“I need a refreshment,” he says, clicking his fingers together in a kind of nervous rhythm. Then he goes out, sniffling and rummaging for the bag Samjeeza gave him, and closes the door behind him.
You have perhaps five minutes to make your escape, comes Samjeeza’s disembodied voice in my head, the second we’re alone with Angela. Go back to the train station and take a northbound train, which will come shortly. Hurry. In a few minutes the whole of hell will be after you, including me. And remember what I told you. Don’t speak to anyone. Just go. Now.
Christian and I rush to Angela’s side.
“Ange, Ange, get up!”
She opens her eyes, the dark traces of tears still on her cheeks. She frowns as she looks at me, like my name isn’t quite coming to her.
“Clara,” I supply. “I’m Clara. You’re Angela. This is Christian. We have to go.”
“Oh, Clara,” she says wearily. “You were always so pretty.” Absently she rubs at her arm where it says jealous. “I’m being punished, you know.”
“Not anymore. Let’s go.”
I pull at her arm, but she resists. She whispers, “I’ve lost them.”
“Ange, please …”
“Phen doesn’t love me. My mother did, but now she’s lost, too.”
“Web loves you,” Christian says from beside me.
She stares up at him with anguish in her eyes. “I left him for you to find. Did you find him?”
“Yes,” he says. “We found him. He’s safe.”
“He’s better off,” she says. Her fingers drift up to scratch at the fresh words on her neck. Bad mother.
I grab her hand. Her self-loathing churns through me. I get the sharp taste of bile in the back of my throat. No one loves her. She can never go back.
Yes, you can, I whisper in her mind. Come with us. But I don’t know if she can hear me. She never learned how to receive.
“What’s the point? It’s over. Ruined,” she says. “Lost.”
In that instant I know that her soul is wounded. She’ll never wake up from this trance she’s in, not like this. She’ll never agree to come with us.
We came here for nothing.
No one loves me, she thinks.
No. I will not let this happen, not again. I grab her shoulders, force her to look at me. “Angela. I love you, for heaven’s sake. You think I would have come all this way, to freaking hell, to rescue you if I didn’t love you? I love you. Web loves you, and what’s more, he needs you, Ange, he needs his mother, and we don’t have any more time to waste with you feeling sorry for yourself. Now get up!” I command her, and at that precise instant I send the smallest blast of glory straight into her body.
Angela jerks, then blinks, shocked, like I threw a glass of water in her face. She looks from Christian to me and back again, her eyes going wide.
“Angela,” I whisper. “Are you okay? Say something.”
Her lips slowly curve up into a smile.
“Geez,” she says. “Who died and made you boss?”
We stare at her. She jumps to her feet. “Let’s go.”