Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Kieran had told himself he’d have an early night. Be sensible. Act like a man who wasn’t running on caffeine, adrenaline and the quiet terror of getting things wrong.
Instead, he was hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table, shoulders pulled tight as if bracing against a knife in the back, eyes gritty and unfocused.
The screen glowed back at him, unblinking, as he tweaked layouts and menus for ClosetAura – nudging buttons, reworking colour palettes, adding filters no one had explicitly asked for but everyone might secretly need.
Make it easy to navigate.
Make it budget friendly.
Make it something we really need in our lives.
The voices from the pub replayed, looping like feedback from a badly placed microphone.
He rubbed his face with both hands and stared at the screen again, willing it to make sense.
His eyes closed for a second.
Prom brushed against his ankles, the cat circling before settling, purrs vibrating softly through the soles of Kieran’s feet. The sound folded around him, familiar and oddly comforting.
Then the cottage wasn’t the cottage anymore.
The air was thick and heavy, clinging to his skin. Heat pressed in from all sides. Sand shifted beneath his bare feet, warm and grainy, each step leaving an imprint that vanished almost immediately.
Music played somewhere nearby. Not pleasant, not melodic, but discordant, insistent. It crawled under his skin.
The smell of incense hung in the air, sweet and overpowering.
Lisa flickered across his mind uninvited, but the thought of her slid away just as quickly. Whatever this was, she didn’t belong here.
‘I’m asleep,’ Kieran said, testing the words. They didn’t echo.
‘Welcome, Kieran,’ said a voice. It was familiar. Unsettlingly so.
Footsteps crunched behind him.
‘He hears it,’ another voice said. High, quick, threaded with worry. Jinnie. Definitely Jinnie.
‘Of course he does,’ said Jo. She was calm, measured: the voice she used at the café when stress levels were high, and she’d burned a batch of something.
‘Aye, but he’s no’ meant to yet,’ Wilma snapped. ‘Not without guidance.’
‘Or maybe not at all,’ Sam said softly. ‘This is Beth’s story, not his.’
Kieran spun round.
No one was there. Just the shimmer of extreme heat and vague shadows, figures suggested rather than formed, as if his mind refused to give them bodies.
‘Hello?’ His voice sounded wrong here. Too solid.
The sand gave way beneath his feet. He stumbled forward – and suddenly he was inside a building.
A corridor stretched ahead, impossibly long, its walls smooth and pale, the floor polished to a blinding sheen. His reflection warped beneath his feet as he walked. Overhead, a massive fan turned lazily, stirring the thick air.
The corridor opened into a vast room. At its centre stood a pinball machine. Not the pinball machine. And yet it was – but larger, taller, brighter. Its lights pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm that matched the beat of Kieran’s heart. The familiar music grated at his nerves, louder here, distorted.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Jinnie said sharply.
‘Touch it,’ Wilma countered immediately.
‘Who’s the demi-Djinn around here?’ Sam muttered.
‘Careful, love,’ Jo said, and this time there was no mistaking the warning.
Kieran didn’t mean to move, but his hand pressed the launch button anyway.
The ball shot up the channel. It wasn’t the usual cheap silvery metal. It was gold. Warm, almost alive.
It struck the bumpers, and with each impact the room flashed.
The night of the storm at the pub.
Candles guttering.
Prom wearing a paper crown.
Beth’s laugh.
Beth’s mouth on his.
The score climbed. Faster. Faster.
A burning sensation crept into his wrists and his chest ached as if something inside him was being wound too tight.
‘Stop,’ he said, though he wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
The glass rippled.
A face pressed through from the other side, the features forming slowly, deliberately. Amber eyes. A smile that knew too much. ‘You wonder why you hear me,’ it said.
The voices rose again, overlapping.
‘He’s not ready.’
‘He will be.’
‘You’re already involved.’
‘You always were.’
The machine shuddered violently. Lights flickered.
The face leaned closer, flattening against the glass until Kieran could see every line, every glint of amusement. ‘You’re closer than you think,’ it murmured. ‘And she’s closer than she knows.’
The ball dropped. The music cut out. Darkness enveloped him.
Kieran gasped awake.
His chair scraped loudly against the floor. His heart pounded so hard it made him dizzy. His mouth tasted of metal, sharp and unpleasant.
The cottage was unchanged. Lights on, laptop open, cursor still blinking at the end of a line of code.
‘It was just a dream,’ he whispered.
Prom lifted his head from the windowsill, blinked slowly at him, then turned round and went back to sleep.
Kieran swallowed. Deep inside him, something stirred.
Not a voice.
Not a laugh.
Just the unsettling certainty that whatever he’d seen wasn’t done with him yet.