The next morning Zane wandered out of his bedroom to find Jay lying on the floor on a blanket and his mother having a hushed conversation with Callum at the doorway.
Zane looked down at Jay, lying on his back. His jacket was missing and the t-shirt he wore was blackened from the chest downwards. A large hole gaped over the right-hand side of his torso, the edges crisped as if it had been burnt. One of his mother’s poultices was smeared onto a large burn that spread from the top of his right hip to his ribs. Jay’s mouth was slack and eyes shut, his long eyelashes especially black against the pallor of his face. He didn’t look so scary now, and Zane found it hard to remember how he could have seemed so threatening the night before.
The boy had gone from the sofa, but Zane peeped into Miri’s bedroom to see that he had been placed on the top of her bed and was sleeping too.
Miri and Callum were so involved in their conference that they hadn’t noticed him.
“They’ll have her now,” Callum was saying as Miri leant against the doorframe wearily.
“I can’t believe it was so close to here,” she replied. “Poor girl.”
Callum sighed. “Not sure what the boy had to do with her, but they were close.”
Miri nodded. “He kept asking for her. I have no idea how to tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Zane made his mother jump.
Both she and Callum looked at him with the guilty faces of interrupted conspirators.
“Who has her now?” Zane focused the question at Callum, making him shuffle awkwardly.
At a pointed look from Miri, he coughed and mumbled, “I’d better get over to the Boys. They don’t have anyone watching them at the moment.”
Zane watched him withdraw from the doorstep and slip out of sight. Miri shut the door and turned to Zane.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, using an old distraction tactic.
Zane shook his head. “What’s going on?” he asked, frustrated.
Miri’s eyes flicked around the room, searching for something to concentrate on other than her son’s suspicious look. They settled on Jay. “Jay’s badly hurt and he may be here a while.” She came over to Zane, moved his long hair off his cheek and smoothed it affectionately, sadly. “Zane … Mark and Grame died.”
Zane looked past her, through the window and into the garden, the day taking on the quality of a strange and rather unpleasant dream. “Oh …” was all he managed to say. His mind ran over the events of the night before, how Mark had slid down the wall, how Grame had slammed into the post. He wasn’t surprised, but it still made him feel odd. He hadn’t been particularly close to them, but they’d always been around. Boys died in fights with the Gardners with depressing regularity, but none had ever been killed like this. He wondered how Jay had survived.
Miri kissed his forehead and went into the bedroom to check on her first patient. Zane stood there for some moments, looking down at Jay’s injury, feeling numb.
“Good morning,” he heard his mother say, and he surmised that the boy had woken. “I’m Miri, and you’re in my house. Don’t worry, I’m looking after you. No, stay still. You’ve got a couple broken ribs and that’s why you’re hurting.”
A pause.
“What’s your name?”
Silence.
“I have a son–I think he’s about your age–called Zane. Do you know how old you are?”
Nothing.
Zane went to the entrance to her bedroom. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. The boy lay still, staring up at the ceiling. “I think he’s called Titus,” he said. “The girl said it last night.” Miri grimaced at his insensitivity and he mouthed “Sorry” to her silently.
The boy looked across at Miri. “Where’s Lyssa?” he whispered plaintively.
Miri sighed heavily. “I’m afraid Callum couldn’t find her … she’s gone.”
Zane watched the flash of panic in his eyes, and then all of a sudden it was gone. He simply stared back up at the ceiling, his blank expression forming a mask.
Zane and Miri exchanged a worried look. She drew a thin blanket over Titus and stood slowly. “I’ll make you some food,” she told him quietly. Zane followed her to the kitchen.
She began to chop fruit earnestly, the pregnant silence hanging between them. Zane sulkily picked at a rogue splinter of wood in the door frame, resentful of being kept in the dark. Miri focused on her task with the fervour of one avoiding an unpleasant conversation.
“Did Callum tell you about last night?” he finally ventured.
She nodded and then stilled the knife for a moment to look at him. “Zane, I’m sorry I shouted at you yesterday.”
Zane gave a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry I made the deal. Callum explained to me why you were upset. I know how bad it is.”
“Well … it’s done now,” she said as lightly as possible. “We’ll just make the best of it.”
Zane watched her struggling to keep her brave face on. Several times he almost spoke but the resolve left him. Then he decided to jump in. “Mum … that wouldn’t have happened if you told me more about what’s going on.”
“It’s best for you not to know these things, Zane, else you’ll only worry, and I can do that enough for both of us.”
Zane puffed out a frustrated breath. “Mum, that girl, Lyssa, what happened to her?”
Miri chopped rapidly.
“Mum!”
She stopped, hanging her head over the chunks of fruit. “I don’t want you to know. I want everything to stay as it is!”
He stepped towards her. “But it can’t … Callum said it can’t be like that anymore. I want to know.”
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “You’re so tall now, Zane,” she murmured. “You look so much like …” Her voice trailed off and she laid the knife down. She wiped her hands on a cloth, looking tired and worn. “We think that the Unders have Lyssa,” she whispered.
“Unders?”
“Shhh.” She pointed at the way to her bedroom and the open doors in between. “Someone else, a friend of Callum’s, called them that, but I don’t know why. I’ve never seen them, but I’ve heard of them. I thought they’d gone away, but it seems not.”
“Are they a gang?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
Dissatisfied, Zane pressed further. “What do you know about them?”
“Only that they take women,” she continued reluctantly. “And they’re never seen again. No-one knows what happens to them, where they’re taken, nothing.”
Zane was horrified. “And no-one does anything about it?”
“You saw what they can do, Zane.”
“They won’t take you, will they?” he said, suddenly frightened.
She smiled as she shook her head. “I have two gangs who like me being here. They look after me, both of us.”
“Is this why there are only Bloomsbury Boys and not Bloomsbury Girls?”
Miri considered this. “Maybe. Probably. I’m not sure where most of the Boys come from anyway. They don’t know themselves.”
Zane perched on one of the wooden stools lined against the wall. “So there’s only you and the Red Lady left?” he said incredulously.
She shook her head, smiling. “There are women in the Red Lady’s gang too.”
“There are?” he exclaimed. “They were all indoors when I went.”
“Hmm, I wondered why she picked a mealtime to invite you over,” Miri murmured to herself.
She went back to her task as Zane pondered. Only weeks ago, everything was so normal, but now he was finding out just how much had been happening without his ever knowing. He watched his mother, thinking over what she’d said, about her niche in the world, about how people depended on her and so kept her safe. Not for the first time, he wondered what was in the box that Luthor brought to her regularly. Herbs of some kind probably … but for what?
Jay was barely conscious for several days, waking only to eat and drink small amounts and moan in pain when the dressing on the wound was changed. Despite many attempts by both Miri and Zane, the other new patient, Titus, didn’t say a word to them. He ate, slept, and lay as still as possible in the bed, any movement causing him a lot of pain. Miri slept on the sofa, wanting to be close to Jay if his condition changed and mindful of giving Titus some space.
On the third day Titus tried to leave by climbing out of the bedroom window, but they found him passed out on the floor beneath it. Miri put him back to bed without any fuss. She was concerned that the trauma of the beating and the loss of this Lyssa girl had just been too much for him and that nothing was going to reach him in his silent world.
On the fifth day, however, something changed. Zane had been talking to Miri as she prepared breakfast and trailed after her into her bedroom to watch her give a bowl of food to Titus.
Just as he had since he’d arrived, Titus took the offered meal after a few moments of staring at it and sniffing it a little, still distrustful of his caregiver. He winced as he moved, and Miri fetched some willow bark for him to chew on afterwards for the pain. As she did so, she noticed how Zane was holding his right arm as if it were hurt.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” Miri asked Zane, watching him rub it.
“Huh? Oh,” he shrugged, “Just a bruise.” He lifted up his right sleeve and looked at it, a large red welt that curved across his bicep. He frowned. “That’s weird …” he mumbled. At his mother’s curious look, he said “I had a dream last night, where Luthor was fighting with me. We both had big sticks and he hit me on the arm, just here … he said I needed to be quicker.”
Miri looked at it. “Maybe you hit your arm in the night, and it made the dream happen. Sometimes –” She was interrupted by Titus coughing on a chunk of fruit. He was staring at Zane in surprise.
“Is this Luthor someone real? A big man, very tall?” he coughed.
After the initial shock at hearing him finally string some words together, both Zane and Miri nodded. Titus lifted the sleeve of his shirt to show an angry red swelling curved across his bicep in exactly the same place. “I had that dream too,” he said in his quiet voice, amazed.
Zane gawped at it. “You did?”
Titus nodded, looking at Zane with those violet eyes. “But I’ve never met him before … I thought it was just a dream, ’til you described it.”
Miri swallowed hard. “Perhaps … it was just a coincidence.”
Titus looked unimpressed. “There’s a very low probability of that.”
Miri didn’t know what to say, surprised by his academic tone, as Zane tried to remember whether his mother had ever told him about probability.
“The dream was very vivid,” Titus continued. “It felt as if I were being trained, but I was a bit scared too.”
No-one said anything for a few moments until Titus finished his breakfast and laid the bowl on the bed. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “That was very nice. Tasted strange, but nice.”
Miri smiled at him, relieved that he was talking at last. “Where do you come from?”
He considered the question for the best part of a minute, as if weighing up whether to reply or not. Eventually he began. “We …” His voice faltered briefly. “From northeast London, quite a long way away. It took us a while to get this close to the river.”
“What river?” Zane asked and Titus looked at him disbelievingly.
“The Thames,” Titus said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Zane shrugged good-naturedly. “I’ve never been very far from here.”
Titus accepted that and scrutinised Zane as he chewed on the willow bark. “Did that horrible man die, the one who found us?”
“I think he means Jay,” Zane said quietly to Miri. “He’s not normally that bad, but you were in his territory … he doesn’t like that.”
Titus scowled darkly. “Did he die?”
Zane shook his head and the scowl deepened. He then looked at Miri. “Why are you looking after me?”
Miri blinked. “Because you’re hurt, and … well, it seems to be the right thing to do.”
“Mum always looks after people that are hurt,” Zane added.
Titus frowned, not taking his eyes off Miri. “What will you want in return?”
She shrugged. “Nothing.”
The frown didn’t leave Titus’ face and he didn’t seem very reassured, but he didn’t pursue the issue. “Lyssa will be back soon and then we’ll go far away,” he muttered.
Neither Miri nor Zane felt it was the time to correct him. “Is she your friend?” Miri asked.
“My sister,” Titus replied. “She’s brilliant. She’ll come back for me when she knows it’s safe. It might be a few days …” He looked at Miri shyly. “Will you let me stay here until then? It seems safe here.”
She was about to reply when a loud groan erupted from the other room. “Ah … oh shit that ’urts! Oh … oh … Miri? Miri! You ’ere? Oh …”
She grabbed more willow bark and hurried off as Titus’ eyes narrowed. He struggled to climb off the bed, clutching at his side where the broken bones complained. Zane tried to tell him to stay still, but he was ignored. Titus made his way to the living room with grim determination and Zane followed, anticipating something dreadful.
Titus stopped in the doorway, watching Miri tend to Jay, who was now chewing willow bark frantically and grimacing as she cleaned away the poultice and began to treat the wound with fresh aloe. Titus’ shoulders were high and tight with tension, and Zane was confused when he didn’t say anything. Titus didn’t rush in and start to batter Jay; he simply watched.
Zane edged past him and into the living room. He studied Jay’s wound, frowning. “I’ve never seen a burn like that before,” he commented quietly. He glanced at Titus. “It must really hurt.”
“Course it bloody hurts!” Jay exclaimed testily, and at a glare from Miri went back to chewing the bark. “This twig ’ent workin’, Miri. It still ’urts.”
“Good,” Titus muttered bitterly.
Jay noticed him and struggled to recall his face. “Oh, it’s you,” he finally said and squeezed his eyes shut in pain.
Titus stared at him, as if willing Jay to spontaneously combust before him. Zane was amazed that he wasn’t shouting at Jay, screaming accusations at him. But the thin boy simply maintained a steady, hateful gaze.
“What happened?” Jay croaked, and Zane filled him in on the lightning, and then at a nod from his mother, what had happened to Mark and Grame. Jay gripped the edge of the blankets, lips pressed tight together. “Someone should be at the square!” he said suddenly but Miri pressed him back down.
“Callum is there.”
Jay relented, tucking his hands into his armpits. Zane had the urge to try to heal Jay, like he had with the Gardner, but with Titus’ baleful glare focused on the patient he felt it was the wrong time.
A loud rap on the front door made them all jump, so intensely were they watching Miri’s ministrations. It opened before Miri had a chance to reply and Zane span around when Titus gasped at the sight of the visitor.
Luthor filled the doorway, peering in to look with cold interest at Jay lying prone on the floor. He stepped inside a pace before Miri invited him, irritating Zane and Jay immensely. Zane caught a glimpse of someone else behind him, but it was impossible to see whom.
“Luthor … what a … surprise,” Miri said cautiously, getting up and standing protectively between him and Jay.
Luthor did not look like he was in the best of moods. His attention switched from Jay to Miri, then fell on Zane, the muscle in his jaw clenching.
“I’m here to train you,” he said, clearly not happy about the fact.
As Zane’s eyes widened in disbelief, Jay spluttered out the bark while struggling to get up and yelled, “What!”
Miri shut her eyes and paused a moment before kneeling to push Jay back down again. “Luthor, please go outside,” she said calmly, authoritatively. “Zane, go and talk to him. Jay, stay still!”
Zane didn’t move straight away until she said his name again firmly, then he and Luthor stepped outside. Titus followed, still staring dumbstruck at the figure from his dream.
The person who was standing behind him at the doorway was a girl in her early teens who moved forward to stand next to Luthor. Zane saw an immediate resemblance between the two. She had Luthor’s scowl, certainly, and the same steely eyes. Yet her features were softer, her lips a little fuller, and her hair, scraped back into a ponytail, was mousey brown rather than Luthor’s dark blonde. Without any conscious intention, Zane compared her to the Red Lady and the girl seemed very plain as a result. She was as tall as Zane, slightly taller than Titus, dressed in an ill-fitting white sleeveless top, brown linen trousers that were too long, and the same type of boots as Luthor wore.
She reached across to brush a stray strand of hair from her cheek, the movement revealing more of her arm. Both Titus and Zane shot a look at each other. The same red welt that they shared also marked her arm.