Whitby, England
WE’RE WOKEN IN THE GRAVEYARD by a cloud of bats screeching overhead, returning to the abbey before dawn.
Or rather, that’s how Goose claims to have been woken, before he shakes me awake. Which happens to be right when a short, balding caretaker sort appears in the graveyard, staring at us with an expression that reads They don’t pay me enough for this shit.
“Jesus fuck,” Goose mumbles as I rise. “What happened to your hand?”
I look down at my right fist. My knuckles are split, bleeding. I try extending my fingers and the pain is extraordinary. I place my other hand on the cross, steadying myself, and notice my blood on the stone.
“You punched a bloody grave,” he says finally. “Literally.”
“Seems so.”
“May I ask why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Goose bends to try and read the headstone. “Apologies on my friend’s behalf, Miss Milnes.”
A finger of ice straightens my spine. “What?”
“The name on the grave. Allegra Milnes.”
I bend to read the inscription, but most of it’s eroded away by wind and rain and time. There’s a thought trying to pierce the surface of my blinding hangover, but Goose takes my elbow before it can coalesce.
“Come on, mate,” he says. The caretaker’s hangdog eyes follow us with reproach, so Goose apologises to him, now, and collects the remains of our binge from the graves we slept on.
“We’re vile,” I say, trying not to further desecrate or stumble over any headstones and failing.
“The worst,” Goose agrees amiably. “Though at the moment, you’re vastly more pathetic.”
Undeniable. The sun’s beginning to rise in direct proportion to the arrowing pain in my temples. Or the other way around. Or something. It’s shit, is the point.
“Least we’re not far from the cottage,” Goose says in an attempt at cheeriness. “We can ask the host for a doctor nearby or something—”
I try shaking my head—a grievous error. “No,” I say instead.
“I’m relatively certain your wrist isn’t supposed to bend at that angle.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Fine. Then we’ll order some takeaway or something, get some protein in you.”
The thought of food roils my stomach. “Mention food again, and I’ll vomit on those stupidly expensive shoes of yours.”
“They’ve seen worse.”
“I have a headache in my eye.”
“Buck up, mate. And walk in a straight line, if you can. Preferably not dead centre of the street.”
“If I get run over by a car, I’ll die,” I muse. “Fascinating.”
Goose has an arm around my shoulder, which only works because he’s just slightly taller than I. “Be fascinated later. We’re almost there.”
I’m overwhelmed by an urge to laugh and throw up simultaneously; mercifully it passes once we arrive at the house. The keys are hidden beneath a little red-hatted garden gnome, and Goose unlocks the back door. We’re immediately confronted by a massive staircase.
“I won’t make it, mate. Go on without me,” I say solemnly.
“You’ve been resurrected before. You can climb a flight of stairs.”
“Good morning!” a round, happy voice exclaims from somewhere behind me. I try to locate the source of it, but can’t seem to move my head without seeing spots.
“Morning,” Goose replies. I catch a flash of his toothy grin in my peripheral vision.
“Welcome to East Cottage!” the woman says. “I’m Jane Corbin! You boys have fun last night?”
“Celebrating my mate’s homecoming,” Goose says. “A bit overenthusiastically.”
Jane is no stranger to enthusiasm, clearly. Every sentence is punctuated with a verbal exclamation point. “Of course, of course! Well, welcome, as I said! There’s plenty of food in the fridge, my husband Roger will be down in a bit before he heads to work, and then you’ll have the place to yourselves for the rest of your stay!”
“Thanks,” I say, trying to smile like Goose. I think it frightens her.
“You’re most welcome,” she says. No exclamation point, that time. “Oh, love! What happened to your hand?”
“Slammed a door on it,” I lie. “Jet lag and alcohol don’t mix.”
She offers a sympathetic look. “They certainly don’t. You ought to get that looked at—my husband’s a medic, he can—”
“I’ll be fine, just need a sleep.”
“Of course, of course,” she says, fluttering her hands. “Off to Bedfordshire with you.”
I haul myself up the stairs, my jaw clenching with each step. I’ve no idea how many bedrooms are in the cottage or which ones are ours, I realise, at about the same time I realise I don’t care. The first one with a made bed is the one I end up in. I kick the door shut, and fall onto it stomach first, a massive mistake.
I lie there, unwilling to moan even a bit, because I’m going to suffer silently, with dignity. People who moan are intolerable.
Just be sick already. Get it over with.
“Fuck off,” I say to no one, staring at the white beadboard on the lower half of the white walls. There’s a fireplace in the room. Charmant.
Just being able to rise up onto my elbows is a monumental achievement, on par with space exploration and stem cell research. The prospect of death is always tempting, but never more so when compared to the prospect of standing.
“Get up, twat,” I growl at myself. Gendered insults work on my ignorant psyche, apparently, because I am standing. Unfortunately I can’t remember why.
Also unfortunately, I’m facing a mirror, which seems spectacularly unfair. I look the way I deserve to look, which is to say, ill and wretched.
I allow myself to wallow in it instead of focusing on any of the more global concerns, like whether Daniel or Jamie has been co-opted into one of the respective shadow organisations that have taken an interest in us over the year, or Mara’s current whereabouts and welfare, or whether I’ll wake up to find Goose missing and then dead.
Or that dream from this morning, or last night, or whenever it was. That Horizons dream.
Too much. The best course of action is oblivion, obviously, which leads me to do the perfunctory knock-then-open on the doors of the other rooms until I find Goose sprawled on a large canopy bed in one of them, snoring lightly.
He had the pills in his jeans pocket, which he’s still wearing, which is why my hand is on his ass as a man dressed in white scrubs—Roger, presumably?—walks by, as I’ve left the bedroom door open.
“What!” I shout slowly.
He backs away with raised eyebrows, which is ideal, as it allows me to (1) avoid conversation and (2) withdraw the bottle from the still-sleeping Goose, shake out a few pills, and summon enough saliva to swallow them without water (an important life skill) before stomping back across the hall, my teeth rattling in my skull.
Without alcohol to help the pills along this morning, I remain upright and conscious, jittery and chattery. My fist throbs, but I don’t want to think about it because that means thinking about the nightmare and the grave and the name of the woman buried in it when I don’t want to think about anything at all, so instead I’m opening the various doors in the bedroom I’ve landed in—a cupboard and a loo, should I decide to force my body to empty my stomach of its poisonous contents, though I already know I won’t. “It would be disrespectful to waste Goose’s beneficence so thoughtlessly,” I say aloud, to no one, as I wait for the pills to kick in.
The effects are disappointing, to be honest. I’d hoped for instant sleep—the exhaustion plus sedatives plus leftover alcohol ought to be enough to down a bull elephant, one would think, but all I get instead is a mild reprieve from my vengeful headache and the twisting in my stomach, along with a general creeping tiredness. I lie down, but can’t close my eyes. The curtains in the room are drawn, and daylight sneaks in from the edges, slicing bars and shadows on the wall. The room feels raw, eerie, wrong in the daylight. Coffinlike and close.
I’m gripped by a wave of paranoia, suddenly—like I’ve got an audience in my head. Fucking drugs. I’d thought that at least they’d quiet my mind.
Because my mind is most definitely the problem. How do you escape when the enemy is you?