Jenna's tears glittered on her cheeks and her fluid eyes reflected Jack's image. She and Sparky had such a future together.
And Sparky, his big strong mate, so ready with a quip but so sensitive underneath. He might suffer the most over what was to come. But Jenna would tell him why. Jack was confident of that.
He'd told her enough for her to work out why.
Jack left the club without taking one final look at Reaper. He preferred to remember his father as he had been two years before, and he hoped he would have been proud.
Out in the silent, still streets he breathed in stale air and waited for Nomad to join him. She came moments later. Without a word they set off for the museum.
Perhaps she still believed this was not the end.
Jack had soothed some of her pain, but Lucy-Anne could still feel the damage done to her face, and her friends’ expressions when they looked at her told her everything she needed to know.
But she did not care about that. Neither did she care about what Nomad had done to her, and why, though it showed once again that her dreams were ambiguous things.
She cared about Jack and what he had done. It had been her idea, and he had taken it away. Stolen it for himself. Lucy-Anne was the one who should have been in the museum with the bomb—her and Nomad—but now Andrew was with her again, and they were going to try to leave London at last.
Jack had been in her mind. He'd left a sense of himself behind, and it was an almost sensuous feeling, like the memory of a kiss or the promise of making love. She could not help feeling that she'd lost him again, but she would treasure what he had left behind. Maybe she could dream it afresh again and again.
“We can't just let him,” Sparky said. “That's stupid! We can't just let him.”
“He's already there,” Jenna said. “Between one blink and the next, he's gone to the museum.”
And he's already dreaming, Lucy-Anne thought. Jenna was looking at her, the saddest smile she'd ever seen on her friend's face. Lucy-Anne nodded gently, trying not to disturb her wounds. Dreaming us safe.
“Well, he's a fool,” Reaper said, standing, turning to go, and then Sparky was on him, knocking him to the ground and punching with fists and forearms. Lucy-Anne wanted to shout for Sparky but she could not, so she had to sit and watch.
Reaper shrugged him off and Sparky sprang up, pouncing again as soon as Reaper tried to stand. They rolled into a table and sent chairs spilling, glasses smashing to the floor, drinks cans adding their own hollow shouts to the fight.
Reaper growled. The ground vibrated, and Lucy-Anne groaned aloud, standing and staggering towards the fight. Jenna grabbed her arm and held her back.
Andrew appeared from the shadows and smiled at Lucy-Anne. “You're going to be safe,” he said, voice carrying above the struggling boy and man.
Reaper shouted. A window cracked somewhere, a bottle shattered somewhere else. Sparky stood, panting, hands still fisted by his sides.
Reaper stood as well, but he did not shout again. He did not say a word. Lucy-Anne wasn't sure whether he was able to roar anymore, or whether he chose not to. But he sat down again and looked down at his hands, and the rosettes of blood dripping onto them from his bloodied nose.
“Your son is not a fool!” Sparky said. “Get it? D'you get that, you bloody superior dickhead?”
Reaper did not respond.
“He's as far from a fool as anyone I've ever known,” Jenna said. “You know what he's doing, and why?”
“Trying to stop the bomb,” Reaper said.
“That's only a part of it!” Jenna said.