Kiss at Midnight (The Shades of Northwood 4)

  Every sound echoed off distant walls. Footsteps bounced around and sounds as if they came from everywhere but their own feet. Katie stood still for a second and put a finger to her lips, trying to hear that awful half laugh, half sob again.

  “When I saw you tonight,” Leo began, his words almost choking their way out, “I thought you were a dream.”

  “Do you dream about me a lot?”

  “Since you… went away, I’ve been staying in your room. Once, I prayed for you. I prayed that you’d be safe where-ever you went.”

  “Further proof that God is just a word. This is probably the least safe place there is.”

  “You’re a Shade and you physically can’t get badly hurt. I call that pretty safe, don’t you?”

  Katie stayed quiet. The wall to her left was quite uneven with rocks and stones so she went over to it. Something cool like a hidden door was too much to hope for but there might be some chunks of loose stone they could use to smash the windows up there. She pointed at Leo and then at the opposite wall.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked, obediently going over and running his fingers over the cold, hard rock.

  “A way out. I refuse to believe we’re trapped here. If you can find a loose chunk of wall or something then maybe we can use it to smash a window or something.” Though, realistically, even if they could reach it neither Katie or Leo was going to fit through that gap.

  “So we’re just gonna cut and run? And leave some poor git behind?”

  “No, we’re making an escape route.”

  “Before we find whoever was screaming?”

  “What is your problem, Leo? Nobody asked you to come.”

  “Not in words, no. But I don’t trust that kid in your room. Where’d he go anyway?”

  Before Katie had a chance to think about a suitable answer, that pathetic scream came again. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Me neither. We should find them first. Once they’re safe, then we can work on getting outta here.”

  “You know, you make a lot of sense when you want to.”

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  “Right… the xenophobia thing.” With a deep-seated dislike of Shades, Leo was, with hindsight, not the best person to have at her back. As people who had died but been deemed too important to remain as ash and bone, Shades were given the chance to resume their old lives in the knowledge that they would live and age until natural causes claimed them. It went against what Leo believed; his interpretation of the Bible was that dead should mean dead. And yet here he was. Standing yards away from Katie and here by choice. “Just keep it shut and keep looking.”

  He did not make a sound, but he did not move back to his examination of the wall either. Watching the young girl stretch and bend through the glow of the phone was too entertaining. Part of Leo wanted her to be the girl he had kissed the weekend before last. She still was that girl. She was still beautiful and vibrant and vital. There was no denying that her death had changed something though – something important. He could still want her, still walk at her side, still risk everything for just one smile that broke his heart. And she was too dead inside to notice.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “You. Well, everything actually.”

  “Leo, we’re in a large dark room with black walls, black floor, it’s freezing and it’s all immovable rock. Just rock!” Katie emphasised her frustration by kicking out at the wall. Nothing happened. She might have broken a toe but it didn’t hurt for long. “There’s nothing interesting to look at.”

  “Not on the walls or floor no, but where haven’t we looked?” The white beam from the phone angled up and couldn’t even penetrate the darkness far enough to find a ceiling. Luckily, all the pair needed to see was illuminated.

  Or, unluckily.

  A balcony ceiling jutted several feet out from the back wall. The light cast everything half in shadow, a couple of hunched figures and a chair. One of the figures walked over and braced its hands on the back of the chair. Leo squinted up to see better but Katie could see perfectly. One of the figures was a girl, small and slim, blue eyes that pierced the room.

  Katie took a step back.

  By the time Leo had managed to tear his eyes from the dark sight above him, Katie was long gone and moving almost too fast for him to track her through the gloom. She was running across the room and then she was hanging from the edge of the half-ceiling and clambering her legs up. “How – how did you get up there?”

  Valid question. It was about a dozen feet above the ground.

  Leo moved closer and shone his light over the shadows. Not that it really made much difference to Katie, he supposed, but it made him feel useful. “I’ll keep looking for a way out or something.”

  Katie nodded and then twisted to see where she was without waiting for Leo to move. The girl in the shadows whimpered again – a dreadful, broken sound that filled the air with despair. “Jaye.” She took a step towards her friend but Jaye shrank further back into the shadows. Recoiling from her touch.

  “Don’t take it personally,” said a second voice. Low, sultry, female. “She doesn’t even remember her own name. Well, maybe she does but we don’t use it.”

  “What,” Katie whirled to face the source of the voice, her words cutting through the hush like daggers, “have you done to her?” One foot stamped down to stop the spin with the last word. The rest of the space seemed empty of people although there was the chair she had seen somebody leaning on. There was a flat bundle of straw at the far side which evidently was being used as a bed. A battered wooden crate formed a makeshift table with scraps of food and a length of rope. She shuddered at the sight.

  “Me? Why, I’ve done nothing to the poor little girl. She was so… accommodating last time.”

  “Accommodating?”

  “Mmm. I thought, given our history, she might welcome me with open arms but no. You see,” the voice went on. Katie had the vague impression that she was being spoken to from somewhere very close to her. The table, if she was pushed to guess. “Oh, don’t strain yourself, you can’t see me until I take a new body.”

  “Take a-? Possession.” Wasn’t that the most fun thing she had ever heard? Last time Katie had faced a possessed person, she had got shot, nearly smothered by spirits in the End Place, and beaten half to death in her college common room.

  “And back to me. You, child, you’ve had a vey bad influence on this one. Every little thing I say or do, she refuses me. It got quite tiresome so…I’ll have to take this one again.” A dark shape blinked into existence, standing on top of the crate. A figure so completely covered by moving, living evil that even Katie’s enhanced Shade vision couldn’t see beyond it. A moment later, the figure jumped down from the crate and some of the darkness faded, not by much but enough to make out a human face.

  “He’s been resisting me too. Over and over again. Cute really.”

  “If you have a problem with me, then say it.”

  “Funny you should say that really. I do have a bone to pick with you girly, but I want to do the whole story. I’m after the full effect here.”

  “Strange that I’m not.”

  “I wonder how far you’d go to save your brother. Soon you will remember me. Isn’t that how it went? I was in his body every time this one – Daniel, isn’t it? – and he so thoughtfully brought me to you every single time when he thought he could protect you.”

  “Get out of him!” Katie growled. “Leave my family alone!”

  “Why, when they’re so very useful in bending you to my will? Okay.” Daniel pulled the chair over to him and sat down, lifting his legs and crossing them at the ankles on the crate. “For me to leave him intact, there’s a price.”

  “Isn’t there always? Name it.”

  Daniel brought his hand up to his face and turned it over as if he had never seen it. He blew on
his fingers like a girl drying fresh nail polish and some of the shadows blew away like cobwebs, leaving his skin as smooth and human-looking as her own. It was just a display, Katie realised, a show of how easy it would be to leave him. “Just to save him. This boy you barely know. Well, if I’d known you were so easy to manipulate, this could have gone so much quicker.”

  “Who are you? Why are you using my family to get to me?”

  “Because you made me a promise. Oh, come on, you can’t have forgotten already. … It wasn’t even that long ago.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And if I make a promise, I sure as hell would not break it.”

  “Oh, but you did.” Daniel let out a chuckle, deep and sexy. It made the air shiver. “Last time we met, you agreed to a partnership with me. To provide me with souls in exchange for that girl… that soiled soul you seem to value so much. And then you never delivered. Very disappointing, Kathleen.”

  “Ohhh, you’re her. And I only answer to Katie.”

  “Yes. I’m her. She. The one too old to have a name.”

  “I don’t remember making any kind of promises to you.”

  “You wouldn’t. Death accepts vows in different ways from you lot.”

  “Us lot.”

  Daniel looked steadily at Katie and continued without pausing for breath. “I asked – and very nicely, I might add – for you to choose me nice new bodies and souls in order to leave your Jaye alone. Now, you may not have used the words – you might have refused me even – but the fact remains. I left her. And now… you owe me.”

  “Hmmm. You’ve pretty much body-snatched my friend and my little brother. Haven’t you caused enough damage?”

  “I knew you’d be like this. That’s why I put my back-up plan into action yesterday.”

  Katie took a second to flash back through the events of today and yesterday. “The crash.” It had to be. It was an event that had killed more people than had survived, and now those souls were wandering around, lost, confused, and ripe for corruption. “You rigged that up. Why?”

  “Mostly because I could. If you won’t give me what I want then what choice do I have but to just take it? And I have the whole world to choose from. Oh, come, of course I know the Keepers showed you that. I’m active all over the world. I am hardly going to keep that a secret.”

  “Those are innocent people.”

  “Purity wouldn’t be so easy to turn. You know that. Look how long it took evil to claim you.”

  Katie winced. The memory was not a nice one. Involuntarily, she took a step back and her bag dropped into the darkness. “They’re dead and they don’t remember how it happened. You think it’s fair game to take people who don’t even know who they are?”

  “Yes.” Daniel stood up and walked forward. He stood close to Katie and, whilst every instinct screamed at her to move out of arms reach, there was nowhere left to go without following her bag down to the rocky ground.

  “It has nothing to do with fair! It has to do with you getting what you want. Which is..?”

  “Same thing I wanted before. A steady supply of bodies and souls so I can stay in your world. Or, rather, so I have a vessel ready and waiting when I decide I want to cross over.”

  “I am not cherry picking host bodies for you.”

  “I burn through you humans so easily. It’d only be a few every month. You’ll hardly even notice them.” Said like the sacrifice of human lives, even complete strangers, meant nothing. Maybe, to She, it didn’t. But Katie… Katie couldn’t even imagine herself giving up unwitting mortals to this, this being. “You’re so delicate.”

  “Me? Delicate?”

  “You’re the exception to the rule and that makes you, dear child, extremely valuable. Surely you know that much.” Daniel came even closer, barely an inch from touching noses. If he was breathing it had no smell, no temperature. He grinned. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed that everything bad seems to happen when you’re around. Like I’m happening.” He snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her tight, whispering, “It’s all about you, kid.”

  He released his hold but Katie jerked back before he moved. Her foot scrabbled to find the floor but found only air. Her momentum was too great and she fell over the edge. The only comfort as Katie plunged towards the floor was that Daniel still had his hands on her hips and was going down with her. He would end up as damaged as- No, no, no! This was all wrong. It was not Daniel that deserved the damage – it was the thing inside him. She had a split second to decide whether to control the fall and spin to let Daniel take the impact in the hopes that She would get hurt too – not likely – or whether to curl his slightly smaller body into her own and protect her little brother even if it meant sharing that cocoon of safety with her. The latter option won out. There was just no way she could let a defenceless little boy take a hit like that. Truthfully, she barely knew Daniel and might never see him again, but blood ran deep.

  Katie let go of him as soon as she hit the rock floor, the wind knocked out of her so completely that all coherent thought went on sudden holiday. He rolled away and there was a light flutter of feet finding the ground a yard or two away from her. Daniel. Maybe his body was bloody and broken, if it was corporeal enough to sustain such damage, but She wouldn’t care. She would force him to walk on fractured legs if it served her purposes. “Ah-hah-hah,” Katie hissed out when she tried to move. It didn’t hurt half as much as she had feared but not being able to get her breath was worse than any pain she could dream up.

  A shadow made a dark streak across the strobing lights behind her eyelids. Daniel, if you’re in there anywhere, you won’t hurt me. Surely he wouldn’t kick her when she was down? But, it wasn’t Daniel in control any more, was it? It was She. And She had turned Daniel into the Shadow Boy who had first come to her. Who had tried to drag her into the Dead World with him. Had he been trying to save her even then? Had he somehow known that was the safest place for her? Face down, Katie pushed herself up until she was resting the weight of her upper body on her elbows and coughed until she thought the lining of her throat might rip. A hand closed over the back of her neck and roughly pulled her up. Katie stiffened and her muscles bunched, ready to throw him off.

  “Hey, cool it, bitch.”

  “It’s just you, Leo. Where’d he go?”

  “Took off into the shadows. Breathe, okay.” He held her hands flat to her sides and refused to move until she was breathing deeply and evenly with him. “Are you hurt?”

  “Jaye’s up there. I saw her. You need to-“

  “I need you to be okay before you do anything stupid.”

  “But Jaye-“

  “Will be fine for a bit. Nobody’s up there with her are they? Exactly. No-one to hurt her.”

  “What if she hurts herself?” Katie couldn’t forget that flinch away when she had reached out to her friend. “She didn’t even recognise me.” Her bottom lip began to tremble and she bit down on it to forestall the tears.

  “We’ve gotta trust she’s stronger than that, right.” Leo brought the phone up to his face to check the battery. The light was burning the charge pretty quickly – it was down to half battery already and it had been on charge at home before Shadow Boy turned up. “I’m turning the light off.” A second’s warning before he thumbed the torch app closed, slid the phone into his jeans and slapped his hand into hers. “No smackin’ me into walls either.”

  Was he… was he trusting her? An unexpected occurrence. And maybe one she couldn’t handle. Right now, all Katie wanted was to go racing off into the depths of the room, where there was a dark tunnel opening which definitely hadn’t been there earlier, to find her brother. And she couldn’t very well do that if she was holding another person by the hand. She had to push back her straining muscles and ignore the faint stickiness between their palms. Apart from that mistake of a kiss between them
a week and a half ago, Katie hadn’t been this close to a guy other than Jack in months. It made her nervous. But that was not important. Couldn’t be important.

  “Hold on tight. I’m going fast.” A squeeze of her hand in response.

  “It’s getting late,” Leo murmured as Katie walked fast to the far wall. Being a Shade seemed to have improved the main five senses, and it came with handy perks like bucking the laws of nature and physics, but it did sweet nothing in the way of cool stuff like mega-speed or super-strength.

  “You afraid of the dark?” Leo snorted in answer. “Man up. I’ve been to some dark places – some so dark I forgot what the light looked like. And you guys got me through it – my friends pulled me out. Now I just need you to trust that I am going to get you safely through these tunnels. Do you trust me?”

  “Where? Where’ve you seen anything to block out the light?” He knew that was a mistake as soon as he heard himself say the words.

  Her step faltered slightly. Leo must have noticed because he froze instantly. “Everything is so bright now that I think my whole life has been in the shade. I loved Worth… where I grew up. It was safe and cosy and they taught me a lot. Arthur Claymore High taught me to run. Then I was attacked, and suddenly it wasn’t such a nice place anymore. They taught me to run away. The night before I left home, I met Jack.”

  “And he showed you the light. Really helping.”

  “No, but he showed me that there could be light. It just had to get a whole lot worse before it got better.” Most of what had happened since her arrival in Northwood was common knowledge. “When I died I was in such a bad place, Leo. I’d nearly let everyone die in that fire, I was – you were right – I was a bitch.”

  “But I thought the silver burned all the crap outta you.”

  “Oh, it did. And it still burns me now. There’s nothing evil in me now but I can feel it everywhere I go, in everyone I see. Even in you. Just flecks. Black on black.” The tunnel ahead forked off – one tunnel carrying on straight ahead and one branching off to the right. Straining to hear any sound that belonged to her brother, Katie took a few steps into the right tunnel then changed her mind and turned down the other passage. “What did I have to live for?”

  “Me,” he said so softly Katie would not have heard him without super Shade hearing. “You had us, Katie. You had the chance to live and you turned it down.”

  If only the tunnel was a different colour and made of concrete it could have been the corridor the two of them had so recently wandered down. Both were long, silent and ended in shadows when the eye could see no further. And there was that dread feeling too that they were walking into the monsters lair. “I wish-“ it was that simple. Katie stopped and felt Leo tense up behind her.

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  The scene was set. Daniel was standing in the middle of the narrow tunnel. It wasn’t the most dramatic of places for a final fight – not the epic, great hall battle the films kept banging on about. No, the large room where they’d met was out of the question. Far too spacious. Too many places for young Katie to escape. Of course, there was always a chance the human might tire herself with all that running around…

  Katie grinned as if she had read that thought. “I’m game if you are.”

  Perhaps the child really could pick up thoughts. Hmmm… an interesting power for a human to have. Few mortals ever developed the ability and fewer of them retained it in the afterlife. Granted, Katie had been exposed to the strange powers of her little town.

  “Are you talking to me?”

  Katie did not dare take her eyes off the person in front of her so she muttered across to Leo, “No, I’m talking to-“ She used her free hand to dip in his pocket for her phone. Then she unlocked the screen, opened the torch and clipped it to the holder on her own jeans, pointing at her brother, “who-ever that is right now.”

  Daniel smiled a tiny smile, more a sneer, and shuffled back a few inches. He turned to the side and suddenly there was Jaye on her knees and staring up at this hideous/wonderful being. She had a vacant smile on her face and a scar on her right arm flickered. One moment it was glowing insistent and silver, the next moment it was gone and only flawless, pale skin remained. She rummaged around in a bag – Katie recognised her tiny denim backpack and swallowed down a cry of indignation – grabbed something and offered it up. The object glinted silver. It took a moment or two but, even in darkness, the shine of a weapon was unmistakable. The slightly rusty penknife. Daniel took it and touched Jaye’s face. She looked down, almost blushing. That girl had never looked so peaceful.

  Daniel flicked the blade out, reversed his grip like a pro until it was hovering right above his diaphragm. “Resourceful, aren’t I?”

  “Psychopath resourceful.”

  “Oh, you do compliment me.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “Really? It came across as one. Now, care to introduce me to your friend here.” Daniel turned to face Leo, letting the penknife dangle from his fingers. “Oh, it’s you. I remember you from before.”

  “You know each other. Oh – right – of course you do.” Early in the school year, back when Katie had been only half-conscious and discharging herself from the hospital – Jack, Jaye and Leo had faced off with this thing and sent it back to the Dead World. Whatever had happened then seemed to have been a temporary measure only, though, because here She was. In the flesh. In my brother’s flesh, Katie corrected.

  “It took me years to recover. Of course, that’s just a moment really.”

  Katie clenched her fists by her thighs and glanced across. “Time is… wonky over there.” Leo nodded like that made perfect sense. She respected him in that instant. Just a tiny bit.

  “Did you tell her what happened? No? Oh, it was beautiful, Kathleen, it really was. Such reminiscing. We go way-“ then that titanium hold faltered and the complete blackness over Daniel faded for a few seconds. For a single breath, She had been pushed aside – the death spirit holding fort in his fragile body locked out – and he was purely Daniel. The deep chocolate brown eyes that most of the Cartwright family shared, the slightly crooked grin because they all smiled when they wanted to cry. Katie. You… Katie. Somewhere. Whatever happened next, her brother was in there. And he was begging her to get this over with. Giving his permission for… for anything she thought necessary.

  Anything.

  “Samael.”

  “Samuel? Who the hell is Samuel?”

  “Not Samuel. Samael.”

  The remnants of Daniel broke apart and darkness filled him once more. “You remember me. How nice. Naughty boy – trying to steal himself away from me. Honestly, you children have no manners. I’m not done playing with him!”

  “Get out of him!”

  “Would you like me to use this one again?” Unforgivably, Katie had forgotten Jaye was still kneeling there on the floor until just then. “I suppose I could…”

  Katie elbowed Leo in the ribs, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to get his full attention. “Get her. Be gentle. She doesn’t know us.” It took her gaze away from her brother for a mere heartbeat but it was a heartbeat too long. By the time Leo was sidling up to Jaye, Daniel was standing just inches before her again, and doing that weird not-looking-like-he-was-breathing thing. In a flash, he had the knife at her throat.

  “Katie!” Leo gasped. The phone light was shining down the tunnel and only a faint glow showed him Jaye. He stopped where he was, trying frantically to orient himself in the dank tunnel. Who was he meant to help? “Don’t hurt her!”

  “Hurt my own sister? You think so little of me.”

  “She is not your sister.”

  “As good as.”

  Leo glanced down at the dark figure by his feet. Jaye showed no signs of moving an inch. Leo touched his fingertips to the gr
ainy stone wall to get his bearings, then sprang forward and punched Daniel so that his head snapped to the side and he loosened his hold on Katie to let her wriggle away and move out of grabbing range. “Ten seconds. Talk fast.”

  “Samael is… Samael’s one of the Christian angels of death. The evil one. Takes life indiscriminate an’ all that.”

  “The angel of death,” Katie repeated doubtfully. Her scope of weird was suddenly even wider… and it hadn’t been exactly narrow before.

  “An angel.”

  “Great. There’s an angel of death squatting inside my dead little brother. Why do I think getting it out is going to suck?”

  “I thought Samael was a bloke.”

  “Maybe She can be if She wants. Maybe She just likes being a girl.” Or maybe Samael had been a girl all along, even back in the (allegedly-true) Bible times, and had just presented herself in male images. That sounded just as plausible. She could take on any form she wanted provided the occupying soul was weak enough. Katie made a mental note to get a hold of Leo’s Bible when this was all over. “Get her out of here!”

  “And leave you with this freak?”

  “He – She – I’ll be fine.”

  “You always say that,” he whispered. Katie had to swallow back a sob. The older boy was right – she said it a lot. But she said a lot of other things too. “And you’ve never been wrong yet. You’re always okay.”

  “What did She mean – you go way back? She meant before the club, didn’t she?”

  “Long story. ‘Nother time.”

  Just as Daniel/Samael got some semblance of balance back, Leo bent down and kissed Katie lightly on the lips. It stirred up all kinds of memories she couldn’t be dealing with right now. “I prayed for you. And some-one heard me.”

  Yes. It was me.

  “You came back okay. Different, but okay.”

  Katie smiled, under-armed the fading phone to him and watched from the corner of her eye as he reached for Jaye and pulled her into the shadows. “It’s just us now.”

  “What’s the time?” Jack asked for the hundredth time. He’d been asking every half a minute since 10.46 and it was getting irritated.

  “Just after eleven.”

  Definitely, the boy had good reason for wanting to know the time. They were all wary of it. Dina Bayliss, Jack Lawson and Shimma No-last-name knew that every minute Katie stayed away from them was another minute closer they were to not carrying out their plan. Perhaps she should have used the extra time to make more preparations or to give her plan a trial run through. Instead, Dina was just growing more and more sure that everything would go wrong.

  Blood magic was nothing she should be messing around in. It wasn’t anything she wanted to be involved in. Even the basic level magic Dina was toying with… well, so many things could go wrong. And the biggest problem – that Katie would not be here in time – was in motion.

  “What if she doesn’t come?”

  Dina smiled up at him – a smile she knew looked as fake as it felt – from her seat on top of the bar. She was rolling a half-empty bottle of water between her hands and glancing around the empty club. The fairy lights along each wall were switched on and the aqua lights over the seating areas were all blazing away, making the whole place feel bright and welcoming. It felt just like any other nightclub before it filled up with revellers. If Shimma ever opened the doors up again.

  That probably depended on whether tonight worked.

  Jack hopped up on the counter beside Dina. “D, are we running out of time? I mean, how long does this all take?”

  She didn’t know. It might take a few minutes. It might take right until the strike of midnight. They might already be too late. “She’ll be here.”

  “This’ll help, right? This setup you got workin’ here?” He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the answer in case it was one he didn’t like, but it seemed like the right question to ask. He took the water bottle out of her fidgeting hands and held them still. “You’ll do good.”

  “I’ll do my best, Jack, but I can’t promise anything. If this works for Katie, then it should work for all the others we saw, and that’s asking a lot. Of them, of us, of her. If she had been here…”

  If Katie had got there on time then there would have been plenty of time to explain what they were going to attempt. If Dina closed her eyes tight enough she could almost see her young friend dressed in the faded jeans and black shirt she wore for work as she passed under the red and black SHIMMA sign over the door; back doing the daily grind like normal. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “If this didn’t have a shot of workin’ then you would never try it. I know you better than you think.” Dina glanced up at him, then dropped her gaze once more. It would be so easy to get lost in the hope his eyes projected – the blind hope, the stubborn failure-is-not-an-option hope – and she couldn’t let herself get caught up in that. Hope led to belief which led to confidence which led to complacency and then mistakes because you trusted you would get everything right without even trying.

  “What about you? This will be dangerous for you too. The Keepers… you know they’ll take your Shade powers whether this works or not.”

  Something beeped from the other side of the dancefloor and heavy booted feet clomped across the wood. They both looked up as Shimma approached with a grim expression. He was holding his mobile in one hand and drumming his fingers on the screen with the other. “Still no answer. It just goes straight to answerphone.”

  “Did you try home? Maybe she fell asleep or something.” But Dina had a sinking feeling about that.

  “I tried that. She’s not there.” He sucked in a breath, getting ready to say the next bit. “Nor’s boy toy. Leo.”

  “Boy toy?” Jack twisted to face Shimma. The whole club could have been illuminated by his laser bright eyes. They were flashing with… something. Anger, fear, faith, all three, none of the above. To be truthful to himself, Jack wasn’t sure what he was feeling either. But it was intense.

  “Yo, not my business, man. I just think they spend a bit too much time together for people who hate each other.”

  Had something happened between the two of them? It didn’t make any difference really – he would forgive Katie the world if she only asked – but she hadn’t asked, had she? He had suspected, had always suspected, that something would happen between them. After all, Leo could give his girlfriend something he couldn’t: he could be there for her. All the time. In a blur of movement, Jack flashed to the other side of the room and slammed his fist into a blank piece of wall. Black paint cracked and flaked off around his knuckles. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing!”

  “You don’t say things like that if you didn’t see nothin’.”

  “I didn’t, Jack, I just – look, they live together. There’s bound to be tension.”

  “Boys, boys! We’re getting off topic here.” Dina slid off the top of the bar and crossed the room. She put a hand on Shimma’s waist. “This is about saving Katie and all those angry ghosts we saw on the motorway. And the longer we stand here getting in touch with defenceless walls, the further away from us they get. So, try her again.”

  Shimma backed off and flopped down on one of the nearby seats. Dina put herself between the two males –if they wanted to discuss this further then they would have to go through her. Knowing that neither of them would consider hitting a girl didn’t make the position any less knee-trembling. “Let me see.”

  “It’ll heal.”

  But Dina didn’t move. Not even when Jack scrunched his eyes up and tried to will the injury away. “It won’t go.”

  “You thought they were going to strip your powers all at once? They probably started early, taking things away a bit a time otherwise it’d hurt too much. I guess,” she added, just in case he thought she knew more than he did. “I mean, the Shade thing is basically everythin
g you are now. Gimme.” Reluctantly, Jack held out his fist and slowly straightened his fingers. The skin was broken and red rings marked out future bleeding or bruising, but overall the wall had come off worst. When the cuts were safely wrapped under a few tissues, Dina moved to one side and slid down the wall until she was crouching just above the floor. If the boys were going to go at it, let them; she was too tired to care. She had been too worried about Jaye to sleep much last night, and today was an exhausting mix of travel, panic, and messing with things she didn’t understand. It didn’t help her fragile mental state that the men were looking at each other like they were both plotting something messy – and Dina was caught in the middle.

  Nothing was going to happen between Shimma and Jack. Jack was blaming himself for going away. Okay, it wasn’t entirely his fault because he was just spending time with the man he thought was his father but… shouldn’t he have decided staying by Katie’s side was more important? “They’ve gone off together.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Both of them go missing at the same time. If they’re not together, it’s one hell of a thingy. Coincidence. An’ I bet somethin’ happens. If he gets her hurt, I swear…”

  “You’d know if she was in trouble. You have a link to her energy – you said so yourself – and if that’s still there… she’ll come to us.” I hope.

  “She died and I didn’t know that,” Jack pointed out.

  Point.

  “We have to rely on that connection tonight. We have to rely on a lot of things.” She rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes and made her way over to the pool of blood in the middle of the floor. In over a week it hadn’t dried or turned a different colour – it was irregular and glimmering the deepest ruby. Streaks of it smeared the polished wood where Katie had leaked blood from her wounds as she crawled across the floor. “This is the best chance we’ve got, guys. If we can make this work, if we can restore Katie, then we put all the other souls back too. When she… when we all came here last week, Shimma gave us enchanted talismans that bound us altogether. A whiplash on her arm caught us all. My best guess… we’re all linked by blood now.”

  “Guesses ain’t good enough, D.”

  Guesses were all they had.

  “If we pool our resources.” Dina took a deep breath and tried to steady her voice. Jack believed she could make this work. If this didn’t have a shot of workin’ then you would never try it. I know you better than you think. He hadn’t said as much but she knew Shimma believed she could do it too. The only one with doubts was Dina herself. “If we work together, we can use that link to pull her back. Blood is the strongest element the mortal realm has. And… since I’m the one with the penchant for cutting herself…”

  “I don’t have her blood in me though.”

  “You’re not mortal. The dead have spirit, a soul to soul bond. And Shimma has power. The spell needs those things. Katie was given a crystal by Mademoiselle Romani and a good psychic always enchants them. We should be able to channel all of that into the crystal.”

  “And the crystal will use Katie’s energy to work on everyone else.”

  “The research says so.”

  “I still can’t get her,” Shimma called over. “Should I leave a message?”

  How the hell should she know? And what should he say? Get your arse down here now sounded good on paper but if she had gone off on some mad adventure then it wasn’t going to do much good.

  “Give her another few minutes and then,” I don’t want to but, “we’ll do it without her.”

  “Shit. Will it – should it – can we do that?”

  Like Dina wasn’t asking herself the same question.

  Christ! He wasn’t supposed to do that!

  Katie dodged the fist Daniel aimed at her stomach by dancing back, but didn’t see the leg sticking out. The first she knew of it was tumbling to the floor and feeling hard packed earth scraping skin off her hands.

  “Daniel, you can’t want to hurt me.”

  “Oh he doesn’t. I, however, take what I can get.”

  “Desperate.”

  “Hmm. No. Just really pissed off.”

  She braced a hand on the wall and clawed her way up.

  “I really don’t want this. If you just gave me what I wanted then how many lives could have been saved? Hundreds? Thousands? More?”

  “You wanted me to kill innocent people-“

  “Find them, Katie dear. I would have killed them myself. I have morals you know.”

  Ewwww! How screwed up. “Just so you had a nice clean body to jump into and another soul to condemn.”

  “Yes,” Daniel/Samael grinned. “It seemed fair. But you refused. I give you back your friend and you give me a nice substitute shell. And this body was just wandering around the Dead World, just wasting away. He had no soul to speak of so it was simple enough to use him.”

  “He has a name. Daniel.”

  “Uh uh uh.” Samael waggled a finger at Katie even as she stood there, eyes to the floor and breathing hard. “Which of us has a knife?”

  “I’m wearing silver. The Keepers spelled it.” She was lying through her teeth but desperate times and all that. It was just plain silver.

  “Possibly. Sadly for you, you won’t get close enough to burn me out of your brother. So now, I ask you this… are you willing to kill him just to get to me?” Katie didn’t give the question a thought. The speech had distracted Samael with her own self importance for Katie to twist her ring until the tiny cube of zirconium jutted out from her fingers. She rushed at the figure with the hand out, hoping that a good stab with the jewellery might drive the fight back to where-ever Leo had dragged Jaye. If neither of them were in a fit state to help her, there might at least be more room further down the passage.

  Daniel – there was something of him still flickering deep down – took half a step back and began to raise his hands in defence. He was trying to turn away. In no way, shape or form did this boy who had never lived want to fight the sister who had only just begun to. He did not want to be hurt by her but he didn’t want to be the one to hurt her. Not even if it wasn’t really his fault. And then whatever embers had been burning, struggling to survive, snuffed out. Samael was back in control.

  That made it easier.

  Or it would have done if Samael hadn’t caught her by the arm, twirled her into the opposite wall, pinned her there with impossible strength for his size, and driven the pen knife deep into her side. It was not painful. It just felt like a slice through her flesh and then something steel and cold touching everything inside. Samael twisted the knife and listened to Katie gasp in shock.

  “Would that make you like me?”

  “Bitch!” spat Katie. She felt her knees begin to buckle and pushed off from the wall to sag against Samael. “I’m better than you.” The pen knife dug deeper and Katie cried out as she fell to the ground. Her ring twisted again and she touched the beads on her necklace. ANGEL. Maybe she should buy more beads and add OF DEATH to it, because that was her only chance now. If she didn’t agree then her friends would be next; then her family and everyone she knew. Just to make her realise the consequences of denying a death dealer.

  “Really. You look pretty pathetic to me.”

  Katie reached up and slapped Daniel’s tight face, grinning with a twisted satisfaction when the blow drew a jagged line of blood across his right cheek.

  No pan no pain but blood blood inside outside wrong place.

  It was silent, where-ever she was. Whatever dark place Katie was floating in, it was quiet and cool and… wrong. As she lay there bleeding, something started pulling on her.

  Started dragging her back.

  Chapter fourteen