Adrian hadn't changed all her habits, though. He thought her emerald broderie anglaise dress was something Maid Marion would've been perfectly at home in; it had puffball cap sleeves, a lace-up bodice and a skirt hem riding several centimetres above her knees. Nice legs. The girl's clothes sense was the weirdest, nobody else her age wore anything remotely similar. But, of course, she wasn't like anybody else her own age. Just wanted to be.

She lifted the front door's iron latch for him, eager to please. Sparrows, goldfinches, and a couple of hoopoes squabbled underneath the sprinklers' cascade, pecking at the grass for worms that'd risen in the artificial rain. The direct sunlight set off an uncomfortable itch on Greg's face and hands.

"Hop in," he said, as he blipped the Duo doors, "I've got something to say to you."

Her face lit up with mischief. "Greg, really! And Adrian so close by."

He sensed that ghostly extraneous thought current leave her mind with lightning swiftness. Her own thoughts were a fast-paced mixture of excitement and contentment. Julia was one happy girl. He flicked the jammer on, screening the Duo's interior from the manor's security surveillance sensors. "Julia."

Her expression dropped at his tone. "What?"

"Katerina."

"Oh, her. What about her?"

"I'm going to be very nice to you, and I'm not going to put you over my knee and give you a damn good wallop. Although God knows you deserve it, or worse, after what you've done."

"What?" She was spluttering, hauteur and outrage gathering within her mind.

"Your grandfather was quite right about you. You're a sciolistic; you know the moves, but not the governing laws."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, you worked it out very nicely on a surface level, I'll grant you that. What you failed to appreciate were the undercurrents."

"Stop talking in euphemisms, it's bloody annoying."

"I've seen inside Kendric's mind," Greg said. "He dreams of you, Julia."

"He does?" She was suddenly very uncertain.

"He hates you, and fears you. He wants to destroy you. No. He's obsessed with destroying you. Not merely Event Horizon, but you personally, physically. He wants you beneath him, Julia, spread-eagled and screaming. He's sick in a way you'll never know."

"I do know," she insisted quietly.

"No, not really; you still haven't twigged, have you? Loathing is an abstract to you, a word whose meaning you've looked up in a dictionary. Kendric is its physical embodiment, lethal, and scatological to boot. You will never understand the sheer intensity of his revenge psychosis. It's a monstrous personality dysfunction."