her utterly and sometimes he was sure she could hear his unguarded thoughts. Occasionally, he would experiment by sending out a clear mind call, but to these Mima would never respond. Flick, however, could not dispel the impression this was deliberate and that she was concealing her abilities.
But these enigmas were put aside in the spring, when a new mystery presented itself to Flick. He had long accepted that the white house was a haunted place, and thought it no surprise, considering the many violent deaths that had taken place in the locale. He had often felt strange tinglings in his spine as he worked in the garden or walked though the settlement seeking tools and other supplies in the empty houses. Then, it came to Flick’s attention that Mima was taking food from their stores and disappearing into the settlement with it. He followed her on a couple of occasions, and found that she laid the food out behind the old Cevarro house. Eventually, he cornered her in the kitchen one morning and asked her outright what she was doing.
‘They are offerings,’ she said.
Flick was interested at once. ‘Offerings for spirits? Your family?’
Mima frowned. ‘Not exactly…’ She sighed deeply. ‘I feel awkward about this, but there’s no point keeping it secret, really. I have two dead brothers, Flick, but one still walks.’
And so the story of Terez came out. Flick’s initial reaction was of complete shock, not because a har had failed to complete an inception, but because Ulaume had done nothing about it. To Flick, this was typical Ulaume behaviour.
Mima came to Ulaume’s defence. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do. Terez is a walking corpse, but he can’t die. He won’t let me near him. He is terrified of those who live. Perhaps the kindest thing to do would be to kill him properly, but I can’t do it. I can’t. So I bring him food. Because of all that you’ve done, we live well now. I want Terez to share that, in whatever small way he can.’
‘You must take me to him,’ Flick said. ‘There must be something we can do.’
‘There isn’t,’ Mima said. ‘I’m responsible for what happened, Flick. I have to live with it.’
Flick thought about it for a while. ‘You acted out of ignorance, but not with malice. It’s not your fault. I think we could try to repeat the inception.’
Mima’s expression brightened. ‘We could do that? Is that possible?’
‘Ulaume should have thought of it before.’ Flick frowned. ‘But how? We lack the proper equipment. Blood has to be transfused.’
Mima stared at him steadily. He looked into her eyes and saw a small, fearful hope within them. She wet her lips with her tongue, swallowed. ‘Could we not… could we not feed him blood?’
Flick shook his head emphatically. ‘No, it doesn’t work that way.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ve seen hundreds of inceptions. We are not vampires, Mima.’
‘I think we should try it, all the same.’
Flick was alerted by a certain tone in her voice, and the fact that her aura seemed to condense around her like a protective blanket. ‘What makes you say this?’
‘Nothing, a hunch… What harm could it do?’
‘It’s more than that. I can sense it. Why won’t you tell me?’
Mima stood up and walked away from him. She went to the window by the sink, rubbed at a new pane of glass where some of Flick’s finger marks were still visible, close to the frame. ‘You might not approve of what you hear.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Tell me.’
She sighed. ‘I suggested it because it… because it was what happened to me.’
Flick stared at her for some seconds. ‘What?’
Mima turned to face him again. ‘Can’t you tell? I know you can. You’ve sensed it. I was waiting for you to ask.’
‘You have drunk Wraeththu blood?’ A dozen hideous images splashed across Flick’s mind.
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘but not in the way you’re thinking. Before you came, but not long before, Lileem fell badly and was injured. I was… ill then, mentally ill. It was because of all that had happened, but… Anyway, when Lileem was hurt, I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know how, so I licked her wound, like an animal would. I don’t know why I did it. I can’t remember what it was like to be me then. The blood affected me. I became… different. Not completely har, but different.’
‘Do you realise what you are saying?’
‘Not as much as you do, obviously.’
‘This is astounding. The implications are immense. Have