In her room it took Edie only minutes to be ready. Her bag had indeed been packed for days as she had known this visit was coming, and all she needed to do was stuff her mobile into it. For the last month she had felt a sense of impending menace that had been growing stronger daily. That morning, in the early hours, it had been almost overwhelming and had inspired in her a barely controllable feeling of panic. She had to use all of her powers of concentration to quell the desire to run from this unknown threat.
These detailed flashes of the future had been a routine part of her life for so many years and she no longer questioned whether or not they actually made sense. In the beginning they had been simple glimpses of what someone was going to say or where something had been hidden. She could tell whether someone was lying straight away, and if someone had a secret that gnawed inside them, she could feel the pain it created as it ate away at them.
Edie had spent her life up to the age of nine travelling around the world with Moon. For most of these years she featured more like luggage in her mother’s life than a child. When her hippie grandparents passed away, Moon inherited the farm and took Edie back to live there permanently.
Living at the farm made her unusual character easier to mask as the other people there routinely attempted to gain a more spiritual aspect to their lives. Crystal readers and psychic healers seemed to gravitate to the farm and many lived there for long periods of time, or at least until the hard work of running a self-sufficient community ground them down. Most of these people had been fakes; Edie had known this and had tried for a while to tell her mother. Her mother had wanted to know how Edie could possibly know such details about these colourful hangers-on at the farm, but Edie had seen what happened to people with a ‘gift’. There were regular psychic events at the farm with fat middle-aged women apparently reaching out to the spirit world. Edie knew from a very young age that she had no desire to be roped into these events and end up being trawled around the world all over again as some kind of wonder, and so she learned to keep silent and hide her skills.
But despite her best efforts to pretend she was ‘normal’, her powers grew and distanced her from regular people. In secret she had begun practising her skills and by the time she was eight she had refined them so much that she could turn them on and off as she needed to. She could sense emotions in others all the time, just as clearly as if they were wearing a T-shirt with the details of their life printed on for all to see. With practice, she learned to switch off her ability to see what was going to happen to them. Too often she had seen terrible things in a person’s future – illness, tragedy and loss – and she knew that she could not help them or prevent this from happening, so she just shut it out.
It was the powerful flashes that she could not turn off, and these forced their way into her life no matter what she did. Her only warning that it was about to happen was a slight taste of metal, like dried blood, in the back of her throat. She managed to keep these flashes to herself, but had sacrificed friendships to maintain the secret.
What she struggled with most were the dreams. Edie could not recall a time in her life without the dreams, the nightmares. At first, when she was very small, they were cluttered and indistinct. Images of faces and people and places that she did not know, but felt as if she should. As she grew older, she realised that they were memories, but not of this life. These were fragmented recollections of all the persecution and suffering her life spirit had been through to get to this place in her life, this point in time.
Then, when she was seven, everything they had suffered rolled over her in brutal and vivid nightmares over which she had no control. She walked in their footsteps and saw into the faces of those who persecuted them. She knew every bit of their pain and lived it over and over again, and it felt as fresh and as real as if it had just happened. As a result of this, she slept very little; it just seemed safer that way.
Edie’s biggest fear was that someone would find out about her and she would be ridiculed in the village. The people who lived on the farm were already thought of as weird by the villagers – a true witch would just be the icing on the cake for most of them. And so she kept to herself and remained friendless.
The flash about the impending arrival of D’Scover and Adam had been very vivid and she was thankful that it had not happened at school as it had swept her away for over an hour. She had seen London and a dark cloud that was looming larger and larger with each passing moment; she had seen Adam and his cold and lonely life and death. She had seen his isolated life as he bounced from school to school, from foster family to foster family, as no one cared enough to deal with this damaged and angry boy.
Edie saw the monastery and its destruction and watched as D’Scover fell into his fiery coma and died. She had seen the rituals and the formation of the Brotherhood and had seen the chaos that currently threatened to engulf it. Though, as hard as she had tried, she had not been able to grasp what it was that actually threatened them, but she knew she could help them to deal with it. She knew she was important to them somehow, and she felt pursued.
When the visions began to subside, Edie found herself slumped over her homework, and began to prepare for the arrival of Adam and D’Scover and made up a suitable cover story for why she would need to leave. Her mother had not argued as she felt Edie was a “free spirit” and should do whatever she felt was “emotionally right” for her own well-being. Edie had heard this many times and knew she could safely make her excuses and they would not be checked up on. This casual approach to parenting had annoyed Edie when she was younger, but recently she had begun to feel it was all part of the grand plan that was coming and that ultimately her upbringing had a bigger purpose.
With her bag ready, she managed to get out of the house without having to say goodbye to anyone and ran across the fields to the barn where she had left D’Scover and Adam. D’Scover had already emerged from his Dispersal and was patiently waiting for her in the dusty shadows of the barn.
“I will just need to summon Adam and we can be on our way,” he said.
Edie waited as he muttered some words to bring Adam back from his Dispersal. She felt a low hum that made her ears pop and D’Scover gestured for her to stand back. A deep crimson spiral of glistening globules whorled around the barn, with the vortex growing ever smaller until it gradually formed the shape of the boy once more.
“Why is he red and you’re grey?” Edie asked D’Scover.
“It just works that way. Have you not found that in the living world some people seem to be more blue or white than others?” he asked. “I do not mean skin colour, that is irrelevant, rather that some people seem to represent colour more than others do? Some spirits do have vivid colours, often if they have had a less than pure past or if they have had a violent death. For most of us, our Dispersal colour is grey, white or various shades of blue, but for Adam it is red,” D’Scover said. “Ah, he is back.”
Adam stood once more in front of them, beaming his confident grin.
“Impressive, huh?” he said to Edie.
“If you like that sort of thing,” Edie said casually, unwilling to admit it was easily one of the most impressive things she had ever seen. “We’d better get going. We’ve got a couple of hours before the train leaves, but it takes at least twenty minutes to walk to the station and we’ll need time to find someone to, er, travel with.”
“We have to stop at your school first,” D’Scover said.
“Why?” she asked. “We really don’t have long if we’re going to find someone to hitch a lift with so best not to waste time.”
“I said earlier,” he reminded her, “that Adam must return to the office and start consulting the Texts. A long train journey is essentially a waste of valuable time; we have little choice in how we travel, but Adam does.”
“Do I have to?” Adam moaned. “I think I’m getting the hang of this; it’s kind of nice to be out in the sun and all.”
“Yes, you do have to.” D’Scover put his foot down. “In any case, you have no experience of using a living person to carry your spirit. You may as well go back the quick way.”
“The quick way?” Edie asked.
“It is a long story; you will see soon enough,” D’Scover said. “Now we must go.”
The day had drifted past. The short February afternoon had lost almost all of its sunlight, and the sky now took on a cold, deep blue shade. No clouds cluttered the view to the ocean and a spiteful chill wind ran up the road towards them. Edie shivered and pulled her thick fleece tighter round her thin frame.
“You two’d better look a bit colder,” she said through chattering teeth, “if you don’t want people to think you’re weirder than you are – although that’d be difficult, I reckon.”
“Hmm,” D’Scover said and stopped in the middle of the track. “Is there any way we could be seen here and not realise it?”
Edie shook her head. “Nah, miles from anywhere apart from Freedom Farm and even from there you can’t see the road because the barn is in the way.”
“Good.” D’Scover raised his palms to his face.
He began to grow blurry as if she was looking at him through smoke. Then, with one swift movement, he swept his hands down and over his body as though he was brushing something off his clothes. Edie looked from his feet to his face and saw that he was now wearing a well-tailored black overcoat that almost touched the floor and matt-black leather gloves over his pale hands.
“Very classy,” she said. “Looks expensive.”
“Your turn,” D’Scover told Adam.
Adam nervously looked up, unwilling to admit in front of Edie that he had not actually done this before. He had created a bench in the Memoria, and had moved a few things around, but he was still wearing the tatty outfit of jeans and T-shirt that he had died in. In fact he had not changed any of it and had avoided trying in case he lost a grip on what he had. But Edie was right: his outfit had not been right for the weather when he died, and it was not right now. He tried to picture what a boy of his age should be wearing, but drew a blank and instead decided on a copy of the fleece that Edie had on, only in black, as he reasoned it would not only be easier to do, but would look better too.
He stood back, mimicked exactly what D’Scover had done, and felt the shapes around him change and flux as he settled into this new image. Opening his eyes again, he could see he was indeed wearing a black fleece similar to Edie’s but far too big for him. The sleeves hung over his hands and it came down far too long over his body, reaching almost to his knees.
“Guess I pictured myself a bit bigger,” he grinned, bunching the sleeves up.
“It will suffice,” D’Scover said, and strode on once more. Adam and Edie exchanged a small laugh and trotted to catch up.
“Not bad for your first time, Red,” Edie said.
“How did you know I’d not done that before? Is that your powers again?” Adam asked. “And why Red?”
“I didn’t need any powers for that,” Edie laughed. “You should have seen your face; you looked scared stiff that you were going to make a total prat of yourself! And I called you Red because it just seems to suit you better and you go red when you do that Dispersal thing. Adam’s not your real name anyway, is it?”
“Do I go red? He goes all grey shiny bits; I didn’t know I went red. Should’ve gone red with embarrassment after ending up with a fleece this size!” he said, waving his long, flappy sleeves at her. “I don’t mind what you call me as long as it’s not rude. Don’t suppose you know what my real name was?”
“No, sorry, I did try to see what it was, but it’s just . . . I dunno . . . it’s like it’s lost, out of reach.” She frowned. “It’s like that sometimes. It might come to me; one day it might just pop into my head. Don’t worry about the fleece – you look fine. Shame you don’t look like him though,” she teased, gesturing towards D’Scover, who was still ahead of them on the road.
“Why?” Adam frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Because he’s so fit of course,” Edie said. “Did you see the way Moon looked at him? I mean, look at him!”
Adam looked at D’Scover properly and saw for the first time that Edie was right. There was something about him. He moved with a fluid grace and his hair always seemed to be unruly but never actually looked messy. His clothes always fitted perfectly and the dark colours he draped himself in complemented his pale skin.
“I mean, he must’ve caused a bit of a stir in the village – we don’t get guys like him around here often,” Edie gushed. “He looks like a model or an actor or something.”
“He doesn’t really look like that, you know,” Adam snapped. “I mean, that’s just a look he took for himself.”
“Nah, sorry, Red, I’ve seen him in one of my visions when he was young and he would’ve grown up to look like that anyway,” she said. “Some people are just born that way.”
“And some aren’t,” Adam grumbled.
“Hey!” Edie laughed. “Don’t go throwing your toys out your pram about it – you’re not so bad yourself, you know. You just need his fashion sense!”
“Thanks!” He laughed and playfully shoved her.
D’Scover stopped abruptly and turned back to where they stood, his coat curling dramatically out around him.
“I would like to remind you that it is imperative that we return to my office as quickly as possible,” he said sternly. “The more time we spend on the journey, the greater our risk of detection. We are still unsure of Miss Freedom’s role in this, but I feel that it is of great importance. Everything could depend on her safety and we are far too exposed this far from the Texts and the relative security of my offices.”
Suitably chastised, the two hurried to catch up. The walk to the village was far less tedious than the walk out to Freedom Farm. Edie tried to contain herself, but was so full of questions that it was impossible to remain silent.
“You don’t feel the cold?” she asked as they still trailed behind D’Scover.
“No, I think that I did at first, but that was just because I remembered what cold was like and so if I knew that I should be cold, then I was. Does that make sense?” he said.
“I think so. What about food – d’you eat?”
“No, but I don’t feel hungry either and that’s brilliant,” he replied. “I don’t miss anything any more. It’s dead weird.”
Edie pictured his death just as she had seen it in her vision, and could understand exactly why he wanted to forget what it was like to feel cold and hungry.
“How long have you been, you know, like this?” she asked.
Adam stopped walking and a thick frown contorted his face. “You mean dead?” he replied. “I don’t know; what’s the date?”
“It’s the twenty-third.”
“Still February?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s been about two weeks.” He shook his head in amazement. “I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks; it feels like for ever.”
“You’re aware of time passing?”
“Sort of. I mean, I don’t really have days as you’d know them, but if I spend enough time holding my substance, I do notice the nights passing, so it’s possible to hang on to time,” he tried to explain. “I don’t know about in the long term, but for now I’m roughly aware of the days.”
“What d’you miss most?” She continued to press him.
“Shouldn’t your psychic powers answer all of these questions for you? I mean, shouldn’t you just be able to look inside my head and find out for yourself?”
“It doesn’t work.” Edie frowned. “I mean, it works with everyone else but not you two. With you two, I don’t have the same level of control of what I see, I just get random images. I suppose that means that it doesn’t work properly with dead people. I can see things that you’ve seen, but I don’t get any solid visions about you as people. I can see some things connected to you, but they seem to be in your past. I can feel your emotions in the past, right up to where you . . .” She broke off.
Adam stopped in the middle of the path. “You were going to say that you could see up to where I died, weren’t you?”
Edie nodded.
“You know what happened to me? How far back do you know?”
“I only saw your death,” she lied. “I haven’t tried to see your past.”
“Well, leave it that way.” Adam began to walk off. “That’s my business, OK?”
“Sure, no problem, Red,” she called after him and trotted to catch up. “Anything you wanted to ask me?”
“Yeah,” he turned to face her, “did you know that your ancestors have been linked to the Brotherhood for centuries?”
“Kind of,” she nodded. “I mean, I’ve found enough references to show my family were around monastic houses, and one ancestor was killed during the Dissolution. It seemed weird that witches were linked to monks, but my ancestors were written about by loads of religions, mostly when they were trying to execute us. I had the vision about you two and everything kind of slotted into place.”
“Did you see his death?” Adam gestured towards D’Scover.
“Yeah, that was when I saw what he looked like younger,” she said. “When was it? Sixteenth century would be my guess.”
Adam nodded. “I’m not sure of the exact date, fifteen thirty something.”
“Why’s he a man? Didn’t he want to be young any more?” Edie stared ahead at D’Scover, and the dark swathe he cut through the streets, as they descended into the village. “I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “There’s nothing wrong with being old, but why not stay young?”
“He has his reasons,” Adam told her. “It’s complicated.”
“Aren’t you tempted to do that?” she asked. “You could be anyone you wanted to be.”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “I need to deal with all the other stuff first. Holding a shape that I know this well is difficult enough, let alone choosing a new one.”
D’Scover had stopped outside the school hedge, waiting for them both to catch up. “When you two have quite finished, we have work to do,” he frowned.
The school playground rested under a clear, starry sky by the time they arrived, and thankfully no one was around to see D’Scover and Adam as they melted through the door and into the school building, leaving Edie outside to wait alone. She slipped into the shadows and leaned against a wall.
Inside the classroom the green glow of the computer’s standby light gave the room an eerie quality. Adam had found that his eyes worked just as well in the dark as in the light now, but darkness gave everything a slightly creepy feeling until he remembered that they were the ghosts. D’Scover slipped his CC from his pocket and rested it next to the keyboard while he tapped into the Brotherhood’s network to establish the Hotline.
Adam walked around the classroom, looking at the artwork displayed on the walls: a bright and cheerful collection of paintings on the theme of springtime that the art teacher had surely chosen so that they could all chase off the last of winter. Jolly little houses with smiling flowers waving over bright green lawns. A nice friendly school with normal children to paint pictures for a caring teacher’s wall. Adam sighed.
“Adam,” D’Scover called out, breaking into his musing. “When you get back to the office, I want you to use my computer to find out if there have been any unusual ghost reports from around the world. Not the general reports of wandering women in black or Romans in the cellar kind of thing – it has to be out of place or aggressive.”
“What? How d’you expect me to do that?” Adam asked. “I can’t just call up agents like you can.”
“You know how to use the Internet, do you not?” D’Scover asked him. Adam nodded.
“There are a number of sites that deal with this sort of thing; most of them are bookmarked. The most valuable resource on there is a site run by a magazine called the Fortean Times. They have this type of news from all around the world and you will not have to wade through pointless news of the living. It will cut through the rubbish for you and give you the reports you require. You will need to use your CC to unlock my computer as most of the functions are shut out in case the office is ever infiltrated. I have already set it to accept your CC’s identity code; simply drop it into the slot on the right-hand side of the keyboard. Is that clear?”
“Yeah, suppose so, but I’m not going to pretend I’m happy about it,” Adam grumbled. “I don’t see why I can’t travel back with you two.”
“You do not have to like it, just do it. This is a serious business and we need more information. We shall be back in the office by nightfall as soon as I have managed to shed whoever gives me a ride back.”
He stared back at the school computer screen, which was rippling with a familiar black surface decorated with the occasional crackling blue spark.
“Your Hotline is ready.” D’Scover waited for Adam to come and stand by him.
As soon as Adam placed his hand on the screen, the Hotline began to take hold. Blue sparks rushed up to meet his fingers before spreading up his arm and breaking him down into a mix of blue and red glittering embers whirling in mid-air before disappearing into the screen with a final pop as the last of him vanished.
Outside Edie stood upright as D’Scover reappeared through the school wall.
“Did he get off OK?” she asked.
“We must hurry; we have wasted enough time already,” he snapped at her and walked off in the direction of the village. She remained in the same spot, leaning casually on the wall.
“I think we’ll waste less time if we head in the right direction, don’t you?” she said sarcastically.
D’Scover stopped walking and turned back to Edie once more. “You may think this is all a grand game, young lady, but there is more at stake here than you realise,” he growled. “If you have quite finished, could you get us to the station before we waste any more time?”
“Fine,” she muttered. “It’s this way.”
The station was busy. Parcels were being unloaded from a goods train standing in the station and people milled around the small, antiquated building.
“Why are there so many people?” D’Scover asked.
“For a start, it’s the last Sunday in half-term, so the family types are trying to get back home before school starts again; also there are only three London trains a day so they’re pretty busy all year round. This is the last train of the day,” she explained. “Lots of business types stay in London during the week, so they head down on Sunday night. One of them is probably our best bet.”
There was only one platform and the tiny waiting room was filled with people virtually shoulder to shoulder, huddling into the tiny space for warmth.
“Do we have to go in there?” Edie asked. “It always stinks of sweaty bodies and I hate tuning in to people when they’re so crowded together, makes my head ache.”
“We have no choice. It is imperative that we find someone who is going our way,” D’Scover said.
“Well then, could you look a little less, well, noticeable?”
“I do not understand what you mean,” D’Scover said, looking down at his long black coat, perfectly fitted suit and expensive-looking shoes. “Is not my clothing smart enough?”
“Oh, it’s smart enough. It’s just . . .” She sighed. “Never mind. I’d better go and buy my ticket; the train’s due any time.”
Edie walked over to the ticket office while D’Scover stood and looked uncomfortable in the background. He even attempted a smile at the ticket seller.
Rather than wait for Edie to open the waiting-room door for him he hoped that no one was looking and held his hand round the handle and concentrated for a second. A light fuzz of blue sparks rolled round the handle between his hand and the metal and he turned it, opening the door and going in. A wave of heat from sweaty human flesh rolled over D’Scover and he stepped backwards as he took a moment to shut it out. He hoped no one had noticed him reeling back, but looking around, he could see no one had looked anyway as everyone was doing their best to avoid eye contact. D’Scover tried to guess who would be going all the way to London, but without Edie, he had no chance and was grateful when she joined him a few minutes later.
“Time to play your part,” he whispered. “Find us someone.”
“OK.”
She peered through the masses and tried to focus only on each individual. Wishing she had something to lean on, she started to trawl through the minds of the people in the crowded room. Dipping into these collected minds made her dizzy and nauseous at first, as she was overwhelmed with the emotions of this mixed crowd of strangers and knew if she did it for too long, it would cause her pain. She felt their distress at being late home and their annoyance at the cramped room and this washed a wave of discontent through her.
Their feelings and senses blurred together until Edie had to take a deep, calming breath to try to smooth them out into separate streams of consciousness. Closing her eyes, she isolated first one, then another until she could sense them all as individuals. She tried to shut out some painful memories that came to the surface in some of their minds, unwilling to sink too deep into the tragic mire of their lives. She only wanted to know where they were going, not where they had been. At last she could feel two men travelling alone who were thinking about London, and how they would travel on from the station at Waterloo. Edie, having a tendency to label things, named these two Mr Lanky and Mr Chubby.
First she fixed her thoughts on Mr Lanky, who wore an obviously expensive and well-fitted suit, as she thought this man would fit D’Scover quite well – although she was not yet exactly sure how that would work. Her main motive was that he looked like the kind of person she could spend a long journey with; he looked intelligent and had soft crow’s feet around his eyes of the kind that her mother called “laugh lines”. In fact he looked just the kind of person she would have chosen for a dad. She concentrated on him, but all the while looking at her own feet so as not to raise his suspicions.
It had been a long time since Edie had gone out of her way to plunge into someone’s thoughts like this, and as such, it took her a little while to even out the thoughts of the rest of the people around them and isolate only this man’s mind. When she finally had his thoughts to herself, she saw his world and it churned her up inside. Here was everything she wanted in life: a smart house in a London suburb with a scruffy dog running in the back garden and a couple of big brothers to watch out for her.
Edie shook off his life and tried to only pick out how exactly he was going to get home, but quickly realised he would be of no use to them. She saw him arrive at the station and walk briskly across the forecourt, looking around for someone who was obviously meeting him from the train. This would be no good for D’Scover as the man would not have the time to be steered to the office.
Mr Chubby was leaning back against the wall from his seat in the corner – he was obsessively thinking about finding somewhere to have a cigarette and to distract himself he popped chunks of chocolate into his mouth and washed them down with large gulps of Coke. Edie was not looking forward to this man’s thoughts as she had already picked up brief snatches of his tedious job and mundane life and his endless ill health. He was thinking about how late home he would be and she could see a large house a long way out from London. He would be catching a connecting train from the city. This was very good for D’Scover as Mr Chubby could be taken to the office and put back on his way hopefully without meeting anyone who knew him.
Edie delved further to make sure that Mr Chubby was not on a tight schedule and that he only had one train to catch; it would not be fair to abandon him in London just because of a missed connection. He must have travelled this way a lot as he seemed to know the times of all the trains and his thoughts roamed speculatively about whether or not to stop off in London for dinner before catching a later train home.
“That guy,” Edie whispered to D’Scover. “Mr Chubby in the corner. He’ll be perfect; no one meeting him and he’s looking forward to sleeping the whole journey.”
“You will have to see if you can get him outside alone,” D’Scover said. “That is going to be really difficult.”
“Not really, I have an idea.”
“Be quick. I will meet you outside,” D’Scover said as he gestured to Edie to open the door for him so that he could leave.
Edie leaned against a patch of window and pretended to stare out at the track, but watched Mr Chubby in the reflection. She closed her eyes and pictured the grey mass of the ocean she knew so well. She took the gentle swell in her mind and began to churn it up and rush it towards the shore. Picturing the sound, she splashed it around her target man’s thoughts until the image of him in her mind hung wet with spray and water dripped from him. Conjuring up a beach so real that she could taste the salt of the water and hear the hiss of the tide as it sucked back along the sand, she placed him right on the shoreline. She forced him to think only of the water and the sound it made as the ocean rolled in its relentless ebb and flow. Then she brought on rain and the whisper of it skimming off the cliffs and breaking up the sea around him.
Mr Chubby sat up, stretched, reached down for his overstuffed bag, got up and left the waiting room.
Outside D’Scover watched him leave and stroll across the platform.
“How did you do it?” D’Scover asked as they followed at a suitable distance.
“Easy – long train wait, bottle of Coke and a vivid memory of the sea – enough to make anyone need the toilet!” she said.
D’Scover nodded and followed the man along the platform. The toilets were squalid and D’Scover was grateful that he could not smell them. He waited by the sink, pretending to wash his hands and hoping that no one else would come in and see the water run through his hands rather than over them. Mr Chubby dragged his bag out of the cubicle and dropped it at his feet at the sink next to D’Scover. D’Scover turned to walk away and pretended to stumble over the bag; Mr Chubby reached out instinctively to catch him as he pitched forward; it was the opportunity that D’Scover needed.
As the man lifted his palms, so did D’Scover and for one second they stood like that – palms to each other’s chests, frozen in a foul-smelling public toilet. Then, almost imperceptibly, D’Scover breathed in and the familiar blue sparks began to crackle under his hands. By the time Mr Chubby looked down to the hands flat on his chest it was too late to resist. D’Scover’s hands had begun to melt into the body of the other man and were already absorbed to the wrist.
“What the . . .?” Mr Chubby gasped and stepped backwards.
D’Scover stepped with him and plunged his arms into the hapless man and, as he broke up into a whirl of cobalt crackles, he became totally absorbed by him. For a few moments the sparks skittered over Mr Chubby’s body, making it appear as if he had grasped a live wire – then they were gone and the man stood alone in the lavatory. He turned to the mirror and leaned in close to get a good look at himself, taking special interest in his eyes which now glistened with D’Scover’s dark and piercing gaze, before picking up the bag and turning to leave.
Outside Edie had found a space on the end of a bench and was sitting with her head tipped back against the wall, taking in the last of the clean Cornish air before boarding the train. Right on cue the train rolled slowly to a stop in the station and the doors hissed open as people began to stream from it.
“I suggest we find a seat.” D’Scover leaned over Edie, casting a shadow as he blocked the platform lights. She opened her eyes and looked up at him in his new guise.
“Fantastic!” she laughed. “No one would ever guess. Have you got his train ticket?”
D’Scover rummaged in his new pockets and came up with a wallet stuffed with receipts and little else. Further examination of his bag turned up a small amount of cash, several bars of chocolate, two cans of Coke, a variety of still damp clothes and an envelope containing the ticket for the return journey. D’Scover read it carefully.
“How long before the train leaves?” he asked.
“Ten minutes, why?”
“Because you need an upgrade. It seems that our friend likes to travel first class.”