‘Is Tom around?’ Zoe asked one of them, who pointed towards the bar. At that moment Tom strolled out. He was hard to recognise without the make-up. He looked older than I’d remembered, for one thing.
He gave us both a brief nod and turned to the drummer with a sniff. ‘Not many in there tonight. Another dead one, by the looks of it.’
I heard Zoe take a deep breath in.
‘Hey.’ She gave him a smile. ‘Maybe you need a good dancer on the set to liven things up a bit.’
Tom turned his head towards her, gave a grunt and looked straight back at the van. He smelled of cigarettes. ‘Want a hand taking this in, Mick?’
I felt myself going hot with embarrassment. And anger. I wanted to slap him. I could almost feel Zoe’s confusion, thickening and weighing down the air.
‘Tom. It’s me, Zoe.’ She was still smiling but it had an edge to it, of something like desperation.
Tom frowned at her. After a few beats, he said, ‘Hey! Zoe! Good to see you!’
He has no idea who she is, I thought. I wanted to run away.
‘Zoe the dancer,’ she persisted. ‘Did you – did you lose my number?’
The drummer cackled. ‘It’ll be with all the other numbers, sweetheart.’
‘Look, er – I have to set up,’ Tom mumbled, actually stepping backwards. ‘Maybe see you at another gig sometime, eh?’
‘Sure.’ Zoe raised a hand in a kind of wave, but Tom had already turned away and was striding towards the bar. I put an arm around her shoulder and gently steered her back out to the road.
She turned to look at me, her face flushed and her eyes watery-bright. ‘He forgot who I was.’
‘Maybe he was just busy,’ I said. ‘You know. Distracted.’
‘Maybe he’s a jerk,’ she countered.
I smiled. ‘That too. You OK?’
She gave me a weak grin. ‘I will be. Let’s go back to your house and play with knives.’
13
Ritual
Mum was standing right next to the door when I put in my key. She went on at me for being so late and said she had to go out for some sort of evening training session at work.
‘I did tell you about it last night.’ She shook her head and gave me her mum-style pop-eyed glare. Then she handed me a tenner. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I haven’t had time to cook. You and Zoe can get a takeaway or something.’
‘Sure?’ I didn’t really like taking money from my mum. A year or so ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but now I knew she always had to watch what she spent.
‘It’s fine, I’ve had a bit of overtime this month,’ she said, already halfway out of the door.
Zoe and I raised eyebrows at each other. The house to ourselves. The first thing we did was ring for a Chinese takeaway and we ate it in front of the TV, watching some bad reality programme so that we could laugh at all the losers taking part. Zoe laughed a little too hard. I knew that she was putting up a front. If I mentioned Tom, she waved her hand at me and changed the subject.
We put the cartons and the last bits of food in the kitchen and thumped our way up the stairs to my room, where Zoe drew the curtains and put on some music – Ghost, followed by Black Widow. We set everything up – the skull, the black candles, the chalice, the knife. A handful of graveyard earth.
The music, with its muffled drum beat and mournful-sounding flutes, got under my skin a bit. It sounded like some sort of medieval funeral. Zoe said she loved it and that we should keep it on to create an atmosphere. Everything seemed to make me extra nervy, though. I kept glancing round, over my shoulder, over Zoe’s shoulder, thinking I could see shapes moving about.
Zoe shook her head. ‘It’s just the candles,’ she said. ‘They make weird shadows. You get so easily spooked, Anna.’
There was a special ritual that Zoe had worked out. She wrote something on thick parchment-style paper, then rolled it up and put it on the little table with the candles and skull. I wanted to ask her what she’d written down, but I thought it might ruin the mood, so I kept quiet. The incense sticks kept up a steady, thin trickle of scented grey smoke, making the air feel full and fuggy. Zoe anointed both of us with an amber-coloured oil, on the forehead and wrists. It smelled like a church at a service for the dead.
Closing her eyes, Zoe picked up the knife and held it high. The candle light caught its blade and made it gleam. It left Zoe’s face shadowed out, but I could see her fingers around the knife handle, glowing as if heat was flowing through them. She drew a circle in the air with the knife. Before I could work out what she was doing, she used the tip of the blade to pierce her index finger and let drops of blood fall on top of the skull, where they trickled blackly across its smooth surface.
Zoe put her hands on top of the skull, her eyes still closed. If she’d hurt herself with that knife, she gave no sign of it. I placed my own hands on top of hers, but I was too afraid to close my eyes. In the background, the music sounded relentless, and it felt as if it was growing louder and the drum was banging along to my own pulse and heartbeat. The flutes made me want to cry. We gripped each other’s hands. Our fingers felt death-cold. Mine were trembling, but Zoe’s were steady. She was whispering, names and words that I couldn’t make out, because the music seemed to be drowning everything out, blocking my ears from the inside.
A thundering, banging noise made us both jump
