*
The next few days are different. Arran is working with Van in the medical unit but he spends all his spare time with me. It’s over two years since I was taken from our house and he wants to know everything that’s happened to me while we’ve been apart. I can only do a bit of it. I don’t like to tell him the bad stuff. Ellen has told him everything she knows but that isn’t much and he wants to know more. He glances at the tattoo on my neck and at my hands and he reaches out to touch the scarred skin of my wrist. I tell him to ask Gabriel if he wants any details.
Then he asks me about Gabriel and I say the same thing. “Ask Gabriel if you want any details.”
“I will,” he says.
“You have to promise to tell me what he says.” I smile. I am actually curious at the thought of what it might be.
Arran says, “It’s good to see you smile.”
“And you.”
Then I remember I wanted to tell him something. “Remember that time when I climbed the tree and you came up after me and I went further up and out and you wanted me to come back? And I did and we sat there for ages together, our legs dangling down either side of that branch, and you were against the trunk and I was leaning back against you?”
He nods.
“I think about that a lot. When I need something good to focus on.”
And Arran’s eyes fill with tears and he hugs me and I hug him back.
Laughter
Celia and I are having another talk.
“Before she was arrested Deborah sent out one last piece of information,” Celia tells me. “It’s probably what led to her being caught but she thought it was so important that she was willing to risk her life for it.
“Wallend has been experimenting on Black Witches, those ones that were first caught outside Paris a few weeks ago. He’s developing some kind of tattoo. Tattooing them over their hearts. The experiments are on Black Witches but we think that the aim is to develop the tattoo to be used on Hunters.”
“Why?” I ask. “What does it do?”
“Deborah couldn’t find that out. Have you seen any Hunters with strange tattoos on their chests?”
“I haven’t been looking.”
“From now on we need to.” She hesitates, her eyes locked on mine. “As long as you’re ready for another mission.”
“Why wouldn’t I be ready?”
“I just want to check that you’re in control. Losing your sister is difficult. I know that.”
“I didn’t lose her. They took me from her years ago and now she’s been executed.”
Celia sticks her fat lip out.
I sigh and say, “OK. Leave me off the mission. But I’d suggest you leave Marcus off too in that case. Cos he’s more likely to go off on one than me.”
Celia nods. “I haven’t thanked you for that yet. But you did well with Blondine and controlling Marcus that day.”
“What’s happened to Blondine?”
“I sent her back. I saw her name on the last list of executions that we got from Deborah. Executed for desertion, it said.”
“You knew they’d do that.”
“I wasn’t certain. But she was a deserter. She should have stood her ground and fought.”
“If Marcus had killed her, everyone here would have called him an animal. You send her back and no one bats an eyelid.”
Celia doesn’t reply.
I say, “Blondine would have suffered less if I’d let Marcus kill her.”
*
The next raid is a small one. Among the final material Deborah provided is a list of locations of Hunter bases in northern France, along with details of how many Hunters are at each point. Without this the raids could never take place and never work. We all owe her so much. Celia is busy in meetings with new arrivals. She’s spending more time in administration now, hasn’t been to a training session for days.
So Greatorex is to lead the attack, which is fine: she’s a good leader. She’s serious and professional, like Celia, like all the Hunters, but she seems to have a more human side and to understand her fighters as individuals, each with a different personality, and to each of us she speaks a little differently. With me she jokes a lot, laughs at me. With Nesbitt she’s tough but never critical. With Gabriel she’s business-like. With Sameen she’s encouraging. I respect her and the others do too.