Chapter 76

JUST SKIN

“You’re a special girl,” said Jack to Jasmine.

Jasmine spat in his face.

He wiped the spit with his fingers and licked them.

“You let me go,” she said, struggling in Hallam’s grasp.

Spencer watched in horror. This had gone too far. It had to stop. But who was he to stop it? He was nothing. He was no one. He would go down too—for killing Jay-T, for stabbing Paul.

He looked around. It was a large area. It appeared to be an underground car park. But it contained no cars. Pillars reached up to the ceiling, which was too far up and too dark for Spencer to see when he craned his neck. It was very cold in here.

“Where are we?” he said without thinking. His voice echoed.

Jack stared at him. The only sound was Jasmine’s cries.

Jack said, “Didn’t I show you places you’d never seen, Spencer? Things you’d never seen?”

Fucking goat . . .

He shuddered, trying to get the image out of his head.

“You think your world is the only world there is?” said Jack.

“I . . . I don’t know.” He had thought that. Nothing lay beyond Barrowmore. In any direction. The estate was everything to him. It was hell and it was heaven. It was the place he hated and the place he loved. Leave and he’d die; he was sure of that. So were many other kids. On the streets, they felt strong. They owned their territory. Or they thought they did.

“Your world was built on other worlds,” Jack said. “Your cities on other cities. Your history cloaks other histories. This is just skin, Spencer. Barrowmore. Whitechapel. London. Just skin. This place”—he gestured to the vast cavern they were in—“is not part of your world.”

“I . . . I thought you couldn’t leave.”

“I can’t. I’m still trapped. A great circle surrounds Whitechapel. It goes to heaven; it stretches to hell. I can’t move past it, no matter how deep I go. This is why we have to deal with this seer.”

Spencer felt sick.

Jack walked over to the kid and the pervert.

“Don’t kill me,” said Jasmine.

Her voice cut into Spencer’s heart.

“I ain’t going to kill you, child,” Jack told her.

“What are you going to do to me, then?”

Jack smiled. “I’m going to get someone else to kill you for me.”

She cried for her mother.

Jack said, “It’s what I have to do. It’s the rules. It’s how we were made, you and me. You are poison, little girl. You are the only ones who can hunt me down. The only ones who can find me. And when you do, I have you killed, because your deaths will secure my freedom.”

“You’re crazy.” She struggled, but Hallam held her tightly.

“They say so,” said Jack, “and it may be true.”

“My grandad’ll kill you.”

He laughed, and it echoed around the underground lot, bouncing off the pillars. Spencer’s eyes followed the sound and then came back to Jack. By then he had taken a Butcher’s knife from inside his cape. It had a wooden handle. It was the one he’d used to gut the Sharpleys and Lethal Ellis. The one he’d taken from the briefcase he left in the lock-up.

“Do it, Hallam,” said Jack.

Spencer froze.

Hallam said nothing.

Jacks face darkened. “Hallam, did you hear me?”

Jasmine said, “Please don’t, Hallam.”

Spencer thought, Please don’t, Hallam.

“Hallam,” said Jack, his voice low and chilling. “Now, Hallam. Now.”

“Why can’t you do it?” said Hallam.

Jack growled. “Hallam. She is God’s own. I can’t harm her. I wish I could. I need her dead. Make her dead, Hallam. Now.”