I looked away, feeling a flash of shame. “I’m sorry,” I said at last. “That wasn’t what I meant. But Will and the Nightstalkers are still out there and they’re still after me. I know that for you this is the most important thing in the world, but you don’t have to worry about getting killed in your sleep.”

“This is more important than Will and the Nightstalkers,” Shireen said, and her voice was utterly certain. “They’re a short-term problem.”

“Short-term?”

“You’ve faced worse,” Shireen said. “So has Rachel. They’re not going to be around in the long term but she will be. You needed to know this, you needed to see it, so that you understood. And yes, it was dangerous, but I’m not sorry for doing it. It was worth the risk.”

Easy for you to say, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. For the first time since meeting Shireen’s shade, I felt I was starting to understand her. She had her own priorities and to me they might seem crazy, but from her point of view they made sense and now that I had some idea of what they were I could deal with her. It wasn’t like it was the first time I’d had to work with someone with a skewed point of view . . . and somewhere at the back of my mind I couldn’t help but wonder if our points of view might not be so different after all. “Anything you can do to help?”

“I can’t fight for you,” Shireen said. “Not in your world. But there’s a place I can show you. You won’t enjoy it but it might help you find something you’ve been looking for for a long time.”

Chapter 12

chapter 12

Icame awake to realise someone was talking. Just the knowledge that I wasn’t alone sent a spike of fear and adrenaline through my system, and in an instant I was fully alert. I could smell stale air and unwashed clothes, and from the shuffling of footsteps I could tell there was another person near me. Without moving any other part of my body, I opened my eyes.

There was a man standing a few feet away. He wore an ancient stained greatcoat over dirty torn clothes, and from his smell neither he nor his clothes had had a wash in a long time. Straggly grey hair framed bleary eyes and a face prematurely aged. “—you doing here?” he was saying. “Huh? What you doing here?”