In the cubicle, Ruth put the toilet lid down and sat on it before letting her head drop into her hands. Vicky was right – she should just accept the way things were. At least that way she might find some kind of peace. When she looked up, her attention was caught by a piece of graffiti on the back of the door, partially obscured by messages of cheap sex and anatomically incorrect drawings: a pentacle.
Ruth was transfixed by it for a long moment as her heart beat faster and faster until she thought it would burst. Leaning forward, she reached out. When her fingers were barely an inch from the scrawled design a blue spark leaped from the tips in a flash and a smell of ozone filled the cubicle. A scorch mark obscured one of the arms of the pentacle.
She returned to the bar in a daze. On the bar stood five glasses, four empty, the fifth being filled with Coke by the barman. Ruth saw it and froze. Blue sparks fizzed across her mind.
One of five, she thought.
Feeling excited and not knowing why, she hurried back to the table to find a man sitting in her place talking animatedly to Vicky. He looked about Ruth’s age, his hair black, his looks dark and handsome. He wore an expensive suit and had an air of success about him, but not ostentatiously so.
‘Oi, look who it is!’ Vicky waved, clearly taken with the new arrival.
‘She won’t know me,’ the man said with a self-deprecating grin. I just moved into the flat next to yours. Saw you leaving this morning. It’s a real coincidence I bumped into you here.’ He shrugged, looked around. ‘I wouldn’t normally come into a dive like this, but … I’m glad I did.’
Vicky winked at Ruth over his shoulder. Despite herself, Ruth’s cheeks flushed.
‘I know you’re Ruth. My name’s Rourke,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Nobody bothers with my first name. Too embarrassing, to be honest.’
Ruth took his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ After so long feeling lonely, the charming Mr Rourke gave her a tingle of excitement.
Is it all right if I have a drink with you?’ Rourke asked.
His dark eyes were deep and soothing and made Ruth feel as if she wasn’t alone any more.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Vicky said sniffily.
‘Yeah, have a drink,’ Ruth said. Make us both laugh. We bloody well need it.’
Rourke smiled, and suddenly the pentacle, the blue spark and the five glasses on the bar were forgotten.
9
In complete confusion, Church found himself retreating through the white nothing-world, despite his consuming desire to keep watching. He didn’t want to lose Ruth so soon. The disorientation left him reeling, for the world he had been viewing had felt as real to him as the one in which his body stood. As he tried to make sense of the whirl of emotions and sensations, a wave of joy crashed against him. Seeing Ruth again reignited everything he felt for her so powerfully it was almost painful. If he allowed himself, he could entertain the fantasy that it would have taken no effort to touch her skin, or smell her hair, or even to talk to her.
Yet if he were truthful, he also felt a twinge of jealousy. He saw the way she had looked at Rourke. Had she already forgotten him?
He snapped back into the sunlit chamber, staggering so that Jerzy had to support him.
‘You saw her?’ Jerzy asked.
Church nodded as he reacclimatised himself. He had felt as if he was in a dream, but now he was back other details began to surface. ‘She was a Sister of Dragons,’ he said with a certainty that came from somewhere deeper than the information he had observed, but she didn’t seem to know it. I don’t get it.’
‘But she was safe?’
‘She looked as if she was, but there was something not quite right about the whole scenario … I don’t know.’ He silently cursed his broken memory. ‘At least I can keep coming here to check on her. Even if I can’t do anything about it.’
Church made to walk away from the Wish-Post, but it pulled at the back of his head. He had looked into it, and it into him, and it was not yet prepared to let him go. He decided he would stay there for as long as it took, drinking in every detail, every scene it was offering him.
As he swam in the white, another scene coalesced: a run-down fast-food joint, and leaning over the grill a young woman with rough-cut white-blonde hair, eyes heavy with mascara. Her skin had a vaguely unhealthy tinge, which may have been a result of the strip lights that turned the place into an oasis of artificiality. The woman had a hard face made even harder by the contempt she exuded as she pushed a thin, grey burger around the hotplate.
Who are you? Church thought.
10
‘Why do people eat this shit?’ Laura DuSantiago could barely stop herself from gagging. She’d decided she was very definitely a vegetarian, but the work was regular and, really, what else could she do?