Page 127 of You’re So Vein

Dora: You’re going to fly? In this weather? In the dark?

Komal: I have to save Hannah.

Celeste: Of course we’ll help with the village.

Winnie: We’ll bring people to Black Crag. We’re the highest ground there is.

Komal: I can’t thank you all enough. You’re true friends.

Isis: Friends come and go like ocean waves, but true friends stick around like octopi on your face.

48Augustin

I’M CRAMMED IN THE BACK seat of Beth’s patchouli-scented hatchback as we race towards the hangar. I can see Komal in front, past Irene and Dante, who are wedged in the middle seat. She texts her friends, explaining to me in a strange, eerily calm voice that they’ll coordinate the evacuation of the village. I’m acting mayor, but I’m so preoccupied with Hannah that I can’t even consider the hurricane threatening Argleton. Komal sets down her phone and stares at her hands, gasping in long, shuddering breaths.

I long to hold her. I know I shouldn’t.

A tendril breaks from my arm and inches across the car seat towards her. It strokes the back of her hand. She turns her fingers over and squeezes it so hard that she crushes the leaves.

She shouldn’t be flying. She’s terrified.

But she’s also Komal Ahuja. I recognise that determined set of her jaw. And I know she’ll do it. She’ll face her fear for Hannah.

The moment Beth parks her vehicle, Komal throws her door open and races for the hangar. Storm clouds roll across the sky, perfectly matching my mood. By the time we untangle ourselves from the car and Beth hands us our swords from the boot (Callista has come with a small arsenal – I think I see a mace hanging out of her handbag), Komal has her helicopter – Aishwarya – ready for us.

She seats Beth, Dante, Callista and Irene in the back seats, and me in the front next to her. The glass windows curve around us, giving the sensation of being inside a fishbowl. Komal plonks headphones over our ears and checks our seatbelts are done up. Ominous storm clouds roll across the horizon.

The rain has gone from a consistent drizzle to a serious downpour, but Komal assures us it’s perfectly safe to fly, as long as we return before the real storm hits. Her voice wavers and I know she’s lying.

“Hurricane Mindy isn’t due until morning, but we have to be back before then anyway, otherwise you’ll all be sunbathing on the hilltop,” she says into the headset as she bends over a tablet, her voice appearing muffled and far away in my ears. “This should be a quick trip.”

“What are you doing? Why are we not in the air?” Callista demands.

Komal doesn’t look up. “I’m just finishing the paperwork. Augustin, stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re going to take the controls yourself. I can do this.” She looks up then, glaring at me the same way she does at our council meetings. “If you want to help, keep me talking. Distract me. That seemed to… to help in the stationery cupboard.”

Her voice wobbles again.

“Have you always wanted to fly?” I ask as she starts the motor. The blades whip above us. I don’t want to chat. I want to slice Kael like a loaf of garlic pizza bread, but we need to get to him first.

“Yes.” Her face brightens a little as she leans forward in her seat. “When I was a kid, I collected Airfix aeroplane kits. I had them all over my room. I was hopeless at painting them. I never could stay within the lines, but I’d spend hours winding them through the air, imagining what it would be like to be up in the sky.”

I picture her as a girl, with that bright smile, wanting to carve her own path. But then it makes me think of Hannah, and I grip the seat so hard that the leather tears beneath my fingers.

“What did you want to do?” she asks. I think she’s trying to calm me down, probably so I don’t tear her helicopter apart. “Back in Dusk Court, before you came here.”

“Politics.”

She snorts. “No, really.”

“I thought that maybe I could make things better for children like me who grew up without families. When I worked at the occult society, I met men and women in positions of great power. I saw all the ways in which they could change things for the better, and instead they chose to make themselves even more powerful. When I became an Upyr, I finally saw a path. I intended to follow my father onto the Dusk council. To hold such a position, I had to reach a certain level in my magical training, so I spent most of my time in the court gardens, learning about my powers from my mother, understanding plants in a way I didn’t always understand people. I have more control over my powers than most Upyr my age, and the path was opening to me, but then…”

“Hannah.”

Exactly.