We vanish into a side street, and after several confusing turns, he pulls us through a doorway.
‘You’re safe here.’
Upon hearing those words, I sink to the ground and adopt the foetal position. I think I must retch because bile fills my mouth, and I guess I’ve started to cry, because I hear the sobs of a terrified girl. My hands flit between clawing at my neck and shoving away imaginary demons – a colony of ants crawling all over me, biting, nipping, burrowing down. Katie sits beside me and strokes my hand, and the black-haired Imp holds my hair from my face in case I puke. These kind gestures pull me from my pit. I struggle into a sitting position and lean against the wall beside Alice. I turn and take in her face, pale and drawn and streaked with mascara.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks.
I shake my head and register a new pain; the burning ring of fire encompassing my neck. I run my fingers across it and feel something warm and moist, oozing on to my split-heart necklace.
‘Violet’s noose was really tight,’ Katie says. ‘I could see it cutting into her skin.’ She’s trying really hard to speak in her normal, practical tone, but I catch the waver at the end of her sentence.
The Imp passes me a cup of steaming liquid. ‘Here, try and drink something.’
I take it with quavering hands and let my chest just rise and fall of its own accord. I take small, broken sips and the pain around my neck subsides. It tastes a bit like black tea. He passes one to Katie and Alice, and I hear them muttering thank you. Alice sniffs it and places it on the floor.
I gradually grow aware of my surroundings – a small room, sparse and uncarpeted, boxes instead of chairs, a small sink in one corner and an open fire in the other. The Imp lifts a quilt from a nearby box and throws it around my shoulders. Only now do I notice how cold I feel.
‘So, what’s your story?’ the Imp asks.
A single word spears the bleariness: Nate. I recall the last time I saw his face, tight with anxiety. ‘I need to find my little brother.’ I try to lever my body up, but my arms buckle, the world rotates, and I end up slumping back against the wall, tea slopping on my lap.
The Imp takes the cup from me, his fingers grazing mine. ‘You’re not going anywhere for a little while. You’re in shock, and those bastard controllers may still be out there.’ His voice sounds warm, like he’s known me for years, and I feel my muscles unwind a little.
‘He’s right,’ Alice says.
Katie nods. ‘Nate will be fine, he’s with Saskia and she’s a right old battleaxe.’
I bite my bottom lip, pinning it in position, trying to stop it from trembling. Silence spreads between the bare walls.
‘I’m Ash,’ he finally says, touching my arm.
I feel my head jerk upright. ‘Ash?’
He looks a little bemused. ‘That’s what I said – Ash.’
‘Ash from canon?’
He shakes his head like I’m mad. ‘From what?’
‘Now you know how I feel,’ Katie mutters.
‘Do you work at the Harper estate?’ Alice asks him.
He nods. ‘Yeah, I’m a Night-Imp.’
Alice and I look at each other for a moment.
‘It’s Ash from canon,’ Alice says, and then laughs.
Canon-Ash was one of the Imps who looked after Rose at the Harper estate, though he had no idea she was a rebel. He showed her around, helped her with her chores, and stared at her a lot. I always felt a little sorry for Ash; he was like Jacob from Twilight, traipsing after Bella like a lost puppy. Ash from the film even looked like a puppy – big blue eyes, floppy black hair. But current-Ash looks more like I imagined him after reading the book, more feline than canine – sleeker and prouder and just more attractive. I can’t help wondering if Russell Jones didn’t want the on-screen competition. I bet R-Patz’s heart sank when he saw Taylor Lautner for the first time.
‘But you look so . . . so different,’ I say.
‘Roll up your tongue, Vi,’ Katie whispers.
Either Ash doesn’t hear or he ignores her. ‘Have we met before?’
I shake my head, a little too vigorously, and the pain intensifies. ‘No . . . no . . . My mistake.’
He smiles. ‘And you are?’
‘Violet,’ I say.
‘The colour or the flower?’
‘Both.’
He looks at the wound on my neck. ‘Do you mind if I take a look?’
‘Go for it.’
He reaches beneath my hair. The sharpness of his nail catches my collar bone and something warm and fluttery grows in my stomach.
‘That’s gotta hurt.’ He smiles this wonky smile and cocks his head to the side. I realize he feels a little awkward touching me – he’s only eighteen, a year older than me. He wipes my blood on his overalls and scowls. ‘I can’t stand those nasty controllers, deciding who lives and who dies.’ He moves across the room to the sink and runs a cloth under the tap, which flows straight from the sink into a drain cover on the floor, no pipe or anything. Even from a distance, I can see flecks of brown in it. The reek of raw sewage wafts towards me.
Alice wrinkles up her nose.
Ash pretends he doesn’t see. ‘They’re just power-hungry idiots. No better than the Gems, if you ask me.’ His eyes flick to Alice. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’m not a Gem.’ Her newly cropped hair reveals her neck, which remains smooth and unblemished. Katie was right; my noose was particularly tight. This thought sends another wave of nausea through me.
He arches a dark eyebrow (current-Ash has way better brows than canon-Ash, not a monobrow in sight). ‘Seriously? You just look like that?’ he asks.
She smiles. ‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Oh, please,’ Katie says. ‘Her head’s quite big enough already.’
‘Hang on,’ I say to Ash. ‘If you thought she was a Gem, why did you save her?’
He wrings out the cloth and shrugs. ‘We’re all just animals.’
‘So you . . . don’t hate Gems?’ I ask.
‘Course I do, but I wouldn’t kill ’em.’ He moves towards me, and I notice the stark line where the darkness of his hair meets the white of his skin. ‘We should probably clean that up.’
I let him dab at my neck. I can’t help but notice how his skin looks almost translucent in the dimness of the room, lending him a vulnerability completely at odds with the breadth of his chest.
‘So, where are you from?’ His breath skims my ear.
I falter on my words. ‘We’re from a different universe.’
He laughs. ‘Let me guess, one where Imps rule the world.’
Now it’s my turn to laugh. ‘Would that be so weird?’
‘Not really. We used to, didn’t we? Before genetic enhancement was discovered.’
Ever so gently, he tilts my chin. I look straight into his eyes. The cool expanse of blue reminds me of winter. He slides the cloth around the back of my neck, under my hair, and I catch his scent – sweat and soap.
‘So maybe we’re from the past,’ I say.
‘Time travellers, the plot thickens.’ He pauses for a moment and we smile at each other. His smile takes up his whole face, even his proud nose has to fight for space.
Katie turns to Alice. ‘I’m suddenly feeling invisible.’
‘Hello.’ Alice waves her hand. ‘We still exist you know. When do we get our own personal sponge bath?’
Ash and I laugh, a little nervously, and our breath mingles in the space between us.
He rocks back on to his haunches. ‘You must be hungry?’
My stomach growls of its own accord. I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.
He moves across the room to a cauldron and stokes the fire. ‘Ma put a stew on before she left.’
‘Who’s Ma?’ I recall the controller’s words: He’s Ma’s son, if he says she’s an Imp, she’s an Imp. Obviously, Ma demands respect.
He stirs the pot. The heat and movement release an aroma of stewing meat, overpowering the sewage smell and making my mouth water.
‘She’s the local Imp midwife,’ he says. ‘Everyone loves her, and the Imps need her, you know.’
‘I guess there’s no hospital then?’ Katie says.
Ash grins. ‘You really are from another planet, aren’t you?’
I can’t imagine what the women must go through, giving birth in these conditions, walls caked with muck, water flecked with brown.
He keeps on stirring, and I let the melody of his voice lull me into a trance-like state. ‘She’s the reason that mob let you go, I get a lot of respect being her son, even the controllers value her, cos it’s their mistresses and babies she’s saved. She loses the odd one, baby or mother, and then she cries in her sleep for a week.’ He pauses, staring into the stew like he can see something he once lost and can never retrieve.
‘She sounds amazing,’ I say.
But what strikes me as even more amazing is the amount of backstory which wasn’t in the book or the film. It’s as if this universe extends beyond the edges of the canon. I want to discuss it with Alice and Katie, but I’m afraid Ash will think I’m mad.
He pulls himself from his thoughts and starts ladling the stew into bowls. Brown lumps suspended in discoloured water. ‘Yeah, Ma’s amazing all right.’ He hands us each a bowl.
It smells even better up close.
‘Violet,’ Alice hisses, placing the bowl next to her cup. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
My mind reels back to the film, the scenes of the hungry Imps catching and skinning rats, interspersed with clips of Gems stuffing their pretty faces with gourmet food.
‘Is it rat?’ I ask him.
‘Rat?’ Katie says. ‘For real?’
He looks a little confused. ‘What else could it be?’
The thought of eating rat makes my stomach turn, of course it does. I remember this scandal in Shepherd’s Bush a year or so back, when a restaurant was closed down for serving rat instead of chicken. I didn’t eat meat for a week, and when I finally did, Dad and Nate hid this plastic mouse in my turkey sandwich. I screamed at them. I mean, really screamed. And then I didn’t eat meat for another week.
But I look at Ash, the way he cocks his head to the side, watching me watching him. I force a smile. ‘Yeah, course. Thanks.’ I rest the plate on the floor and use my hands to shovel the gloop into my mouth.
Alice and Katie watch me eat in silence, still holding their bowls with suspicious hands.
When I’ve finished, Alice and Katie start to giggle.
‘You’ve just eaten a rat,’ Alice says.
‘An actual rat,’ Katie says.
I start to laugh too. ‘It tasted OK.’
‘It’s the best rat this side of the broken bridge,’ Ash says.
Something clicks in my brain. ‘We need to get to the broken bridge.’
‘You sure about that?’ Ash says. ‘There’s only trouble down by the river.’
I nod. ‘Yeah, Nate will be there.’
Ash looks confused again. ‘I can take you so far, but I’ve got to get to back to the city gates before the buses leave. I’m heading to the Pastures tonight.’
I notice his regulation grey overalls for the first time, taut across his chest.
Alice sits bolt upright. ‘The Pastures?’ She emphasizes the word Pastures like she did the word Hawaii after her big family holiday last year. She returned even blonder, even more sun-kissed, and just a touch smug. She leans in. ‘Of course, you work in the Pastures, don’t you.’
‘Yeah, I’m a Night-Imp, I thought we cleared that up.’
‘What are they like?’ she asks.
I can almost hear a ukulele and the swish of a grass skirt.
‘What, Night-Imps?’ He frowns. ‘Sun-starved, kinda pasty, vitamin D deficient.’
Alice laughs like she can’t hear the sadness behind the sarcasm. ‘No, no. What are the Pastures like?’
‘OK . . . you know . . . readily available food and clean water, all those luxuries.’ He scans her face for a moment, but distrust rather than adoration flickers beneath his features. ‘Why are you so interested?’
Her hands fidget around her mouth and she stifles a nervous laugh. ‘Oh, you know, just trying to make conversation and be a good house guest.’
He glances at her untouched bowl of stew. ‘A good house guest would have eaten the rat.’
This makes me laugh and he turns his gaze to me. ‘You sure you want to go to the bridge?’ he says. ‘It’s just . . . I really can’t come with you, not that far. If I lose my post my family won’t survive.’
I get this burst of sympathy and a lie forms on my lips. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to go all the way, just in the general direction. We’ll be fine. We’ve got friends waiting.’
‘It’s just, I won’t be able to protect you, not this time.’ He lowers his dark lashes, and I notice how long they are, grazing the crown of each cheekbone.
‘And I thought you were our hero,’ Alice says.
He ignores her coquettish look and raises his gaze so it meets mine, the warmth of his smile tempering the ice of his eyes. He then picks up Alice and Katie’s bowls and slops the contents back into the cauldron. ‘Yes, but the Imp-bus waits for no one, not even us heroes.’ He dashes from the room for a moment.
Katie turns to me. ‘How do you know where Nate is?’
‘Saskia and Matthew were taking us to Rebel Headquarters, remember?’ I say.
‘And headquarters are by the broken bridge?’
‘That’s right,’ I say.
‘I don’t remember Ash being that cute,’ Alice interrupts.
‘He most definitely wasn’t,’ I reply.
‘Who’s Ash?’ Katie says, the frustration rising in her voice.
‘Think Jacob from Twilight,’ I reply.
She shrugs. ‘You think I’ve read Twilight? Do you know me at all?’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Alice says. ‘Even my gran’s read Twilight.’
‘OK, think Buttons from Cinderella,’ I say. ‘Ash followed Rose around like a lost puppy.’
Katie’s face lights up. ‘Ooh, like Silvius from As You Like It.’
Alice rolls her eyes. ‘Or Geeky McGeekyson from Attack of the Nerds.’
Ash returns with a pair of tatty leather shoes dangling from his hands, one of which has a hole in the bottom, plugged with some sort of dried straw. He hands them to Alice, who holds them between her thumb and her forefinger like she’s avoiding touching them.
Katie can’t stop grinning. ‘Not quite Jimmy Choos, are they?’
Poor Ash looks thoroughly confused again – he looks really cute with his forehead all creased up. ‘They’re not Jimmy’s, they’re mine.’ He points at Alice’s feet. ‘But they should fit you OK, you’ve got massive man feet for a girl.’
I catch Katie’s eye as we try not to laugh.
‘We’d better get going then, find that little brother of yours.’ Ash grins at me, and that warm, fluttery feeling stretches to every extremity of my body.