It was all coming to an end.
By Amanda’s watch, they would arrive in eight hours.
They’d done all they could, maybe even a couple of things they couldn’t. Now they just had to sit tight and prepare.
Ignoring the ache in her bones, her throbbing headache, the slow tick of her watch, her rumbling stomach, she worked. The remains of her sleeping bag lay in shreds around her as she tore it to strips to make rope. Caleb’s sleeping bag lay before her, the holes already cut through. Once the ropes were through they’d have a sledge, good enough to pull the weight of a boy in chains a couple of miles. If she had the energy. The fatigue was so bad she could barely make it past a shuffle now. But a stretcher made of sleeping bag would be lighter than the trailer they’d brought at least.
Caleb lay beside her, arms folded over his chest, glasses at his side on top of his books. You would think he was sleeping if it wasn’t for the absent saw-saw of his breath. That’s what Amanda tried to tell herself, anyway. Truth was it was easy to tell he was dead. There’s a lot of difference in the way a dead man lies to a sleeping one. There’s something about the neck and the hands, the way the skin folds. Even when someone’s sleeping, there’s still the impression on life. There’s an electricity that helps the fingers keep their shape, the neck taut. When they’re dead they’re like wax beginning to melt.
They hadn’t the strength to move him. They’d barely had the strength to move him back to his spot. Caleb wouldn’t leave the carriage.
The guilt squirmed deep inside her, taking her breath away. She hushed it. She’d deal with it later. Or she’d be dead.
Steph was barely visible, wrapped in her sleeping bag, clothes, any material she could pack around her body to keep the heat she needed. Only her hands were visible, shuffling through Simon’s playing cards, clumsy in her bloody gloves, looking at them one after the other in constant succession. She fussed at them, making sure every edge was straight after each flip, lining the pack just so.
Amanda bit her tongue, didn’t want to upset the girl by telling her to stop. There were empty tins at Steph’s side, the last of their food. What extra food they should have had with both Skeebs and Caleb gone had been used to keep Steph from starving to death. Reeves’ cold and appetite had been making the girl ravenous since Caleb had died. It was only now that he was gone that the pair realised how much of Reeves’ burden he was carrying, how much cold, hunger and pain. Now the cold bit deeper, hunger came quicker, the chains heavier. Reeves’ hooks were deeper in both of them now that they were only two.
Amanda’s stomach rumbled at the thought of food, but even the smell of the stuff made her sick. Nerves had swallowed her appetite.
She finished off the rope, knotted it, threaded it through the hole of the other sleeping bag, tested it. It wouldn’t last long, but then it didn’t need to.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
The girl looked up.
‘I never wanted it to end like this,’ Amanda explained, waving a hand to take in the room, its burnt walls, its empty tins, its demon, its corpse.
‘You don’t have to—’
‘No. I do. I just wanted my family safe. Magic to me had always been bad. It was just another way for the powerful to shit on the rest of us. Thing is, I’ve spent so long fighting it that I never saw it for what it was when I needed it – a tool. You use it and you get what you need and people’s needs can be anything, even protecting their family. If I’d recognised that sooner, your mum might still be alive, my family might… I just want my daughter back. She’s all I’ve got left. So I’m sorry, for all of this. You should never have been here. You should never have been used like this, by people like me.’
Steph seemed taken aback by the admission, but to Amanda’s surprise she responded with a shrug. ‘You’ve changed though. You’re trying to, anyway.’
Amanda shook her head. ‘No one changes. When you get older, you realise it, maybe even make peace with it. The good bits, the bad bits, you never really change. Sometimes you manage to convince yourself you have but then you end up making the same old mistakes for different reasons. I’m still the selfish, manipulative bitch I was when this all started.’
‘That’s not true. You were going to do the ritual.’
‘I’ll still do the ritual.’
‘No. It’s best if I do it. And with the knife… I don’t think I could do the bit with the knife.’
‘I’m not sure either but…’
The train continued to clatter on its tracks, Amanda’s emotions twisting and rolling inside her. It was a fight every moment not to scream.
‘There’s another reason I want to do the ritual,’ said Steph.
‘Oh?’
‘This could change everything. What my mum started, if I can finish it then magic would change forever. To summon demons and hold them, to be able to banish them. This is a game changer. There’s this woman back home. An Abra. She could help refine this, stronger bindings, stronger wards. If we truly harnessed a demon’s power everything would change. And I want it to be me who does it so I can go back and be part of it, not just some kid who got roped along. So I guess in some ways I’m selfish too. Maybe we’re not so different.’
Maybe was right. Amanda looked her over, her bent glasses and burnt hair, her chin blistered, dried blood on her lip and across Caleb’s gloves. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Amanda replied.
The train lurched, throwing the pair of them to the ground. The burning pain in Amanda’s arms rose to a scream as Reeves fell, pulling the chains taut with his full weight.
The noise was immense. The high-pitched squeal of the train’s brakes, the cacophony of tumbling boxes, chairs and rolling, empty cans. Steph let out a wail of panic, drowned by the crash of the trailer as it pitched off its end, missing her by inches.
The table hit Amanda, cracking painfully against her head.
For a few terrible moments it felt like all of Amanda’s organs were trying to exit out of her mouth. And then it stopped, gravity returning to normal with a thud.
Stunned silence. The detritus of their supplies settled. Cans rolled to a stop, toppled boxes, shifting and adjusting.
The smell of spilled bleach began to permeate the air.
Amanda could taste the familiar tang of blood. She’d bitten her tongue.
‘Is it time?’ asked Steph, voice filled with panic, snatching herself off the floor. ‘I thought we still had hours.’
‘Maybe we’re early.’ She checked her watch. Eight hours early. Was that possible?
Reeves was back on his feet. Standing like nothing had happened. He looked down at Amanda, his eyes glittering.
‘Was this you?’ she asked.
Reeves said nothing.
‘What if it’s the drivers?’ said Steph. ‘What if he got to the drivers?’
‘It is time to release me,’ said Reeves. ‘Open your powers to me so I can break free.’
Amanda saw her feelings mirrored in Steph, disbelief curdling to fear.
The girl cast about, like she was looking for an escape route. ‘What do we do? What do we do?’
Amanda turned away, trying not to let the girl’s panic infect her, shutting her ears to Reeves’ laughter. What was there left to do?
Tears were running down the girl’s face, her hands were up in her hair, her pain and fatigue and hunger forgotten. ‘He won! Amanda he fucking won!’
‘Easy. Easy.’ Amanda pulled her into a hug – she didn’t know what else to do – until the girl’s sobs had subsided. ‘Now go and calm yourself.’ She looked her in the eye, emphasising the last two words.
It took Steph a moment to understand. She looked down to the floor, gave a nod before shuffling back to find the bathroom, stumbling over tumbled boxes as she clambered across them.
‘You have no hope of reaching the circle,’ said Reeves. ‘You must release me.’
Amanda didn’t reply. She stared at the door. The room was so silent without the thrum of the engine, the judder of the tracks. She could hear her own breath, the softest tinkle outside of snow landing on the shell outside. She wanted to be sick, had nothing to be sick with.
‘Force on me the indignity of escaping and I will see that both this girl and your daughter die cursing your cowardice. I will have my confrontation with you now.’
‘Alright!’ Amanda growled it through gritted teeth. She checked behind her, making sure that Steph couldn’t hear. ‘Alright. Drain me then. Let’s get this done. But I am not letting you go.’
Reeves smiled. ‘Take her blood. Open yourself to me.’
Steph re-emerged, scrambling back over the boxes.
‘Of course…’ said Amanda, ‘there’s always plan B.’
If anything, the girl looked worse than when she’d left. Her skin was paler, her movements sluggish and uncoordinated. ‘Did you take it?’
‘Hate pills,’ she muttered.
‘What’s this?’ Reeves demanded.
‘A little experiment,’ said Amanda, shoving her hands in her pockets. ‘Feeling it yet? Tingle in your fingertips?’
‘What have you done?’ Reeved demanded, looking from one hand to the other, flexing his digits.
‘We figured it out. If you’re taking everything we’ve eaten, then we thought maybe we should add a little something of our own and see what happens. So I reckon you should be getting the benefit of the diazepam she’s taken right now. Harder to fight us if you’re asleep, isn’t it?’
Reeves’ eyes widened and Amanda felt a short rush of triumph.
‘You should be gone in the next minute or so. Feel it in your toes? That prickle travelling up your body? You won’t be under long, but long enough, we reckon. Get the train started again, get to the Circle…’
Steph slumped to the floor, hugging at herself, knees up to her chin, hands in her lap. She worked her mouth like it was dry, her eyes dull as she stared about the floor.
‘You OK?’ Amanda asked.
‘I’ll live.’
‘Yes, you will.’ She smiled at Reeves. ‘Live for a good long while. And Amanda does it again.’ She went in close, sneering into the demon’s face. ‘I’m a fucking genius.’
The demon was lost for words, emotions flickering across her son’s face as its mind worked, processing, calculating.
‘Really thought you had me,’ she said. ‘But you killed my family and no one gets away with that. Even if I had to move heaven and fucking hell to do it. Even if I had to cosy up to learning magic. So, you happy now? I don’t do confrontations on anything less than my own terms.’
Amanda kept her face set in an expression of satisfaction until the demon lifted its head again.
‘The solution is simple.’
Amanda felt it as she had before, those invisible tendrils burrowed into her body making themselves known, pushing her back away from the thing in chains. Cold gripped her, hunger yawned in her belly. She tried not to stagger, the feeling like icy fingers pushing deeper between her ribs, chilling her blood from the inside out. Her stomach growled, she was light-headed with hunger, stretched thin, anaemic. Had the girl been living with this?
She was barely aware of Steph slumping beside her, her already weakened body unable to take the weight of the chains. Amanda heard her moan so low it was barely a sound at all.
Amanda stared in horror up at the demon, unable to push out the words.
‘I have connected you to one another,’ Reeves answered. ‘Sharing the burdens, my chains, my hunger, your drug. Another ruse failed.’
Eyes squeezed shut, Amanda tried to keep it together as she yielded to the inevitable. No more options. Might as well get it done quick.
She opened herself.
She’d always known how, had always felt the power inside and how to tap it. All the blood lettings, how could she not? The demon’s connections made it so much easier. She opened her power and let it be drained from her. By Steph along their new connection.
The girl began whispering to herself, pulling her knees down to reveal the string looped in her hands, already describing patterns. Amanda felt it, a tug from the centre of her chest. If Steph’s power wasn’t enough to hold Reeves, then maybe both of them connected was. Amanda was the daughter of a powerful Abra after all. Reeves had already told them that his connections were more effective than blood magic and why use blood magic when you could get it straight from the source.
‘No!’ Reeves’ face twisted in fury, a look Amanda had never seen on Darren’s face.
Amanda staggered, leaning against the tumbled boxes for support as Steph drew her power. She could feel the cold, the hunger, the chains’ weight leeching from her. The girl was taking it all, highjacking the connections for herself and pushing all the misery back down them to Reeves, the pair of them gaining strength as he weakened.
The demon slumped, as the manacles doubled then tripled in weight. Amanda felt the skin of her wrists heal. The demon’s skin began to draw, the cold and hunger crashing down on him. Black traced its way across his nose and up his fingers as frost bite ate into his flesh.
Steph’s face was a grimace of concentration, her fingers working faster than Amanda had ever seen. If Amanda concentrated, she could hear the faint murmurs of the girl’s mind working, repeating incantations. Steph’s skin had rediscovered its pink glow. She’d even given Reeves her burns, Amanda’s too.
Amanda stood, relishing the newfound flexibility in her muscles, warmth returning under her clothing. ‘How long have we got?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Steph. ‘It’s hard to keep the connections from collapsing.’
‘OK. Just hold on.’
Reeves’ eyes tracked her across the carriage.
‘It’s all in drawing the eye,’ said Amanda. ‘Keep you watching me so you don’t see what the girl is doing. Get you fooling yourself and doing what we wanted you to do. Truth was we had you beat hours ago. Now let’s see about getting that train started again. Worst case scenario, we leave you here. Middle of nowhere. By the time you get back to London we’ll be long gone.’
The padlocks came away one by one.
Fresh air splashed across her brain, waking her up, cold sunlight uplifting and blinding her all at once.
There was nothing outside.
Nothing but grey, snowy, stony scree, sky and horizon, bisected by a train line. No train drivers waiting with weapons or even shaking off the effects of Reeves’ influence.
She looked back to the girl, pale in the daylight. It was like seeing her for the first time, the colours all different.
Leaning out, she squinted toward the front end, blinking to try and clear her vision.
She ducked back inside as soon as her sight cleared and she spotted the silhouette of a man peering back at her from the diver’s cabin. ‘Why have we stopped?’ she yelled.
‘We arrive,’ the shout came back. ‘Early.’
‘He was bluffing us,’ said Amanda, half to herself. ‘You were fucking bluffing again.’
‘You take the advantages you get,’ Reeves growled.
‘And hope for the best,’ Amanda replied. ‘It took a bit of time to realise but once we got to discussing it, we realised that under all the power, you were just a con-artist like me. I even told Skeebs that, when he started all this. You make it so your mark’s so twisted up they think the only options are the ones you’re giving them. Then you keep them off balance so they never have time to think.’
The demon’s face twitched. ‘There was no drug.’
‘Slow aren’t you.’ Amanda strode across the room, gathering the makeshift stretcher and pulling it in front of the demon. ‘We knew the connections were two-way streets and we knew if we could join our powers it might be enough. So we figured we needed to trick you into connecting us. Guess I am my father’s daughter in some ways. That power came in handy after all.’
‘I followed every conversation, checked every page. You could discuss nothing without me knowing.’
‘You didn’t check everything.’
The playing cards were at Steph’s feet, scattered from where she’d dropped them. Amanda picked one up, showed the face. The drawing was black and white, her leaning against the bar with a smile, Simon beaming back at her – the first time they’d met. It was scrawled over with tiny, neat writing. ‘Been slipping them to her with a bit of the old-fashioned stage magic – a few palm offs and pocket drops. You didn’t ask for them because you never saw the times we had to write them or read them. I hated letting these go but they got me what I wanted in the end. And maybe they’re just things. I’ve still got the photo in my wallet and maybe what I’ve got up here,’ she pointed to her temple, ‘is more important.’
‘Can we hurry this?’ asked Steph.
‘Time we went for a little walk,’ said Amanda, heading for the chains, the cards tumbling from her fingers. ‘It’s time we finished this.’