And Elizabeth. God. Elizabeth was expecting to meet Ethan later. She would be sympathetic, kind, make her tea and let her cry. But Kay didn’t want that. She didn’t want to think about how she’d told Ethan that she wanted more and promised him they could fall together. She didn’t want to remember how vulnerable she’d made herself while he had been holding back the whole time.
What she needed was something to fight. She wanted something to punch. Something to throw herself against and howl out her misery and hurt. Something like the people behind the dark Shadows.
She turned off the music playing through her phone and pulled up the address to Oracle. She could take a look and see if there was anything there. When it turned out to be nothing, she would accept defeat and go back to Wales to speak to Elizabeth and figure out what she was going to say to James. And then she’d decide where to go. Maybe David could find a place for her in India.
Kay turned her phone off—she couldn’t face speaking to Elizabeth yet, and her gran probably already knew something was wrong—and slid it into her pocket. Then she heaved herself up, shook out her stiff legs, and climbed back on her motorcycle to drive down to Westminster.
The Oracle office was in a smart cream-colored terrace. It had big sash windows and tall pillars beside a polished black door. Everything seemed very quiet and ordinary.
She parked around the block and brought up a soft Shadow to cover her tear-stained face as she walked up the stairs to the door. A discrete bronze nameplate next to the buzzer listed four different companies, the last given simply as “Oracle.”
Kay pressed the buzzer, but no one answered. She pressed it again and waited. Still nothing.
She took out her keys and made a show of fumbling through them as she pulled together a tiny Shadow which she inserted into the lock. Holding her keys bunched in her hand, she twisted against the lock mechanism, using the Shadow to turn as if it was a real key, and pulled the door open.
She stepped through quickly, pulling the door closed behind her, and climbed the stairs to the Oracle offices while keeping her face covered in swirling Shadows.
The front office seemed dark and quiet, and Kay stood outside the door counting long seconds under her breath until she was certain it was empty. Then, using another Shadow key, she silently unlocked the door, opened it a crack, and paused, listening, feeling with her Shadows for any sense of someone else’s energy. The next room was completely quiet, so she opened the door, and slipped through the gap.
It was a standard office reception, with a big desk along the wall and a cluster of small black leather sofas at the front. A glass coffee table was covered with current financial newspapers and magazines, and a water cooler gurgled softly in the corner. It had the quiet, empty feeling that offices get after hours.
Kay glanced at the reception desk; it was completely clean except for a telephone in the corner. Working silently, she quickly opened a couple of drawers, finding nothing but stationery and some blank name tags. Whoever worked there was obviously a neat freak.
A corridor led away from reception and Kay followed it. To her left was a large conference room with a glass front, and to her right an open-plan office with three desks, separated by pot plants and office dividers. There was a small tea and coffee station against one wall. At the back, there were private offices with blinds closed and doors shut.
The furthest corner office came into sight and her Shadows lurched. A light was on, shining under the door, and Kay could sense a living presence. Someone was at work after all, despite it being a Saturday. Damn.
Creeping over to the set of desks, she paused, realizing what had felt off since she got there. This was not any kind of normal office that she had ever been in. Not one desk had any paperwork on it, not even any photos or Post-it notes. There were calendars pinned to the dividers, but none had any of the usual circles or marked dates she always had on her calendars. She swiftly checked the drawers of the nearest desk, and it was full of perfectly arranged stationary. No old business cards or half-used pens, only immaculate sets of unopened stationery, the notebooks still in their plastic.
It was as if no one had ever actually worked there.
There was no point in searching through empty desks. The only place she might find anything was the office at the back. She didn’t want to leave and run the risk she couldn’t get back in again. Her best bet was to wait for the person in the office to go out, whether for lunch or even to go to the toilet, and then take a quick look around.
Kay made her way to one of the desks and quietly lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the floor underneath it. The office divider covered her, but she pulled a darker Shadow around her body just in case. There was a small gap between the divider and the wall so she could see the person when they left.
She sat silently, sinking into a Shadow meditation. Trying to find the calm, quiet space she needed.
Her mind returned to Ethan—kissing her in the alley, fighting beside her at the school, holding her against him as they watched the Thames flow past, his eyes half-closed as she knelt between his legs, his arms around her during the night, his white-faced snarl as he told her to leave—and then she forced herself to concentrate on her breathing and clear her mind.
Again, and again her thoughts returned to Ethan, and again and again she forced herself to let it all go and bring her focus back to her breathing, in a continuous, torturous loop. Her eyes burned, but she willed the tears away.
It was at least an hour before Kay heard a noise from the office; someone was walking around. She shifted her weight, trying to release the ache in her cramped legs, then wiggled her fingers and toes as she tried to get the blood circulating again. Not much longer, hopefully. The person in the office would leave, and she could take a quick look, and then she would go.
The handle turned and the door opened, letting a shaft of yellow light fall across the desks in the central area. A man wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood up walked out, facing away as he pulled the door closed behind him. And then he stilled. He paused for a long moment before he spun slowly and looked right at her.
ChapterTwenty
Had he been less distraught,maybe Ethan could have thought more clearly.
If his pain hadn’t been choking him to the extent that all he could think of was getting Kay away from him before he fell apart completely, perhaps he might have considered whether any of it made sense.
Instead, all he felt was crushed. Destroyed by the agony that was tearing through him. He had tried so hard to avoid ever feeling pain again, and now he was being shredded from the inside.
James had been utterly certain, watching Ethan with thinly veiled pity as he explained. As he held up photograph after photograph. Kay wearing a bikini, hand stretched up toward the camera. Kay in her pajamas. Kay wrapped up in James’s arms, her lips on his face, their wide smiles. God.
Vaguely, in the back of his mind, a part of Ethan knew that Kay was devastated. She had looked completely broken. Nothing like Amanda had when he’d confronted her. His ex-wife had looked guilty but almost relieved when everything was out in the open. Kay looked like she was being run over by a bus.
Her pale tear-streaked face and shaking hands had stirred a moment of anguished sympathy that he’d ruthlessly pushed away. Strong, vital Kay looking so destroyed was more than he could bear. He’d almost reached out for her. Almost made the mistake of touching her. Instead, he’d shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them under control as his Shadows heaved brokenly inside him. The Shadows that she had wakened.
