Sammi looked back and forth between them, eating her eggs. She was sharp. She’d pick up on Angela’s anger, and Lilou’s unusual vulnerability.

“You’ve been in the same place for too long,” Lilou said. “I’ve been keeping watch, especially for the past couple of months.”

“Keeping watch on us?”

“Partly, but also on people in the surrounding communities. There’s a man who runs long distances through these hills sometimes, and he says he’s seen lightning balls chasing him in the forest.”

Angela glanced at Sammi, who was looking down at her eggs. A brief, tense silence was all she offered. She knew that Sammi was changing, and Sammi knew that she knew. I have to talk to her about all this one day, she thought.

“There’s a place I need to go,” Lilou said. “I think you should come too.”

“You can’t even drive,” Sammi said.

Lilou shrugged. “Never was much need for it in London.”

“Do any Kin drive?”

“Of course they do.”

“Wow. Even if they can fly?”

“But why ask us?” Angela said. “It’s not like you need us. We’re only humans.”

Lilou ignored the barbed comment. “You’ve shut yourself away up here. I’m spending my time wandering the wilds, hundreds of miles a month, after so long constrained in London. So in a way we’re both aimless. It’ll do you good, and I could... I need the company. It’s a long way to travel alone. And you know I’m not at my best among people.”

“What is this place?” Angela asked. Lilou’s comments about watching out for them troubled her, but not as much as what she’d seen and heard. Whispers about her and Sammi would grow into rumours, and rumours stuck. Soon they might have people driving out to watch them from the woods. After that, strangers knocking at their door. Clips on the internet. People seeing her face who knew how to see past cut and coloured hair and contact lenses—like the British police whose Most Wanted list she likely still topped.

“It’s a valley,” Lilou said. “There was a town there a long time ago called Longford. Something happened there, and the town was abandoned and the valley flooded. Now it’s drained again. The dam ruptured, the water’s lowered, the remains of the town have been revealed.”

“Why does this interest you?” Sammi asked.

“Because there were Kin there,” Angela said.

“There were. And I lost an old friend when the disaster happened,” Lilou said.

“What was the disaster?” Angela asked.

“Contagion.” Lilou shrugged. “The official story is that there was a disease outbreak that killed most of the townsfolk. They cleared the town and flooded the valley. But there are other tales about what happened.”

“Your friend died there?” Sammi asked.