 
Wyrd Girl

Jon Jacks
Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught

The Rules

Chapter One

The Changes

Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency

The Healing

The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom

Charity

The Most Beautiful Things

The Last Train

The Dream Swallowers

Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night

Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens

Dr Jekyll's Maid

The 500-Year Circus

P

The Endless Game

DoriaN A

Text copyright © 2013 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

*

It didn't make any sense; it had been nothing more than a mild traffic shunt, yet both adults in the front of the Shogun were dead.

And with all the lacerations of a major collision too.

The girl in the back, presumably their daughter, was so young she didn't even seem to know what had happened to her parents.

'What do you make of it Diane?' Detective Connery asked the forensic science officer as she approached him with a puzzled frown.

'Weirdest thing is, Dave; way it looks to me, they died by drowning.'

*

# Chapter 1

I'm the weird girl.

You know; the one everyone avoids being seen with.

Even those who whisper it to me that they've got nothing against me actually, but...

See, they act like what I've got is catching.

So what is it I've got?

What I've got, basically, is that I don't care that the most popular girls in school have got it into their empty little heads that there's something weird about me.

See the irony here?

I'm weird because I don't care that they think I'm weird.

But I don't care, see, because I know that there's somebody, somewhere, looking out for me.

If I feel down, if I feel I need a sign that that special someone is still looking down on me (that's in the caring, not the stuck-up sense), well, all I have to do is take a walk outside.

And whaddya know, there it is; a small, brilliantly white feather.

An angel's feather, some people call it.

Only it isn't, is it?

*

The thing about the feather, see, is that we can all conjure one up if we really want to.

No?

You don't believe me?

Well okay, so try this, little miss full-of-doubts.

Think hard, really hard, about that small, brilliantly white feather.

Think of how it glows in the light.

Just like an angel's feather, right?

Picture it.

Hold it.

Feel it.

That's right; reach out.

Touch it, softly. (You don't want to crush it!)

It might tickle, yeah?

Now sometime today – provided you actually manage to get outside, lazy! – when you're out for a walk, you're going to find one lying on the ground directly in front of you.

Take a look around; where did it come from?

Take it from me; there'll be nothing round abouts from where it could've naturally come from.

Now how weird is that, eh?

See, you're weird; just like me,

*

# Chapter 2

I've been passed from foster home to foster home.

I never really seem to fit in, truth be told.

Yeah, I blame myself, see?

Quiet.

Moody.

'Always in her own little world, that's our Tracey.'

For the moment, I'm at a 'home'.

That's what they call it anyway, even though they mean an institution.

Nicer, though, to call it a home, isn't it?

Me, I prefer the darkness of the alleys.

Places where no one else likes to go.

No one 'cept me and Chris.

Chris's the boyfriend that no one at school believes exists.

He likes school even less than I do, see?

That's why they never see him with me.

Not unless they're prepared to come down the alleys.

Which they're not.

So it's hardly _my_ fault that I can't prove I have a boyfriend, is it?

*

I like the alleys because Chris likes the alleys.

He lives in them; lives in dumpsters he decks out with coverings to turn them into relatively smart little homes.

Like me, he used to live in a 'home'.

Only he ran away.

He couldn't stand it.

Like me.

Only I haven't run away.

Yet.

I'm sorta more slowly drifting away, rather than running.

Staying away longer and longer.

Sleeping in the dumpsters.

Using the school washrooms to tidy up.

(Chris, he walks into hotel washrooms like he's meant to be there. He's clean, oh yes, he's very clean.)

We laugh.

We joke.

We steal. (It's a laugh, a joke.)

We rarely fight.

We like our own company, thank you very much.

'Shhussshh!' Chris says, putting a finger up to his mouth.

He's heard someone outside.

Someone who's come into the alley.

Into our alley.

It's hard not to hear them.

They're breathing real hard.

Like they've been running.

Like they're frightened.

Like they're hiding from someone, and trying desperately to control their breathing so they won't be found.

(How do I know all this just from hearing someone's breathing? I dunno. Perhaps I've been there plenty of times myself, yeah?)

'No, no! Please no!' the girl pleads.

'Chris; she's in danger,' I mouth quietly.

Chris shakes his head, like he doubts it. Like we should wait and see what happens before risking revealing ourselves.

In the dumpster, no one can see us.

'Please, please...I _help_ the dead!'

I give Chris a puzzled frown, mouthing the weird word, 'Dead?'

'No no...oh God no! You're...you're _not_ the dead, are you?'

'Not dead?' I mouth silently at Chris with another frown.

Chris puts his finger up to his mouth once more. He leans back against the dumpster's side, trying to hear better.

'You're...you're nothing more than...than bits of junk!'

Junk? I don't bother mouthing this to Chris this time. He's straining to hear.

'No, no...please, I...'

I can't stand it anymore.

That girls in danger, and I'm just sitting here, all safe and cosy.

I don't care who's out there.

I've got to help.

I stretch up towards the trapdoor Chris has made in the dumpster's false ceiling.

Chris reaches for me, trying to pull me back. But he's trying to do it quietly, so he's at a disadvantage.

I push open the trapdoor and swiftly clamber out, standing up amongst the rubbish Chris has deliberately scattered across his roof.

'Leave her!' I yell, even before I've figured out where they are, let alone _who_ they are.

'I know who you are!' I add, hoping they see this as a threat to their safety.

Dark coated guys who look like they've stepped out of a fifties film noir have cornered the cowering girl against the wall.

They all ignore me, apart from the one nearest to the dumpster.

He looks up at me, his face hidden in the shadows of his wide brimmed fedora.

'Stay out of this.'

He says it calmly but gruffly, like he's a dog struggling to talk.

'You don't know what you're dealing with!'

He lifts and swings out a massively long arm, making a grab for my ankle.

I hop onto the other foot, but he's too quick for me, like he was expecting this. He grabs my other ankle. –

As I'd urgently scrambled up through the trapdoor, my long, bushy hair had picked up a thick coating of the dust that lies everywhere around here.

I can't think of anything better to do so, bending down towards his upturned face, I envelop it in my dusty hair as I give my head a fierce shake.

He steps back slightly, coughing, spluttering, choking, bringing up phlegm from his mouth.

And suddenly, his gripping hand vanishes.

He's gone.

His hat, his coat, it all just drops to the floor. Like there had never been anything inside them in the first place.

Nothing, that is, apart from rotting cabbages, banana skins, crushed cans and mouldy packs. All of which fall to the ground along with the clothes.

The other guys are calmly walking away, like they haven't seen what's happened.

They're not bothering to look back, like they don't care or don't notice that they're a man short.

The girl is still by the wall, lying in a still heap amongst the sodden, filthy litter that's gathered there.

I jump down, shout out, 'Chris, get out here,' and rush over to her.

I'm tempted to shout out after the guys too, but think better of it.

The girl's completely still, silent.

It doesn't look good.

But I never heard a shot. And there's no blood. Nothing I can see, either, that looks like a knife wound.

Her face, though; it's warped, frightened, frozen.

Like she's just seen Death himself.

*

# Chapter 3

'How is she?'

Chris has crouched down alongside me, studying the girl.

'Dead, huh? Wow; what a face! What made her face go like that, huh?'

'I dunno,' I answer. 'Poor thing; she looks like she was absolutely horrified.'

'Who were they, those guys?' Chris had just caught a glimpse of the guys leaving as they had turned the corner. 'What did they have to kill her for?'

'They didn't look like any muggers I've seen. More like some cops from an old movie. Or gangsters.'

Chris rises to his feet, gently pulling on my shoulder in an attempt to make me stand up with him

'Come on; let's leave it for the cops to figure out.'

'Yeah, we'd better call them and–'

'Call them? You kidding? Who're they gonna suspect first if we report it, eh Twice?'

(Those who really know me, my real friends, call me Twice, not Trace or Tracey. Twice Hadday, get it? But there's another reason I'm called Twice; the _real_ reason.)

'Us, that's who they're gonna suspect,' Chris continues. 'No no, let's leave her here, Twice.'

He suddenly bends down alongside me once more.

'On second thoughts...'

He starts rifling through the dead girl's handbag.

'Chris!'

I grab him hard on his arm, trying to pull him away. But he shrugs me off, griming hugely when he finds and withdraws her purse.

'Look, she's not going to need it now is she? Anyway, I've left her everything else. And _we're_ gonna need it twice – we're going to have to leave for a while.'

He despondently nods back towards our dumpster. Our home.

'The cops; they'll find it, won't they?' I realise now that Chris was right; we would be prime suspects. 'They'll come looking for us!'

Chris shakes his head.

'Nuh-uh; cos I'm gonna destroy it. Move everything out, let the roof and all that trash fall down on it, fill it in.'

I stand up, glance back down at the dead girl.

It seems odd; worrying about our trashy little house when she's lying here dead.

But as Chris had said, there wasn't anything we could do for her now.

Wait!

I urgently grab Chris by his arm.

'Chris, wait –I just remembered. One of the guys; he attacked me!'

I run back towards the side of the dumpster, where the guy had been standing when he'd reached up for me.

When he'd disappeared.

The stench by the dumpster is overpowering. Sure, it never smells great around here, but you get used to it.

But this smell; it's more like the worst kind of garbage you can think of. Garbage that's been piled up and left to fester in a long heat wave.

'Look Chris, look!'

I reach down and lift up the old coat the guy had been wearing.

Wow, is it old! Like something even a down-and-out would turn his nose up at.

I glance down at the hat – same thing. Ancient and worn out beyond belief.

Chris takes the coat off me.

'Jesus? This is what they were wearing? So how come they left the girl's bag?'

Around the coat, there's nothing but the garbage I thought I saw fall to the ground as the coat and hat fell. It's now mixed amongst all the garbage that's always been there.

'Chris, I–'

Nope, I can't say it.

I was going to tell him that the guy we're talking about didn't seem to really exist.

He seemed to have been made of – well, nothing but his coat, hat and bits of this rubbish lying around our feet.

Crazy, yeah?

Yeah, crazy.

Chris holds me round the waist tenderly. Like he thinks I'm stumbling for words because I'm either shocked by what's happened or sad that we have to leave.

'It's okay Twice; it's okay.'

'Yeah, I'm okay. Let's pack up and go Chris.'

*

The room's plusher than anything I've ever seen.

Seats you sink right back in, so I almost end up spilling the coffee the receptionist had brought out to me in a shallow white cup and saucer.

Plants too, but ones like small, delicate trees and brightly coloured bushes, sprouting out of massive earthenware pots.

The walls are stark white, made all the brighter by miniature spotlights hanging from taut wires stretched across the room.

Most of the light, however, is focused on the framed adverts fixed to the walls; adverts featuring impossibly beautiful women, incredibly handsome men, the best behaved children you've ever seen.

There's a massive TV too, playing what seems to be an endless loop of commercials, selling you everything from breakfast cereals to the cars most of us don't even get to see on the streets let alone end up owning.

Brightest of all is the agency's name plaque, a mix of gold and steel letters on a grey marbled backing; Zoofelt, Dunnstedt & Ernst Advertising.

Dimmest of all, like they're embarrassed by its presence, is a large painting of elephants drinking at a water hole. Weird thing is, when I first saw it, I thought it was a picture of swans on a pond.

Then again, this whole thing is weird.

No, it's crazy.

And it's down to that damn dead girl's purse.

'Hey, look at this.' Chris had said as, not long after the girl's murder, he'd calmly begun to search through the purse's contents.

It was an identification card.

Mary Anne Colderson. Courier Liaison. Zoofelt, Dunnstedt & Ernst Advertising.

'You know what that means?' Chris had said, eyeing me strangely.

'It means we can't use it, as it's not only got a photo but also electronic coding strips,' I'd answered, pointing them out to him.

'Sure we can use it; if we use our intelligence.' Chris had turned to me, reaching for my hair, moving the strands around my face.

'Chris, I'm not going to be able to pass for her no mat–'

'Shhussh,' he'd said. 'I'm trying to think how we can make you look a bit older, a bit more sophisticated.'

'Chris!'

I'd given him a playful push in the chest.

'Look,' he'd said, laughing, 'we _don't_ need the card. But it's the school holidays, we're short of cash, and all you've got to do is turn up here saying, excuse me, but I was wondering if you have any _vacancies_ fo–'

'Chris!' I pushed him real hard this time. 'I'm not slipping on a dead girl's shoes! Besides, it'll never work!'

When the receptionist had given me an odd look, I'd cursed Chris under my breath for persuading me to go ahead with this.

But she'd coolly looked me up and down, said take a seat, fill in this form, I'll get someone to see you. Would you like a coffee or tea?

She hadn't made the coffee. She'd called someone to do that too.

Now the form she'd given me, that's really weird.

Sure, there's all the usual stuff; age, where you live, ethnicity, all that sorta thing.

They're easy to fill in. I just tell them what I think they want to hear, which means a few little white lies.

(Hey, if they're gonna come out with stuff like _This won't have any effect on the judgement of your suitability_ , then why the heck should I be worried about lying?)

Ethnicity, well, that just requires a few exotic grandparents, _ngay_?

But the third page; well, this could have been a bit of a struggle even for me. Only I decided that, once again, the best solution was to tell them what they wanted to hear.

I mean: Do you consider yourself to be a) alive b) dead c) other.

Or how about this one: Do you believe there are worlds other than this one?

And: Have you ever thought you'd seen someone in a darkened room?

And this is an application form for an advertising agency, _ngay_?

Stranger still, I reckon that for most of these questions, if I were being honest, I'd have to answer yes. Or c).

You know what?

I'm not going to get this job am I?

I mean, I'm the girl whose favourite song is _At Seventeen_ by Janis Ian.

It speaks to me, know what I'm saying?

I could have written that song. If I could actually write songs.

So what I'm going to do is actually answer this weird page honestly; just for the heck of it.

*

# Chapter 4

'Miss Hadday?'

A young guy's just come through one of the doors leading off from reception.

He's holding the application form I'd handed back to the receptionist once I'd filled it in.

I raise my hand, smile, like there are hundreds of other people sitting out here rather than just me.

He's smiling too, but it fades a little as he quickly looks me up and down.

Up close, he can probably see that my blouse isn't a master class in ironing.

My suit's good quality, but as it's stolen off the peg, the fit leaves a lot to be desired.

The makeup, well that's one step up from Styling Head; even I know that.

As I stand up to take his hand, he grins again anyway.

He's cute in a Hanna Barbera cartoon sorta way; all square chin and eyes that are a little bit too large for the real world. Hair most women would sell their kids for.

'Jake, Jake Frasen,' he says. 'Interesting answers you've given,' he adds, raising the form I'd filled in.

'Oh, er, yeah, yeah. Twice, Twice Hadday.' I say my nickname before I've had time to think better of it.

'Twice Hadday?' He grins. 'Yes, I'd noticed that on the form; in the area where we ask you to tell us what your friends tend to call you?'

'Oh, yes, I wondered about that; why would you want to know anything like that, if you don't mind me asking?'

'Well, the name a person's friends give them can be particularly revealing, don't you think? You know, about that individual's character; and how they're perceived by those closest to them too?'

I grin, nod.

With a wave of his hand, he indicates that I should follow him over towards the room he'd just stepped out of.

The room's much larger than I'd expected, more like some kind of boardroom than a regular office. A massive table dominates the room, surrounded by chairs.

One of the chairs is pulled back from the table, a pad, pen and half-finished cup of tea laid out before it.

Jake waves me to the chair next to his, pulls it out for me like he's some attentive Victorian gentleman.

'Some of your answers surprised me...'

'Oh yes yes.'

Oh no no! He'll be calling security any moment now!

'Particularly the reason behind your nick name that we just touched on now...'

Even as we sit down, he flips through the forms.

'Ah yes, here it is...very interesting, very very interesting.'

'Very interesting? For an advertising agency?'

He grins, like we're sharing a private joke.

Fact is, I'd thought it was all a bit much, demanding such incredibly personal details.

How mum had lost what would have been her first child while pregnant.

How I'd come along and, as a precocious three year old, had announced to my parents that I had planned to come along earlier, but realised it wasn't the right time after all.

How, when mum and dad sat down and worked it all out, there was an incredibly good chance that we would have shared the same birthday.

So this was, you could say, my second coming.

I'd been planning to come along once before.

But now here I was after all.

So I'd come along Twice.

Yeah, that's all pretty personal in my book, even though mum and dad are no longer around, God bless them.

Yet I'd filled in the boxes anyway.

Like I wanted, needed, to open up to someone other than a close friend and get it off my chest.

'Er, if you don't mind me asking again? Why are there all these other odd questions on the form?'

'Odd?' He looks at me like I'm the odd one for asking.

'Well, as I said; this is an ad agency, yeah?'

He gives me the private joke smile once more.

It fades when it dawns on him that I'm not smiling, that I'm posing him a serious question.

'Ad agency?'

He says the words like all this is complete surprise to him. Like when we came through the door, we stepped through into a room involved in a completely different line of business.

Is that what this is?

Is it really some sort of front for some criminal organisation, like that Tom Cruise movie about the dodgy law firm?

'You weren't expecting it; the questions?' he says.

'Well, no.'

He purses his lips. Another surprise for him, obviously.

He turns to the front two pages.

'And you're Vietnamese, yes?'

Times like this, the best form of defence is attack.

'Ago naway hiatir rotophan erga snay.'

I say it with the nearest to a lilting musical tone I can manage.

I smile benignly.

'Ban da noi nhung gi?' he replies.

Oh gawd; what's the chance of that eh? The only Vietnamese speaking ad executive in the whole of the bleeding city, I'll bet!

I nod, smile.

It sounded like a question.

Fifty-fifty chance it's the right answer, right?

He frowns.

Wrong?

'Thing is,' he says, 'I picked up my Vietnamese while serving an arduous tour a few minutes ago on Google translation. I'm not quite sure where your Vietnamese comes from though.'

I smile benignly again.

'Ngay,' I say musically.

It's the only Vietnamese I know.

It means right.

I think.

But, come to think of it, is that as in right and left?

Course, I could have said, 'Mum and dad didn't really stay alive long enough to teach me it.'

But somehow I think that's a misuse of mum and dad's memory.

'Now,' he says brightly, like I've just passed that test with flying colours, 'can you see anyone else in this room?'

I raise my eyebrows at that one.

Trick question, right?

There was no one else in here when we came in.

Unless this place is like _really_ weird, and someone's been hiding in here all along, ready to jump out and surprise me.

I look cautiously to my left, taking in everything I can, even turning in my chair to get a full view.

Nope, no one there.

I do the same on my other side.

Nope, no one there eith–

No, wait!

In the far, badly lit corner there's a coat stand.

The way a coat hangs there, together with a hat casually flopped across the highest array of hooks, and the way the shadows fall over it all – yeah, you could see that as a figure.

You know, in the way some people see a picture of the Virgin in the charred bits of a piece of toast, or could swear there's a rock formation that looks like Jesus himself.

Or like how I saw swans instead of elephants in the picture out in reception.

That's it, isn't it?

This is a test of my imagination, this being an ad agency.

'Well, I suppose that coat and hat over there could be–'

It moved!

It just moved, I could swear it!

No – it's not moving anymore.

If it moved at all.

I'm just a little freaked out, yeah?

See, the long coat, the old style hat; it just looked for a moment like one of those weird guys I'd seen attacking that poor girl in the alleyway yesterday.

(Am I using the word weird too many times here? But how else do I describe what's happening to me these days?)

I turn to the guy.

He's making notes on the form I'd filled in.

Hopefully, he didn't see me twitch and gawp in surprise when I thought I'd seen the coat moving.

'You know, it could be taken as a sort of figure,' I say, completing the sentence I'd originally meant to say.

'Good, good,' he says. 'Now, just one final question; who recommended you?'

'Recommended?'

'Well, someone must have recommend you. Your psychiatrist perhaps?'

Psychiatrist? Does he think I'm...

'Do you mean you think I'm...'

'No no, not all! But you can't have just turned up here, applying for this particular job...'

He spots my anxious frown.

'Can you?' he says doubtfully.

'I, er, just sort of turned up on the off chance...'

'Off chance?' He manages to make it sound like it's the craziest thing he's ever heard.

I nod wanly.

'Off chance.' I repeat, managing to make it sound like the craziest thing anyone's ever heard.

And it had all been going relatively well up until this point.

He stands up from his seat, smiling, offering me his hand.

'Thank you for coming to see us Miss Hadday,' he says smartly. 'We'll be in touch.'

Which, of course, means they won't, _ngay_?

*

# Chapter 5

'We always think interviews go worse than they actually did,' Chris says, trying to reassure me.

He wraps his arms around me, hugs me close.

'Least you tried, eh?'

I grimace, determined to tell him the less-than-rosy truth.

'Trust me Chris; this isn't just a gut feeling that it went wrong. It went really really wrong.'

We pull apart, I stare into his eyes.

'It was all – well, really _weird_.'

He laughs.

'Twice, everything seems _weird_ to you!'

(See, I knew I was using that word too much!)

'No, no Chris – you don't understand, honestly. This didn't seem anything like an ad agency. It was like I'd stepped through the wrong door into a sort of Alice in Wonderland madhouse, where nothing much made any sense.'

He reaches out, gives me another affectionate hug.

'Well then Twice; you're perfect for the job, eh?'

We chuckle together.

Know what I thought had been really, well, weird about Jake?

The way he wasn't freaked out by me.

See, most people are usually just a little bit nervous around me. A little bit unsure about why I look the way I do, why I come across all shy one moment, yet the next won't give way on certain points.

And I just wasn't sensing that edginess in Jake.

Like he was used to dealing with people like me.

Like I was as normal, as far as he was concerned, as any of the other girls at school.

And, see, I know I'm not like the other girls at school.

'I'm expecting the call saying you've got the job any moment now,' Chris says archly, glancing down at his watch like it's all going to happen in the next few minutes. 'You gave them the home as your address, yeah?'

'Ha, you kidding? If I'd said I came from there, no way would I get a job in a swanky pla– ohh!'

Chris's look is half admonishment, half well-what-was-I-supposed-to-expect.

'Twice!' he says sternly, before breaking out into a deep laugh.

*

I've got to show up every now and again at the home, if only to let them know I'm not completely falling off the rails.

In the morning, as I'm getting ready for school, there's a knock at the door. Before I can answer it, it's followed by a shout.

There's someone with an important message for me down in reception.

For me?

An important message?

Someone in reception?

Like, wow!

I mean, that doesn't even happen on my birthday.

Course, our reception is nothing like the one proudly put together by Misters Zoofelt, Dunnstedt and Ernst.

There's a lot of people here for a start.

Probation offices. Social workers. Plain clothes cops. 'Uncles.'

All here to check on their wayward charges.

I look over towards our dour receptionist.

All the time she's worked here, she's never offered me a coffee; how about that?

I'm hoping she'll give the nod towards whoever's here to see me.

But I don't need to.

I can see who's here to see me.

She already rising from her seat. She's gives me a richly beaming smile as she catches my startled gaze.

It's the girl.

The dead girl from the alley.

*

# Chapter 6

'Miss Hadday?' she says. 'I'm ever so pleased to meet you! I'm Mary, Mary Colderson; from Zoofelt, Dunnstedt & Ernst Advertising?'

'Oh yes, yes.'

Okay, okay – so what was I supposed to say to her?

'Er, excuse me; but aren't you dead?'

Or would you prefer, 'Oh yes; we've already met. I rifled your pockets while you were dead, remember?'

'Well Twice – it is all right if I call you Twice, isn't it? – I'm really pleased to tell you that: you did it, you've got the job!'

'Job?'

I'm too bewildered to respond in any other way than like a complete idiot.

She's shaking my hand, this girl I saw lying dead only yesterday.

There was no doubt about it – she was dead.

But there's no doubt about it now too – here she is, every bit as alive as I am.

Sure, her hand's a bit cold. But nowhere near as cold as you'd expect the hand of a dead person to be.

'The job as courier liaison, of course! It's a wonderful, wonderful job, Twice! I should know, because I was the one doing it just before you came along to take over from me! You said you could start immediately? On the form; you ticked the start anytime box?'

I nod, dazed.

'S...s...sorry. It's all a bit much to take in.'

She grins, like she understands.

'Well, would a nine a.m. start tomorrow be okay with you? Obviously, we need someone to start straight away, of course.'

She giggles, like she's cracked a funny joke.

'Yeah, I'll be starting dead on time Mary!'

No, no; I _didn't_ say that.

'Don't worry Twice; I'll be there to help you bed in. We'll be working together for a while. Isn't that exciting?'

'Together?

Wow, does everyone who starts working at Zoofelt, Dunnstedt and Ernst Advertising just automatically start repeating what the other person has just said?

There seems to be an awful lot of it going on lately.

'I mean, well, what; so...you're keeping your job, right?'

'No, no, course not!' she says, her voice and eyes all sparkly excitement. 'I'm still going to be courier liaison; but now I'll be representing the other side, of course!'

'Yeah, yeah, of course, course.'

I chuckle along with her.

Such fun, talking to a dead girl!

*

After all the weird stuff that had been going on, I naturally thought my first day at Zoofelt, Dunnstedt & Ernst Advertising would be a magic mushroom version of a Tim Burton movie.

But no; it's all just regular advertising stuff, far as I can see.

Oddest things here are the people turning up from film production companies and photography studios, either pitching their wares or here for meetings.

Pony tails on guys who are well into their male-pattern baldness phase. Younger guys and gals who think they're a gift to the art world because they've come up with lines like _It's creamy screamy_ or _Just a second Bert!_.

They scrutinise the ads on our walls, whispering amongst themselves that they can't see why it beat them to an award they obviously thought was a shoo-in.

Actually, that's one of the tag lines on the endless loop of TV commercials that's already driving me crazy: _It's a shoo-in at Farn's Shoes!_

The picture of the elephants on the wall manages to raise the most sniggers.

'Salvador Dali!' they say with an awed, disbelieving shake of the head.

There's no sign of Jake.

Pity; I would have liked to have met him again, thanked him for recommending me for the job.

There's no sign of Mary, either; thank God!

There is a girl here to help me, however.

She's called Franky, Franky Gordon.

Franky actually works on the night shift (yeah, that's what I thought too – night shift? In an ad agency?) but as a favour both to Mary and me, and 'recognising the awful urgency', she's come in specially to quickly show me the ropes.

So she sits alongside me, showing me how to put calls through, who I should call, particularly when someone comes in looking a bit vague about who they need to see. The quickest ways of using the phone and room booking lists, the best way to call them up on the computer screen, the easiest way of making sure there aren't any booking clashes.

Making sure I don't make any mistakes, basically.

Come lunch time, Franky's still here, insisting she'll be okay for tonight thanks to her Energy+ pills. Perfectly legal, she insists; 'Each one is about the same as fifty concentrated coffees, that's all!'

That means she's here when Chris pops in to see how I'm getting on on my first day.

'Chris – Franky,' go the quick introductions.

Chris can be a bit of a charmer when he wants. As a thank you to Franky for helping me settle in, Chris picks up her doodle sheet from the desk, deftly folding it into one of his amazing butterflies.

Okay, so I admit that doesn't sound too enthralling, right?

But I defy anyone not to be just simply gobsmacked when he gently pulls down on the butterfly's lower body and it begins to flutter its wings like it's going to take off from his hand at any moment.

Well, Franky's delighted anyway.

Fact is, she breaks down in tears.

'No no, sorry, it's beautiful, it really really is,' she explains through her tears. 'It's just that, well, it's my Granny Gordon's funeral on Friday – and she just loved butterflies. She said they were like the souls of angels, they were so small and fragile and beautiful.'

Chris decorates our dumpster homes with these butterflies, ones he's created from old boxes, newspapers, magazines. They're every colour and pattern you can think of.

'It's a metaphor,' he says to me, 'the way you can transform things people throw away into something beautiful.'

Like giving the trash life, a soul. Like we came together too, as soul mates. Our souls, combined, transform everything around us for the better.

When Franky finally gets around to heading off home for an afternoon of deep sleep ('NightDoctor – perfectly legal, but packs the punch of a syringe-full of God knows what!'), she carefully packs the butterfly away into her handbag like it's one of the most precious, delicate things she's ever owned. She slips it into a small cardboard box she especially went down to the post room for.

Come the afternoon, I'm left on my own, sink or swim time.

And still no sign of Mary, cross my heart and touch wood.

*

I breathe a sigh of relief as I see the wall clock drawing closer to that magical five thirty.

It hasn't been a particularly hard afternoon.

But I've been dreading something going wrong, something unforeseen happening.

But nope – just thirty minutes to go, and my first day has been a perfect success!

The telephone rings, but it's always ringing.

I pick it up.

'Zoofelt, Dunnstedt and Ernst Advertising. How can I help you please?'

'Hi, Twice? Look, sorry, this is Franky. Sorry, Twice, but I'm going to have to ask you to just hang on a little bit longer, if that's okay, please. See, it's Granny Gordon – she's at the door, and she's insisting she has something important to tell me! Sorry, sorry – got to go!'

She hangs up before I have time to tell her not to worry, that will be fine.

Wait a minute though: hadn't she said it was her gran's funeral on Friday?

*

# Chapter 7

Thing is, fact that Franky's going to be a bit late isn't much of a problem for me.

When I check on the room booking and meeting schedule on the computer screen, it's all completely blank.

So, there goes that myth I'd heard that ad agencies are a hive of activity, working late into the evening to service their clients.

Nobody's turning up in reception, apart from a few arty types I see passing through as they make their way home.

Come six o'clock, even that movement has come to a halt.

The computer screen suddenly changes.

Different imagery; different colours.

Different scheduling.

There's a meeting in quarter of an hour. In the boardroom.

I'm wondering if I should be arranging coffee and biscuits and what have you for the meeting when an expensively dressed, middle-aged guy grumpily walks through the main doors into reception.

I recognise him immediately from pictures I've seen of him in the papers, though I can't recall his name. He's in the government; some sort of lower-ranking minister, in the department of blah-di-blah.

Soon as he spots me sitting behind the desk, he frowns.

'Good evening sir, are you–'

'What're you doing here?'

He says it gruffly, rudely, like I'm about as important as one of the room's chairs.

'Where's Franky?'

He looks about him like she's suddenly going to appear from behind one of the potted plants.

('Here I am Minister! Only hiding!')

'I'm afraid Franky's been delayed sir. Can I–'

'We can't have this!' he storms. 'Doesn't Matthew realise the urgency of–'

Whaddya know, he's so rude he even interrupts himself.

He's reaches for his mobile, flicking it open like he's Captain Kirk wanting to be immediately beamed up before a laser beam cuts him in half.

'Matthew! This girl on reception – we need Franky! Franky, it has to be Franky!'

Wow, now he's broken into singing Pointer Sister hits!

He looks me up and down with undisguised disgust as this Matthew he's phoned burbles something back at him.

A door opens.

Jake steps through.

He looks at me.

'Where's Franky?'

'She's been held up–'

'Okay, don't worry about it.'

Almost as brusquely and as rudely as the Minster for Surliness, he moves round behind my desk and begins to place my bag and coat on its top.

'Get your things together; I'll take you home.'

'But I don't mind covering for Fran–'

He glares at me.

'We can handle it until Franky gets in.'

The minister's half looking at his watch, half glaring up at Jake, a grimace on his face somehow managing to say, Get her out of here in the next few seconds or...

Jake looks at me, my face managing to say, Here's me just trying to help out and I get you two complete jerks who...

His face softens, like he realises he's being unfair.

'Look, sorry Twice – I know you meant well. But we really do need to get you out of here, for your own good, honestly. I'll try and explain in the car.'

The minister scowls at Jake like he's already explained way too much.

Jake turns to him, says, 'Minister, please – you can come straight through.'

The minster at last manages something that could be said to be the beginnings of a smile as Jake leads him off towards the boardroom.

As they disappear through the door, the main doors open once more.

Mary enters, her face beaming as if she's been awarded all the smiles the minister's never bothered using.

'Twice, you're still here! I hoped Franky would be here – oh no, sorry, I didn't mean that the way it sounded! Of course I'm glad you're here after all; I thought I'd miss you. What with all this panic that's going on, I couldn't pop in earlier as I'd hoped!'

She reaches forward, kisses me warmly on both cheeks – Muuhhhaaw, muuuhhhaw!

So that's what the kiss of death is like, eh?

A kiss friendlier than any I've ever had, not counting Chris of course.

'It's all a bit bewildering actually,' she continues breathlessly, 'especially as you could say I've sort of caused it all.'

'You Mary? Why, what have you done?'

'Well, I died of course, didn't I?'

There; she's admitted it.

She really is dead.

I wasn't going crazy after all.

So how come I'm just standing here, accepting the fact that I'm casually talking to a girl I saw killed as if she's just told me she's been suffering from a particularly bad case of flu?

Well...well because it just sort of proves what I've known all along, doesn't it?

I think that's the reason I'm not rushing for the doors, anyway.

'So they know you were murdered by those weird guys, yeah?'

I'm so relieved to be able to say it at last.

Then I bite my lip; I'm not supposed to know how Mary died, am I?

Luckily, either Mary doesn't fully take in what I've just said, or she assumes it's already all been explained to me.

'Course they know, silly! I told them, didn't I? Although I must admit, I was torn about telling everyone.'

'Torn?'

There I go again; repeating something someone's just said!

Trust me, I really really didn't use to be like this!

'Well of course I'm torn, Twice! I mean, I'm working for the Nyxt now, aren't I? It's such a fantastic opportunity, being made their courier liaison. But I have to tell the truth, even so, don't I?'

Nyxt?

(Damn!)

I suppose I could ask Mary who the heck these Nyxt are, but I don't want to show my ignorance. Thankfully, Mary seems to have got it into her pretty little head that I'm fully up to speed on everything going on around this weird place, so she's spilling the beans like she's the world's worst airhostess.

'So – er, what is the truth Mary?'

'Truth? I thought you'd heard, Twice! It was the Nyxt who killed me!'

For the first time since she's stepped through the door, the smile fades from her face.

Suddenly she's all sad and serious.

'And that can only mean war, Twice! A war between us and the Nyxt. A war no one can win.'

*

Wow, and I thought I'd managed to get through most of today without anything weird happening to me – well, ignoring, of course, the fact that Franky seems to think her dead granny's come calling.

And hey, what's so unusual about that, seeing as I'm standing here chatting to someone I saw brutally murdered in an alley only yesterday?

Thing is, after her announcement that World War Three was about to break out between the living and the dead (the Nyxt have got to be the dead, right?), Mary had had a little chuckle.

'Oh dear, what am I like, Twice, I don't mean a war between us and the Nyxt, obviously! I mean, I'm in the Nyxt now, aren't I? So, course, I mean a war between you, the living, and us Nyxt!'

Yeah great, thanks for clearing that up Mary.

That makes it all sound so much more like a fun day out at Disney Land.

Thing is, as she happily babbled away, I was seriously tempted to point out that, Hey, hang on a minute though Mary; it wasn't the dead who killed you, right? It was guys made of garbage, yeah?

Then again, who am I to say what these Nyxt look like when they decide they're going to appear amongst us?

The dead aren't going to be the prettiest people around, are they?

Mary excepted, of course. But I'm getting the impression she's a special case, the way she's been allowed to move back into her body.

Thing with the garbage guys, anyway, is that it could just have been my wild imagination playing tricks, yeah?

And bringing it up now, that I was just standing around twiddling my thumbs while poor little Mary here was killed – I think that's going to have an adverse effect on our burgeoning friendship, right?

I glance over at Jake.

He's hardly said anything since we got into his car.

Should I tell him about the garbage guys?

'Oh Jake, I know you're looking all pensive and worried about this war with the dead, but hey, did I happen to mention that I might have actually been able to prevent it if I'd helped Mary? Because I was there! Isn't that just a scream?'

Yeah, that's the way to ensure I'm probably arrested for all sorts of crimes that probably haven't even gone on the statutes just yet.

Besides, he's deep in thought, like he doesn't want to be disturbed.

I disturb him anyway.

'Sorry you're having to take me home Jake. Aren't you needed back there, in that meeting?'

'Yes,' he answers sourly. 'But I felt responsible for you, seeing as how it was me who recommended you.'

'Oh, yeah thanks for that Jake. So why _did_ you recommend me? If you think I can't handle covering for Franky for a bit?'

He shrugs.

'It's difficult to explain?'

'Difficult to explain that you're not an ad agency at all, but some sort of go-between between the living and the dead?'

Jake almost swerves into the side of a bus we're overtaking.

'Let me guess,' he says with narrowed eyes as he regains control, 'it was Mary, right? Mary who told you.'

'Huh huh.' I nod.

'Jeezus. I mean, Mary was never the brightest button, but – well, you'd think that with everything that's happened to her, she'd have picked up some sense along the way.'

'In her defence, I think she just assumed I knew all these things anyway.'

'Figures, to be honest; normally, we'd only appoint someone to your position who had been recommended to us. Someone who already had an inkling of or had experienced contact with the dead.'

'The dead; that's the Nyxt right?'

Jake just about bangs the wheel with his head.

'Just how much has Mary been telling you?' he just about yells, shaking his head in bewilderment.

'How come the Nyxt have appointed her as their courier if she's about to let on that they were the ones who killed her?'

Jake's eyes widen, like he really really really really can't believe just how much Mary's told me.

'You're picking up things way too fast, Twice!'

'That wasn't an answer to my question, right?'

'Look, Twice, we usually let anyone new take it relatively easy while they gradually adjust to what's expected of them, okay? It can be dangerous otherwise.'

'Oh, like a war between the living and the dead isn't dangerous at all, yeah?'

Jake pulls a face that says he could kill Mary if she weren't already dead.

'And that's an excuse for you being especially nosey, eh?'

'If you want to put it in those actual words, I suppose so. To be a bit more mature about it, I'd say I'm going to have to grow up pretty quickly if I'm liaising between groups who might declare war on each other at any minute.'

He grins. First time I've seen him grin since he got in the car.

'It's tradition; when one of our couriers dies on the job, as they've got a natural understanding of what's wanted by both sides, they're helped to quickly regain control of their body so they can serve as a more permanent contact between us.'

He says 'when one of our couriers dies on the job' like it's a bit like getting a yearly good attendance badge.

Great!

'Permanent contact?' I say.

'Well, thankfully, the Nyxt can't just appear and hang around in our world as easily as some of them would like. But when they do appear, they're sort of hard to pin down if they want to cause trouble. Someone in Mary's position, though, that satisfies us both; she can be around at all times, yet she's restricted by the body she's been allowed to reanimate.'

'And it's tradition, yeah, for the new courier to squeal on their new employers?'

'How would it look if the Nyxt refused her the job? They'd look guilty, right? Fortunately, Twice, like us the Nyxt don't want a war.'

'So, what do you think; that they didn't kill Mary?'

Like it was really some weird guys made of garbage who have absolutely nothing to do with these Nyxt?

He grimaces, a grimace that says he can't really figure out who else could have killed her but the Nyxt.

'There are those amongst them, Twice – and even amongst us too – who are tired of this uneasy – and yeah, pretty troublesome – peace that's held between us all this time. They think war will be a blessed relief that resolves things once and for all.'

'An unwinnable war?'

'Way they see it, we can only find out that if we actually go to war.'

'Perhaps that's what Franky's gran wanted to warn her about.'

'Franky's gran? Franky's dead gran?'

Jake says this like it's the weirdest thing he's ever heard, somebody's dead gran turning up at their door.

Which, of course, it would be, unless you happen to work for the otherworld's equivalent of UBS parcels.

Still, he looks like every drop of blood he has has drained from his face and gathered in the hands tightly gripping the wheel.

'Oh jeezus no!' he says, throwing the car into a violent U-turn.

*

# Chapter 8

Suddenly, Jake's zipping through the traffic like he's auditioning for the remake of Ben Hur.

'Why didn't you tell me this earlier?' he snaps.

'Well I tried–'

He throws the car into a screeching corner.

I get it – we're rushing to Franky's place.

Why? What's going on?

One minute, everyone's just accepting the dead turning up like it's as commonplace as popping down the shops. Next thing, when Franky's gran comes calling, it's all terrifying Twilight Zone stuff

'I know, I know –sorry,' he says, while squeezing the car down a thin lane I felt sure was going to take our sides off. 'I hope it's just my imagination in nuclear fission mode, but this might be urgent.'

You don't say? That's why you're driving like neither of our lives matter and we'll soon be working for the Nyxt ourselves.

He makes it worse too, trying to call Franky on his mobile while he drives.

When there's no answer, he throws the phone in the back.

He drives the car up onto the kerb, brings it to an abrupt halt.

He's out the door, rushing towards the entrance of an apartment block as he shouts back, 'You stay here; it's too dangerous.'

I follow him anyway.

*

The door's locked.

Jake bangs on the door, shouts, but there's no answer.

He takes out a key (he has a key?), unlocks the door, flings it open and rushes inside.

He's urgently yelling, 'Franky, Franky!'

'Franky!' I cry out, running in behind him.

There's no answer.

There's nobody home.

There's no disturbance; everything's neat and tidy.

There's even two half-finished cups of tea, like Franky and her gran decided, half way through a nice chat and a cuppa, that they had a bus to catch.

*

The only thing odd about Franky's apartment is that it smells real bad in here.

Yeah, come to think of it, those garbage guys who killed Mary could have been reanimated corpses, after all.

Perhaps what I thought had been rotting cabbages and what have you falling away from inside the coat is more or less what a corpse gets to look like after it's been hanging around for a while.

Is that what poor Mary will end up smelling like as she slowly decays?

That could explain some of the odd smells you get on the tube trains these days if there's more messengers like Mary and Franky's gran knocking around.

Jake's taking a quick scan of the place, looking for clues.

'Don't touch anything,' he says, as he moves aside cushions, pictures and vases.

'If it was her gran, she's prob–'

'Don't try and figure it out,' he says, raising a hand towards me like he's calling a halt. 'We've got people trained to sort things like this out.'

He gets on his mobile, turns away so I can't hear him properly as he whispers something into it.

I glance about me, wondering if it's like one of those movie scenes where you think the place is empty but someone's been surprised and is still hiding behind the curt–

There's someone by the curtains!

No.

Idiot!

For a moment there, I'd thought I'd spotted someone by the large window; but it's just a trick of the light, the way the light reflects off the glass and the shadows fall along the curtain folds, making it look like a figure.

The figure steps away from the window and into the room

'Jake,' it says, with vocal chords made of curtain cords.

*

# Chapter 9

'Andrew?' Jake says doubtfully, turning towards the figure made of what looks like curtains, shadows and reflected light.

Andrew? These things have names like Andrew?

The figure turns to me, talks in a voice rolling over broken glass.

'And I must thank your new courier liaison for granting me permission to come here.'

Did I?

I nod, smile. I wonder if I should say something like, 'Thank you, your grace.'

He turns back to Jake.

'I assumed you would want me here Jake?'

Jake's face is that of a little kid caught knocking on doors and running away.

'We need to work out what went on here quickly, before...'

His voice trails off, like it doesn't need to be said.

Andrew nods in agreement.

'It's understandable,' he growls, 'with all these other unfortunate things suddenly happening between us.'

Jake sniffs the air.

'I can smell it Andrew; the smell of the dead.'

Andrew sighs sadly.

'We didn't do this Jake; we wouldn't hurt Franky, you know that.'

'I didn't think anyone would hurt Mary either. Now she's working for you.'

'Franky's not dead; there's no sign of her on our side.'

Ah, so these dead can't be everywhere, otherwise they'd know where Franky is.

'It's got to be one of the factions, we know that Andrew. But if this goes on, none of us will be able to prevent a war. There'll be cries for revenge, that no one can be trusted; that we'd be fools to just let ourselves be picked off one by one.'

Andrew suddenly shudders. He raises his head like he's the one now sniffing the air.

His nose somehow leads him to me.

Standing so close, I can see what could possibly be taken to be a ridiculously sharp, gaunt face amongst the shifting light and shadows.

He eyes me warily, his own eyes glints and sheer darkness amongst the play of light.

'And what of your side Jake? Are you dealing with things beyond your own control, perhaps?'

Jake glances back at me.

'Twice? Yes, she's new, untried. But we have no choice but to quickly introduce her to our goings on, under the circumstances.'

'New?'

He says it like he's taken it to be an outrageous lie.

The glare from his eyes seems to be moving towards me, feels like it's wanting to slip inside me.

Then the movement, the feeling, disappears.

He whirls on Jake.

'I hope it's only the factions playing games here Jake,' he snarls. 'Otherwise, there will be no alternative but war!'

*

'Wow, what was all that about?' I ask Jake once we're safely back in his car.

'Well, chances are, she'll turn up safe. With any luck, it _will_ be her gran who's come back to give her a warning, and we might even learn something from it. But what with everything that's going on, we've got to treat everything odd like it's a potential catastrophe. Otherwise, that's what it will definitely _end_ up as.'

I presume Jake's idea of 'everything odd' is different to anyone else's idea of 'everything odd'.

Actually, though, I'm disappointed by Jake's answer.

Like him, I'm hoping Franky will turn up.

I mean, as it's her gran – even if it's her dead gran – who's turned up for a tea and a biscuit, where's the harm in that?

No, what I was hoping Jake would answer for me was why Andrew had looked at me like he was probing for something deeper within me that even I wasn't aware was there.

Like he'd sensed something in me.

Course, I could be flattering myself that he'd seen something about me that made me special.

We'd all like to think there's something deep inside us that makes us special, wouldn't we?

'Thing is Twice,' Jake says, slowing down the car like this is something he needs to concentrate on and pick the right words, 'I need to warn you; this thing with Andrew saying you'd invited him, right?'

'I didn't, honestly. I don't know how he got there.'

'Well, although you might not be aware of if it, you _did_ invite him. You've seen the picture in reception of the swans?'

'The elephants you mean?'

'Elephants, swans – that's the whole point of the picture. It's a reminder to us all that we have to be able to control what we're really seeing and what we're fooled – or more usually frightened – into thinking we're seeing. See, fortunately the Nyxt can't just go turning up in our world whenever and wherever they want; they need a form they can slip into. And if we're not careful, our overactive imaginations unwittingly conjure up a figure out of nothing that they can move into.'

'Ah, like the shadows in the curtains. Or the coat stand at my interview.'

Or, I held myself back from saying, guys made from garbage.

Jake nods in agreement.

'Sooo...' I say, 'how come you said "with any luck" it will be Franky's gran who came back to warn her? Who or what else could it be?'

'Once a body's soul has moved on, the Nyxt can take it over – another way of achieving form, of course. Fortunately, it's apparently a pretty awful experience for them; once a spirit's achieved freedom, it rarely wants to move back into its own body, let alone someone else's that's decaying, diseased or been mutilated in an accident. It takes a great deal of effort – or yes, as in Franky's gran's case, desperation – to hold it all together.'

'But if it had been some other spirit, rather than her gran's, wouldn't Franky spot that something was wrong?'

Jake pulls one of those faces that means 'Ah, well, see, it's not that simple is it?'

'How're we supposed to know,' he says, 'how someone we knew when they were alive behaves when they're dead?'

'But Franky's not dead yet; that's good, yeah.'

'That's good, but she could be being held somewhere. Thing is, until she turns up, Twice, you're now our courier – so you're going to have to learn the ropes pretty damn quickly. Fortunately, I sensed at your interview that you've got the right qualities and abilities.'

Wow, I've got abilities?

'Such as?' I ask.

'Hmn, nothing specific I can put my finger on just yet. Just a mix of gut feeling and the answers you gave to the questions pointing to an average level of abil–'

'Average?'

Wow, that hurts, know what I'm saying?

He gives me a glance that says he recognises my annoyance.

'Look, that still means a vastly superior ability than most people possess, okay? But you've got to realise that, when it comes to dealing with the Nyxt, there are some real stars, right?'

'Like you, you mean?'

He shrugs.

'Well, I'm just slightly better than average, if you must know. And yes, I admit that does smart a bit, knowing you're not up there with the best!'

'Better than me though, eh?'

He sighs.

'With a bit of training – who knows? And all this being thrown in the deep end, at a time of panic; end of the day, it's up to you whether you sink or swim.'

Suddenly, I feel incredibly doubtful about my own abilities.

'I lied,' I admit. 'I lied when answering some of your questions.'

He chuckles.

'You don't say? Fortunately, when it came to the ones that counted, I reckon you told the truth.'

*

# Chapter 10

I have to direct him to the home.

So, unlike Mary, he didn't know where I lived.

He hadn't been fooled by the address I'd given on the questionnaire.

He'd asked, 'So, where do you really live, Twice?'

*

Soon as I've made sure the staff on reception have clocked me in as going off to my room like a good little girl, I prise open the back window and sneak out.

It's dark. And it's raining.

I don't care; soon I'll be with Chris, cosy in the new home he's made for us.

The rain's falling hard, glistening like silver strands in the light coming off from lampstands, illuminated signs and windows.

Most people are indoors, keeping dry, watching TV, or getting ready for bed.

The falling rain's making everything around me hazy, indistinct. I can only just make out a small group of people heading towards me, the rain bouncing off their shoulders and heads.

Otherwise, they're like wraiths made of the surrounding darkness and the rain itself.

The group spread out across the road.

Uh oh; this doesn't look good.

I glance behind me, wondering if there's somewhere I can run to if this is going to turn out badly.

There are figures behind me, languidly closing in.

There's no rush; they know they have me surrounded.

I back up against a wall.

I cry out for help, but the heavy rain deadens every sound.

I feel alone, abandoned.

Is this how Mary felt, just before she died?

*

They slowly gather in a semicircle around me. Close, yet strangely keeping their distance.

The rain falls about them, splatters off them, dark shapes only given form by the way the rain defines them.

Then I realise; they're not real.

Or, rather, they're not real people.

They're Nyxt.

And I've helped them come into existence.

As Jake had warned, my own fear has conjured up figures in the darkness and the rain, giving them form and allowing them to slip into our world.

'We know what you are.'

The voice is like violently splashing rain, rain rushing down a gutter.

'I'm a courier; I help the dead.'

Once again, I wonder if I'm feeling what Mary felt in her last seconds alive.

'No; you're more than a–'

_'Twice_?'

The urgent shout cuts through the heavy rain.

It's Chris's voice.

It's Chris, running along the street, almost as insubstantial as the surrounding figures in the falling rain.

'What's wrong, why are you just standing there?'

He can't see the Nyxt

He just sees rain.

Perhaps he sees the rain falling oddly here and there, but it's just so many drops falling amongst so many millions of others.

'Stay away Chris! They're–'

Suddenly, I can't see them either.

They've gone.

Chris rushes up to me, embraces me warmly. Chuckles with a mix of relief and concern.

'Where have you been? You're so late! I was on my way to the hom–'

He notices that I'm trembling.

'Twice? What's wrong? You looked so scared.'

He glances about him, trying to see what could have scared me.

'It's only rain.'

'No no; it wasn't only rain, Chris! It was the dead; I think the dead were about to kill me!'

He chuckles again, but uncertainly this time.

'Twice! I always knew you had an overactive imagination, but–'

He stops, realising that I'm serious.

'No, no Chris, it's more than that! I've got so much to tell you. Things you won't believe.'

*

Chris does believe me.

He sits there quietly, without interrupting, as I go through everything that's happened to me today.

He doesn't even halt me to insist I go over bits I've described poorly.

He waits until I've finished, even when he has the answer to one of the many things that have been puzzling me.

'That bit you mentioned where you couldn't understand how Mary had found you, when you'd put the wrong address down on the form? I think I know how she could have known.'

'How, Chris? How could she possibly know?'

'Well, way I see it, someone, right, thought you were right for this job, yeah? Well they'll have made sure these couriers knew where you lived, wouldn't they?'

'They? But who're these they, Chris? And how would they let the couriers know?'

He puts his arms around me.

'Well, I phoned them, didn't I?'

*

'You know, I gotta say you're taking all this pretty well,' I say to Chris, surprised that he hasn't once asked if I might be mistaken about everything that's happened to me.

You know, the bit where someone says, 'Of course I believe you; but there has to be a rational explanation for all this.'

Instead, Chris says, 'Yeah, but isn't it amazing Twice? It means we don't die. We just move on to the next level – hah!'

He laughs.

'Nyxt level – you reckon that's why they've got that name?'

'Could be,' I agree.

'Thing is, what I don't get is all this about this war being unwinnable by either side.'

'Yeah, me too; surely when we die, we just end up fighting for them.'

'Never ending reinforcements – well, up until we're all dead I suppose.'

'Hmn, I suppose then they couldn't get back into this world.'

'They could keep a few of us alive; breed us just as a form of access into this world.'

I shudder,

'Jeez! That would be terrible, wouldn't it?'

At the end of the alley, cutting through both the heavy rain and even the thick sides of our dumpster home, there's a shriek of car tyres trying to get a grip on wet tarmac.

There's a sickening bump, the squeal of tyres at last coming to an end.

Then silence, bar the peaceful patter of rain against the dumpster's sides.

'An accident!' we both say at once.

We're both out of the dumpster in an instant, rushing towards the end of the alley.

The light of the beams of a stationary car cut across the road at an odd angle.

There's the sound now of people, people like us, running through the rain to see how they can help.

Or just to see. Like it's an extra special show, just put on for them.

'I didn't see her! She just ran out! She's so small – anyone could've missed her!'

The driver, standing by his car, protesting his innocence to no one but himself.

We're surrounded by people. The same people I'd called on to help me, but who hadn't heard, hadn't responded.

Where were they for me?

Why are they all out for this girl but not – but as soon as I look down on the girl, ungainly sprawled out in front of the car, I know I'm being selfish, foolish.

She's young, so incredibly young.

The unopened, still pristine packet of cigarettes some unthinking parent has sent her out to buy lies just out of her reach.

And just as these people didn't come when I needed them, they've come too late for her too.

Even as Chris bends down beside her, I know she's dead.

She's too still.

Unnaturally, painfully positioned.

And...there's a darkness around her.

A darkness that doesn't surround anyone else around me.

Chris is crying. Tenderly stroking her head, her hair.

'My beautiful, beautiful butterfly. A crushed butterfly.'

His eyes fall on the packet of cigarettes.

I can see him fighting to control his anger.

Other people around me are less successful at fighting their anger.

They're arguing with the driver, calling him a murderer, 'A murderer of little children!'

'It was dark...'

'There are lights!'

'How could you miss her?'

'You must have been speeding!'

'...wet conditions...'

Chris ignores them all.

He breathes in deeply.

He caresses the girl's head, ignoring those telling him he shouldn't be touching her, she might still be alive, you can paralyse them if you're not careful.

'You don't have to go, not just yet,' Chris whispers to the little girl. 'Not just yet, my beautiful little butterfly!'

She coughs.

She coughs again.

Stirs.

That strange darkness no longer surrounds her.

'She's alive!' someone cries in relief.

The girl turns around, so she's looking up into Chris's face.

'Where am I? Have I been asleep?'

'Look, look – the girl's all right!' the driver shouts out defensively.

The girl blinks, looks about her curiously.

She sees the packet of cigarettes.

She picks it up, runs off home.

'I thought she was dead!' someone gasps.

'I could've sworn she was dead,' says another.

She was; she was dead.

But, somehow, Chris has brought her back to life.

*

# Chapter 11

'She was dead Chris.'

'She can't have been, can she?'

'Chris, I _know_ she was dead; there was this weird darkness around her, like the light had left her.'

'Trick of the light. It was raining. It was night. Lights everywhere.'

He's acting like he's the one he's trying to convince.

Like the driver protesting his innocence.

'Dead; she was dead.'

I say it flatly, assuredly.

'It's not like you killed her or anything, Chris; just the opposite. You brought her back to life. Even amongst all the weird things that's happened to me today, that's the most amazing – most beautiful – thing I've ever seen!'

I reach out and touch his hand.

He's trembling.

'I...I didn't mean to do it,' he says tearfully. 'I...I just _wanted_ to do it, wished I _could_ do it. Told myself, hey, it must be possible – look at the weird, unbelievable things that's happened to Twice! There is another world we move on to – so that means, why should we move on if it's not really our time? So I, well, sorta called her back, told her she didn't have to go just yet. Her mum and dad – they'd miss her.'

I cup his hands in mine.

'Chris; it was the most wonderful, beautiful thing I've ever seen!'

And then we both cry.

Crying because we're so happy for a little girl who should be dead but, thanks to Chris, is now back home where she belongs

*

I reckon it's time I visited my own gran.

Not that I want to.

Not that she wants me to.

But with everything that's happened to Franky, well – I think it's something I should do.

I don't want _my_ gran coming back from the dead!

Jake had told me not to worry about coming in throughout the day. 'Getting cover for that's pretty easy, as it's mainly advertising work,' he'd said.

He wants me in later, filling in for Franky.

Gran lives just a bus ride away. In her own 'home'.

A nice, polite word for an asylum.

Yep, gran's crazy; crazy as a box of frogs.

Mum and dad had to have her committed.

See why I don't want her coming back to call once she's gone and popped her clogs?

Worse still, she doesn't like me.

'Go away,' she says as I walk to where she's sitting by the window.

'Hi gran,' I say, beaming.

She stares beyond me.

'That boy with you again?' she says, her voice trembling with fear.

No, she doesn't mean Chris.

She used to say that even before I started bringing him with me.

'That boy; I don't like him.'

'What boy gran? There's no boy there.'

Then she'd look at me like I was lying, like she was frightened of me too.

When I did bring Chris, it turned out to be a mistake.

'The boy, you've brought him again!'

'Nuh uh,' I'd say with a shake of my head, bringing Chris closer to her. 'See gran; he's actually here. This is Chris. Not the invisible boy!'

She'd shrink away from both of us, her eyes wide like we were playing some dreadfully evil joke on her.

Of course, she could never forgive mum and dad for placing her in here.

Every time I visited, there'd be some variation of, 'Your mum and dad; they must've sold their souls. Sold their souls to the devil! Only explanation, only explanation.'

Today, after finishing staring beyond me, she looks straight at me.

'See that boy's not with you today; good!'

She turns away from me, stares out of the window.

'Still don't want you here though!'

*

'Where's Franky?'

Just about everyone who comes into reception asks me this.

Obviously, Franky's disappearance isn't common knowledge.

'You're not Franky!'

That's the more irritating version.

Like I'm sitting there not actually knowing that I'm not Franky.

Two girls I've never seen before come out of the door leading to the offices behind me.

'Franky? Where's Franky?'

'Held up,' I say for the umpteenth time. 'She'll be in later this week.'

'What about the meeting?' one of the girls asks, a dumbfounded, horrified look on her face.

'Me; I'll be attending it in her place,' I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel.

They both look terrified.

Great! That's a real confidence builder.

The girls pass through reception a number of times, carrying old coats, hats and coat stands. They bring them from out of the offices, taking them to the boardroom.

I take a quick, curious peek inside the boardroom. As I'd expected, the girls are placing the stands and coats against the walls, each one looking much as the stand and old coat looked at the time of my interview.

Today, however, rather than lying in shadow, the coat stand is brightly lit. As are all the new coat stands. Small yet incredibly bright lights hanging from the ceiling have been deliberately directed at each stand.

The light is so bright you can see every detail in the coats and hats.

You can't mistake them for anything but coats and hats.

The girls peer back at me as they go about their task, looks of both disdain and puzzlement; How could _she_ end up in Franky's role?

Hey, I'm used to looks like that.

They bounce straight off me.

'Oh, Twice!'

Hearing someone back in reception calling out my name, I spin round.

It's Mary.

'Isn't it awful about Frank–'

I put a finger up to my mouth as I pull back from the doorway.

'Not everyone knows,' I warn her quietly as she gives me a surprisingly warm if tearful embrace.

'And I'd been so looking forward to telling her not to worry about her gran!' she whispers urgently in my ear.'

We move away from the boardroom's doorway so the girls can't hear us.

'It was her gran who tried to warn her about something,' I say.

'I know,' Mary says guiltily. 'That might have been down to _me_!'

'Because Franky's gran was worried about how you died, you mean?'

'Maybe yes; maybe that's all it comes down to. But let me tell you, Twice – putting your body back on...'

She shudders, like it's the coldest, clammiest, most horrific thing she's ever experienced.

'But I thought you wanted this job Mary...'

'The job, yes – it's a terrific career opportunity, don't you think?'

She gives me one of her incredibly bright smiles, like she's talking about a move up to a managerial position.

'But that's the only reason why I did it – move back into my body, I mean,' she continues. 'And even for me, it was an awful experience; so constricting, after that sudden experience of complete freedom. And I was so lucky in the way I died of course!'

'I can't see that getting _murdered_ is lucky, Mary!'

'Ah, but my body wasn't damaged in any way, was it?

I've been wanting to ask this question for a long time now – so I can't pass up the opportunity.

One moment Mary had been standing against the wall, surrounded by the weird garbage guys.

The next moment she was on the floor, dead, with not a mark on her.

I'm hoping, too, that she tells me something that makes me feel a little less guilty about standing by while she was killed.

You know – that it was inevitable.

That I couldn't have possibly helped anyhow.

'How _were_ you killed Mary?'

'I think it was just that the dead pulled either the spirit or the energy from my body; I'm not quite sure. So, as I was saying, twice – my body hadn't suffered any decay, or even gone into rigor mortis. It hadn't even been lying around for long at all.'

She flounces and twirls around on her tiptoes like she's modelling a new Armani dress, but I take it she's really showing me how perfect her body looks.

'It's as perfect as any courier could hope for, really,' she says.

Will it begin to decay? And if so, when?

That might be a question too far to ask her.

I let her talk.

'Yet it was still awful for me to take possession of it once more,' she says. 'So how awful would it have been for Franky's gran? Why would she do that just to tell Franky something she'd find out anyway – that I'd been murdered by the dead?'

'So, if you're thinking her gran can't have been warning her about your death, Mary, how come you're blaming yourself? Didn't you say you think her gran's warning might have been down to you?'

'Well, yes, see; when you die, and your spirit leaves your body, it can be a bit of a shock, all a bit disorientating – especially if you've died suddenly, like in an accident or a murder, like me! You find yourself on the borders between life and the spirit world, right, wondering what's happened, or what you should be doing, right?'

I nod; yeah, that figures.

'Luckily, some spirits, see, don't feel like moving completely on into the spirit world at first, especially if they're still concerned for anyone back amongst the living. Now when Franky's gran died, right, she finally found out what Franky's job as courier was really about – so luckily for me, she was there to calm me down!'

'But Mary, I'm still not seeing how you're responsible for Franky's gran deciding she had to warn Franky about something.'

'Well, see, there's something right at the back of my mind that says I told her something odd about my death – but do you know, I can't remember what it might have been!'

*

# Chapter 12

'Well you know what Mary? I was there when you died! So I bet the odd thing you told Franky's gran was that you said "you're _not_ dead" to the guys who killed you.'

It was on the tip of my tongue.

But I never said it.

What else could guys made of garbage be but the dead?

I've been invited into the meeting to fill in for Franky.

Seated on my side of the large table, there's Jake, Matthew, the Minister – who, when he'd turned up, had been incandescent that 'we're using a novice at the most dangerous point in our relationship' – and some other guy called Hugh who makes the minster appear calm and considered by comparison.

Seated opposite us are the dead.

They look odd, dressed in out-dated hats and coats, and formed mainly from shadows and plays of light.

As soon as we, the living, had taken our seats at the table, the lights had been dimmed.

'Times like this,' Jake had explained to me as he'd led me into the boardroom, 'you let your imagination play any tricks it wants; we _are_ inviting them to _this_ meeting!'

As soon as I'd seen the images of figures within the coats and stands, the figures had stirred and moved.

Then the dead had calmly, silently walked towards the table, taking their seats.

The real stands and coats remained by the wall; obviously, once the spirits have been given a sense of form, they no longer need the reality that allowed the human mind to conjure up figures from nothing but shadows and light.

It was a long winded, quite frankly boring discussion, most of which I didn't understand because – naturally – they assumed everyone around the table knew exactly how the relationship between the living and the dead worked.

Putting the odd pieces together, though, here's what I picked up from the meeting.

These meetings have been going on for thousands of years, with only an elect few amongst the living either knowing of or being capable of talking to the dead. For, it happily turns out, most of the Nyxt have as much interest as we have in keeping the living world – well, living.

The Nyxt aren't just the spirits of the dead – but also the spirits of those yet to be born!

For the Nyxt, an existence without the living world would be like our world without trees, animals, the sky.

But of, course, in the interest of feeling secure, there are always some people prepared to sacrifice such things.

*

As I head back into the alleyway, I see the little girl.

She dashes past me, clutching something else that her parents have sent her out to buy from the local shop.

She doesn't see me, doesn't recognise me.

She probably never realises that, for a brief moment, she was running along the borders between life and death.

Obviously, too, her parents remain blissfully unaware how close they came to losing her.

When I tell Chris, he's angry.

'How can you use a little girl like that? Don't they realise she'd be dead if I hadn't–'

He trails off, looks at me uneasily.

'So,' I say calmly, 'you do admit she was dead – dead until you raised her back to life, Chris.'

He shakes his head.

'No, no; it was a mistake. I didn't mean to do it, Twice!'

'Some mistake Chris!' I chuckle uncertainly. I draw close to him. 'You saved a young girl, Chris! A girl who'd be dead if it wasn't for you!'

He shrugs, irately pulling himself away from me.

'Can't you see what will happen, Twice, if this story gets out? That I raised someone from the dead?'

'It's a gift, Chris. A miraculous gift!'

'And what if someone comes here, wanting their loved one raised form the dead? What if I can't do it again? I don't know _how_ I did it! What if I do it for some, but not for others? If someone's diseased, old, or their body's mutilated – how do I bring back life to those, Twice? They'll be angry with me, Twice! And if I leave them dead, their relatives will and up blaming me for their deaths!'

'We both know it's possible, Chris. We both now know that there are other world's beyond this one, that people – well, their spirits anyway, which is what we're really talking about here – can move between those worlds.'

'So what about you Twice? You've been accepted at this weird agency, that talks to the dead – why can't you use _your_ powers to raise the dead?'

'Hah hah; because I'm still not sure what my supposed powers are supposed to be, for one. Because I wasn't the one who brought a little girl back to life, for another.'

He takes my hands in his, bows his head sorrowfully, like he's about to make a terrible confession.

'Look, Twice, the real reason why I wanted to believe I could help that little girl comes down to, believe it or not–' he gives an embarrassed little laugh – 'well, it's because I once knew of a little girl of that age who'd also died; and yet, I _swear_ , she came back to life, just like that little girl did!'

'And you were around then too? It was down to you?'

'No, no; not down to me that time. To be honest, it's how I heard it right?'

'Ah, a _story_ you mean?' I say doubtfully.

'A story that rings, true, know what I'm saying? Cos I'd heard she'd been killed, then later on I saw her alive.'

'Okay, so what happened? How, according to this story, did she come back to life?'

'Well, as you'd expect, her mum and dad were heartbroken – but I mean heartbroken to a point where they were being driven crazy. They couldn't live without her. They wanted to be with her again. So they got drunk; then deliberately drove their car into a deep river. At full speed, so there was no chickening out at the last minute.'

'So far, sounds like we're going to end up here with three bodies.'

'When it comes to the difference between life and death, Twice, a river can be an odd thing. How many times do you hear of people who are drowning and see all their past life flooding before their eyes once more? In most legends, it's a river that stands as the boundary between the living and the dead, yeah?'

I nod in agreement. We've all heard of the Styx and Charon's ferry for the dead at the very least.

'As they plunge into the river, the parents aren't sad anymore; it's the most joyous they've ever felt since their girl died. "We're coming to meet you darling!" they're yelling.'

I raise my eyebrows, wondering just how the original story teller knows all these details; I mean, if the mum and dad die, how can anyone know what they were saying?

'Did the girl hear them calling out her name? Had she been hanging around on the borders, worried for her mum and dad because they missed her so much? Who knows? What we do know–'

'What this _story_ tells us,' I point out sceptically.

'What we _know_ is that her parents begin to lose consciousness. So perhaps it's at this point, when they're at the half-point between life and death, that their girl finally realises what's happening. Because as they drift off, her mum and dad see what they think are flickering points of light in the water. But the lights are getting bigger, drawing towards them.'

He looks up at me, his eyes pleading – _believe me Twice, this is true_!

'It's the girl, swimming towards them. And a beautiful angel is there, guiding her.'

'Chris, a lot of amazing things have been happening to me lately, but I've not heard anything about angels yet.'

He shrugs off my doubt.

'They're all so eager to hug each other once more that, somehow, working together, they manage to throw open the car doors. And somehow, too, they've conquered that barrier between life and death. They swim to the surface, letting the car sink, like it's the lead weight of their old existence they're leaving behind.'

I frown.

'So...you're saying they all survive?'

He nods, his face serious.

'The parents hadn't actually died, remember? They'd just got to that point where you're hovering between the two worlds.'

'But the girl – she was dead, right, and came back to life? Like you brought that girl back to life?'

He nods, smiling – _trust me, Twice, it's true_!

'Well, I'd be tempted to say it's just a story, Chris, But if it helped you believe you could bring life back to that girl – who am I to doubt it, eh?'

He reaches forward, hugs me tightly.

'Thanks Twice; I knew you'd understand!'

I smile back.

I hug him back.

But no, I don't understand.

I don't understand anything that's happening to me lately.

*
Franky's gran showed up where she'd disappeared from; the casket where she'd been originally laid out in the undertakers.

Much to the disgust but useless protests of the family firm who ran the business, the agency sent in a forensic team in an attempt to find anything that could lead us to finding Franky safe and well.

Somewhere between taking Franky and ending up back in her coffin, however, gran had taken a very thorough shower, giving her clothes a good old-fashioned scrub in the process.

She was no longer hanging around on the borders either; she'd moved deeper into the world of the Nyxt. Perhaps she was already well on her way to merging and becoming one with the spiritual energy there.

Naturally, the newspapers that managed to find out anything about gran going walkabout were discouraged from reporting it. Only the local paper was allowed to cover it, if only to dispel the rumours that a body had gone missing by putting it all down to a macabre student prank.

Besides, the newspaper had something far more interesting to report, a story that no one could dissuade them from running; secret meetings were being held, where a dishevelled boy was raising the dead.

*

# Chapter 13

Now that, in effect, I'm working alongside the dead, it has crossed my mind that I should look into contacting my mum and dad.

They've been out of my life for so long, I can't even remember what they looked like, what type of people they were.

From what I've heard about Franky's gran, however, the way she's virtually disappeared in the otherworld now that she's moved away from the border, I've had to face up the fact that they're probably still unreachable.

Apparently, the world of the Nyxt makes our own world look small by comparison.

Once a spirit has either overcome or come to terms with the shock of being separated from their loved ones – and realising, anyway, that the chances are they will meet up again one day – they inevitably move deeper and deeper into this new, fabulous world.

As they become more accustomed to this new way of 'life', many even give up the last residues of a separate identity, choosing instead to allow themselves to be swept up into the One, transforming into and amalgamating with the spiritual energy flowing through the Otherworld.

It's supposed to be the most wonderful experience. Though how you can experience anything when you no longer exist as an individual as we know it; well, I'm not quite sure.

When Chris raises the dead, he tries to explain to the clamouring, hopeful crowds that the spirits who move away from the border are beyond his contact.

He insists he can't go into details – his knowledge doesn't stretch that far,

His reach doesn't stretch that far.

He can only contact the recently dead.

And by recent, he means they died at most over an hour ago.

There's another reason for this insistence, he's told me.

If decay has set in, it will continue. Only at a slower rate than if the body was left without its spirit.

He explains to the growing crowds, packing out the halls, spilling out of sports and scout huts, that he can't prevent a disease continuing to rampage through a body.

Limbs that have been lost cannot be restored.

He begs the people clamouring for his help to bear this in mind.

'Would the one you love really want to live once again in the body you bring to me?'

Still, though, as Chris had originally prophesised, these desperate, distraught people turn to him for help even when the body they bring along has only been made presentable by the undertaker's art.

He has to patiently explain time and time again that a post mortem has destroyed any chance of a resurrection, as indeed has even the slightest setting-in of rigor mortis.

Still they insist that he should 'work his miracle'.

Still they complain that he has no right to deny them what they ask for.

Still they assure him that the risen person won't mind inhabiting a body that no sane person would want to stand close to.

Still they accuse him of being ultimately responsible for their death – for he has the power to bring them back to life and he has refused.

Thankfully, any resorting to aggression are immediately and if necessary forcibly ejected from the meeting by Chris's swiftly increasing band of reverent, worshiping followers.

These come only to see the resurrections.

It is enough for them.

Chris is the saviour.

He himself is the Risen.

*

'Ah, so you'd heard about these meetings too eh, Twice?'

Suddenly, Jake is sidling up to me.

We're at the back of the hall, the place I prefer to be as it's farthest away from the frenzied, emotional clamouring and delirious swaying that always surrounds Chris.

'You should have let me know rather than trying to stop it yourself.'

'Stop it?' I say, just before it dawns on me what he means.

He doesn't know that I know Chris.

He thinks I've heard about this meeting the way most people hear about them – on the grape vine, people whispering details yet swearing the listener to secrecy.

He thinks, too, that I've come here in my role as courier.

It's my duty to stop something like this – a tampering with the borders between life and death.

'He's bringing people back to life,' I whisper quietly to Jake. 'Haven't you seen all the ecstatic faces around you?'

Faces that will turn to angry ones if they overhear us talking like this.

'And you think that's fine do you? Tampering with the Wyrd?'

_'The_ weird?'

'The _Wyrd_ , spelt with a 'y' – the Life-Force, in other words.'

'Life force?'

'See? You still don't know enough about all this, Twice, to go making all-embracing claims that bringing people back to life is a good thing. What about if people just started tampering with the weather, just making this day hot, because we're having a barbeque, this day rainy, cos the garden needs it; don't you just think there might be some serious knock-on effects? Because it's all connected, of course; just as the Wyrd links everything to do with life and death.'

He'd stared directly at me, his eyes hard and penetrating, while he'd talked.

Now he turned away, looking up towards Chris once more.

'Trust me,' he says sternly, 'we have to stop him.'

'I can't.'

'I know you _can't_ – but I take it you mean you _won't_?'

I nod. With another nod, I draw his attention back to Chris.

'I know him. Chris. He's my boyfriend.'

Jake's mouth hangs open in surprise.

He turns to me, a look on his face I could interpret as disgust, unbelieving astonishment, or a request for me to tell him that I'm joking.

He shakes his head, mouths a silent 'Jeeezus'.

'It's not just me,' He says. 'The Nyxt will want to stop this too. Better _we_ stop it than them.'

He turns to me.

'A better chance that Chris comes out of it alive.'

People have heard us. They're glaring at us, nudging other people around them.

Some of them are drawing closer. They're angry.

'We'd better get outside' I warn Jake, pulling him with me as I quickly head for one of the exits.

'I've seen it before,' I explain as we dip outside into the night. 'The police have got wind of some of the meetings; tried to break them up. Some of the people here see it in similar terms to attacking a church – no, worse. More like you're trying to snatch salvation away from them. I think some of them would be prepared to kill to protect Chris. He always escapes, anyway.'

The moon's full, lighting up the alley we've come out into in a hazy, silvery glow. We could be underwater, the way everything around us seems so unreal, the walls and rubbish bins merging with the grey sheen of the illuminated air.

Above us, there's a wild fluttering of wings.

Jake looks up, startled, anxious.

'Uh oh!'

'Pigeons; a cat probably disturbed them.'

'Could be.'

He says it, but doesn't sound like he believes it. He still seems on edge.

'What?' I snap in frustration. 'So now you're saying you can read pigeon movements, like some sort of ancient soothsayer?'

'If you see circular ripples in a pond, you don't have to see the thrown pebble that caused them to know they didn't just appear out of nowhere.'

One of the birds falls from the sky, landing with a dull thud on a nearby roof.

The one immediately behind it falls next, hitting the ground limply.

The others wheel off.

'Dead zone!' Jake barks urgently, pulling me back. 'For the moment, it's the domain of the dead.'

He looks up at the moon like he wants to curse it.

'Don't move Twice! Anything entering the zone will fall down dead!'

*

# Chapter 14

Nothing was really distinct in the diffused silvery light.

Yes, it created hard shadows there, brightly lit other things here; but it was a landscape of few tones, such that objects naturally seemed to blend, merge, and take on an unfamiliar shape. Bright sunlight would give them the colours that separated them. Darkness would transform them into black but thankfully formless shapes.

Here, the light was ideal for playing tricks with your imagination.

If I thought my control was wavering, I instantly looked away before the shapes took on a more figurative form.

What had Jake said? If you think you see movement in the corner of your eye, then you probably did.

He'd also said that, when it came to the way kids always think there's something hiding under the bed, in my case there probably had been.

Great!

Figures are forming in the middle of the alley, well away from any object. They're forming in the shimmering haze of the light itself.

'Jake! Sorry! I was trying my hardest not to see any figures out there!'

Jake rewards me with a bitter sigh.

'Don't worry, Twice. This wasn't down to you. It's a moon river – a river of soft light that makes it almost impossible not to see shapes in. It's a natural gateway. The Nyxt can move into shapes that wouldn't be anywhere near distinct enough for them to use normally.'

What had been columns of shimmering light sharpen and harden, taking on more and more definition.

They're more like actual figures than any others I've seen.

'Jake; this has to stop.'

One of the figures authoritatively takes his place at the head of what could be a rough triangular formation, the rest hanging back. Even so, they still manage to give off an air of menace, of barely controlled anger.

Me and Jake, we're the complete opposite, as we're obviously confined to the shallow porch arching the exit door.

We're not sure where the dead zone begins. We've got to stay where we are.

Jakes makes the best of it, standing up straight and proud beneath the alcove, like he's transforming the crude brickwork into a portal to the world of the living. And he's the one barring the way.

'Andrew,' he says in greeting.

Once again, I don't know how Jake knows it's Andrew. Even in this new, more defined form they've taken in front of us, they're all still pretty much the same as far as I can see.

Perhaps there are odd differences between the way they look that I'm not yet used to spotting. Or maybe it's down to the way they speak.

'We're also here to stop it, Andrew,' Jake says. 'We know this shouldn't be happening.'

Even I can tell that Andrew isn't impressed by Jake's comment.

What passes for a scowl passes across what passes for his face.

'You Jake? You and this girl?'

He observes me scornfully over Jake's shoulder.

'Do you really think you can bring a halt to this? A crowd drunk on miracles?'

'All we'd be doing is equalising things out,' another spirit says. 'Many have returned to the world of the living from the realm of the Nyxt. We'd only be taking some of the living by way of recompense.'

'All we have to do is extend our temporary domain.'

As he speaks, another indicates the way the silvery light ends against a row of rubbish bins. Two dead cats are sprawled across the floor, while a third cowers fearfully in a darkened corner.

'There's no need for that!' Jake holds his ground. 'This is our domain–'

'That's intruding into ours!' Andrew snaps back

The second spirit to speak has drawn closer towards the alcove. He's studying me intently, like he's casting his eyes over a work of art he's about to buy, checking for any signs of fraud or fakery.

'This girl?' he says. 'Is she the one responsible?'

Jake shakes his head.

'No; she's our courier.'

'Courier?'

He says it like he's spotted the fake artist's signature. He turns to Andrew.

'There's something not right about her; something–'

A piercing shriek comes from the hall behind us.

More screams follow, and angry or amazed shouts.

Jake whirls on the step, about to rush in – then he spins back once more, his hand raised as if that alone can somehow block the entrance of the dead.

'Andrew, please,' he pleads. 'I'll halt it. We can discuss this later.'

Andrew appears unimpressed. He begins to move closer to the porch, a sure indication that he's going to follow us into the building.

Strangely, the figure alongside him reaches out, touching his arm.

He glances up at me, then turns back to Andrew.

He shakes his head.

'All right Jake,' Andrew says. 'But if you don't immediately put an end to all this, we will act ourselves.'

He and the others turn as if to walk away.

Instead, they just fade out of existence.

*

What had been a clamouring, excited crowd was now a fearful, seething, surging sea of bodies.

The police had arrived in force, rushing into and amongst the crowd like dark, frenzied sharks.

They had obviously heard of the meeting, and figured out where it was being held.

Perhaps Jake himself had arranged for them to be here.

As Andrew had pointed out, how was he expecting to bring the meeting to a halt with nobody but me to help him?

The police hadn't managed to reach the stage yet, however. Although most people were fleeing them, many had actually rushed into the attack, lashing out with fists and broken chair legs.

Chris was being quickly led off the stage into the cloaked sidings. An escape route had been prepared earlier; the halls were always carefully chosen for their hidden, unexpected exit points.

He was leaving behind a weeping, ecstatic family on the stage.

'Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord!' the oldest man amongst them intoned dazedly.

Carefully, they helped the recently risen woman unsteadily make her way across the stage.

She mumbled confusedly.

'No, no! What am I doing here? No no!'

I understood her distress.

Her body was gawky, her legs bent ungainly, no doubt by the accident that had killed her.

Maybe Jake was right; maybe people shouldn't be brought back from the dead.

*

# Chapter 15

'Why?'

I didn't hide my anger.

'Why raise that poor woman Chris? She was...she wasn't capable of walking on her own!'

'So, are you saying that the otherwise-abled shouldn't be given the chance to live again?

He nonchalantly breathes a temporary gust of life into another of his origami creations, this time an elephant that jerkily walks off.

'What? No, no...'

I don't know what I'm saying.

'It...it doesn't seem right, somehow!'

'Somehow? That's hardly a strong argument, Twice. Besides, her family were insistent. Anyway, wasn't I the one who originally said this would happen?'

A paper butterfly takes off from his cupped hands.

'Raising the dead is illegal. It's necromancy!'

I was merely repeating what I'd heard the police say to people protesting their innocence as they were taken away from the meeting in handcuffs.

Chris chuckles.

'Does that law still really exist? If it does, it's got to make you wonder how much the authorities have known all along about the possibilities of bringing the dead back to life.'

He turns to me, his eyebrows rising quizzically.

'How come you don't get it on the NHS, eh?'

'Why aren't you taking this seriously, Chris? I've told you about my job – this guy Jake, from where I work, I told him you're my boyfriend. He wanted me to tell him where you lived; I had to fob him off, saying you could be anywhere out on the streets. That you wouldn't meet up with me now you'd seen me with him, with Jake.'

'Good, good.' He smiles at me. 'We wouldn't want to be moving on again, would we?'

'Jake's not going to leave it there if these meetings continue Chris! He's always Googling me as it is!'

'Googling?' he laughs. 'I think you mean ogling, Twice.'

I slap him playfully.

'I mean _Googling_ ; he looks at me like he's really studying me all the time, searching for something. Like he's trying to work something out about me that he hasn't quite figured out yet.'

'Sure it's not just that he fancies you, eh?'

I shake my head.

'No, no; his stare's too intense. I catch him watching me every now and again. He turns away quickly, trying to make out he wasn't watching me.'

'Sounds like he fancies you to me.'

I give him another playful slap on the arm, making him drop the flamingo he's making from a sheet of newspaper,

'So how come you're taking it all so calmly if he does, eh?'

'Because we're soul mates, of course.' He grins, grabs me, wrestles me gently to the floor. 'You can't split soul mates!'

'Chris, sorry, sorry, stop, stop!'

I try and push him off, trying to reach for the paper he'd dropped.

Something had caught my eye.

'What?' Chris backs away. 'What's wrong Twice?'

Grabbing the paper, I quickly unfold it, read the headline.

'It's the minister,' I say. 'He's been murdered.'

*

'It was the Nyxt again,' Jake says assuredly when I mention the murder of the minister. 'Obviously, the papers have reported it as a burglary gone wrong; but it was the Nyxt all right. He's absolutely fuming, off course.'

'Fuming? How can you know he– ahh, of course. On the other side, you mean?'

He nods, frowns slightly; like how else would he mean?

It's evening, and we're outside the home. Jake has called to pick me up, saying he'll give me a lift into work.

He was 'passing anyway' he'd said.

Sure. And it's nothing at all to do with checking up on me to see if I'm still hanging out with Chris or not.

'Mary said he reckons he must have been a bit off guard; his lights went out at home, and he didn't think anything of it. Put it down to a blown fuse. They were made up of all sorts of weird objects from his own house. Zapped the life out of him, just as they did with Mary.'

'The Nyxt fear a war as much as we do.'

Hearing the girl's voice, I turned expecting to see Mary.

'Franky!' both Jake and I say at once in delighted surprise.

'Why would they kill the minister?' Franky sternly asks, urgently walking across the grass towards us.

'Where have you been?'

Jake wraps his arms around her, briefly but joyfully lifting her up off the floor.

Her gaze never leaves me, however.

It's a hard, probing stare.

Is she jealous?

Does she think something is going on between me and Jake?

'In a place lit so I couldn't call up the Nyxt to tell them where I was. Gran thought she was leaving me somewhere safe, but someone locked the door as soon as she'd left.'

'So how did you escape Franky?'

I say it as brightly as I can, hoping Franky realises I'm glad that she's back.

Her cold stare seems harder, more hateful than ever.

'It was left open this morning and–'

In midsentence, she launches herself sideways at me.

She's a blur.

She moves at a speed I would have thought impossible. It's a leap that defies gravity.

Suddenly, I'm flying up into the air too.

Not because I've jumped. But because Franky has lifted me up off my feet as if I'm weightless, throwing me backwards towards the wall lying well over fifteen feet behind me.

I hit the wall high up, the blow knocking the wind out of me, jarring every bone, setting off ever pain sensor.

As I fall to the ground, Franky flies towards me once more.

Despite her unbelievable speed, however, Jake moves faster.

He seems to appear between us from out of nowhere.

'Franky!'

As she moves or feints one way, he moves with her, blocking her attempts to reach me.

'What's going on Franky? Why're you attacking Twice?'

'She's Half-Life Jake! Gran said no one could be trusted, that I had to go somewhere safe for a while.'

They're sizing each other up, looking for an advantage.

'I don't know what you're talking about Franky,' I scream out.

'We've never detected anything that could say she is Franky!'

Jake's so busy talking he's let down his guard.

Franky feints one way, leans back, slips under his arms.

She grabs me by the arms, half spinning around to whirl me up into the air yet again, throwing me with all her remarkable strength towards a row of arrow-tipped railings.

She's planned the throw so that I land on the points.

But, as if he's got some kind of superpower, Jake runs, leaps into the air and grasps me around the waist.

We sail over the railings, Jake twisting in mid-flight so that he lands on his feet, still holding me in his arms.

Wahhammmm!

Franky has barged directly into us.

I'm sent flying out of Jake's arms.

Caught off balance, Jake is sent reeling backwards.

Franky follows after me, running, jumping, grabbing me, this time forcing me to the ground.

She spins me round, brutally taking me by the upper arms, painfully wrenching them up behind me like a disturbed boy twists back the wings of a butterfly.

She twists her arms around mine – and I abruptly realise what she's going to do.

She's going to use my own arms to rip my chest apart.

*

# Chapter 16

Franky's grip loosens, like she's suddenly come to her senses and decided not to kill me after all.

Then her forehead crashes against the back of my skull.

Then were both falling, exhausted and limp, to the ground.

*

'You okay Twice?' Jake asks breathlessly, offering his hand to help me up.

Yeah, yeah,' I answer, grabbing his hand, realising Franky is laid half on top of me, half to my side.

As I get to my feet, Franky completely slips to the floor, lifeless.

'Franky; is she...'

'Dead? Afraid so. But if I hadn't killed her, Twice, she would have killed you.'

As he speaks, he drags Franky's body into a clump of bushes, glancing about him nervously to make sure no one's watching.

The back of Franky's head is caved in, like it's been hit with a stone or a hammer.

Having seen the way Franky and Jake were leaping around just a moment ago, however, I wouldn't be surprised if Jake had done it with little more than a sharply jabbed fist.

Jake makes a quick, quiet call on his mobile.

He slips the phone back into his pocket, draws close to me and begins to guide me to his car.

'Someone will take care of her,' he says.

I'm shaken. I let myself fall against Jake.

He doesn't seem to mind. He curls an arm about my waist.

'Poor Franky.' Jake shakes his head sadly.

'Why, Jake? Why was she trying to kill me?'

'Somehow, she'd got it into her head that you were Half-Life.'

'I heard her say that; but I don't see why that would mean she'd have to kill me. I don't even know what Half-Life is.'

'As the name implies, it's someone who's neither dead nor alive in the normal sense. They can freely move between both worlds, even leave their body here while letting their spirit roam. Both the living and the dead fear someone so powerful.'

'Why would Franky think I could do that? I didn't even know anything about the dead until just a few days ago!'

As he opens the door to the car for me, I turn to him, realising how hard it must have been for him to kill an old friend – perhaps even a girlfriend – for the sake of someone he'd only recently met.

'Thanks for trusting me, Jake.'

'No thanks needed.'

He smiles, but grimly. He pulls away from me, runs round the front of the car.

'I didn't have any choice, see? Because if Franky was right, killing you should be the very last thing she should be trying to do.'

'What?' I snap. 'You mean you didn't save me because you think she's wrong? You really think I might be this weird, dangerous Half-Life thing?'

He shrugs as we both settle into our seats.

'I don't think so. I hope not. But if Franky had been right, and she had managed to kill you – well, then you'd know for sure if you're Half-Life or not.'

'How would I know that if I'm dead? Even if I'm looking down from the other world, fat lot of good it does me knowing, hey, wow, I was this incredible being with these incredible powers – and hey, come to that, what about you and Franky and all those superpowers? Are you two Half-Life?'

He shakes his head.

We're now out in the road. He's driving slowly, like there's a lot on his mind.

'That's just using the Wyrd; if we think you're right for it, we'll teach you that later. But getting back to you being dead – think about it. What's being dead but having to split your body from your spirit, which moves into another realm. But if you're Half-Life, you can freely roam from one world to the next; there aren't any barriers. You realise you're not dead after all – so you realise your Half-Life.'

'Sure, but even Franky's gran could come back; so what's so special about that?'

'To a cold, clammy decaying body. And with a ridiculous amount of effort. A Half-Life somehow keeps his – or her – body alive, perhaps by using something similar to what the ancient shamans used to call the shadow soul.'

'Shadow soul? You mean, there's more than one soul?'

'Your soul is effectively a vibration in the Life-Force, giving your body substance and shape – think of a whirlpool in water, right? If you can control the energy, you can create a temporary soul, a shadow soul, to briefly replace your real soul. The ancient shamans could only send their souls to explore the spirit world by creating a shadow soul that would keep them alive – but that would be for a couple of days at most.'

Souls. Shadow souls. Life-Force.

It's all a bit confusing.

And yet I'm supposed to be – could be – this all-powerful Half-Life?

This whole thing just gets weirder by the minute.

*

Normally, you start visiting your gran more regularly the day you realise she won't be here for ever.

Me, I'm visiting because I now realise she will.

She'll be around long after she's dead.

And, who knows, she might decide to cause me a bit of trouble.

Like Franky's gran, only deliberately so.

It would be far better, wouldn't it, if I had somebody up there looking out for me?

So, heart in my mouth, I call in on gran's 'home'.

There's a few things I'd like to ask her anyhow; like is there anything she can recall about my life that means I'm going to have the same capabilities as Franky and Jake?

Or am I destined to be someone who lies lower down the scale, simply because I didn't have any comparable life/death experience earlier in my life?

'Oh you know gran,' I say as nonchalantly as I can, 'there must have been lots of times in my life when you thought, Oh, isn't Twice something special? You know, like, did I, you know, just sort of die for a few minutes? And when I came back, everyone was really happy!'

Gran grumbles, chews her teeth, like some old, gnarled cowboy chewing tobacco.

'Ah, so it's finally dawning on you, is it girl, that there's something odd about you?'

'I've always known there was something odd about me gran; but what I'm asking is, did I seem to die for a short while, or something like that?'

'And that's the sort of question all granddaughters ask their grans is it?'

I shrug.

She chews her gums or her teeth or whatever she's still got inside there.

'Me,' she says, 'I was put in this place for asking questions like that!'

She indicates the home with a wearily waved hand.

'Wow gran; so you used to wonder if you'd also died earlier?'

She glares at me scornfully.

'Not _me_ , silly girl! I was put in here by my own son, just to shut me up!'

'But what questions gran? What questions were you asking?'

'I was asking how come you're still around when you died in that there car accident!'

'Oh gran, not this again! I didn't die gran; it was mum and dad who died. They were in the front, and I was safely in the back, where they'd put me to be safe. That's why I've spent all my life being passed from home to home, more or less like you have.'

I reach out for her wizened old hands, intending to tenderly cup them in mine, to show that I understand what she must have gone through all these years.

She pulls her hands back, leaving mine grasping nothing but air.

She had been deeply shaken by the accident, of course. She's never been right since, refusing to accept what had happened that day.

Even the police doctors had confirmed that she should be institutionalised, for her own safety.

'And what sort of accident was _that_ , eh?' she demands harshly. 'When the traffic was at a crawl? When there's no real damage to either car? Just a few scrapes on the bumpers. But your mum and dad; they're all cut up, like it's been some horrifying crash!'

She realises some of the people around us are staring.

She leans forward conspiratorially.

'A police sergeant, he came round here, asking me if there was any way to explain their injuries. But they shut him up, see? Shut me up too, their doctors saying I was _definitely_ crazy. But the detective, he'd said there was something even weirder he couldn't understand.'

'What couldn't he understand gran?'

'Why, the real reason they died of course – by drowning!'

*

# Chapter 17

Yep, gran's mind has completely gone, I'm afraid.

I'm too young to remember what happened in the accident, of course; but all this about traffic being at a crawl?

About mum and dad drowning?

In the centre of town?

Is it just her way of trying to come to terms with something she doesn't want to accept?

Making things up, so it doesn't come across as dad's fault that he was driving too fast or too carelessly?

You know, perhaps Franky's gran was going through something similar when she told Franky I was this weird Half-Life thing.

Sure, Mary remembers telling Franky's gran something odd about her own death – but yeah, she can't remember what that odd thing was! – but she's hardly going to tell Franky's gran I'm a Half-Life, is she?

I mean, Mary didn't even know I existed then!

And if Mary thought I was a Half-Life anyway, why isn't she trying to kill me like Franky did, or at least warn Jake?

'Is there something you should be telling me, Twice?'

Jake's leaning over my reception desk. He's glaring at me.

'Erm, well, er, I know I took a longer break than I intended, but I had to visit my gran, see, and–'

'About your boyfriend; this Chris.'

'He's no longer holding any more meetings, if that's what you mean Jake,' I lie.

'The Nyxt say otherwise.'

'That's what he told me. So if he is, he must be lying.'

(Okay okay; so I feel the lowest of the low for lying like this! But Chris made me promise not to tell!)

Jake's eyes are locked on mine.

They're quite amazing eyes; blue, with a burst of white emanating from the darkened pupil, like permanently frozen snowflakes.

At the moment, though, they're also hard, cold, and sharp. Like he's trying to see deep inside me, to see if I'm telling the truth or not.

'You know, Twice, when you came to see me, I put you through for this job through gut instinct rather than anything specific I could read in you. Don't let me down.'

Okay, this has been nagging me for a long time now, but especially since my gran came out with all those weird ramblings.

I've just got to come out and ask him, right?

'Why Jake? Why did you have this gut instinct that I'd be okay for the job?'

'The Life-Force – the way it moves around you.'

'You can see it? You can see this Life-Force you keep on bringing up?'

He nods.

'I can't see it all; it's a massive web of energy, linking everything. But I can see the way it hangs around certain people, a bit like an aura.'

'Can everyone see it? Everyone here, anyway?'

As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn't.

I've never seen it, have I?

So if everyone here is supposed to be able to see it, perhaps I shouldn't be here after all.

I almost sigh with relief when Jake shakes his head.

'It's not easy to see; I've been told you've got to see with your soul, not your eyes. Truth is though, I just see it, so I don't know if that's what I'm doing or not.'

'Is that how you can see differences between the Nyxt? The way the Life-Force hangs around them.'

He gives another nod of his head.

'And so this Half-Life –you'd be able to tell, right, if I really had all this power?'

He grins.

'Ah, so that's what all these questions have been leading up to, is it? Thing is, are you saying you _want_ to be Half-Life?'

I shake my head vigorously.

'Of course not! Who'd want to be so terrifying everyone – including the dead – want to kill you?'

'Or, rather, not kill you, remember?'

'Oh yeah, yeah; course.'

I want to ask how a Half-Life can be defeated if you can't kill them. If you don't even _want_ to kill them.

But what I really set out to find the answer to, of course, is why Jake thinks I'm right for this job.

'To answer your question, though,' Jake continues, 'no one really knows what we should be looking for to detect a Half-Life. No one who's ever detected one ever lived to tell us what we should be looking for. If it would reassure you, though, going by what I can see of your Life-Force, I'd say you're not even close to Franky's level – so I can't see why she thought you could be a danger.'

Oh wow, that's just what I wanted to hear, isn't it?

Nowhere near _Franky's_ level!

I smile at him, like that's the best news I've ever heard.

'Thing is,' he says, completely oblivious to how he's managed to insult me, 'Franky's abilities were like, wow, amazing right?'

That's it Jake; just keep on turning the screw!

I smile benignly.

But I could kill him.

Oh yes, I could cheerfully kill him.

'So if Franky suspects anything about anybody, it makes me go back to the records and check them once again, just to make sure I didn't miss anything first time around.'

'Records? You have records on me?'

I point a finger back at myself.

Really, I want to be pointing it at him, saying 'How dare you keep checks on me you...you...you...'

'Sure,' Jake says blithely, 'we can't just let anyone work here, can we? We have to run a check on your history.'

On my _history_?

So it's not just keeping a record on me; it's digging up my past too!

'You...you checked everything about me? Is that legal?'

'Nah, not even here! But not much we do here is legal, is it?'

Suddenly, I'm curious.

'So, what do all the records kept on me say about me?'

'Nothing out of the ordinary, thankfully. Well, nothing out of the ordinary going by other people who work here.'

'Which means...'

'Well, didn't I say that most people here have had a near death experience? You know, waking up in a hospital and finding themselves looking down on their own body, that kind of thing. And yep, there it is in your records too.'

'What? You mean I died – the came back to life?'

'Sure; a car accident. Hit and run. When you were three.'

'When I was three? But...but I can't remember that!'

Wait, wait; isn't that what gran had said?

That I'd died in a car accident?

But I hadn't believed her; I'd thought she was confusing it with the later accident involving mum and dad.

'You don't have to remember it for it to give you the qualities we're after, Twice; the ability to accept the presence of the spirit world.'

Then, wow, that's great, isn't it?

There really is a chance that I have similar qualities to Franky and everyone else here!

Jake chuckles.

'Course, I hadn't noticed first time I'd looked, because someone with a bit more sense had corrected the dates; but whichever doctor first recorded your death must have been half a sleep going by the dates he'd put down!'

'Dates? What; do you mean they'd been corrected?'

'Well, going by the original dates recorded, Twice – you'd have to have been dead for over five days, which would be impossible even for people here!'

*

# Chapter 18

Around midnight, it's so dark outside the windows that they act like mirrors.

We're a couple of stories up from the ground, avoiding most of the glare of the street lamps below us. And, across the road, there a thin band of trees and parkland rather than other offices.

Seated behind the reception desk, I look back at my reflection in the window.

So, I really did die when I was younger.

But, fortunately, here I am; somehow, my spirit had decided to slip back into my body after all.

Had the car just knocked my spirit out of my body for a while?

Had I looked down on my little body, splayed out across the road?

Had someone been there on the borders, helping me move back into my body?

If they hadn't, I wouldn't be here now, staring at my own reflection in the glass.

My reflection waves back at me happily.

It smiles.

But I'm not waving.

And I'm not smiling.

The face moves to one side, leaving my reflection where it should be.

Oh no; I've invited a Nyxt to call!

*

The face drops out of view.

I rush to the window.

We're a few floors above the street. Can the Nyxt die if they drop from–

Is that a stupid question or what?

By the time I've made it to the window, the slightly warped girl I've helped bring into being has moved across the road.

She's waiting – hiding – in the shadows of the trees.

I'm expecting her to look back up at me, giving me an amused, challenging stare.

But she's ignoring me.

Far as she's concerned, I bet, I've done what she (he?) wanted me to.

She's watching the main doors to our offices, like she's waiting for or expecting someone to step through them.

Her head moves slightly, like she's just seen someone exit.

She moves away from the trees, heading down the street.

I crane my neck, hoping I can see who she's following.

It's Jake!

The Nyxt is following Jake!

*

# Chapter 19

I have to warn Jake that he's being followed.

I've never taken his mobile number. But it will be on the list on the reception desk's computer.

I dash back to the desk, call up the list on the computer, start searching for his name.

One of the girls I've finally got to know, Gillian, strolls into reception.

I've got Jake's number, dialled it in, waited for the rings, waited for him to answer – what if he hasn't got it switched on, or he doesn't hear?

'Gillian,' I say before she disappears through another door, 'sorry, but could you please just cover for me while I pop out for a minute? It's urgent, honest!'

She makes likes she's going to protest, but relents, smiles and makes her way towards the desk.

'Thanks Gillian!'

I dash out the door without bothering to pick up my coat or bag.

I run down the stairs, forgoing the lift. (Too slow!)

I crash through the main doors, out onto the street.

It's cold.

It sharpens my senses.

I break into a run, heading the way that I'd seen Jake and the girl heading. I'm being careful to ensure I'm moving as fast as I can without making any noise.

Damn! It's impossible with these high heels!

I hop on one leg as I take a shoe off, hop on the other leg as I remove the second shoe.

I break into proper run, throwing the shoes into the wood as soon as I cross the road.

Soon, I catch up with the girl, seeing her walking alongside the road just up ahead of me.

I can't see Jake; he's obviously somewhere farther in front, the girl keeping her distance to make sure he's not alerted by her presence.

Just as I keep far enough back to make sure she doesn't know I'm following her.

If she sees me, it might make her attack Jake straight away, or whatever else it is she's planning to do.

After a while, she takes the rough path leading into the trees.

Oh, great choice Jake!

Should I shout out to warn him?

And alert her that I'm here too?

Probably not.

The roughly surfaced trees, the tangled branches, the darkness broken by the light coming from the street lamps; it's all a perfect landscape for seeing figures.

I have to control my fear; to make sure I'm not seeing things that aren't really there.

Because as soon as I do see them, of course, they really will be there!

A dog howls.

Like that helps!

It howls again, closer now.

There's a crashing and breaking of branches off to my right.

Someone – or something – rushing through the undergrowth.

The dog growls menacingly.

And then, suddenly, it's blocking my path.

The Hound of the Baskervilles!

*

# Chapter 20

'Jake!'

I cry out as loud as I can.

I know running won't do me any good.

The massive, slavering dog standing before me would run me down before I'd gotten anywhere near the road.

If it's not the Hound of the Baskervilles, it's a Hell Hound.

It's black, massive. Its eyes glow red as wet blood.

'Help me Jake!' I scream.

There's no reply, no Jake rushing back through the trees to help me.

I've been tricked, haven't I?

We were never really following Jake at all, were we?

Like an idiot, I've followed a Nyxt into the woods.

So I run.

*

I plunge into the undergrowth.

If I'd headed down the path, the dog would have been on top of me in a matter of seconds.

This way, I might get to live for a few terrifying minutes.

I haven't got time to look over my shoulder and check if it's following me.

I know it will be.

Yep; I hear it crashing through the bushes and branches behind me.

I'm trying that trick where you grab hold of any long branches and let them swing back like long whips.

Yeah, that will really hold back a Hell Hound.

I break through the last of the clump of bushes, coming out into a small clearing, looking about me for any tree I can quickly scamper up.

Whuumpphhh!

The dog's leapt on to my back.

It's like being hit from behind by a gigantic sack of coal.

I'm sent rolling across the ground.

I spin around, hoping I can get to see how far I've fallen away from the dog.

The dog jumps on me once more, straddling me with its legs, its slavering maw inches from my face.

'We need to talk,' the dog says.

*

# Chapter 21

'Nyxt, right?' I say, at last recognising the dreadful stench of a dead, decaying body.

The dog moves back to let me get to my feet once more.

'Yes; but I don't intend you any harm, if that's what you're thinking.'

The dog's voice is a harsh, tortured growl.

I dust myself down.

'Why me? Why do you need to talk to me?'

'A few of us have sensed something odd about you; we'd like to know where you stand.'

'Where I stand?'

'For the Nyxt? Or for the living?'

It's one of those questions that you can guess what your answer should be, right?

Even if you don't quite understand the question itself.

'The Nyxt, of course.'

'Then why are you still with the living? We draw closer to war every day.'

This has got to be something to do with this Half-Life thing, yeah?

Neither dead nor alive, yet both at the same time, sort of thing.

He'd only be asking me a question like this, like I had a choice between which side I chose, if – like Franky – he thought I was Half-Life.

'The Half-Life announce their decisions whenever it's convenient for them, not everyone else.'

The dog nods, like this is a considered answer, as opposed to something I'd quickly cobbled together in the hope it helps get me out of here alive.

'Still,' he growls suspiciously, 'you ran from me?'

He says it like the Phantom of the Opera would say it, like it's a big surprise to him.

'I didn't want to reveal myself just yet,' I say sagely.

He nods again.

Phew!

There's a fluttering of leaves and branches.

The girl I'd been following steps out into the clearing.

'When I last saw this Jake, there was something... _other_ following him.'

She's talking to the dog, not me. Even so, I'm the one who replies, asking her a question.

_'Other_? What do you mean by _other_?'

'They were trying to look like us – but they weren't Nyxt.'

I turn to the dog.

'We have to help him.'

The dog stares at me quizzically.

'Why? Why would you want to help the living, if you say you have chosen the Nyxt as your allies?'

Woahah, think quickly, quickly girl!

'If they're trying to look like Nyxt, the Nyxt will get the blame.'

Now if he's working for one of the factions who are actually wanting war, then I've just ensured I'm dog meat, right?

*

# Chapter 22

We're running as fast as I can.

The dog could easily bound ahead of us.

Of course, the girl runs like she's only as heavy as the the light and shadow she's made up of.

Unfortunately, although the dog's massive, he's not exactly gigantic, so I couldn't hitch a ride on him like you tend to see in the movies.

'Stretch yourself ahead, Half-Life!' the dog says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world to do.

'And reveal myself to this Jake?' I reply breathlessly.

The dog nods, I think. It's hard to tell, as his head bobs up and down as he runs anyway.

'Run on ahead; help him!'

I say it forcibly, like it's a command.

The two rush on ahead.

Wait, wait, I think as they swiftly leave me behind.

I don't know where he lives!

*

I continue running anyway.

My feet are sore.

My legs hurt.

My heart feels like it wants to jump out of my chest.

Then I hear the frenzied growling of the dog, echoing around the walls of an alleyway just ahead of me.

As I turn the corner, I get a glimpse of what could have happened to me back in the woods.

A man is crazily wheeling around, uselessly flailing out with his arms at the massive beast clinging to his upper torso. The dog's huge jaws are riving piece after bloodied piece from the man's arms.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't have been able to even stand, let alone move around with the enormous weight of the dog hanging down on me. The man must be ridiculously strong.

Amazingly hardened too.

As more and more of his arms end up as bloody pieces of meat on the floor, he doesn't scream or even cry out in anger.

Another piece flies through the air.

It lands by a darkened figure lying splayed across the floor.

I gasp, clutching my throat in horror.

Jake?

No no; the figure's too big.

He's also wearing an old coat and hat similar to the one worn by the man the dog is now successfully forcing to the floor.

I look around.

Jake, where's Jake?

It's the girl I see first, over by the wall. Leaning over a slim, limp body.

Like Mary; this is just how it happened to Mary.

I rush over to them.

'Is he...?'

'With us now?' The girl shakes her head. 'No, he's still on the side of the living.'

She points to a large bruise on his forehead.

'Knocked out. Probably put up a fight.'

With a nod of her head and a wave of an arm she indicates more bodies lying around us.

They're all the same kind of characters.

Large, overly tall, and wearing old coats and hats.

Much as the garbage guys who had attacked Mary had been.

Leaning across the rubble and garbage, I reach out for the hand of one of the bodies.

It comes away from his arm.

Chunks of meat fall out of the coat's arms.

This guy's aren't made of garbage; they're made from lumps of butcher's meat.

*

'They're nothing but chunks of meat,' I say in bewilderment to the dog as I show him what he's been fighting.

'What was making them move? What was keeping them alive?' the dog asks.

'Whatever it was, it obviously worked in giving the impression that one of our factions was responsible for the murders,' the girl says bitterly.

'Hmn, it doesn't end the chances of all this ending in war,' the dog replies. 'We still don't know who's responsible.'

I'd moved on to studying what passed for the figure's head. It was odd, the way pieces of ham, bacon and sausage had been used to give the impression of a face.

'Why go to all this detail?' I say. 'Why make up a face when you can bring huge chunks of meat to life?'

'To pass off the figure as one of us – as one of the Nyxt – it would need some idea of a face.'

The girl looks up at me.

Yes, she has a hazy face – my own face, more or less.

But it disappears if she turns side-on to me.

And that time Andrew had appeared in Franky's apartment, his face only appeared as such when I caught him at the same angle as when I'd first mistaken the shadows falling around the curtain as a figure.

I take another look at the face made up of butcher's cuts.

The mouth, in particular, is well formed.

There's not just lips. There's even a mouth-like hole beyond them.

And is that a–

It's an awful sensation, putting my fingers between these pieces of cold meat. But it's the only way to check if I've seen what I think I've seen,

Yes; it's a tongue!

'Why have a mouth and tongue?' I say.

The two Nyxt swap intrigued glances.

I move the slice of folded ham that serves as the tongue.

There's something there, beneath it, like a thin white stick.

I pull what I thought was the white stick out, realising even as it squeezes flat between my fingers that it's actually a roll of paper.

'Paper, a roll of paper,' I say, unrolling it. 'With some writing on it; in a language I don't understand.'

I hold it out to the others, in the hope they can interpret it.

'It's a magical charm,' the girl says.

'For a golem,' the dog says, glancing about him at the bodies scattered around us. 'These things are golems.'

*

'Golems?'

Jake has woken up. He's standing over us.

'Let me see, Twice.'

He holds out a hand for the charm I'm still holding.

'Yeah, this is a charm right enough,' he says as he studies the writing.

'There's another one here too,' the girl says, holding up a charm she's pulled from the mouth of one of the other figures.

'They'll all have them,' the dog says. 'They're all golems.'

Jake spots the puzzlement on my face.

'Back in mediaeval Prague, they used charms like these to give life to man-sized figures of clay, placing it under their tongues. There's no reason why it shouldn't work for figures of meat, or even wood or paper or whatever else you want to make it from, for that matter.'

Paper?

Like origami figures?

Oh no – who does that remind me of?

But surely Chris wouldn't...

'Twice?'

Just as Jake had noticed my puzzlement, he's now seen that something's dawned on me.

'Oh, er, nothing, nothing...'

Chris's paper butterflies.

His paper elephants.

His – on no no!

Surely not.

Surely all those people he's given life to aren't just golems!

*

# Chapter 23

'If they're nothing but golems,' Jake spits angrily, throwing the car around a corner, 'their bodies will continue to rot. And there'll be nothing to stop any disease, or injuries, from just festering and getting worse!'

I've never seen Jake as angry as this.

When I'd told him my suspicions, he'd almost accepted Nick and Kristine's offer to break up the meeting I'd told him about. Even if it resulted in a number of horrendous deaths.

(Nick was the 'girl', Kristine the dog.)

'You should have told me!' he'd stormed.

'I'm telling you now,' I'd replied pathetically.

He'd calmed down enough to realise that Kristine's presence would only add to the mayhem. We'd run to where he'd parked his car, Jake phoning Mary on the way, saying to me, 'We're going to need someone on our side when we end up talking to the Nyxt about this!'

There was still a part of me that couldn't believe Chris would allow the people he was helping to suffer in the way Jake was describing it.

Perhaps he just didn't realise that this was how it would all end up?

And how did the golem attacks fit into all this?

What had Chris to gain from them?

If he really had been responsible, why would the golems chase Mary into our alley, where I might have tried to help her?

It doesn't make any sense.

*

The meeting we run into is even more chaotic than the one broken up by the police.

The crowd is keeping well away from the almost empty stage.

People are weeping, or wailing fearfully.

Everyone appears terrified, but seem unsure whether they should stay where they are or leave the hall.

Worst of all are the few people on the stage; their skin is white, their faces drawn. They seem unsure how to even move, either swaying from side to side in a daze, or lying as if ill on the floor.

Around them all, prettily coloured paper butterflies, hummingbirds and flamingos flap though the air.

'What's going on?' I ask the nearest person to me who looks like she might be able to come up with a reasoned response. 'Where's Chris? The man who raises the dead?'

'He was taken,' she says, her eyes wide, her lips and voice trembling. 'He was taken by the dead!'

*

'How do you know?' Jake demands of the terrified woman. 'How do you know it was the dead?'

'We saw them,' a man close by replies. Like the woman, his eyes are still wide with shock. 'They came in from the wings, up on the stage.'

The woman nods dazedly.

'Like they came from the shadows. I thought it was part of the act at first.'

Another person joins in, glad to talk about what she had seen.

'They grabbed him, started dragging him away.'

'What about the men who protect him?' I ask. 'Didn't they try and help him?'

'He told them to stay back; he said it was the dead. They'd come to steal his soul, for daring to raise people.'

Jake frowns, like he doesn't believe it.

'It could be his own golems,' he says to me.

_'If_ he's controlling the golems.'

As an origami flamingo wafts past me, I make a grab at it, pulling it towards me.

I unfold it.

It's just a sheet of coloured paper.

There's no charm inside.

I show it to Jake, but he still doesn't look convinced.

He begins to urgently, even carelessly, make his way through the crowd.

'Please, please,' he says, 'who was raised here tonight? This is important, you won't be in trouble...'

A man has raised an arm. He's happily hugging a woman with an amazed yet elated expression on her face.

'Kelly, my Kelly,' the man says proudly, joyously. 'She...she was raised, thank the Lord!'

I join Jake as he's talking to the woman. I can't hear what he's saying over the wailing and weeping that's continuing to dominate the hall, but the woman nods with a smile.

She opens her mouth. Jake bends a little so he can peer inside.

I look too.

There's no charm in there.

*

'So, Chris isn't our golem man after all – and now he's been taken by the dead!'

'His soul,' Jake says, correcting me. 'His soul's been taken, Twice; that's far easier for the Nyxt to do than hold a living body somewhere.'

We'd stepped outside, and away from the hall's entrance, where people were beginning to fearfully file out into the darkness.

I thought back to how I'd seen Mary collapse to the ground as soon as the Nyxt had somehow withdrawn her soul from her body.

'So without his soul, you're really saying he's dead, right?'

The only reason I can say this without breaking down in tears is because I've seen enough strange things going on recently to cling on to the hope that Chris is still alive somewhere.

I breathe a silent sigh of relief as Jake shakes his head.

'Not necessarily. It depends on what the Nyxt are hoping to gain from taking his soul. If he's dead, they've no longer got anything to bargain with. Then again, maybe they don't want to bargain; maybe they just want to put an end to Chris's tampering with the Wyrd.'

'But how could he still be alive if his soul's gone?'

'I'm hoping they've kept him briefly alive by leaving him with a shadow soul.'

'This is that ancient shaman thing again, yeah? But that'll keep him alive for two days at most, right?'

'We're not responsible for this.'

Mary's approach has been surprisingly silent.

I don't know how much she's heard of what we've been saying, but she seems to be aware of what's happened.

I noticed that she said 'we're' rather than 'the Nyxt'.

'One of the factions then?'

Jake says it like it's a nice get-out-clause for everybody.

'Possibly,' Mary says.

'Then if the Nyxt aren't responsible – if it's just a faction – they'll be able to find and return Chris's soul, yeah?'

'Our world is much bigger than yours.'

Nick, the girl made up of my own hazy reflection, has now drawn up alongside us.

I'm so intent on working out how to help Chris that I'm obviously not hearing anything going on around me!

Even Kristine, the huge dog, is also here. I should have heard her arrive at least!

'You could search for centuries,' she says, agreeing with Nick, 'and still not find him.'

'Sorry,' Nick says, 'we came along just in case you needed our help. We've overheard what the people leaving are saying.'

'But what about this Wyrd, this Life-Force you're always talking about?' I snap irritably at Jake. 'Didn't you say everything's connected?'

'Yes; which gives us our only chance of finding Chris in time.'

He reaches out and takes my hand in his. He locks eyes with me.

'But you've got to ask yourself, Twice; are you prepared to risk your life to save his?'

'Risk my life? How? How can I save Chris?'

'If you love someone enough,' Mary explains, 'there's a connection between you both.'

'You could sense his presence,' Nick agrees, 'and the strands of the Wyrd could lead you to him.'

'But he's...he's not in this world anymore.'

I'm trying to quickly work out what they're all suggesting here.

'You're saying I have to go into the underworld to find him, right? But does that mean I have to die to...'

Jake shakes his head.

'No, not die, not as long as you make it back in time before–'

'This is that ancient shaman thing again, right? I'm going to need a shadow soul keeping my body alive while my spirit goes searching for Chris, yeah?'

They all nod,

But not one of them is smiling.

They all look grim.

'But you only have two days,' Mary says.

Jake grips my hands tightly.

'And Twice; even the shamans used to get lost in the otherworld.'

*

# Chapter 24

Like the last of the crowd who are being politely asked to leave the hall by Mary, I'm just following orders.

I find the hall's heating controls, then turn them up to full.

Jake is tearing at and pulling down the stage's curtains.

As soon as the very last of the crowd leaves, he starts leaping around using those strange powers he'd used when he'd fought with Franky. It means he can easily pull away the curtains from their rails, throwing them down on to the stage.

Kristine – who increasingly walks and handles things more like a human than a dog – fetches up some old metallic bins from the cellars. She hasn't bothered emptying either the rubbish or various clothes and books they've been used to store. Instead, she sets them in a circle around the stage, punching holes in the sides that face inward, ripping at the crumpled metal to make the holes bigger.

Mary and Nick pile everything burnable they can find into the bins. That includes chairs they smash against the walls, old cupboards or tables Kristine helps them smash into splinters, and even the large speakers of an audio system. The bins are soon full, so everything else is piled instead in a circling wall around the bins.

Any flammable liquid they find – cleaners, oil, lubricants – are poured over the bins' contents.

I just go along with all this, helping where I can. No one has bothered explaining what all this preparation is for, but I'm sure that Jake will sit me down at some point and take me through it all.

I'm wrong about the sitting down bit.

Jake lays the huge curtains down on top of each other in the centre of the circle of bins, then invites me to lie down on them.

'What we've got to do, Twice,' he says as he begins to quickly fold the edges of the curtains over me, 'is create a massive increase in your body's Life-Force, which your body will use to create your shadow soul when your soul leaves.'

Behind him, Mary, Nick and Kristine are setting the bins' contents alight, turning them into huge, blazing braziers.

'When the fires really get going, you'll feel the vast forces flowing through you, reaching out into every fibre of your body. You have to control it, letting that power connect you to the web of energies lying outside your body. It will feel like you're being torn apart – but don't worry about it. You have to project your soul along those fibres into the underworld.'

As he talks, the blazing fires reach higher and higher, throwing out their incredible heat. I'm already sweltering beneath the layers of heavy curtains, cocooned like some tightly wrapped baby.

'And when I'm there?' I ask. 'What then?'

'We all have a spirit guide; it could be a person, an animal, even an object, like a pebble.'

I laugh.

'A pebble? Fat lot of use that will be Jake!'

'If that's what you need, it will be,' he answers seriously.

'What about Mary? Couldn't she guide me? Or Nick or Kristine?'

'Mary's still too tied to our world; Nick and Kristine to theirs.'

'Is it easier than it sounds Jake? How often have you done this?'

Jake paused, lost for words.

'Never, Twice,' he admits finally. 'No one's attempted it for years.'

'Because it's dangerous, right?'

He nods.

'Do you want to stop this? Stop it before it's too late?'

Is there a pained look in his eyes begging me to say 'Yes'?

I shake my head.

'Chris is my soul mate; I have to find him!'

'Okay Twice,' Jake says, standing up and stepping away from me. 'But remember, you only have two days; your body will burn itself out in two days!'

*

# Chapter 25

The heat flooding through me is now unbearable.

It beats at my skin, roasting it. It penetrates beyond it, rippling along my muscles and nerve endings. I could swear it's even seeping into my bones.

I want to move away from the heat, but I can't.

The flames leap around me everywhere, as if I'm in the middle of a vast fire, as if I'm being burnt alive like a witch at a stake.

My nerve endings tingle, almost crackle.

It was a tingling and crackling that was sinking deeper, pulsing along every fibre of my body.

I'm slipping into a daze, drifting into unconsciousness.

*

I've had enough of this ridiculous, pounding heat.

I get to my feet and walk away, through the encircling fire of furiously blazing bins.

Someone must have noticed I've left.

I hear them saying something behind me.

They're speaking quietly though, as if they're afraid I might hear.

I glance back over my shoulder.

No, they're not speaking quietly.

They're just a long way behind me.

How have I travelled this far so quickly?

What happened to the walls of the hall?

*

My nerve endings are crackling so much now that they're sparkling, like hundreds of little stars.

Their light flows back along the nerve fibres themselves. I can see the light passing along inside my body, like a bright, flowing electric current.

All around me now, there's a similar maze of glowing, sharply whipping strands of current.

It's like a gigantic three-dimensional spider's web, only one made up of crackling light.

The strands reach out, connecting with the sparkling ends of my nerves, of my fibres.

It's painful, incredibly painful.

The glowing threads surging through me increase in intensity, the surrounding areas becoming ever darker by comparison.

The web is pulling at me. The threads glowing inside me are pushing outwards, like they want to expand.

I feel like my body's breaking up.

The darker parts of my body suddenly flow away, like bits of flotsam in a sea, becoming a part of the space lying between the glistening strands.

I'm nothing but glowing fibres, a figure made of crackling light.

*

I move along the fibres much as a drop of water swirls along a canal.

The areas between the glowing web is now grey and hazy rather than dark. It all hangs like a damp mist over what could be the rolling fields of a high cliff.

Behind me lies the darkness of a squally sea, fizzing and bursting with the never-ending cracks of a lightning storm.

In the frequent bursts of illuminating light, I can see odd glimpses of the living world I've left behind.

This is the border, I instinctively realise.

I can't see anything I would recognise as being a soul. All I see are strange movements within the patterns of light, in the way an invisible fish would cause the strings of a net to curl and writhe.

I can't stay here.

I have to move on.

A glowing butterfly is flying ahead of me, leading the way. It flies along one of the strands, the thread of energy glowing all the brighter, highlighting its course for me.

I can feel certain strands of the web weakly vibrating, as if something much deeper in its clutches is entangled there.

I have to let the sparkling web draw me on.

And as it does so, my fibres are rewoven, reformed.

Soon, I sense that I am 'me' once again.

Though if anyone living would recognise me as 'me', I'm not sure.

*

It's not just me that's changed.

Around me, everything else has also taken on a more recognisable form.

Hills. Fields. Trees. Water.

All forms of water.

Rivers. Streams. Lakes, Pools. Waterfalls.

Water flows everywhere.

Everything sparkles. Not just the water, but also the grass, the rocks, the plants.

It's the Life-Force, lying just beneath the surface, visible in the way you see the glistening sheen on the metallic paintwork of an expertly waxed car.

Yet weren't the Nyxt supposed to fear war because our destruction would be like our world without its trees, animals, and sky?

Why would they fear such a thing when they have all this beauty here?

The butterfly flows through it all like it's slowly fluttering along on a drowsy summer day, yet we're moving at an incredible speed. It suddenly speeds up, moving too fast for me to keep up.

It gets smaller and smaller, becoming nothing more than a sparkling burst of light.

But soon I can see what it seems to be heading for; a larger, much more pronounced glow.

A figure standing by a shimmering pool. A figure more sun dappled than the glittering water.

A figure I would have sworn was an angel if I hadn't seen that it was Chris.

*

# Chapter 26

As Chris languidly stretches out a hand, the butterfly lands on it like a tamed yet exotic bird.

'Twice!' he cries elatedly. 'You _did_ it! I _knew_ you could!'

I land right by him, somehow without even thinking about it turning slightly in mid-air and landing on my feet, like Superman would.

We hug each other excitedly, being careful not to disturb the butterfly gently flapping its wings on Chris's outstretched arm. Even so, intense emotions of loss, longing and love surge through me, like they've all been waiting for this specific moment to reveal themselves.

'Wow!' I say, stepping back, giggling with elation.

Chris smiles beatifically. He looks admiringly at the butterfly patiently and tamely sitting on his hand.

'I see our little beauty safely led you here,' he says, almost blowing it a kiss in his excitement.

The butterfly rises into the air, fluttering around our heads.

'Chris, we have to get back qui–'

'Oh, there's no rush, Twice.'

'No rush? Chris, you don't understand! I know it's wonderful here but–'

'Wonderful?'

He turns, holding his arms out wide.

'It's _beautiful_ , Twice!'

'But you'll die Chri–'

'No Twice,' he says, turning back with a huge grin on his face. 'You mean my _body_ would die; but _I_ would still be here!'

'Yes yes – I know what you mean Chris! But _I_ want you back! I'm not staying here; and I want you to come back with me!

'But Twice, isn't it amazing here? Don't you see how it all works? The Wyrd flows through everything, connecting everything. The Life-Force flowing through you is the same as that flowing through the trees, the mountains, the planets. Of course, just as a fisherman can't control the wind or the tide, we can't ever hope to control such a powerful force as the Wyrd; but we can turn it to our advantage, just like that same fisherman trim his sails to be in harmony with nature.'

'But Chris, we're not supposed to _be_ here just yet!'

'Aren't we?'

He says it like I've suggested something really stupid.

'Then how do you explain,' he continues, 'how I've managed to visit here before?'

'Here? You've been here before?'

'You'd be surprised how many times I've been here. And each time, I learn something new!'

'Then why didn't you tell me Chris? How could you keep something like this secret from me? I thought you were in danger; I risked my life to rescue you!'

'I wanted to tell you! I wanted you to know what amazing things we were capable of, Twice! But would you have believed me? Wouldn't you have dismissed it out of hand, thinking it all sounded crazy? No, no, Twice; I knew I would have to wait. You would accept the truth only if you discovered it piece by piece, as you have done.'

'Yes, I do believe it all now. It's lucky I got that job at the agency–'

'Lucky?' He chuckles. 'Everything is connected, remember? I'd found out about the agency while travelling around here. I knew they'd realise there was something special about you, and accept you.'

Now I'm the one that chuckles.

'Chris, are you forgetting that it was poor Mary's murder that led me there?'

'And Franky's disappearance that allowed you to swiftly move on to the more important night shift. And the threat of war that meant you were trusted to take on her role with little training.'

He takes my hands in his, looking deeply into my eyes like he's about to make some profound declaration of love.

'But yes, there are _some_ things that seem to happen by chance; in which case, you have to see them as the opportunity they are. It wasn't until that poor girl had been run over, reminding me how awful it is to be so forcibly parted from your body, that I realised I could just simply breathe life back into the dead.'

He grins happily.

'Of course, I also kept on using the charms anyway; just to ensure no one would connect – see, there it is again – my raising of the dead with the golems.'

I jerk my hands away from his.

'Chris! You're saying you _are_ responsible for the golems?'

He nods, but without any sign of remorse.

'Of course; to help you realise your powers, Twice! And here you are! It worked!'

'Only because I thought the Nyxt had taken – _they_ were your golems too, weren't they?'

He nods again, grins again.

'That's it Chris,' I say, turning my back on him, 'I'm leaving!'

'Okay – so race you!'

'Race me?'

'Sure; I'll even leave you the butterfly, to give you a chance.'

'Chris, I–'

'Ready, steady – go!'

He springs into the air.

Then hurtles off along one of the now barely visible strands.

*

The butterfly, although apparently lazily flapping its wings, lies just ahead of me as we rush across the landscape.

Chris, however, is easily increasing his lead.

It dawns on me that, somehow, perhaps because I've been relying too much on the butterfly's guidance, he's on a slightly different track to us.

Is that why Chris left me the butterfly? Because he wanted her to lead me slightly off track?

I curve my body slightly to take me onto a different energy strand. Without protest, or even seeming to falter in its course, the butterfly zips back into place just ahead of me, lighting up the threads for me.

Chris swoops lower, curving around a grassy hill.

Perhaps the butterfly had been right to keep to the straighter course; perhaps Chris has just taken me on a playful detour here.

I wheel around the hill in Chris's wake.

I almost explode right into her.

It's Franky; blocking my way.

*

# Chapter 27

Chris must have known she was here.

If he's been here before, like he says; he might have been able to sense her presence in the same way I sensed his.

If that's the case, it means you don't actually have to love someone to be able to trace them, provided you've developed your skills enough.

'I knew I'd find you here someday,' she says triumphantly, warily edging closer.

Every time I make a move to pass her, she swiftly moves to block me. We're hovering in the air, like two angry bees.

'Please, Franky; I've never meant you any harm. I need to get back quickly, or I might die.'

'Die?' She laughs. 'A Half-Life die?'

'Franky, please; I'm not a Half-Life! That's why I need to get back!'

She's circling me cautiously now, having stopped advancing closer. There's an edginess in her eyes, like she fears me.

'You think I don't know that a Half-Life's soul is free to wander here, while her body is kept alive by an unbelievably powerful shadow soul?'

If she seriously thinks I'm a Half-Life, now she's seen me here in the underworld she'll also assume I've realised my powers. She may well fear what those powers might be.

Should I use that to my advantage?

No; she's determined to try and stop me, even if it ends in her – well what would it end up in for someone who's already dead?

I'm thinking quicker and more logically than I ever have. But I can't work that one out just yet.

Franky suddenly stops in her wary circling. She looks me up and down curiously.

'Wait – it's not your _soul_ , is it?'

'Not my soul? Of course it's my soul! What else would it be?'

Although keeping her distance, she observes me intently.

She locks her eyes on mine, glaring at me suspiciously.

'Your _shadow_ soul; it's your _shadow_ soul. How can that be? Your shadow soul shouldn't be here unless–'

A small, brightly glowing fox abruptly rushes into the space between us. Jake immediately appears behind it, swooping in on the glistening strands.

'Franky,' he blurts out urgently. 'I know what you must be thinking, seeing Twice's soul here. But I sent her; sent her the old shaman way.'

'Hah, you've no idea what I'm thinking anymore Jake!'

'How did you know I was in danger?' I ask him.

'I didn't; I followed on, just in case.'

'You're crazy Jake,' Franky says. 'Coming this deep your first time with nothing to guide you; you'd have surely got lost.'

'I felt the vibrations, found myself drawn here.'

Franky; his connection with Franky drew him here.

He turns to me.

'I hoped the connection would be strong enough to lead me to you safely.'

'So now you're helping her realise who she is, Jake? Actually sending her here? And you killed me because you thought I'd do that by killing her?'

'She's not Half-Life, Franky! I sent her because she was the only one who could rescue her boyfriend.'

'Jake, it was her boyfriend who told my gran she was Half-Life!'

'Chris has been here before?' Jake stares back at me distrustfully.

'Yes, he's been doing it for a while; I never knew Jake, honest. He _is_ controlling the golems!'

'I knew it!'

'But why would Chris say that to Franky's gran? Why would he want to get me killed?'

'Because Jake was right when he warned me of course,' Franky says. 'If Chris thinks you're Half-Life, he knows the quickest way for you to realise what you are is to have you killed.'

'So why not just get his golems to do it? Why didn't he get his golems to kill _you_ , come to that?'

'Golems wouldn't have been able to take me as easily as they did Mary.'

'Look, we're going to have to talk about this later–'

'No, Jake; she can't go back.'

Franky faces up to Jake, drawing up much closer than she had ever dared with me.

With a strident pointing of her arm, she draws his attention back to me.

'You think there's nothing odd about her, Jake? That's not her soul. That's her _shadow_ soul!'

Jake looks me up and down, his face slowly creasing in puzzlement.

Come on Jake! Tell her she's crazy! This is my soul! How can it possibly be my shadow soul, when it's back in the world of the living keeping my body alive?

'It doesn't make any sense,' Jakes says, then, turning back to Franky, 'Unless it's like when the shamans–'

'The shamans? Not _them_ again!' I say in a mix of anger and anxiety.

'This is important though, Twice.' Jake looks back at me calmly, like he hopes it will help me stop being so uneasy. 'Sometimes, a shaman's soul would get lost in the world of the dead; in which case, he'd have no choice but to send his shadow soul after it.'

'But I'm no shaman, Jake! And if this _is_ my shadow soul, what's happened to my soul? And what's keeping my body alive?'

'All I'm saying, Twice, is that if the shamans could do it, it's probably working the same way for you too. The body would draw on even more of its energy and Life-Force to stay alive; the risk being that it would burn out even quicker than before.'

'Quicker? How quick?'

He strides over to me, takes my hand, his eyes full of concern.

When he touches my hand, it's like he passing over a whole array of his emotions; worry, fear, love.

Oh no! Is he feeling my emotions too?

'We don't know,' he says, 'but you need to get back right–'

'I've already said no Jake!'

Franky has swooped up close to us, even closer than she'd dared approach me before.

'She'll die Franky unless–'

'And that's a bad thing, Jake? A Half-Life dying?'

'If she's a Half-Life, holding her here wouldn't kill–'

'Wouldn't kill her? In a situation like this, where it's her shadow soul that's here? You don't know that Jake. It might be the _only_ way of killing her!'

'Franky, she goes back!'

Jake propels himself hard at Franky.

They strike like powerful, bared electric cables coming together, emitting a universe of sparks and starbursts.

Franky spins back through the air, Jake following through on top of her.

'Go Twice!' he screams back at me. 'Go now! I can handle her!'

*

It didn't seem right, leaving Jake like that.

But he didn't want me to stay.

All I would have done is distract him, worry him.

This time, I let the butterfly lead the way. Once I'm at the borders, I zip down the pulsing threads, seeking the connections my body is weakly emanating.

There's a sensation like bursting up through water, only it's happening all around me; and suddenly, I find myself looking down on the hall.

I look like I'm asleep, cocooned in the multi-layered bed of folded curtains. Jake's lying alongside me, like we're a married couple having an early morning lie in.

The fires blaze all around us, the towering, flickering flames throwing a weird orange glow throughout the wall.

There's no sign of Nick and Kristine; I can't sense them being anywhere close either. They must have left, seeing no further point in staying.

Mary is tending the fires on her own, keeping them going by carefully dropping extra fuel into the bins, shielding her face from the incredible heat every time she moves close.

I'm sitting here watching all this because I don't know how to move back into my body.

I'd thought it would all just happen naturally, the same way my soul – or, rather, my shadow soul, if Jake and Franky were right – had just seemed to get up and walk away from it.

'Twice!' Mary cries out excitedly. 'You're back!'

What? Can she see me?

No; she's walking towards the stage's centre, where my body lies.

No!

It's not just lying there!

It's stirring.

It's opening its eyes!

It's wearily attempting to get out from underneath the layers of curtains.

Mary rushes forward and begins to help.

'Welcome back Twice!' Mary says breezily. 'You _did_ it!'

'Yes, yes, I did it Mary!' I hear my own body say.

*

# Chapter 28

But that's impossible!

How can my own body be moving around when I'm here, just helplessly watching it all happening?

'Where's Jake,' Mary asks. 'He came looking for you.'

My body looks back at the sleeping Jake.

'Did he?' she says. 'I never saw him,' she lies.

It's my voice.

But it's not me.

Has one of the Nyxt managed to take my body over while I've been away?

There's a glow surrounding my body, an aura. There's one shimmering and fluctuating around Mary too.

Now that I look closely, however, I can see a glistening sheen lying over everything.

It's the web of the Wyrd, visible to me now in a way I would never have imagined before I'd been caught up in all this.

Just as in the world of the Nyxt, it underlies and connects everything.

One of Chris's origami butterflies is still weakly fluttering around high above the stage, wafting along on the heat currents, drawing on the excited energies of the Life-Force to stay alive far longer than Chris had originally intended.

Like anything containing the breath of life, it emanates a light that sparkles far stronger than the glow coming from any other object in the hall,

The butterfly reminds me of the spirit guide I've left behind, the way it shines like a beckoning star.

I reach out to one of the threads of energy connecting us.

The light intensifies, crackles.

I pass along the thread – and suddenly, I'm the butterfly.

*

I fly down towards Mary, wondering how I can tell her what has happened.

'Oh look Twice!' she says brightly, pointing up towards me. 'One of the small butterflies is still alive! Isn't that–'

'Kill it!' my body screams. 'It's a spirit that was following me!'

She leaps up towards me with that incredible, superhuman skill I've seen Jake and Franky use.

I wheel off to one side just in time, my own hand almost scraping my wing as it grabs nothing but empty air.

My body spins in mid-air, whirls around, pushes off the wall and sends herself flying towards me once more.

Once again, I only just manage to stay out of her grasp.

In an instant, she's throwing herself back at me. I avoid her only because I'm small, light, wafting away from her as I'm caught up on and pushed away by the gusts her own rapid movements are causing.

She hurtles towards me time and time again.

I spin, I drop, I whirl.

I'm too slow; I'm going to get caught soon if I can't find some way of keeping out of her reach.

Reach?

I reached out to the butterfly along the energy threads, yeah?

The threads!

Energy, lying everywhere!

I swiftly wheel towards the nearest glowing strand, letting myself become a part of the web once more.

And suddenly, I'm moving faster than 'she' can!

*

After a while, 'she' stops trying to leap around after me.

She knows she's not going to catch me now that, like her, I've mastered using the Wyrd in this way.

She rushes towards one of the braziers, reaching for one of the protruding pieces of blazing timber like the incredible heat and the danger of burning has no effect on her.

She wrenches the timber clear, knocking it a number of times against the bin's side to douse most of the flames. She bangs it a few extra times to forge it into a charred, roughly sharpened point.

She spins around, striding across the bed of curtains.

In one effortlessly fluid move, she shifts the timber in her grip until she's holding it like a spear ready to be thrust home, its blazing point hovering just short of Jake's heart.

'Jake dies if you don't land now!' she screams wildly.

*

# Chapter 29

I've no choice.

Whoever she is, I know she'll do it.

I begin to flutter down towards the floor.

Mary looks as confused as I feel.

But at least she knows Jake needs saving.

She charges across the stage, violently barging into whoever now possesses my body.

Taken by surprise, my body is knocked off to one side, sent sprawling across the wooden floor.

The blazing timber flies out of her hands, wheeling through the air until it lands with a clatter against the blazing bins.

My body is back on its feet in an instant, crouching in readiness for an attack. It throws itself into the air, grabbing hold of poor, stumbling Mary even as she tries to regain control after her headlong charge.

With a simple wheeling of an arm, my body whips Mary high into the air, throwing her hard against one of the walls.

Mary is no match for her.

I have to do something, quickly!

I rush down a connecting thread.

I land on my own shoulder.

I let my soul spread throughout the fibres of energy I'd seen sparkling so brightly when I'd first left my body.

My body tries to dash the butterfly away; but I have enough control of my own body once more to confuse it for a second, letting the hand uselessly slap against my upper arm.

Who's here?

Who's taken over my body?

I furiously yell out my questions.

'Twice!' Chris says. 'It's so nice to be back together again, isn't it?'

*

# Chapter 30

'Chris? What the hell are you doing here? Your own body could be dying right now!'

'No, _my_ body's fine thanks, Twice! I mean, we've always been here for each other, haven't we?'

'Not like this Chris! This is weird beyond belief! You can't stay here! You have to leave!'

Gawd, I'm saying it like I'm asking an old boyfriend to leave my apartment.

Thing is, I want to _kill_ him!

'Ah, but you can't kill me, can you Twice?'

'What? You can read my mind?'

'Well, not really your mind, is it? But yeah, there's no need for all this screaming and shouting Twice!'

'No need?' I scream. 'You're in my _body_ Chris! You don't belong here!'

'Don't belong here? How long is it going to be, Twice, before you remember how I helped you save your parents, eh?'

'Save my parents?'

What's going on here?

Just how crazy has Chris been all these years without me knowing?

'Chris, my parents died long before you even showed up in my life.'

'And you're calling _me_ crazy? I get it, though; you're thinking of when they died when the traffic was at a crawl, yeah? You know, horrific lacerations, signs of drowning; just the sort of things we all suffer in a mid-town accident right?'

'How do you know all this?'

'Because, obviously, it was all just payback time, when everything they'd suffered in their first accident finally caught up with them, yeah?'

'First accident? You mean, when I was knocked over?'

'No! I did say _their_ first accident, Twice! They were almost dead. They were crying out for you down through the Wyrd. Remember?'

'Chris, aren't you confusing this with that story about the guys who drove into the river and– wait! You're saying that it was _my_ mum and dad?'

'You've got it at _last_ Twice!'

'So that was me, the girl swimming towards them! And you – you were the angel? You're my guardian angel?'

'Ohh, so close Twice! You're still not taking into consideration that you're Half-Life.'

'If you've always thought that Chris, why didn't you just get your murderous golems to kill me, eh?'

'I haven't always thought it Twice! It didn't dawn on me until a while ago. As for the golem question – well, I wasn't quite sure what complications that might cause, me being involved in your killing.'

'Complications?

'See, it's just so difficult to get you to accept who you are. Twice! Which is why I thought, heck, I'm sure _I_ can make it all work by myself anyway, if it's just your shadow soul that gets lost out there!'

'But my soul Chris; where the heck is my soul? Have you done something with it?'

'Me? Why would I want to hurt your soul, Twice?'

'I don't know; would you?'

'Twice; I would no more hurt your soul than I would hurt myself.'

'Then what's going on Chris? Who are you?'

'Twice; _I'm_ your soul!'

*

# Chapter 31

My soul.

Chris is my soul.

Hah – my _real_ soul mate!

What had happened when I'd died?

Had we been apart too long to fully come together once more?

Had the love of my dying parents been so strong that, somehow, it had managed to bring us _partly_ together once more?

To re-forge connections in the Life-Force that had previously been broken?

What is this body surrounding me but a temporary layer defining my worldly existence?

Isn't it really just an entrapment of my soul?

Isn't it just acting like a dam, preventing the Life-Force flowing through me?

Preventing me from flowing along on all its gloriously invigorating energy streams.

And we fight to preserve it (as if death is a terror we can avoid), this dam blocking the stream's movement.

Turning it into a stagnant pool.

Shouldn't the body be a valley, letting the streams flow through, drawing off its energy?

Accepting what it can grant us.

Even in our deaths.

Why be scared of death?

Why not accept it as a part of life?

If death takes you, so be it.

I no longer accept this imprisonment of skin.

I accept the power of the Wyrd.

My fibres crackle once more, as they had when I had undertaken my trip into the underworld.

The ends sparkle, like universes in miniature.

No; not _like_. They _are_ universes in miniature.

The Life-Force floods through me, connecting me with the world, with the _worlds_ , and beyond!

'Chris; you don't belong here – not all of you, at least!'

A small part of him is so much easier to remove than all of him.

What had Chris himself said? That he could manage without a shadow soul!

I cause a surge to ripple along every glowing fibre, pushing him back as a surging river pushes the flotsam before it.

I push him up and out into the paper butterfly that's still mingled with our spirit.

Before Chris has a chance to respond, I dash him off my shoulder.

'I'm back,' I say proudly.

*

I don't know what Chris is thinking now.

I could reconnect with him, using one of the strands.

Too dangerous.

Instead, I'm making sure the connecting strands he's trying to reach out to me with are blocked by surges of energy.

He's weak; I left him very little of the Life-Force he had originally been formed of.

I'd taken it from him, for my own use.

To reconstitute my own soul.

Mary's coming round. I don't know how long has passed since she was cast so hard against the wall it had knocked the breath out of her.

She observes me warily.

'It's okay Mary,' I say, raising a placatory hand. 'It's me; Twice. Something had come back with me from the underworld. I've got rid of it.'

I'm worried if she'll buy it or not.

I'd just made it up on the spot.

Mary grins, rubs her head like it's sore.

'Yeah, it happens,' she says. 'Sorry,' she adds, like she's responsible.

Catching a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, she turns to look up at the weakly fluttering butterfly.

'The butterfly?' she says.

I nod.

The butterfly dips, rises, like it's a dying butterfly.

Chris isn't giving up even now, however.

He's heading for the blazing bins.

He's hoping to draw off the concentrated Life-Force, as the origami butterfly had originally, staying alive for far longer than it should have.

He bathes in the fire's glow, like a phoenix rising from the flames.

A flame licks at a wing.

He's too close.

He hasn't got the strength to move away.

The flame greedily spreads along his wing.

Suddenly, in a sharp burst fire, he's gone.

Did I hear a scream?

'Mary, I need to rescue Jake!'

'Jake? So you _did_ meet him?'

'Yes, he came for me. But he's in trouble.'

'Trouble? But how can you go back so soon Twice? I might have a strong enough connection to find him–'

'No, Mary; there's no need.'

While we've talked, I've been looking about me,

Looking with my soul, not my eyes.

The underworld isn't below us. It isn't above us. It isn't even someplace else.

It's here.

It exists right here, right amongst us.

Just as, I now realise, in the underworld the world of living exists right alongside it too.

The underworld exists in the spaces between the glowing, three-dimensional web of the Life-Force. And the living world exists in the spaces between the glowing, three-dimensional web of the Life-Force that makes up the underworld.

The webs are interconnected, intertwined, interdependent.

One world could no more destroy the other than a man could strip out his blood vessels and remain whole.

I reach out to the fainter glow of the web defining the underworld.

I feel it drawing me.

I draw on it too, as Chris's fisherman would draw in his net.

I let myself feel its vibrations. Let myself become _one_ with the vibrations.

I risked my life because I loved Chris, my soul.

Jake risked his life because he loved me.

His love is rippling along the strands, building and building as I draw all those vibrations towards me.

I _am_ the vibrations.

I _am_ his love for me.

I step through into the world where Jake is still fighting Franky.

I draw the net in tighter, bringing Jake close by me, swinging Franky safely off to one side, like a fish with its fins caught in the netting.

'I've come to take Jake back Franky,' I say nonchalantly.

'Twice?' Jake can't believe that I'm here. 'But how–'

'The connections, Jake – they drew me back.'

He nods, like he's trying to understand.

I open up the net on one side, letting Jake step through to the world of the living.

I turn to follow him, but not without first turning back to Franky and releasing her.

'I was wrong, Franky,' I say. 'And you were right.'

*

# Chapter 32

I hadn't completely left the world of the living.

As far as Mary was concerned, I had been with her all along, apologising for worrying her, saying that I was sure Jake would be here soon.

Even so, she had breathed a sigh of relief as Jake had stirred amidst the cocooning curtains.

Now we were all dousing the fires. Jake had made a call, arranging for a team to get here as soon as possible and clear everything up.

Before she left, Mary gave us a hug and kiss.

'Just what had you brought back, Twice?' she whispers as she holds me close.

'Oh, I'm not sure,' I quietly lie. 'But, he's gone now, right?'

'Right!' she says, giving me one of her beaming smiles as we pull apart.

The smile fades.

'Sorry about Chris,' she says. 'Sorry you couldn't find him.'

I shrug.

That's what I'd told them both; that I hadn't been able to find Chris.

As I wave bye to Mary, Jake comes up behind me, casually slipping an arm about my waist.

'You know Twice, when you came back for me, I can't remember much about it all – but you did mention a _connection_ between us, right?'

I turn to him, wrap my own arms around his waist, slip my hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

'I think I _might_ have.'

His other arm slips around me.

He grins.

'You know, the way you came back for me like that – and Mary says you still managed to beat me back here too! – well, perhaps I've got to give you a reappraisal on your _average_ ability, eh?'

'What, you mean I might be better than average after all?' I say cheekily.

Those beautiful eyes of his are studying me carefully once more.

This time, though, their wondering, asking, if we might just, well, make a little bit more of all this and...

Kiss.

For a long time

'Wow!' he says breathlessly when we finally pull slightly apart. 'Much much better than average.'

'Hey, just how many girls have you been appraising?'

I jerk him towards me playfully.

Yeah, but I wonder; just what kind of emotions did I pass through to him in that kiss?

Was it just the pleasure I felt in being together?

Or was it also the pleasure the other me is experiencing; sitting by a sea with no horizon, a waterfall that stretches as high as a mountain, a sky bluer than anything I have ever seen?

Where will we go next, a dazzling, fluttering butterfly asks?

Even in the world of the living, I now realise, there are more beautiful things than I could ever have imagined.

Everything is linked; me, us, the trees, rocks, mountains, the moon, the sun, the stars.

Everything is alive; but the breath of a rock takes a human lifetime, that of a mountain a thousand lifetimes.

A change of power within ourselves is reflected in a change in everything we falsely believe lies outside of us.

We kiss again.

Slower, longer.

More tenderly this time.

Yes, I've found my connection to the world.

Found my connection to every other world too.

*

You'd think there could be nothing more terrifying than the dead.

But the dead, they fear a war with the world of the living, which could tear the Wyrd apart.

And so everyone fears the factions, who want to set that war in motion.

But Franky was right.

There's something more powerful, more frightening, than all these things.

Something that could tear every connection apart with an angry squint of an eye.

It's me.

I am Half-Life.

End

If you enjoyed reading this book, please remember to click that you liked it on the Kindle Rating icon.

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Chapter One

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The Dream Swallowers

Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night

Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens

Dr Jekyll's Maid

The 500-Year Circus

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