Before I could control my helpless rage enough to speak she said “Are we done for the moment?”

“I want you to be done with Roy for good.”

“I’m for his good as he is for mine.” A chill breeze emerged from the dark, infecting me with a shiver, and seemed to mingle with her voice. “There won’t be much more need,” she said.

I might have been making a threat or a plea as I said “When are you going to leave him alone?”

“You may count the days. Meanwhile I advise you not to trouble us.” She turned her face to me, and I could have thought darkness had spread from her eyes to erase every feature. The whole of her looked like a shadow rendered solid. “I can come to you at any time,” she said.

“Is that meant to be—” My retort trailed off, because I was addressing the night alone. A gust of cold air that could have been a loitering breath found my face, and then the dark was still. I stared about at the deserted promenade and headed for the nearest streetlamps, almost running before I broke into a run. The lights felt so distant that I could have fancied someone was withholding them from me, and the dark seemed altogether more real.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

A Search for Evidence

Bel was Bal, and both had been Abel, and now all of them were Bella. The names clamoured all night in my head, blocking every bid to think beyond them. They might have been a spell somebody had laid on me, unless I’d brought it on myself. I could have imagined the obsessive repetition was designed to prevent me from reaching a thought it was crucial to have. Knowing the names all belonged to one creature was a cognitive peak I had repeatedly to scale, only to slip back into defensive disbelief and begin again. Whenever I awoke from a doze almost too shallow and fleeting to count as one, I felt as though the knowledge had been just a dream I could dismiss. The recurrent parody of reassurance was a mockery of hope, and yet I persisted in feeling as if I must have dreamed the encounter on the promenade and everything it confirmed. If only I could talk to someone about all this, but who would believe me without evidence? I felt as though I’d been drawn deeper into my aunt’s world than I would ever have wished – the world of her paintings, where the mundane offered no defence against the unknown, and everyday sights collaborated with the unnatural. I felt like a child isolated by a secret nobody but the culprit would accept. Bella had said she could come to me at any time, and often when I lurched out of another loss of consciousness I expected to find her watching me in the dark.