Dylan whimpered quietly beside him, horrified by the thought, but Tristan nodded without hesitation. That had been what they’d agreed, after all.
“You and your soul may never tell others of the knowledge you possess. If you do, your lives will be forfeit, and the lives of any you have told.”
Again, Tristan nodded. Dylan did too.
The Inquisitor’s threats didn’t matter; neither of them would say anything about this to another living soul. Ever.
The Inquisitor bowed its head. “Then we are finished.”
Relief made Dylan sag against Tristan. She watched the Inquisitor turn, hardly able to believe it was over. Then it disappeared, and the dawn light seemed dark.
Tristan shifted suddenly and Dylan knew he had regained control of his body. The very first thing he did was grab her with both hands and haul her into a bone-cracking hug. Dylan couldn’t breathe, but rather than pulling back she wound her own arms around him and squeezed tighter.
“We’re free, Dylan.”
“Please,” she whispered, face pressed into the thick fabric of his jumper, the scent of smoke rising from him. “Please, can we go home now?”
“Yes.” Tristan said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I think we can.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
It seemed a long time later that they finally stood outside Dylan’s building. Their building, Tristan supposed. He lived here now.
He had a home.
Hopefully, he still would tomorrow.
It had taken them hours to return to Glasgow, silent, stricken and without Jack’s car for transport. And Tristan had the feeling that it wasn’t over yet. A glance at his watch told him it was almost midday, well over twenty-four hours since they had left the day before. Dylan’s parents were going to be frantic. Frantic and very, very angry.
“Come on,” Dylan mumbled beside him. She was so knackered, she was swaying on her feet. “Let’s get this over with.”
It took her two attempts to slot her key in the lock and she couldn’t quite get her hands to work together. After two aborted attempts, Tristan gently ushered her out of the way and turned it for her. He practically had to carry her up the steps.
“Well, this is going to add credence to our story,” Dylan told him sleepily as they reached the front door of the flat. “I feel drunk.”
They had tried to come up with a plan for why they’d been gone an entire night. A party? An accident? A roadtrip? They knew whatever their story was, Joan wasn’t going to let them get away with it.
After everything they’d been through, everything they’d done since the appearance of the Inquisitor. Something as trivial as an alibi for Dylan’s mother seemed nonsensical to Tristan, but Dylan was right to be concerned. It was Joan’s flat, not Dylan’s. And, no matter how mature she seemed to Tristan, Dylan was a minor. If Joan threw him out, Dylan’s mother and the authorities could, and would, stop her going with him.
That would be a death sentence.
They stepped into the hallway.
“No, wait just a moment, officer,” he heard Joan’s voice saying. “That’s somebody now.”
Dylan’s dad, James, stuck his head into the corridor.
“It’s them,” he said to Joan. Then he advanced on them.
He was a big guy. Taller than Tristan, fit for an older man. As he came prowling down the hallway Tristan wondered if it might make a better impression to back away, as if intimidated – and he was, slightly – but there was nowhere to go.
“You have some nerve!” James growled “Where the hell have you been?”
“Just out,” Dylan mumbled, blinking owlishly. She didn’t seem to realise that her dad wasn’t talking to her.
“Dylan?” Joan’s voice was tight and tense, though it didn’t hold the threat of violence embedded in James’s. She rushed down the corridor. “Are you all right?”
James gently but firmly took Dylan by the arm and led her into the living room. Tristan followed, and sat down next to her when her father had deposited her on the sofa.
“Where have you been?” Joan this time. Arms folded and eyes narrowed.
“We went on a trip.” Dylan uttered.
“A trip?” Joan’s eyebrows rose up until they almost disappeared into her hair. “You have been gone all night. What sort of fifteen year old goes on an all-night trip without telling anyone?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Dylan said, sounding perfectly like a sulking teenager. Tristan couldn’t tell if it was an act or real, it was so convincing. “It was sort of spontaneous. Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Joan echoed. “Sorry!” She waved one arm dramatically in the air. “You’ve been gone almost two days with no contact. You made me think you were dead – again. I have to stay home from work so I’ve lost the money from today’s shift, we’ve been worried out of our minds and all you can say is sorry? Where did you go? What on earth were you doing that was so important?” Dylan opened her mouth, but she didn’t get the chance to say anything. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, young lady. In fact, I do.”
A change of focus. Now it was Tristan pinned under the spotlight.
“You.” Joan pointed at him, finger piercing the air. “You. That’s what’s changed.”
James moved to stand at Joan’s shoulder, a menacing presence. “I don’t know much about you, but it seems this change in Dylan has happened since you came on the scene.” There was a hard edge to his words. “You’re clearly older than her, and I don’t know your background, but it seems to me you’re leading my daughter astray.”
“It isn’t Tristan’s fault!” Dylan butted in. “It was my idea, and it was me who wanted to go on the trip.”
“Right, OK,” James stepped between the two of them. Neither Joan nor Dylan looked remotely impressed by his intervention. Undaunted, he turned to Tristan. “I notice you’re keeping quiet. What have you to say for yourself?”
Tristan stared at him. As Joan’s anger had escalated, his had calmed.
“I’m sorry,” he began softly.
Joan scoffed.
“James, Joan… I love your daughter,” Tristan continued, “I really do. She’s everything to me.” A quick glance at Joan. She looked stiff and unyielding.
“Out.” James’s voice was quiet, but firm.
“No! You don’t understand!” Dylan made to reach for Tristan, but her father sliced his hand through the air.
“We’ve given him enough chances, Dylan. Something weird is going on and it’s putting you in danger. You’ve been helpful, Tristan, but you’ve caused too much disruption. We don’t need you under Joan’s roof any more – not now Dylan has almost fully recovered.”
“Please—” Tristan began, but James had already strode out of the living room and opened the front door for him.
“Out.”
“You don’t understand, I can’t—”
“Don’t make me call the police, son. Just go.” James moved back towards him, grasped him by the shoulder and started manoeuvring him forcefully back down the hallway and through the flat door. Tristan fought the urge to wrestle with him – redoubling his efforts when he heard Dylan screaming at her mother.
The tightness in his chest hit on the landing outside the flat. Shards of pain raked his legs at the top of the stairs. He tried to brace, reluctant to go further, knowing Dylan would be feeling the same pain – or worse.
“Tristan, don’t fight me,” James warned, softly forcing Tristan down another step. “Leave. Now.”
“Please, listen,” Tristan gasped. “You don’t understand what you’re doing to Dylan. You’re hurting her.”
“She’ll get over it.” James gently pushed him one more step away.
No, Tristan thought. She won’t. But the words wouldn’t come out, he was in too much pain.
They’d been further away from each other before, but never like this, knowing they were about to be truly separated.
“Dad!” Dylan burst out of the flat door and stu
mbled towards her father. “Stop! You can’t do this.”
She didn’t get as far as the top of the stairs. Her legs gave out on the landing. Tears were streaking down her face and she clutched at her back.
“Dylan!” Tristan croaked.
“Look what you’re doing to her.” James’s voice was rough in Tristan’s ear as he shook his shoulder. “Just go, so she can pick herself back up.” Without warning, he charged forwards and Tristan had to move with him to stop himself from toppling down the full flight.
Three more steps and they were on the floor below. Dylan’s scream of agony ripped through the air.
“You’re killing her,” Tristan ground out through gritted teeth.
“She’ll be all right.”
“No, she won’t.”
Unable to take the pain any more, Tristan dropped where he stood, sprawling across the first-floor landing. Aggravated, James clambered roughly over him and went to haul him up by the arm.
“Tristan!” Tilting his head, Tristan could see that Dylan had pulled herself to the top of the stairs. The hand that she stretched out towards him was covered in blood.
“James,” Tristan begged, “look at your daughter.”
James hesitated for a moment, looked up and gasped. “Dylan! Stay there, sweetheart. You’ve hurt yourself!”
“No,” Tristan mumbled, disoriented by pain. “You’ve hurt her.”
James looked down at him, at his slumped body, and all the colour leeched from his face. Tristan knew that the blood he could feel saturating the back of his shirt must be smeared across the floor.
“What the hell…?” James whispered.
“I told you,” Tristan said. “We can’t explain. But you can’t keep us apart. You just can’t.”
For several long seconds, James simply stared. Tristan could hear Dylan’s soft sniffles above. Her father must have, too, because he looked towards her and something changed in his expression.
“All right,” he said gruffly. “All right, let’s get you back up the stairs first.”
It took some doing, because Tristan’s legs didn’t feel like they could support him, but James managed to hoist him up to the second-floor landing and drop him down beside Dylan. Ignoring James, who was hovering protectively over his daughter, Tristan drew Dylan against his chest. She was wracked with shivers, pale as a ghost.
“I don’t…” James shook his head. “What’s happening?”
“It was the train crash, Dad,” Dylan admitted quietly. “I’m not the same as I was. And I need Tristan.”
“But—”
“We can’t say any more,” Tristan said firmly. The Inquisitor had been clear. The little they’d given away might already have been too much.
James sighed, reached up to run his fingers through his hair. “Let’s just get you back inside, deal with your injuries. Joan can—”
“No!” Dylan shook her head. “You can’t tell her. It’s important.”
“Dylan, you’re bleeding.”
“She’s not any more,” Tristan promised. Then, to Dylan, “Show him.”
Somewhat awkwardly, because Tristan couldn’t bear to let her go just yet, Dylan swivelled and lifted her shirt at the back. Tristan knew what James would see beneath the blood-soaked material: the smooth skin of her back, marred only by faint white scar lines.
“That’s impossible,” James murmured.
“You see, Dad?” Dylan said. “We have to be together. I know it seems crazy, but it’s real.”
“What’s going on here?” Joan’s sudden appearance in the flat doorway made the three of them jump. “Why is he still here?”
“Mum—”
“It’s all right, Dylan,” James cut in. “I’ll deal with this.”
“Deal with what?”
“We’ve had a discussion, the three of us,” James said. “Tristan and I have had words – man to man – and I think we’ve sorted a few things.”
“Man to man?” Joan’s voice carried a hint of scathing, but more than anything she sounded weary. Worn thin with worry. Tristan felt a pang of guilt for everything the woman had been through.
James cleared his throat. “I think we understand each other now. There will be no more skipping school, no more keeping Dylan out late.”
Tristan dipped his chin in a meek nod. “Yes, sir.” He lifted his head to see James staring at Dylan’s mum, something soft in his face.
“A second chace, Joan?” James breathed.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“I can’t see what they’re doing!” Dylan complained.
She looked back at Tristan. He was reclined across her bed, reading her Kindle, the glow from the screen illuminating his face, since she’d made him turn all the lights off.
“I’m going to have to open the window.”
He didn’t say anything, so she unhooked the lock and, as quietly as possible, opened up the sash. Tilting out as far as she could, she craned her neck until the front of the building came into view. What she saw there made her jerk back inside and leap onto the bed.
“Ew!”
“What is it?” Tristan didn’t look up from his book.
“They were kissing!”
He kept on reading, but a slight smile hitched his lips. “Well, what did you expect? They were on a date.”
“But they’re kissing!”
Giving up, Tristan put the Kindle down and gazed at her, his eyes laughing. He pulled her to him. Then, as he had every day for the past four months, he whispered into her ear, “I love you.”
And as they had every day for the past four months, the words made Dylan glow, inside and out.
“I love you too,” she told him. “Before you came, I was so unhappy. I didn’t have anyone – I just wanted to hide away. Now, I can’t wait to go out and explore the world with you. I want to see everything, do everything – with you.”
“We will,” Tristan promised. “We have time now – time to live. Although,” a twinkle glittered in his eye, “I really hope you don’t want to experience any more of those school dances, because one was enough.”
“Oh, but you haven’t been to a Christmas dance yet!” Dylan told him. “You can’t miss that! You haven’t tried the Gay Gordon! Strip the Willow! You’d make a great Dashing White Sergeant!”
Tristan groaned and Dylan laughed, delighted in her teasing, in her boyfriend – in her life. Staring into his cobalt blue eyes, she dipped her head down and kissed him. His arms wrapped around her, pressing her even closer. They were wonderfully, heart-poundingly alive.
EPILOGUE
The wind was howling. Or was that the wraiths? Susanna wasn’t sure. She felt dizzy, disoriented.
This wasn’t how it usually happened. Where was the world? Where were the tower blocks and rusting cars? Where was the blood stain on the pavement from Jack trying to haul himself away from danger – and towards death.
“What is this?” Jack hollered. It was hard to hear him over the whooshing, whirling and screaming.
“The wasteland,” Susanna shouted back.
“Why doesn’t it look like it did before?”
Because it was real now. The bloody red core that lay beneath every soul’s projection. This was the underbelly where the wraiths didn’t have to follow the rules of sun and shadow, because the burning ball in the sky shone deep red, keeping the landscape in a permanent state of semi-darkness.
Susanna stared at Jack, dread bubbling in her stomach. This is how the Inquisitor had punished them. Crossing the wasteland like this – following the thin sliver of inky-black pavement that wound through the blood-soaked sands – was almost impossible.
It was a death sentence.
“Jack,” Susanna said, turning to the soul she’d led too far from his path, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Acknowledgements
Thank you very much to the following people:
To Ben Illis at The BIA. The train just goes on and on and on. Here’s to the little book that c
ould.
To my family, thank you for letting me disappear inside my head. For all the hours I spent saying ‘hang on’, ‘just a minute’ and ‘nearly done’. I hope you agree they were worth it.
To Floris Books, thank you for welcoming me into the family. I look forward to continuing this exciting adventure with you.
And to you, if you read Ferryman and came back to see how Tristan and Dylan fared in the real world. Thank you readers. (A special nǐ hǎo to readers in China. Wǒ hěn gāoxìng nǐ yě ài Tristan hé Dylan. I hope that makes sense – I tried!)
Claire McFall
Follow KelpiesEdge or search “Ferryman soundtrack” on to listen to our specially selected soundtrack for the novels.
Together The xx
I Will Follow You Into The Dark Death Cab for Cutie
Skinny Love Bon Iver
Burning House Cam
In Dreams Ben Howard
The Killing Moon Echo & the Bunnymen
The River PJ Harvey
First Day Of My Life Bright Eyes
A Thousand Years Christina Perri
Riverside Agnes Obel
We Found Each Other In The Dark City and Colour
I Will Wait Mumford & Sons
Lucky Bif Naked
All the Little Lights Passenger
Say Something A Great Big World
COPYRIGHT
Kelpies is an imprint of Floris Books
First published in 2017 by Floris Books
© 2017 Claire McFall
This eBook edition published in 2017
Claire McFall has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act of 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the prior permission of Floris Books, Edinburgh
www.florisbooks.co.uk
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards the publication of this volume
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