his lips as if savouring the prospect.
‘I’ll tip your bottom-heavy society right on its face.’ He waved at them. ‘Bye! Enjoy cleaning your own palaces and breaking your own backs on the sun farms, because you can kiss goodbye to your fat-arsed privilege when there’s only one of your poor-bugger Plebeians to every hundred of you.’
He hawked and then spat, very deliberately, on the roof. ‘Think about it,’ he said, and turned away.
Beth looked back at the faces of the Mirrorstocracy. They were all white with impotent fury, except for Senator Maggie, who kept that sour smile on her face.
‘Fat-arsed privilege?’ she said mildly. ‘Spoken like a true prince.’
They hit the ground, jumped over the fence and ran down the alley back towards the main road, laughing wildly. Beth felt immense, euphoria surging in her, like when she and Pen pulled off some beautiful mural.
At that thought, Pen’s brown eyes flashed into Beth’s mind and she stopped short and swallowed, but the grey-skinned boy was still grinning at her and she felt her own smile burst back.
‘Got ’em!’ Fil shouted jubilantly. ‘ Now I’m having fun.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Definitely. There’s no way they can face down a threat like that.’ He embraced her impulsively, squeezing the air from her, then let her go.
‘What was that for?’
‘For your big mouth. You were so river-bleeding rude to ’em, and they took it, so I figured I could take the high hand too.’
His skin was shiny with city-grease and when Beth looked down she saw her hoodie was smeared with it. ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘that’s pretty gross, you know that? Do you sweat motor oil or something?’
‘Get used to it,‘ he said with a grin. ‘Stay with me, you’ll get a good coat of it yourself in no time. It’s handy — keeps out the chill.’
‘So sign me up — I’m freezing.’
‘Right you are.‘ He reached around her and smeared her face and her clothes with it and she squealed and struggled and laughed and he laughed too as he wrestled her to the ground. They struggled in the dirt for a few seconds, struggling to fight, breathe and giggle all at once, until Beth slid out from underneath him and got on top, bending his arm back and pinning him down.
For a fraction of a second her mouth hovered over his. He stopped laughing. Beth was suddenly, shockingly, aware of the strength of his thin arms, of the fact that he was letting her pin him. She felt the heat of his breath against her lips and she panicked.
Heat flooded into her face and to cover her embarrassment she stuck her tongue out at him and jumped away.
Then he cracked up again and she felt hysterical laughter boil up out of her.
When the echoes of their laughter had finally faded they were both lying on their backs, panting for breath. Hesitantly, she slid her hand over the asphalt and took his. Her sleeve had hitched up and their bare arms touched, their tower-block-crown tattoos resting side by side.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered to her.
‘What for?’
‘For being here.’
That night they drank to celebrate what Fil assured her was their first successful recruitment. He’d boiled up clear green liquor over a fire he’d set in a metal dustbin. Beth felt her head swim as the heat of it trickled through her, turning her limbs to warm mud. The skinny boy drank twice as much as she did, and sang stupid Latin songs horribly off-key. He would have fallen flat on his face if she hadn’t caught him. They folded together into a comfortable heap and with her head resting on his shoulder and him already snoring, Beth, contented, drifted off to sleep.
She woke in the pale silver dawn, bleary-eyed and stiff, her cheek glued to the concrete by early morning frost. Fil sat opposite, winding fresh strips of torn poster around his burns. A train sounded in the distance. Its whistle was wrong somehow. Beth couldn’t quite say why, but it sounded thin… wounded.
He cocked his head, listening, then he noticed she was awake and gave her a tired smile. ‘Recognise that sound?’ he asked her.
‘The train?’
‘Not just any train: that’s your Railwraith, the one you were riding the night we met. She’s been following us for two days now, keeping as close as she can on the tracks. Any idea what she wants?’
Beth shook her head. ‘I don’t even know why she picked me up in the first place.’
A broad smile split his face. ‘Seriously? You don’t even know that? But that’s obvious — you were a passenger. You wanted to go somewhere — anywhere — and she sensed it. Wraiths get passengers: passengers are what they remember, what they do. Passengers make ’em happy.’
He stretched and settled against the wall next to her. ‘Mind you, what she wants with you now you’re with me is anyone’s guess. Maybe she blames you for getting her mauled by that freight train; maybe she’s looking for payback. Then again, p’raps she’s lonely and just wants a friend. Railwraiths are pretty unstable at the best of times, and after what that one went through she’s bound to be a little barking.’
Beth winced. The clash and churn of the immense ghostengines was burned into the memory of her body. She huddled up and pulled her hoodie down over her knees.
‘Cold?’
‘No,’ Beth said flatly, ‘practising for my future career as a contortionist.’
He threw an arm around her. His bony hip jabbed her uncomfortably, but he gave off a surprising amount of heat. ‘S’all right. She can’t survive away from the tracks for more than a few minutes. We stay off the rails, we’ll be fine. Besides, you’re with me now.’
Beth snorted. ‘Given everything, I have a hard time believing that makes me safer, Fil. But thanks.’
‘Fair point, but tell what you what: I’ll do my best to make sure I get killed before you do. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?’
A little shiver went through Beth as he spoke at the thought of him dying. That’d been the first thing he’d told her about himself: Someone’s trying to kill me.
‘Nah,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘Very kind.’
CHAPTER 17
‘You’re sure this is the place?’
‘Positive.’
Mr Bradley’s fingers drummed on the small stack of photos they’d run off on his home printer. Pen knew them pretty well as they’d been taken from her mobile. She wished she’d been surprised that he didn’t have a recent shot of his daughter.
On the off-chance, she’d also printed a couple of copies of the sketch of the scrawny boy; it was just possible they’d find someone who might recognise him.
He hesitated and then said, ‘Parva, you’re Beth’s best friend. I want you to know that if she isn’t- Well, if we don’t-’ He muttered, ‘Well, then I’m sorry.’
Pen flinched but didn’t reply.
His words spilled on into the silence. ‘Beth was always Marianne’s little girl more than mine. When Marianne died, I… I went inside myself, it was like I was trapped there.’ He swallowed. ‘I couldn’t get out to Beth. I tried, inside I tried to find a way to make myself, but I couldn’t reach her.’
She wouldn’t let you, Pen thought. If it had been me, I wouldn’t have let you either.
‘I just,’ he went on, ‘I didn’t know how to go about caring. There wasn’t anything to grip. I don’t do well with all that stuff, emotional stuff, I mean. It doesn’t come naturally. What else was I supposed to do?’
Pen couldn’t bring herself to deliver some platitude. She bit her lip and then said quietly, ‘Try harder.’ She let herself out of the car and stamped up the rickety wooden steps.
She heard Mr Bradley’s car door slam as he climbed out and followed her, wheezing, up the steps behind
