My pulse slowed beneath his touch, and I smiled. ‘I trust you, remember?’
I closed my eyes as I sensed a gentle pressure inside my chest. It felt completely different than it had with Victor and Ashton. Cliff didn’t hurl himself against my soul, he knocked cautiously. I didn’t try to push him back, I opened it for him. After all, he was already in there, although in a different way.
It lasted just a few velvet-flowing seconds, the heat streaming from me and into him. I was flooded with a pleasant kind of langour, sinking against him, breathing him in, absorbing his closeness–the same thing he was doing, just differently.
Carefully he disconnected, although he held my body more tightly than ever. His breathing deepened, maybe because of my energy, maybe because we both sensed this was a goodbye. He wasn’t taking part in the ceremony: if he tried to follow us, it would raise questions. It was safer for us and for the plan if he waited here. Still, it felt awful.
‘I don’t know if I can let you go,’ he murmured. ‘If something goes wrong?—’
‘It’s our best option, isn’t it?’ I broke in calmly. ‘I mean, you can’t keep me out of this now, I’m in too deep. You said it yourself–the council wants to get rid of me. And I’m not going to hide from them. We both want a real life, don’t we? And we can’t do that if we’re on the run. We have to strike first. We have to stop them. This is the right way. Logically, it’s the only thing that makes sense.’
He pushed me gently away from him, looking at me. ‘This has nothing to do with logic, Pica.’
‘Yeah, I know. Emotions are such a drag.’ I rolled my eyes, knowing he would see in my face that I didn’t mean it. Not anymore. Not when it came to him–to us.
‘Promise me you’ll be careful. That you’ll do everything you can to protect yourself. If you have to choose between destroying the artefact and saving yourself, you choose yourself, okay?’
I forced myself to smile. ‘Sure.’
Cliff pressed his forehead against mine. ‘You’ve always been a terrible liar.’
‘All right, then listen to this: I’m coming back to you,’ I replied, with all the certainty I had. ‘Was that the truth or a lie?’
Instead of an answer, he gave me a kiss. Maybe he really could hear what I was thinking: that it wasn’t either of those things. I wanted to mean it, but I couldn’t promise. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen once I got into that car.
Just as Cliff let me go and took a step back, it appeared at the end of the road: a black vehicle with tinted windows, which pulled up beside us. Cliff’s expression shut down, and I knew the curtain had fallen back across the window. Once again, he had made a mirror of himself, reflecting whatever it was that others wanted to see. Reaching for the rear door, he opened it for me.
I knew I couldn’t afford to turn a hair, couldn’t make the slightest protest: my soul was supposed to be drained, and I had to act accordingly. Meekly. I lowered myself slowly into the car, staring rigidly ahead at the rolled-down partition while Cliff flicked the door shut beside me. Leaving me like it was nothing. Even though I knew he’d drawn the curtains of distance and indifference on purpose, I felt sick. I hoped desperately this wasn’t my last true glimpse of him.
* * *
I couldn’t tell how long we’d been driving. The landscape slipped by outside the tinted glass like a featureless grey ribbon, and I didn’t let myself glance at my watch. Not until the car began to slow did I risk a proper look out of the window. In the blue dusk I saw the outline of a manor house. Low lamps illuminated the gravel driveway that led up to it, bathing it in a warm coppery glow.
We pulled up just outside the steps leading up to the enormous double wooden doors. A moment later, the door opened next to me and a man peered inside. His eyes swept over me, then he took my arm and pulled me out. Everything inside me was screaming to tear myself free, but instead I walked on up the steps beside him without a murmur.
The interior of the house was as chilly and imposing astheexterior had suggested. The man led me silently down red-carpeted corridors, past walls covered in paintings, galleries of pale statues, and nooks crammed with brocade armchairs, as I struggled to take note of my surroundings without seeming too alert. After we had descended a flight of stairs, he stopped and turned me around, yanking my arm so roughly that I hit my back against one of the sculptures. For the first time, I allowed myself to look at my escort, and I noticed the bird-shaped pin on the lapel of his jacket. It was exactly like the one Heaven had worn in the picture of her, Cliff and the others.
‘Wait here until someone comes to fetch you.’
I didn’t have to decide whether to risk a reply, because he had already turned on his heel and was climbing back up the stairs.
Just as I was about to take my phone out of my jacket pocket to text Cliff, I heard more footsteps down the hall. Taking a cautious step away from the statue, I peered out into the corridor. Two men were standing a few yards away from me by a half-open door. I could only see one of their faces, which glowed pale in the dim light of the gilded sconces between us. His eyes swept glassily along the corridor and over me, as if he didn’t notice me at all.
A second later, the other man grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him down onto a bench, saying something. I froze when I realised who it was. Just as he straightened up and saw me.
How could I have spent even half a second talking to Jess and not realise? That smirk on his face: derision camouflaged as pleasure, so insincere that the skin around his eyes never even creased. The way he tucked strands of hair behind his ear, even though they were too short and immediately fell out again. The way he appraised me, as if he both hated me and wanted me for himself. None of that was Jess. It was Victor. Or… the soul I thought of by that name.
He stopped just in front of me. ‘Well, well, well. Who’d have thought we’d end up here, eh?’ He wound his fingers around a lock of hair and tugged hard.
My fingers twitched. I dug them into my palms and bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to make a sound. He was so close to me now that I could see what Cliff had meant when he said the body was falling apart. His skin was sloughing off in reddish-purple scales, his cheeks were sunken, his eyes deeper-set than normal. The corners of his mouth had cracked, as had his nails and the skin around the cuticles. The unpleasantly sweet odour was even more pungent than before–it made me think of overripe fruit.Rot, I thought instinctively.That’s what rot smells like. I breathed through my mouth, lowering my gaze, because I wasn’t sure what to do. What I would be like if I…wasn’t myself anymore.
‘I’d have bet money Cliff would give in to temptation and accidentally kill you,’ he murmured, running two fingers along my cheek towards my throat. ‘The way he looked at you… I haven’t seen him show that much emotion for years. He wanted your soul so badly–I’m astonished he wanted your face more. As if this were worth anything.’ He flicked my cheek before he let me go. ‘He’s stupider than I thought.’
Rage flared up inside me, forcing my lips apart. ‘Shut your mouth.’
Victor frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
I knew I should leave it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to. My gaze bored into the washed-out greenish-brown of Jess’s eyes. ‘Don’t you dare talk about him like you actually know him. You don’t know anything about him. Or me.’
