Stop thinking about it so much. That was supposed to be the secret. His elbows and knees stung. He knew he would be sore if he tipped over again. He leaned forward, pedaled faster, and saw his shadowy reflection flitting through the windows. His mum was clapping. She lifted her hands above her head. Yay.

You’re doing it.

His dad had let go without telling him. But he still felt him just behind him, his presence, the sense of him there, just in case.

Alex kept pedaling forward and it felt like flying.

•  •  •

ALEX’S GRANDFATHER SCRABBLED backward on his elbows.

The boy who called himself Alexander frowned, then sighed. “What to do with you is a question indeed. But first: the name of God. I can take it from you, of course. But I think I would rather that you give it to me. Just for the symbolism of it: the last belated gift from a dutiful son to his father.”

He walked toward Alex’s grandfather, holding out one hand expectantly, raising his blade with the other.

As sword struck stick, Zia raised a hand to her mouth and giggled.

•  •  •

AND ALEX WAS twelve and it was almost Christmas.

They had gone away for the holidays. Just a cheap little cottage by the sea, but they had brought loads of food and there were endless nights of old films and no homework and a real fire. It was cozy and it felt like they were the only people left on earth.

It was evening. Alex was in his room. His mum and dad were in the big room just beyond the half-open door, getting dinner ready. A smell of roast potatoes.

He sat at a desk by the window, wrapping the presents he’d bought them. Books and a Johnny Cash mug for his mum. For his dad, a weird-looking toy robot that Alex had found lurking in a stuffy secondhand store.

Rain rapped against glass. If he looked out his window, he knew he would see the black curve of the shoreline, and off in the distance, the slow turning beam of a high, lonely lighthouse. But he didn’t want to look out his window.

He glanced down suddenly as his finger jagged on the robot’s rough old tin.

He had to be careful. In places, the ragged edges were sharp enough to draw blood.

•  •  •

THE CUT ON Alex’s grandfather’s brow bled freely. Alexander stood over him, pressing his sword to the old man’s breast. Dogs barked somewhere off in the forest.

“The life I could have given you,” Alexander said.

“You’ve never lived,” the old man whispered. His eyes were closing. “You’ve spent two hundred years trying not to die. It’s not the same thing.”