‘I’m sorry that any of you got involved, but this is not my fault.’

Kira lets the words ring. Her fury is a Molotov cocktail, quick to light and quick to burn, but oh, did he deserve it. Callum’s attacking her; he’s honestly attacking her. It’s unbelievable. Yes, everyone ending up here is an iron maiden, spiked with guilt, but Callum’s change of heart and mind stings like fifty bees. Although it made her realise this is not her fault, his words amount to one thing: he wishes he never met her.

‘They’ve gone,’ he says suddenly. He’d been looking away, his fists clenched, his face screwed up with a foreign blackness, but now, he slumps. ‘They’ve gone.’

At first, it doesn’t click. Kira stares at him, livid, horrified, hurt. But then…

‘How can they have gone?’ She gapes, snapping around like whiplash. The sides of the centre window have emptied; kaleidoscopic colours pour, but there’s nothing to illuminate. No Romy, no Jay. The shadows creep alone. ‘How?’

A crash rocks the hideous quiet. Already teetering over an edge, she jumps from her skin to the sky.

The fat cross from the altar lies sprawled at Callum’s feet. ‘It wasn’t real,’ he mutters, ground through his teeth. ‘They’re not dead. It was as much an illusion as the ceiling sky, and the tunnel wall that…’ He flounders angrily. ‘Melted. I hate this fucking place.’

He slams his fist on the altar. Starting, Kira recoils. ‘Callum?’

‘What?’ His rage is carved and wild. He throws up his hands. ‘Don’t you? Don’t you hate it? I’m so sick of everything happening to us, like we’re nothing and probably worse. Nothing’s been real since we saw that doll. We were just too shocked by the crosses to realise that killing Jay and Romy, and sticking them on a wall, gains them nothing.’

Swelling in the air, the choir sings dissonance, a discordant haunt that chills. ‘What does it gain them not to?’ Kira asks, harsher than she intended. Really, though, she doesn’t much care; a thousand emotions ricochet through her, and he’s blossomed into a beast. A brute. He’s spiteful, and he means it.

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Dismissing her, Callum looks away.

Sting. A beast. A brute.

‘I’m not.’ Kira reins her temper in, thread by thread. ‘We weren’t sent here for tea parties, or, or caviar. We thought we were, and there, we were stupid. There’s clearly something sick going on, so why not kill us off?’ She spreads her hands and steps toward him. The threads start to burn. ‘Who knows why Talie lied to us, but it’s all going to be linked. You can see that, right? You’re not too blind? Someone wants revenge on me and Romy, so why not split us up, drive us mad with horror-film stills, divide us more, and kill us? It’d make a great spectator sport. Kind of like in Saw.’

The choir ebbs, and rises. A shrill soprano flutes the descant. Kira shivers.

‘It wasn’t real.’ With an aggravated sigh, Callum pushes off the altar. ‘Christ, Kira. Just stop. Sure, it could be a spectator sport, but they wouldn’t get tired of this quickly. Something else is going to happen, and we need to get out before it does.’

Ebbing again, the music is changing. Floating in snatches through the air, it deepens, less unearthly, speeding up.

‘We don’t know that.’ Her voice is a battle. ‘We don’t know Romy and Jay aren’t…’

Dead.

She swallows, breathes, and lifts her chin. ‘When Dad died,’ she says, the words catching, ‘it was real.’

Callum scoffs. ‘Yeah, and how’s that going?’ He shakes his head at her. ‘He’s achieved quite a lot, for a dead man. Framing. Murdering. Even with harpies in his head, it’s impressive.’

‘Mum—’

‘Don’t.’ He lifts a scornful finger. ‘Don’t bring up your mother. According to you, all she did was vanish. She’s probably out there somewhere.’

Sting. Sting. Kira’s breath feels trapped. ‘Stop it, Callum.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Stop assuming you know what I’m going to say.’ She quashes the angry urge to cry. He’d only get more condescending. ‘What happened to the you in the tunnel, saying we’d figure everything out? You’re being cruel. Irrational, and cruel.’ Her throat closes up. ‘Why?’

Callum smiles. It’s not his smirk, or his smug smile, or the grin that crinkles his eyes. It’s small, and sly, and it makes her feel ill. ‘Because Callum was never in the tunnel.’

Her first thought is why third person?

Her second is oh, my god.

Callum clasps his hands over his jeans. ‘Oh, my god, indeed.’

Kira’s head swoons into a black, black hole. His dark expressions, his off-kilter actions, even the danger she felt in the kiss. She passed it off. It slipped away. All of it slipped away.

Oh, god. The realisation gusts through her, like she’s facing into the wind. That’s exactly what they wanted; they wanted her fooled. They wanted her trusting. They wanted to nip at her mind, to bend it, to toy with her senses and watch her dance.

A spectator sport; a game. It makes Whiteland seem tame.

‘Who are you?’ Kira whispers. Her voice feels very far away. ‘If you’re not Callum…’

She falters. The words physically won’t come out.

Callum steps toward her, a saunter, a spring. Something ticks. Something whirs. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’ The smile becomes a smirk, and it makes him cold. ‘You were very…alluring.’

In a blink, he’s in front of her. Pinching her chin between finger and thumb, he tilts it up. He’s far too close, moving like a flicker. Kira can hardly breathe. ‘Get off.’

Softly, he laughs. ‘That’s not what you want.’ Bending down, he strokes her waist. ‘Pity that Callum’s not here.’

His voice tickles her neck. Kira shudders, tensing to dread, disgust. ‘Where’s Callum?’ She clenches her fists by her sides. ‘What have you done with him?’

Behind her eyes, the northern lights flicker, a ripple of purple and gold. Kira blinks. The distorted music settles around them. It’s a rumbling, blooming blanket, and it’s almost making sense.

‘Mmm.’ Callum kisses her neck. Cringing, Kira shuts her eyes. God, if she could faint, or scream and never stop. ‘He’s having fun.’

Kira swallows. The sound is too loud, her mouth too dry. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means’—his lips brush her neck again—‘that he’s with another of us.’ His fingers dig into her waist. She represses a flinching, frightened whimper. ‘Maybe another you. One’—he smiles against her skin—‘who’s even more alluring.’

The jibe doesn’t bite. She just needs to get out. Kira angles her head away, her neck away, her waist away. This isn’t Callum. He’s not in there. He’d be strong enough to fight, and strong enough to win.

Kira grits her teeth. Breathe. Focus. ‘Who are you?’ she forces out. ‘What—’

The music shatters. As though it had been muffled by glass, as though she’d been muffled, too, it shatters, and like a kick in the teeth, she knows. The bassline, the thrashing drums. Enraged guitars and men.

Let’s become a carnival now Ragnarok is visceral.

Kira’s fortress crumbles.

‘Funny how we know you,’ Callum whispers.

Unable to stop it, Kira whimpers. The song blazes, and she’s back in Holland, back in her house, inching upstairs. Her bedroom is the image at the end of a telescope, close but far, and beyond the door lies carnage.

Other memories scuttle in, ones that aren’t her own: an open-plan, white-panelled room, moonlight sighing in the dark. The song plays a burning ballet. On a bed sit bodies, lined up neatly, a sketchy tree etched into their wrists. Funny how we know you.

Kira blinks, and blinks again, but the afterglow remains. ‘What do you want?’ she manages. It’s stilted, barely more than a breath, but the effort stops her falling. Breathe, focus, think. Get out.

A pause. Callum chuckles, slinking and snaking, cold on her neck. When he pulls back, with a slow relish, the man’s face has gone.

In its place is a mask of fire. Amber slits make snakelike eyes. A hooked beak masks the nose, scarlet, yellow, orange feathers melding to leathery skin. Around the feathers’ edges the scorched face puckers, furious at being so foully defiled. The slashing mouth is a Chelsea smile.

The horror steps back, and links its hands. Its body burns. ‘I am the Pretty.’

Darkness swallows Kira whole. With a bloody, brutal scream, she runs.

It’s sacrilege. All of it. Tripping down the steps, she bolts down the aisle to the door that took the tunnel. Her feet pound with pain. The stone jars her knees.

Hunting wolves in curtained skies.

The church is growing longer. It must be. She’s gasping, dizzy, weakened, hot, slowing to a stagger. She should have reached the door by now.

Are we dead when we have died?

The music roars louder. A gale in her ears, a tolling bell, heavy in her chest. Her calves shake. Her feet throb. She breathes through her teeth, tears in her eyes.

Oh, how the world lusts after nothing.

Suddenly, the door is there. Kira slams into it. ‘Ah!’

Rebounding, she teeters. The song screams, a hundred screams, women and children on fire, in agony. One by one by one they burn, beneath the northern lights. A chamber with a grove of trees, shadow-figures gathering around a crooked bonfire. She’s one of them, becoming them, it’s her in the flames, slashed and spliced, her very being tearing, shredding, torn—

It’s not. At a spark of pain, real pain, physical pain, she wrenches back. She’s here, scrabbling at the door. Smacking with her palms, scraping with her nails, her fingers bitten by splinters.

I am the Pretty.

Kira’s knees buckle. Something wrestles with her mind, ripping and fleshy.

Funny how we know you.

No, you don’t. She shakes her head, again, again, picturing the words, feeling them. Not as well as you think.

Consciousness wavers, just for a second. Kira focuses on the now, the wood, her frenetic fingers fumbling. The air is laced with blood and smoke. Where’s the—

There. No flamed arms restrain her as her hands hit the handle. She yanks the iron ring around, letting out a sob, and to her half-feral shock, it grates open.

She flies out into white sunlight, and for a moment thinks she’s free.