‘What?' Evie and Cyrus shouted at the same time.
Issa squinted, turning her head rapidly left and right. ‘It's chaos. I can't see clearly. Things keep shifting. There are Shadow Warriors. I can't see them. Ash, Ash is fighting them.' Issa suddenly threw her head sideways, wincing hard.
‘What? What is it?' Vero shouted.
‘Nothing, he'll be fine,' Issa answered, glancing at Evie in appraisal.
Evie squeezed her eyes shut and felt the ground swaying dangerously beneath her feet, only Issa's grip on her keeping her upright. ‘After I – afterwards – what happens to Lucas? Does he get away?'
‘I can't see,' Issa said quietly, her hands dropping finally to her sides. ‘There are too many other choices in the way. His choices. And I'm losing my connection to Lucas.' Evie didn't miss the way Issa's nostrils flared in her direction. ‘It's still unclear what his future holds.'
Evie felt all of a sudden like screaming – drowning everyone in her screams. All this then might be pointless. Lucas might die anyway. All the subterfuge and the lies – it might all have been for nothing. He might still die because of her.
‘Evie,' Issa said quietly as if she could hear the screams going on inside Evie's head. ‘You doing this at least gives him a chance at a future – a future he could never have with you. And I promise you, after today I'll stay with him. I'll warn him of anything coming. I'll keep him safe.'
Evie thought her head might explode with the rage that was pounding the inside of her skull.
‘Well, I'm more concerned about my future and the future of every other human on the planet,' Cyrus butted in. ‘If we do it your way, like you've said, does it stop this army of unhumans coming through?'
Issa nodded. ‘Yes, I think so.'
‘You think so?'
‘Unless someone does something that changes it. What I've just told you is the future as it stands right now in this instant. For some reason I can't see what happens after Evie walks through.'
‘Oh, for God's sake,' Cyrus growled. ‘So if someone makes a last-minute and totally unexpected decision that you haven't seen yet – if someone changes their mind and dodges left instead of right, or if a butterfly somewhere in a rainforest in Brazil bats its wings, for instance … If that happens, which undoubtedly it will, everything will change. Is that what you're saying? That it's probably not going to happen like you've seen it happen?'
‘Yes,' Issa admitted after a few seconds' pause.
‘Well, what good is that?' yelled Margaret, slamming a hand down on the car roof. ‘What point is there in listening to any of this?' She turned away in disgust. ‘What a waste of time. We should have left already. We could be on our way. The way through could already be closed.'
I could already be dead, Evie thought to herself.
‘No. There's a point,' Cyrus interrupted, speaking in a firm voice. ‘It's better than not knowing anything – than walking into this completely blind.' Suddenly he paused before reeling around. ‘But let's shorten the odds even more in our favour. Get in the car,' he ordered Issa.
‘What?' Issa stuttered.
‘You're coming with us,' Cyrus announced. ‘I want an RSS feed as we're fighting. I want to know second by second what's coming at us. That tips the odds in our favour.'
‘I'm not allowed to interfere,' Issa said, taking a step backwards, her eyes widening. ‘If they find out … ' she whispered.
‘You just did interfere. By coming here you interfered. Who are you talking about anyway? The Elders? Why are you worried about them? It's not like they'll ever be able to catch up with you. And, besides, don't you want to make sure I don't change my mind about killing the Shadow Warrior?' He took a step towards her, his tone becoming low and menacing. ‘Split-second decisions and all.'
Issa shut her mouth and stared at him, her eyes becoming milky-white once more as she tried to scan the future.
‘You'll have more chance of saving Lucas if you come with us, right?' Cyrus pressed.
Her eyes faded back to blue. ‘Yes,' she finally admitted, glowering at him.
Cyrus turned back to the car and walked around to the door, throwing it open for her. ‘So get in,' he said.
Chapter 41
‘Let me get this straight. Everything you told us just now might be complete and utter horseshit? Is that right?' Cyrus asked as he crunched through the gears. His eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror where Issa sat wedged uncomfortably beside Ash. Evie was this time squashed up against the car door beside Vero. Margaret had stolen the passenger seat. No concessions for the girl with the noose around her neck.
‘No,' said Issa, obviously struggling to keep her tone even. ‘I keep telling you that's the future as it stands, but if you'd let me concentrate I could keep you updated on any changes.'
‘But in the heat of battle how's that even possible? Decisions get made in snap seconds, in the instants between seconds. But how would you know that? You've never been in a fight, right?'
Evie gripped the door handle as they swerved around a corner.
‘I know how these things work,' Issa answered, staring right back at him in the mirror. ‘I've been seeing the future since before you were born.'
‘How old are you?' Ash asked.
Issa sighed. ‘Eighty-three human years old.'
‘That's older than my grandma,' Ash said, edging away from her. ‘How old do you live to exactly?'
‘Old,' Issa answered, lifting her chin and staring straight ahead.
‘How old's Lucas?' Vero asked.
Evie started at the mention of his name.
‘Twenty,' answered Issa. ‘He ages like a human.'
‘So if Lucas is twenty and you're like, eighty-three or whatever, doesn't that make you something of a cradle snatcher?' Cyrus asked, turning to look at Issa over his shoulder.
A car swooped out of a side road, almost careering into them. Cyrus spun the wheel, veering into oncoming traffic to avoid it. He righted them with a loud whoop, slinging Evie and the others into each other.
‘You,' Margaret barked at Cyrus, ‘keep your eyes on the road!' She turned to Issa, ‘And you – keep your eyes on the future!'
Evie rested her forehead against the headrest in front of her and shut her eyes. She swallowed, feeling her throat constrict as if some clawed demon was squeezing her neck. Keep your eyes on the future. She couldn't keep her eyes on anything else – what little of it remained seemed to be slipping too fast through her fingers, vanishing as quickly and in more of a blur than the buildings they were speeding past.
She thought about her mother being woken up in a few hours' time by a knock on the door. She tried to picture her mum's reaction. She didn't need to imagine it. She'd been there when the neighbours had come to tell them about her dad's accident. It would look something like that. Her mum would collapse to the ground, and her cries would threaten to lift the roof, and the doctor would probably come and prescribe yet more sleeping pills, and her mum, dosed up on Valium, would sit tranqed-up in the church at her funeral, which probably wouldn't be that full given that Evie had spent the last few months not talking to anyone. Maybe Tom would come. Would Lucas?
She could hear Ash through the haze in her head, still quizzing Issa about her visions.
‘How does it work?' he was asking. ‘What do you see?"
Issa sighed heavily, ‘It's like watching a film. And sometimes you get a bad copy and it's all fuzzy and the picture's unclear – that's because there are too many external factors coming into play and not everything has been decided.'
‘So there is free will then? We do have choice?' Ash asked.
‘Yes, of course we all have choice, except in a few cases. There are certain things that are just meant to happen, no matter what we do to try to change them – things like the marked prophecies. There's no point fighting it then – the destination will always be the same no matter what path we take to get there. But,' she said, ‘most times we do get to choose the outcome. Like we just got to choose a different outcome for tonight. When you make a choice, you change the future. Only, most people don't make choices. They follow the path of least resistance. They take the easiest route – the one that doesn't require courage or thought.'
Evie opened her eyes and sat back. ‘Lucas said that sometimes in life you have to choose one path over another. He said the hard path leads us past places we don't want to go.' Her voice cracked and she struggled to hold it together. ‘But that path brings you to the exact place where you're supposed to be.'
‘He always did believe that,' Issa said smiling, ‘that we each had a purpose in life.'
‘Philosophical discussions parked to one side for one moment,' Cyrus broke in impatiently, ‘what's happening in about five minutes from now?'
Issa fell silent. Evie watched her eyes start swimming under their white coats.
Suddenly Issa started gasping for air as if she was drowning. Her eyes flashed open. ‘Oh no,' she gasped, her fingers clawing at the seats.