Unfinished Business (The Shades of Northwood 3)

  “Remember, Katie, you’re trying to break his fingers, not yours.”

  “I’m trying!”

  This short, sharp exchange had become quite normal in the Newton Street house over the past couple of weeks. In the beginning, Katie had been reluctant to put any force behind the manoeuvres Adam was teaching her but…

  “You’re forgetting you’re at least twice as strong as me Adam.” And she was using her left hand which wasn’t the strongest.

  “No, I’m not. But the guys you’ll be trying this one will be full of alcohol and adrenaline. And that makes them dangerous. Now, push!”

  With her hand – the other one was bundled up in a plaster cast and cradled to her chest in a foam loop that went around her neck – Katie pushed down with the heel of her palm and grunted. Adam was a tall guy, broad and muscly too. It was hard to get a decent grip on him but he had spent hours showing her how to get good grips on any part of any body, no matter what size or shape. Well, not all parts maybe. Hand down, grab bollocks and squeeze until something pops was pretty instinctive. All at once, his fingers began to arch up as Katie pushed the back of his hand into the carpet, she laced her fingers through his and started to pull back. When she felt his hand protest under the pressure she let go. “But I have the element of surprise. I mean, no-one’s going to expect me to know how to defend myself.”

  Adam shook his hand out and started to flex his fingers. “How did that feel?”

  “Not too bad. It was harder than before though. Were you fighting me?”

  “Could you have finished the job if I was?” Answering a question by asking another one. Helpful. “At least you’ve stopped making straining-for-a-crap face. You need to work on speed though.”

  “You cheeky sod! I never made poo-face.” She made a fist and smacked Adam in the chest with it. He gave an exaggerated wince. A dump truck driving into Adam would probably do more damage to the truck than it would him. Probably. “Maybe a face that said trying to crush your bones is like trying to bend steel rods.”

  “You’re getting stronger.”

  But learning how to defend herself was not all about strength or even blocking physical attacks – it was about knowing how to control and diffuse situations before they ever got that far. And that was the skill she really needed. Working at a nightclub was reason enough to want to defend herself – working there at age sixteen was even more of one. The things she had seen since arriving in Northwood pushed the need to the edge and the challenges she had facedown just rose up and kicked those reasons right off the cliff.

  But Adam didn’t need to know about any of that. All he had to know was that he taught self defence, Katie wanted to learn it. There was not much to be done with her forearm in plaster. But the little moves… sometimes they were better than turning an annoyance into a confrontation. “Do it again. Don’t hold back and don’t stop.” So Katie repeated the push/pull action and kept pulling even when his fingers were so far back they should have snapped already. Then he twisted under her and reversed the grip so he was pushing instead. There was a struggle – Katie was determined not to give in – and then the hold broke. She thought she could have broken fingers but whether they would have been his or her own was another matter entirely. “Okay, I’m done for tonight.” Her broken wrist was begging for painkillers and an essay on altruism beckoned. How interesting had her life become? When you had nearly died at least twice and actually died once within days of moving to Northwood, tight deadlines seemed kind of mundane. Between making sure her grades stayed high enough to keep her scholarship, working at the club, and doing her fair share of jobs around the house, Katie was spread thin enough. She liked this predictable cycle of eat sleep work. Right on cue, another part of her routine popped up. A pair of thick soles raced across the landing and a door slammed, inviting a stream of abuse. It sounded as though Jaye had just stolen the bathroom from her room-mate, Dina. A high peal of laughter and then the door creaked open and shut once more. The girls shared most things and, tonight, it sounded like make up.

  “There goes my hot water,” Katie sighed. She had been planning to get somebody to wash her hair but Jaye was incapable of leaving the bathroom with any hot water in the tank – whether she needed it or not. “And here go I.”

  About half-way up the stairs, Lainy swept in through the front door, bringing in a sudden blast of approaching winter with her. “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Oh, hey. I thought you were on the late shift tonight.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think anyone will miss me. I’ll be up later. Now, where’s that feller of mine?”

  Katie jerked a thumb towards the front room. “And tell him to stop beating up on little girls.” Lainy looked her up and down. At nearly five foot seven the look took a while. And Katie still had a few more years of growing to do. “Point taken.”

  As she passed the bathroom where Jaye and Dina were squealing over some new techniques for smoky eyes, a familiar sensation hit. It was a cool, squeezing hand around her insides. Her stomach contracted in both discomfort and longing; not quite pain, though that would certainly come, and a sudden need for the feeling to continue. Because the end result would be worth it. Katie hurried past one open door and one closed one with that talking cat from YouTube drifting through it, and dashed into her small room at the end and slammed the door behind her. The first port of call was the bottom drawer of her bedside table where she kept some Paracetamol. She could dry-swallow them or pop a couple and take them with Red Bull. Neither option appealed but she eventually decided to swallow them dry. She wanted to sleep tonight. A beep came from her prone – a text message from some ringtone firm trying to sell her Halloween tunes. Hmm… tempting. Not. Katie pressed the power button on her laptop and, as she waited for it to load up, eased her cast out of the foam loop and rested it on the desk. It was her right hand, her writing hand, but she could just about type and use a mouse with it. Thank you modern technology. Can’t even get me out of homework. The essay was about half done. She wanted to finish it later tonight and only have to double check it tomorrow because there wouldn’t be time for much else before work.

  And then it started hurting again.

  It took a moment for the pain to set in but at least Katie was expecting it. She let her mind turn inwards and a ball of silvery energy shot through with purple-black streaks formed in the pit of her stomach, and she focussed on that. It had taken until now to grow that ball of life force into this healthy orb from the shredded mess it had been left in a fortnight ago. That was down to having her new friends around all the time. A little love worked wonders for a girl. Sometimes, though, it felt like love was killing her.

  These almost daily visits were definitely taking a toll. Although getting to spend time with Jack was wonderful, it was also torture. An invisible finger dug deep into that silver ball, hooked a whisper thin strand of light and pulled. It came loose and that was painful enough. It unravelled and Katie forced herself back into the real world before she fell into her own soul. The pain wasn’t oh my God bad and hadn’t been since the first couple of times when all this had been new; more like she was slowly coming undone inside. Each and every tug of that string of light was just pulling another splinter out of her soul. Melodramatic much? This was the most beautiful hurt Katie could ever imagine and she never wanted it to stop because somewhere… somewhere deep and hidden… she knew she deserved it. Only – however corny it sounded, the breath she couldn’t quite catch, the waves of tiredness that nudged her edges – none of that even registered when Jack’s ghostly image began to form in front of her. It didn’t stop hurting.

  “Hey,” she grinned, putting her hand up to his face – or where his face would be when he was flesh once more. Her skin would always be the first thing he felt. “I missed you.”

  Jack couldn’t speak until he was fully solid so he just smiled in return. And that smile was l
ove. Pure and eternal and invincible. Maybe Kate hadn’t completely worked out her feelings for him yet but Jack had loved this girl for so long. He’d waited more than a century for her – weeks, months, a year or more, it wouldn’t make much difference. I missed you too.

  Katie jumped. “I keep forgetting you can do that.” It should not have surprised her. He had sent his thoughts to her many times but she never expected it when it happened. “You need to start knocking when you want to do the mind meld thing.”

  Knock knock.

  “Not happening, cowboy.” Katie turned back to the computer screen which was staring at her and wondering why she didn’t love it anymore. Altruism and modern society. There really wasn’t all that much to say. It didn’t exist any more. End of. “Unless you’re planning to share some thrilling new ideas for this essay, I am not moving from this seat!”

  What you writin’? Love letter? For me? You shouldn’t have.

  “Anyone ever told you you can be a right arse sometimes?”

  “You love my ass,” said Jack, finally solid enough to speak, and turned around to give her a better view of said body part.

  “I don’t like it when it’s interrupting me,” she shot back and gave him a light smack on the arm. It was a lie – there wasn’t a single part of him that Katie could justly have a problem with – but the truth was, she didn’t need the distraction right now… and it was worryingly easy to get distracted with him around. “Oh God, I need someone to do this for me.” She put her head down and rested it on her cast, hoping the rough weave of the plaster would scratch some life into her. Giving part of her energy to Jack to allow him to take physical form had drained her and it would take a little time for it to return in full.

  He leaned over her, took a look at her screen and frowned. Reading hadn’t been a part of basic education when he was young and, whilst his mother had aught him letters before he left home, it still took him a while to figure out some words.

  “Jack?” Katie glanced up at him and searched his sea green eyes for something – strength, vitality – anything she could use to feed herself enough to keep awake. All she found there were shadows. Things he didn’t want to tell her yet. Things he maybe didn’t want to tell himself. But that was too deep, too soon; all Katie wanted was a hug.

  “Lady Katie.” At some point, that had become the name he used for her – like a cute little nickname. Katie liked it. It had first passed between them just after her arrival in Northwood, she was sure of it, but he had kissed her that night and her memories of the time were blurred pictures and snatches of conversations that might or might not have ever happened. It wasn’t that the kiss had been mind-blowing enough to blank her mind – it had been gentle and shy and pleasant – but Jack had a… talent. A special way of making sure he was forgotten. Jack was a ghost. Not a ghost in the spy sense where you just made yourself so incredibly average that nobody had reason to remember you, but a fully-fledged, card-carrying ghost. Of the dead variety. He was called a Shade. One of the things he could do was kiss a person and completely erase him from their memory. Which, all things considered, was probably a good thing. But, when Katie was meant to be in a relationship with said ghost – not kissing was becoming a problem. “Is something wrong?”

  Want the list? she thought at him. There was a lot wrong and Jack knew it. He was just doing that male thing of pretending his problems didn’t exist until they went away. “Everything I ever knew fell away when I moved here. That should’ve been enough.”

  “You told me yourself, everything you knew turned to fear.”

  “It was a big enough thing, you know, leaving home is the biggest thing a lot of people go through. Ever. So I thought I’d be home and dry because God knows I’ve been through it,” she continued, barely pausing for breath. Now that the words were coming out of her mouth, there was just no stopping them. “But oh no, the world just keeps on piling it on because hey, it’s Katie, let’s see how much more she can take. Well, newsflash World - Katie can’t take any more. I’ve been beaten up, whipped, nearly drowned. I thought I found friends but I had to fight to keep them. I had to kill a guy to stop him killing us both. And I can’t even kiss you because it’ll screw with my head.” What have I done? Why is the world punishing me? “And my wrist hurts.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have no answers for you but the wrist… I can do something ‘bout that.”

  Jack gently placed his own hand over hers and touched her fingertips. Katie shivered. Being touched by Jack wasn’t like being touched by any flesh and blood human. His touch was air-light but somehow cool and firm. It sent a tingle through her and it was good. A tingle that made her feel safe. Safety was all she had wanted for some time and Jack had been there to give that. He wouldn’t always be around though, as Katie had found out, so she needed to know how to handle herself in a fight. Like every-one, she hoped she never had to call on that knowledge but based on her first month here, the possibility was slim to none. She pushed back in her chair and closed her eyes, breathing deep and preparing herself for the wash of numbness that would sink into her wrist.

  And then there was a knock at the door.

  “Katie, can I come in?” There was a moment of silence then Lainy walked straight in with no more warning. “Let’s do this before I fall down.”

  “Long day?”

  “New lot of students. Think they know it all. They’ll learn. Believe me, they’ll learn.”

  “And you get to teach them. They pay you extra for that?”

  “As if! No. Goodness of my heart, sweets.”

  “Lucky you.”

  In the next second – so fast Katie would have missed it if she had decided to blink – Lainy shot a questioning look at Jack and he just stared back, no response in his eyes. She had found the two of them holed up here together a few times already and, although she never asked how Jack got there, the question was growing. Maybe she knew and was just being polite. “So, how does it feel today?” Lainy asked, taking the bandaged arm in one hand and prodding exposed flesh with the other. All the time she never took her eyes off Jack and Katie just knew there was some silent conversation shooting between them. If Jack could communicate with Katie psychically then it made sense that he could do it with Lainy too. So, in the way she had become very good at over recent weeks (worryingly good if she was honest) Katie split her consciousness in two, letting the very surface take care of what her body was doing, and pushed the rest of her mind over to the invisible level on which her friends were speaking. She felt Jacks’ mind nearby, just a wall, closed off and heavily guarded but couldn’t see Lainy. Then a snake of purple-black light raced across and there was a tangle of silver sending ripples of greens and blues to another tangle of silver, only this one had handfuls of black threads mixed in. And the blue and green waves began to sing. And the song turned into an argument.

  She’s 16, Jack. She might look older, act older, but she’s still a kid!

  You think I don’t know that?

  I think you know, I think you understand, and I think you’ll carry on anyway.

  O’course I will. I love her.

  You know how many rules this is breaking, right? I mean, you do realise how much trouble you could both end up in?

  I tried to stay away. The first time I met her, I did my job and then I tried to keep my distance. But it wasn’t that easy. She’s too young for this kind of relationship. There’s too much that could go wrong. But logic doesn’t really count for much when your heart speaks louder than your head. Up here, in the dead air between minds, Jack spoke with a rich, deep south accent. Whether it was just because the Texan twang was his native one and therefore the one all his thoughts came in or it was just harder to maintain an adopted accent when he was worked up, Katie didn’t know. It was cute. He should speak like it more often. Surely you went though all this with Adam.

  That was different
.

  It would be, wouldn’t it?

  We were both over 18!

  She knows she can’t kiss me. I take her memories away if we do. I can’t let her forget me.

  Maybe that’d be for the best.

  Katie felt something bubble up inside - something furious, something she didn’t want to control. She couldn’t let this out around her friends. Jack and Lainy continued talking but Katie could no longer focus on the words. A haze of dark light glowed around what she imagined to be her own consciousness and she could barely see the gentle flow of words. She felt like she was floating away from that place. Somewhere very far away, and yet right next to her, there was a noise that shocked her out of this detached state and brought her thundering back into her body. She felt the two parts of her mind slot back together and squash that horrible feeling of being angry and used between them. The sensation was… she wanted to say nasty but a tiny slice of her had kind of liked it. The sudden knowledge that she could be bad and not have to apologise for it was intoxicating. All she had to do was give in.

  No!

  Where were these thoughts coming from? She didn’t want to feel that way. Not about her friends.

  Slowly, she became aware that Jack was banging on the thin bedroom wall and bellowing at her last housemate, Leo, to turn down that annoying popcorn music from his games console. Just to be even more irritating, the music went up a few notches before it finally settled at a level somewhere just below deafening. He made to fade straight through the wall and talk to the other boy about something but, at Lainy’s warning look, decided to use the door instead. Then it was just Katie and Lainy, looking awkwardly at each other. Things had never been tense between them before, not really, only Lainy was trying to hide the conversation she had just had with Jack, and Katie was struggling to hide the fact she had heard it all. She couldn’t wait for her 18th birthday – the day there would be no more secrets in this house. She wanted to be able to talk to Lainy. Tell her how her whole world was tearing apart.

  “So, you two are good now?”

  “We’re getting there,” the older girl answered with a shrug. “He thought I went back to work too soon.” Katie frowned. “A few years ago, I was in a car accident with my dad. He died and I didn’t. I’m a nurse and I couldn’t do anything to help the poor sod. I never went back to work at the hospital after that. I just set this house up with Adam and took care of you. It used to be enough but I needed to go back to nursing. I needed to know I could still make a difference.”

  “And he didn’t want you to?”

  “Oh, he did. We talked. I just accepted the offer before I spoke to him. There were things we were going to do.”

  Before Katie had a chance to ask what kind of things, Jack stormed back into the room and leaned against her wardrobe, jumpy but not breathing fast. Not breathing at all. His eyes were dark and flashing. He looked shocked. Haunted.

  “Okay, it’s looking good. I think we’re done here.” Lainy fiddled around with the foam loop, guided the cast back into it, “There. That should take the pressure off,” and left. She was right – it felt lighter and easier now it was back against her chest.

  “Jack, what’s wrong?” She went over to him, took his chin in her hand and forced him to look at her. He might have 150 years on her but when her loved ones were scared or in danger, she was damn well going to be the boss. Whether she wanted to take charge of this was something she would find out in time. The answer would probably be no. But for now… something had shaken Jack, given him that haunted look, and she knew it had to be dragged out before something else happened. And there would be something else – disasters never came on their own.

  “It’s nothin’,” he said and shook the worry out of his face.

  “Come on, Jack. You don’t have to be macho around me. Hell, I’ve been in hysterics when you’ve been around me and I never cry in front of people.” Okay, that wasn’t all the way true. People had seen her cry but only her nearest and dearest and only when she couldn’t help it. Every now and then, tears were more powerful than words. “Something’s got you worked up.”

  He tore his gaze away from her and fixed it on his scuffed boots. That only brought back memories of how those scratches had got there and that was a bit too close to home for the moment. He didn’t want to worry Katie with his troubles. The girl was just starting to go a whole day at a time without looking over her shoulder for somebody trying to jump her – he wasn’t going to take that freedom away from her. “It’s nothing you need to worry about Lady Katie.”

  “Okay, now I really think I need to know.”

  “I just… I jus’ saw a name. It freaked me out a little.”

  “A name?”

  “It was my name.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Back in my time, my name wasn’t the most uncommon.”

  Jack turned bright green eyes on her and tried to catcher gaze. If he held her brown eyes then everything would be alright – Katie would lose herself in them and her questions would die away, and no more questions meant he didn’t have to give her answers to. Answers that would only make more problems.

  “Has something changed between us? Because I thought we were going to start telling each other things and I can tell you’re not telling me something important.”

  She was right. And he wanted to tell her what was wrong. He really, really did. It was only the fear that stopped him – the dreadful certainty that she would work herself up over a tiny thing. Because that was what Katie did. She took an insignificant moment and made a drama out of it and then when something truly momentous happened she just… didn’t.

  “I mean, that’s what a real couple does. They tell each other their hopes and their fears so the other one can share them. I want that for us.”

  “Oh Katie, I want that too. And that’s why you have to believe me when I tell you this is nothin’ important.” But it was. But it was something he would deal with alone. Jack crouched down and sat down on the floor, pulling a blanket off the bed to cover the both of them with. “You know how sometimes you see a stranger writin’ your name, and you wonder how they know you? It turns out to be their name because a million people have the same name.”

  “You promise?”

  He nodded and put an arm across her waist. “Promise,” and then he felt guilty for lying to her.

  “You know, the bed is much more comfortable.”

  “Exactly. When you get cosy, you forget there are some things you shouldn’t oughta do.”

  She eyed him with doubt. They had already done quite a few things they shouldn’t have but it probably wasn’t wise to do any more of them… or think about them. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “She’s smart. Points for that.”

  “Stop it. Stop treating me like everything’s the same. You’re keeping a secret from me and if you are, I want to know it. I want to help Jack.”

  “You are. You’re helping me forget I was ever worried.”

  Katie reached down inside her for that tangle of energy and brushed the surface of it, feeling the hum of life all around it. She could try to pull a thread out and reach into his mind and just take the words from his mind. It would be easy. Not painless but if they couldn’t talk this out then their relationship was already heading for the skids as far as she was concerned. No. They weren’t in trouble. Jack wasn’t keeping some huge secret from her. She didn’t need to know every tiny detail. She was just being paranoid, looking for problems where there were none. Just so used to fighting that anything even resembling a problem provoked that challenge response in Katie. “You’re right. I’m being silly. We’ve got a couple of hours before I have to go to bed. We should spend them on us.”

  Doing things your Daddy’d kill me for, Jack finished the thought. He glanced at her and covered most of his face with the brim of his cowboy hat. Th
ere was a hint of a blush under it. It wasn’t that Jack was particularly prudish about physical intimacy or that he had suddenly come over shy near Katie. If that was the case then solving it would be simple – sleep with her and get all those fantasies over and done with and never have another care about such things. It was the fact that their relationship was… unconventional, to say the least, and they had found more creative ways to be close to each other.

  My Daddy will never know, she thought back at him. It was easier to think when he opened his mind to her. She leaned back against Jack and turned her face into his chest, breathing death in. Somehow, it didn’t smell the same as it had on some other Shades. Well, the ones who were trying to kill her, to be specific. Then, death had smelled foul; like rust and ashes and acid. On Jack, it had the same notes of something old and used up but also of something more… something desperate. He was quite a dark Shade apparently, and that basically meant he had to spend a lot of time in some other world with other dark Shades, and so smelt of the grave. Lighter Shades – the ones who spent all their time in this world – were clean and could smell of whatever perfume or cologne they wore. On Jack, the stench of death was just an undertone Katie was getting used to, mostly hidden under lingering fragrances of straw and horses.

  He put one arm over her shoulders and leaned back until they were lying on the floor. “You said your wrist was hurting?”

  She did her best to shrug. “Pain killers have kicked in. It’s not too bad.”

  “But it could be better.” He laid one hand over her cast and closed his eyes. I don’t want you to rely on tablets and chemicals.

  And I don’t want to rely on ghosts.

  As she watched his hand slowly sank through the half inch of plaster and gauze and padding, and into that thin cushion of air between the cast and her wrist. Katie instinctively tried to pull her arm away- listening to her eyes yell that there was a hand ready to grab her broken bones, while her brain calmly whispered that he had a magic touch, that she wouldn’t feel a thing. Her brain was wrong. She did feel something. It wasn’t pain, the eyes had got that one wrong. There was a strange sensation as his hand brushed her skin, just she imagined the sieve felt when flour fell through it. Then there was a coolness creeping through the bones in her wrist, centred on her radius, cooling it down from its agitated state of trying to knit itself back together. Until this process started, Katie had not even realised how much discomfort she was in. Just got used to it, I guess. Her bones stopped itching and burning and slipped into a satisfying numbness. Feeling nothing was far better that feeling her insides itch. And just as this calm was spreading through her right forearm, Jack let his hand sink deeper – almost soul deep. Uh-oh.

  He melted further into her body than was strictly necessary and the room blasted into another dimension. Katie could see her bed, her furniture, her window, but they were all overlaid with swirls of moving colour and light. The swirls were the energy everything had – moving things (like her computer) were imbued with energy of their own because of the potential for life they bore, but other things – large, inanimate objects like desks and drawers gave out echoes of the energy of people who had used them. Most things in this room glowed with her life force but there were smudges of brightness left by her housemates as they came in. It was so nice just to be able to see a tiny glimpse of this magical world again. She turned to Jack to thank him for showing her this world –

  Oh God. Oh Jesus, Jack was so gorgeous in this new vision that it hurt to look at him. He was still Jack, no aura or surrounding glow. There was a tiny flame deep in his chest. Katie tried to rub the back of her hand over it, suddenly needing to feel the warmth it gave – it was tiny but looked so intense, so destructive – but she came up against a wall. His actual chest. And it was cool again, not cold, but a good few degrees off room temperature. What kind of heat could he deliver if he just allowed himself to touch that fire? Katie frowned at him for a second – a thought occurred and two things clicked in her head – but she couldn’t seem to keep her thoughts straight. Something to do with Jack being full of this unfeeling and it maybe having something to do with him not wanting to talk to her about… what? She’d forgotten and she hoped to hell that he wasn’t making it that way. And then the puzzle lost all importance.

  Something moved behind her. A mess of letters and books swooshed to the floor, moved by an invisible gust of wind, and fluttered to cover half of the dark carpet, leaving trails of gold and orange in the disturbed air. She tried to trace the lines the things left and giggled as she tried to catch the ends. It felt silly and giddy and exactly right.

  Jack caught hold of her hand and together they stretched straight up – his hand twisted around hers. Katie glanced across at him. There was a moment of absolute perfection between the pair, joined skin on skin and so much more, and then it was gone. Broken. Shattered. Logic was trying to fight its way to the surface. And logic – cold, cruel logic – said that they couldn’t be together like this, couldn’t be this happy, they hadn’t earned it. Only, this moment was so perfect, so intimate, neither of them wanted to interrupt it.

  “But- “

  “Hush. You think too much. Stop doin’ that.”

  “I have to think.”

  “Why? What is there beyond this?”

  “College, work, family and friends, running, not getting myself almost killed….”

  “You need to stop worrying. Look, you got Jaye and Dina back, the sheriff can’t hurt us no more. You’re nearly a straight A student. You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about so just… quit it. Okay?”

  But how could she? How could she really? So many things in this town to worry about and Katie had… actually yes, Katie had beaten all of those things. She had died and came right back to carry on. She had broken her wrist and gone straight from the hospital to join in another fight at Shimma. Even when she had seen Jack killed and lying in the middle of a storm, she had faced his murderer and won. Through the tears and the blood, Katie had carried on fighting and now she was realising that she deserved this peace, this rest. This year had been – traumatic, if that wasn’t too big a word – with everything that had happened since coming to Northwood, the reason she came here at all, and having to suddenly stand on her own two feet with all these new relationships and demands on her time after sixteen years of her family’s protection and care. So yes, she had earned the right to enjoy herself and just be a teenager for a while.

  “Incoming!” a voice yelled out, sounding hollow and strange. She didn’t recognise it but then even her own breathing sounded alien in this state of seeing. Something whizzed through the air, slicing it like a knife. Katie sensed it heading straight for her chest long before she saw it. Even then her reaction time would be far too slow to stop the spinning thing from hurting her so she relied on her instincts and shot her left hand straight up above her head, desperately hoping that her reactions were accurate enough to stop it.

  It was a vain hope. Her left hand was not her strongest and, even though she was learning to rely on it more and more, it still didn’t feel as natural as her right. And it told.

  She caught the thing hurtling towards her body but not before a sharp point on it carved a split down the pad of her index finger and across the palm. It started stinging but only a tiny, ignorable bit. Her hand closed around the object and she whipped her hand back down to her chest to absorb the tiny shockwaves.

  “Thought you might want it back.”

  Jack blinked and rolled away, up to his feet. Katie looked down at the thing in her hand, a silver disk with spikes, and crawling with red lines and smudges. Hate and anger, pure and ugly and limitless. It started getting hotter as she looked at it, quickly hot enough that she yelped and dropped it to the floor, half-expecting it to burst into flame and burn a hole in the carpet. Her vision snapped back to regular three-dimensional viewing. She saw a silver badge lying b
etween her knees when she got up; just an ordinary badge with no powers of emotion. Still, she didn’t want to pick it back up. Just in case. Katie watched it carefully and when she was satisfied it wasn’t going to jump up and bite her face off, she raised her head and looked in the direction the badge had come from. The sixth housemate, Leo, was standing by the open door and looking at her with a puzzled expression. “Maybe without the attempted amputation of all my fingers?” It wasn’t hard to guess why he looked that way. He had spent a bewildered few weeks trying to get his head around the idea that half of his friends were dead or about to die. She didn’t think he had come to terms with the idea yet. It was no easy task.

  “Did I interrupt something?”

  Katie brushed her hair back from her face, sat back at her desk and handed Jack her new green and white striped scrunchie. “Please?” He obliged and started tying her long hair up. Boys should never be let loose on other people’s hair but Jack had gotten quite good at this over the weeks Katie had been unable to do it for herself.

  “I interrupted. Oh well.” He didn’t care. As if she had expected Leo to be human and leave them alone. “Anyways, bitch… hey, what freaked you out?”

  “Bit late to the compassion party, Pointer.”

  “’Scuse me for giving a crap.”

  “What do you want?” The older boy always wanted something. Leo wasn’t the type to enter into any kind of social interaction without a damn good reason. “Oh yeah, don’t cross that line.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Leo glanced over at Jack with something just under out and out hate, and just above distrust. It was hard to believe that these two had fought side by side just a couple of weeks ago and had had each other’s backs. Unless Leo was trying to stab Jack in his. Which was more likely the case. It made her giggle and Katie had to cover it with a very fake-sounding cough.

  “We’re teenagers with crazy bad hormones. Hmm? Whatever could we have been doing?”

  “Whatever. You’ll be the one gets hurt.”

  Katie sat back in her chair, tipping it as far back as it would go without being in danger of tipping all the way over, and took a longer look at Leo. Blue eyes, dark hair starting to grow back on his DIY skinhead, maybe an inch or two taller than her. He was a few years older too but the fact he didn’t appear to have shaved in days made him look even older. In addition to that, his plain white shirt and black jeans looked as though they could walk to the washing machine by themselves. The jump from a steady eight or nine hours a day of college work at home to working so hard at the academy that you only slept between deadlines didn’t look good on him. “Boy, you need to sleep or someth- oh, wait,” she said and tugged a can of Red Bull out of the case by her desk and held it out. “Works.” She waited for him to take it.

  “You’re a freak. You hang out with dead guys, you work with dudes who could batter you, you always find trouble… fact, I reckon you go looking for it. You’re a freak, bitch.”

  “And yet you’re the one still in my room.” She shrugged the best she could. Letting Leo know his presence was getting on her nerves would just encourage him to lurk some more so she turned back to her computer. The essay was going nowhere fast so checking email was a good substitute. Not that she was expecting anything important. “Spam, spam, you’ve won the Nigerian lottery. Buy our crap. More spam. Yeah, I should clear my inbox out.” There was about a month’s worth of junkmail – she hadn’t even deleted anything since she had the computer. The most interesting things in today’s box were a quick HI HOW R U? message from her sister and a red flagged one from EVENTS at the academy. A lot of them came through but most of them went to her college email address. When had she ever given them her real address? Still, insurance companies and ambulance chasers seemed to get her mobile number from somewhere…”You still here?”

  “Well, I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

  “You got a problem with me?”

  “Man, you’re a walking corpse.” He let that sink in for a moment but he wasn’t telling them anything new. “You’re an abomination. You break all the rules of man and God. And you walk in our world like you’re one of us. It’s wrong, man, and you know it. All of you – none of you should still be here.”

  “Maybe I have a job to do before I get too Heaven.”

  “If you’re still on this planet after you die, you ain’t getting to Heaven.”

  “And you reckon Saint Peter lets prejudiced pieces of shit through the pearly gates?”

  “I might not like you and I certainly don’t trust you but at least my heart still beats.”

  “I’m an abomination, right? Unnatural? Why the hell should I even look human?!”

  “You tell me.”

  “I’m not some monster, Leo. I used to be human and, okay, I’m a shadow of it now but I’m here and I’m not leaving so get used to it!”

  Katie rolled her chair back and threw her good arm out to keep a safe few feet between the boys. “Guys! This is not getting us anywhere. You don’t like each other – we got it. No-one’s asking you to be the best of friends. But Leo, you need to trust him with me ‘cos seriously, big girl now.”

  “You’re alive and he’s not. He’s taking a little bit of your soul away every time you see him. You shouldn’t be with a dead man.”

  “Jack’s never tried to hurt me and, anyway, who I give my soul to is none of your business.”

  “He’ll kill you,” he said simply and walked off.

  Jack got on his knees and shuffled over to Katie, his face nuzzling in her ear. His breath tickled her, warm and light. “I think somebody’s jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of us?”

  “Mm-hm. I got the prettiest girl in town and he only has the Bible and an old copy of Playboy.”

  “Ewww, bad thoughts!”

  “Extremely bad. I should be ashamed of myself.” He dropped his head to her shoulder, dotting kiss all the way down the side of her neck. Katie put a hand to his cheek and smiled. Being with Jack was so hard most of the time. Moments like these, the rare times when they could just be a regular couple and do some of the things any other pair of teens would do, these were the moments she lived for. No rules. No ‘we shouldn’t’. Just lust and a great big dollop of fun. “I’ll be good.”

  “No, good means stop.” And that wasn’t an idea she loved.

  “I’m a bad, bad influence.”

  Jack kept nipping at her neck. “Hey!” Katie made a half-hearted attempt to push him away but didn’t really put much effort into it. She had work to do.

  “It’ll still be there in the morning.”

  “Exactly. It still won’t be finished in the morning either.”

  “Okay.” Jack reluctantly rose to his knees and went over to the bed. He sat down, back pressed to the headboard, and draped one of her blankets over himself. “I’ll be here when you’re done but I want you to know I’m feeling unloved.”

  “Good to know.” She watched him for a second – waiting for him to make a move and coax her back into his arms. Hoping, not waiting, because he really wouldn’t have to coax very hard. But when it became apparent he meant to stay where he was, Katie turned backed to her screen and clicked on her EVENTS email. Miss Cartwright. Regarding the prize draw held on the first of October, we are pleased to tell you that you have won a prize. Huh. Must be something she did at the open day or something. You have been awarded a psychic reading with Mademoiselle Romani, a travelling fortune teller guest lecturing with us. It was just signed Levenson Academy of Sports and Action – no name or reply address. It was probably just an automated thing but still… Katie was way more excited than she probably ought to be. She never won things. The odd cuddly toy or tub of talc on raffles but never anything when there were other people to compete with. “Very cool,” she murmured, low enough that only she could hear it. There was a time, date and place written underneath which she
scribbled down.

  Afterwards, she founds that she deeply didn’t want to do her homework.. it went on her TO-DO list for the next day – along with college, training, ironing (her turn already?) and a four hour shift at the club. Anyway, the sky was properly dark now. Sleep time.

  Shut the world out, sweetheart. There’s bad people out there.

  Jack, I thought you were asleep.

  I don’t sleep.

  Katie stuffed her slippers back on and padded over to draw the curtains. She’d had these cloudburst ones since she hit her teens but they were one of the few things of her childhood she hadn’t quite outgrown. Drawing the curtains… such an easy sounding task. Surely she could do that without screwing up somehow. She knew it was only paranoia – irrational and fleeting – but she had a vision of something going horribly wrong. And, maybe because she was thinking of it, it did.

  Mostly.

  On her way back to bed and Jack, her fluffy slippers caught on something and she fell forward. The lethally spiked silver badge was lying slightly to he left. She twisted as she fell. And the badge came hurtling towards her face.

  “Katie!”

  But Jack couldn’t move fast enough to stop her fall. Katie squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the impact of the floor and the agony of the badge slicing into her face. Leaving it lying around had been a dumb thing to do and, really, it was just waiting for a face to disfigure. Half a heartbeat later, the bruising shock of eight stone of Katie getting a short, sharp introduction to Mr Floor crashed into her. Another heartbeat in which she realised holding her breath wasn’t going to make any difference, and the needle sharp point of the badge didn’t slice into her. The really bad pain sometimes took a while to seep through the blanket of shock. Another few seconds and still nothing. Tentatively, Katie cracked her eyes open and glanced around. There was rather an interesting view of the junk under her bed. So… definitely on the floor. And there was the badge… one point poking through the thickest part of the foam loop around her neck. If that hadn’t been there then the silver star would have been stuck in her neck and her carotid artery would be pumping.

  Relief flowed like laughter. Even the roaring in her bones couldn’t stop it.

  “Sorry,” she hiccupped. “Must be my lucky day.”

  Chapter two