‘Charming.’ I pursed my lips and locked the screen. I didn’t like how sorry I felt for Ashton. It was easier to see him as an emotionless, unscrupulous monster. ‘Did Ashton have that bench put up for Heaven?’
‘No, that was me and Norah. We tried to be open about how much it affected us, losing Heaven. After all, the five of us had been practically joined at the hip since we first started jumping. What happened to her changed things, for all of us. But Nox threw himself into the security of the council’s rules and regulations, and began pursuing a career in the League. And Ashton just pretended like nothing happened. Ever since then, all he wants to do is live for the moment, and he never really lets anybody get close to him. He’s been struggling with it for nearly forty years, but he won’t let anybody try and help him.’
‘But that doesn’t give him the right to take it out on other people.’ No matter how much Ashton had suffered, was still suffering, perhaps, it didn’t justify inflicting pain on others. Nothing did. ‘I need to protect Zoe from him. We need to protecteverybodyfrom him. From him and from… the rest of you.’
‘You’re right. I’ve known for a while now that this can’t go on.’ Again, I thought I saw a shadow flit through his eyes, but before I could reach for it, he blinked it away. ‘But the artefact is under twenty-four-hour guard. It’s impossible to get to it. Unless…’ His face twisted, as if a bitter thought had occurred to him.
I was instantly on edge. ‘What?’
‘Very soon, they’re going to hold an emergency ceremony.’
‘Emergency?’
He hesitated. ‘You’re not going to like this.’
I gave him an incredulous stare. ‘You think I like any of this?’
He sighed again. ‘During the accident, when Victor hit Davie. At the moment Victor’s body was injured, he tore his soul out of it and jumped into the only undamaged person he could find nearby.’
This time I was quicker to put two and two together. I didn’t like what I got, but I wasn’t surprised. ‘Jess Holden, the witness. I spoke to him–he called me Anna Karenina. So that was…Victor?’ Part of me had suspected after our conversation that there was something deeper going on. But how could I have persuaded my rational mind to accept it? I could never have made it fit with what I thought I knew of the world, but it did fit perfectly with what I knew of Victor. With his disregard for others. Not only had he come within a hair’s breadth of killing Davie, but he’d murdered the real Jess to save himself. I felt sick, and hugged the duvet around me more tightly.
‘Yes,’ Cliff replied cautiously, as if he knew exactly what was going through my head. ‘Emergency jumps like that are risky. They’re not always successful, and even when they are, they’re short-lived. If you jump into a body without preparing the ground first–by weakening the soul inside it–then the energy is still too present. And it’s too overwhelming for the body. You have a few weeks at the most before it dies.’ He snapped his fingers, and I winced.
‘So they’re going to let Victor change his shell? And they’re bringing the artefact here to do that?’
‘The ceremony won’t work without it. The trouble is, they won’t let me take part. My body… I still have a couple of years left in it, and the protocol is absolute. The artefact must beprotected at all costs, even from us. After all, we might be tempted to take it for ourselves, run off and jump as much as we like. Only one member of the council, the jumpers, and the people whose bodies they want to occupy can be present.’ His fingers were drumming on the duvet, and I had to restrain myself from grabbing them. Something told me he was only moving them so he wouldn’t have to stop and face the thought that was spreading like a dark cloud across his eyes.
‘What is it?’ I asked bluntly. ‘Something else I’m not going to like?’
He stopped, caught. ‘It’smethat doesn’t like it. But if we’re going to save you and destroy the artefact, it’s the only option that might conceivably work.’
I didn’t fail to notice the hedging, but I ignored it and lifted my chin. ‘All right. Then let’s do it.’
His eyes wandered over me, darkening, second by second. It took me a moment to realise there wasn’t affection or concern behind them, but something more overcast. Something I had never seen in him this strongly before. Maybe because he’d been hiding it from me, or maybe because he hadn’t felt it this powerfully in the time I’d known him.
‘I’m afraid,’ he whispered. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve known fear, but then you came along, and suddenly my list of things that make it all worthwhile boils down to you, and pretty much nothing else.’
My heart turned heavy and soft at the same time when I realised what he was referring to. I remembered the way he’d looked at me on our walk, when I told him the things on my own list. Admiring and almost envious, as if he longed to find something to put on his.
‘I know how ridiculous it sounds, but it’s true,’ he went on, when I said nothing. ‘And that’s exactly why I’m scared. You really terrify me. I don’t want to lose you. Ican’tlose you.’
I was able to move again, at last. ‘You won’t.’ I let go of the duvet and climbed onto his lap. I didn’t care that he was seeing me naked again–I’d always felt bare, exposed, before him anyway, ever since the night we met. ‘We’ll get through this together, and afterwards we’ll just do really boring stuff. Revise together, eat one a.m. pancakes, start a Brontë book club. And do this.’ I pressed my lips to his. ‘A lot.’
‘Sounds tempting. And in betweenthis’—he put a hand on my lower back, pressing me in closer, and I sighed, and he smiled and gave me a fleeting kiss—‘we can go travelling. I’d like to show you a few places that in my opinion you definitely can’t miss.’
I grinned. ‘Sound great. We’ll have to wait until I’ve saved up for it, though. I don’t care how filthy rich or ancient you are, I’m not letting you pay for everything. But we’ve got time.’ Inuzzled the tip of my nose against his. ‘Not eternity, but… a lifetime. That’s enough, right?’
He closed his eyes and slid his face past mine, nestling his forehead into the hollow of my neck. ‘Mabel.’ His voice tickled against my skin, and beneath it.
I’d never thought my name would feel so meaningful to me. As if it truly did belong to me alone, and said so much more than I had ever realised. Those two syllables contained everything he saw in me, which in turn was everything I was. It sounded like the most beautiful compliment I’d ever heard, yet at the same time the most despairing cry.
‘What?’ I asked, with a lump in my throat and a knot in my chest. Both relaxed a little when he drew away and looked directly into my face. There was a last trace of sadness in his eyes, but the smile in them was stronger. Even in the dim room, it brought a light to them, and for a brief moment nothing about our situation seemed crazy, weird or hopeless. For a briefmoment, everything was fine. Just because he was looking at me like that, like he was telling me how sure he was that this– thatwe– were worth overcoming anything.
‘Mabel,’ he repeated gently. This time, it sounded like a promise I still could not fully understand. ‘I think, with you, everything is enough.’
Chapter28
Cliff
