One day Denis sucker-punched me as I walked into the house. His fist hit me right in my cheekbone. If I hadn’t suspected it was coming, I would have been knocked out cold. But that’s what you got for putting laxatives in other people’s food.
He hated me because I refused to go down easily. But they had messed up and I had become valuable to the gang’s business. It was a bad idea to give a kid like me a bit of rope.
The Denis in my memory had tried to take another swing at me. The one in front of me stroked his hideous beard.
“Hey!” I screamed. “This is seriously not funny! What are you trying to play at?”
Denis reached me. He swung his meaty fist in my face. I ducked instinctively. “Giselle!” I screamed. But there wasn’t time to convince that psychopath to stop this illusion. Denis ambled forward. I had a feeling that whatever this was, it would prove to be real enough if he happened to make contact with me.
Denis had always been a bruiser. He liked to intimidate through sheer size. To a twelve-year-old kid, he seemed like a giant. Today he swung at me in rhythmic hits that I both anticipated and evaded. His fist feathered too close to my face. I ducked and smashed my foot into his solar plexus.
The hit sent a jarring pain up my leg. I catalogued it for later and rolled to avoid another swing. Denis roared as he stomped the ground. I waited until he was within reaching distance and swept his legs from underneath him. He grunted and fell on his back but flipped into a crouch with the ease of an acrobat.
Okay, real Denis had never been able to do that. He staggered towards me. I sidestepped as he reached out. This time, I wasn’t fast enough. He caught hold of my sleeve and yanked me forward. I latched onto his wrist just in time to stop the forward momentum of the punch. Grabbing his middle finger, I wrenched it back until I heard a snap. He roared and charged forward. The room flew by and then pain exploded along my spine. He smashed my back onto the wall. Just before he could press him weight on me, I curled my legs and planted my feet on his chest.
His left hand came out and winched around my throat. It held me in place as he drew his fist back. I jammed the heel of my foot into his face. It did nothing but push him slightly off-kilter. Either he was getting stronger or my technique was much worse than I had feared.
In my memory, this was the point when Marsha had grabbed me by the shoulders. She held me in place so that Denis could punch me in the stomach. In reality, I dropped my legs. The full weight of him sandwiched me against the wall. Instead of punching me, he pressed my forehead back with his palm. With his other hand, he stroked my jaw. His breath was no less putrid than the smell of the fens. Nausea ripped through me.
“Look at those big, pretty, blue eyes,” he said. “Wonder what they’ll look like if I pop them right out of your head.”
The hand around my throat constricted. I gasped for breath. A red haze speckled my vision. Only then did it hit me what those flecks of colour on the floor were. Blood. Darkness flooded my vision.
I lashed out and jammed my finger into his left eye. The resounding pop was like music to my ears. The sticky feeling against my thumb made me want to upchuck. Denis roared. He staggered backwards and clutched at his weeping eye. I charged him and pushed him backwards until he tripped over his own feet. As soon as he was on the ground, I laid into him. I kicked him repeatedly in the head and tried to crush his windpipe with my foot.
I was screaming when he finally stopped moving. Back then I hadn’t stopped screaming until I’d blacked out. Today he was the one who didn’t get up.
I was on my knees, gasping for breath, when the door opened. My heart felt like it was going to jump right out of my chest. Giselle and Eugenia walked unhurriedly towards me. Denis’s body didn’t disappear. When she was close, Giselle couched down. She poked at the corpse.
“Out of curiosity,” she said, “how did this turn out?”
I stared at her, my expression blank. My pulse was thrumming in my ears. “I torched his house.”
For the first time ever, her chilling smile warmed me. Like I had just confirmed her suspicions that underneath the placid facade, I was just as nuts as she was. I had made it. Back then and now. I would make it.
Eugenia clapped. “Excellent.” She handed me back Morning Star. “Great trial run. Now let’s see if you can deal with the real thing.”
“Say what?”
Giselle grabbed my shoulder hard. “There’s nobody watching you now. They already think you’re a monster. Time to stop playing nice.”
They promptly left the room. Denis’s body finally dissipated. I stood there with my gaze locked on the splatters of blood. I thought they would materialise another fake foe, but to my horror, a spark burst open in the air. A portal’s wide mouth gaped.
Something thundered in the parallel dimension. I planted my legs on either side of me, raised Morning Star, and waited for the demons to come crawling out.
41
Three weeks later, I came home from a training session to find Sophie and her parents in our living room. For a second, I thought I was hallucination from being kicked in the head too many times. It was only after Sophie squeaked and came screaming at me that I knew it was her. I hugged her back, taking in the soft sugar scent of her. Tears pricked my eyes.
“How?” I said.
“Mama got
