“Do you think we’re fools? Do you think we haven’t dealt with snakes like you before, time and time again?”
“I didn’t mean to—” She ran over everything they’d talked about, trying desperately to work out what had happened. “I really don’t know what—”
She gasped. Suddenly she did know.
“Oh,” she gasped. “The phone.”
It must have run out of battery. They had realized that the deal she’d made with them for information was worthless.
“The phone,” Rufus confirmed, furiously calm, and dragged his hand backwards. He tore a hole along the length of her eye, pulling the lashes away from the lid.
The pain kept coming in waves, worse and worse, and a scream forced its way from her throat. “St-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Vini had his hand on her elbow, steadily leaching her fear away from her. The familiar pins and needles turned into a white-hot fire, and then disappeared into numbness. Was this what the Shells had felt, when she’d sucked them dry – a slow, burning loss of sensation?
Finally, Harriet managed to control herself enough to speak. “Stop! Wait! I can fix this!”
Rufus paused. Carefully, he slid his fingers free of the hole in her eyelid. He held the torn piece of skin on the end of his finger, inspecting it carefully, then folded it into his palm.
He surveyed her. Harriet met his gaze through the destroyed remnants of her eyelid.
“How are you going to do that?”
When she blinked, pain came screaming back into her eye. “What do you want? I’ll get you anything you want to replace the phone!”
His eyebrow twitched. “What makes you think you have anything to offer us?”
“I have powers now. I can use them to trade. They’re strong ones.”
His gaze fixed on Harriet’s newly white hair. He leaned in to sniff delicately at her temple.
“Three?” he asked, surprised. “Oh, you’ve become a perfectly creeping horror, just like you always wanted. Well done, you busy girl.”
Vini grinned, revealing sharp eye teeth. “Leave some for the rest of us.”
They could tell how many Shells she’d consumed just by smelling her? “Two and a half, actually.”
“A half?”
“One of them disintegrated before I could get its power.”
“Ah. A waste of a good murder.”
Harriet ignored this. She hadn’t killed the Shells. They hadn’t been alive at all. They were practically brain-dead, whatever the others thought.
“I can turn invisible and manipulate emotions,” she said. “Surely those are worth keeping me around for?”
“If you don’t trick us again. Would you care to explain why you never told us the phone would shut off when we made a deal?” Vini smiled through rigid lips.
“I was distracted. I forgot. It was an honest mistake.”
Harriet wished she’d never come to the basement. She was no match for the Tricksters, she saw that now. She was an amateur.
Rufus was waiting for more.
“I’m telling the truth.” She tried to smile, but it hurt too much to move her face. “Only an idiot would try to trick you. Even I can see that.”
“You forgot,” he repeated. “You came down to the basement to make a deal with the most dangerous beings in this building, and you were so preoccupied you forgot that your phone’s battery would run out. Well. How nice it must be, in that little brain of yours.”
Harriet blanched. “I’m sorry. Really. Please. Let me make it up to you.”
Rufus turned to Vini. They conferred silently.
Harriet waited, listening carefully. She caught the words “Leah” and “not strong enough”. The basement air tasted rotten on her tongue. Her eyelid twinged.
Finally, Rufus spoke to her. “Do you know Qi Pang?”
Harriet curled her lip. “We’ve met.”
He nodded, a minuscule movement. “Fetch her.”
Vini was still leaching fear from her arm, and Rufus pushed his hand away, like he would a dog begging at the dinner table.
The Harriet of a week ago would have asked “Is that it?” but she knew better. If they wanted Qi, then it wasn’t for a cup of tea and a chat. She wasn’t going to escape unscathed. They were asking her to give up Qi in Harriet’s place.
She didn’t bother asking what Qi had done. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t negotiate. Either she gave Qi to them, or they destroyed her. The Tricksters might be trapped in the basement, but they had strong people on the outside, like Greg. If they wanted Harriet gone, there would be nowhere she could hide.
Harriet looked inside herself, questioning whether this was something that she could do. If the Tricksters were planning to hurt Qi, then she would be complicit in that.
But then, why shouldn’t she do it? What was she holding back for? Qi was already suspicious of her, so it wasn’t like she was losing an alliance. Plus, the thought of helping Rufus strangely fed the hunger of the unstable energy brewing inside her.
For years, Harriet had been ignoring the urge to bite and tear, to pounce, pushing that desire down into the darkest corners of her brain, limited to imagination only. But the fresh energy was giving her darkest desires the space to grow.
She had devoted so much of her effort to hiding that part of herself away, and for what? She’d burned her bridges with Rima and the others. They had decided that she wasn’t good or kind or one of them.
Harriet couldn’t stand the way they had looked at her – appalled and disgusted, like she was a monster. If it was all over with them, what was the point of even trying to be normal any more?
She might as well indulge herself, in the only way that she could. Harriet would give them something to really be afraid of.
There was no one left who would care if she burnt herself to the ground and reinvented Harriet Stoker anew.
“Give me ten minutes,” she said, relief flushing her with pure adrenaline. “I’ll bring Qi to you.”
Rufus folded his arms, a small smile playing at his lips. “Good girl. And don’t bother running off. We’ll get Greg to track you down again if you don’t come back. He can be … hard to refuse, as I’m sure you’ve found.”
Harriet met his gaze, holding her bleeding eyelid open with a huge effort. “I understand you perfectly.”
Rufus is working so hard, in every moment of every conversation. He wants to be just like his older brother. He needs his approval, even when he’s long gone.
He’s always been that way. I’ve checked. I’ve watched them play together as children. Pretending to be centurions and savages, with blue paint and wooden shields, back when Vini was a baby. Rufus let his brother order him around, hunt him down and beat him up. Rufus idolized him.
He was a sweet boy, until he realized how much more fun it was to be cruel. He learnt from his brother, just like Harriet is learning now.
Circles. It’s always circles.
HARRIET
As she walked up to Qi’s room, Harriet formed a vague plan for sneaking up on her while she was invisible. She would push an emotion into her then, but she hadn’t decided which one yet.