“Don’t try anything, Verus,” Cinder said. “Been a long day and fighting you is just a pain in the balls. I’m not in the mood.”

I looked Cinder up and down, then turned back to the boy I’d thought of as Captain America. “Your name’s Kyle, right?”

Captain America—Kyle—looked at me. “Yeah.”

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I never had anything against you.” I turned and crossed the laboratory, my steps heavy. I skirted Kyle just in case he tried a last desperate attack, but nothing came. He and Cinder watched me go.

I walked down the tunnel in the darkness and through the chapel. The pile of dust had been scattered in the battle and there was no trace that anyone had been left there. I didn’t hear any sound from behind. I could have stopped to spy on Kyle and Cinder, see what Cinder was going to do, but the thought of staying here any longer filled me with nausea. As I trudged up the steps to the mansion’s ground floor I pulled out my phone and dialled. Variam picked up almost instantly. “Alex?”

“It’s over,” I said. I felt utterly drained, so much that it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. “I’m coming up.”

“Gate’s ready when you are,” Variam said.

I hung up and started the long walk back to where Variam was waiting to take me home.

Chapter 14

chapter 14

It was a few days later.

I stood under the trees of the South London cemetery. The sky was overcast, low clouds forming a thick blanket that held in the heat, and the weather was close and humid and tiring. I held still, the tree obscuring my silhouette enough to make me easy to miss, and watched the people gathered around the new grave in the far corner. It wasn’t a large crowd—less than a dozen—and the priest was reading from a small leather-bound book. I couldn’t make out what he was saying and I didn’t want to get close enough to hear. Up ahead, through the legs of the crowd, I could see Catherine’s grave, her parents’ tombstones just behind. A new grave marker had been added next to hers, of the same size and shape.