We make it down the garden path at a walk. Then around the corner at a jog, and into the pub car park at something approaching a run.
The car park is dark and mostly empty. A few cars. A lamppost at the far end shedding orange light. The sounds of the pub muffled behind us.
Hex stops. The body he’s wearing goes very still.
Then it opens its mouth, and black smoke pours out.
It is not a small amount of smoke. It billows out in great rolling clouds, thick and absolute and darker than the night around us, curling upwards and then condensing, pulling together into a shape beside the now very unoccupied looking man who is standing with his arms loose at his sides and his eyes closed.
The smoke settles. Solidifies. Becomes Hex, standing in the shadow of a parked car, red eyes glowing faintly, a grin spreading across his face.
The man opens his eyes.
He looks at his hands. He looks at the pub. He looks at me.
“Wha…” he says.
I feel genuinely terrible. I also feel genuinely unable to explain any of this. I gesture towards the pub with what I hope is a reassuring expression. “You’ve had a night, mate. I’d get back in there if I were you.”
The man looks at the pub. He looks back at me. His expression is that of someone whose internal processing system has encountered something it fundamentally cannot parse.
He pats his pocket. Finds his phone. Stares at it.
“I’m going to get an Uber,” he says, to no one in particular.
“Good call,” I say.
He walks away. Not towards the pub. Not towards the road. Just slightly away, in the manner of a man who needs to put some distance between himself and everything. I watch him go with a feeling of profound guilt.
Hex materialises more solidly at my shoulder. “He’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He’ll have a strange gap in his memory and a feeling that something interesting happened.” Hex sounds unconcerned. “That’s basically every good night out.”
I turn to look at him. He’s fully himself now, all shadows and red eyes and the particular quality of presence that fills whatever space he’s in. He’s watching me with an expression that is trying to be smug and not quite managing it because something else keeps breaking through underneath.
“You absolute menace,” I say.
“I thought it went rather well.”
“You told my mother you own several buildings.”
“I do own several buildings. In the Shadow Realm, admittedly, but the statement was technically accurate.”
“You told my uncle you’ve played golf on a private island in Iceland.”
“I’ve been to Iceland.” He pauses. “There are shadows everywhere. I’ve technically been most places.”
“My cousin is going to spend the next three weeks trying to find the Reykjavik island golf course.”
“Then he’ll have a project. People like James need projects.”
I press my hand over my mouth. The laugh comes out anyway, bursting through my fingers, and once it starts I can’t stop it. I’m laughing properly now, slightly hysterically, the kind of laugh that comes from somewhere deep and relieved and overwhelmed all at once. Hex watches me with that soft expression, the one he thinks I don’t notice, the one that makes my chest do complicated things.
We end up in the park around the corner. Because neither of us wants to go home yet, apparently, and the park is there, and the night is cool and clear, and there’s a bench by a big old oak tree that seems as good a place as any.
We sit. Not quite touching. The sky above the tree is full of stars, or as full as a city sky ever gets.
