though, huge lawns. I remember lying down on one – I thought it was a carpet. And gates – lots of gates. But that’s all.’
Evie exchanged a brief look with Vero and Ash. It sounded somewhere expensive – somewhere like Bel Air or Beverly Hills. Nowhere near downtown.
‘So let me get this straight,’ Cyrus said. ‘We were all Hunters and we were trying to close this way through gateway thing – to stop any more of these unhumans from getting here?’
Evie nodded.
‘And the way through was in that building – the one we were just outside?’
‘Yes. There was a big fight. We fought our way inside. I think that’s what you remember when you say you saw a blond guy and Evie stepping between you. It was an Original. They’re like Thirsters, only worse. Evie killed it.’
Cyrus turned towards her, his turquoise eyes piercing her as hard as any arrow. She felt herself squirm some more under his scrutiny.
‘And I closed the way through? How?’ he asked.
There was a heavy silence.
‘You walked through it,’ Vero eventually said.
‘Did I know what was going to happen to me? Did I know I was going to end up …’ he hesitated, ‘like this?’
‘No,’ Vero said. ‘You thought you were going to die. That’s what we all thought the prophecy meant. That’s what we were told. That the White Light would die closing the way through.’
Cyrus’s expression turned to one of stunned amazement and then a soft smile crept across his face as if he was secretly kind of impressed with himself.
‘It said something about memories fading,’ Evie suddenly said. ‘The prophecy.’ She shook her head, trying to remember the exact words. ‘And shadows falling.’ She couldn’t stop the catch in her voice.
Silence descended. She could feel the others watching her. She looked up. Cyrus was studying her intently.
‘I was supposed to be the one to walk through,’ she told him, lifting her chin, ‘but you stopped me. Right at the last moment. You pushed me out of the way.’ She avoided telling him the part about the kiss.
Confusion rode in waves over his face. The question in his eyes was one she didn’t know the answer to either. Why had he done that?
She shrugged silently and looked away.
They let Cyrus sleep. It seemed the drugs were still loaded in his system. Hopefully, when they cleared out, some of his memory might return and he might be able to remember more.
Evie was huddled on the sofa with Ash and Vero, talking softly in the half-light of dawn so that they wouldn’t wake him.
‘He seems different somehow,’ Vero said in a low voice.
‘He’s drugged to the eyeballs.’
‘No, I mean, there’s something different besides that. It’s like someone else is wearing his skin.’
‘No, it’s him,’ Evie said firmly. She’d seen the glimmer of the old Cyrus not just in the underlying swagger as he walked, but in the way he’d reacted so fast when he killed the Mixen. And in the smile that sometimes tugged at the corner of his mouth as if he was laughing at a private joke.
‘He’s just lost his memory, that’s all,’ Ash said.
‘Do you think he can still fight? Will he remember how?’
‘Did you see him kill that Mixen?’ Evie asked. ‘He’s not forgotten how to fight. And his instincts brought him right back there. To the Bradbury building.’
‘We have to take him to Margaret first thing in the morning,’ Vero said.
‘Shame she wasn’t answering her phone,’ Ash grinned. ‘That’s going to be one joyful reunion.’
Evie’s fingers dug into the spaces between her ribs. She winced at herself. First she’d been jealous of what Ash and Vero had, and now she was jealous of Margaret being reunited with Cyrus. It was wrong to resent any of that. But she couldn’t help it. When she’d seen the long scar running up Cyrus’s back the wind had been knocked out of her, and when Cyrus had turned to face her, joy had blasted through her – a joy that she hadn’t felt in months. But then the happiness had been pricked by a needling disappointment that had slowly drained away the joy.
Disappointment that it was Cyrus and not Lucas.
She hated herself for feeling it, even more for admitting it, but it was true. Why couldn’t it have been Lucas to come back from the dead? To find her against the odds, like that?
‘Evie? What do you think?’
She tuned back in. Vero was looking at her expectantly.
‘About what?’ she asked.
‘Why didn’t Cyrus die? Didn’t