“Reaper won't let it happen,” Fleeter said.
“Reaper used to be my father,” Jack said. “He worked in an office, liked banana sandwiches, watched motor-racing on a Sunday afternoon. He went running lots, and my mother never really understood that. He said it was a better mid-life crisis than having an affair. He collected Star Wars figures. Didn't like milk in his coffee. I saw him crying once when we were watching ET.”
Fleeter went to speak, but said nothing. She shook her head.
“Reaper can't save you all,” Jack said. “But I'm beginning to think I can. Now take us to him.”
Fleeter turned her back on them. For a moment Jack thought she was going to wink out of existence again and leave them all behind, and he knew he would not follow. But then she walked slowly, cautiously out into the street.
Jack and his friends started to follow.
“She was there. She was there!”
“I didn't see anyone,” Rook said.
“There, in that open doorway, watching me!” Lucy-Anne pointed at the building she had only ducked into before realising it was empty and lifeless. She had not been afraid to continue inside, but she had been certain that to do so would be pointless. The woman was already gone.
“Nomad,” Lucy-Anne said. “That's who she is. The wanderer. The ghost of London.”
“Nomad's a myth,” Rook said.
“And what do you think you are to everyone outside?”
Rook looked troubled. He glanced between Lucy-Anne and the empty building, and she could see that he believed what he said—he'd seen no one there, and to him, Nomad was a myth.
“We should get going,” he said. “Dusk soon. Good time to get into the north.”
“There's a boundary?” Lucy-Anne asked.
“Only in your head.” Rook set off and Lucy-Anne followed, but she paused to glance back several times at the open doorway. The place had once been a hotel, and she wondered how many rooms with closed doors still housed the rotten remains of the dead. Amongst them had walked Nomad, seeking a place from which she could observe Lucy-Anne.
She's there in my dreams, and now I'm seeing her for real.
Rook took them through the back end of London—hidden places, alleys and areas that only people who knew they were there would be able to find. Some of them wound behind rows of houses, paths overgrown with rose bushes gone wild and clematis given free rein now that there was no-one there to trim it. Other narrow, cobbled roads seemed to be left over from a much older London emerged from hiding, and if it weren't for the dusty vehicles sitting on flattened tyres, Lucy-Anne might have believed they had gone back in time.
In some places there were bodies. Shrivelled, dried remnants, or gnawed bones scattered by carrion creatures. Lucy-Anne was surprised how quickly the shock faded.
Dusk settled quickly across these hidden places. Shadows seemed to stretch out from where they had been resting during the day, washing across the ground, climbing walls, enveloping everything and striving to hide things from view. Lucy-Anne felt safe with Rook, and she could still see and sometimes hear his birds following them above, or flitting from roof to roof around them. But that did not prevent her from being unsettled as night approached.
Going north made the darkness deeper.
As Rook led the way, Lucy-Anne noticed something of a change come over him. At first she thought perhaps it was the failing light that seemed to bleed some of his confidence. But he moved slower, more cautiously, until he stopped at the end of an alleyway leading out onto a wide shopping street. He stood facing away from her with his arm held out, and a rook shadowed down and landed on his upturned wrist.
The bird was silent, head jerking left and right and looking everywhere but at Rook.
“What is it?” Lucy-Anne asked.