‘No. It suits you, somehow. I can see you as an old man on a patio somewhere, doing a crossword puzzle.’ I let myself dropback onto the mattress. ‘How come you never go past twenty-five?’ Lots of people said your twenties were the best years of your life, but I’d never really believed it. The older you got, the more you found yourself. Personally, I was just happy I’d found myself enough that I no longer felt at sea in the world–no matter how chaotic it got sometimes.
‘The council decides what role we play. Some of the older members inhabit the bodies of very prominent people, which is how we expand our sphere of influence. Ashton, Norah and I were among the youngest of our original group, so we have to wait until we’re allowed to move up to a more senior level. Until then, we play the spoilt children of wealthy, powerful families, siphoning off money and influencing our parents… It’s all a bit trivial, really. Basically house arrest for soul-jumpers.’
‘So why haven’t they let you guys move up the chain yet?’
Cliff sighed quietly. ‘Henry–that’s the head of the council, and one of the founders of the League, the only one chosen to survive the ceremony?—’
‘Wait,’ I interrupted, snatching at a memory as it flitted through my mind. ‘I saw a Henry. At the Christmas party. He looked late thirties, at the most.’ My lips pursed as I remembered our encounter. He’d more or less told me with a single glance that he thought I was worthless.
‘His current body, yes. Benjamin Colton, he’s an MP. Henry’s actual body was in its mid-forties at the time of the ceremony. He’s my uncle, and Ashton’s father.’
‘You’re related?’ I asked, taken aback.
Cliff nodded. ‘Our fathers were brothers. And Ashton’s relationship with Henry is complicated. He’s always felt this need to prove himself. The rest of us could have applied to be moved up a rung, but we didn’t want to leave Ashton. He needs people around him who love him, and who are kinder about showing it than his dad.’
‘There are limits to my sympathy for Ashton.’ Which was putting it mildly.
Cliff gave a half-hearted smile. ‘He’s complicated. Like everybody else. But he isn’t all bad. This life just has a different way of shaping you. A crueller way. We were all just trying not to die. And Ashton’s had a tough time.’
‘In what way?’ I asked reluctantly.
Cliff sat up, leaning back against the headboard. ‘At the timeof the ceremony, in 1867, he was seeing this girl. She was a soul-jumper, too. They were more or less inseparable for a century.’
I felt a queasy flip in the pit of my stomach. I sat up too, pulling the duvet around my chest. ‘What happened?’
His eyes were far away, different. Something told me he was delving deep into memories that had nothing to do with his body–and everything to do with his soul. ‘She was the wildest, freest person I ever met. Open-hearted, brave, confident, but rebellious almost to the point of danger, and… reckless. She just did what she wanted. Acted without thinking. I never met anyone who lived like she did.’ He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. When he looked back at me, his expression was troubled. ‘Problem is, there are certain rules wehaveto follow. Like for instance, there are limits to how much energy we’re allowed to absorb. If we feed on others unchecked, the vessel that contains our soul can’t handle it–it’s like it cracks open. It leaks out, and corrodes the body we’re living in.’
I tried to follow what he was saying, confused. ‘But then, can’t you just switch to a new body?’
‘Not if the soul is already trickling out. Then you’re stuck in that body, trapped as it slowly but surely falls apart.’
‘And that happened to her? Ashton’s girlfriend?’
Cliff nodded. ‘She overdid it. Ignored the warning signs and kept on going, because for her, it was always about the next thing, she never stopped and took a breath–let alone a step back. Until it was too late, and her body was on the verge of collapse.’
‘So she died?’ I couldn’t stop a note of sympathy from softening my voice. Despite how I felt about Ashton, I hadn’t forgotten the look on his face when he was describing what he’d lost. The pain etched on his features in that moment had been real. And probably the most human aspect of him I would ever see.
‘She killed herself,’ he corrected. ‘Here, in Cambridge. We were at university here then, too. We celebrated this existence so hard, you know? We felt invincible. We relished every second of these stolen lives, because we didn’t care we’d taken them from someone else. We didn’t care about anything.’ He laughed, a hoarse, discomfortingly sad sound. ‘Until one of us decided out of nowhere to start a fire and die in it.’
My mouth fell open when I realised what he was talking about. ‘Hang on… do you mean Amelia Wallingford? The student who died here? 1982?’
Cliff smiled lopsidedly. ‘Too crazy?’
‘Maybe a bit,’ I murmured in agreement. ‘Wait.’ I fumbled for my bag, which was lying next to the bed. It took me a moment to find the picture on my phone. It was blurry, but the only one I’d been able to snap of the article before it was burnt along with the rest of Davie’s files. Zooming in on the faces of the five students, I held the screen out to Cliff. ‘So these are all people in the League of Starlings?’
He nodded and took the phone, holding it so we could both see it. ‘Nox,’ he began, from the left, ‘Norah, Ashton, Heaven and… me.’ He tapped the man in the middle before handing me back the smartphone.
I gazed dumbfounded at the figure I’d mentally labelled asCedric Landon Wells, although somehow he’d felt oddlyfamiliar to me this whole time. It was nuts: suddenly, in this oh-so-bizarre way, everything made sense. ‘I knew there was something about him nagging at me.’
‘The scar. You can just about see it,’ Cliff said, pointing at the pixellated face.
And sure enough, I could make out a faint line on his temple, but I knew that wasn’t what had struck me. ‘No, that wasn’t it. It was something about the look on his face. It’s the look I’ve seen so often onyourface. So brooding.’ I shot him a teasing grin, before examining the other faces with fresh eyes. When I reached Arthur, I paused. He had his arm around the shoulder of the woman next to him, and his eyes were fixed on her profile, the expression in them soft and full of open tenderness. If I hadn’t known it was Ashton, I never would have guessed. I had never seen such devotion on his face. I hadn’t even thought he was capable of it. ‘He loved her, didn’t he?’
‘More than anything,’ Cliff said quietly. ‘We all did, but Ash took it hardest of all. When she disappeared, a part of him went with her.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘I like to think that souls don’t die, they just go somewhere else. Many cultures believe they reappear eventually–in a person, in another living creature, as some energy of the universe. Some souls are older than others.’ He nodded at me with a grin. ‘Like yours, for instance. It feels ancient.’
