“This is useful information,” Wei said at last. “But it’s only a theory.”
Ellie appeared to loosen slightly at his words, but Lottie could see the shadow lingering, the dark thoughts she’d worked so hard to pour light over creeping back in.
“Now we will be sending you back to school.”
Another flash of lightning illuminated the room.
“We still have to find Jamie,” Lottie pleaded, trying to shake off new Leviathan fears. “And what do we do about Haru?”
“You will not be doing anything; while you’re here at our school you’re our responsibility. It’s likely Haru will return and act like nothing happened,” Sayuri said.
“He’s done things like this before.” Rio’s smirk was laced with anger.
“We need you to continue to pretend you know nothing about Haru or us. No one can know; he’s our most valuable source of information. We will keep you safe, and we ask you to share any material you have on Leviathan,” Sayuri added.
“And will you tell us what you know?”
They turned on Anastacia so fast you could hear the air snap.
“No,” Sayuri said firmly. “And you should stop hunting for Leviathan. If it’s true that they want you here, for whatever reason, you need to stay out of their business, or you’ll be playing right into their hands.” She looked at Lottie so sharply that Lottie felt it like a knife in her chest. “We don’t want you doing that again.”
Lottie felt the sob crawl up her throat. “What about Jamie? What do we do about him?”
“You will go back to the school and hope that he returns. If he does not return, we will call the police and your parents. That is all that can be done.”
Lottie and Ellie turned to each other, the remnants of the festival still clinging to them: the acrid scent of fireworks, the sweet taste of the taiyaki, and their now-disheveled yukatas.
Slowly Ellie blinked. “Lottie, he’s . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, but the word still hung in the air.
Jamie was gone, they’d lost him, and there was nothing they could do about it but have faith in him to find his way back.
“Now quickly, everyone,” Sayuri announced, glancing out the window. “We’re in the eye of the storm.”
19
IT WAS A RELENTLESSLY HOT midsummer day in St. Ives, and tourists had hijacked the streets to guzzle overpriced ice cream and sizzle their skin in the stifling heat. It was hard enough to find things to do in the town during low season, but as soon as the summer holidays rolled around, Ollie Moreno was virtually trapped in the prison of his house.
All his other friends had sensible parents, who’d get out of the town as fast as possible and rent their homes to people vacationing to make money off the seasonal tourist hellscape. But not Ollie’s mum. Oh no. Manuela Moreno needed to “mind the art gallery and get those tourists hooked on my work.” Artists and their egos.
He knew he wasn’t doing himself any favors by lying on the white linen of his bedsheets, barely any natural light reaching him through the curtains, but he didn’t have the energy to do anything else. He was sad. He knew it was stupid, yet he couldn’t shake it.
Lottie was practically ignoring him, nothing but curt text replies to tell him she was busy. It was so unlike her, and she didn’t even seem to realize, and, worst of all, he knew she was right. She was busy, and she did have more important things to worry about.
He wished it was only sadness he felt, but there was more, a prickly feeling in his stomach that itched and bit at him. Jealousy.
It had been one of their childhood dreams to go to Japan together one day and go on adventures. To spend a week going to all the nerdy cafés and themed restaurants, then another week exploring the awe-inspiring sites, and now Lottie was there with her new princess best friend and that grumpy bodyguard, and he was just a stupid slug bothering her.
Rolling over, Ollie picked up the newspaper he’d thrown on the floor. There was one more thing troubling him. Lottie had been all over the news. There weren’t many photos, only some grainy shots taken sneakily, but a collection was starting to build. The pictures of her at the summer ball the previous year, the pictures after the fencing tournament, and now this. It was inevitable that their old school friends would see her, but when they did, something miraculous happened. Not a single one of them recognized her.
The closest call was a comment from Charlie saying how the princess reminded him of Lottie, resulting in hiccups of laughter from the girls, especially Kate.
“Can you imagine if that pink-faced airhead was the princess?”
“More likely she would turn into a pumpkin.”
They were mean and stupid. “Ugly stepsisters,” Ollie called them, but he didn’t say anything. Lottie was going off, living a life he could never imagine, growing and blooming into someone new and whole, while he remained here, a mere sapling.
He grabbed his phone and typed out the silliest, most dramatic thing he could think of that might make Lottie laugh.
RIP Ollie Moreno. Died from being left to melt by his ex-best friend in the world’s worst hellhole tourist trap.
Before hitting send he quickly snapped a photo of himself lying against the bed, tongue drooping out of his mouth like he was dead.
There was no response, as expected, and he could practically hear Lottie groaning at how pathetic he was. He already felt stupid for sending it.
Defeated and bored, Ollie picked up a handful of jelly beans from his bedside table, throwing them in the air and catching them in his mouth. It was on the fifth bean, a cotton-candy flavored one, that he said out loud, “I want to grow.”
As
