‘Just do what I said, Tea. Remember what I said.’
Before I can ask what she means, voices coming floating along the walkway. I switch the torch off on my phone and drop it into my lap. The door opens, smacking against the wall with a bang.
‘. . . too much of a coincidence,’ the Glasgow leader is saying. ‘We find the thing, and then the girl claims to know something about it? There has to be something in it. We should interrogate her.’
‘She doesn’t know anything, Ross.’ The Edinburgh leader’s voice, loud and so close it sets my nerves alight. ‘I don’t know what she’s playing at. We’ll discipline her once this is all over, find out what she’s up to.’
He clicks a button, and a beam of light sweeps across the room. The leaders fall into silence. There’s a dull groan of plastic on tiles as Teacake shifts in her chair. I can feel Allie’s breath on my shoulder, shallow and warm. My pulse is so loud I’m amazed they can’t hear it.
‘Jesus Christ. I still can’t believe this.’ A light scratching sound, followed by a whimper from Teacake. I picture the Edinburgh leader running a finger over her face, touching her wings, and my chest tightens with anger.
‘We need to make a decision,’ he says. ‘We’ve wasted enough time as it is.’
Ross grunts in agreement. ‘Aye. It’s gonnae get out of hand if the followers catch wind of this.’
They’re divided. Ross is torn between contacting ‘administration’ to tell them about Teacake – ‘the thing’, as he calls her – and selling her to a research centre, splitting the reward between them. For a while, the Edinburgh leader, Damien, keeps quiet, listening to Ross talk through their different options. But then footsteps move across the room. There’s another long moment of silence, broken only by a tiny whimper from Teacake.
‘We should destroy it,’ Damien says. ‘Break its wings. Throw it off the roof.’
The beam of light sweeps from right to left.
‘Are you mad? If administration finds out we had a Being and killed it—’
‘Administration are crooks. They’re frauds,’ Damien says. ‘If we tell them, they’ll just ship it off to America for testing anyway. We won’t see a penny of it.’
‘Let’s do it ourselves, then,’ Ross says. ‘Now, before they can find out. That centre in California is offering a reward of—’
‘Who gives a shit about some reward? I’m talking about power.’ Damien’s voice begins to pick up pace. ‘There are over a hundred believers here. We could have more if we bring the Newcastle and Manchester chapters up. Imagine it: all those people, hundreds of them, all standing together – and then this thing, this demon in our midst, falling through the air, breaking apart on the concrete. Do you not see? This thing is evil – Christ, it must be, if it’s been pushed out of heaven. We’d be the ones to send it falling down to earth! That makes us closer to the Creator than anyone else alive.’
He goes on and on, describing how they’d appear on every news channel in the world, how converts would flock to them from all over the globe, how they’d outsize the London and New York chapters in a couple of days. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the images he’s describing swirl behind the lids. Allie keeps muttering ‘Come on, Teacake, please’ below her breath. Whatever she’s willing her to do, Teacake doesn’t comply.
Then my phone starts to buzz.
The men’s chatter cuts out.
‘What’s that?’ says Damien.
One of them takes a step. Towards us.
That’s when I stop thinking.
I leap out from behind the control panel, snatch the torch from Damien’s hand and throw it across the room. It smashes against one of the control panels and shatters, leaving us in darkness. One of the men lunges for me, but I kick him in the shins and push him to the ground. ‘Get her, Allie! Go!’
Swears and bumps fill the darkness. Allie grabs the back of Teacake’s chair and pulls her through the door, scrambling to untie the ropes as she does so. Another hand grabs my sleeve, but I slip out of my hoody and follow Allie through the door. I slam it shut and jam the chair, now empty of Teacake, under the doorknob. It won’t hold long, but a ten-second head start could be all that we need.
‘Go! Go!’
We turn towards the staircase that we came up. Before we can run back down, we see a cluster of Standing Fallen members, all ashen-faced and slow, ambling up the stairs towards us. A few of them look up, their jaws dropping as they see Teacake. The kids from the rooftop are among them; the little girl clutches the boy’s arm, her dark eyes huge and unblinking.
I spin around and push Teacake in the opposite direction, towards a second staircase leading upwards. After just a few steps, the door to the control room bursts open and the two men spill out, their heads twisting in all directions. Damien sprints after us. Ross leans over the barrier and shouts at the members staring slack-jawed up at us to move.
My legs have never worked so fast. I leap up the stairs three at a time, one hand holding Allie’s, and another pushing the spot between Teacake’s wings. I’m too scared to look back, but I can hear the men’s footsteps drawing closer, their heavy breathing just a few metres behind us. I bound forward and push open the fire-escape door at the end of the final staircase. We stumble out, tripping over each other –
On to the roof.
There’s nowhere to go – only forward, towards the edge. No wall to hold us back, no barriers. Up here the evening wind feels icy on my bare arms, and strong – strong enough to pull us from the rooftop and drag us into the sea beyond. My head starts to spin, but I grab Allie’s hand and follow her and Teacake towards the edge. Ross and Damien come running through the doorway. Other members hurry after them, their eyes wide and mouths gaping.
‘Stay back!’ Allie shouts. ‘If you come any closer, she’ll jump. Her wings are still weak. There’s no way she’d survive the fall.’
It’s a risky lie – they’ve seen Teacake zipping around McEwan Hall – but in the confusion of the moment it stalls them: they might want Teacake to die, but only in front of an audience. Damien holds the others back.
‘That’s not your choice to make,’ he shouts to us. ‘That thing is a fallen angel, a manifestation of evil. It’s not up to you to decide what becomes of her.’
‘It’s not up to you either—’ Allie begins to shout, but a sudden gust of wind sends us staggering sideways, knocking the breath out of me. Damien and Ross rush forward. This is it. This is the end –
But then Teacake begins to speak.
‘You’re wrong about God. You’re wrong about everything.’
Her voice is soft and lilting, almost carried away by the wind, but the men slam to a halt. For a moment, I forget about the crowd surrounding us, about the wind and the fact that we’re on a rooftop twenty metres above the ground. This is it. She’s learned to talk. She’s going to tell us her secrets.
But then I see Allie nodding, and it clicks: these are the words she whispered to Teacake down in the control room, a speech for her to parrot. Even with the Standing Fallen leaders just a few metres away, I find myself beaming at Allie. I would never have thought of that.
‘Go on,’ she says, loud enough only for Teacake and me to hear. ‘You can do this, Tea.’
Teacake closes her eyes and begins, in her strange, musical voice, to repeat Allie’s words.