Barrier

by Mary Victoria Johnson

  He laughed coolly, remarking, “Already wrapped around her little finger, aren’t you? But then, she always did have a way with persuading others her way was the only way. You’re not the first to fall. I think, though, at the moment, she’s too busy killing off my assassins to come to your aid.”

  “Assassins?” My jaw dropped at the connotation of the word.

  “The Farthing twins have many enemies, all but few of whom don’t have any power to extract revenge. It took minor persuading.” Madon smirked at my open expression. “But really they were more of a distraction. No, I’m here to talk to you.”

  Weariness rapidly replaced my panic.

  “Have we not already been over this? The surveyor visit, the rhododendrons…”

  Madon didn’t flinch as another Rip, sounding like a burst of static, followed by another high-pitched scream echoed from the alleyway.

  “She can open Boundary and save my friends. Can you do that?” I went on, finding courage from the memory of the recent visit. When he didn’t answer, expression darkening, I pushed even further. “And if you want to know why I’m trusting her over you, I’ll give you one word—punishments.” I would never forget what Madon would do to punish us in Boundary.

  He laughed with so much bitterness, the gesture was nearly a snarl. “Demitra and Deio don’t usually lie, if they can help it, which is part of their allurement. But understand this—omitting the truth is just as dangerous, if not more.”

  He had a point, but it was one that I couldn’t care less about. I knew they had committed all manner of atrocities, but they didn’t affect me; I would comply until we freed my friends, and that would be the end of it.

  “Why do you care? Why can’t you leave me alone?”

  Madon removed his hat, closing his eyes and pacing. “All right. All right. I can see you’re still beyond reason. I’ll let you be for now if you promise to push Demitra about your past. She’s evasive because she has so much to hide. Secrets that will send you running back to me.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said with as much aggression as I could muster.

  “So are you. When you change your mind, use the Others to—”

  Like somebody had bashed a brick against my head, I was suddenly overwhelmed with dizziness, and something that felt like static.

  Madon shouted in surprise, jumping backwards so that his trench coat billowed. I leapt out of the way, just in time to avoid being crushed as a lamp post crashed to the ground.

  My head snapped up in shock, but Madon was gone.

  “What…?”

  Demitra came rushing around the corner of the alleyway, eyes wide.

  “Damn!” she swore, observing the lamp post in amazement. “Damn! Damn!”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Of course you didn’t, you idiot,” she snapped, kicking the post in frustration. “I did! Damn it…I can’t do anything anymore without breaking the bloody barrier! Madon is such a…such a…” She trailed off, too angry for words. Then, “This is what I mean.” She pointed viciously at the lamp post. “This is what these things that are leaking through are doing!”

  Still swearing, Demitra spun around and stormed off down the road, leaving me running in her wake. Mind spinning, I was certain I saw her wipe blood from her hands onto her shawl, blood that was almost definitely not her own.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So you want me to find your parents?” Andrew repeated for the umpteenth time. “But you have no idea what their names were, where they were from, or anything?”

  “That about sums it up,” I admitted.

  As I’d expected, he hadn’t been pleased with how long I’d been gone yesterday. We’d found him pacing outside the chip shop, claiming to have been a minute away from calling the police for help in finding me. Demitra had only laughed in his face and waltzed off, leaving me to pacify him—which, eventually, I’d been able to do, after promising to never leave for such a long stretch of time again.

  We were sitting having a breakfast of dry toast with tea in Demitra’s flat. She had left on an ‘errand’. Andrew thought it was more along the lines of body disposal, which I had to admit, was probably correct.

  Andrew took a sip of tea, wrinkling his nose and pouring the rest down the drain. “I hate tea without milk,” he complained. “What is England coming to these days? Oh, don’t look at me like that, Evelyn! I’ll try my best, promise.”

  “Good.” I leant back, satisfied.

  The room fell silent; there was not even a clock making any noise. My head was still buzzing, partially from lack of sleep, and partially from the emotional rollercoaster of the past few days. How odd it felt, to be sitting here casually drinking tea!

  “I don’t like Demitra,” Andrew muttered into his empty mug, his face creasing into a frown. “Or Deio, for that matter. I mean, she must have done something pretty awful for those girls to come after her like that.”

  “Madon sent them,” I pointed out, unsure why I felt the need to defend her. “And he would torture us for simply speaking out of turn, so killing someone for becoming antagonistic isn’t so far-fetched.”

  Andrew raised a fair eyebrow, saying sarcastically, “That makes it all right then. Look, Evelyn, I worry—”

  “Don’t,” I interrupted. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Inside, of course, I was rather enjoying having him act so concernedly, though I would never admit this out loud.

  “This is insane, you know,” Andrew shook his head and got up to wash out the cups. “Sometimes, with all this banter about ‘layers’, evil overlords, and five lost teenagers, I can almost forget there’s a war going on.”

  “Not a bad thing.” I stared out of the window. Even in the weak, overcast light, I could make out the recruitment posters slapped onto every lamp post, and the obvious absence of young men on the streets.

  “Isn’t it?” He shrugged philosophically.

  We sat together on the settee, thinking to ourselves, until voices from downstairs signalled Demitra’s return.

  Andrew made a face. “Great. Time to get thrown out with the scraps again.”

  “You can stay.”

  “Somehow,” he sighed, “I don’t think that’s your decision. Besides, I can use this time—and this time, I really do mean an hour—to do some of your research.”

  Demitra scowled at him as he passed her. “What did Madon say to you?” she demanded. “Did he do anything?”

  “Nothing new.” I squirmed under her poisonous glare. “Honestly, he left as soon as the lamp post came down.”

  She cursed, kicking the kitchen cupboards and throwing down her shawl so harshly, a snapping sound whipped through the air.

  “I hate him. I really do,” she spat. “Damn, what was he thinking? He knew those girls wouldn’t be able to do any damage, but arming them with knives? He wanted them to hurt me, not fatally, but enough to cause a scare, enough that I’d have to dispose of them. Do you know how sick that is? And knowing I’d have to resort to Ripping, knowing what that would mean!”

  She flopped down on the window seat. She had pulled her hair back into a simple ponytail, which was coming loose at the front, and her outfit was more era-appropriate with an embroidered blue blouse and grey skirt; not at all the monster Madon was trying to push me to think she was and nothing like the murderer who had killed three women last night. Only an average, if not slightly withdrawn, seventeen-year-old, possessing a temper.

  “We need to figure this out,” she whispered through her teeth. “Before it gets out of hand.”

  I waited—on edge after the outburst. I needed to trust her, I knew that. She was my only key to opening the door to my friends—but at what point would morals override that fact?

  When people start dying?—a snide voice in my head questioned. That ship had sailed already; perhaps I was more hardened to such things than I believed.

  “Sit down.”

  I did, immediately.

  “Okay, th
en.” Demitra took a long breath. “Let’s get down to business. As you saw last night, Ripping is having an almost immediate effect now. Every time the barrier is breached, more Others are flooding in.”

  “Others,” I repeated, frowning. “Like those Harriet saw.”

  For some reason, I had never made that connection before, and now that I had, I felt like an idiot.

  “Harriet? Oh, that girl from the farm.” Demitra’s mouth curled into a humourless smile. “Yes. Some people are aware, shall we say, of their presence. Even I cannot sense them that well. All that I know is that most of them are attracted to heat sources, like fires, and they have an irritating habit of breaking things when there are too many in one area. Luckily, I’ll be shocked if you can even nearly Rip by the end of today, let alone create something big enough for trouble.”

  “I can’t Rip, Demitra. Penny could, even Avery could a little, but when she showed me I never managed to do anything.”

  “You’ll have to learn.” She shrugged unsympathetically. “I need you. Deio and I won’t be able to break the barrier alone. Not long enough to rescue everybody, anyway.”

  I gasped. “You mean there’s a chance some of them will be left behind?”

  “There’s a chance the whole thing is so unstable, it will collapse on them when we try to break it.” She turned to peer out of the window. “In which case, whoever’s left inside will be squashed between the layers. But there’s a lesser chance of that happening if you can help us, so I suggest you try hard. We’ll need three to break the barrier.”

  She didn’t care if anything happened to them. If Penny was the only one who escaped alive, the threat would be gone—but also her death would solve the problem. I swallowed, refusing to think of it.

  “Tell me what to do,” I whispered, glancing down at my nails and realizing I had chewed them down to the stubs.

  Demitra smiled again, cloudy eyes shifting from the window to my face. “Don’t worry. You’ll be able to do it. I’d bet on it.”

  I grinned back. She was obviously more confident about that than I felt.

  “That’s why I was upset that Penny tried teaching you,” she explained with a touch of bitterness. “The last thing I needed was for multiples of the same problem.”

  My smiled slipped away. Then why did she teach Penny in the first place, knowing the issues it would cause?

  “Anyway—” Demitra clapped her hands, snapping those uneasy thoughts away—“I want you to levitate this teacup. Basically, you have to flex the space around it. I won’t go into detail. Just concentrate on it until you can see the wobbly lines, then try to lift it. Simplest trick in the book. Also the best trick for parties.”

  I remembered my failed attempt to try to move powder pots within Boundary and winced to myself. There was much more at stake this time around, however, and there was no bigger motivation than the thought of seeing Fred again.

  I stared at the cup until my eyes burned and my vision swam, until I couldn’t help but blink away the pain. Wobbly lines. What wobbly lines?

  “I can’t!” I complained, rubbing my eyes.

  “Of course you can,” she snapped. “Watch.”

  It took less than a heartbeat for the cup to rise smoothly off the table, before being set back down again.

  “If there’s any doubt, it will be impossible. Don’t overthink it. Bring to mind another strong emotion to mask the uncertainty.”

  Emotional memories weren’t exactly a rarity with me, so I sifted through each significant moment until I was nearly sobbing. Nothing worked, with every attempt ending in the same painful blink of defeat.

  Demitra was rapidly losing patience, no matter how hard she tried to mask it. She clenched her fists and jaw, her foot tapping the floor until she could sit no longer and started pacing back and forth across the room.

  “Again,” she would retort every time I blinked.

  “It’s useless.” I sat back in frustration, arms crossed. “I haven’t even come close.”

  “You’re just not trying hard enough!” Demitra shouted, the room starting to buzz with static pressure again. “You should be able to do this!”

  “I can’t do anything else!” I cried. “I’m not trying to be awkward, I just can’t do it! Besides, what makes you so certain?”

  She gritted her teeth, eyes closed in a struggle to maintain control. “Perhaps if I dragged Andrew in here and put a gun to his head, you’d be able to do it,” she suggested coldly. “Freddie alone obviously isn’t enough.”

  My mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.

  “Except it isn’t just Fred, is it,” Demitra mused, words sharpened to hurt. “Mustn’t forget Lucas, Avery, Tressa, and Penny. It’s their lives on the line too.”

  “Look,” I said instead, my voice shaking a little. “If there is anything else that might help, anything at all—”

  She cut me off with a vehement shaking of her head, causing more strands of hair to slip out of the ponytail.

  “You need to be able to Rip, Evelyn,” she hissed. “Or else the chance of this going badly multiplies by a thousand.”

  I wrapped an ebony curl around my finger, the tip of which began sporting a bluish tinge. I had to force back my tears.

  I tried once more, but my eyes were so exhausted that they fluttered closed after a few seconds.

  “I can’t!”

  “You have to want it more!” she screamed, something snapping. “Don’t you understand? You’re supposed to be able to do this, you’re just not trying! Why do you have to be so pathetic?”

  Pathetic. I hated that word.

  Panic turned to anger, and as Demitra shrieked at me, I found myself wishing she would just disappear. Or calm down and just admit that I was ordinary.

  Then the cup shattered. Shards exploded across the room causing me to jump back to avoid being hit.

  “Did you do that?” Demitra asked, also having jumped back.

  I shook my head, heart hammering. “No.”

  She stared as though she didn’t believe me. “You must have. We’re the only two people here.”

  I think we both reached the same conclusion at the same time. Others.

  “You must have done something to bring them here,” Demitra snapped. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The lights exploded, showering even more glass everywhere. Then one by one, books began hurling themselves from the shelves, pages flying loose of their own accord. We ducked down.

  “Stop! Whatever you did, you’ve got to make them stop!”

  But how could I? I didn’t understand what I’d done. Stop, please just stop, stop, stop…

  Then they did. The rushing pressure stopped. The pages fell to the ground. And the noises faded. It went completely quiet.

  My jaw dropped.

  “Did you…did you actually stop them?” Demitra gasped softly, uncurling from her protective crouch on the ground and staring at me in begrudging amazement.

  “I don’t know,” I muttered, flushing.

  “Evelyn, Evelyn.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re such an unassuming dark horse, it’s actually laughable. These things don’t just pack up when anyone tells them to, you know.”

  “Is this good, then?”

  Demitra bent, collecting all the papers up by hand—too nervous to Rip them together again. Her brow was furrowed in deep thought, and I bent down and scooped up the pottery fragments whilst waiting for an answer.

  Eventually, she murmured, “Well, it’s not what I was expecting. Better than nothing, to be sure, since you’ll be able to help keep the Others under control when we split the barrier. And it’ll buy more time. But it still means getting all five out safely is going to be a challenge.”

  I swallowed. “So…there’s no chance I’ll be able to…you know…do both?”

  She shook her head stiffly.

  I was proud of myself. Having special abilities was quite something to be proud of, even
if it wasn’t the exact gift Demitra had been hoping for. Maybe I wasn’t quite so ordinary after all.

  “Don’t know how we’re going to practise this.” Demitra frowned, sliding the books back in place. “Not without risking serious damage. But imagine if you could use the Others as a weapon…if you could get them to do things for you…”

  She gave me a rather disturbing smile.

  “Excuse me. I have to go to see to something.”

  Just like that, Demitra had grabbed her shawl and was gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Andrew had booked into a cheap lodgings down the street not wanting to stay another night on the hard floor of the flat and with Demitra making him feel distinctively uncomfortable staying there. When we met up he told me that my news could have nothing on his. He suggested we should go to a place we could talk where nobody could overhear, that being the seaside.

  “It seems a bit extravagant,” I’d said.

  “Trust me.”

  And that had been that. I had never been to the seaside before and was at once excited and fearful.

  The train, compared to the bus, was heaven. I was beginning to appreciate them. Even in third class, there weren’t many passengers except perhaps for city-dwellers escaping to family in the country; people were clearly feeling uncomfortable about holidaying during wartime. This meant we could stretch across a whole seat each, and I greedily took advantage of my own window.

  If I forgot for one moment how fast we were going, and how many things could go wrong. It was actually one of the most enjoyable journeys I had ever been on. The train was smaller than most, and the windows opened about halfway down to let in a fresh breeze.

  It stopped at a little station only a short time later, with only the two of us getting off. From there we walked in a silence that was not awkward, but suspenseful.

  “Is the sea not dangerous?” I asked, my nerves starting to bother me with the increasingly salty air. “I mean, what if you fall in?”

  Andrew took my hand in his, refuting, “No. It starts out quite shallow, and gets deeper very gradually. There are currents and drop-offs, of course, but as long as you stay on the beach you’ll be fine. Have you really not even seen any large bodies of water before?”