and unzipped it, pulling out one of Lucas’s old T-shirts. She brought it up to her cheek and then lay down, using it as a pillow, closing her eyes and trying to breathe in the lingering scent of him.
The dream came swiftly, drawing her down, submerging her. It was a dream she’d had before. She was at the bottom of the pond – the one in the woods near her house – her limbs bound up with pondweed so coffin-tight she quit struggling within seconds, knowing already what would happen and deciding not to fight it. Ice-cold fingers of water plunged into her ears and forced their way inside her mouth, caressing her eyelids and seeping into her eye sockets. Her lungs were bursting – on fire from the inside.
‘Evie! Evie!’
She was being shaken, hard. Her eyes flashed open and she spluttered, heaving in deep breaths of air, clutching at her throat even as the tears streamed relentlessly down her cheeks. She rolled off the sofa and tumbled onto her knees, pressing her head to the cool wood floor.
Suddenly she became aware of Vero’s hand on her back, patting her shoulder blade. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘It sounded like you were drowning or something, like you couldn’t breathe.’
Evie gripped the edge of the table. Her clothes were drenched with sweat, her skin felt clammy.
‘I’m fine,’ she mumbled, wiping a hand across her forehead. She glanced up at Vero, hoping to reassure her. The last thing she needed was Vero seeing her like this.
Vero stared at her sceptically, her eyebrows almost merging with her hairline.
‘It was just a bad dream,’ Evie told her, resting her fingers against her ragged pulse, trying to bring it under control.
Vero continued to stare at her for a few seconds before she nodded. ‘I have those all the time,’ she said, dropping down onto the sofa and taking a deep breath. ‘I keep dreaming about Risper – about her dying. I’m just there. Watching it happen. And I can never do anything to stop it.’
Evie’s throat tightened again. Was there an element of blame in Vero’s voice? Evie had been there when Risper died. She and Lucas hadn’t been able to help her or save her. The guilt of that ate away at her every second of the day, along with the guilt of everything else.
She cleared her throat, wanting to say something – to apologise, explain, empathise – but before she could find the words Vero started talking again. ‘When Risper died I wanted to kill every single unhuman I could find.’
‘You did,’ Evie said, remembering how Vero had acted like a woman possessed, on a vengeance mission no one could have stopped. She had taken out every Thirster in her path without batting an eyelid, setting fire to the Bradbury building in the process.
‘It was the same when Cyrus died,’ Vero said, turning towards Evie. ‘But it doesn’t go away.’
‘What doesn’t?’ Evie asked, frowning.
‘The pain. It’s still there. Ash doesn’t realise it either. He’s like you. He thinks that killing as many of them as he can will bring his friend back, will somehow make up for the fact that Cyrus died.’ She softened her tone. ‘It’s not going to fix anything, killing Victor. It’s not going to bring Lucas back.’
Evie felt as though the ice-cold fingers from her dream had torn open her ribcage and were now shredding her insides.
‘I can guarantee you’ll feel as empty as you do now,’ Vero added. ‘Maybe even emptier.’
Evie stared at her, utterly speechless. What she was saying couldn’t be true. It wasn’t possible to feel any emptier than she did now. ‘No,’ she managed to say, ‘I won’t.’
A ghost of a smile flitted across Vero’s face. ‘The one thing keeping you going right now, Evie, is the promise of that pain disappearing. As if killing Victor is going to be like popping a magic pill. But it won’t take away the ache. It’ll still be there afterwards. It will always be there. I don’t think it ever goes away. It will get less though,’ Vero said. ‘Over time. I can promise you that much.’
Evie dropped her head into her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. Vero was wrong about something, she thought to herself. She didn’t want the pain to magically disappear, because if it did then it would be as if she had forgotten Lucas ever existed. The pain was a part of her now, just as much as he had been a part