Beside this sweet, ten-year-old, alternative-universe version of Flic stood a boy, staring darkly at the camera as if suspecting it of sinister motives. He had eyes the colour of storm clouds and unruly dark hair. Lucas, she thought with a smile, tracing a finger over the picture. Between the two of them, kneeling down, was a woman. She had straight brown hair, almond-shaped eyes and a smile that lit the picture better than a camera flash. Their mother, obviously. Just a few years after this picture had been taken, she had been killed by Victor. Lucas had watched her die.
Victor. Evie shook her head, trying to clear it. It was still hard to believe that the man who'd walked into Joe's diner a month ago and informed her that she wasn't Evie Tremain but Evie Hunter, the last pureblood demon-hunter on the planet, the man who'd trained her – well half-trained her, half-tortured her – was the same man who'd killed her real parents too.
Evie closed her eyes. Images, jumbled and fractured, pierced through with the sounds of screaming, filled her head. She pictured Victor flat on his back, Lucas's knife pressed to his throat, blood bubbling chemically against the metal. And she pictured herself telling Lucas to let him go. What the hell had she been thinking? Victor was out there now. Looking for them. Looking for her, so that she could fulfil this damn prophecy, which no one seemed to have a clue how to do, not even a Sybll. If only they could find the other fragments of it, that might help.
A sound made her eyes flash open. She tiptoed to the door and poked her head around it. From the living room she could hear the hum and hiss of voices speaking in raised whispers. She couldn't make out what they were saying but undoubtedly it was about her. And seeing how she was the odd one out in this situation and the idea of killing her had already been voiced, she decided it was only wise to find out what exactly was being said. She eased open the door and stepped silently out into the hallway. It was Flic who was the loudest, her whisper stepping over the line into a shout that had probably woken the neighbours over in the Shadowlands.
‘I can't believe you're doing this, Lucas. When you ran off and joined the Brotherhood I thought that was stupid enough, but this? This is beyond stupid. Way beyond. This is crazy!'
‘Flic,' she heard Lucas respond, exasperation and tiredness flattening his voice.
Flic ignored him. ‘Are you trying to save her because you couldn't save mum? Is that what this is all about? You think that if you save Evie it will make all your guilt go away?'
‘Don't,' Lucas hissed through clenched teeth.
There was a brief pause before Flic spoke again, quieter now. ‘Lucas, you're my brother. Do not ask me to stand by and let you do this. I'm not going to allow you to kill yourself. For who? For what? For her? For some ridiculous notion you have of love? Of saving this world?'
‘Flic,' she heard Lucas say, ‘you knew when I joined the Brotherhood there was a risk of something happening to me. There was always a possibility – a strong possibility – that I was going to die. Look at dad. It's not a career choice you make with a pension and retirement to the Shifter realm in mind.'
‘Yes, but at least that was about revenge, Lucas. That I could understand. This – this I refuse to.'
‘It's about more than revenge now. Don't you see that at least? The realms should be severed. We don't belong here.'
‘Speak for yourself,' Flic shot back.
‘We're not human, Flic. Not fully. We don't belong in this realm,' Lucas answered calmly.
‘Well, where do we belong?' Flic shouted, ‘The Shadowlands? We wouldn't be welcome there even if a grey wasteland with no housing and no sanitation was somewhere I actually wanted to live. And now you say I can't live here. So where am I supposed to go? Where do I belong, Lucas? Where do you belong?'
Evie could feel her palms sweating. She felt like one of the helplessly frozen mannequins from Victor's boutique, standing there helplessly behind the door.
‘Flic, this whole conversation is pointless,' Lucas answered. ‘The realms are going to be split. The prophecy is marked. It's going to happen.'
‘OK,' Flic said. ‘If it's going to happen as Issa says, it's going to happen with or without you. If she's it, if she's the White Light – she'll sever the realms without you. So why do you need to help her? Answer me that.'
He didn't answer her that. No one answered in fact. Everyone had fallen silent and suddenly the only noise Evie could hear was the waterfall rush of blood in her ears. She shrank further back into the shadows, holding her breath, waiting, wishing she could turn invisible like Lucas.
Finally she heard Jamieson mumbling something and under the cover of his mumble she started tiptoeing quickly towards the bedroom.
She closed the door behind her, turned around and let out a scream.
Chapter 5
'Jesus!' she said, clutching a hand to her heart and falling back against the door.
Lucas was standing in the centre of the room, arms crossed over his chest, fixing her with a cool stare. He'd showered. His hair was brushed back from his forehead in wet streaks and he was wearing a faded black T-shirt and a pair of dark sweat pants.
‘How did you … ?' she stopped. She understood. He'd done his turn-invisible, slink-into-the-shadows and pass-her-in-the-hallway trick. Damn it. So he knew she had been eavesdropping. Was he angry? She couldn't tell. She took a step towards him and then stopped. She didn't want to get too near. It would put her off. Just looking at him was putting her off. Even through her tiredness, even with her heart still beating as though it could see a finish line up ahead, she couldn't help but register how much she longed to be in his arms. Proximity would only make saying what she had to say harder.
‘You can't do this,' she blurted. ‘Flic's right. It's insane. It's like she said – if the prophecy is marked, if it's meant to happen, then there's no need for you to be involved. It will happen with or without you.'
Lucas regarded her for a long moment, his head tipped slightly to one side, then he took a step towards her, his hands coming to rest lightly on her shoulders. ‘Do you want me to stop?' he asked in a neutral voice, his eyes locked on hers. ‘Do you want me to walk away?'
She drew in a breath and tried to drop her gaze but it was impossible – he had her hypnotised with those slate-grey eyes of his. ‘No,' she said, shaking her head. ‘But Lucas, that's just me being selfish – worse than selfish.' She swallowed down the wedge of guilt that had got stuck in her throat. It didn't budge. ‘I just don't want to do whatever this is I'm doing alone.'
‘You won't have to,' he said, his lips so close to her own that it made her lose her focus. ‘I made my choice and you're it.'
Her stomach dropped away, whether through relief or something else she couldn't tell.
‘Even if you sent me away I wouldn't go,' he continued, his hands tightening on her shoulders. ‘Ever since I first saw you there's been something holding me to you. I don't know what. And I don't fully understand it. All I know is that I couldn't walk away now even if I wanted to. I told you before that I would do whatever it took to keep you safe, that I would fight whoever was trying to hurt you – human or unhuman, demon or monster – and I will.'
‘But what if … ?' she stuttered before falling silent. All she could hear in her mind was Flic telling Lucas that he was going to get himself killed.
Lucas's fingers squeezed her tighter. ‘I'm not going to die,' he said in such a low voice it came out as a growl.
Evie took a deep breath. ‘Lucas, if there's a chance,' she said, ‘even the smallest chance, that by fulfilling this prophecy you'll get hurt then I don't care how marked this prophecy is, I don't care whether every damn Sybll in the world tells me it's going to happen, I won't let it.'
He didn't say a word. He just considered her, his face inches from her own, their breathing running in unison.
‘OK,' he finally said.
‘OK,' she repeated, hearing the wobble in her voice. ‘Glad we're clear about that.'
Slowly he drew her into his arms, pulling her close until her head was buried under his jaw. She felt his lips press against the top of her head, could hear his heart beating loud and strong beneath her ear. She pushed back suddenly so she could look at him again.
He wasn't smiling. But then neither was she. She studied him – the iron cast of the shadows under his eyes, the paleness of his skin under his tan. He took her hand and led her to the bed. She sat down beside him, their shoulders brushing.
‘So, the way through?' she asked. ‘I didn't want to give your sister any more reason to shoot me her Gorgon stare, so I didn't ask earlier, but what was Jamieson talking about when he mentioned the way through? Is it the same thing Issa was talking about – this Gateway?'
Lucas nodded. ‘Yes. It's how unhumans get here. How, all unhumans travel into this realm. The way through. Some people still call it the Gateway.'
She couldn't help but snicker. ‘The Gateway? What does it look like?'