‘Well, what else am I supposed to think?’ Evie’s mother sighed, her tone softening. ‘We’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since. And then when I find you’re not even at the gas station where you said you’d be – well …’ She shook her head, words apparently deserting her. ‘Can you even imagine how worried I was? And you didn’t even think to call me and tell me where you were?’
Evie glared at the ground, feeling her eyes tearing up. She knew that her mother had a right to be mad at her, but there was so much anger inside her own body that she couldn’t see past it enough to do anything about her mother’s. Everything was so impossible, so tangled up. She wished she could just fall into her mother’s arms and cry, and tell her everything and have her soothe it all away, but even if she could open up about what had happened, there were no words that could soothe it away anyway.
‘Evie,’ her mother said more gently, using the same pleading tone that Tom had tried in the car. ‘Please, talk to me.’
Her face was contorted with worry. And Evie knew she was responsible, just as she was responsible for the pain and suffering of dozens of other people – of Cyrus’s mother Margaret, and the rogue Hunters Vero and Ash. And, of course, Lucas’s sister, Flic. If Evie had died instead of Cyrus, instead of Risper, instead of Lucas, she wondered how much less suffering there would be in the world? No one except her mother would miss her. She felt a pang that twisted itself into the unbreakable knot of emotions inside her. Steeling herself against the pain and her mother’s indignation, Evie rushed past her, heading for the stairs, her chin tucked in tight to her chest.
‘Evie!’ her mother called after her as she trudged up them, ‘you can’t keep on behaving like this.’
Evie slunk into her bedroom and closed the door, trying to block out both her mum’s shouts and the screaming voice of guilt in her head. She crossed to her desk, which she’d swept clean of everything. All her old magazines, term papers, essay notes and books were stashed in a cardboard box inside her closet, already coated in dust. She’d taken down all the photographs that had been stuck on the walls, as well as the list of colleges she’d intended to apply to, and in their place she’d tacked up a sheet of paper with a single word on it:
VICTOR
She stared at it for several minutes, then pulled open a drawer and took out a piece of paper. On it were fragments of text, drawn from memory, as complete as she could make it.
From two who remain a White Light will be born
A purebred Hunter fated to be the White Light
Standing alone in the final fight
To sever the realms by passing through the light
Memories will rise, shadows will fade.
Facing an army from the realms
The sun, the giver of life and the light
Together will stand and fight
And one will sacrifice himself
Closing the Gateway by walking back through
Crossing into the dark, memories will fade and shadows fall
Evie dropped the sheet of paper back onto the desk. She didn’t know why she kept looking at it. The thing was done. The prophecy had come true. She had never been the White Light. It had been Cyrus all along. Anger ripped through her every time she thought about it. The Sybll were worse than the witches in Macbeth. At least the witches got the right person. They hadn’t gone telling Macduff he was going to be king.
She walked over to the bed and flopped down on it, curling onto her side, her hands sliding beneath the pillow and pulling out a crumpled T-shirt. She balled it up and held it against her face, breathing in deeply and closing her eyes as the scent of Lucas overwhelmed her. It was fading but she could still smell him – a trace of citrus and of late summer days, hazy with smoke and horses.
Her mother was right about one thing, Evie thought to herself as she lay there clutching the T-shirt to her lips – she couldn’t keep on behaving like this. She needed to do something before she went mad, before all the anger inside her erupted in a lethal, all-consuming torrent.
Her eyes flew open and settled on the piece of paper above her desk.
Victor. Once she had found Victor – and killed him – then she’d feel better.
Chapter 3
Her mother was calling her down to dinner. Evie rolled off the bed, putting one heavy foot in front of the other. She was so tired. She knew she probably looked like a train wreck but she no longer cared. It had been weeks since she’d looked in a mirror. She had covered the one in her room with a scarf, and stood with her back to the basin every time she brushed her teeth to avoid having to see her reflection in the bathroom cabinet.
She forced herself down the stairs, wary at what admonishments her mother might be dishing up alongside dinner. But when she made it into the kitchen she saw her mother had regained her calm.
‘Joe’s coming over later,’ her mum said, bustling about the table, pouring Evie a glass of juice.
Evie raised her eyes. Her mum was keeping her own gaze firmly fixed on the tabletop. She’d started humming. Evie smiled quietly to herself as she watched the blush creep up her mother’s neck. There was one thing to be glad of at least. Evie’s old boss, Joe, was a good man and her mum deserved someone in her life who made her happy, seeing how Evie was failing monumentally on that score.
‘You know, Joe said he’s holding your job for you,’ her mother told her, sitting down at the table.
Evie picked up her fork and started toying with the food on her plate.
‘What do you want me to tell him?’ her mother asked.
When Evie didn’t answer she hurried on. ‘Well, maybe you could tell him yourself, later. I think it might be a good idea, you know. The diner was always a good job. Much better than that silly boutique. I told you it wouldn’t last a month and I was right.’
Evie placed her fork down carefully by the side of her plate.
‘I mean, what was that man thinking? Designer dresses in a place like Riverview? Those price tags! And they’re all still sitting in there, hanging on the rails. I had a look through the window the other day. He just cleared off out of town without so much as a day’s notice. What was his name again? Victor. Here one day, gone the next. If you ask me, there was always something very suspicious about him.’ She lowered her voice, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all a front for some kind of money-laundering operation.’
Evie looked down at the tabletop, her fingers digging sharply into her thighs. She knew her mother was angling, trying to get her to talk. The co-incidence of Victor disappearing from town on the exact same night that Evie had run off with Lucas had had the whole town buzzing with the scandal, rumours flying around like migrating birds. To her credit, her mother hadn’t mentioned a word of it to her face, but Evie’s hearing was good – better than good, it was supersonic these days – and she’d overheard people talking at school as well as on the street. There were some pretty good stories going around. According to a woman she’d overheard in the drugstore, Evie (referred to only as that Tremain girl) had stolen all the cash from the boutique and then gone on the run with the good-looking boy who worked on Janet Del Rey’s ranch.
She’d also heard Kaitlyn Rivers whispering to someone in the cafeteria line at school, saying that she (referred to this time as that skank) and Victor had been having an affair and that Lucas had walked in on them, so they’d done away with him and buried his body in the woods. Unfortunately Evie had only managed to fuel that last rumour by slamming Kaitlyn against the wall and daring her to say it one more time to her face.
‘So, what do you think?’
‘Huh?’ Evie looked up, startled.
Her mother shook her head in exasperation. ‘I was asking about Joe’s offer to give you your old job back. I don’t want you to feel like you need to work. Now Mrs Lewington’s back lodging with us and the insurance company have finally paid out we’re doing fine, and this year is your senior year. But it might be good for you – you know, to be out there, meeting peopl
e, seeing your friends again …’
‘I don’t know,’ Evie mumbled into her potatoes.
Her mother frowned, then decided to drop it. She got up from the table and walked to the fridge. ‘Oh, I bumped into Jocelyn today by the way,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘She was asking about you.’
Evie paused with a forkful of peas halfway to her mouth. ‘Really?’ she asked, wondering what on earth Jocelyn was still doing in town. There was no reason for her to still be in Riverview. Evie didn’t need protection anymore. She was trained. She had her full Hunter powers now that she’d killed her first unhuman. Not that any of that mattered because there weren’t any more monsters to kill. But beyond all that, she thought she’d made it pretty damn clear to Jocelyn just how much she disliked her. Jocelyn had lied to her all along – she had known that Victor had murdered her biological parents and had said nothing. And rather than protecting Evie as she had sworn to do, she had let Victor use her.
Evie stood up suddenly, pushing her plate aside. She needed to get out, breathe fresh air. Being scrutinised all the time, like she was a bug on a Petri dish, was more than she could bear.
‘Where are you going?’ her mother asked, looking up at her in surprise.
‘For a walk,’ Evie mumbled, heading for the back door.
‘But you’ve hardly touched your dinner,’ her mother said to her back.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Evie answered.
Her mother called something after her but Evie didn’t hear it, or rather she chose not to. She promised herself that when this was all over she would find a way to apologise for everything, but until then she just couldn’t find the words.
She opened the door and walked out onto the veranda, feeling the instant relief that being outside and away from people brought her.
The orchard was growing murky, the trees dissolving into darkness and shadows. The moon was a pixelated blur sliding in and out of black clouds. She sniffed the air and waited for her senses to kick in and adjust to the onslaught of new sounds and smells. Her heartbeat slowed as soon as she’d verified there were no other creatures besides Lobo lurking out there in the dark. There were no more monsters, she reminded herself. She didn’t need to be constantly scanning her surroundings trying to sense unhumans.
She crunched through the leaves in the orchard, hearing Lobo howling behind her as she stretched the distance between them. She missed it, though, she realised as she reached the road. She missed feeling him. That sense of heightened awareness whenever an unhuman was around was something she had never thought she would miss. Not that she wanted to be surrounded ever again by Thirsters and Mixen and Scorpio, just that she associated the feeling unhumans evoked – the sweaty palms, racing heart and whoosh of adrenaline – with Lucas. Being half Shadow Warrior he’d managed to confuse her senses so that the danger signs, which should have kept her alive, had become synonymous in her mind with him and with safety. And, yes, that had almost killed her. But now she missed it. She missed Lucas more than she thought it possible to miss anyone, so much that she thought she might die from it. And not in any melodramatic way, but because sometimes she actually couldn’t breathe; sometimes she woke up choking down air, dots dancing in front of her eyes, as if her lungs had decided of their own accord to shut down while she slept.
Of course, that could also be to do with the number of sleeping pills she was popping.
She broke through into the tree line on the other side of the road and started jogging. She didn’t understand. She would never understand why fate had brought her down the path it had. Why it had so entwined her path with Lucas’s, only to wrench them apart just at the point they’d reached their destination.
But maybe that was why. They had reached the destination. Maybe the point was the journey.
Either way it wasn’t fair.
She swore at herself. As if she hadn’t learnt that lesson about life already.
Chapter 4
Evie stood on Jocelyn’s veranda staring at the door. She didn’t bother knocking. She didn’t need to. She knew that Jocelyn – being a Hunter – would have sensed her from half a mile away. And even as she stood there hesitating, she could hear footsteps, slow and heavy, heading her way.
The door fell open. Jocelyn stood there, her face rumpled and her clothing creased, as if she’d just been startled awake from a nap.
She stared at Evie for a beat and then nodded, as though she’d been expecting her for a while.
Evie felt her nostrils flare in response. She sunk her heels into the veranda to stop herself from swinging around and leaving.
‘Do you want to come in?’ Jocelyn asked her.
Evie didn’t. But now she’d come this far she figured she might as well. She edged past the older woman, feeling a familiar jolt, a buzzing in her sternum as if an invisible cord connected them.
It was a connection she wished she could sever. It made her jumpy. She hadn’t felt that jolt in a while now. Not since that day at the Bradbury building when everything had ended. That had been the last time she’d been around any Hunters. Because that’s what it was – that buzzing feeling – it was what all Hunters felt around each other. Cyrus had called it chemistry, had claimed it was part of an undeniable attraction she and he had for one another. She’d told him that all he was feeling were the tidal waves of irritation bouncing off her.
‘Would you like a drink of something?’ Jocelyn asked.
‘Um, no, thank you,’ Evie answered, surprised by how cold and official her voice sounded – like a cop come to deliver bad news.
‘Are you sure?’ Jocelyn asked. She seemed nervous, jittery almost, her hands refusing to settle in one place and her voice ratcheted several notches too high. ‘I can make some fresh coffee. Or something to eat? You look like you could use something to warm you up.’
Evie realised only then that her hair was plastered to her skull and a cold trickle of water was worming its way down her spine. How had she not noticed that it had been raining? Her clothes were stuck to her body and her hands were chilled to the bone, the tips of her fingers red and numb.
‘I didn’t come here for tea,’ Evie answered, ignoring the chill and hoping the coldness of her body carried all the way to her eyes. ‘I came here for information.’
Jocelyn pursed her lips and then, after a beat, nodded. ‘Let me at least get you something to dry your hair with,’ she said, moving quickly past Evie to a closet at the end of the hallway. She pulled out a small towel and handed it to her.
Evie took it reluctantly and started absently patting the ends of her hair. When she was done Jocelyn led the way into the front room.
Two overstuffed sofas covered in knitted blankets took up most of the space. Paintings of what appeared to be foreign landscapes hung on the walls. Books filled the bookcases, but the mantelpiece was bare. There were no photographs on display anywhere. Jocelyn had no family, a choice she’d made which had once seemed tragic to Evie and which now seemed damn sensible.
‘Why are you still here?’ Evie asked, rounding suddenly on Jocelyn. ‘I don’t need protecting anymore. There’s no reason for you to stay in Riverview.’
Jocelyn seemed taken aback by the question. She took a while to compose herself, staring at her hands, which were now clasped in her lap. ‘You’re still my responsibility,’ she finally answered, looking up.
Evie rolled her eyes. ‘Oh please.’
‘Your parents …’ Jocelyn began.
‘Again, oh please,’ Evie shouted, cutting her off. ‘You betrayed them. Don’t you dare talk about them.’
‘I didn’t betray them,’ Jocelyn burst out, anger sparking like flint and flaming across her face.
Evie grimaced. ‘Well, why didn’t you stop Victor from killing them then? You said they were your friends.’
Jocelyn took a deep breath. ‘Evie, you of all people should know that we can’t always protect the people we love. That sometimes, despite our best efforts, we fail.’
Evi
e’s legs actually went from under her. One moment she’d been standing in front of Jocelyn and the next she was sitting on the sofa, staring at her knees, the room spinning wildly.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Jocelyn said, pulling a blanket from off the back of the sofa and draping it over Evie’s shoulders.
‘If you knew what Victor had done,’ Evie whispered, gripping hold of the sofa arm, ‘how could you let him take me when I was a baby, how could you let him come back and train me to be a Hunter?’
Jocelyn drew back. ‘Evie, please,’ she said. ‘I asked you once to try to understand. I’m asking you again. I was barely twenty-two. I’d seen what Victor was capable of. I was terrified of him.’
‘And you also wanted the way through closed,’ Evie reminded her.
Jocelyn shrugged, her chin lifting. ‘Yes. I’m not going to lie. I wanted the way through to close. We all did! The realms needed to be severed – unhumans don’t belong in this realm. But believe me when I say I had no idea that it would involve you getting hurt. If I had known about the prophecy – if I had understood what it meant – I would never have let Victor near you, I swear.’
‘You let him get away though. When Lucas and I left him tied up in his store, you let him escape.’
‘No,’ Jocelyn interrupted. ‘He was already gone by the time I got there. I had to take care of Risper’s body before it could be found.’
Evie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the image that arose of Risper lying in bloodied, scattered pieces across the alley. It didn’t make a jot of difference though. She could see it with her eyes open and with them shut.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jocelyn finally said. ‘I’m sorry for my part. For making you believe that the White Light was you. I thought it was true. And I’m sorry about Lucas – I know what he meant to you. And I know …’
Evie shot Jocelyn a look so fierce that she fell instantly silent. They stared at each other for a few seconds before Jocelyn finally worked up the courage to speak again. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘that he loved you and that he wanted this.’