him.
“Better not say it aloud.”
Although Persephone was crying into my tissue too much to hear us.
“I suppose we should be grateful to him for stopping her just in time,” I murmured with my eyes on Arthur.
“I knew it,” growled Henry.
The whispering around us was gradually turning back into the normal noise of a party. It was crazy, but with every minute that passed, the mood seemed to be more and more ordinary, as if nothing at all had happened just now. Or as if everyone had secretly agreed on the story that we had really thought up for the police. And maybe that was better, for Persephone too—no one would believe the truth, anyway.
Someone—Emily?—had even turned the music on again. Although not so loud as before, so that we could clearly hear Arthur’s cheerful laughter. He seemed to be in a very good humor. And so were all the others around him.
Except for Grayson, of course. He had clenched both hands into fists, and he looked as if he might burst with rage any moment. Like a bull who’s been staring at a red rag for too long.
“You’d better get him out of here fast,” I murmured to Henry. “Before he breaks Arthur’s nose again.”
“Let him go ahead and do it,” said Henry.
“No! Arthur would only turn it to his own advantage. Please look after Grayson, will you?” I tried to smile, but even I noticed that I wasn’t succeeding very well. “I’ll take Persephone home. Then we can meet later at Mrs. Honey … at our old friend’s place, okay?” I took Persephone’s arm. “And—Henry?” I had to stop again and turn toward him.
“Hmm?” Was I imagining it, or was Henry’s smile a little shaky?
“Thanks for getting in front of me,” I said. “That was very … very chivalrous of you. Also very reckless.”