‘If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘Ah, now your story just gets more and more intriguing, doesn’t it? Time traveller, assassin . . .’
Our upper arms nudge against each other. He seems happy not to pry, to walk beside me, his arm resting against mine like we belong.
We see fewer and fewer overalls. The plain-clothed Imps look lean and desperate, even for Imps. Recessed eyes, angular cheekbones, fingers like twigs. I remember this from canon. The Imps who work in the Pastures live nearest to the gates and are the rulers of the city. The ones that are fed and clothed and given a small allowance. But the Imps nearer the river look close to death, their lips tinged blue.
I watch as the sun slips down the sky. Back home, it’s springtime – the air tastes balmy and sits easy in your lungs. Here, it’s early autumn, and the cold begins to worm its way beneath my tunic and into my bones. I briefly wonder what time it is back home, whether Mum and Dad have set the table for tea, waiting for me and Nate to return from Comic-Con. I imagine their anxious faces as time ticks by, and I get this lump in my throat like I’ve swallowed a piece of shrapnel.
The air changes and the wind picks up, delivering a pungent odour of fish and sewage.
‘We’re getting nearer to the river,’ Ash says. ‘I need to get back to the city gates. If I run, I can still make the last bus.’ He cups my elbow with his hand – a spot of hot sun. ‘I hate leaving you here, you nearly got hung in the nice part of town.’
‘That was nice?’ Alice says.
He smiles his crooked smile. ‘Just keep heading south and you’ll hit the river soon enough. Just stay away from the rebels, yeah? They’re bad news. I know it’s a worthy cause, Imp emancipation and all that, but they’re a bunch of ruthless bastards – they’d kill their granny if they thought she was a Gem.’ He gestures briefly to Alice. ‘And you’ll have trouble convincing them that Bigfoot here hasn’t had her helixes tampered with.’
Alice sighs. ‘Jesus, will everyone stop going on about how fit I am.’
He turns to leave and catches my cheek with his lips. A weird feeling gathers in my stomach; a twist of longing.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
He cocks his head to the side and holds me for a moment with those amazing, frosted-blue eyes. Then he turns and jogs back up the street.
‘I need a hero,’ Katie sings, just loud enough for me to hear.
‘Oh, sod off,’ I say.
Alice joins in. ‘I’m holding out for a hero till the end of the night—’
‘Guys, seriously!’ I say.
Katie clutches her heart and throws her head back. ‘And he’s gotta be strong and he’s got a big dong . . .’
We start laughing, really loudly, like we’re back home, the three of us lined up on my sofa, watching shit telly and throwing popcorn and insults at Simon Cowell. But something about our laughter sounds so out of place in this strange, concrete world – like bird-song in a warzone – and gradually it tapers into silence.
‘I guess we keep on walking,’ Alice says.
I reply by moving my feet, the monotony of the tarmac bedding into the soles of my boots.
‘Alice?’ I ask.
She grunts.
‘When you wrote all your fanfic, did you give all the Imps backstories?’
‘What are you getting at?’
I struggle to order my thoughts. ‘It’s just, Ash’s got this rich history which is completely new to me, and most of the Imps we’ve seen aren’t from the film or the novel . . .’ I trail off.
‘That is weird,’ Katie says.
Alice nods. ‘I know what you mean. I don’t think fanfic has the answer though, I think maybe Nate’s right.’
‘Alternate universe?’ I say.
Alice laughs a breathy laugh. ‘This is mental.’
‘So what happens next?’ Katie asks.
Alice pulls at her ragged hair as if trying to make it grow. ‘Bet you wish you’d listened to Violet’s presentation now.’
‘I did,’ Katie says, looking at me, concern registering on her neat features. ‘Honest I did, Vi. It’s just everything here is so messed up it’s hard to remember it all. And you said something about the canon haunting us, so it might help hearing it again.’
‘Then try reading something other than Dickens,’ Alice says.
I step in. ‘So Saskia and Matthew took Rose to meet Thorn at Rebel Headquarters. Which is where we’re going now, to find Nate. Then Thorn took Rose to see Baba.’
‘The psychic zombie?’ Katie says.
I nod. ‘Baba read Rose’s mind, and told Thorn that Rose would be the one to save the Imps.’
‘Through self-sacrifice and love,’ Alice says, unable to resist butting in.
I push on. ‘So Thorn trusted Rose to take the lead in the biggest rebel mission to date – the Harper mission.’
‘And that’s where she met Willow?’ Katie says.
Alice nods and sighs. ‘Ah, Willow. To think, we’re breathing the same air, standing beneath the same sky.’
I get that same tremor of excitement, like we’re back at Comic-Con thinking about Russell Jones. With all the commotion, all the worry about Nate, I’d completely forgotten about Willow.
Eventually, the road opens up. Bombed-out buildings sit at either side, the shadows of their foundations remaining. Weeds push through the cracks in the tarmac and, for a brief moment, I feel relieved just seeing the green. And then I notice them. Thistles. Hundreds and hundreds of thistles. Forcing their way between the paving slabs, nestling between bricks, peering from mounds of rubble.
‘The symbol of the rebels,’ I say.
‘Cut us down and we come back stronger,’ Alice replies, a little dreamy, like we’re back at the cinema watching the film.
I nod. ‘We’re nearly there.’
Rose walked this very path with Saskia and Matthew on her way to meet Thorn for the first time. The thrill of her first successful mission was fading and the nerves were bedding in. I recall how she saw the thistles and said, Is he as spiky as his favourite weed? And Saskia smiled and replied, Even spikier.
Now, it just seems ridiculous that Rose felt nervous. She hadn’t destroyed the thistle-bomb mission, and she hadn’t lost her little brother, and she hadn’t been transported to a different universe. That piece of shrapnel is back and I start to feel sick again.
Alice must be thinking the same, cos she squeezes my hand. ‘He’s not that spiky. Remember, he loved Ruth, didn’t he?’
‘Who’s Ruth?’ Katie asks.
Alice turns to me. ‘You tell her, before I scream.’
‘She was a main part of Thorn’s backstory,’ I say. ‘She was the love of his life years ago, when he was our age, but she was hanged at the Gallows Dance before they could elope. Thorn never recovered.’
Katie gasps. ‘That’s tragic. Poor Thorn.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘And watching the love of his life hang at the hands of the Gems did wonders for his anger issues. He’s a ruthless psycho.’
Alice cackles. ‘Ruth-less, get it?’
Katie manages a half-smile. ‘That would be funny if we were still talking about a book.’