done it for Jilly. For Sera, certainly, God help him. Only that seemed not to be necessary. The human lived, and amid the flurry of activity around him and phone calls to the emergency services, Blair had seized his opportunity to chase the shadow that had been following him and his.
The glass front door stood wide open. And yet Sera had closed it behind her when she’d arrived. Either Dale had woken up and done a runner or…
Could the Founder go out in daylight?
Blair picked up the biker’s helmet from the floor where Sera had dropped it to rush down to the cellar with everyone else, and took the gloves from the plastic bag beside it. Then he walked into the cool, grey daylight. Nothing moved. Even the birds weren’t singing. And yet Blair sensed a presence as surely as he knew his own name.
“Can we talk?”
He sent the thought out there with more hope than expectation. It didn’t get a reply. He wished he knew what the Founder was looking for.
And then it came to him that the Founder’s quest was none of his business, except in so far as it affected him and his, and it seemed he knew what to say after all.
“Things happen around her, that’s all. She makes them better.”
Something touched his mind, a flutter of amusement, not untinged with pity, and then it was gone, along with the presence he’d still never seen. After a moment, he realised the undead skin under his thin clothes was smarting, and he backed into the house and closed the door.
In spite of the unsatisfying nature of his one-sided conversation, to say nothing of his physical discomfort caused by the daylight, he felt oddly soothed, almost…contented. Because although the Founder hadn’t spoken to him, he had touched his mind, almost like a father’s caress. For now, at least, Sera was safe.
****
“Where’s Dale Ewan?” DC Alex McGowan demanded.
The ambulance had taken Adam away, breathing but heartbreakingly weak. The police had refused to let Jilly go with it, though. Now they all sat once more in the Ewans’ gracious if empty entrance hall. Petra, flanked by two policewomen, held an ice pack to the lump on her head. Sera sat close to Jilly in silent solidarity while Blair sprawled in the shadows in the corner, wearing biker’s leathers and holding a black helmet dangling from one hand.
“Good question.” Jilly frowned at Sera. “Where is Dale?”
“Um, asleep on his bed,” Sera said tranquilly. She didn’t once glance at Blair, although while Alex issued instruction to two uniformed men, she did murmur in Jilly’s ear. “Blair took enough blood to make him lose consciousness in the study. Which is why he left him there when he came to open the trapdoor. When it was all over, he bunged him on his own bed.”
“Won’t they be suspicious he’s so weak?”
“In all the rest of this shit, I doubt they’ll notice,” Sera said frankly. “Anyway, at least it means Blair’s less likely to drink from the police.”
Jilly couldn’t help the sudden hiccup of laughter. And then Alex was there, studiously ignoring Petra’s glare as he sat on the low table facing Jilly and Sera. Jack strolled over and sat on the arm next to Jilly.
“Okay. Spill. You’re really telling me Mr. and Mrs. Ewan kept Genesis Adam down there for five months, connected to nothing but a drip and a state-of-the-art virtual reality machine?”
“The evidence is all there,” Sera pointed out. “They forged documents and spread false rumours in the press alleging Adam’s descent in drink, drugs, and rehab. They forged the documents that signed over his share of the company to them for a relative pittance, which the Ewans then got back anyway because they were his chief heirs.”
“So why didn’t they just kill him?”
Sera didn’t really understand this part, so Jilly forced her own lips apart. “Petra meant to. I suspect Dale just wanted to squeeze him out, relying on Adam’s disgust and unwillingness to drag everything through the courts for justice. Dale probably reckoned Adam would just start again on his own.”
“Would he have?” Jack asked curiously.
Jilly shrugged. “Not sure that’s all he would have done. He is a fighter and doesn’t let go. Whatever, Petra was pretty sure Dale was wrong, so she took things into her own hands.”
Jilly glanced at Alex’s fascinated if slightly bemused face. “Petra didn’t have the long-standing friendship Dale couldn’t quite shake off,” she explained. “And she did, probably, bear a grudge for Adam rejecting