“You need me to do this. You chose me for this.”
Since the world she had been wandering had dissolved into nothing, Katie had been standing/hovering in the middle of a star-dotted grey space and repeating the same words for the last five minutes. The Keepers may not be able to hear her – indeed, they might not even be listening. But she was damn well going to float here and stamp her foot until they started paying attention.
“You took me away from my friends, my family, you took me away from Jack! If you have reasons, fine, tell me what they are. You brought me here and I will not go another inch until you get to explaining!”
It took a frustratingly long time (though it was likely under a minute) before things started happening. The dull grey began to swirl around Katie, wrapping her in a tornado of a million colours, all blending in to one another. She blinked a few times so the blinding whirlwind was dimmed by her own eyelashes, for a second it helped, but then the colours just… stopped. Fell away. Before it had picked up the power and speed Katie was sure it was capable of.
“Another one of your games? Original.” She swallowed to buy herself some thinking time. “Wind me up and watch me go? You’re not exactly making me want to help you.”
And yet, you will.
“You seem very sure of that.”
We know you, Katie Cartwright. You will not stand by and allow this to continue.
“Damn, I’m too good for my own good.”
Your bravado is thin. Strand by strand, you are broken but you still pretend. Humans are so interesting.
“But I’m not exactly human any more,” she pointed out. She made a noise in her throat in an attempt to clear some blockage. Her voice was failing. This grey vacuum was nowhere. Nothing. And, in it, she was nobody human. This, Katie thought, was a world the Keepers could control – one that could sustain neither her voice, nor her image which was slowly breaking apart into floating dots of silver light. “Am I?” she managed before her voice packed up completely. This time last year, her father probably would have come home from work special to enjoy the peace and quiet.
You are closer than you think. And yet you are… other. More.
What’s that supposed to mean? Can I get my life back?
We have allowed you to remain in your world. It is your choice how to proceed on a personal level.
Jesus, sound interested won’t you? I died! And you guys – girls – whatever the hell you are, and they could be its for all she cared, you let me! And I’m meant to be grateful you haven’t taken me away yet?
Yes. And you will earn your right to life.
Katie held up her hand for silence and dropped her head to her right shoulder, outing her opposite arm over her eyes to blot out the overwhelming absence of colour. Behind her eyelids still danced that whirling dervish of neons and jewel bright hues. They hurt to look at but they were hypnotic enough that Katie could distract herself for a few minutes and get some distance from all the voices. Finally, she straightened up and peeled her arm away from her face, hardly surprised to notice the scarred palm of her left hand crawling with points of silver. Threads of the brilliant energy crept along her wrist and down her fingers.
Why is it so important that I go to that motorway junction?
The voice of the Keepers sighed. It was just one breath but it somehow sounded as though the entire world had decided to sigh at the same moment. It was the most human sound there was and to hear this otherwordly voice do it was just creepy.
They must be saved.
I get that but you’re the all-powerful, everywhere at once ones. And I thought lost souls were kind of your responsibility.
Once they come to us. Once they are free to do so.
You can’t just pull rank and take them? She paused, a tiny smile creeping over her face. Realisation bloomed in her mind like a sunflower – getting bigger and stronger each moment because it was suddenly and completely Katie who held all the strings right now. The Keepers… well, they had no control over events in the human world as far as she could tell. That’s why they had to have this little chat up here, in a none-space they could inhabit. On their terms, but not by their rules, Katie decided. She was going to get something out of it.
Okay, so this is what will happen. You’re going to-
Katie Cartwright, you have no place asking things of us. Your incomplete existence continues. Do not make us rethink our decision.
Rethink away but rethink this too. If you kill me properly dead, who is going to rescue all those innocents down there? I mean, you can’t do it. You can’t affect the lives of mortals. Which is why they waited for me to be touching death before they could force me into this. Because they knew this was going to happen and they needed somebody with a connection to all three worlds – the mortal world, the Dead World, and the End Place where some Angel of Death girl decided when they would cross over and what version of the Dead World they would get.
And then Shimma had rocked up with his ghost raising hoodoo and wrecked their plans. Yet they were still finding a way to use her.
You need me to help you.
We need nothing of a half-life.
Half life? Wow, you know how to make a girl feel special. Those words seemed familiar; they rolled off her tongue as easily as the alphabet or the names of her favourite bands. Basic words that she didn’t even think about.
It is true that we cannot meddle in human affairs. Not in any physical way. That is why we have agents and that is why we have you.
Before I do anything else, you can take me to see my friends.
This is your request?
Umm… yes. Look, I haven’t seen them in over a week. Just let me have a minute. I’ll only peek in and then I’m all yours. With a start, Katie realised what she had just said. Would they take her at her word and actually take her away to live out her strange existence in their messed up world? Were they still human enough to know that she was promising only a temporary act of co-operation?
They mean enough to you that you would risk yourself for them?
Risking myself?
Of course. Look at your hands. Your connection to your mortal self is fading. You are transforming. Into energy – light, weightless, merciless energy. Katie knew it without the Keepers having to say so. She was existing on memories and stores of her human lifeforce, whatever had been keeping her going since Shimma had wasted his own weird Keeper powers on her, and those reserves had been dropping steadily ever since. Now she was no longer in a world made for the living – or even a world for the dead but populated with so much humanity that it made little difference – Katie was burning up those threads at an alarming rate. When the light covers you, you may never again return to the mortal world.
I’ve got time. But she didn’t. Not really. Each moment that she hovered in the grey mist, another of those dazed souls from the accident was being twisted into something vengeful and merciless. She could be down there saving them.
Whether you can accept what you see is not our responsibility. Only you shall see them. They will not see or hear you. You may not-
Please. Whatever you think of me, I’m not an idiot. Sometimes, you know, normal people are smart enough to do the right thing without having rules about everything.
The rules are protection.
Who for? The way Katie was thinking it could go either way. They protected the mortals from things they had no place seeing or knowing. Or it could be to protect their own sorry, mystical arses from… from something.
The ever moving cylinder of colour rose up and closed around Katie once more. She held a breath she didn’t need in sudden apprehension. This… it did not feel quite right. The Technicolour tornado grew too much, just watching the bright blurs whizzing across her face was exhausting. She let her breath out a bit at a time, ignoring the silver threads of energy criss-crossing both bare legs and
forcing her tight not-really-muscles to relax. Sleep would not come however much she craved it. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. Hell, I don’t even need to breathe. What makes me real?
This, the voice of the Keepers said softly.
Katie felt a light pressure in her gut; deep down where she always imagined a ball of silver light like a ball of string. It was that which Jack grabbed hold of and pulled on whenever he wanted to see her. How on earth would he come back if she had nothing for him to draw on? Nobody else could or, probably, would help him. Maybe Adam but… oh God Adam! He had looked ill before everything had happened and that was nearly a fortnight ago. What had happened to him since then? But he had looked more or less like his old self when she had plundered Dan’s mind and saw him at the memorial. The only thing out of place had been the empty chair Jaye should have been in. The one she couldn’t convince herself was a coincidence. The girl… felt gone, if people could feel gone. Worrying about her would be pointless. Jaye might look cute and defenceless but she had steel in her bones.
“You didn’t show me anything,” said Katie, her voice barely more than a whisper that cracked on the last syllable. “You didn’t show me anything,” she repeated a bit more firmly. If the Keepers were going to play their games with her, Katie was going to play one of her own. If that meant fighting for every last bit of voice left in her then so be it. “That’s not fair.”
Humans and their skewed ideas of justice.
“Skewed? Fair is keeping your promises and letting me see my friends before I do your job for you.”
We wonder Katie Cartwright. We are curious as to why you crave a final glimpse of your friends in Northwood and not one more moment with your family.
“My friends are my family.” She sensed the voice about to say something to fill the falling silence but she cut it off by holding her right arm out and stripping her jacket off to show a fleshy depression across the limb. “We’re blood.”
Still you doubt us.
“You’re saying I should trust you. You sent evil after me, you nearly killed me, you somehow set all of this up… and you won’t give me Jack.”
Love is a complication. An obstacle on your journey that you do not need. We cannot allow this affair of your heart to go on. It… interferes with our plans.
If ever she needed proof that the Keepers were behind this whole mess then this was it. “What the hell would you know about love?”
We know love is too precious to waste on one person. One you will never be able to save.
Silver mist was swirling up to her knees, shoulders and in a thickening belt over her waist now. “I’m going to die before we come to any agreement.” She sounded a lot calmer than she felt. Inside there was a lot of screaming and running around. “Your move. Show me my friends, or let me die.”
That was an ultimatum and a half.
Unfortunately, the silvery light was getting closer and closer around Katie, tight enough that if she had had skin it would have been clinging to her like Lycra. Instead it was dancing lazily through her ghost – harmless as air but worrying all the same. She closed her eyes as silver covered her face and invaded her mouth, nose, ears, even sinking through the corners of her closed eyelids. The silver wouldn’t kill her as in everlasting pain or an eternity of darkness the way her nightmares had convinced her back when she had dreamt of zombies and Daleks and a man with hate in his eyes. It would not be the escape from hurt and suffering and running, always running, she had craved when she finally gave up on the dancefloor last week. Or would be the rest of time to be owned by the Keepers, having to watch tiny lives live and die like firework sparks that burnt so brightly for such a short time. If she’d had a stomach, Katie was positive she would have wrenched until it ruptured at the thought of having to see the same thing repeat itself and never be able to change it. But she was not going to be their puppet! She pulled in a breath she didn’t really need, instinctively coughing as silver smoke tickled the back of the throat she didn’t really have.
Is this what it takes to prove a point?
Ready. She was ready to dissolve. She was ready to become nothing.
Chapter eleven