‘Let me speak to him first,’ Clover said. ‘We don’t know how he’ll react.’
Ten to fourteen days’ bed rest, Dr Wheeler had said, but less than a week after his recommendation I discharged myself from Oak Hill Hospital. During the short time I’d been there I’d discovered it was a former stately home in the Hampshire countryside, not far from Farnborough. I’d also discovered that my stay and treatment, and that of Hope’s, was being paid for out of McCallum’s estate.
When the solicitor, Daniel Worth, had first appeared and told me about the bank account that McCallum had arranged for me, and about the monthly allowance that would be paid into it for as long as I lived, I’d been gobsmacked. My overwhelming emotion had been relief at the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to worry about money while I continued my search for Kate.
Once Worth had gone, though, and I’d started to think more deeply about the implications of McCallum’s gesture, my attitude had changed. I’d started to feel uneasy, and then increasingly angry and resentful. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the wheels McCallum had set in motion to ease my task as the heart’s new guardian were not for my benefit, but the heart’s. My wishes were irrelevant; my life was irrelevant. I existed simply to be moulded, manipulated, and if my loved ones happened to suffer because of that, then tough luck.
Whether McCallum himself had chosen me as the heart’s guardian or whether it had been determined by the heart, or even by a greater power – Fate maybe – was irrelevant. The point was, I felt belittled, beholden. I felt like calling up Daniel Worth and telling him to stuff the money, to donate the lot to charity.
I didn’t, though. Because of Kate. McCallum’s money might have been dirty money, blood money – or at least that was what it felt like to me – but so what, fuck it. Principles were all very well, but the only thing that really mattered was getting my daughter back, and at the end of the day the more resources I had to do that the better.
Sitting around for a week with nothing to do but think about my daughter damn near drove me mental. However, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Physically I was fucked, and as desperate as I was to be out there, continuing the search, I was warned that trying to do too much too soon would almost certainly have resulted in a relapse, setting me back even further. Even so, I might still have been pig-headed enough to take the risk if Clover hadn’t been there to stop me. She helped me with my exercises, she encouraged me and monitored my progress, but she also reined me in when I reached my limit. Most importantly she kept me from going completely insane by convincing me that we needed a proper plan of action, and that we should use this period of enforced inactivity to concoct one.
‘I mean, what are you going to do if they let you out right this minute, Alex?’ she said. ‘You’ll run around like a headless chicken and get nowhere.’
She was probably right, but it was tough all the same. Aside from Clover and my eldest daughter Candice, who I chatted with on the phone a few times, the only other person who made that week bearable was Hope. She was a bundle of energy and enthusiasm. In contrast to me, each day was a new adventure to her. On the evening of the day when I’d decided I was going to discharge myself (Clover had tried to persuade me to stay for the full ten days, but I’d been adamant), I’d dreaded telling Hope I wouldn’t be around to play board games or watch cartoons with her any more. But she was fine about it, especially once I promised we’d still be visiting regularly. In fact, as soon as I told her I’d be heading back to London, her eyes lit up and she said, ‘Alex, do you have a mobile phone?’
I smiled. She was steadily breaking out of her Victorian cocoon and adopting the mannerisms and speech patterns of the twenty-first century.
‘I have,’ I said.
‘Jackie’s got one too,’ she said innocently. ‘And so has Ed. He was showing me how to use it. It’s cool.’
Clover’s favourite nurse, Jackie, had brought her son Ed in for a visit, thinking Hope might be bored with no one of her own age to talk to. Hope hadn’t been bored, but she and Ed had hit it off nonetheless.
‘Is that so?’ I said, trying to keep a straight face.
‘Mm,’ she said, ‘and I was thinking, well if I had one too I could ring you up and talk to you on the days when you might be too busy to visit me. And did you also know that you can use a mobile phone to write messages to people? You just press a button and the message flies through the air to the other person’s mobile phone? And then they can read your message and send you one back?’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Fancy that!’
‘So could I have a mobile phone, Alex?’ she asked. ‘I know you bought me lots of presents for Christmas, but it would be ever so useful, wouldn’t it?’
I thought of those presents, and of how unreachable they were now. I smiled again.
‘We’ll see.’
The next day, after kissing Hope goodbye after breakfast, Clover and I put the first part of our plan into action.
I say ‘plan’, though ‘strategy’ might be a better word for it. The first part had been to get ourselves mobile and hire a car, which Clover had done the previous day from a place in Farnborough. With me strapped into the passenger seat, she’d then driven the fifteen miles or so from Oak Hill to Guildford. Pulling up to the kerb outside Benny Magee’s house, Clover had asked me to let her go ahead, speak to Benny first.
‘No way,’ I said, fumbling with my seatbelt. ‘I’m not letting you put your neck on the chopping block. We’ll go together.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Lord save me from working-class chivalry.’
I must have looked stung, because her gaze immediately softened.
‘I don’t need protection from Benny, Alex – never have, never will. Whatever’s happened in the past between the two of you, there’s no way he’d ever harm a hair on my head.’
‘Yeah, but what if he’s been got at?’ I said. ‘The last time I saw him he was surrounded by Tallarian and his freaks. What if he’s become one of them? Or what if what looks like him answers the door, but it’s really the shape-shifter?’
‘What if, what if,’ she said. ‘We can’t base everything we do on what ifs. What if I’m the shape-shifter? After all, I was once, wasn’t I? What if I’m leading you into a trap?’
I scowled. ‘I’m just saying we should be careful, that’s all.’
‘But that’s exactly what I am doing by suggesting that I speak to Benny first, before you show your ugly mug. Or do you still think Benny and I might be in cahoots?’
‘Course not,’ I said, thinking back to the last time I’d been here, when I’d been unsure how much I could trust the woman I’d ended up on the run with. A lot of filthy water had flowed under London Bridge since then. ‘It’s just… oh, all right, go ahead. I suppose you’re right. I don’t suppose it’ll make much difference in the long run. I mean I haven’t even got the heart on me to protect us if we do get attacked.’
‘Exactly,’ she said cheerfully. ‘So we’d be buggered whatever happens.’ She unclipped her seatbelt and opened the car door. ‘I’ll tell Benny to leave the gate open, if that makes you feel better. That way I can make a quick getaway if I need to.’
‘If you get into trouble, just holler and I’ll come hobbling.’
‘No you bloody well won’t. You’ll start the engine and hightail it out of here. No point both of us getting got.’
She jumped out of the car, shutting the door firmly behind her, then strode up to the black iron gates in the high wall fronting Benny’s house. Wearing skinny black jeans, black high-heeled boots and a black fur-trimmed jacket she reminded me of Emma Peel from The Avengers. She was certainly a different proposition from the girl I’d met over three months before, who’d been too nervous to get directly involved in the burglary of McCallum’s house.
She took out her phone, made a call, and a minute later the gates opened. Once she’d gone through, I got out of the car on my side, grunting and wincing with effort. I felt much better than I had when I’d woken up in Oak Hill a week ago, but I was still nowhere near fighting fit. At least I didn’t need a stick any more, though. Those first few days in hospital had given me an insight into what it must be like to be eighty. Where would I be when I reached that age, if I reached that age, I wondered. Hopefully sitting in front of a blazing fire with my slippers on and Kate bringing me cups of tea.
I moved round the front of the car to the driver’s side and leaned against the door with my arms folded. From here, even at hobbling pace, I was close enough to the gates to slip between them if they started to close. The street was quiet and peaceful, the big houses tucked away behind high hedges and tall trees, as if politely but firmly discouraging visitors. I wondered how many of Benny’s neighbours knew about his background. I wondered how many of them had equally dodgy pasts. It was a cold autumn morning, the air so brittle it felt as though you could reach out and snap it with your fingers. The sky was the colour of despondency and the ground was covered in withered brown leaves.
Clover must have gone into the house. I certainly couldn’t hear the sound of voices from beyond the hedge. The big reunion must have come when I was struggling to get out of the car, my own wheezing and grunting having drowned out the ringing of the doorbell and Benny’s surprised exclamation at seeing Clover standing there. As I waited I breathed in air so icily sharp it stung my sinuses, then blew it out in long white plumes. Glimpsing movement high to my left I twisted round so quickly that my aching ribs and stomach muscles sang briefly with pain, but it was only a squirrel, slipping with quicksilver swiftness from branch to branch.
‘It’s okay,’ said a voice, as if assuring me that the squirrel was no threat. ‘You can come in now.’
I turned to face front again, twisting my body more cautiously this time. Clover had reappeared in the gap between the open gates and was looking at me. I couldn’t tell from her face what sort of encounter she’d had with Benny; I got the feeling she was keeping her expression deliberately neutral.
Jerking my head in the direction of the house, I asked, ‘How is he?’
‘Come and see for yourself.’
I followed her up to the house. The door into the front porch stood ajar. I felt annoyed for being nervous, but that didn’t stop the fluttering in my stomach. I couldn’t work out whether it was the prospect of seeing Benny again that unsettled me or the possibility that he might have been got at by the Wolves. How many times could I walk knowingly into danger and escape with my life? Then again, what other choice did I have if I wanted to see Kate again?
Entering the porch, I heard a whirr and a faint rattle behind me, and turned to see the gates in the high wall sliding slowly closed. There was nothing sinister in that, I told myself. Benny simply valued his privacy; besides which, with his background, he couldn’t be too careful when it came to security. I pulled the porch door closed behind me as Clover opened the one that led into the hallway. I followed her through and there was Benny, standing with his arms folded in the centre of his sumptuous domain, slight but somehow solid, indomitable. The hallway was just as I remembered it – the grandfather clock, the artwork on the walls. There was no sign of his wife, Lesley, or their little dog. Benny was staring at me, his expression as unreadable as Clover’s had been at the gate.
‘Alex,’ he said.
I gave a nod of greeting. ‘Hello, Benny.’
Now that I was in his presence I realised how little the wariness I was feeling had to do with Benny himself. The awe he’d previously inspired in me, the dark glamour that had seemed to cling to him, had now largely vanished, and not only because he had betrayed me. Since meeting up with Benny in the Hair of the Dog (months ago for me, only a week or two for him), I’d seen such wonders and terrors, had had my horizons expanded to such an extent, that he and his concerns now seemed petty in comparison. For the first time he seemed to me like a little man who wanted to be a big one. A man with delusions of grandeur who couldn’t see beyond the high walls he’d built around himself.
He narrowed his eyes, as if he knew what I was thinking. In a cagey voice he said, ‘You look different.’
‘I’m older,’ I said with a shrug, but he shook his head.
‘That’s not it. It’s something else.’ For a moment we stood, appraising each other. Then he said, ‘Never mind. Monroe said you wanted to talk, so let’s talk. Come through.’
He turned and stalked away, leading us not left to the conservatory at the back of the house – which I guessed was either too cold to sit in now that the weather had turned chilly or was still in a state of disrepair after being partially crushed by the sinewy darkness that Frank had unleashed upon it – but along a corridor to the right of the staircase. He stopped at the first door, glanced back to ensure we were still following (or perhaps to check I hadn’t pulled a gun on him), then pushed the door open and entered the room.
The decor of the spacious sitting room beyond was cream coloured and made me think of desserts – meringues and white-chocolate parfaits and swirls of white icing on wedding cakes. There were cream rugs on a blonde wood floor, three white leather sofas so pristine they looked as if they’d been carved out of fresh snow and a gleaming white grand piano in the corner. My instinct was to squint against the glare, even though the light filtering through the long, narrow windows that overlooked the front drive was murky.
As he turned towards a sideboard crowded with bottles of spirits on the back wall, Benny swept a hand towards the bulky sofas, which surrounded a glass coffee table like a trio of school bullies closing in on a smaller, weaker victim.
‘Take a seat,’ he said, making it sound like an order. ‘Drink?’
‘Whatever you’re having,’ Clover said, and I nodded.
‘Same here.’
Two minutes later he handed each of us a thick glass tumbler full of Scotch and soda, the latter having come from a siphon that resembled a mini fire extinguisher. Instinctively I’d seated myself on the right-hand sofa so that I could keep him in my sights while he was preparing the drinks.
Benny perched on the sofa directly opposite me (Clover was sitting back, apparently relaxed, on the one between us and at right angles to us both, like the bottom bar of a squared-off ‘U’) and after taking a sip of his Scotch, leaned forward to place his tumbler on the table with a glassy clunk. He stared at me for a moment and I stared back unflinchingly. Although I’d been aware of how much Clover had been changed by her recent experiences, of how much tougher and more resourceful she’d become, I hadn’t been particularly aware of any significant change in my own attitude and capabilities until now. But confronting Benny like this, realising I no longer felt even remotely intimidated by him, was a revealing yardstick, to me at least.
Eventually he spoke.
‘Who the fuck are you, Alex?’
I took a sip of my drink as I considered his question. Who was I? I was the guardian of the obsidian heart. But what did that even mean?
Snorting with quiet humour, I said, ‘I’m not anyone. I’m just a normal bloke who’s been caught up in… extraordinary circumstances. I’m just a dad who wants his daughter back.’
Now it was Benny’s turn to sip his drink and look thoughtful. It struck me that the conversation was like a chess game, each player contemplating the board before making his next move. I was so focused on his pale blue eyes staring into mine that when Clover flapped a hand in front of her face I jerked in surprise, thinking for a moment there was a bird in the room, remembering how the shape-shifter had burst from the chimney in a cloud of soot.
‘Whew,’ she said, ‘I can hardly breathe for the testosterone in here.’
I smiled, but Benny frowned in irritation. Gesturing at me with his glass, he said, ‘Don’t give me that. If you’re no one how come so many people are interested in your welfare? And when I say people, I mean powerful people, people with money.’ I saw him grimace, almost shudder. ‘People who aren’t even people at all.’
‘You know why,’ I said. ‘It’s because of the heart, the one I stole from Barnaby McCallum. It’s not me they want, it’s—’
But Benny was wagging a finger rapidly from side to side, as if erasing my words as they emerged.
‘No, that isn’t it. I don’t buy that. It’s not just the heart. It’s you and the heart. I’ve been giving this plenty of thought since that… since what happened in that fucking crypt. And you and that fucking thing are tied together somehow. I don’t know how, but you are.’
I suddenly realised that what had happened in the crypt (and also, presumably, before that, in this very house, when Frank’s darkness had engulfed us) had shaken Benny to the core. He’d tried to maintain his tough exterior, was trying even now to keep his fear contained, but the more his mouth ran away with him, the more the cracks in his façade widened. His drink clattered against the table when he put it down, a sign of how much his hand was shaking. I almost felt sorry for him. But there was a part of me too that felt a secret satisfaction at the way his hubris had been punctured.
Before I could speak, Clover said coldly, ‘I hope you got your blood money, Benny, for trying to turn Alex in. I hope it was worth it.’
He slid her a glance, and for a moment I felt sure she’d been mistaken when she’d told me that Benny would never harm her.
Then he sighed and looked down at his glass. In a softer voice he said, ‘Tell you the truth, I was just glad to get out of that place in one piece. Once those things turned up, money was the last thing on my mind.’
‘How did you get out?’ I asked him.
Benny shook his head. ‘You tell me. One minute I was surrounded by those things, the next – nothing. I guess I must have blacked out. When I came to I was alone. I tried to tell myself I was going mad, that I’d imagined the whole thing.’ He barked a laugh. ‘Believe me, that felt like the preferable option.’
‘You were so insignificant they didn’t even bother to kill you,’ Clover said spitefully.
Benny shrugged off the jibe. ‘I’ll take that any day of the week if it means I get to carry on breathing.’ He spread his hands. ‘Look, I fucking admit it. I got into something I couldn’t handle. Does that make you feel better?’
‘A bit,’ Clover said, and scowled at him. ‘How could you, Benny? Betraying your friends? That’s beneath even you. That’s really low.’
His head snapped up and for a moment I thought he was actually going to snarl at her like a dog. But I detected a suggestion of shame in his expression too.
‘Don’t give me that! You know who I am, what I am. I was offered a fucking big payday to hand him over – and he’s no friend of mine, I don’t owe him a fucking thing. It’s no skin off my nose what happens to him.’
‘What a charmer you are,’ Clover said.
‘What do you want me to say? Grow up, girl. I’ve got nothing against the boy – at least I didn’t until he pulled that weird voodoo shit in my house – but I’m a businessman.’
‘You’re a crook.’
I thought that might sting a reaction out of him, but he just laughed.
‘We all know that, don’t we? That’s not even an insult. In fact, it’s justification for what I did. But, you know, the money wasn’t the only reason I handed him over. I also did it for you.’
Clover recoiled. ‘Oh, pur-leeze!’
‘Think what you like. But I’m telling the truth. When that… thing came to my house, when he brought it here, I wanted him out of it. Gone. I wanted him to fuck off and never come back. But when you went with him it nearly broke my heart.’
‘Yeah, right. I’d believe you if I thought you had a heart to break.’
‘Like I say, believe what you like. I don’t care. But when I got that phone call, asking me to deliver Alex to that crypt… well, it wasn’t a hard decision to make.’
He went silent, as if simply mentioning the crypt had brought the full horror of what we’d encountered there rushing back into his mind. Clover stared at him with grim satisfaction.
‘Except you got a bit more than you bargained for, didn’t you?’
He took another gulp of his drink. He had a haunted look in his eyes. He tried to tough it out with a smile, but it flickered and didn’t catch. At last in a low rumble he said, ‘What were those things, Alex? I mean, what the fuck…’
He shook his head, his words drying up.
He wasn’t quite broken, but it was clear he’d never view the world in the same way again.
Quietly I said, ‘Believe it or not, Benny, they were the Wolves of London.’
A flash of anger. ‘Don’t take the piss, boy.’
‘I’m not. That’s not what I’m here for.’
‘So why are you here?’ All at once on his guard, his eyes danced quickly from me, to Clover, then back again. ‘Revenge? Is that it?’
Clover gave a snort of disgust. ‘Don’t judge us by your standards, Benny.’
‘So what then?’
‘Believe it or not,’ I said, ‘I’m here because I want your help.’
He stared at me for five, ten seconds.
At last he said, ‘You’re bullshitting me, right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m just trying to find my daughter, and I want you to use your connections to help me do it. It’s a business proposition, that’s all. Whatever the Wolves of London offered to pay you to hand me over, I’ll pay you more to keep you on my side. I’m not asking you to put yourself at risk for me. You can do what I’m asking from the comfort of your armchair. All I want is for you to put the word out, set up an information network. I just want people to keep their ears to the ground, and if anyone hears anything, anything at all, I want to know about it.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘And what if I don’t help you find her? What if she’s never found?’
‘At least I’ll know people are looking, keeping their ears and eyes open, and that’s the important thing.’
Benny looked thoughtful. ‘So where’s this money coming from?’
‘Inheritance,’ I said. ‘It’s not something you have to worry about.’
He shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’
‘So are you in?’ asked Clover.
‘I’m prepared to discuss terms.’
‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘If the Wolves contact you, I want to know about it. Whatever they might offer you to do the dirty on me, I’ll give you more. Okay?’
Benny nodded. ‘Sounds reasonable.’
‘I would like to say that by making you this offer we’re giving you a chance to redeem yourself,’ Clover said, ‘but we all know that’s idealistic bullshit. If you really do care about me, though, you’ll help Alex as much as you can. No more throwing him to the Wolves, okay?’
Benny slid his lizard-like gaze in her direction. ‘I’ve said the offer’s a reasonable one. What more do you want from me? Blood?’
‘A handshake’ll do,’ I said, standing up and extending my hand across the glass table. ‘To seal the agreement.’
For a moment I thought Benny was going to leave me standing there like a lemon, but then he rose to his feet and offered his hand in return. The moment our palms touched it was as though an electrical connection had been made – or perhaps broken. There was a sense of… shifting. As though I’d inadvertently stumbled. Or as if the walls of the building were re-aligning themselves around me.
And all of a sudden I was somewhere else.
It wasn’t far away, though. I came to in another room in the house. I recognised it immediately. It was the conservatory. I felt as though I’d fallen asleep without realising it, then had sleepwalked in here and jerked awake.
Except suddenly it was night. So what had happened? Had I fallen asleep or passed out? Had I been unconscious for hours? Perhaps Benny had put something in my drink? And where was Clover?
Even as I asked myself this last question I realised there were two other people in the room. With relief I saw that the closest, sitting in an armchair to my left, illuminated by the rosy glow of a table lamp with a red shade, was Clover. She was wearing a long white nightshirt, which she’d pulled down over her bare legs, having tucked her feet underneath her. In the lamplight her glossy hair seemed to be the deep maroon colour it had been when I’d first met her.
Looking beyond her, I focused on the person she was talking to, who was standing with his back to the glass wall of the conservatory that overlooked the garden – not that a single detail of the outside world could be seen through the glass. The panes were nothing but a series of black screens imprinted with a faint reflection of the room.
The second person raised a mug to his mouth and took a sip. I froze. I’d assumed it would be Benny, but it wasn’t.
It was me.
Suddenly I knew not only where I was, but when. This was the night when Frank had first appeared, when his darkness had enveloped Benny’s house before eventually breaking in and smothering us. He’d done it not to harm us, but to drive us out before our real enemies, the Dark Man and his cohorts, showed up. I’d saved Frank’s life and he’d returned the favour – though, of course, I hadn’t known that until later.
But what was I doing back here now? Had I somehow slipped through a gap in time as easily as I might slip on a wet pavement? But I didn’t have the heart with me. I hadn’t yet been back to the house to retrieve it from its hiding place. Could it be that I didn’t need it now, that I had absorbed enough of its power to operate without it? Or perhaps it was influencing me from afar?
Clover was talking, telling the other me about her family, about how Benny had helped her buy Incognito so she could set herself up in business. Neither past Clover nor past me seemed aware that I was there. I was clearly a ghostly observer, invisible and undetectable.
‘He thought it would be a nice little starter business for me,’ Clover was saying.
I heard myself ask, ‘And has it been?’
Curled in the armchair she shrugged. ‘I was doing all right – until all this stuff with McCallum and the heart. I wish I’d never got involved now.’
Over by the window I saw myself give a stiff smile. ‘Crime doesn’t pay.’
‘Benny doesn’t seem to have done too badly out of it,’ Clover said, wafting a hand, her brow furrowed in a frown.
I saw myself glance around the room, shrug, pull a laconic face. ‘Suppose so. Unless you count the fifteen, twenty years he’s spent in prison. Not sure I’d consider that a worthy trade-off. Even for this little lot.’
Hang on. Had I really said that? Maybe, at the time, I’d been thinking it, but I’m pretty sure the words hadn’t left my mouth.
Baffled, I saw Clover stretch, yawn. ‘Horses for courses. I’m sure Benny’s prison experiences were a lot different to yours.’
The other me snorted. ‘I’m sure they were. When I was in Pentonville he ran that place like it was his own personal hotel. He even had the governor and the screws in his back pocket.’
‘Screws,’ she said with a mischievous smirk. ‘You still speak the lingo then, Alex? Once a lag always a lag? Is that it?’
The me that was standing by the window laughed, and she laughed along with me. The me that was standing apart and undetected, however, was feeling uneasy. Wasn’t it before now that the conversation had been interrupted by the darkness that Frank carried within him? Hadn’t Clover’s eyes widened just after her remark about Benny having done okay out of crime, and hadn’t I turned to see blackness squirming across the outside of the glass like a mass of writhing black snakes made of smoke or oil?
I was certain I had. So where was Frank? Why wasn’t he here? My sense of unease grew as I watched the past versions of Clover and me obliviously conducting a conversation I was sure we’d never had. She asked the other me about my background, and I then proceeded to tell her more than I’d told her previously about Kate and Lyn. Standing apart, I listened, incredulous (it was like watching a deleted scene from my own life), and as the conversation wore on, continuing for another five minutes, then ten, then fifteen, and still Frank failed to appear, my unease slowly blossomed into fear, and then into a heart-clenching sense of dread so awful that I found I could no longer take in what Clover and the other me were saying.
I wanted to scream at them, tell them to run, but all I could do was observe. The fact that they continued to chat blithely away, with no inkling that anything was wrong, was agonising. Even the fact that one of these two people was me, and that I knew this was not what had happened, made no difference to how I was feeling. The terror I felt was like being tied to a railway track with a train advancing through the darkness.
I heard a sound behind me – a fumbling at the door, a scuff of movement. My heart leaped. The fact that I was nothing but an invisible observer seemed at that moment irrelevant. I swung round. Benny was standing in the doorway. He was wearing a black, silky dressing gown, black leather slippers on his bare feet. He looked past me, at Clover in the armchair, at the other me still standing by the glass wall of the conservatory.
‘What’s this then?’ he growled. ‘Mothers’ meeting?’
The other me raised an apologetic hand. ‘Sorry, Benny, my fault. I couldn’t sleep, came down to make myself a cuppa. I didn’t mean to disturb anyone.’
Benny sniffed. He looked sceptical. ‘That right?’ He nodded at Clover. ‘What about you, Monroe? You suffering from insomnia too?’
Before Clover could answer the other me said, ‘That’s my fault again. She heard me moving about and woke up.’
Benny shot the other me a sharp look. I expected him to say he’d been speaking to Clover, not me. But instead he said, ‘Not sure how I feel about people sneaking round my house in the middle of the night.’
‘Oh, come on, Benny,’ said Clover. ‘You’re not serious? You honestly expect us to stay in our rooms during the hours of darkness?’
Benny moved into the room, all but brushing against me as he passed by. I didn’t know why, but I was starting to get a very bad vibe about this situation; you might even have called it presentiment. But surely Benny wasn’t the danger here? He was volatile, unpredictable even, but he wouldn’t seriously do anything to endanger either of us, would he? Not at this point anyway.
He approached Clover, came to a halt beside her chair. Watching him I tensed, but Clover seemed relaxed in his presence.
‘When people are in my house, I expect them to observe my rules,’ he said quietly.
Clover gave him a quizzical look. ‘I wasn’t aware that there were any rules.’
‘There are now,’ Benny said, whereupon his hand shot out with incredible speed and grabbed her throat.
The other me by the window sprang forward, but almost immediately came to an abrupt halt, a look of horror on his face. It wasn’t because Benny had barked, ‘I wouldn’t do that, Alex.’ No, it was because Benny was changing.
The hand he’d used to grab Clover was transforming into a black, ropey tentacle. It was winding round and round her throat, stretching her neck, forcing her chin higher. Her face was already puffing up, turning red; her eyes were bulging. Awful choking sounds were coming from her mouth; her swollen tongue twitched.
‘Let her go!’ the other me roared, and suddenly the obsidian heart was in his (my) hand. He (I) brandished it like a grenade.
The shape-shifter in the guise of Benny merely smiled.
‘Well done, Alex. You’ve saved me the bother of asking you to take that out of your pocket. Now look behind you.’
I could see something coming out of the darkness on the other side of the glass. Not Frank, but a huge, spider-like shape: the Dark Man’s mechanical conveyance.
The other me ignored the shape-shifter’s words. He refused to turn to see what was creeping up behind him.
‘Let her go now or I’ll fucking use this!’ he (I) shouted.
The shape-shifter sniggered. ‘I don’t think you will. Because first, you don’t really know how to. And second, I’ll kill her the instant you try anything. How confident are you that the heart will stop me before I end her life?’
Clover’s face was turning purple. Her eyes were flickering. The other me cast an agonised glance from the shape-shifter to Clover, torn by indecision.
The shape-shifter smiled. It was a warm smile. Friendly. It looked completely alien on Benny’s face. It transformed his features into a grotesque mask.
‘Sensible boy,’ the shape-shifter said. ‘Now, as I was saying, if you turn and look behind you, you’ll see—’
And that was when Clover struck.
I thought she was on the verge of unconsciousness. Maybe she was. Maybe her action was instinctive, a final desperate attempt to survive before blackness claimed her.
The sequence of events happened quickly. It took everyone by surprise, including the shape-shifter. One moment Clover’s hands were hanging limply by her side, the next she’d grabbed the red-shaded table lamp from beside her and had thrust it like a glowing red sword directly into the shape-shifter’s face.
The red lampshade crumpled, the bulb beneath it exploded. There was a bang and a white flash and the shape-shifter let out a roar of pain or rage.
Almost simultaneously, as the shape-shifter lurched backwards, there was a crack sound, like a whiplash, and suddenly Clover’s head separated from her body. It seemed to leap upwards from her shoulders as though on a spring, to spin through the air, trailing a flowing ripple of hair and a scatter of droplets that looked black in the sudden murk. I saw her headless body slump to one side, saw the other me’s face expand with horror, eyes and mouth opening wide.
Was it me or the other me who screamed? Or did we scream together? All I know is that the jolting shock pulled me out of the moment. This time there was a sense not of shifting, but of being wrenched, physically and spiritually, from an intolerable situation. I felt momentarily like a bungee jumper who, having reached the end of his elasticated rope, is snapped back up into the air again.
The world rushed by. Dark became light. I was disorientated. Was I shouting or was someone shouting at me? I struggled, felt a weight on me, holding me down.
My body was stinging all over. When I moved, something crunched.
Then I heard Clover’s voice: ‘Hold still, Alex. Stop wriggling. You’ll make it worse.’
I was so overjoyed to hear her, to know she was alive, that I obeyed without question. I stopped struggling. I opened my eyes.
There were two faces above me. In between them was part of a white ceiling. The faces belonged to Benny and Clover. Benny was scowling; Clover looked scared.
‘Back with us, are you?’ Benny said.
I blinked up at him. ‘What happened?’
It was Clover who answered. ‘You fell, Alex. You just collapsed.’
‘Right on to my glass table,’ Benny growled. ‘Smashed it to fucking bits.’