‘Your last gourmet meal, modom,’ said Nurse Annie, in a terrible attempt at a posh accent. Her eyes twinkled. ‘We’re discharging you today.’
I scooched up a bit on the pillows and made a knee-hump for the tray. ‘You are?’
‘Yes, hinny. We need the beds and you need to get on with your Christmas holidays. A bit of fun and relaxation is what the doctor’s ordered.’
Christmas. I’d almost forgotten. The big day was just over a week away, and I’d be seeing my dad. Back when life was normal (ya know, before my hanging, my trial by the Dark Order of the Grand Stag and my post-mortem chat with Henry), Shafeen and I had arranged to stay with Chanel in Chester for the week before Christmas. Somewhere in the middle of that week, unbelievably, was my Oxford interview, so I’d planned to train it there and back. Then, as Chester was pretty close to Manchester (by name and by nature), I was going to go home from Nel’s on Christmas Eve. I guessed that, now I’d banned my dad from coming home early from his shoot in Madagascar, that arrangement still stood.
Sure enough, Nel turned up soon after breakfast with Shafeen in tow. They both looked quite different from their school selves. Shafeen wore a winter jacket over a wine-coloured hoodie and jeans, and Nel wore this fluffy peach jacket that looked like it was made out of Muppet skin.
They both hugged and kissed me, and Shafeen took my hand at once. ‘Let me see.’
He and Nel bent over my thumb. He lifted his dark eyes to mine. ‘So it was all real. The trial, I mean. Those bastards. We have to get them now.’
Nel said, ‘Wait, what? What trial?’
‘Not here,’ I said, low-voiced. ‘In the car.’
I thought Doctor Kyd and Nurse Annie were on the level, but I couldn’t escape the fact that the Old Abbot had supposedly ‘died’ here, and the paramedics who had attended me at STAGS (and Henry at Longcross for that matter) were also from this hospital. My friends stepped outside while I got dressed – Nel, God bless her, had packed me some clothes in a wheelie case.
When I was done I examined myself in the mirror. Nel had chosen a kind of Victorian blouse to wear with jeans, and it had one of those high frilly necks so you couldn’t see the fading rope mark at my throat. She was all thoughtfulness, that girl. But the white of the blouse only emphasised how pale I was. My black bob hung lankly to my shoulders and the fringe had done that annoying separating thing that it did when it needed a wash. Little wonder – I hadn’t washed it since just before we’d performed The Isle of Dogs. But there was no real visible tell of my recent trauma, except perhaps a new and guarded look in my eyes. If it wasn’t for the brand on my thumb, you’d never know. I pressed the print to my reflection, right where my nose was, and it left a smoky whorl with a perfect M in the middle. The thumbprint, and all it meant, terrified me. At that moment I wanted to smash the mirror, like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. But surely there was nothing to be afraid of any more. I’d made it out of the heart of darkness.
Hadn’t I?
I shrugged on a chunky cardigan and my coat, opened the door and smiled a smile I wasn’t really feeling at Shafeen and Nel. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
At reception I signed the discharge forms myself as I was over eighteen. I said my thank-yous to Doctor Kyd and Nurse Annie, and the reception doors whispered open as we left, letting in an icy northern blast. I felt a bit wobbly and I walked across the car park to Nel’s gold Mini leaning on Shafeen’s strong arm. Alnwick Castle cast a chill shadow over us, snow still on the battlements and the arrow slits watching us like eyes. It was nice to get into Nel’s car and blast the heating. ‘Shotgun!’ I said out of habit, before I remembered that the word might have unfortunate connotations for Shafeen, since he was the one who had once been riddled with pellets from Henry’s gun. But if it did, he said nothing. He just smiled and opened the passenger door for me in a courtly way, before folding his long legs into the back seat.
Needless to say, I did all the talking in the car. I had so much to tell, and I’d waited so long to tell it. I described my trial by the DOGS all over again, that circle of creepy, antlered figures in the theatre, led by the Old Abbot as judge. I went through it all in fine detail: what he had said; what I had said; what I had felt. Then I filled them in about my two visitors from Longcross the night before, Cass briefly and then, at much greater length, Ty. I told them about Leon Morgan, Ty’s tragic great-uncle who had been taken to Longcross when little more than a child and had never come home again. I told them about Ty being mrs_de_warlencourt, the mysterious Instagram messenger who had been my guide throughout the last crazy weeks, and that her last cryptic statement, ‘There is another Place’, had meant Cumberland Place, the de Warlencourt London home. And I told them about Ty’s determination to return to Longcross to thwart whatever plan the twins might have and to end the cycle once and for all.
Of course, Shafeen and Nel had about a million questions and we were a long way down the motorway before a silence fell. There was this massive sign over the road saying THE SOUTH, with a huge white arrow beneath it, and as we followed the arrow my stomach flipped over. As we drove further and further south I thought about Ty. After a year of being three conspirators, I now felt that, without her, there was someone missing from our group. In that short intense conversation in my hospital room last night I felt that she had been a true friend to me, much more so than I’d been to her, and I felt incredibly invested in her welfare. I rubbed the pad of my branded thumb with the middle finger of the same hand, a new habit of mine that accompanied deep thought. I must have made some weird little sound because Shafeen leaned forward. ‘Are you OK? Does it hurt?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t hurt. It’s just …’
‘Yes?’ he prompted gently.
‘It’s Ty,’ I said, letting out a long breath. ‘I keep thinking of her, back at Longcross, without any of us. It just feels like we are ditching her.’
‘We’re not,’ said Nel. ‘Don’t worry.’
But I did worry. It felt like she was up there, fighting the good fight against the Order of the Stag, and we were going to Nel’s to swim in the pool, and watch movies in the cinema room, and go Christmas shopping in Chester. I wasn’t sure I could enjoy all that while Ty was at the mercy of the de Warlencourts. I still wasn’t certain in my own mind if the twins were goodies or baddies (to Cass I gave the benefit of the doubt; Louis, well – the jury was still out), but I was more worried about the creepy uber-Order who had tried and branded me. Moodily I stared out of the window, watching the road signs flash past. One of them said CHESTER.
I sat bolt upright. ‘You missed it!’
‘Missed what?’ Nel didn’t take her eyes off the road.
‘The turn-off. To Chester.’
‘I know.’
‘Aren’t we going to Chester?’
‘No. I mean, yes, but not yet.’
‘Where are we going then?’
I saw her eyes meet Shafeen’s in the mirror, saw him give a tiny nod.
‘We’re going to another Place.’
I knew from the way she said it. She managed, just by some strange trick of speech, to put a capital on that last word.
We were going where Ty had told me to go.
We were going to de Warlencourt HQ.
We were going to Cumberland Place.