Chapter 29
Mabel
The next two weeks felt like a sort of trance.
I spent most of my free time with Cliff.
He went out of his way every morning to walk me to the faculty building, kept me company between seminars, picked me up from the library in the evenings.
He said he wanted to spend time with me, but we both knew it was more than that: he wanted to make sure Ashton didn’t run out of patience and take matters into his own hands.
For the same reason, I spent most of my nights at his place.
I slept beside him, with him. For the first time, I felt like I truly understood why they called it sleeping with each other.
It wasn’t just about the sex, it was about the before and after.
The sense that you were sharing something beyond the physical.
When I fell asleep in his arms, I felt like our minds were interweaving.
As if, although it was unconscious, although it went unremembered, we even shared our dreams. Whatever this thing was between us, it was bigger and more powerful and more beautiful than anything I’d felt with a man before.
In the presence of his soul, I felt my own soul coming to rest, and somehow … coming home.
Nobody noticed I was spending the majority of my free time away from college.
Davie was still in a coma, and Zoe had gone back to her parents’ house the day after my confrontation with Ashton.
She still wasn’t feeling any better and the college had insisted she take a leave of absence.
I’d told her I thought it was a good idea – Cliff had promised me she’d recover quickly once Ashton was no longer feeding on her soul.
That thought was the only thing that let me relax even slightly as the date of the emergency ceremony loomed.
It felt like we were on a chessboard. Cliff and I on one side, the rest of the Starlings on the other.
Although we were the only ones aware we were playing, I still felt like we were at a disadvantage, because on a fundamental level, we didn’t know the rules.
We had a plan, but it relied largely on improvisation.
The only real move we had was to get me into the same room as the artefact.
Everything that happened after that depended on me.
As much as I liked taking matters into my own hands, I couldn’t stop them shaking when I thought about that. Like right now. I clasped them uneasily over my stomach to keep them still.
Cliff noticed anyway. With a glance up and down the empty street, he interlocked his fingers with mine. ‘The car will be here any minute.’
‘I know, that’s why I’m nervous,’ I muttered, looking around. It was early twilight, and Cambridge lay before us in shades of grey and blue, only the evening sky shot through with soft violet.
Cliff had told me the council moved the location of the ceremony every time, making it harder for anyone who might be planning to disrupt it.
This one would take place somewhere near Cambridge, because Victor’s body – Jess’s body – was already too damaged to withstand a long journey, but the exact location had not been shared with Victor or Norah.
All we knew was that I’d be picked up in about ten minutes.
‘There’s something else.’ Cliff stepped in front of me, shielding me from the street. ‘They’ll notice if your soul is untouched. I have to take some energy from you or they’ll get suspicious.’
I swallowed, my carotid pulsing dully. ‘Okay.’
‘Just a bit, I promise.’ Softly he cradled my face, letting two fingers slip down to the artery in my throat. I’d realised by now that made it easier for them to reach the soul.
My pulse slowed beneath his touch, and I smiled. ‘I trust you, remember?’
I closed my eyes as I sensed a gentle pressure inside my chest. It felt completely different than it had with Victor and Ashton.
Cliff didn’t hurl himself against my soul, he knocked cautiously.
I didn’t try to push him back, I opened it for him.
After all, he was already in there, although in a different way.
It lasted just a few velvet-flowing seconds, the heat streaming from me and into him. I was flooded with a pleasant kind of langour, sinking against him, breathing him in, absorbing his closeness – the same thing he was doing, just differently.
Carefully he disconnected, although he held my body more tightly than ever.
His breathing deepened, maybe because of my energy, maybe because we both sensed this was a goodbye.
He wasn’t taking part in the ceremony: if he tried to follow us, it would raise questions.
It was safer for us and for the plan if he waited here. Still, it felt awful.
‘I don’t know if I can let you go,’ he murmured. ‘If something goes wrong—’
‘It’s our best option, isn’t it?’ I broke in calmly.
‘I mean, you can’t keep me out of this now, I’m in too deep.
You said it yourself – the council wants to get rid of me.
And I’m not going to hide from them. We both want a real life, don’t we?
And we can’t do that if we’re on the run.
We have to strike first. We have to stop them.
This is the right way. Logically, it’s the only thing that makes sense. ’
He pushed me gently away from him, looking at me. ‘This has nothing to do with logic, Pica.’
‘Yeah, I know. Emotions are such a drag.’ I rolled my eyes, knowing he would see in my face that I didn’t mean it. Not anymore. Not when it came to him – to us.
‘Promise me you’ll be careful. That you’ll do everything you can to protect yourself. If you have to choose between destroying the artefact and saving yourself, you choose yourself, okay?’
I forced myself to smile. ‘Sure.’
Cliff pressed his forehead against mine. ‘You’ve always been a terrible liar.’
‘All right, then listen to this: I’m coming back to you,’ I replied, with all the certainty I had. ‘Was that the truth or a lie?’
Instead of an answer, he gave me a kiss. Maybe he really could hear what I was thinking: that it wasn’t either of those things. I wanted to mean it, but I couldn’t promise. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen once I got into that car.
Just as Cliff let me go and took a step back, it appeared at the end of the road: a black vehicle with tinted windows, which pulled up beside us.
Cliff’s expression shut down, and I knew the curtain had fallen back across the window.
Once again, he had made a mirror of himself, reflecting whatever it was that others wanted to see.
Reaching for the rear door, he opened it for me.
I knew I couldn’t afford to turn a hair, couldn’t make the slightest protest: my soul was supposed to be drained, and I had to act accordingly.
Meekly. I lowered myself slowly into the car, staring rigidly ahead at the rolled-down partition while Cliff flicked the door shut beside me.
Leaving me like it was nothing. Even though I knew he’d drawn the curtains of distance and indifference on purpose, I felt sick.
I hoped desperately this wasn’t my last true glimpse of him.
* * *
I couldn’t tell how long we’d been driving.
The landscape slipped by outside the tinted glass like a featureless grey ribbon, and I didn’t let myself glance at my watch.
Not until the car began to slow did I risk a proper look out of the window.
In the blue dusk I saw the outline of a manor house.
Low lamps illuminated the gravel driveway that led up to it, bathing it in a warm coppery glow.
We pulled up just outside the steps leading up to the enormous double wooden doors.
A moment later, the door opened next to me and a man peered inside.
His eyes swept over me, then he took my arm and pulled me out.
Everything inside me was screaming to tear myself free, but instead I walked on up the steps beside him without a murmur.
The interior of the house was as chilly and imposing as the exterior had suggested.
The man led me silently down red-carpeted corridors, past walls covered in paintings, galleries of pale statues, and nooks crammed with brocade armchairs, as I struggled to take note of my surroundings without seeming too alert.
After we had descended a flight of stairs, he stopped and turned me around, yanking my arm so roughly that I hit my back against one of the sculptures.
For the first time, I allowed myself to look at my escort, and I noticed the bird-shaped pin on the lapel of his jacket.
It was exactly like the one Heaven had worn in the picture of her, Cliff and the others.
‘Wait here until someone comes to fetch you.’
I didn’t have to decide whether to risk a reply, because he had already turned on his heel and was climbing back up the stairs.
Just as I was about to take my phone out of my jacket pocket to text Cliff, I heard more footsteps down the hall.
Taking a cautious step away from the statue, I peered out into the corridor.
Two men were standing a few yards away from me by a half-open door.
I could only see one of their faces, which glowed pale in the dim light of the gilded sconces between us.
His eyes swept glassily along the corridor and over me, as if he didn’t notice me at all.
A second later, the other man grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him down onto a bench, saying something. I froze when I realised who it was. Just as he straightened up and saw me.