Fury

have to do. In case I’m seen.’

He eases himself down beside me, places his head on the wide armrest beside mine and turns to face me. ‘It still feels like I’m lying next to a stranger,’ he complains quietly.

‘I am a stranger,’ I reply, inexplicably wounded by his words. ‘In some way I’ll always be a stranger because I can’t get close to you. It was written, remember? We’re just finding out about it now, that’s all.’

Ryan’s dark gaze softens and he reaches up and brushes a long, dark curl back from my face before grinning. ‘You could get closer,’ he murmurs, ‘if you’d take off that stupid black puffer jacket you keep insisting on wearing. We might even gain a couple of inches of togetherness …’

He startles a laugh out of me that sounds almost tearful. ‘Better?’ I reply, shifting so quickly and imperceptibly that I’m wearing just the simple black turtleneck and jeans before he’s even registered the jacket is gone.

He wrinkles his nose. ‘What you’ve got on still has to be the opposite of sexy.’

It’s done before I can call it back. In a fit of pique, I shift so that I’m wearing the filmy white blouse and slim-fitting dark grey skirt of Rosa’s uniform. ‘Sexy enough for you?’ I say through gritted teeth.

Ryan recoils, almost falling off the couch in his haste to put some distance between us. His voice is reproachful. ‘Now you’re just being a bitch. We were only talking. You don’t get the right to act like a jealous girlfriend when you won’t even tell me what I mean to you.’

I shift back into my black turtleneck and dark grey jeans, but Ryan doesn’t move any closer, and I say rawly, ‘What else do you expect from a monster? I’m no good at any of it. At being me, at being like this. The Eight should have put me down the way I begged them to. I was born to trouble, to bring trouble upon others. I’m a freak …’ I cover my face with my hands.

‘You begged the Eight to kill you?’ Ryan says in a hushed voice.

He pulls my hands away from my face fiercely, shaking me, his expression brittle with shock.

‘I woke in that place — that place we’re hurrying so hard to get to — so horribly burnt and wounded it was a wonder I ever woke at all,’ I whisper. ‘They were all staring down at me, mocking me with Their incredible beauty, Their terrible power. But though I begged to die, They refused. Michael said it was against everything we stood for to end the life of one of our kind — even though I was vain and proud and the personal muse of the greatest force of destruction our universe has ever witnessed. They would not do it, though I threw my unspeakable pain, my deep rage and confusion, in all Their faces. And this is the result of all that care of me, all that love and protection that has never been warranted and can never be repaid. I’m a mess. In. Every. Single. Way.’

Ryan pulls me into his arms, holding me, rocking me, until little by little I stop shaking and my hurt begins to ease, at the edges.

‘You should have seen the look on your face,’ he murmurs, changing the subject valiantly. ‘It was like you wanted to rip the poor girl’s throat out.’

I give a shaky laugh. ‘I always look that way. Get used to it.’

We don’t talk for a long time after that; we just hold each other, the heat of our two bodies mingling. After a little while, when Ryan’s hold slackens, I see that he’s fallen asleep, and it makes me smile, how he can sleep anywhere.

I reach up to place a small kiss upon his wide, full mouth and that’s when I notice a shadow falling down the aisle towards us. I look back up the plane, but Rosa’s already fled, making a small, terrified noise as she runs towards the cockpit. She knocks frantically, then pulls open the door.

Ryan’s still sleeping, one arm thrown across his chest, one leg bent slightly outward, when Rosa returns with one of the pilots. He’s in his shirt-sleeves, hatless, his shaved head gleaming under the lights of the cabin. He flicks his light, hazel-coloured eyes from Ryan back to Rosa, his lashes and eyebrows such a pale ginger-red, they’re almost colourless.

‘I don’t see the problem,’ he says quietly in Dutch-inflected English. He strides towards the washroom door, opens it, looks quickly around inside. ‘How could there be a girl? There’s no one here.’ He looks back up the plane and throws his hands out wide in confusion. ‘There’s nowhere to hide on this plane. What girl? ’

When he shuts the washroom door with a firm snap, Ryan wakes with a start. He sits up, instantly alert when he sees Rosa and the pilot standing there looking at him.

‘What? What is it?’ he says, looking around warily, and I know that he’s searching for me. ‘Have we arrived?’

The pilot pins a genial smile on his face though I can tell he’s annoyed. ‘We’re about to start our descent, Mr Daley, so perhaps you would care to return to your seat now?’

He indicates the table for four behind him with a sweep of his hand, before turning and striding back towards the cockpit with Rosa following at his heels, flustered and upset.

‘But I saw her, I tell you. He was holding her. Why didn’t you ask him? Ask him.’

I see the pilot shake his head and reply shortly, ‘And what? Sound like a lunatic? There’s nowhere to hide. You probably saw the ghost of one of Maxi St Alban’s many mistresses; one he arranged to have thrown off the plane, I don’t know. Like people say, Rosa — suck it up, okay? We’re almost there.’

‘Rumbled,’ I whisper in Ryan’s ear ruefully, and his eyes widen in understanding. ‘See you on the ground.’ After the plane comes to a stop outside the dedicated StA Global Logistics hangar at Le Bourget and the customs and immigration men enter the plane, I slip down the collapsible staircase and immediately see the anonymous, black, luxury sedan with the tinted windows waiting about thirty feet away. There’s a slender, youthful-looking man of average height leaning against the front of the car. He has dark eyes, a triangular, clean-shaven face, and short, light brown hair that’s been waxed so it sticks up in artful spikes all over his head. He’s wearing a stylish camel overcoat over his navy suit, everything tailored to fit him perfectly, and his hands are buried deep in his coat pockets.

The wind is icy — the temperature can’t be more than about five degrees, and the sky is slate grey — but all looks and feels normal for this time of year. December in Paris. The notion suddenly fills me with so much dread I almost can’t bring myself to move towards the car.

But I make myself drift closer, circling the vehicle and its driver at a wary distance. He has an observant, watchful air about him, an expression that reminds me of Gia Basso. He gives out the same kind of muffled, complicated energy she does, too. It’s hard to get a handle on what he’s thinking.

After a roughly twenty-minute interval, the officials re-emerge onto the staircase of the aeroplane, one of them roaring with laughter at something the other has said. As they descend, I see Ryan appear at the door of the Gulfstream. I get a brief glimpse of Rosa behind him, her expression as frozen as her body language.

The driver pulls himself upright languidly when he sees Ryan and moves to open the rear passenger door on the driver’s side. Though he seems relaxed, I see him size Ryan up with narrowed eyes.

As he comes off the stairs, Ryan checks to see that the officials have driven away before jamming his cap back onto his head, placing his fake spectacles onto his nose and hunching his shoulders a little to make himself seem shorter, like a different person.

I’m just a drift of energy on that chill, chill wind as I circle him and whisper, ‘Tell the driver to stop the car just as you round the hangar marked IRL Industries. I’ll be waiting.’

Ryan’s a pro, because he doesn’t even check his progress at my words, just sweeps on towards the car, shouldering his pack, keeping his head down. The guy nods at him and he nods at the guy, and the door’s shut, the driver’s back behind the wheel turning the engine over, and I almost don’t make it to the corner before they do.

The black car slides to a stop beside me — the me of the Duomo, black puffer jacket and all — and the driver gets out and opens the rear passenger door again. He nods, says neutrally in his gravelly voice, ‘Mad’moiselle,’ without a hint of surprise, before helping me into the car.

The word actually makes me wince as I slide in next to Ryan. He reaches over and buckles me in tenderly, like I’m a child, like I even need a seatbelt.

The driver shuts the door. There’s no window between us and him; it’s just a normal car, like the one that