Katalepsis Novel that which you cannot put down - 7.4

In a minor miracle of grip strength, I’d managed to hang onto the filthy blanket during our rapid descent from Glasswick tower. Which was lucky, because a January morning in Sharrowford was no place to be out of doors dressed in only one’s pajamas.

“We should uh … we should … ” I mumbled. “We should … yes … ”

Bloodstream still awash with the receding floodwaters from a tidal wave of adrenaline, I attempted to get to my feet, and discovered my bruises.

“Ah!” I winced. “Ahh, oh God, okay. Ow. Ow, my stomach.” I bit my bottom lip and squeezed my eyes shut. Our landing had tenderised my abdominal muscles. How was it possible to be this bruised without breaking any bones? I sat very still, breathing very gently.

“Best I could do,” Zheng rumbled. She still grinned with success, but had her head tilted to one side, as if listening to a distant sound on the air.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m alive. That’s what counts. That counts.”

Ting, agreed Praem, the lead weight jumping inside her bottle. I felt a bizarre urge to press my face against the glass.

I spent a good minute figuring out how to stand up without using my stomach muscles or dropping Praem’s bottle. In the end I had to put her down, turn over and use my hands to lever myself off the ground, then tucked Praem back into the crook of my arm underneath the blanket around my shoulders.

“How am I not concussed?” I said, blinking hard at my own left hand. “Am I concussed? I should absolutely have a concussion.”

Clink-clink. Praem didn’t think so.

“I paid the at price,” Zheng purred. She didn’t bother to look at .

Her aning failed to penetrate my adrenaline-addled brain. I touched the back of my neck as if expecting to find protruding bone, gingerly rotated my head on my shoulders, swallowed and blinked and searched for damage. “Shouldn’t I have whiplash? That was like a car crash.”

“I am smarter than a seatbelt.”

I nodded automatically. As the adrenaline drained away, my teeth threatened to chatter. “We should go, we should really go. We can’t stay here.”

“Should,” Zheng echoed.

“That boy might alert sobody. Parents, police, I don’t know. And Sarika could be on her way, she said she was coming here. We’ll need to keep out of sight, both of us. How do we do that? We can hardly take the bus.” I spoke more to myself than Zheng, trying to marshal my thoughts and reboot my brain after the fall. “If sobody spotted us falling … well, we’ll make the strange and unexplained news. I don’t know how we’re going to get ho without being seen, I … what, what is it?”

Zheng had turned her shark-toothed grin on

as I rambled on.

“Zheng? We really should go, we need to leave before-”

“Should and could. Different things.”

“ … I’m sorry?”

“Seven fractures.” Zheng tapped her left thigh, then her right. “Four fractures.” Her finger rose to the wide swell of her hips inside her jeans, to her pelvis. “Two fractures. One in my spine as well. Structural. I take a step, I fall down.”

“Oh.” Suddenly the cracking sounds I’d heard earlier made sense. Iron and rock she may seem, but even demon-altered corpse-born flesh and blood was still only flesh and blood. “Oh Zheng, I’m sorry. You- for . Thank you. I-”

“I’m fixing it.”

“Fixing? … oh, yes. You can do that, can’t you? Like when I … ” I trailed off, wincing in slow motion, gratitude and guilt mixed into a heady cocktail by the rush of still being alive. “I never apologised for severing your arm before. So, I’m sorry. And thank you. Thank you, Zheng, I … thank you. I still can’t believe you jumped out of a building.”

Zheng shrugged, rattling Praem’s wooden body on her shoulder.

“How long will healing take?” I asked. “Sarika might be on her way here. And, well, people might see us.” I glanced around at the thin barrier of old bushes and partially dismantled security fence, the twin concrete cliffs of Gleaston and Glasswick towers looming over us. Nobody had chanced by yet, but it was only a matter of ti. “You look like you stepped out of a Greek myth. Plus we’ve got quite a bit of … red, on us.”

“Fifteen minutes, give or take. Bones need ti.” Zheng shrugged again. “Don’t run off alone.”

“Believe you , I am not going anywhere.”

I tugged the blanket tighter around my shoulders and adjusted Praem’s bottle. The road beyond the secluded patch of scrub ground was deserted for now, the gap between the towers hostile with graffiti and broken bottles, but it would only take one passer-by to glance down here at the wrong mont, one stay-at-ho mum in Gleaston tower to look out of her bathroom window, and we’d be the subject of a very bizarre phone call to the police. Headly council estate might be numb to vandalism and pretty drug cri, but I doubt they’d shrug off the sight of a seven-foot-tall monster covered in dried blood and concrete dust, accompanying a shell-shocked college girl in her pajamas.

But despite what I’d said, I didn’t care.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or the joy of not being dead, or the sheer madness of surviving a twenty-five story fall, but for once in my life I simply couldn’t bring myself to give a damn.

I filled my lungs with frigid air, and didn’t care how much it made

shiver. I was alive and I was free, and my bruises would heal.

My only witness - other than Zheng, her eyes tilted to the sky, her attention focused inward - was the omnipresent spirit-life, the pneuma-somatic background noise to my life. From where we stood on that half-hidden patch of scrub ground I could already see a dozen different spirits; a blob of tentacles and orange suckers climbed Gleaston tower, a clump of creatures all stalk and eye picked their way across distant rooftops, a Roc-sized bird of black fire hovered low over the city to the east - and a pair of hound-ghoul things snuffled down the nearby road, barely thirty feet away.

An idea struck , one I would never have dared fifteen minutes ago. That was the old Heather, who had not yet survived death with her eyes wide open.

Well, eyes screwed shut in terror. Still counted.

“Zheng, I-”

“You feel invincible,” Zheng said before I could finish. She lowered her eyes to et mine. “Maybe you are.”

“I … how did you know that?”

“Go out in a storm.” Zheng’s voice dropped low and quiet, a tiger-purr in the night. “Naked and alone, and climb to the highest point you can find. The trees shake, the rocks shiver. But you shout back at the thunder and the lightning, defy the Gods to kill you. Maybe they do, maybe you die. But if you live, you’re invincible. That’s how your kind do it. The old way.” She took a deep breath and her grin broke the spell. “Or it’s just how you monkeys get when you cheat death. Endorphins.”

“Yes, probably that second one.” I took a deep breath as well. “I’m going to … it’s hard to explain, I’m going to take a risk. Please trust

for a mont.”

Zheng shrugged. Couldn’t help but notice she kept her legs and hips and spine rock steady as she moved.

The two spirits nosing at the road hadn’t moved too far along yet. I wet my lips, wrapped myself in false courage, and opened my mouth.

“You,” I said in a level voice, far too quiet to carry from our hiding place.

One of the spirits looked up at . Goat-like eyes in a pale lupine face. Its companion stopped too, and they stared at

like a pair of wolves examining a baited trap.

“Co here,” I said. “Or don’t. Your choice.”

A hesitating first step turned into a trot, and the pair of spirits edged up toward the patch of scrub ground, pacing back and forth.

Suprely ugly, a unnatural combination of wolf and ape, leathery hands instead of paws and scraggly fur like old man’s hair sprouting in clumps on their rubbery skin. Big loose jaws full of blunt teeth worked silently on empty air. Eyes too large and too far apart kept sliding over at Zheng, unwilling to venture within her range. That’s right, I’d seen her pick Tenny up by the throat once before, hadn’t I? And Praem had wrestled that spirit at the Saye estate. Demons could touch them, hurt them, and they knew it.

“You know who I am, or what I am.” I raised my voice slightly and reminded myself I’d done this before; I’d spoken to spirits, I’d pressed them for information, I’d even commanded them - briefly. This was unlikely to work, but I had nothing to lose by trying. “I have a task for you.”

Pacing, back and forth, back and forth. No indication they cared.

“There’s a magician approaching this tower, a mage, understand? She’ll be here soon, and she might go up inside the tower. Follow her when she erges again, follow her ho. Then co back to , and show

where she hides.”

Both spirits stopped, sat on their haunches, staring at . A demand, a refusal? This wasn’t working.

“In return … I … ” I what? I couldn’t think of anything.

Before I could get out another word, both spirits leapt up and ran off with a skidding and skittering of feet, nipping at each others’ faces and hides. I puffed out a long sigh. A failure. I’d think of sothing else. I had to.

Zheng was watching

with quiet fascination.

“I thought it was worth a go,” I said. “I can see … uh, spirits, it’s-”

“Of course you can see them, shaman.”

That word again. She’d called

that over and over since I’d freed her, but now she imbued the word with that awful reverence once more, a dark intensity in her eyes.

I sighed to cover my discomfort. “I do hope we didn’t scar that boy too badly. Not to be rude, Zheng, but you’re the sort of thing that causes recurring nightmares.”

Or wet dreams, if one was like , but I didn’t say that part out loud.

“Thank you.” Zheng grinned in savage delight, back to normal. She rolled her neck and one shoulder, then twisted her torso and hips sideways in a slow motion that produced a machine-gun sound of every spinal vertebrae popping in sequence. She coughed, flexed her thighs, bent a knee, went up on tiptoes, produced more popping noises as her joints realigned. She coughed again.

“Almost there?”

“Mm. Minute,” she grunted, coughed a third ti, then opened her jaw wide and fished a chunk of concrete out the back of her throat. “Huh.”

Zheng didn’t strike

as remotely in need of what we re mortals thought of as dignity, but I averted my gaze all the sa. I looked up at Glasswick tower, at the vertical dungeon we’d escaped, and tried to spot the window we’d jumped from. Couldn’t see it from all the way down here, not at this angle.

“Did you know that would work?” I muttered. Zheng grunted an interrogative, busy rotating her ankles. “Jumping that far, I an?”

“Fallen further before,” she rumbled.

“Carrying a person?”

“Three goats.” She broke into a grin, enjoying the look on my face. “Off a cliff. They lived too.”

“Goats. Glad to know I’m in good company.”

Clink-clink-clink went Praem. Three tis? Was that laughter? I frowned at the oily smoke in the bottle.

“They were good goats,” Zheng said. “Good at.”

“I’m certain they were, but I better not be.”

Clink, went Praem.

“Yes, thank you,” I sighed, and stared up at the tower again.

The corruption, the tentacles, the imprint of Alexander Lilburne’s mind - none of it was visible from the ground. Nobody knew it was there, except for

and my friends, and a bunch of cultists dedicated to my worst enemy.

Zheng took several steps, rolled her torso around in an arc from her hips and drew herself up to her full height, swapping Praem’s wooden body from one shoulder to the other. She stretched, a tiger preparing to sun itself. “Ahhhhh. Much better.”

“I’ll be back for you,” I whispered to the tower, hugged Praem’s jar, and turned to Zheng with a question on my lips.

“Shaman.”

“Zheng. Are you … ” I cursed my hesitation. Zheng was a demon and a monster, but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase the question. “Are you certain you’re coming with ?”

“My legs work again. Bones,” she grunted amused disapproval.

“No, I an are you comfortable coming ho with ?”

“Mmmmm?” she purred, watching

carefully.

“The house - my ho - it belongs to Evelyn. She’s my best friend, I love her, but she’s a mage. I understand if you’d rather not go there. You don’t owe

anything. I’m pretty sure I can get ho on my own if I have to. If this is where we part ways.”

Zheng shrugged. “I’m still here, shaman.”

==

Walking all the way ho took almost three hours.

Zheng and I stuck to less-used roads, back alleys, side streets, with much stopping and starting, on a circuitous route to avoid the city centre, the shops, the holess camps under the motorway, anywhere with people. Peering around corners, listening for footsteps, lurking in back alleys; a painstaking trek through the concrete jungle, all the way to the other side of Sharrowford.

My fears were proved justified a couple of weeks later. A grainy picture of Zheng and I surfaced on the internet, snapped from the window of a passing car with a shaking phone cara, along the motorway embanknt near one of the clusters of tents. Nothing visible to recognise

by, only the back of my head atop a shapeless lump of blanket - but Zheng was clearly far too tall. Supernatural sighting or trick of perspective? Photoshop or clever stunt? Luckily enough, the responses to the photograph descended into jokes about giant Yorkshire-n escaped from the moors. I’m certain so amateur paranormal researcher has glanced at my awful matted hair and hunched shoulders, and wondered about so obscure species of Northern English gremlin.

My unshod feet plagued , sore and hobbling after the first hour, one sock-less soft sole bleeding by the third, so Zheng picked

up and carried . Princess style. Twice. An experience my body didn’t forget in a hurry.

She carried

until I could walk again, and I didn’t reject the help, despite the quasi-sexual discomfort and Praem’s fleshless wooden bones bumping alongside .

Raine needed all the help I could get. From any quarter, any monster.

By the ti number 12 Barnslow Drive finally hove into view I was back on my own two feet, ready to drop, dehydrated, and shivering with cold.

Ho, this cracked and weathered redbrick leviathan, roof tiles patched with tarpaulin. wreathed in shrivelled ivy for the winter, squinted at

from dark windows and made my heart soar.

I hurried the final stretch, feet stinging, bruised abdon complaining, and pushed through the garden gate with an unbidden smile on my lips. Praem didn’t say anything from within her bottle, and perhaps it was only my imagination, but I swore I felt her respond as well. This was the place she’d co into our reality. Her ho too.

“This one?” Zheng purred from behind. In my mont of relief, I missed the warning note in her voice.

“Yes,” I sighed. “Yes, we’re ho.”

And not a thing out of place. I stopped on the garden path and bit my bottom lip.

Front door intact and sturdy, not smashed in as I’d half-expected. Raine’s battered old car still squatted next to the pavent a few feet down the road, where she’d last left it parked. No lights showed around the cracks in curtains, all was dark and quiet under the brooding winter sky. The inside of the house sotis felt like a cocoon or a womb, sealed and guarded from the city beyond.

“Question is,” I murmured. “Who exactly is at ho?”

Click, agreed Praem.

I finally tore my eyes from the house to glance back at Zheng, and realised she hadn’t crossed the threshold of the front gate. Spirit-life lurked in the street behind her, at a respectful distance. All the way here the pneuma-somatic wildlife had given us a wide berth, as if Zheng was one of their natural predators. One of them - barred from the Saye house as they were?

“Zheng, you can co inside, can’t you? I didn’t think to ntion, the property’s warded. I actually don’t know what that ans, but … can you?”

“Signs won’t stop flesh,” she rumbled, and stepped through the invisible barrier, stalking up alongside

like a panther, without once wavering from her staring contest with the house. She watched the building with a slow, wary regard, tilting her head one way then the other, as if getting a good view through each separate eyeball.

No dark amusent, no face-splitting grin. Not amused.

“What’s wrong?” My words erged as a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Zheng, what’s wrong? You’re spooking . Do you see sobody?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I see this place. Not so different to the tower we ran from.”

I sighed and resisted an urge to roll my eyes. “I did tell you it’s an old magician’s house. Everyone’s so upset by it - you, Twil, the Brinkwood people. Why weren’t the cult scared? None of this would have happened.”

“Because they’re fools,” Zheng purred, gaze still locked onto the house.

“Zheng, I’ve known you for one morning, and this is the second ti you’ve wanted to fight a building. Unless you’re secretly intending to murder Evelyn or steal her books, I don’t think the guards will pay you any attention, and the house won’t care. It’s not a haunted house, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The shark-grin returned to Zheng’s face, directed down at . “Afraid? Perhaps you should be afraid of this house, shaman.”

“Well, I’m not. It’s ho, it’s treated

well, and it’s where my friends live. Speaking of which, Zheng, you … I don’t an to imply- and I do want to just get indoors already, but-”

“Spit it out.”

“You won’t get violent with anybody, will you?”

“Anybody?” Zheng purred.

“Any of my friends. You know what I an.”

“And if the house bites?”

I huffed, curling my freezing toes against the pathway flagstones. “Bite back.”

And without further ado, I marched up the path and knocked on the front door.

Luckily for my remaining credibility, Zheng decided to join , a tower of muscle at my shoulder ready to threaten, kill, or eat anybody who wasn’t supposed to be here. If she’d hung back, well, I would’ve had to retreat and try again. Maybe go around the back, find Tenny. I’d check on her as soon as I could.

Nobody answered my knock. The house echoed with a long pause through which dark things crept in silence. I rattled the handle and knocked again.

“It’s !” I called out. “I don’t have my key, for obvious reasons.”

My mind backed up a step and I looked at the door properly - and my heart crawled into my throat. Number 12 Barnslow Drive had indeed been broken into, quite expertly. The keyhole showed a scuffed ring of fresh tal amid the decades of old scratches, and the thick wood had been dented slightly, about level with my head; the lock been forced, a shoulder ramd against the door? After Twil had run out into the night, had Raine closed the bolts? I didn’t recall. If only we’d locked it properly, if only-

A rapid patter of feet sounded suddenly from inside the house. I jumped, my heart leapt, and my stomach dropped. Sobody - sothing - bumped into the door, turned the lock and ramd back the bolts with a clatter.

“Oh.” I backed up, right into Zheng. She put a hand on my shoulder and put herself in front of , just as the door flew open.

Sharp amber eyes in an angelic face, wide and blinking in surprise.

“Twil!” I half-shouted her na in a shudder of relief. Suddenly my knees felt weak and rubbery.

Twil didn’t hear , not from behind seven feet of zombie muscle; I scurried around Zheng to hug my friend, not even thinking, but then things got tiresoly predictable.

Twil catapulted herself backward from Zheng in a feat of canine gymnastic shock. I flinched and swallowed a yelp. She landed already bristling with fur and claw and the elongating snout wrapping itself around her human face, growling deep and loud through clenched teeth - not a warning, a war cry.

“Twil! Twil, it’s , it’s fine, it’s !” I blurted out as I hurried over the threshold. Praem agreed with a clink from inside her bottle. Wolfish eyes caught

and Twil’s entire body jerked as she aborted a forward charge.

“Heather?” she growled through a snout of ghostly wolf-flesh.

“Yes! Yes it’s , I’m here, and I’m- well, I’m not okay, but I’m unhurt- wait, no, that’s not accurate. I am hurt.” I almost laughed at the absurdity of the mont, an edge of hysteria in my voice. My strength was draining with relief, my body knew I was ho. This warm dark cavern of old wood and familiar scents, of our shoes by the door and the unique way the light through the curtains dusted the front room with plush shadows. A wall of warm air washed over , the heating still turned up against the cold outdoors.

And under it all, the faint iron scent of blood tainted the air. Blood, and cleaning chemicals.

Zheng had to duck to follow

through the doorway, then straightened back up to her full height. Twil’s eyes flicked between , the giant zombie, the huge glowing bottle in my arms, and the twisted wooden mannequin over Zheng’s shoulder. Much more of that and she’d make herself dizzy.

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“Twil, it’s okay,” I almost laughed again. “It’s okay, we’re all friends here.”

“Yeah right, sure, fuck,” Twil managed.

Like a huge jungle cat squaring off against a rival, Zheng showed all her teeth, and grinned at Twil. “Laangren?” she purred.

“And you can knock that off!” I snapped at Zheng, emboldened by finally being ho. “And please, shut the door before sobody sees us. Please?”

Zheng closed the door without removing her eyes from Twil. My werewolf friend growled back as Zheng’s grin widened again.

“Please, both of you, please,” I repeated, exasperated. “I am exhausted, we are in a crisis, please.”

“Heather?” Twil asked through gritted teeth. “You’ve gotta be joking.”

“I freed her,” I rushed to explain. “Zheng, I an, I freed her. She’s on our side - my side, sort of. Zheng, this is Twil, please-”

“We’ve t,” Zheng rumbled. “Never got to have a proper fight, did we, skinchanger?”

Twil reacted like a startled hound, blinking and shaking her head. “Hey what, you talk proper now?”

“I have a mouth, I must use it.”

“She saved my life this morning,” I said to Twil. “Yes, she is extrely dangerous, but not to us. I think.”

“Your trusted are mine, shaman,” Zheng purred, but her grin stayed fixed on Twil. “But don’t you want to feel it too, laangren? I haven’t had a good fight, a real fight, in decades. We’ll both walk away, no real skin in the ga, just the sheer joy of it.”

Twil blinked at her. “ … later. Maybe. Fuck’s sake.”

Zheng grumbled like a tiger having a dream, but finally allowed her shark’s grin to simr down to a dark smolder. She shrugged, and Praem’s wooden body rattled on her shoulder. “I’m up for a round with you anyti, skinchanger.”

“Not indoors you’re not.” I tutted.

A ripple of change passed through Twil’s transford musculature. Her wolf-flesh lted away, wisps curling and vanishing into nothing as she tilted her chin up at Zheng, all human again. “Beat you last ti, didn’t I? What, you want a rematch between my foot and your face?”

“No,” Zheng corrected her. “You ran away.”

Twil frowned, not quite following. “Fuck it, whatever. Who cares.”

That should have alerted

to how dire the situation was - Twil refusing to rise to the bait. Instead, she stepped forward and pulled

into a fierce hug.

“Ah! Ah, careful,” I winced as Praem’s bottle was squished against my abdon. Sotis Twil didn’t know her own strength. “Stomach, stomach’s very bruised. Ow.”

“Sorry. Sorry, Heather. S’just, you know, shit’s so fucked up. Welco ho, yeah?”

“Yes,” I managed. “Thank you.”

A wave of emotion welled up in my chest, but I swallowed it down. My body said rest, you’re ho, everything’s going to be alright; I told it no, we still had miles to go.

Twil pulled back to look at my face. “God, fuck this morning. I’m real glad you’re okay, Heather.”

“’Okay’ is a relative term, but I am alive. Thank Zheng.”

Twil glanced up at the zombie, frowning hard. Zheng shrugged and stepped away from us to prop up Praem’s altered wooden mannequin on so of the many boxes of junk Evelyn kept stacked in the front room. Better than dumping Praem’s body on the floor, I suppose, but it still hurt to see.

“The hell is that?” Twil asked.

“Luggage,” Zheng purred.

“Praem’s body.”

Twil gaped at .

“Oh, oh, don’t worry,” I hurried, and held up the bottle. “She’s in here, this is her, for the mont. Say hi.”

“Um … hi, Praem?”

Clink, went Praem.

“I think we can put her back together,” I said.

Twil nodded, frowning, quite lost indeed. “The hell happened, Heather, where were you?”

“Bad places, then the ground. Long story. Twil, where’s everybody else? I’m worried sick, I think they took Raine, at least that’s … that’s what they … ” The look on her face made it obvious. “She’s not here, is she?”

Twil winced and shook her head. “Hoped she was with you.”

“The cultists kidnapped her. I think.”

“Shit!” Twil swore through her teeth. “Last night, I got back here as fast as I could, I really did, I promise, but you and her were both gone already! I’m sorry. Evee won’t wake up. Kimberly, she- I think she was hiding sowhere, under a table or so shit, and-”

“Kim’s okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Twil nodded. “Scared, you know? But yeah. We put Evee upstairs in her bedroom, and Kim’s been doing stuff, you know. Magic? Trying to get Evee to wake up. I called my mum too, but she says none of them can co into town right now, not with this going on. My folks are in full panic mode, I’m supposed to be at ho, but sod them. Evee won’t wake up. Heather, I can’t wake her up.”

I looked at Twil - really looked at Twil, and realised she was closer to the edge than I. Face puffy with lack of sleep and panic, eyes wild, still in the sa clothes she’d been wearing when she’d torn out into the dark last night. Her easy exterior was cracking. Nothing to chase, nothing to punch, a faint shaking in her chest and face. She didn’t know what to do.

I did.

“We’re going to wake Evelyn up, and I’m going to find Raine,” I said, and surprised myself with the conviction in my voice.

In truth I had no idea if we could do either of those things, but if we wanted a ghost of a chance then Twil had to believe, because I might need her, so my job was to make her believe.

“ … yeah,” Twil mouthed.

“Twil. We will. We absolutely will. I will do anything. Understand?”

Clink, agreed Praem.

“Yeah. Yeah, we will, we can do this.” She nodded, going along with . “Right. We can … oh!” Her face suddenly lit up. “You can make things vanish! Right?”

“I … I can, yes?”

“Oh, fuck . Lifesaver.” Twil let out a huge sigh of relief. “Heather, you are a lifesaver. I didn’t know what to do with the corpses!”

“The … ” I blinked, rewound, replayed that word. “I’m sorry, Twil, the what?”

“The corpses,” she gestured at the floor - and the wall behind , and the door-fra. And the inside of the door. In all the excitent I had failed to notice the wood was slightly damp, and still stained faintly in a way recent scrubbing had failed to completely eliminate. The whole area was punctuated by several patches of damage that looked like impact craters from railway spikes. I reconstructed the scene in my head: blood on the floorboards, blood up the walls, blood up the door.

My eyes travelled upward, and I flinched. One of Evelyn’s spider-servitors still hung over the doorway, in an ambush position, so well-concealed I hadn’t seen it when I’d stepped inside.

The Eye Cult had paid a high price for invading my ho.

“Thank you,” I said to it. “Next ti, don’t let anyone take Raine, please.”

“ … is it … it’s not one of the invisible spiders, is it?” Twil whispered, as if it might hear her.

“Yes. It is,” I sighed.

“Ugh. Well, yeah then, I guess that must have been it. When I got here, there were these two dead guys on the floor. Huge ss. Put them both in the kitchen, but uh-”

Twil wasn’t exactly a master of misdirection, or of concealing her emotions. Her eyes flicked to the closed door to the disused sitting room.

I followed her gaze. “I thought you said you put them in the kitchen?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah I did. They’re both still there, you know, getting cold and stiff. It’s just, um, there’s- it’s a been a bit of a complex morning and we’ve got, um … ” Her eyes wandered over my shoulder, frowning at Zheng.

I sighed. “We can discuss this in front of Zheng. She’s on my side, and yes, she’s also a violent cannibalistic demon-”

“Cannibal implies the sa species,” Zheng purred, almost as if distracted. “I’m no monkey.”

“-but she saved my life twice this morning, and I think she wants to help.”

“Uh, no.” Twil pointed. “I an, what the fuck’s she doing now?”

“I can hear you, laangren,” Zheng rumbled.

“What? She … oh.”

Our friendly neighbourhood flesh-eating demon had also noticed the Spider-servitor, and was now locked in a staring contest. The spider’s head of crystalline eyes rotated to return Zheng’s look, both of them frozen in the mont of eye contact. Two supernatural beasties vying for who was bigger and scarier.

“It’s fine,” I said with a sigh. “She and the spider are squaring off, just like you did too. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t care. It’s okay, Zheng, I … I think.”

“I have eaten spider many tis,” Zheng purred.

“Not one of those, I’d wager,” I said.

“A first ti for every kind of at.”

“I’m extra glad I can’t see any of this,” Twil said, hands up in surrender.

I stared at Zheng for a mont, trying to figure out if she was serious. The last thing we needed was a demon getting into a death match with what was left of our security system.

“Look, Heather,” Twil was saying. “It’s just, we’ve got a situation to deal with. Uh, a really … delicate situation, and maybe like, she should go sowhere else for a bit?”

Caught between a territorial zombie and Twil sounding worryingly un-Twil like, I frowned at the latter in confusion. “Delicate situation? What are you talking about?”

Her eyes slid to the sitting room door again. She winced and struggled over a word or two. I was about to tell her to get on with it, I’m too tired, I need to sit, I need to wash my sore feet, I need to eat, and we need to save our friends - when a cry of delight split the air. My na.

“Heather!”

My na, from the most unexpected source.

Thundering down the stairs in a clatter of bare feet, flying the distance between us in a twirl of plaid skirt and pink poncho, throwing herself at

in an uninhibited tackle-hug, here ca Lozzie.

I almost couldn’t believe my eyes - and barely remained standing when she hit , that flying hug not just for show. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders, squeezed all the air out of , and nuzzled her face into my neck. Pulling back, laughing, making

laugh back at her in surprised delight, wheezing from the bruises in my stomach but not caring. I almost dropped Praem’s bottle, but Twil reached in and took it from , like sticking her hands between a pair of wrestling ferrets.

“You’re here! You’re here! You ca back!” Lozzie laughed at .

“You too,” I croaked, speechless, smiling all over. “Ow.”

“Mmm!” She made a sound like a small excited animal, and hugged

tight. I went ‘ow!’ again but I didn’t care.

“Yeah,” Twil added. “And your spooky friend is here too. Turned up outta nowhere.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked Twil over Lozzie’s shoulder, hugging her hard as I could stand.

“Other things on my mind.”

Lozzie pulled back again, half-dancing on her bare feet. God, she looked so healthy, her elfin face glowing, well-fed and clean - though still pale and mushroom-like, as if her skin had seen no sun in months. Which made sense if she’d been Outside, beyond the reach of terrestrial light. Where’d she gotten the clothes? The plaid skirt was so her, and the pink poncho had a cute little hood with floppy rabbit ears. Her hair was everywhere as she raked back wisps out of it out of her face. She slled of foreign bath soap and dical moisturiser, mango and Vaseline. And underneath it all, the lingering taint of Wonderland ash.

“I have so many things I need to ask you,” I said, overwheld by emotion.

“Heather, Heather, where did you go? Why did you go?” She laughed, bewildered with . “I was getting you out.”

“Sobody - sothing grabbed . Pulled us apart! Lozzie, I wouldn’t leave, not … not when … I thought you were gone.”

“Ahhhh,” she sighed, nodding and smiling. “Sa thing. I can’t leave! Have you tried? I can’t get back Out, it’s so weird.”

“You … you tried to leave again?” An unexpected barb of pain twisted in my chest.

“To find you! You were supposed to be here!”

I swallowed and focused. “Hands on your ankles? Dead hands?”

“Yeah! You too?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Weird, huh?” Lozzie smiled at , a bouncing, happy sort of smile, and hugged

again.

“Ahh, ow. Lozzie, I’m sore, I’m so sore.” She’d co back to . She was healthy and whole and safe. I laughed, and realised I was crying too. “You got

from Wonderland. You got . Thank you, Lozzie. Lozzie.” The tears ca on full now, I couldn’t stop them, and my voice erged as a whine. “Lozzie, I’ve lost Raine. They took her sowhere. I can’t- I-”

“No!” Lozzie pulled back, her face set in a serious little frown. “They can’t do that! I’ll help! You love her, this is important! We’ll get her back, I have an idea already!”

“You- you do? Of course you do.” I took a shuddering breath, sniffed, and managed to stop the tears. Lozzie nodded and helped wipe my face. I had to focus. Lozzie likely did not have any ideas that made sense in this reality, but her sheer blinding enthusiasm helped hold

up.

“Little … little Lauren,” Zheng purred, almost a whisper, and we both looked up.

Zheng wore an expression I hadn’t thought her capable of, a lost fragile wonder, her staring contest with the spider forgotten. One huge hand reached out and brushed the top of Lozzie’s head, the gentlest gesture I’d seen Zheng make.

“Oh!” Lozzie lit up again. “You’re awake! Hi, Zheng.” She gave the zombie a little wave. “How’s it feel?”

“This is … I spoke to you, little Lauren, in dreams,” Zheng purred, the stone of her voice softened and blurred. She blinked heavily. Can demons cry? “You gifted

with dreams where I was free.”

“Uh huh, yeah, it was fun!” Lozzie wriggled out of my arms - leaving

more than a little unsteady on my unsupported legs - and threw a hug at Zheng, as unafraid and uninhibited as she had been with , utterly unintimidated by this rippling giant of barely suppressed violence. Zheng looked as surprised as I felt. Lozzie danced away again, panting and red in the face with excitent. “Did you get her out, Heather? How did you do that?”

“Um, I just removed so of her tattoos. It was … well, it wasn’t easy, it made

pass out. But it was simple enough.”

Lozzie tilted her head back and forth quickly, as if this feat was beyond her imagining. “Wow, cool. Heather, you’re so clever! I could never figure it out.”

“Little Lauren, little … ” Zheng grinned again. “Hahhh. I rember now. My little mooncalf.”

“Mooncalf?” Lozzie pulled a face, stuck out her tongue and pulled down on one lower eyelid. “Ruuuuude.”

Zheng rumbled a low laugh - then froze.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t an to interrupt,” a tiny voice ca from the kitchen doorway. Kimberly, one shuffled step into the room, staring at Zheng with poorly concealed horror, then at

with an uncertain smile. “Heather, hi. I’m- I’m glad you’re alright. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Kim,” I said, trying to sound soft. “I’m glad you’re okay too, you-”

Zheng moved like a foxhound after the scent of blood. She pounced past

in a blur of uncoiling muscle made of quicksilver and lightning. I flinched and gasped, Lozzie let out a little ‘oop’ and hopped backward, Twil growled like a startled dog - and Kimberly wasn’t fast enough to scream. Zheng picked her up by the throat and slamd her against the back wall, knocking all the breath out of her lungs.

“Little wizard,” Zheng hissed through a shark-toothed grin.

“Aw fuck,” Twil shouted, first off the mark - but she had no idea what was happening.

Legs kicking, eyes wide in naked terror, Kimberly opened her mouth to scream. Zheng’s other hand whipped out like a snake and darted forward into the opening, fist jamming Kimberly’s jaw wide open.

“Zheng, no!”

Luckily for Kimberly’s tongue, I got there first, one hand on Zheng’s arm. I knew that all the strength in my body wouldn’t be enough to stop the demon’s little finger, but the tone in my voice worked better than any physical restraint. Not a shrill cry, not a scream of panic. A command. A command given to a freed slave.

Slowly, her hand still ready to rip Kimberly’s tongue out at the root, Zheng turned her flesh-eating toothy grin on .

She radiated cold malice. She thought Kimberly was a threat, but I’d offended her, in probably the single way anyone could.

“Zheng.”

“ … shaman,” she rumbled through her teeth.

“Kimberly is my friend.” Keeping my voice steady was impossible. I let it quiver. I was terrified, why pretend otherwise? I glanced at Kimberly, pinned to the wall and staring back at , panting through her nose. She moaned a muted scream around Zheng’s fist, her feet scrabbling at the wall for purchase. In the corner of my eye I saw Twil circling to Zheng’s other side, half-transford, ready to take her up on that offer of a rematch. “Twil, don’t,” I said out loud. “Zheng, Kimberly is mine. Understand?”

“I recall this one, skulking and worming, filling her grey at with secrets. Making more like .”

“What she did in the past does not matter. Or what she was forced to do. Now, she’s mine. And free, like you.”

Zheng let out a growl, a nasty one, like a mountain disagreeing with . I hiccuped.

“And,” I added, shaking all over. I hiccuped again. “You said that removing your tattoos guaranteed no wizard can bind you with words. I heard you say that. Was that a lie? Is Kimberly dangerous to you? I don’t think she is. She’s helped . She’s with . Are you with ?”

Zheng grimaced. She turned a hateful gaze on Kimberly, made the poor woman squeeze her eyes shut, still fighting to breathe.

“Don’t hurt Flowsie, she’s harmless,” Lozzie said. Her little blonde head appeared over Zheng’s arm, peering up at Kimberly. “She’s kind of boring, and stiff, but she’s harmless. Sweet if you catch her alone.”

Zheng looked down at Lozzie and the awful toothy grin died in an instant, as if it couldn’t touch her little mooncalf. The fury in Zheng’s fra dropped away. She levelled a re nasty look at Kimberly instead, and her huge tongue slowly inched out of her mouth to brush Kimberly’s cringing cheek, before whipping back again.

“Woah shit what,” Twil muttered.

“One betraying twitch from you, wizard,” Zheng purred in Kimberly’s face, and clacked her teeth together. Kimberly tried to nod - difficult with a fist in your mouth - and Zheng dropped her to the floor and stepped back.

“Back further, you big fuck,” Twil growled. Zheng grumbled, but amazingly enough she did as she was asked.

Hacking and coughing, wheezing for breath, shaking and crying, Kimberly flinched as I went to my knees and put my arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Kim. I’m sorry. I didn’t … I didn’t think … I didn’t think, that’s it. I’m sorry.”

“I hate magic so much,” Kimberly whined.

“Good,” Zheng purred.

“You shut the fuck up,” Twil snapped at her.

“Yes, Zheng,” I added quickly. “Please just … just leave it alone.”

Zheng grumbled and refused to look at anybody.

“It’s okay, Flowsie, I don’t hate you.” Lozzie patted Kimberly on the head too, but I suspect that didn’t help. Twil, still eyeing Zheng like an unexploded bomb, fetched Kim a glass of water, which went down without obstruction and was quickly followed by another. It took us a while to get the poor woman back to her feet, by which ti Zheng had retreated to the other side of the room, brooding like a moody teenager.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here,” Kimberly kept saying. “I keep screwing everything up, I-I can’t-”

“You don’t screw everything up, and that wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“It was,” Kimberly hiccuped. “I deserved it. The zombie’s right, I did so many terrible things. And now I’ve screwed up everything here too. We can’t wake miss Saye up, and I hid when you needed help. And it’s my fault that we’ve got … ” She trailed off at a look from Twil. I glanced between them.

“She thinks the police woman’s her fault,” Lozzie said. “Typical Flowsie.”

“ … police?” I echoed, going cold inside. “Oh no, what is this? Twil?”

“Oops!” Lozzie bit her lips. “We’re not talking about that?”

“I was, like, getting there. Okay?” said Twil.

“I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault,” Kimberly repeated. “I shouldn’t have opened the front door in the first place.”

“Twil?” I demanded.

Her eyes slid to the closed door of the disused sitting room.

With terrible inevitability and a growing sense of unreality, I stepped over to the door, turned the handle, and opened it on the curtained and shadowed room inside.

I’m not certain exactly how long I stared. It felt both too long and too short at the sa ti. Mortified, my mind racing at a million miles an hour, yet unable to process the implications of what lay in front of . A pair of solidly stoic eyes stared back at , neither accusing nor pleading, but quite afraid.

I closed the door, paused, then turned the handle and opened it again, hoping that sothing different might be inside. Nope, still the sa. I closed the door a second ti. Straighted up, took a breath, let it out slowly.

“Heather-” Twil started.

“Please, Twil.” I raised a finger. “Please, please tell

that is not a real police constable we have bound and gagged in there?”