Ashton laughed jarringly, not pulling back an inch. ‘Are you for real? Do you seriously think I don’t know what happened? Henry just called and told me how the guards found the ceremony chamber: Horatio and the host body were lying unconscious among the broken shards of the artefact, Victor’s dead, and Norah and your fucking moth were nowhere to be found. Don’t tell me this was an accident,Cliff. We both know it was absolutely deliberate. This was the plan all along. You lied to me! You took advantage of our friendship and tricked me into giving your friend the chance to destroy it!’
Again he punched the wall, so hard that his skin split and blood spattered across the wallpaper. Feeling sick to my stomach, I took a step towards them.
‘You’re right,’ Cliff said, his voice rough. ‘But it wasmyplan.Mydecision. If you want to find them a scapegoat, take me. She had no idea what she was doing.’
‘That’s not true!’ My heart was racing in my throat, but I forced myself to take another step towards them. I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t scared of Ashton, but I was still going to intervene. Cliff and I had made this decision together, so we’d face the consequences together. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing,’ I went on, as Cliff gave me a warning look over Ashton’s shoulder. ‘I’mthe one who broke that thing. I know you’re angry that you don’t get to keep switching bodies, that you’vegot to stick with this one for the rest of your life, but ifyou’regoing to take it out on somebody, take it out on me.’
Ashton’s body went visibly stiff, then he let go of Cliff and turned to me. His gaze seemed to bore through me, and my stomach fluttered uneasily as I remembered what he did the last time he’d scowled at me with that kind of rage. Yet he made no move to grab me, inside or out. He only looked at me, brow furrowed, and… laughed again. The sound was clear as crystal, and so cold that it sent a shiver down my spine. ‘She doesn’t know, does she?’
‘What don’t I know?’ I looked uncertainly from Ashton to Cliff, who had taken a step towards me, so that he was now standing between us. I could only see the back of him, but I could tell that the muscles in his neck were tense.
Ashton shook his head. The echo of a sneer lingered at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes still gleamed darkly. ‘What it is you’ve really done.’
‘Ashton, don’t.’ Cliff reached out a hand towards him, but Ashton shoved it roughly aside and pushed past him, coming straight to me.
‘Doesn’t she deserve to know what she’s actually responsible for doing? You won’t be able to hide the consequences from her, mate.’ He slid his hands into his pockets, stopping just in front of me. ‘When you destroyed that artefact, you didn’t just kill the person who was mid-jump. You ruined any chance of any of us ever changing host again.’
‘I know. You’ll have to live ordinary lives in your ordinary bodies. What a terrible tragedy. Welcome to the normal world, Ashton.’ I tried to take a step past him, but he seized my arm. His knuckles were bright red, and the metallic scent of blood filled my nostrils, forcing me to breathe through my mouth.
‘Normal?’ He loomed over me. ‘Let me tell you something aboutournormal. Because there’s still residual energy left over from the original souls that inhabited these bodies–ourbodies–they age differently than they otherwise would. It’s like they’re burning up from the inside out. The energy in them is too much. We can bolster them by absorbing energy from other people, but after a certain point, we’re powerless against nature.’
His words were a river in my mind: a terrible roar that drowned all the meaning in those letters, until I could make no sense of them. ‘I… d-don’t understand,’ I stammered, although I was beginning to sense that wasn’t true. I did understand, deep down. I just didn’t want to admit it, so I was holding the knowledge beneath the surface with all my might.
Ashton’s grip tightened, his mouth twisting into a furious smile. ‘Oh, come on. I thought you were supposed to be clever. Surely you can work out how stupid you’ve really been.’
I swallowed hard. What he’d told me reminded me of something Cliff had said about Victor and unplanned soul-jumping. He’d said that if the original soul hadn’t been weakened beforehand, the body would decay more quickly than usual. But Ashton, Cliff and the others had done it properly. I’d assumed they only changed bodies so frequently because the council insisted: because that way they could take over whatever lives were most useful to them at the time. But if what Ashton had said was true, that wasn’t the only reason. If the original soul’s energy weakened the body more quickly than normal, that meant it would age more rapidly. Which in turn meant?—
‘Your bodies are going to die sooner?’ I whispered hoarsely. My eyes darted past Ashton to Cliff, who had turned his face away from us. As if he couldn’t bear to look at me. ‘But… when?’
‘Generally speaking you’ve got about three to five years after a jump before the body becomes uninhabitable. Until the soul has to move on, if it doesn’t want to die too.’ Ashton let me go. He must have known those words would hurt me more than any physical pain he could inflict. It felt like I was poised on the edge of a cliff, every syllable pushing me closer to the brink. I staggered, barely managing to keep myself upright. Until he leant in towards me again. ‘And you’ve made that impossible for us now, haven’t you?’
That was the last nudge: my mind toppled over the edge, and I fell and fell and fell–until I hit the realisation of what that meant. What I’d done. I let out a sob, and pressed a hand to my mouth. Tasting bile and blood on my tongue. Maybe because I’d bitten my cheek, maybe because I had so much blood on me now. Not just on my hands, everywhere. I breathed guilt, and it tasted of iron and ash and pain.
Ashton stepped back, gazing down at me. ‘We’ve been in these bodies for two years already, Mabel. So enjoy the next few months with your boyfriend, because soon you’ll be watching him die a miserable death in front of your very eyes. And you’ll know it was your fault.’
My cheeks burned, my vision blurred. I was dimly aware of Ashton turning on his heel and walking out without another word. He slammed the door behind him, and the picture frames trembled again. So did I.
I stared at my hands, winter-pale, library-pale, but I could still see the blood. These were the hands that had destroyed theartefact. These were the hands that had made sure no soul-jumper would ever leave their body again. I’d thought that meant they had one last life to live. With a bit of luck, and universe willing, they’d have another forty to sixty years, just like the rest of us. A normal life, a normal death. I thought I’d done the right thing. Logically I knew that was still true: these souls didn’t have the right to eternal life at other people’s expense. I had protected countless people from them. I had protected Zoe. I had done what I set out to do. But I hadn’t known what price I’d pay for victory. What I was sacrificing for it.WhoI was sacrificing. If I had… I wouldn’t have thought of it as a victory at all. You couldn’t call it that, not when you were losing this much.
‘Mabel.’
I didn’t even see Cliff until he was standing right in front of me. He reached out to me, but I flinched away. How could he have talked about his own struggles with guilt, only to let me bring the same guilt upon myself?
My vision was still distorted. I could barely focus on him, but I registered the marks on his face: the swelling under his eye, the split lip, the red cheek. Despite it all, I was sure I was more badly hurt. I had so many feelings: rage, despair, sorrow, pain and… betrayal. ‘You knew.’ I had to force out the words, still backing away. ‘You knew my biggest fear is to lose someone I love! And you still… you did this to me? You let mekillyou?’
I didn’t care what I was confessing to him, I didn’t care about anything. I felt like I was choking. My head was pounding, my heart raced, its beat a constant pressure that fractured every positive emotion I’d ever felt. There would never be anything bright, pure or good in me again.
‘You haven’t killed me, Mabel. If you think about it, I should have been long dead by now anyway.’ He came towards me, but I recoiled until my back hit the wall. A picture frame jabbed into my shoulder, and I wished the pain had been more intense. I would have felt anything to distract me from the burning inside me.
‘But you’re not dead. Just, now… now you’re dying. Because of me.’ As my voice cracked, so did something inside me: the last piece of armour protecting me from the full impact of this feeling. It was like someone had sliced through me with a knife. Not just through my chest, but my belly, my lungs, every single cell in my body. It made sense: I felt Cliff everywhere, so of course I’d feel it everywhere when I lost him. And I had lost him, in the most final possible way, and by my own hand. I’d seen Victor before the ceremony–I knew what would happen to Cliff once his body gave up. In a couple of years, maybe even months, he would die a horrible death. And it was my fault. My fault. My fault. My?—
‘Not because of you.’ Cliff took my face in his hands as if trying to halt the spiralling thoughts behind it–or to save me from falling.
But I already had. I had already hit the ground and shattered, and I knew I’d never be fully whole again. A part of me had broken forever.
‘Because it’s right,’ he said. ‘We don’t deserve to live this life at other people’s expense. What we’re doing is murder. I’ve been murdering people for one hundred and sixty years. It’s time to put a stop to it, you said so yourself.’
‘But not at any cost, not this!’ I tried to push his hands away but he wouldn’t let go, so instead I punched his chest, kicked his shins, fighting tooth and nail to break free of his grip. Cliff didn’t retaliate or defend himself, any more than he had with Ashton. He just stood there calmly while I hit and scratchedandkicked him, until at last I began to cry. Soundlessly, wet-cheeked, shoulders quivering and lips clamped shut. My hands slackened against his body, and in that moment he drew me close. Wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me into a tight hug.
