Now, the jokes are as silent as the night.

‘Jesus.’ Callum rolls his head along the tree to look at her. ‘Is that why what you said earlier was something to do with a rock?’

Kira blows out heavily. ‘Yep. I’ve had such a lot of fun.’

‘Mmm.’ Callum taps her knee. ‘If we ever get back to some kind of normal, you should write a novel. Call it Whiteland’—he unfurls a banner in the air—‘and expose all the mind-screwing heathens. It’ll sell.’

‘It might, but they’d come for us.’ Kira yawns. With the sultry night roosting around them, and their hideout so prettily, safely framed by crowded leaves, sleep is starry velvet. ‘All of this would have been pointless.’ She shuffles her back down the tree, resting on Callum’s shoulder. ‘Do you think it was an illusion? What I saw in the church?’

The question is ginger, and hangs in the air. Somewhere, a sheep bleats. A warm breeze murmurs, sifting the scent of a barn.

‘Like the fake me who made out with you?’ Callum twines one of her hands into his.

Kira pokes him in the ribs. ‘Oi.’

He snorts. ‘Sorry. Ish.’ He lifts their fingers before them. The twinned moonlight makes them soft. ‘Yes, I do.’ He smiles into her hair, and huffs. ‘Can’t say I’d have thought that straightaway, if I’d seen what you did, but from here, now, yes. I don’t think they’ll kill us.’

‘That’s what the other you said.’ Kira shifts around to peek up at him. Shadowed and thoughtful, he watches the dark. ‘Why?’

Callum’s eyes narrow, a quick tic. The corners of his mouth flatten. ‘Because…’ he says, slow and sighing. His lips part, and close again, turning slightly down. ‘Because where’s the fun for the Kyo in that?’

The Kyo. Dead, cracking, screaming. Kira shivers, and drops her eyes. ‘You think they did this?’

‘I think…’ Callum lifts a finger. ‘I think all of this is planned. Did you hear something?’

Another sheep bleats.

‘Oh.’ He slumps back. ‘Never mind. Yeah.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘Yeah, I mean, the plan never seems to have involved killing us. Or you and Romy, at least.’

Kira twists her mouth against his T-shirt. ‘Callum.’

‘No, it’s true.’ He works an arm around her, kissing the top of her head. ‘If it did, you’d have kicked the bucket five times over. I think there’s a lot laid out for us, and that it involves the Kyo. They’re a bunch of crazy exes.’

A small smile twitches. ‘Really.’

‘Sure.’ He drums his fingers on her shoulder. ‘In the end, they’ll always want to be the ones to stab you with revenge. And I know, when you’ve seen so many crazy things that were kind of real and kind of not, it’s hard to be objective, but seeing as I was asleep—’ He stops, and stills. ‘Okay, that time I heard something. I definitely heard something.’

Voices. Kira chills from her scalp to her gut. Voices?

Jerkier than a marionette, she scrambles to her feet. Callum is beside her at once, and she waits, peering through the branches, barely breathing, listening to the dark.

The argument drifts around the corner, shielded by flourishing hedgerows.

‘…Telling you,’ one entreats, ‘it was way, way too simple. Last time we tried, we were cornered by a priest and pushed through a stained glass window. Walking out the front was too easy.’

‘Maybe.’ The second voice is more offhand. Kira’s heartbeat slows, as if doctored by a drug. ‘If it was, we’ll find out, and if it wasn’t, well, there’s not a lot we can do. At least we’re somewhere normal.’

Quietly, Kira pushes the branches aside. Her stomach is tying in sickly knots, greyish, fleshy lumps. Romy.

‘Is it them?’ Callum whispers, emerging behind her. ‘By which I mean, are they real?’

Kira lifts a finger.

‘You call this normal?’ the first voice exclaims. ‘There are two moons, and that fox we saw was the size of a Saint Bernard.’

‘Stop whinging.’

‘It’s not whinging if it’s important.’

‘Nothing’s important when you’ve said it twelve times.’ The second voice is snide. ‘I heard you the—’

‘Callum.’ The first voice wobbles up into falsetto. ‘Kira. They’re here.’

The footsteps erupt. An augenblick later, Jay hurtles round the bend.

‘Callum!’ he yells, colliding with his brother.

Slammed in the stomach, Callum doubles over. ‘Oof.’ He staggers back.

‘Kira?’ Romy rounds the corner, wild-eyed and almost running. ‘Oh, my god.’

They hug in the lane like the world is burning. Kira’s thoughts fragment: Romy’s not dead. She’s not dead, she’s not dead, she’s warm, and smells of incense, and sweat, and her earrings scrape Kira’s neck, and her tangled hair is everywhere, and both Callums were right: it’s all just one big game.

‘This is so messed up,’ Kira mumbles.

Ferociously, Romy nods. ‘Jesus Christ in a bucket, I know. We’ve seen so many crackpot things, and sadistic things, and…that reminds me.’

A dagger stabs her voice. Untangling herself, she walks away, and boots Callum in the shin.

Kira’s eyes stretch so wide they strain.

‘Ow!’ Callum yelps. His knee folds, and he drops to the grass, a grimace spreading like blood. ‘What the hell?’

Romy glowers at him. ‘You know full well.’

Kira cuts her eyes between them. ‘What—’

‘No, I don’t. Bloody hell.’ Groaning, Callum drags his leg to his chest. ‘Jesus, Romy.’

Romy’s face turns red. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have hit her.’

Silence. Kira stares. ‘Hit me?’ She glances at Callum. ‘He didn’t—he didn’t hit me.’

Accepting Jay’s hand, Callum struggles to his feet, shooting Romy blue murder. ‘No.’ Testing his leg, he winces. ‘I only’—he grits his teeth—‘hit women who try to kill me.’

‘With a poker,’ Jay adds.

‘True.’ Releasing Jay’s shoulder, Callum reassumes his glare. ‘Nice to see you’re alive and kicking, Romy, but really. What the hell?’

Kira’s mind starts to tick. False friends. False grief. Real, righteous anger.

She’s not the only one being tricked. ‘Romy.’

‘You had a fight in the church.’ Distinctly less satisfied, but no less stubborn, Romy sticks a hand on her hip. ‘You and Kira. You were shouting at her, and then you thought, hey, let’s macho it up.’

‘Romy.’

‘I trusted you, when you said you—’

‘Romy!’ Kira throws out her arms. ‘Shut up for a second! Just…’ She lifts her hands, palms-out. ‘Just wait. Let me talk to you.’

Romy glares at Callum. ‘Ten seconds, and then I kick him again.’

Tipping her head back, Kira sighs. The moons hang high, silvered and bright, in the flat, midnight blue. ‘We did have a fight, but one, he didn’t hit me, and two, it wasn’t him. He was sleeping in a field.’

Darkly, Callum huffs to himself. ‘Honey, I blew up the sheep,’ he mutters, as Jay ducks into the tree. ‘Great.’

Kira shoots him a look of exasperation. ‘Not helping, Callum.’ She turns to Romy. ‘How did you see us fighting, anyway? We never saw you.’

‘That’s not the point.’ Romy jabs an accusing finger at her. ‘Do you mean to say that you’re letting him off because he thought his brother was dead?’ She spreads her hands. ‘And sheep? What’s the deal with Urnäsch and sheep?’

‘Wait.’ Callum pivots. ‘The fire man hit you?’

‘Stop!’ Jay hurries from the bowing tree, one hand chock-full of olives. ‘Before you kill each other. You’—he points at Kira and Callum—‘need to know what the Chlause do, and then we need to find out from everyone else what’s happened to everyone else.’ He looks between them, a teacher at a rowdy playground fight, before wriggling back through the branches. ‘The olives are nice, by the way.’

Water babbles. A night bird flutes. Kira watches Callum watch Jay. His face is a painting with too much colour: confusion. Sadness. Red-gold pride. She feels the same about Romy.

‘Where are these explanations, then?’ Romy drops cross-legged to the ground. Ripping out a handful of greyscale grass, she shreds it. ‘Jay’s right.’ Her eyes flick up to Kira, and instantly away. ‘The Chlause are…’ She tears another handful. ‘Jay?’

With cheeks like a hamster, Jay reemerges. ‘Basically, we need to get out.’

Lying beneath the olive tree, Kira’s mind spins far from sleep.

I’ll watch for a while, she’d insisted, and the others didn’t much protest. She was wide awake then, and is wide awake now; something here is wrong.

They’re not being toyed with. They’ve been left alone, and it’s less like false security than the calm before a storm. They’ve been allowed to find each other, which can only mean that whatever’s next, it’ll be more of a joyous cataclysm with all of them together.

They drive you mad, they torture you, and make you one of them. Kira stares through the moonlit canopy, digging her nails in the dirt by the roots. The words flash like afterglow. They’ve been treated to a warm-up, the pre-match show, and the main act is ready to start.

Locked rooms with constant screaming. A blackness where you hear everything you’ve ever feared. The feeling of a lifetime stuck in a nightmare, only to wake and you’re here, still here, launched into trials of agony under the mocking northern lights. Beneath the beauty your mind is burned.

Burned, and rent, and lacerated, your body staying still. Your bones are shifted, adjusted, bent, and then, and then, and then…

Unless Callum’s right, and the Kyo are waiting. God knows she’d rather be in Whiteland than here.

Kira’s throat swells, and she lets it, awake and alone as Jay’s snores drone, as Romy tosses and turns. In Whiteland, she had hope. Here, they’re momentously open, vulnerable, helpless, and ignorant, blithering fools. No parents will swoop to pick up the pieces, to buy them creme eggs and make it okay. Her mum. Her dad. Her life. Her world. However much the longing yawns, they’re gone.

It descends like a night terror: the four of them are fucked.

‘Kira.’

Callum’s whisper sends shocks through her skin. She looks down to see him watching her, his coat draped over his legs. How long has he been awake?

With a sigh, Kira shuts her eyes. ‘Go back to sleep, Callum.’ It’s a struggle to handle silence, let alone a conversation.

‘I will if you’re okay.’ Callum shifts, dislodging a clump of earth. It trickles past a root, crumbling and cold on Kira’s skin. He pauses. ‘Are you?’

No. Yes. Kira bites her cheek, tensing her bones. The truth, or a conscientious lie? Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

In the end, she settles for silence. Rustling over the grass, the breeze sighs through her hair. She bites her cheek harder.

Callum clears his throat. ‘You do know’—he taps her forearm—‘that I don’t blame you for this. No matter what the fire pervert said.’

This triggers a tiny, ironic smile, and a tiny, ironic huff. ‘Yeah,’ Kira manages, choked and wet. Swallowing, she drags up her tearstained voice. ‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t thinking of that. I hoped you didn’t, but…’

She trails off. After a moment, Callum lifts his coat.

Kira sniffs, sniffs again, and smiles. ‘That barely covers you on your own.’

Watching her, he doesn’t move. ‘That’s not really the point.’

Kira meets his eyes, and looks away. Sitting up away from the tree, careful not to knock Romy, she takes the coat edge and lies down. The night is summer-mild, but this is warm.

‘Hey,’ Callum whispers.

‘Mm?’

‘Look at me.’

Kira tries not to. Their faces are close, too close to hide, and all she can do is unfocus.

‘This,’ he says, ‘is not your fault.’

Kira fixes her eyes on a freckle on his neck. ‘That’s what I told the fake you.’

Callum lifts her chin. ‘The fake me was a dick.’

‘Maybe.’ Moving away, Kira hooks her toe in her jacket. ‘Either way, he wouldn’t listen. For a while I was really fired up, enough to believe he was wrong, but then the anger went away, and after what Jay said…’ She drags the coat through the dirt, arranging it over their legs. ‘All of this did start with me.’

Awkward and grudging, she settles back. She’s spent the last year feeling guilty, and now the guilt is out.

Callum regards her sardonically. ‘I’m not sure you’ve ever been more wrong.’

Kira pushes out her mouth.

‘No, listen to me.’ He puts a finger to her lips. She frowns. ‘This part of everything started with Romy getting wasted, lost, and possessed. Originally, it started with your mother. I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again. Stop feeling guilty for the world and his dog.’

‘I don’t—’

‘You do, and you know you do.’ Callum crooks his mouth to the side. ‘Do you know why?’

Slotting her hands beneath her head, Kira wriggles on the crumbly ground, and sighs. ‘I feel like you’re going to tell me.’

‘I am.’ Callum’s crooked smile remains. ‘It’s because blaming yourself is easier than believing others have flaws. Personally, I rant and rave and curse the world and his dog, but you…’

He shakes his head against the grass. Kira waits, an odd feeling squirming in her stomach, but that’s it. In their dusky, dusty cocoon, he’s quiet.

Rolling over, Romy harrumphs in sleep. Her butt bumps Kira’s as she gets herself comfy. Jay’s snores tickle on, and still, in their dusky, dusty cocoon, Callum is quiet. Her eyes slide to his freckle again. Nothing wants to come out of her mouth. He knows her. He sees her.

‘How do you do that?’ she asks eventually, in a murmur lower than the ground. ‘I mean…I don’t want to say “know me,” because that sounds cheesy, but…’

‘No, I know what you mean.’ Callum rests a hand on her hip bone. It’s warm on the skin where her vest rides up. ‘I see through people’s crap. That sounds fairly naff as well, but it’s true.’

Kira keeps her eyes on his freckle. There’s another just below it, close to his jaw. ‘You make it sound easy.’

Callum smiles. The twinned freckles lift. ‘It is for me, I guess. I’m like the non-psychic Jay: I see the obvious things, that most people miss, about their own personalities or others. You, though,’ he says, tapping her hip. ‘I can read you better than most.’

Kira’s eyes slide unbidden to his face. ‘Really.’ She shifts, looking away. ‘That makes me want to hide.’

‘Too bad.’ Callum watches as she shifts again. ‘You’ve taken it to heart, even more than before, what that fire pervert said. You think your name is ruin and you’ve savaged everyone’s lives.’

The stark truth of this is black, a sense like déjà vu. It’s a chasm, an abyss, a sinkhole, peat. Kira curls her legs as far as they’ll go before knocking Callum’s knees.

‘Ah.’ Callum shakes his head, again, again. Suddenly, he’s no longer smiling. ‘Kira, listen to me. When I got home and realised I had no way to find you, or to know if you were alive, it was…’

A relief? Kira thinks, as her heart flutes and flurries, as her thoughts stain like rot. Ruin. ‘If it’s like it was for me,’ she murmurs into the grass, ‘it wasn’t so fun.’

Callum makes a noise between a laugh, a grunt, and an effort not to choke. ‘It was about as fun as the Russian Revolution,’ he says. ‘Remember that? You asked me not to blame you for it. Turns out’—he smiles dryly—‘I don’t. In fact, and bear with me here.’ He widens his eyes, leaning in close. ‘I don’t blame you for any revolutions.’

The hazy weight of her mind says no, but Kira’s lips turn up. ‘None of them?’

‘None of them. Well’—Callum pulls a David Tennant-style face—‘maybe just the Glorious one. But that’s your fault for being English.’

The smile breaks through her haze. ‘Hey.’

‘Maybe the US Revolution, too, but that’s your fault for being English.’

‘Hey!’ Kira bites her lip to keep from laughing.

‘Basically’—Callum puts a finger on her cheek—‘what I’m trying to say is this.’ Shifting closer, he kisses her forehead, and murmurs, ‘You didn’t ruin my life. Beyond the mortal peril part, you might have even improved it.’

Kira’s breath catches.

A long time later, she pulls away. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said.’

She taps his cheek in soft amusement. Narrowing his eyes, he removes her finger, and she smiles.

‘Don’t get used to it.’ Callum joins his hands in the thin gap between them. ‘The philosophical and the literary, man and woman. Coming together in metaphor and truth.’ He adopts an airy Oxford accent. ‘Even if the universe can’t choose whether to link us or tear us apart.’

Kira laughs. ‘I think that’s how love works.’

Oh, god. The words are out before she can stop them. Kira’s vision glazes over. Oh, shit.

Squeezing her eyes tight shut, she rolls over. Her chest boils. Her stomach roils. Lord, let the ground rip open and swallow her, or let her morph into a worm and squirm through the mud and the dirt and away. She curls her knees into her chest, and braces. Her heart thuds. God, it’s hot. She shifts her head off a stone. Is it hot?

Maybe he didn’t hear her. Maybe it can be one of those times when someone speaks, no one responds, and the someone is left wondering if they ever spoke at all. Maybe he missed the accidental inference.

Maybe, had she not had a silent freak-out. Kira opens her eyes, straining in horror, staring through Romy’s pale, snarled hair. Her lungs are on strike. Why, why, why? Why did it come out? She didn’t even know it existed as an embryo, let alone wanted to be born. She should become mute, run for the hills, and live out her days in a cave full of—

‘Kira,’ Callum says. ‘Turn around.’

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Inside, Kira thrashes and writhes. She’s home to an acrobat, wringing its hands and repeatedly tripping off the tightrope. Biting her cheek, she shakes her head.

‘Yes.’ He puts a hand on her shoulder. The acrobat pirouettes through her memories, none as heinously awkward as this. She shakes her head again. ‘Kira, come on.’

‘Tell me again I’ve got horses to hold.’ Kira rushes the words in barely a breath. ‘And then forget it. Please?’ The acrobat flips and falls in her stomach. It feels very much like vertigo, or the dreams where you drop from a cliff. ‘I’m sorry. It was stupid, and I didn’t mean to say it. I didn’t mean to think it. I didn’t know—’

‘Right.’ As determined as she is to get what he wants, Callum rolls her over to face him. Rocking like a boat unexpectedly adrift, Kira opens her eyes. ‘That’s better.’

He kisses her. ‘It’s not stupid,’ he says, and smiles.