said the young man. “Exactly. We can’t hurt you. If you let us go, we’ll—”
Quibble raised her gun to shoot him in the head, but Lethe held up a hand. “Ah-ah,” he said. “They may talk to plants, but they’re still sorcerers. They’re still part of the family. We don’t kill family unless we absolutely have to.”
“Thank you,” the guy said. “Thank you so much.”
“Hey,” Lethe said, “we’re all on the same side.” The baby started crying again, and Lethe glanced at Quibble. “Kill the child.”
The young couple immediately tried to break free, but Razzia hit the guy so hard his legs gave out and then grabbed the girl, held her in a choke.
Lethe didn’t take his gaze off Quibble. “You’re still standing here. The child is annoying me. Kill it.”
Quibble had now gone quite pale.
“I’ll do it,” Razzia said happily, but Lethe shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I instructed Quibble to do it, so Quibble will do it.”
Quibble didn’t want to do it. “Please,” she said, her voice soft. “It’s just a baby.”
Lethe observed her through the tinted lenses of his mask. “I see.”
Tears in her eyes. “Lethe … come on, please …”
“You, ah, are refusing to obey, Quibble?” Lethe asked.
Memphis glanced away, refusing to meet Quibble’s eyes. Nero looked bored, while Razzia watched with growing enjoyment, completely oblivious to the fact that the young woman she was choking had passed out.
“I can’t kill a kid,” Quibble said quietly.
Lethe took a moment. “Oh, dear.”
She was dead. She knew it. Temper had seen that look before, that doomed expression on a slackening face. In his experience, there were only three possible options open to her at this point. The first was to run, but Lethe had a Teleporter on his side, which kind of ruled that out. The second was to give up: to accept what was coming or start begging. But begging wasn’t Quibble’s style. Quibble was an Option Three kind of girl.
She raised the gun, aimed it straight at Lethe’s face. Immediately, Memphis raised his, pressing the muzzle to Quibble’s temple.
“Don’t,” Memphis whispered. “Don’t you do it.”
“This is exciting,” Razzia said, and clapped her hands. The young woman slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“This is unfortunate,” said Lethe. “Very, hugely, unfortunate.”
“I can’t murder a baby,” Quibble said.
“Babies are just people who haven’t grown up yet. You’ve killed loads of people. Loads.”
“So let’s wait eighteen years and I’ll kill this one,” said Quibble.
“Oh,” said Lethe. “Oh, this is one of those … principle things, isn’t it? That’s … that’s sad. I’m sad now. You’ve made me sad. Because now I’ll have to kill you, Quibble, and … and I would prefer not to.”
His hands flashed, stripping the gun from Quibble’s grip and turning it back on her, pulling the trigger before she knew what was happening.
Her body toppled backwards. The wailing from the other room got louder, and Lethe handed the gun to Razzia. She looked at it like it was a piece of rotting fruit, and tossed it away.
“I’m sorry,” Lethe said to Memphis. “I know you were close.”
“She was my sister,” Memphis said.
“Oh,” said Lethe. “Didn’t know you were that close. I feel I have to ask, though, Memphis, and please, try not to take offence. Are you going to try and kill me for this? To exact revenge?”
Memphis looked down at Quibble’s body. “No, I guess I’m not,” he said at last.
“Good,” said Lethe. “That’s good. It’s best, after a family tragedy, that everyone tries to move on, and put the past where it belongs. In the past.”
“Do you want me to kill the baby?” Razzia asked hopefully.
“What baby?” Lethe said, and turned back to Temper. “You’re coming with us, Mr Fray. We have questions to ask.”
Another man entered the room, a guy with a braided goatee. Temper tried to keep him away but one touch was all it took, and all the bad thoughts Temper had ever had swirled and swarmed and swamped his mind.
When the bad thoughts crept up on her, and they did, they came slowly and quietly, slipping in unbidden to the back of her mind, and there they waited, patiently, for her to notice them.
She viewed them as if from the corner of her eye, hesitant to acknowledge their arrival and powerless to make them leave. They stayed like unwelcome guests, filling the space they occupied and spreading outwards. They slowed her down. They dragged on her, made her heavy. When she walked, her feet clumped. When she sat, her body collapsed. It was hard getting out of bed most days. Some days she didn’t even try. She knew what was coming.
She was going to die. And she was going to be on her knees when it happened.
She couldn’t see her death, but she could feel it. Kneeling down to change a car tyre, she had felt it. Kneeling down to clean up after she’d dropped a plate, she had felt it. Kneeling down to play with the dog, she had felt it.
This is how I’m going to die, she’d realised. On my knees.
And always, always, after this had occurred to her there came another thought, the thought that it had already happened, that she was already dead, that her body was growing colder and her blood wasn’t pumping any more. She experienced moments of pure terror when she believed, believed with everything she had, that she was trapped in her own corpse, that nothing worked and that no one could hear her screaming.
And then she moved, or she breathed, or she blinked, and with each new act of living she clawed her way back to the realisation that no, she wasn’t dead. Not yet.
It was mid-afternoon, and it was cold. The cold meant something. It was the last bite of the beast called winter, a beast that had stayed too long already. She could feel it on her face, on her ears; she could feel it seeping through her clothes. It meant she still had a spark of life flickering inside her. That was good. She needed that. But it also signalled a loss of focus, as she found it increasingly difficult to summon the crackling white lightning to her fingertips.
Eventually,
