The Lost Girl Read online

  My leg buckles as I try to stand, but I force myself up. The hunter reaches for my foot, hoping to unbalance me. I whip it out of reach and run.

  I leave her behind in the leaves and the dirt and race for the street. I stumble past a blind beggar, past a tea shop, race down the street with people staring, looking for the nearest rickshaw. It isn’t the safest way to travel this late, but that seems laughable now, after surviving a knife-wielding hunter.

  Three rickshaw drivers refuse to take me anywhere. The fourth grunts and nods when I name the general area of town I want to get to. He demands double the meter fare. Resigned, I agree.

  My head drops against the side of the rickshaw as we rattle down the road. I hurt all over. I wonder dimly if the hunter will come after me. She’ll have to get to her car if she wants to, and by then I’ll be long gone.

  When we’re a street or two away from the house, I tense. The driver pulls up to traffic lights.

  “Where do you want to go, madam?” he asks curtly in Hindi. I just about understand it. “Left or right? You know the road name?”

  I don’t answer. I take a bracing breath and dart out of the rickshaw, dodging through waiting cars as the lights glow red. I hear the driver swearing, shouting after me, but I don’t falter. I have no money to pay him with. And his charging a hurt, bleeding girl double the usual fare makes me feel an awful lot less guilty about running away.

  I race through a side street and cross onto Amarra’s. My knife-cut leg crumples under me. I keep going, dragging it along. The house is only a hundred yards away now.

  I sway on my bare, bleeding feet. It feels like my chest is on fire. I make myself take a step forward. Then another.

  Faster. I can get there. I break into a run.

  Just when I think I might have survived this after all, I stumble. I trip over broken pavement and fall. It is cold and hard and I can’t get up.

  I stare at the sky, which swims above me like dark water. I try to roll over onto my knees and push myself up, but the movement sends a sharp pain through my side. I’m too tired to do this. My eyelids flutter shut. I let the liquid world fade away.

  16

  Wake

  I am home again. I can see everything, as though I am on a cliff top, about to jump. The Lake District has the bloom of spring. Sunlight glimmers through the clouds and dapples the forest floor. My eyes follow the English oaks, the pines, the old trees, past the rocks and the stones, the damp, dewy paths, and go to the very top of the hill, where I can see the gleaming lake and the hills that scallop the silver sky.

  The image flickers. Broken.

  Flash, a shard of light, a ripple through the dark, like a bad picture on the telly or a flash of lightning in the shape of the bolt in my Mark. Flash.

  Sean. His eyes. Green. Gold flecks of light shimmer across them. They look like being alive under a hot red sky. I silently swear that I will trade everything, every breath and every last particle of my soul, just to get to keep him.

  “Look at me,” he says. His voice is so fierce, so raw, I must be dreaming. Sean’s voice is never like that.

  Pain clouds my vision and I blink slowly. Dark, light, dark, light. There’s a shadow in the light. Angular, green-eyed, devastating. Dark hair. Short, straight. Like sparrow feathers. I reach for one of the feathers. It’s too far away.

  The shadow leans down and kisses my hair.

  “Wake up,” he pleads.

  Flash.

  There. My back garden. I know it so well. There’s a little girl playing on a swing, a guardian pushing her, up, down, up, down. I recognize them. Little Eva, a younger Jonathan. I kneel on the damp grass. “Where have you gone?” I want to ask him. I look to the house and see familiar shapes against the light: Erik by the doors, guarding, always guarding. Ophelia is some way behind him, staring at something far away. I glance around to see Mina Ma right behind me, watching for the dark, wicked things that might come when I’m not looking.

  I look back at the swing and the guardian. The swing is empty, but Jonathan keeps pushing it. “Where have you gone?” I ask him again. “Where have I gone?”

  “I’m tired,” I tell Mina Ma. “I came a long way to come back home.”

  The empty swing sways and the lake laps the shore. She wipes my tears away with a brisk hand. She smells of love and salt and butter.

  Flash.

  •••

  “Oh, good. Shining the light at her eyes must have helped. She’s waking.”

  I open my eyes. Unhappily. I wanted to be home. Not here. I am in a bed in a clean room that smells of bleach. A hospital room. There’s an empty chair by the window. Tubes in my arm. A monitor nearby, beeping in time to the beat in my chest. A flimsy green gown on my body. A man in a white coat is touching my wrist, shining a flashlight into my eyes. I squeeze my eyes shut until he stops. He says something, but it sounds muffled by pillows. Being awake is painful.

  He says something and leaves the room. I want to close my eyes now that he’s left, but there is somebody else beside me. I turn my head very carefully.

  There’s a bandage wrapped around my leg. A cast on my left hand. Bruises down my body. My head is throbbing.

  But I made a deal with whoever was listening. Every breath, every part of my soul. Just to be with him again. And here is what I traded for.

  “Eva,” says Sean, and his voice is hoarse, raw, but it’s not a dream.

  PART THREE

  1

  Peace

  “You came,” I say.

  Sean’s expression is drier than desert sand. “I did,” he says, “and your surprise is somewhat insulting. Did you really think I wouldn’t? That Erik might say, ‘By the way, Sean, Eva nearly died,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, all right then,’ and go on with my life?”

  “You’re still sarcastic,” I say happily, though my voice sounds like it has been run over by a tractor. “You haven’t changed much. You look older.”

  He smiles in spite of himself. “I am older. You sent me a birthday card.”

  “I remember.”

  I drink some water. Someone must have given me painkillers, because nothing hurts quite as much as it should. I can’t stop looking at Sean. I’ve longed to see him for months, and here he is. Tears slide down my face and he brushes them away. I want to touch him, but it hurts to move. I smile up at him. I must look awful. God. I must smell.

  Sean’s eyes are red and tired. I watch them while he absently strokes the back of my unhurt hand with his thumb.

  “Have you been crying?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says, rubbing his eyes self-consciously, “I just haven’t had much sleep the last few days.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “The hell I am,” he says, and changes the subject. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for a couple days now. I’ve tried to be here the whole time. I guess your head was pretty banged up. I haven’t been your only visitor, though. Your familiars have been here. A girl called Lekha was here a couple of hours ago. Nikhil’s barely been pried from your side. He found you, you know.”

  The hard, cold road swims back into memory. “How?”

  “He saw you fall,” he explains. “He says you told him you’d be back by ten and you’re never late. So when it got to eleven and you weren’t answering your phone, he went out to the gate to wait for you and make sure you came back. And he saw you.”

  I sniff, wiping my nose. “He likes me,” I say.

  Sean goes to the window to refill my glass. When he returns, he says, “Do you want to tell me what happened to you? We still don’t know how you ended up there. Amarra’s boyfriend, Ray, he rang the night you got hurt. Your familiars say you went to a party with him”—his tone becomes carefully neutral here—“but you were alone when you came back.”

  “I was,” I say. “But I did go to the party with Ray.”

  His expression is very blank. “I see.”

  “We’ve spent time together. It’s messy. He can’t forget h
er and he can’t stop seeing her when he looks at me. And I can’t forget that I’m not her. I can’t forget you.” The mask on his face slips. “But there were times when he was Ray and I was Eva and we both knew it. I cared what he thought of me. I don’t know. I only know something went badly wrong and here I am.”

  “Wait.” Sean’s face darkens. “You mean he put you here?”

  I shake my head. “Not like that. He thought he could get Amarra back.”

  I’m telling this in the wrong order. My head doesn’t feel right. Fuzzy. Like my body’s juddering too fast and my head can’t keep up.

  “The doctor said you’d probably be in shock,” he says quietly. “Look, just rest, tell me about it later.”

  I take a deep, shaky breath. “No. Now. But you’re going to say ‘I told you so.’”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “Well, you should. Because you did tell me so and I didn’t listen. See, it was a hunter.”

  And then I tell him. From the start. My voice falters and I muddle things at first, but as I keep speaking and remembering, the musty fog in my memory clears up. I tell Sean everything, stumbling over the kiss, hesitating at each turn to try and read his eyes. He doesn’t say anything. He just listens, his jaw tightening, until I have finished.

  “Jesus Christ,” he says.

  I shake my head. “I used to laugh at the thought of being picked off by a hunter, remember? I thought there was no chance they’d ever find me.”

  “Well, let’s face it, the odds were slim they’d have found you if it hadn’t been for those two,” says Sean in a flinty voice.

  “They didn’t do it to hurt me,” I say, trying not to think about Ray kissing me and telling me to get out. “I think they just want Amarra back.”

  Sean makes a noise in the back of his throat that doesn’t sound very forgiving. In spite of what I’ve said, I have to admit I don’t feel very forgiving either.

  “Do you think the hunter will tell the police about me?”

  “I doubt it,” says Sean, “Hunters act on their own. That’s why they exist, they’ve never trusted the law to get rid of you.”

  I let out my breath in relief.

  “You drive me bloody mad, Eva,” he adds, “and I’m convinced you’re a lunatic, but you’re the only person I know who could have gotten out of that.”

  I smile lopsidedly. “Thanks.” My mouth feels sticky. “Can we talk about something else? I may be sick if I keep thinking about this.”

  “Are you hungry? Do you want me to go get you some-thing?”

  “No!” I cry. Sean goes very still. I let my breath out in a rush as the panic subsides, and I look sheepishly up at him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to burst out like that. I just—I just don’t want you to go. I’m still afraid I’ve been imagining you all this time.”

  “Silly,” he says affectionately.

  I wrap my hand around his index finger. “It’s good to see you, Sean.”

  “It’s good to see you, too.”

  He draws the chair up to the bedside and sits down, legs sprawled in front of him. “See? Not going anywhere,” he says.

  “How are they? The others?”

  “They’re all right,” says Sean. “Ophelia now lives in London so she can be closer to her father. Mina Ma’s retired from the Loom, but she hasn’t left the cottage. Erik’s helping the Weavers revise some laws about how echoes are raised. None of them wanted to take charge of another echo. They miss you.” He stares down at the sheets. “We were told not to get involved when we heard about this. As far as we’re concerned, your chapter’s closed.”

  “What’ll they do if they find out you came?” I ask worriedly.

  He shrugs. “I wanted to come after I heard about the Sleep Order, but Erik reminded me that it would only have gotten us both in trouble. But I couldn’t stop myself after this.”

  “I thought you cared about following the Weavers’ laws.”

  “I decided to break this one.”

  “How un-Sean-like of you.”

  “Tell me about it,” he says, smiling. “But I can always count on you to make me feel like the cautious one again.”

  I lift my tube-wrapped hand and tuck it in his. “Stay?”

  “Until you’re better,” he promises.

  I never want to get better.

  The next time I see Nikhil, I give him a big hug. “Thank you,” I whisper in his ear. Not just for spotting me when I fell. For being out there in the first place, worried because I was late. When I draw back, he’s smiling, that sweet smile I’ve come to know so well.

  “Eva, are you okay?” Sasha demands, climbing onto the bed and sending an instant bolt of pain through my chest. Sean pulls her off before she can sit on my broken wrist.

  “Yes,” I gasp through the pain, “I’m fine!”

  I leave the hospital at the end of the week but am prescribed bed rest while my ribs and leg recover. My broken wrist takes longer to heal and aches almost constantly. The first time I look in a mirror, I’m shocked to see two small red scars on my face, one down my left temple, the other an inch below my right eye. They upset me at first, but Lekha tactfully points out that this is a small price to pay for survival.

  Neil and Alisha insist that Sean stay with us while he’s in the city. They like him. He’s easy to talk to. Uncomplicated. There are no ghosts or shadows or pretenses where he’s concerned. He’s also polite and helpful, which makes him a lovely guest. He is given Sasha’s room, and she moves in with me for the time being. I daresay they all realized that if Sean hadn’t stayed close, I might have thrown a fit worthy of cracking Mount Olympus in two. As the days slip by, I dread the moment he will leave again.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask him one afternoon. I’m hobbling on my leg as he steadies me. I try to keep my balance, regain the strength in my muscles. “When you go? You’ve finished school now, haven’t you?”

  He nods. “I think I’m going to spend the summer in London. I’ve been going back and forth a lot this past year, theater stuff mostly. I might just take my things down and camp out there for a few months. I still have Loom work to do, but I’m thinking of quitting in September when I start university. Erik reckons they’ll let me go without a fuss. I’ve already signed the confidentiality forms.”

  “Meaning you’re not allowed to talk about the Loom to anyone who isn’t involved with it?”

  Sean nods, steadying me with one hand. “Not one word. The Weavers keep their secrets. And they run the Loom with an iron fist. They’ve been getting careless lately, though. Erik told me so. He said Adrian messed up while making two echoes this past year and he doesn’t even care.”

  “Life and death’s not big enough for him anymore,” I say drily. “What else could he possibly be obsessed with?”

  “Living forever? Isn’t everyone obsessed with that?”

  “But not you.”

  “What good’s forever when everyone else is gone?”

  “Hmpf,” I say, annoyed. “Don’t you have an ounce of romance and adventure in your soul?”

  “No, not really. Should I?”

  I tug my hand away from his in a show of pique and try walking on my own. My leg buckles and he grabs hold of me, catches me, before I fall.

  “This is the moment when you scoop me into your arms and proclaim your desire to make me your own,” I say.

  Sean laughs and helps me hobble back to the bed. “Scooping you up isn’t going to fix your leg,” he says. “Do you want to try again?”

  I nod. But even as I try to balance again, I’m conscious of a terrible, certain fear. That when Sean leaves, so will the peace. And the joy. For the first time the house is quiet and restful, and Amarra’s ghost is silent, and I can keep my thoughts away from hunters and Weavers and Sleep Orders and the relentless clock ticking down my time.

  But I keep quiet about it. I don’t tell him how badly I want him to stay. Or how badly I want to go with him. To see him again, only to lose him once mor
e, will be agony.

  No, I don’t tell him. How can I? Echo. Guardian. Echo. Guardian. We were never meant to stay together. Never meant to be at all. They never say what happens to the guardians who break the laws. Am I supposed to risk Sean’s life?

  Sean helps me balance upright. “Matthew brought you here, didn’t he?” he says. “What did you think of him?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t trust him. I don’t like him. But he’s Erik’s friend. He can’t be all bad. And—” I hesitate. “It’s silly, but he made me. That matters. I feel like it ought to matter to him, too.”

  “It’s not silly,” says Sean. “There’s more of him in you than there is anybody else. More than Amarra, or Neil, or Alisha.”

  I don’t answer.

  “They’re not kind people, he and Adrian,” he says. “Brilliant minds, but they’re not kind. Two of the most dangerous men in England. They don’t seem to have any pity or mercy left. Erik told me that, too. He said they weren’t always like this. They’ve changed. Matthew, especially. Erik’s afraid the Loom’s gone wrong.”

  “Was it ever not wrong?” I ask.

  He can’t answer that. How can we know? We weren’t around two hundred years ago when the Loom first stitched a life.

  In the wake of being attacked, of almost dying, I can’t shake a painful awareness of time. Each night I lie awake, cold. I can’t sleep. It’s been weeks since my seventeenth birthday, and I can’t stop thinking of how little time ten months really is. And how I am not saving myself by staying here.

  But how not to stay here? If I left, my god, that would probably kill me anyway.

  “What’s the matter?” Sean asks me early one morning, after Sasha has gone to school. We’re alone in Amarra’s room. Grayish sunlight spills onto the bed. I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in a window. I look ill.

  I stare away from him, clutching the sheets tightly in my fists. “I’m okay,” I say. He knows what the Sleep Order means. He doesn’t need me to remind him that I am not going to survive here much longer.