extending a leg and wrapping it half around Liyana’s back, so she’s almost sitting in Liyana’s lap.
Liyana sighs. “She says a rich old fart doesn’t want a pretty old tart, he wants . . .”
Kumiko raises an eyebrow so it disappears into a fringe of silky black hair. “You.”
Liyana wraps her hands around Kumiko’s ankles. “I suppose. She was fairly drunk. Anyway, I told her I’d pick up the application to Tesco tomorrow.”
Kumiko laces her fingers in Liyana’s. “I’m afraid I have to agree with the senile old tart on that. You won’t last a week.”
“Hey,” Liyana protests, removing her hands, folding her arms across her chest. “What the—?”
“Oh, Ana, I love you, but you can’t work at Tesco.”
“Why not?”
“Come on, have you ever done a day’s hard graft in your life?”
“What? I trained to be an Olympic swimmer,” Liyana says. “It doesn’t get much harder than that, does it?”
“Yes, but that sort of thing is exhilarating. This would be utterly tedious.” Kumiko leans forward, stopping an inch from Liyana’s mouth. “I’m afraid you’re only good for two things, my darling. The first is drawing, the second . . .”
“Yes?”
Kumiko fixes her eyes on Liyana’s lips.
“You’re such a tease.” Liyana closes the gap to kiss her. “You—”
The phone in Liyana’s pocket vibrates and pings. She scrambles to pull it out, capsizing them both and nearly knocking her head against the bed.
“Shit, shit.” Liyana types her passcode, opens her email.
There it is. The first and only unread message in her inbox. The answer. She can see the beginning of the first sentence but not how it ends. Liyana takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, whispers a prayer, then clicks on it.
From: Dr. Martin Conway, admissionsucl
To: Liyana Miriro Chiweshe, liyanamc333gmail
Dear Ms. Chiweshe,
Thank you for your enquiry re the deferment of your place to study fine art at The Slade School of Art. We appreciate that your circumstances have suddenly and unexpectedly changed, but we regret to inform you that we are unable to . . .
Liyana closes her eyes. The ever-rising wave of anxiety finally crashes down.
11:59 p.m.—Leo
The fact that Leo is still dreaming continues to startle him. But perhaps he’s been dreaming every night of his life and simply hasn’t remembered in the morning. Is that possible? Surely not, given that neither his body nor his mind is entirely human. But then, Leo thinks, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . . So, perhaps.
That he dreams of Goldie and always wakes the moment before they touch is a source of both frustration and relief. Frustration, naturally. Relief, because he knows what’d happen after the kiss and no longer wants to see that.
In his short lifetime, Leo has murdered more women in Everwhere than he cares to remember. Some years more, some less, depending on the circumstances. In the months after Christopher’s death, he’d embarked on a killing spree. He prepared for every first-quarter moon as if training for the world heavyweight boxing championship. Every morning he meditated for hours, honing the precision and strength of his senses. Every evening he ran for miles, pausing now and then to annihilate random obstacles in his path—kicking down bins, bashing in bikes, chasing cows across fields. Every night he stalked the streets, skin itching with the urgent need to torture and maim, to inflict as many elaborately violent deaths as his imagination and skill would allow.
That Leo could reach Everwhere only once every twenty-nine days or so (depending on the lunar cycle) was a source of distress that sharpened his grief into a white-hot rage that speared a great many Grimm girls’ hearts. In the year following his best friend’s death, Leo tore his way through the place of falling leaves, parting mists and fogs as he careened along stone paths, leaping over decaying trunks and turbulent rivers, in his furious determination to single-handedly transform Everwhere into a graveyard greater than any on Earth. And so exact his revenge.
At the end of every night, no matter how many Leo had killed, it was never enough. And no matter how violent or vocal the deaths, the satisfaction of each quickly dissipated with the fog that rolled in to engulf the spirit of the dead girl. That the ever-increasing death toll didn’t decrease Leo’s grief in the slightest didn’t serve to soften his zeal or quell his bloodlust. Indeed, it only fuelled his rage and drove him on, harder and faster, to kill ever more with every month that passed.