The Fandom(27)

Katie grips my hand. ‘That has to be Thorn.’

I nod. He walks towards us, his step as lazy as his smile. ‘Well, well. What have we got here? Two more so-called spies. You have a lot of explaining to do.’

He looks from me to Katie, and something crosses his face, something tender and vulnerable and fearful all at once. He lifts a hand, and for an awful moment, I think he’s going to strike her. But instead he touches the backs of his fingers to her cheek. Katie pulls back, heaving in a mouthful of air like his skin’s poker-hot.

Nate tugs at my sash and opens his mouth like he wants to speak, but the sound of Alice screaming silences him. An Imp forces her through the arched doorway.

Thorn reclaims his lazy smile. ‘And here she is. The Gem who thinks she’s an Imp spy.’

Alice tries to say something – my name I think – but the Imps smother her words, teeming around her, wrenching her slender arms behind her back and forcing her to her knees.

‘Alice.’ I try desperately to reach her, but the Imps shove me against the slabs.

‘Stop it, stop it,’ Katie screams, pulling at their shirts, trying to heave them off me. But Thorn wraps his giant arms around her, and I’m left pressed into the stone, my eyes trained on Alice. I writhe and twist and scream like I’m possessed, but it’s no use. And just before an Imp cracks me across the head and everything melts to black, I hear Saskia’s voice.

‘I told you they were worth waiting for.’





I wake in a small, ochre room. The floorboards feel hard and unyielding beneath my body, cords bind my wrists and ankles, and a rag which tastes of alcohol plugs my mouth. I manage to ease myself into a sitting position so I face the door – my back pressed into the peeling wall – and I feel a little less defenceless. There’s a large window to my right, so caked in grime it may as well be bricked up, but the odd splinter of dying afternoon light pushes through, suggesting our prison is not underground. This makes me feel a little better.

Alice sits beside me, the imprint of her body warm against mine. Nate sits opposite; a gag contorts his mouth into an eerie, fixed grin, and he holds his body as though his left side aches. I look into his eyes – sore and inflamed – and we blink a slow, teary greeting. At least we’re both alive. Next, my eyes find Katie – same gag, same eerie grin. She winks. But a tear rolls down her cheek, magnifying her freckles and soaking into her gag. I bet she’s wishing she never moved to London, never laid eyes on me, never even heard of The Gallows Dance. I feel a pang of guilt and let my head fall back against the wall. A reassuring thud. I hear this constant drone like a swarm of bees, and a tar-like substance clogs my left eye – my own blood, I suspect.

I don’t know how long we sit in that room. We stare at the walls, our feet, exchange the odd sympathetic glance. And, of course, I start to deliberate how we got into this mess. It started with the accident at Comic-Con. An earthquake? A bomb? An experiment gone wrong? I press my eyelids shut, my thoughts knotting together. I desperately want to be able to talk it through with the others, but I can’t quite spit the rags out.

I turn my thoughts to the canon instead. Although we can change it, we still seem to keep crossing back into it. We’re like two pieces of thread, running side by side, then twisting into each other only to separate again. So, at this point in canon, Rose had entered the church and was talking to Thorn about how she released the thistle-bomb at the Gallows Dance earlier in the day. I’ve watched the scene so many times; the main body of the church filled with night lights as the sky darkened and the other rebels left. Thorn tried to work out whether she was the right Imp for the Harper mission, and he was much nicer to her than to me – he didn’t crack her over the head and lock her in a room, for a start. ‘Spiky’ was definitely an understatement.

Eventually, I fall asleep. I know this because I have a strange, muddled dream of the city – not my London, but future Imp London. Broken walls, crumbling buildings, a bleak sky imprinted with battered roof lines. I scream and waver on the edge of a barrel. The freckly controller stands beneath me, pointing, laughing, pulling back his boot. Ash cries out and wraps his arms around my thighs. He lies me on the ground like I might crack, and leans over, I think to kiss my forehead. His eyes look the exact same colour as the sky behind, giving the impression he has two holes in his head. And suddenly, it isn’t Ash any more, it’s Nate. A dark chasm opens across his chest.

You did this to me, Violet, he says.

I push my palms into the black hole, but I can’t stem the flow. Blood streams down my arms and spots my face. I’m sorry.

He rests his lips on my skin and whispers, his breath as cold as snow. If only you’d looked after me better, none of this would have happened. He sits back and his eyelids flicker.

Nate, stay with me, I say.

His body dissolves into a red mist, hovers for a moment – a piece of gossamer cut into the shape of a boy – and disperses into the atmosphere like ashes. Like thistledown. I reach out, pawing helplessly at the air. But I feel only a smattering of droplets and the ever-increasing spaces in between.

And that’s when I hear a familiar voice, pushing through layers of time and love and warmth. Mum. Violet, stay with me. I can smell that clean, medicinal smell again, and the faint scent of her favourite perfume, star anise and jasmine. Violet, stay with me.