‘What are you doing down here, Jun?’
The beastwalker and the boy both looked up in surprise at this interruption, and they saw Chloe walking down the trail towards them. William perceived quite clearly that she wanted to add, ‘with this junkie’ to her question, but she refrained from doing so. The implication, though, was written quite plainly in her icy, tight-lipped parody of a smile and the flinty hardness of her eyes.
‘We were just talking,’ Jun answered, sounding almost guilty, although he had no cause to be.
‘Well it’s lunch time, so Njinga sent me to find you.’
The ‘you’ was directed solely at Jun; again, the implication that William could just as well float off down the river and disappear over the edge of the enormous waterfall a mile downriver was delivered with biting clarity. Despite the veiled insult, he held his tongue, smiling warmly at the teenage girl as she approached, without any hint of mockery in his grin. He refrained from making any comments, heartfelt or otherwise, and instead simply dipped his head in Chloe’s direction, a gesture of greeting that she made a point of not reciprocating.
‘I’ll see you later, Jun,’ William said when the boy stood up.
‘Yes. Thank you, William, for the talk.’
Chloe stood at a distance from the two of them, her arms crossed with blunt defiance across her chest, a scowl smeared across her face, her many piercings bright with a mocking glint in the midday sun. She glared at William while Jun walked over to join her, and then spun around with a dramatic flourish and marched off with him in tow.
‘What the hell were you doing talking to that junkie?’ she hissed when she thought she was out of earshot.
William, of course, heard the harsh whisper as clearly as if she’d uttered it right next to his ear. He normally would have brushed such a remark off, but today the wandering spark found a nest of dry, hungry tinder.
‘He can talk to whoever he wants to, Chloe,’ he said loudly, every syllable jagged with frost. ‘And I’d appreciate it if you stopped calling me a junkie, love.’
Chloe froze; this reaction had been what part of her had been hoping for, but had not expected. Furthermore, Njinga was nowhere to be seen, so the performance she was about to put on would be in aid of naught. Still, her Irish blood was sizzling with righteous heat in her veins, and she was never one to back down from a confrontation. It didn’t take long for her to spin around, her head cocked at a defiant angle and her upper lip curled into a sneer.
‘Jun’s a good kid, and he’s my friend,’ she snapped, ‘and you are a junkie. I’ve seen what that shit – the junk you shoot up – does to people, does to their lives, to their families … and as of a few days ago, Jun, Paola and Daekwon are the only family I have, and I sure as fuck am not going to let you poison any of them with that garbage you’re addicted to.’
William chortled humourlessly, shaking his head.
‘Good God, I was only giving the lad advice about dealing with his own addiction, not leading him into a new one. And why on earth do you think I’d ever want to do that? After the hell I’ve been through the past few days getting off the junk, and the utter mess my life had spiralled into when I was on it, do you honestly think I’d wish that on anyone else? Please. You’re not stupid, lass, you’re no fool. I know there’s no way you could actually believe what you’re saying. So why don’t we just clear the air once and for all, yeah? Tell me what your problem with me is, just get it out in the open. Quite frankly, I’m starting to get a little sick of your attitude. We all have to work together now, and—’
‘Ha!’ Chloe scoffed; she was not to be placated, not now, not with her blood boiling and her pulse racing with anticipation at the tirade she was about to unleash. ‘You’re one to talk about “working together”! Njinga told me all about what you did, how you literally ditched your responsibilities twenty-six years ago and just gave up like a fucking loser, like a coward. Yeah, and you literally threw those people you have the nerve to call your friends to the wolves! They were counting on you, and you just up and ditched ‘em to go off on a bender of sex, drugs, nihilism and booze that lasted over two decades! And I literally cannot understand why they risked their lives to rescue you, after everything you did. You’re a real piece of shit, you know that? A selfish, cowardly junkie, that’s what you are, and that’s my problem with you. You happy now?’
‘You say “literally” way too much, lass … but you’re right,’ William said with a sad, defeated sigh. ‘Everything you’ve just said, you’re right.’
Chloe was caught off guard; she’d been preparing her next outburst in anticipation of an escalation of the argument, not this. Her mouth hung
