He didn’t respond for a moment. Then he turned to her stiffly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said uselessly.
He took a stumbling step back.
‘No – I’m sorry. Tell Cam – tell everyone – I’m sorry.’
‘What?’
Pulling himself out of her arms, he edged further away.
‘I’m not like you. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.’
Before Ada could reply, he vanished into the crowd.
2
The Saints-Innocents Safe House
Camille had passed another restless night, chased out of sleep by nightmares of blood and smoke. The deadline had arrived and she felt no more equipped to meet it than she had three days ago. When it had been time to change watch, she had gone downstairs to wake James. Then she had stayed, despite the damp irritating her lungs, and tried to persuade herself to talk to Ada. Ada was bundled in an old cloak, silk scarf tied around her hair, and folded into an alcove. It wasn’t the first time they’d slept apart, or even gone to sleep fighting. Camille knew she wasn’t easy to live with.
But it was the first time she thought they might not wake up still together.
She watched Ada’s chest rise and fall in the darkness for a long while. Then slunk back upstairs to wait for dawn.
She must have slept at least in snatches, because when she went downstairs again to wake the others in the muzzy dawn, she found only a note saying Ada and Al had gone already and would meet them there.
She had left it too late.
Crushing the paper, she went to prepare. Not that there was much to prepare. She needed something – anything to distract her from what was about to come.
And she found it.
Guil was awake and trying to lever himself off the tomb he was using as a bed.
‘No! Absolutely not. Stop that.’
Camille was at his side at once, pushing him back down.
‘I am well rested. I am ready to get up.’
‘Ready to rip all your stitches out maybe.’
He gave her a long-suffering look but allowed himself to be propped at a raised angle against a stack of bags.
‘There. That’s as up as I’m willing to allow.’
‘Thank you.’
Camille fetched her pistol to check it over, then put it down and started fiddling with her tricolore cockade.
Guil reached to still her hand.
‘We are as prepared as we can be.’
She glowered at him.
‘Are we? Doesn’t feel like it. Actually feels the exact opposite.’
