you winding us up?” Felix asked. “You are, aren’t you?”
Jimmy didn’t know how to respond. Felix’s chirpy tone was completely out of synch with the weight of Jimmy’s emotions.
“All right, tell you what,” Felix continued, bouncing on the spot, “I’m coming too.” Jimmy sighed. “Let’s go,” Felix insisted. With a flourish, he plucked one of the pillows from the bed and whipped off the pillowcase. Then he tied it around his neck. “Got to wrap up warm, cos, baby, it’s cold outside.”
“Felix, what are you doing?” Jimmy asked.
“I, my friend, am going to come with you and become a killer.”
None of them knew what to make of this – least of all Jimmy.
“Felix, this is serious,” he said.
“Yeah, serious,” Felix echoed. “Seriously, I’m so serious. Let’s go get serious with some Frenchies.” He grabbed Jimmy’s wrist again, but this time he was dragging his friend towards the door. “Come on, come on, haven’t got all day. People to kill.”
“Stop,” Jimmy urged feebly. He pulled his hand away. “You’re nuts.”
“I’m nuts?” Felix mocked. “Oh, I’m nuts. Yeah, cos, funny thing is, we all thought you wanted to stick with us and get away from the fighting and the murdering. But some little French bird flutters in here with her little gadgets and her cool eyeball trick – that was so cool by the way,” he quickly turned to Zafi and grinned. “And next thing you want to skip off to Paris to become an assassin, which is what NJ7 wanted you to be in the first place. But you’re right – I’m nuts.”
The others were stunned. If Georgie hadn’t been so upset, she would have laughed. Zafi was the first to break the silence.
“Your friend is weird,” she whispered.
“I know,” Jimmy mumbled, “He’s…”
“I like it.”
Finally, a smile forced its way on to Jimmy’s face. “Take off that pillowcase,” he said. “You look ridiculous.”
“So we’re staying?” Felix asked. Jimmy nodded, and his sister plunged her arms around him.
“You’re such an idiot,” Georgie scolded Jimmy even as she was hugging him. “You have to think about these things more carefully. We’re going to get out of here and be safe and normal again.”
“It’s a shame,” interjected Zafi. “They said if you didn’t want to come with me I should kill you.” Jimmy’s blood fizzed in his veins. Georgie gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Ha! Joking!” Zafi exploded into laughter. “Your faces are hilarious.”
Felix and Jimmy both let out a huge sigh of relief.
“I don’t think that’s funny!” Georgie shrieked.
“It was quite funny,” Felix suggested. “Not as funny as me obviously.”
“So it’s OK if I don’t, you know…” Jimmy asked.
“Of course,” Zafi replied, her voice light and almost squeaky. “You won’t work for us, but that’s OK because we know that you are no friend of NJ7.”
“I’d never work for them, don’t worry.” At last Jimmy started to relax. He almost felt like himself again.
“But NJ7 won’t have any distractions now,” Zafi warned him. “I can’t throw them off your trail any more. And if I can find you, they can find you. Get out of the country as quick as you can.” She opened the door and was framed by the darkness in the rest of the building. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”
To his surprise, Jimmy was sad that this girl was leaving. There was so much she might have been able to tell him. He was suddenly overcome by the urge to know everything about her. Had she also grown up thinking she was a normal child? Or had she always known that she was only 38 per cent human? She seemed a lot happier with it than Jimmy was. Did she have parents? Were they, like Jimmy’s, agents of the Government’s intelligence services? And had they kept it a secret?
With all this blurring his thoughts, Jimmy found it hard to say anything – even a simple goodbye. Zafi reached into her pocket.
“I’ll rewire the power supply outside on my way out,” she announced casually. Her hand emerged holding the remote control clicker that had turned on the lights in the room. “Something to remember me by.” She tossed it at Jimmy, who caught it in a daze.
“Don’t you need it?” Felix called out, but Zafi was already floating down the stairs, making hardly a sound. She glanced over her shoulder, her hair catching the streak of light through the banisters.
“I’ll make another one.”
Jimmy, Georgie and Felix were unable to move. They were stunned. Zafi had come in like a whirlwind and left as much devastation. She had made so little noise – they didn’t even hear the front door closing after her – and she displayed all the clinical killing instincts of a highly trained assassin. Yet her eyes had sparkled, her physique was delicate, her voice was soft and high, with a giggle that reminded Jimmy of the most annoying girls in his year at school.
While Jimmy was trying to fathom out how he felt, Felix reached across and swiped the gadget from his open palm. He clicked the lights on and off a couple of times.
“Cool,” he muttered under his breath. Then he asked, “Do you think we’ll, you know, see her again?”
Jimmy didn’t answer. His gut was telling him that he hoped they would. But, at the same time, he could hear a stern voice in his head. It told him that if he ever did see Zafi Sauvage again, it could only mean that he was in trouble.
Jimmy, Felix and Georgie didn’t bother going back to bed. There was no way any of them would have been able to sleep anyway. They were buzzing with adrenaline from Zafi’s visit. Instead, the three of them took their duvets down to the living room. Felix turned on the TV.
“Chris will go ballistic when he hears about what happened tonight,” he said.
“Do you think he’s OK?” Georgie asked Jimmy. “And Saffron?” There was no reply. “Well? Do you?”
Jimmy exploded with frustration. “I don’t know, do I? How is any of us meant to know?”
“All right, calm down, psycho.” Georgie threw up her hands.
Jimmy mumbled an apology. He could picture Christopher Viggo’s face as the man had driven off into the darkness the night before. With him had been his girlfriend, Saffron Walden, dying from an NJ7 bullet. Jimmy had already gone over and over it in his mind – hospitals were out because they were covered in security cameras, and they’d report a bullet wound to the police straight away. So unless Viggo knew a surgeon nearby who was also a so-called ‘enemy’ of Britain, Jimmy had no idea how Saffron was going to survive.
He curled up on the sofa, wishing his morbid thoughts would go away. Saffron and Viggo had done so much to help Jimmy. Viggo used to be an NJ7 agent himself,
