‘Says the man who’s been baking since three,’ Hannah said, smiling back.
‘Ah, but that is good work. Body work. Not up here.’ He tapped his head. ‘That’s what is making you sickly.’
Hannah had become used to this concern from near-strangers and didn’t even bat an eyelid at being described as sickly. She loved it all. The foreignness of it was exhilarating and that it was so familiar made her feel fearless.
The international school occupied an entire building on El-Tawheed. The sign outside was written in several languages and little flags were printed along the bottom to further underline the multicultural experience it offered. Students, nurses, and teachers all flowed through the blue-painted main entrance, most of them eager to improve on their English. Hannah had started working for the school when she’d run out of money in Thailand. She’d done the post-uni gap year, travelling with a bunch of friends through Europe, to America and Australia, and had ended up in Asia, enjoying how far the last of her funds would stretch. Friends went home, got jobs, started their adult lives, and Hannah kept telling herself that she’d do the same. And then another fresh load of travellers would come through Phuket and she’d show some of them around, introduce them to the best midnight beach parties and get bought drinks and food for her trouble. Then, as she passed her mid-twenties and then her late-twenties, she stopped telling herself she was going to go home and began planning a new trip. When a vacancy at the international school came up in Egypt she thought ‘why not?’ and took it.
She’d lost touch with most of her friends back home, keeping tabs via the pretend-friendship of Facebook. Her family had stopped asking when she was going to get a career, and her mother just asked, forlornly, at the end of every Skype session whether there was someone ‘special’ in her life and whether she was missing the British weather yet (ha ha).
Truth was, Hannah didn’t know why she was still in Egypt, why she was still teaching English or why the thought of returning to England made her skin crawl. She avoided thinking about any of it. Today the sun was shining on the traffic-clogged streets. Despite the smog, the city was beautiful and exotic and, after work, she could visit the Museum of Fine Arts, or take a siesta with her current bed-buddy, Omar. She could have kushari for dinner and eat it outside with a cold bottle of lager. That was enough for now.
Taking the steps to the classroom, she concentrated on going slowly and on breathing. During her first summer, she had made the mistake of continuing at her usual pace and had almost passed out halfway up. You just had to make adjustments, that was the key.
‘Hannah!’ Jeremy, ex-Etonian and business manager of the school, appeared on the top landing. His linen shirt was crisp and Hannah had a perfect view of his Italian leather shoes as she climbed the last few steps.
‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
That was typical Jeremy. He always liked to put people on the back foot. Hannah didn’t have a meeting booked with Jeremy, nor was she late for her first class, but somehow he managed to convey that she had done something wrong. She was irritated to discover that she wanted to apologise. Instead, she straightened her spine and pulled her shoulders back a touch.
‘Marking scheme is due on the twenty-first,’ he said.
This was not news.
‘I trust you’ve got it in hand.’
‘Yep,’ Hannah said. She pressed her lips together to prevent herself from adding anything else. Ever since Omar had pointed out that Jeremy walked all over Hannah in team meetings and staff appraisals, she’d been practicing assertiveness. Strength. Poise. Knowledge. She repeated the mantra a couple of times while Jeremy ran on, saying the same things about the importance of the standardised marking scheme that he’d said a hundred times before.
‘Oh.’ Jeremy paused. This was another of his tricks – just when he seemed finally ready to move on, like he’d run down his list of things he wanted to say, he’d find something else lurking at the bottom. It was usually something unpleasant. He patted Hannah on the arm. ‘There’s a girl in your room. Says she wants to sign up for intro to business English.’
What Hannah wanted to say was ‘why didn’t you direct her to reception?’ That was where the student sign-ups happened. Speaking to a prospective student wasn’t, strictly speaking, her job. However, the last thing she wanted to do was to delay Jeremy from leaving, so she just nodded and said, ‘Okay.’
The classroom windows were open but the air was completely still. It felt baked, tasted slightly scorched on the inside of Hannah’s mouth. The sun glanced off every reflective surface, creating little flash flares that could blind the unwary. She would have to pull the shutters before the students arrived or no one would be able to concentrate. She dumped her camel leather messenger bag onto her desk and smiled at the girl sitting on one of the tables near the window. ‘You’re interested in signing up?’ She spoke in Arabic first, although the girl didn’t look local. She had the palest skin that Hannah had ever seen in the city. Even the tourists had more colour. ‘You need to head back down the stairs and take a left to the reception desk. They will help you.’
The girl smiled, standing up in a graceful movement. ‘I wanted to meet my teacher first,’ she said.
‘Well, you sign up for the course and then you’ll be assigned a teacher, depending on class sizes and timetabling. You might not get me.’ Hannah spread her hands to indicate regret. Manners cost nothing, after all.
‘Ah, but you seem nice,’ the girl said, smiling a little wider. She seemed sweet. Shy. Hannah felt instinctively protective.
She tilted her head to one side, a gesture that made her look even younger. ‘May I have your name so that I can request you?’
‘Hannah Weston.’
‘Great.’ The girl stepped closer, one hand held out as if for a handshake.
Hannah reached to take the hand, hesitating as some part of her brain fired off a warning signal. She looked towards the windows, expecting a bird – they flew in sometimes and caused havoc – or for whatever noise had bothered her to reveal itself. Instead, the girl was suddenly very close. The hand that Hannah had thought was heading for a business-like gesture of greeting or gratitude or the conclusion of a contract (Business English, module three), instead grabbed Hannah’s arm and wrenched her around so that she was pulled up against the girl. She was taller than Hannah had realised and the hand that held her was strong, the fingers digging in painfully to her flesh.
Hannah had been so surprised that just a small sound had escaped, not much more than an exhalation. Now she drew a breath, ready to shout for help or to yell at the strange girl for hurting her. She’d been in some dodgy situations before; once a guy who was either reacting badly to the ecstasy he’d popped or had mixed it with some bad LSD had tried to strangle her. She’d stamped on his instep and kneed him in the balls, left him in a whimpering pile while she ran.
She couldn’t twist around and, of course, the girl didn’t have a scrotum to aim for. Some part of Hannah was holding back as she tried to twist and kick at the girl – the teacher part that knew she mustn’t use violence against a student, even one who hadn’t enrolled yet.
‘I’m sorry,’ the girl said into her ear and, at the same time, Hannah felt a pressure drawing a line across her neck. A second later it began burning. She hadn’t shouted, she didn’t think. She’d meant to but it had all happened so fast. The darkness was rushing up, she was falling or flying. There was something beyond the darkness. A bright light. She understood, then, that she was dying. People talked about a light, didn’t they? Lights and tunnels and their loved ones waving to them. Life flashing. Hannah just saw the light. It was beautiful and powerful and it filled her completely until there was no place where Hannah ended and the light began.
Chapter Eighteen
Rose opened her eyes to find Mal above her, looking worried. She was lying on the sand next to a line of long spiky grass, his jacket bunched underneath her head. It was warm down here, sheltered from the wi
nd.
‘Bloody hell, I thought you were gone for a moment there.’ Mal was white with worry.
‘I’m fine.’ Rose’s voice seemed to come from far away and she had the feeling that she had been dreaming. She felt torn, as if she wanted to dive back into it.
‘You just collapsed,’ Mal said. ‘Like you fainted.’ He tried to smile. ‘I knew I was a good kisser, but still…’
‘What were the names you mentioned before?’
‘There was a moment when you weren’t there at all. I know that sounds crazy,’ Mal was talking at full speed and it made him sound several years younger. ‘I swear you disappeared for a second, like your body just flickered.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Did you mean to do that? Did you feel it?’
Rose felt utterly calm and she waited for a break in Mal’s flow to repeat herself. ‘The names you mentioned before. What were they?’
‘What? When?’
‘The dead girls.’
His frown deepened but he answered her. ‘Laura Moffat. Françoise Hellier.’
‘Laura.’ There was a little tweak in her mind. Squares of light on a floor. A girl behind a bar, stacking glasses. She reached across the bar and closed her fingers around the girl’s throat. The sound which had been half out of her mouth was cut off as Rose compressed her windpipe. She pulled hard, lifting the girl’s body from the ground with no effort. The glass she had been holding smashed on the ground. She was across the bar now, her legs flailing in the air. With one movement, Rose spun the body so that it was laid out on the bar. It had brown eyes and they were wide with fear and pain. Rose felt nothing. She went onto tiptoe to gain a little height and then brought her knife down.
‘Rose!’
She refocused on Mal. His hands were on her shoulders, and he was lifting her.
‘Do you feel sick? You keep zoning out.’
Rose could still feel the cold emptiness of the Rose in her memory. She hadn’t felt anything at all. The blood didn’t horrify her, even now. She prodded herself, trying to make it matter, trying to feel the disgust and guilt she ought to feel. Slowly, it began to seep in. Slowly.
‘I should take you home,’ she said, sitting up. Mal moved back, giving her space. He looked so young. Beneath the stubble and the scars, his bones were so fragile.
‘Rose, what is it?’
She had to tell him but she knew it would be the end of their partnership, friendship, whatever had begun to build. It had just been a brief moment and it wasn’t hers to keep. ‘You were right,’ she said.
‘About what?’
‘Me,’ she swallowed hard. ‘I’m dangerous.’
She didn’t look at his face, didn’t want to see his expression. Rose wished she could close her eyes and lean into his shoulder, block it all out, and play at being a real human girl for a while longer. Instead she felt sick. She could still remember the blood, feel the grip of the knife in the palm of her hand. She blinked back tears. She didn’t deserve to cry.
Instead, she pushed herself upright. ‘It’s time to go.’
Mal stood up too. ‘But how?’
‘Hit me,’ she said. As soon as she spoke the words she knew how right they were. She was a killer, after all. A monster.
‘I’m not going to do that,’ he said.
She put a hand to his shoulder and shoved. ‘Come on. Frighten me. Attack me.’
‘No,’ he said, horror on his face.
He stepped back and Rose followed. ‘It’s the only way. We know it works.’
‘I’m not going to—’
She pushed him again, harder this time so that he stumbled back. ‘Come on. It’s not the first time. And I’m not human. I’m a thing. You hunt things.’
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said.
She got closer, grabbed his shoulders and brought her knee up. He twisted so that the blow hit him in the thigh and not on target. He spun her around. ‘Stop it.’
She kicked back, her foot connecting. It was like kicking a tree.
‘Will you just stop. Jesus…’
She twisted in his grip and pushed her hands inside his jacket. He would have a weapon. He was that kind of man.
He grabbed her wrist just as her fingers made contact with a shape in his pocket. ‘No.’ He squeezed and a bolt of pain shot up her arm. She didn’t stop. She forced herself to keep struggling, forcing the pain higher, the desperation. She was a thing, a dangerous thing, and she had to make him understand.
He pushed her away in one violent movement, and her head snapped back. In that moment, everything went white.
* * *
Back in Edinburgh, Astrid watched as Mary King licked her lip ring. Her eyes were wide with fear and Astrid felt happy. She had played the subordinate, had considered using Mary King’s appetite as a way to siphon off Rose’s energy when she showed signs of waking from her half-slumber. Now, Mary King was beginning to see more clearly.
‘I don’t know any other girls. Not like you and Rose. I can help you find them, though. Let me help.’
‘I can feel her,’ Astrid said. ‘Rose is my other half. We are one and the same.’
Mary King nodded, eager to show her understanding even though Astrid would have laid good money that she had none.
Astrid had been the shadow to Rose’s light for millennia and she had wanted a change. They had both wanted a change. Being an unbroken circle of creation and destruction was all very well, but the chance to walk amongst the flesh and blood for a few days, just to experience it, had seemed interesting. To see what it was like to feel air on skin, and muscles contract and flex. It was only supposed to be a short-term arrangement. A bit of fun. They couldn’t be contained in one human form, though, so they split into two. Their essence was just energy and it was divided neatly into two, ready to take two separate human forms. Astrid had been clever, and in the moment of splitting, Astrid had given the energy which had become Rose MacLeod a little nudge. Or, more accurately, thrown the power of an exploding star in Rose’s direction and crossed her fingers. Rather than becoming one human form, Rose’s essence had splintered further, her power dissipated and scattered across the earth.
Astrid had assumed that they’d disappeared into the vastness of the universe. She had imagined them floating out there in the beautiful blackness of space, waiting for Astrid and Rose to go home and scoop them up. Now Astrid realised that each splinter had moulded into a girl, more human than they ought to be, while she had held on tight, bearing the pain as she formed a single being, more god than human. Astrid held the knowledge and some of the power of her original existence, plus she had a cute little human form to run around in for a few days.
But she had discovered sex and booze and hot chocolate, and the more she had of those, the more she wanted. It simply wasn’t possible to cram enough into just a week or two. And so the days had become weeks and then months. Rose was easy to keep happy. Just a little time loop, living the life of a young student. Before Astrid had known it, twenty years had flown by; time on this little planet bound in the lives of barely sentient apes had been more engaging than she had expected. Or, perhaps, the experience had changed her little by little, the human form she had chosen to wear squeezing like a tight suit. Whatever the truth, she wasn’t ready to give it up. Not yet.
‘You may look for the other girls,’ Astrid said. ‘But do not harm them. Keep them for me.’ She would need all the juice she could get to put Rose back in her box. Perhaps if she was the one to kill them, the fragments would slip into her instead of Rose.
Mary King seemed to hesitate so Astrid lifted her into the air. It wasn’t so much a case of levitating the body, but more of shifting the air around her. Astrid could see the gravity that was holding Mary King to the ground, along with the furniture, but it was a piddling little force.
She spun the woman once, slowly, and then again, a little faster, just for the fun of it, and then placed Mary King gently back onto the floor. Her mouth was opening and shutting with n
o sound coming out, the skirt of her suit wrinkled and climbing way above her knees, exposing a run in her stocking.
Mary King found her voice. ‘Of course,’ she said.
Astrid trusted her as far as she could throw her. Which was, she realised with a smile, quite far indeed. But Mary King was a survivor and she knew how to lean with the prevailing wind. She hadn’t lived this long without being able to recognise superior power.
She tugged her skirt back into place and retreated to behind her desk, but she tilted her chin upwards, showing a vestige of her old steel. ‘I hope that concludes our meeting.’
Astrid paused just long enough to make Mary King sweat before nodding. ‘For now.’
* * *
Mal was lost. He knew he wasn’t going to complete the job for Pringle and that he was a dead man walking. He tried not to think about the consequences for Euan, as he knew he had no choice. He could no more hurt Rose than he could stab his own brother through the heart. He didn’t know if it was a charm or divine intervention or romantic love, Cupid’s arrow piercing his side and rendering him incapable of rational thought. He just knew that he would do anything to protect the woman who was sleeping on the big double bed, one arm thrown up behind her head.
The travelling hadn’t felt as bad this time and they had arrived on Princes Street, outside the entrance to the Caledonian Hotel. Rose hadn’t seemed affected at all, and she had walked past the doorman and demanded a castle-view room in the time it had taken Mal to kick the sand from his shoes.
The room was nothing like his usual accommodation. There was endless thick carpet and three sets of drapes at the windows and not a dodgy stain in sight. Wooden panelling along one wall toned with the expensive-looking furniture, but the room was dominated by a gigantic bed dressed in shades of taupe and dark rose, with more pillows than Mal had ever seen in one place. Rose stirred from her position on the bed, sat up and stretched.
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