The Book Eaters(41)

They’d gone perhaps two hundred meters when Hester exclaimed, “Wait!” and jerked to a stop. “My handbag is missing. I don’t have it on me!”

Devon twisted round. “What’s so important about a handbag?”

“Is that rhetorical?” Hester had already swiveled away to squint across the three hundred meters of wild fields. The train was barely visible from the gentle swell of the land. “My wallet and mobile phone and my gun were in there. And the bag itself cost four hundred quid, though I suppose that doesn’t matter.” Her aggrieved tone suggested that it did, in fact, matter. “The biggest loss is the gun. It was an heirloom.”

“Do you want us to try to go back?” Devon said, looking uneasily at the train. Ramsey, she knew, would not take kindly to seeing them return.

“No. Not worth the risk.” Her hands clenched briefly, then uncurled. “Still. I had pencils in there. My sketchbook, too.”

“Sketchbook?” Devon said, nonplussed. She’d never heard of a book eater drawing, though it was technically possible. They just weren’t creative in that way, as a species. “Were they your drawings? Was it important stuff?”

Hester gave a deprecatory laugh. “No, I guess not.” She scraped up her loose hair, wild from running, and tied it back with savage efficiency. “Let’s just go. Before I change my mind.”

“About that,” Cai said. “Where exactly are we headed?”

“The closest town, which is probably Alnwick.” Hester plucked at her mud-speckled skirts. “Get there, get transport, and nip across the border into Scotland proper.”

“I think what he meant was, where’s our endpoint?” Devon said. “Which bit of Scotland are we going to?”

“That’s not safe for you to know yet.” Hester started trudging away.

Devon exchanged glances with Cai. He shrugged.

The three of them straggled through the scratchy nettles and overgrown fields, the musky scent of soggy earth and tangled weeds clogging up Devon’s nostrils. She sneezed twice. No snow out here, just chilly and damp.

After another half kilometer, they reached a two-lane road that wound like a curving ribbon of black ice. Devon peered down each direction, flexing her still-bare toes on the slickly frozen road. “No people or pursuit, but also no cars or houses.”

Hester squinted at a road sign. “Looks like this is A1086. If we have any sense at all, we should be steering clear of the town and walking to the next place along.”

“The next town?” Cai wilted. “But I’m tired now. Do we have to walk all night?”

“He’s right,” Devon said. “We need sleep, all of us. I’ve been up for more than a day, and not eaten nearly enough for a long trek.”

She was indeed bone-tired, but beyond that, Devon also wanted time to observe this woman, and to learn more about what might await them at the Ravenscar household. The only concrete assurance they’d been offered was a single dose of Redemption while the rest was a blank unknown. It was well and good for Ramsey to not give a damn for whatever lay in store, but it wasn’t his neck on the line.

“It shouldn’t take all night to get there,” Hester said, plucking at a loose thread on her sleeve.

“What do you mean, shouldn’t? How far are we going?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you where we’re going until we’re there.” Uncertainty made her seem smaller. “It isn’t safe.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Listen, you’re used to caution. I understand that. But we have to work together right now. How far are we going? Will you tell me that? Not where, just how far?”

“About eighty miles,” said the other woman guardedly.

Devon ran a hand over her face. “And you think eighty miles won’t take all night?”

“Well, obviously it would if we walked it, but it’s a short drive in a car! Someone was supposed to meet us in Edinburgh, once we got there.” She grimaced. “I’d ring them to check in but my phone was in that sodding bag.”

“We’re nowhere near Edinburgh, nor is Edinburgh necessarily safe for us anymore. In the here and now, we are very much without a car. Which makes eighty miles one hell of a walk.”

“Do you have a better idea?” the other woman said, exasperated. “I suppose you think we should bed down here and camp outside!”

“Not outdoors. Indoors.” Cai pointed, his ragged sleeves billowing in a sharp winter wind. “There’s a bed-and-breakfast down the road. We could go there? Then find another way to travel in the morning.”

Both women looked at him.

Devon said, “Have you been here before?”

“Sort of. The lawyer stayed once, for a walking holiday in the moors. He traveled loads in these parts.”

Hester raised an eyebrow. “The lawyer?”

“B and B sounds good.” Devon didn’t feel like explaining the lawyer or any of Cai’s other half-remembered victims. “Let’s go. I want to get off my feet.”

Hester threw up her hands. “I don’t have any money, my wallet was in that purse—”

“I’ve got a few quid.”

“A few? How much is that?”

“Enough to cover us.” Devon reckoned twenty grand could cover most B and B stays.