‘Oh really?’ Evie shouted, leaping up from the sofa, unsteady on her feet. ‘He wanted this, did he? He wanted to be dead?’
Jocelyn winced as if Evie had kicked her. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘But he wanted you to live. And he was prepared to die for that.’
Evie’s shoulders collapsed. Her vision blurred and she whipped around so that Jocelyn wouldn’t see the tears that were threatening to spill.
For an instant it was as if she could feel Lucas’s fingers biting into the flesh of her arms, holding her tight, trying to shake some strength back into her. She shuddered away the thought.
He’d promised her that everything was going to be OK – that he wasn’t going to die.
He’d lied. And now she was alone. She ground her teeth. There was no point dwelling on what had happened. She couldn’t bring Lucas back. She couldn’t bring her parents back. But she could get revenge for their deaths.
Evie squared her shoulders and blinked away the tears. Then she turned back to Jocelyn.
This was why she’d come to see her, after all.
Chapter 5
Evie walked slowly home through the rain, letting it soak through her clothes until her shirt was stuck to her like a second skin and her hair was slicked around her neck in ropes.
She felt the sting as the wind picked up and started whipping the rain in needles against her arms and cheeks. But it felt good – like all her indecision and stupor were being cleansed away. As though the rain was sloughing off some of the dead weight of grief and forcing her mind to focus once again.
Lobo was waiting for her as always by the back door. He sniffed the air and howled as she sprung up the steps. She always had the sense that the dog was looking over her shoulder for Lucas and was eternally disappointed when he failed to appear. At the thought of Lucas she felt another lurch in her gut. Every time, every single time she thought of him she felt like she’d been sucker punched.
Would it always be like this? She didn’t want it to be but she didn’t want it not to be either. The thing that scared her most was forgetting him, forgetting his smile and his voice, forgetting the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips and the filigree of scars that had felt as fine to the touch as silver strands. What if she forgot the exact colour of his eyes and the tiny golden strikes at the centres? What if she forgot the way it felt when he kissed her – as though all the world had gone to hell around them but that it didn’t matter? What if she forgot the way he made her feel?
She already had to some degree. She only recognised it by its absence. She carried with her a constant unnerving feeling of being unsafe. Even though she knew the way through was shut and that she was in no more danger, something inside her stayed tensed in fear. Lucas was the only thing that had kept that fear at bay.
Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her. She jumped to her feet the moment Evie walked in and headed straight towards her with a towel in her hands.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked, taking in Evie’s bedraggled appearance.
‘I’m sorry,’ Evie said. ‘I’m really sorry, mum.’
A movement over her mother’s shoulder caught Evie’s eye and she looked up. It was Joe. He was standing by the sink, nursing a cup of coffee.
‘Evie,’ he said, smiling at her, though the disappointment in his eyes was clear as day.
Evie’s shoulders slumped. Disappointment from every side. It was getting difficult to manage it all alongside the crushing weight of Lucas’s absence and still keep moving forward.
‘Your mum’s been worried,’ he said.
‘I know,’ Evie said, her voice cracking. ‘I went for a walk. I’m sorry. I needed to clear my head.’
‘Well, you’re back now,’ her mother said with a forced smile. ‘And you’re soaked to the skin. Why don’t you hop upstairs and run a bath and I’ll bring you up some cocoa.’
Evie swallowed, feeling fresh tears well up. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
She headed for the stairs, passing Joe on the way. He gave her a warning look, a look that said, Stop doing this to your mother, I beg you. Evie looked away, heat scoring up her neck.
She wasn’t sure if it wasn’t already too late for that.
Chapter 6
Evie glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It was almost four am and still dark out. She climbed out of bed and started pulling on her clothes. Grabbing a sweater from the back of her chair she crossed to the door, pausing before she opened it to listen for the sound of her mum’s breathing. It was slow and steady. She was fast asleep. Evie tuned into Mrs Lewington at the other end of the hallway and heard the phlegm-filled rattle that signified the old lady was also out for the count.
Only then did she inch open her bedroom door and creep out into the hall, tiptoeing towards the top of the stairs, hoping not to wake Lobo. She made it to the kitchen and dropped to her knees, a finger pressed to her lips as Lobo padded his way to the dog flap and peered warily through at her.
She unlocked the door and stepped out onto the veranda.
‘Hey boy, good boy,’ she whispered, crouching to give the dog a pat. She slipped her sneakers on and then, with one last check that she had the key Jocelyn had given her in her pocket, she started jogging.
She couldn’t risk taking her truck – the sound of the engine turning over would wake up her mum. But that meant that she would have to run the two miles into town.
It took her six and a half minutes. She checked her watch as she turned the corner onto Main Street and couldn’t help but smile to herself. She was getting faster as well as stronger – all her abilities improving, not just her hearing. She did a quick calculation. She needed to be back before six am, before her mother could wake up and notice she wasn’t in bed, which didn’t leave her much time.
The streets were deserted at this hour. One or two cars had cruised past her, their headlights alerting her from a distance, giving her time to duck and hide behind bushes. She didn’t want to be seen. The rumour mill was already going wild with stories of her misadventures. Being seen out at the crack of dawn prowling the streets would only create more drama for the knitting circle to get their needles into.
She had been avoiding this part of town for the last two months, and when she stepped into the alleyway that ran parallel to Main Street she remembered why. Waxy yellow lights illuminated the narrow garbage-strewn entrance and created golden circles every twenty metres or so, which the shadows lapped at. Evie hesitated, her heartbeat racing even faster than when she’d been running. She willed herself to calm down and put one foot in front of the other. There was nothing left here. Shula and the others weren’t about to leap out from behind the trash containers and attack her. They were all dead. With her own eyes she’d seen them die and vanish back to whatever realm they came from.
Taking a deep breath, she slinked past the spot where Shula’s body had lain and skirted the area where Risper had died. Then she upped her pace and started sprinting.
The back door to the boutique had a sign on it warning trespassers that they would be shot. Evie pulled out the key Jocelyn had given her and inserted it into the lock.
She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to find but a wave of disappointment almost knocked her to her knees the instant she stepped inside. The room was completely empty. The walls had been stripped bare of their target boards, the tables dismantled, and all the weapons that Victor had once stashed there for training purposes were gone. Evie spun in a circle. The holes in the walls looked like they’d been made by removing picture hooks, and not by tugging out knives that had embedded themselves in the brickwork during target practice.
No one would ever be able to guess that this was the room where Victor had taught her how to kill.
Evie crossed straight to the door on the other side of the room and opened it a crack. The store gave out onto Main Street and the large window at the front meant that, if anyone happened to be walking by, she’d be seen. But it was still early, so
she took the risk and darted inside. The clothing rails hadn’t been touched. All the stock she’d carefully hung – the designer offerings that Victor had used as a ploy to stop anyone from coming in while she was training – was still there, hanging mournfully, gathering dust. She glanced at the rails only quickly. She had no interest anymore in clothes. She couldn’t believe she ever had. The free clothes that Victor had given her now felt like blood money – tainted.
She strode towards the cash desk. The till sat gaping open. It looked like all the takings had been pilfered but Evie knew that there had never been any takings to begin with. No one in Riverview could afford a dress that cost more than their monthly paycheck. She pulled out the drawer beneath the till and her pulse quickened. There was a stash of papers inside. She snatched them and ducked quickly down behind the counter just as a car’s headlights swept like a searchlight beam through the store.
She scanned the papers quickly, using the light from her phone: bills, junk mail, an old copy of The New Yorker still in its cellophane wrapper, and at the very bottom of the pile an envelope with an LA postmark on it. Evie ripped it open. Inside was some kind of rental agreement with Victor’s name stamped across the top.
And there, at the very bottom in fine print, was an address.
Chapter 7
It was a Saturday, which meant no school, and which also meant she had two whole days ahead of her when she wasn’t the focal point of 282 teenagers and 38 faculty members.
It also meant she had two whole days in which to figure out her next move.
The Riverview library was small and, Evie guessed, not a priority for funding if the three ancient, yellowing computers were anything to go by. She pulled out a chair and switched one computer on and, while she waited for it to boot up, she rummaged in her bag for the papers she’d stolen from Victor’s store. Five minutes later she was staring at the website of a business in LA. It looked like the kind of place people used to redirect their mail or as a front for an office.
Evie sighed back into her chair. She had been hoping the address would lead straight to Victor. But it was a start. She would just have to go there and see if she could find any more information on him. It didn’t matter if it took her the rest of her life – she was going to find Victor. And then she was going to do what she should have done two months ago.
While she was waiting for the map to print she rested her hands on the keyboard and stared at the blinking cursor. She thought about it for a few seconds and then, before she could lose her nerve, she typed the words Bradbury Building Fire into the search bar.
Over four million hits came up. She hovered the cursor over the first one. It was a newspaper article. She clicked on it.
Historic Landmark Engulfed by Fire
Evie scanned the article. It quoted a fire investigator laying the blame for the blaze on arsonists. There was a mention of the two policemen who’d died, though no details of exactly how – nothing that hinted at how their dismembered bodies had been discovered lying in a swamp of their own blood in an elevator, nor that their throats had been ripped out by Thirsters.
There was no mention either of the explosion in the basement or of the piles of ash the police must have found down there, and not a word about the arrows sunk into the lobby walls where Vero had nailed three Thirsters. The article wrapped up by saying that the building was closed for the foreseeable future while repairs were being carried out. The final line mentioned that no arrests had yet been made.
‘Why are you looking that up?’
Evie spun around in her chair. Kaitlyn Rivers – Tom’s new girlfriend – and another girl who she recognised from the year below her in school, were standing behind her. She had been so engrossed in the story she hadn’t felt them sneak up.
Her fingers clicked the header bar. ‘No reason,’ Evie said as the home page loaded.
‘Ooh, have you heard about that?’ Kaitlyn asked, pointing suddenly at the screen.
Evie turned back to the computer. The front page of the paper had appeared. A headline running in bold print across the top screamed:
Serial killer strikes again.
Evie felt a funny spasm in her gut, like a knife that had been sticking in there since Lucas died had just been given a further twist. She scanned the piece.
Police fear more than one killer at work
‘It’s like so totally scary,’ Kaitlyn was saying to her friend. ‘What if they come here?’
‘To Riverview?’ her friend asked drolly. ‘Really?’
‘Well, it’s not like we don’t get our fair share of mental cases,’ Kaitlyn said, jerking her head in Evie’s direction.
Evie stood up abruptly from her seat at the computer, switched off the screen and snatched the piece of paper with the map on it from the printer tray.
‘No wonder he broke up with her,’ she heard Kaitlyn whisper as she strode past them.
Evie shook off her anger as she walked to her truck. Kaitlyn Rivers was not worth getting upset about. She had other things – other, far worthier people – to focus her anger on. She threw her bag into the back of the truck and turned over the engine. She needed to follow the trail on Victor before it got cold and there was no longer any point in hanging around in Riverview.
She had wanted to skip town even before Lucas arrived, before Victor had shown up, long before she even knew she was a Hunter. And she owed it to Lucas to find Victor. He would have done the same for her. In fact, he probably would have already found Victor and killed him. He wouldn’t have moped around for two months in a darkly fuelled depression, half-comatose on sleeping pills.
Her biological parents had tried to tell her, through a cryptically worded message, that she could choose not to be a Hunter – that she could choose to walk away. Yet here she was – she glanced at the map on the seat next to her – hunting. Victor had been right all along and they had been wrong. She couldn’t fight what she was. She didn’t get to choose. She was a Hunter through and through.
Though this time her prey wasn’t an unhuman. This time it was one of her own.
Chapter 8
Her mother was hosting the knitting circle. Today of all days, thought Evie with a sigh as she climbed the steps to the back door. The clatter of knitting needles and the bright murmur of voices stilled as Evie walked into the kitchen. You could have heard a stitch drop.
For an instant Evie was reminded of a picture she’d once seen of the women who used to sit at the bottom of the guillotine knitting while the nobles lined up to have their heads chopped off. It felt like the knitting circle ladies were waiting for her to climb the steps and kneel down before them.
She forced a smile onto her face and kept walking, hearing the clitter-clatter of needles start up behind her like so many gossiping tongues.
‘How did your schoolwork go?’ her mother called as she got to the door.
‘OK,’ Evie mumbled, jogging up the stairs. In her hand was Mrs Lewington’s rolled-up newspaper which she’d taken from the kitchen counter.
Once in her bedroom she threw her bag to the floor and sat down on the bed, unfurling the paper and scanning it quickly. The serial killer story was all over the front page. Two dozen people reported dead; over a hundred reported missing in the last week alone. No witnesses; extreme violence in every homicide. There was no pattern in terms of victims or time of death, no robbery or apparent motives. The police were at a loss, speculating only that it was the work of several perpetrators.
Evie got up and started pacing, a storm of adrenaline whipping up in her veins. She was shaking more than if she’d drunk two litres of coffee, and her stomach felt like it was lined with rock. Running her hands through her hair she crossed to the window trying to force herself to think straight.
The police were clueless because they had no idea what they were fighting. It was Thirsters, Evie was sure of it. Or maybe even Originals, the older Thirsters, the ones that made Thirsters look like fluffy, toothless kittens. Evie had killed one
back in the Bradbury building using a shadow blade, the only thing that could make a dent in them. But what if more of them had come through before the gateway had closed? It was possible, wasn’t it?
For a brief moment Evie’s thoughts flew to Vero and Ash, the last of the rogue Hunters. What were they doing now? Were they still in LA? Were they still hunting unhumans? She didn’t know. She knew that Vero had wanted out but she had no clue where the two of them might be now. She hadn’t seen or heard from them since the day at the Bradbury building when Cyrus and Lucas had died.
There had been no love lost between the three of them before and there certainly wasn’t now that Cyrus was dead. In their eyes it should have been Evie who died. She wished she could tell them how much she wished it had been her also, but it was too late for that.
Evie paused, suddenly realising something. If Vero and Ash weren’t fighting these monsters, who else would? The police weren’t going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping a single Thirster, and not even an army could take on a handful of Originals.
She started pacing her room. Surely there had to be other Hunters out there. Ones that she didn’t know about perhaps – rogue Hunters like Vero and Ash, Hunters who weren’t part of the official Hunter clan, who weren’t purebloods like her. It couldn’t just be Cyrus who had led a band of rogues. And surely, if there were others, they would know what was going on, and would do something about it?
As she paced, Evie’s attention kept flicking between the newspaper lying on the bed and the piece of paper tacked to the wall with Victor’s name on it.