They left her there for a day. A full, cold, damp day. With no food, no water, no light and no warmth. A day of hugging herself, sat by the drain. The cold draught whistling from the grate competed with the one that crept under the door. Leaning against the walls meant giving her heat to the cold stone. Her stomach rumbled and her mouth dried.
Amanda tried shouting until she was hoarse but never heard a single other human being. There was only the rustle of the trees, the call of the birds, the distant growl of the curse-thunder.
The cold got under her ribs, her whole body rattling as she shivered, even her toes curled up for warmth.
Night came and night went, time elastic as she caught sleep in snatches. Dreams nibbled at the edge of her mind. Caleb’s rasping breath, her children dead in pools of blood on the floor, her son Darren slumped against the wall. ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she told Steph as the girl stalked by. The rope was around her neck, immovable, heavy, rough. Harry snarled again and again, lifting her over the edge of the boat, threatening to tip her into the water. The woman, Zoe, pleaded with him, grabbed Harry’s arms, helped save her. There was something there, she thought in one of her more lucid moments. She saw a potential ally in that woman if she played things right.
She could feel the scryball against her teeth. If her hands were free, she’d use it now. All she needed was something sharp enough to cut the final notch into the communication wards. She had to let them know she’d arrived, but what would she say? That she was locked in solitary and didn’t know when she was getting out? It hardly mattered: with her hands bound, her only option was patience.
Pacing to keep warm, there was little she could do to keep her mind from tying itself in knots. She’d made it here, but now what? Whatever way she looked at it, Harry was going to be a massive complication and she didn’t know enough to even begin to figure out a way to counteract it.
The sun rose, reawakening her hunger. Eventually, she heard footsteps approaching.
Drummond had returned, two more guards behind him, like the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened.
‘He’s ready for you.’ Drummond beckoned her out.
Swallowing back a reply, Amanda stepped, blinking, into the weak sunlight.
Making no apology, the man led her back to the car and they were away.
‘Getting a feel for how things work around here?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied, short and to the point, nothing for him to strike at.
There was something different about him today. He was more tense, his jaw firmer. He kept rubbing his hands against his thighs. The radio on his chest kept crackling, chatter that Amanda couldn’t make out. Something was going on.
‘The warden is going to want to tell you a few things,’ he said. ‘My advice is that you listen and do as little talking as possible. He asks you how your trip went, your answer is going to be “it was fine”. Anything else is going to land you in trouble. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
She bit her tongue, suspecting that if she told the warden about the boat ride then Drummond himself would be answering some questions.
Where yesterday the White House had been quiet, it now thronged with activity, guards rushing in and out, one holding a pair of dogs with their noses snuffling the dirt.
A jeep sped down towards the village, its windows filled with more mirrored helmets.
They rejoined the road, heading further across the island. It was only minutes before it narrowed and curved where it met the beach. Amanda estimated that it took less than ten minutes from this beach to the pier; the island was not large at all.
The beach was a band of shingle between the forest and the sea, the water crashing and frothing across the rocks. The sky, blue above, was marred by a thick, grey chain a half-mile off-shore, lightning flashing in the distance.
The Warden’s house was another few minutes down the road.
It was all angles, glass and steel, some small cosmopolitan artefact that had been washed onto the rugged shore. A large windowed box of a room, supported on a web of struts and filled with angular sofas and lamps, hung out over the waves to give a view of nothing but the ocean.
‘Jesus,’ said Amanda.
‘Let’s go.’ Taking her by the arm, Drummond led her to the front. There were steps up to the polished, dark wood door.
Drummond knocked and entered without waiting for a response.
The warmth inside make her sigh like she was stepping into a hot bath.
The hallway was just as she imagined, featureless walls and polished floors. The whole house looked like it had been bought straight from a catalogue. Amanda had been in places like this before. This was the house of someone who needed somewhere to sleep and whose ego wouldn’t abide anything that wasn’t a monument to their status. The only signs of habitation would be rumpled bedsheets and the hair in the bathroom sink. This was a place for having, not for living.
Drummond knew the way, striding down the hall past a kitchen and the glass-walled living room that Amanda had seen from the road. There was a door at the end, closed. He knocked again, and this time he waited, taking one last opportunity to glare at her, warning her to keep her mouth shut.
There were a few long moments before a voice called out, ‘Enter.’
The office was more used than the rest of the house. Dark wood on the interior walls. Bookshelves of magical texts, no doubt banned on the mainland, faced spine-out across either side. There was a small, neat fireplace crackling behind her. A large, old map of the island was framed above it, which she took a few long moments to study and memorise. The back wall was entirely glass, looking out onto the stormy ocean and, before it, shadowed against the grey cloud, sat the warden.
He was short, slight, his head shaved, small glasses on his nose. Sitting in a high-back leather chair behind a mahogany desk, Fitzackley wore a buttoned-down shirt that screamed money. His sleeves were rolled up, the better to display his Abra tattoos. To have them visible in a public place without the proper licence was an arrestable offence on the mainland; different rules applied here. Though Amanda had never met any in person, she had always known that the government had their own police-mandated magic users. She guessed that it would be the right call to put an Abra in charge of a prison full of them. She wondered if his credentials had been part of the Coldwater company’s pitch when they’d bid to build the place.
He made no move to stand or greet them.
There were two seats in front of the desk, one of which Amanda was dropped into. Drummond unlocked her cuffs and Amanda couldn’t suppress her moan of relief as she was finally able to curl her fingers again, working life back into them.
‘Thank you, Drummond,’ said Fitzackley. ‘Please send in Sorbon. Any word?’
‘Nothing, sir, we’re doing everything we can—’
‘No excuses.’ His tone was cold, clinical. ‘Get it done. I expect results after I’ve finished here.’
Drummond left without a word, leaving Amanda shivering in her chair, willing her body to drink in the warmth from the fire behind her.
Though she didn’t look up, she could feel Fitzackley’s eyes on her, leaning across the desk, hands clasped in front of him – appraising, assessing.
The room was soundproofed, the only sounds the creak of his chair, the hiss of the fire.
Someone came in. Amanda gave them no notice, though, her eyes fixing instead on the steaming bowl of porridge that had been laid before her, a golden drop of honey at its centre. A mug of tea was set beside it.
She looked to Fitzackley, who nodded his consent, and she leapt for it, burning her mouth, but too cold and hungry to care.
Not a word was spoken as the door was closed behind them. Fitzackley only watched as she ate, scraping every last morsel from the bottom of the bowl.
Somewhere, a phone was vibrating, though she couldn’t see one on his desk. Fitzackley made no move to answer it, ignoring the noise until it stopped.
‘I would say you needed that,’ he said as she set the bowl down on the desk.
‘It’s been a long time coming,’ she replied, sitting back, the warmth and the food starting to help her feel more herself.
The man nodded, not a flicker of sympathy showing as he pulled a file close and began to flip through it. ‘So, you believe magic should be legalised.’
Not knowing what answer she was supposed to give, she kept her silence.
The file was thick. Suspiciously thick. Amanda felt her mouth dry at the sight of it, tried to reassure herself that it was there to intimidate. If he really knew who she was, then she would definitely have been hanged.
‘Says here that you were taken in for bank robbery. A rather poorly executed one by the looks of things.’
‘I needed the money,’ she explained. ‘Fell in with the wrong people.’
‘Yes, that was your defence, I see. And though I have no doubt of the first part, and I’m sure that the second part was undeniably true at some point, it seems to me that there are, let’s call them, discrepancies. And while the government neglected to investigate, our little enterprise looked somewhat deeper.’ He bared his teeth in what might have been an attempt at a smile. ‘On paper, your accomplices fit the profiles of petty opportunists. Small men with long records for minor crimes. But here they are, serving longer sentences than any of them had ever accrued before for trying to pull a heist that, frankly, seems to be beyond their capability to even conceive. And then we look at your history and…’ he flicked through the file, showing her blank page after blank page. ‘Now, when I saw that viral video of yours online and realised that I had no option but to take you in, I devised a use for you. But last night, after you arrived, I started to think a bit harder. Criminals hide their identities all the time. I would have overlooked that, but the timing…’ he grimaced. ‘Amanda Ellis, a woman with no history, becomes a minor celebrity overnight, so I have no choice but to take her in, just when I was looking for a new inmate to perform certain tasks for me…’
Amanda had put on her best poker face, trying to reveal nothing of the feeling that a trapdoor had opened beneath her. Dramatic monologue aside, the man was working up to something and if you wanted someone to show their hand, you kept quiet and let the vacuum pull it out of them.
The sound of the vibrating phone started again, but the man didn’t seem to hear it. Somewhere in the house, another phone started to squawk.
‘This woman on the other hand…’ he pulled a separate file towards him. ‘Amanda Coleman. It says here that she’s missing, suspected killed by a demon. The same demon to have killed all those people in London. From there, I see your father and from there…’ he closed the file again with a slap, letting his displeasure show. ‘Harry Church. How do you explain that?’
Shit.
‘I guess I don’t. I don’t know who either of those people are.’
‘Very well. I don’t have time for games today.’ Reaching down into a drawer, he picked up the phone. ‘You will be sent back to the mainland, processed and hanged. I’m sure it’ll be quite the spectacle for the cameras. You’re welcome for the meal.’
‘Wait.’ Amanda held out her hands, the threat acting like a jolt of electricity. ‘You’re right. That’s me.’
Triumph flared behind his rimless glasses as he set the phone back down. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I lost my temper. Used magic when I shouldn’t have.’
Fitzackley lifted his file to slap it back down on the table. ‘I’ve already asked you not to waste my time,’ he snapped. ‘You are a known magic hater and a suspected criminal professional of the highest calibre. Now you expect me to believe that not only have you changed into a frothing pro-legal Abra, but, by coincidence, your one use of magic is caught on camera and sent to every pro-magic newspaper in the world. Your act was a deliberate attempt to be sent here, the papers ensuring that you wouldn’t be hanged because Westminster didn’t want the headache. You will tell me why or I can undo your little scheme with a single call. You’ll be sent back with a report that you tried to escape.’ He lifted the phone again.
Amanda shut her eyes, tried to think, her breath coming hard. She couldn’t tell him the truth. Fuck, she’d known this plan wouldn’t work. This was just like the bank robbery, just like every job she’d pulled since Russia, throwing herself into more and more dangerous situations, near begging to be caught. Now, just when she needed to be at the top of her game, she’d done it again.
Fitzackley pressed a button on his phone. ‘Get me the pier.’
What could she say? What did he want? There was an answer in there somewhere. There had to be something. If she could just think…
‘It’s Fitzackley,’ the warden said into the phone. ‘Stop the last boat. I have a final…’
‘It was Church,’ she said.
Fitzackley paused.
‘Church set it up.’
‘Never mind,’ Fitzackley said into the phone and hung up. ‘Go on.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Church and my father were friends. Knew each other for years. He heard where I was and got in touch. Said if I could be sent here, he’d have a job for me.’
Now it was Fitzackley’s turn to close his eyes, snatching the glasses from his face and whipping a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. ‘How did he get in touch?’
Amanda winced, trying to think fast, wondering what she could keep back.
‘Fine.’ He reached for the phone again.
‘There’s a woman at Blue Meadow. She has a magic connect out of the prison. I don’t know any more than that. She keeps it all close. Doesn’t want competition.’
Fitzackley nodded at that. He didn’t write it down, which Amanda hoped was a good sign for Marnie.
‘And what was this job?’ he asked.
‘He didn’t say. Never had the opportunity. Just said he had a good thing set up and he wanted me on his team.’
She could see Fitzackley’s frustration growing, his lips twisting and his brow furrowing.
‘And he thought he could just sneak you onto this island and I wouldn’t notice? Well, too bad for him, isn’t it? Because here you are.’
‘I don’t want to be sent back,’ said Amanda.
The phone started to vibrate again. The phone in the other room began to cry, the pair working in sync, each trying to outdo the other.
‘I imagine you don’t.’ He let the silence between them draw out. ‘He didn’t tell you his plans.’
‘No. Church asked for me, said things were better here. I came. That’s it.’
‘And you’d rather not hang.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then it sounds like you very much need to be in my good graces, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose it does.’ She pretended to look disgruntled at this new development. ‘Any idea how I do that?’
Fitzackley smiled – the victor. ‘Well, it just so happens I have an idea. And you’ll find that whatever he has promised you is nothing to what I can offer. You’ll see I have granted Harry and his cohorts a great deal of leniency in how they are treated here. The guards turn a blind eye to some of their activities, they have their own rooms and some small luxuries from the mainland. Until recently, I had thought that a very generous return on the services they perform for me. It is certainly better than rotting in the prisons I found them in. But it seems that Church is less than content. Before I dissolve our partnership completely, I want to know what he is planning and to whom he has been speaking. You’ll do as he asks and report everything back to me.’
‘Fine.’
‘Good. Don’t give me reason to change my mind. Start by finding out what happened last night. Sorbon!’ This last he shouted towards the door.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘One of your new friends overstepped the mark and now a prisoner is missing. I don’t want to close this island down, but should word get back to the mainland, that is what I’ll be forced to do. We can ill afford the scrutiny that this will inevitably bring us from the shareholders if it persists. I want to know what happened, who is responsible, and I want the prisoner found.’
‘I’ll get right on it,’ Amanda swallowed, a bubble of foreboding rising in her gut. ‘Who’s missing?’
Fitzackley scowled. ‘One of our celebrity guests. Karina Khurana.’
Drummond was waiting for her outside, leaning against the jeep they had arrived in. The guards were gone.
‘You ready?’ he gestured that she get into the passenger seat, planting himself behind the wheel.
A quick U-turn and they were heading back down alongside the beach.
‘And?’ he demanded.
Unsure of what to tell him, she only repeated what he knew already. The warden wanted her to spy on Harry and she’d agreed.
‘Whatever weird operation you’ve got going on here,’ she said, feeling bolder now she knew her value to the warden, ‘it’s clearly shady. Otherwise he’d just send Harry back to the mainland to hang. You going to tell me what it is they’re doing?’
‘The warden tell you anything else?’ asked Drummond, ignoring her question.
‘He said a woman is missing. That one of Harry’s people had something to do with it.’
Drummond nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself.
‘Know anything about that?’ she prompted.
He gave her a sideways look. ‘Talk to Harry. That’s my advice. If you do nothing else, talk to Harry.’
Amanda left it at that. She hadn’t quite figured this man out yet, which side of the divide he fell on, and she didn’t want to push him into thinking they were enemies.
What had she walked into? What was Harry up to that the warden was having prisoners inform on one another in his own prison? What kind of hold did Harry have on this place to be given such blatant freedom?
Money was the most likely answer, she realised. And pride. Just one look at Fitzackley and it was clear. She’d known plenty like him. The warden had taken a cushy job, one that was likely going to be dissolved a year, or five, from now with a generous severance package, but it hadn’t been enough for him. He’d set up his own lucrative little illegal side business with Harry. There was a deal, Harry was trying to find his way out of it and the warden wanted to stop him, give him no other option but to know his place. But what could a prisoner do that would be worth so much? Stuck away on an island in the middle of nowhere? It couldn’t be contacts; any Harry might have had would have moved on years ago. Whatever it was, it had gained Harry plenty of influence here. But the old gangster didn’t like having someone telling him what to do. Put him with someone like the warden, someone exactly like him, and she imagined an arrangement between the pair would only last so long before one tried to take more than their agreed share. Fuck, but what had she walked into?
She didn’t know enough yet, but she was in the right place, right on the fault line, a crack that, if she played things right, she could lever open. At the very least, she could buy the time and space to find Karina before either of them. If she could get the warden and Harry to kill one another, maybe life here wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Then there was the missing woman. Amanda didn’t believe in coincidences. The very woman she was hunting goes missing the night Amanda arrives? The two had to be connected somehow. And, as for Harry, much as she wanted to think there was a connection there, she was willing to chalk that up to bad luck. She was amazed she hadn’t already run into someone she knew on the inside.
The White House and the residences beyond were still as busy as an ant’s nest. Where the day before it had seemed a sleepy little village, now it swarmed with guards. Cars sped this way and that, packed with armoured personnel, while others walked the streets in squads. The town hall was command central, a senior staff member outside leaning over a map.
‘You think she’s escaped?’ asked Amanda.
‘There’s no way off this island except the boat,’ said Drummond. ‘She’s here somewhere, hiding out in those trees. But not for long. The dogs will find her.’
‘Warden said no one on the mainland knows.’
‘That’s right. And they’re not going to know. Word gets out and they’ll shut this place down. Guards’ll be out of a job and you’ll all be out of time.’
‘Here’s hoping they find her then.’
Drummond snorted. ‘You’ll think different when you see the place you’re going to be spending the rest of your life in. Now, I don’t have time to be making introductions. You’re going in like any other inmate. Find Harry yourself. Or he’ll find you. Just don’t cause trouble, my people have enough to do right now. It’s almost social time, so you won’t have long to wait.’
They rounded a thick copse of trees, and the prison erupted from the earth before them.
The thick, squat structure, more angular concrete, hunkered down into a pebble-pocked divot. Its wide doors were scratched steel. It was another bunker, much, much larger than the one she had been thrown into when she’d first arrived. It was ringed by two layers of plate fencing, crowned with thickets of barbed wire, the gates having already opened automatically before the jeep.
Looking back, she could see that the inside of the fences were thick with wards, uncountable symbols to prevent escape.
The road dipped to meet the facility doors, which were groaning open to let the car inside.
The vehicle drew to a halt, and she was led deeper on foot, her hands up before her.
It was more of a loading dock than an entry hall. There were guards waiting and a checkpoint.
‘Amanda Ellis,’ said Drummond, stopping her in front of the entry booth. Without another word he was gone, stepping back into the jeep and leaving with a tight turn back into the daylight.
She stood as the masked guard looked through paperwork, asking her no questions, adding notes.
There was the hum of a motor somewhere, the whoosh of air conditioning, but no sound from the three guards in the room at all, except the scrape of their boots.
The guard behind the desk reached down out of sight and began to make a pile in the crook of Amanda’s arms, bedding and a pillow, a towel.
Amanda nearly jumped out of her skin as a guard took her by the arm and led her through the nearest doorway and down the stairs beyond.
The hum of circulated air grew louder as they descended, growing colder as they went down, down.
The place reeked of magic, the scars on her arms and legs itching as unseen wards declared their unheard new rules to the space around her.
This was a prison built to hold Abras, space shifters, reality benders, the dangerous and unpredictable. It had all the comfort of a boot on the throat.
There was another guard at the bottom. Another door. And behind that, for the first time, Amanda could hear voices. These at least were a bit more familiar, closer to barking than speech, the sound of incarcerated people packed in too tightly, chafing against one another.
It was a wide corridor beyond, straight walls topped with a semi-circle of curved ceiling. Bright strip lights traced a dashed line into the distance, pinning shadows in place rather than dispelling them.
The cell doors were painted a sky blue. Each was covered in an irregular pattern of metal rivets, a precaution against unsanctioned wards being drawn on them, the bumps stymying the accuracy required to make a rune function. Now that she saw them, she noticed the same method had been applied to the walls, little concrete nodules everywhere, like stars in a night sky.
Each door was locked shut, a slit of reinforced glass at head height. As she walked, faces began to appear in them, prisoners looking out expectantly to see who was walking past. Those expressions turned to a hard curiosity as they realised she was a new arrival.
Without really thinking about it, Amanda felt her spine straighten, her stride grow more confident. Her chin rose higher and she felt that old familiar armour descend. She was not someone to fuck with.
The prisoners were pale and dirty. Dressed in clothes identical to hers.
‘Has she been found?’ a woman thumped at the glass to get their attention, her voice muffled behind the door.
‘Step back,’ the guard snapped, the first time Amanda had heard one speak, the voice a flat, deep drone, magically disguised. A fist accompanied the words, rapping the glass.
The woman obeyed immediately.
‘She’s just asking a question for God’s sake,’ said the prisoner in the next cell, a very tall, skinny man with a bruise that swelled his left cheek. He received the same treatment.
Their voices had attracted others. The windows of every door in the hall filled with faces. They eyed Amanda hungrily, assessing, looking her up and down. It was in the way they took in her jacket, her trousers, her shoes, the folded linen in her arms. Amanda knew the look well. They were eyeing a marketplace, stripping her for parts.
Keeping up her stride, she took the opportunity to stare straight back, noting the sturdier prisoners, the ones with steel in them. She separated the wolves from the hyenas from the vultures. All the while, some inner voice purred in her ear, telling her she was getting just what she deserved. Maybe here, once she was done with Karina, she would be right where she belonged.
Deeper and deeper they went into the bunker, the chill once again sinking into her bones and between her ribs. But there was something else too. Her legs were beginning to ache like she’d spent a full day hiking uphill, each step heavier than the last. Despite the food earlier, she was ravenous and exhausted.
Finally, they came to a room, the guard telling her to stop.
The cell was empty. Two bed frames, only one with a mattress.
Dumping her new meagre possessions, she turned to have her cuffs removed, flexing her fingers with a sigh as they came off.
She opened her mouth to ask the guard a question, but the door was already closing behind them.
The inside of the cell somehow felt colder than the corridor. The room was bare, as was the bulb that tried its best to light it. Like the walls out in the hall, these were speckled with the same small pimples of concrete to prevent rune-making.
She didn’t have long to wait. With a familiar blare of a horn, there came the ratchet of the doors opening up and down the block. Social time, just like Drummond had said.
Stepping out, everywhere she looked, people turned away, caught in the act of staring.
It wouldn’t be long before they overcame their timidity, she decided. And the last place she wanted to be was in her cell. It felt like a dead end, a trap, and she wasn’t just going to sit in it.
Coming to a decision, she headed back down the corridor.
If this was where she was spending the rest of her life, then she was going to know every inch of the place. And once Harry found her, who knew when she’d get this opportunity again.
The prison was a maze, nothing but cell after cell, every corridor a repeat of the last. Amanda was familiar with social time, the inmates encouraged to interact, and this was little different. When the doors were unlocked, inmates had free rein around the bunker, the set-up meaning that they had no access to any escape routes, facilities or materials where they could cause any harm except to one another. There were no forbidden areas, no wings or sections. But nowhere a prisoner would want to go either. The admin and offices were all up on the surface and, from what she could see, there was no gym, no workshops, no activity space to speak of. The whole complex was one big dead end.
The entrance she had come through was locked and guarded, while other guards patrolled the corridors, watching from corners behind their mirrored visors, stepping in with a truncheon or worse if they decided the situation called for it.
Whoever this Karina was, the fact that she’d escaped at all was growing more and more impressive.
Walking like no one would dare step in her path, the prisoners bent to her way of thinking, picking up on the ‘fuck off’ vibes she was putting out.
Amanda clearly stood out. In a small population like this one, a fresh face was as exotic to them as a brightly coloured bird.
Noting how they’d eyed her sheets from their windows, she’d taken them with her, any embarrassment far outweighed by the thought of returning to her cell and finding them missing. She understood why now that she had the opportunity to peer into other cells. Their sheets were what hers would look like soon enough, washed to within an inch of their lives and then washed again. Even from a distance, she could smell the rot, the damp and the cold colluding so the sheets never dried fast enough. And no number of washings in the world could stave off the stink of the person in the bed, the cloth drinking in the grime and never truly letting it go.
It didn’t take her long to find the cell that must have belonged to Karina. It was the only one that was closed, its heavy door locked. Peering through the tall, narrow slit of window, she could see little. The light was off inside, the fluorescent tubes in the corridor behind casting Amanda’s reflection onto the glass, obscuring the view. She could just make out a bare room in disarray, a mattress hanging out of its frame.
She had to get in there. There had to be some clue inside that would lead her to her target.
No one would talk to her, she discovered after a couple of failed attempts. Conversations died as she approached, resuming only after she was out of sight. It was as though she was walking under some cone of silence. If she turned quickly enough, she caught them watching her. Everywhere she went, she felt their eyes, following.
Though it was hard to tell whether this behaviour was any different, the whole place seemed subdued, trodden on. Conversations were held in whispers. Groups, huddled together, broke at the sight of one the guards.
Everywhere she looked, she saw fresh bruises and scrapes. A lot of people had taken a beating recently.
She wondered if there was a doctor on the island.
Looked like she’d find out soon enough.
They’d been following her for a while now. She’d seen them out of the corner of her eye, lingering at doorways, thinking themselves subtle.
Turning a corner, she quickened her pace and ducked into an empty cell. A few moments later, there they were. Thinking she’d gone on ahead, they were rushing to catch up.
‘Looking for someone?’ she asked, stepping out.
The woman froze. The man tried to pull her onwards, looked to Amanda and realised the game was up.
They were about the same height and, as they approached, Amanda thought they might be brother and sister. It was in the brows and the shapes of their faces. Hunger had hollowed out their cheeks and sharpened their cheekbones.
‘Come on,’ the man ushered her back towards the empty cell.
Amanda didn’t move. ‘What are you following me for?’
The woman put a finger to her lips, looking up and down the corridor. ‘Not here, let’s—’
‘No. Here’s fine. What do you want?’
‘Look, we’re trying to help you,’ said the man. ‘There are people out looking for you. They think you’re working for the warden. Come on.’
Neither seemed like much, so she allowed herself to be led back the way they’d come. It helped that they were heading towards a more populated area.
‘Why would they think I’m working for the warden?’ she asked.
‘You arrived just after a prisoner went missing.’
‘Doesn’t take much,’ said the woman. ‘They just want something to hit.’
Amanda bit back her frustration. She’d barely been here a day and she was already some kind of pariah caught in the middle of prison politics.
‘We’re part of a group,’ said the woman, scratching at her arm. ‘We look out for each other. We share what we have. Sustenance, blankets, you know…’
‘So there is food here,’ said Amanda. ‘Because all I’ve seen so far are cells…’
‘We can show you around,’ smiled the woman. ‘The cells are on this floor. The next floor down, that’s where all the facilities are. The kitchen and the laundry. We’ll show you. The nearest stairs are just around the corner from our room.’
‘Great. You said someone was missing?’ Amanda feigned ignorance.
‘One of the other prisoners,’ said the woman. ‘Karina. She used to be a politician. You’ve probably seen her on the television.’
‘One of our local celebrities,’ said the man.
‘That’s right. They’re saying she attacked one of the guards and escaped.’
The man harrumphed. ‘Not sure why they even bothered lying. Everyone in the prison knows.’
‘Knows what?’
‘Mallory attacked her,’ said the woman. ‘You could say he’s a prisoner… He tried to do who knows what to her and she managed to fight him off. Then she just,’ she mimed a puff of smoke, ‘disappeared.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Amanda.
‘Everyone knows,’ the woman replied, as though that was answer enough.
‘I mean, how do you know this Mallory didn’t kill her? Get rid of the body somehow.’
The woman frowned. ‘If that’s what happened we’d know that too. You might not be undercover, but it’s best you know how things work around here. Men like Mallory, you leave them alone and you don’t speak about what they do. Whether you’re a prisoner or staff. Some people here the warden just gives extra… privileges.’
‘Right,’ said Amanda, beginning to understand: hard to keep secrets on an island, she supposed. Or rather, hard to hide the fact that there was a secret being kept, even if the other inmates didn’t know exactly what the secret was. You couldn’t elevate some prisoners over the others and not have the whole prison population wondering why. ‘Except when this Karina went missing,’ she said. ‘Seems like that was a step too far even for Fitzackley.’
‘It’s never been as bad as this before,’ the woman agreed.
‘Can’t have been part of the plan,’ said the man. ‘Now the guards are off their nut. They think she might have had help escaping, but no one else is missing and there’s no way it was one of the Stasi round here. My advice, if you see Mallory, stay out of his way. A screw loose, that one, and he’s even worse when he’s in a rage.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘You’ll know him when you see him.’
‘But if it’s not part of the plan, then why are the guards covering it up and saying one of their own was attacked?’
The man snorted again. ‘Why tell the truth when you can tell a lie? You’ll see soon enough how it works around here. But, please, keep quiet.’ The man put a finger to his lips. ‘Best to turn a blind eye. Believe me.’
‘If I was a spy you’d already have put yourself in a lot of trouble saying all this,’ said Amanda. ‘What makes you trust me?’
‘Because you,’ the woman replied, ‘are like us.’ She paused outside a room, inviting her inside.
The man tapped at his forearm with a finger. The skin there was one long tally mark of scarring. ‘We look after our own.’
Amanda tipped her sheets to look at her own arm. Carrying the bundle had caused the sleeve of her jacket to hitch up, revealing her scars.
Looking inside the room, she saw a bed tipped on its side and shoved against a wall, making way for the seven or eight people sitting in a circle on the floor. Each sat with their legs crossed, their left forearm proffered to the next person, an open wound red among pale scars. It was a blood circle, she realised. Blood addicts helping one another to get high off the power surge from consuming another’s blood.
They had all turned to look at her, their eyes fever-bright and hungry. Hunger had made a family of them, wearing them down as the thirst for magical power overcame their need to eat.
Just the sight of it made her sick to her stomach, unbidden images of her father looming behind her eyes.
‘It’s been a while since we had someone new,’ the woman said, her words rushed and eager. ‘Just the same old power over and over. We were starting to get a little depleted.’
‘We have someone,’ the man was near trembling with his excitement at explaining to her. ‘He gets us the herbs we need. We’re a collective and if you’ll just—’
‘Get the fuck away from me.’
Amanda recoiled from the woman’s touch. The pair stared at her open-mouthed at the sudden change in her.
‘I’m not one of you,’ she spat. ‘I will never be one of you.’
‘But your arms,’ said the woman. ‘We thought—’ She made to go after Amanda, reach for her again and was surprised as Amanda stepped forward to meet her.
Getting into the woman’s face, Amanda brought up a finger. ‘Don’t you ever come near me. Because once I’m done with you there’ll be so much blood your friends here will eat you alive.’
The woman paled. Her brow furrowed as anger began to kindle, but the man took her arm.
‘We made a mistake. We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to offend.’
The apology, the sheer meekness of them, only served to make Amanda angrier.
Storming away, she headed off down the corridor. How had she not seen that coming? How had she not seen through them?
She berated herself down the hallway, letting others leap out of her way. How had she let this happen to her? How had the world let it all happen? Hadn’t it taken enough? Hadn’t she let it take enough? Just over a day she’d spent here and she was already eager to burn it to the ground.
Taking the first corner, mind on the stairs that the addicts had suggested, Amanda swore as she ran straight into another inmate. Her nose colliding painfully with his chest, she staggered back, a hand out for balance.
‘Shit. Sorry.’
‘Just who we’ve been looking for.’ There were two of them. Both men were tall, their arms muscled and beards unkempt. The sleeves were rolled back on their fleeces, broad forearms displaying a wealth of tattoos.
The only real difference between them was their hair, one bald, while the other’s hung down to his shoulders in uncared-for strings. Hard men, the pair of them, the type she wouldn’t deal with unless she had a plan, or some back-up.
‘And I’ve only been here an hour,’ said Amanda, backing away, her mind still assessing. When a pair of men like this were looking for her, it was never good.
‘Did they even try to find someone who fits in?’ asked the bald man. ‘She doesn’t even have tattoos.’
‘Government thinks we’re idiots,’ replied the hairy man. ‘Stand still.’
They’d slowly followed her as she’d retreated. Snatching out a hand, the hairy man grabbed at her, his hand easily encircling her wrist.
Amanda struck, bringing her heel down on the man’s instep, but her plimsoll only rebounded off his sturdy boots. Pain shot up her leg from her heel to her knee.
If the man even felt it, he showed no sign, tightening his hold and pulling her close. ‘We just want a word.’
The look in the bald man’s eye told the lie to his partner’s words. He was tense, electricity running through his body, clenching his jaw, his fists.
‘Come on.’ Looking around to make sure no one was watching, they began to lead her down an empty corridor.
‘I’m happy here,’ said Amanda, pulling back.
‘Well we’re not.’ Hairy gave her a jerk so hard she felt her shoulder strain in its socket. ‘If the warden thinks we’re going to stand by while his spy does whatever she pleases, he’s about to learn a few things.’
‘That’s right,’ said the other man, checking back behind them as they pulled her down the corridor. ‘Got a real strong message for him.’