Oxford’s eastern flank suffers a plague of abandoned houses. Not the tall concrete tower blocks with their deep roots and stout trunks, still attractive places to live for those with lesser means; around the feet of those well-fed titans slump rows of rotten terraces, shoulder-to-shoulder in half-dead stupor, slack-faced and thin-walled, a flotsam that fills all the crevices the city should have left well alone. These were the first homes raised up for all London’s lost millions, with no benefit of brickwork or the slightest care for longevity. Cramped by plain necessity, foundations skin-deep, their innards prone to mould and vermin and mysterious decay. Nobody lives in the old terraces who can afford anywhere else. Even the city council doesn’t want them, land lingering on their books for private buyers who will never arrive, undead streets immune to redevelopment.

  Here in the east, London’s corpse makes an unhealthy neighbour, an oil-on-glass reflection forever gleaming on the horizon. When Nightmares seep from the London Exclusion Zone, the east is where they make landfall. If a Dreamer walks right through the Wall again, the east will be the first port of call. To lay one’s head here night after night, year after year, so close to the waking world’s ever-open wound, is to risk the strangest of dreams. Solid concrete seems to buffer the mind, tower-block home-machines like starships in the void. But wood and plaster and single-pane glass is little better than thin air.

  It is to one of those terraces that Grimgrave leads me, searching for somewhere to hide my cries.

  By some miracle she’s set me moving, my bag slung over her shoulder, prosthetic hand held tight in her own, feet faltering as I follow like a little lost girl. My left forearm muzzles the worst of my sobs, echoes soaked up by thick veils of fog.

  Can’t think, can’t choose, can barely walk without aid. Grimgrave drags me on, into the heart of the mist. If she wished me ill right now, I would be helpless to resist.

  Fog dense as cold syrup has swallowed the far side of the road, the whole of Oxford dead and drowned. No sound of traffic, no other pedestrians, no sky-bound hum of camera-drones. The shattered facades of slant-skulled terraces loom from the mist like ancient temples on the ocean floor, their eyes smashed out, cheeks tattooed with graffiti, toothless mouths of boarded-up doors hanging half-open to moan silence into the swirling mist. Each empty home vanishes to our rear, sinking back into the fog as Grimgrave hurries onward.

  We pass through a crossroad, little roundabout in the centre, lose sight of the world amid dead calm. Nothing ahead, nothing behind, only endless depths of off-white fog. But Grimgrave pushes on, and we regain solid ground, dark grey asphalt still slick-wet with rain.

  “This one!” she hisses, nodding at another empty hull of a house, third from the end on a row like all the rest.

  I can’t tell what criteria make this corpse any different. But what do I know? I’m a fool and a mark and I can’t stop weeping. I am a dead-end, a child, a burden, and I don’t understand why she hasn’t left me behind.

  Grimgrave pulls us aside to the boarded-up doorway. She sneaks a look left and right, as if a moment of mundanity might break through the fog to ambush us with a bobby on the beat. She reaches forward with a bare hand and works her fingers beneath the edge of the board, then braces one trainer against the wall. Two quick tugs and she cracks the untouched tomb, breaks the wood away from the nails and levers up the plywood sheet, wide enough to pull me on through.

  “Watch your coat, don’t get snagged. Come on, come on!”

  Once we’re safely inside she lets the plywood sag back into place, submerging us in sunless gloom.

  The derelict house is bare and bleak, naked floorboards dusted with mouse droppings, corners choked by spider webs, walls crusted with scraps of floral paper, spotted with black mould, streaked with dark water damage. The air smells wet and damp from the rainstorm outside, tainted with animal urine and decades of dust.

  Grimgrave leads me deeper, past doorways that once opened into kitchen and sitting room, both now stripped down to the bones. She coaxes me up a narrow flight of stairs and around a tight turn, wooden boards creaking beneath our feet, damp footprints smudged in our wake.

  The top floor is lighter, less damp, doesn’t smell so bad. Grey light trickles along a tiny corridor, accompanied by feelers of fog, from windows boarded up by less than expert hands.

  Grimgrave pauses at the top of the stairs, then picks a door, and tries the handle.

  “Score!” she hisses, and drags me through.

  The sorry remains of somebody’s bedroom — carpet torn up, closet door removed, paint on the walls peeling like cancerous sunburn. One narrow window faces the fog-shrouded street, glass miraculously intact. An old metal bed frame stands rusting in a corner, host to a sagging mattress.

  “Lucky, lucky, lucky!” Grimgrave says. She tries the light switch, but the bulbs are long gone. “Often the council gave up on getting the bigger pieces of furniture down those fuckhole-tight stairs. Window’s not smashed, door got closed, so it’s still dry and not covered in shit. We got lucky, hey!”

  Grimgrave’s grin dies from one look at my face. She dumps my sports bag on the floor. Closes the dust-caked door.

  Tries to hug me again.

  “N-no—” I squeeze out between ragged sobs, ward her off with my prosthetic hand. “No— I don’t— don’t need—”

  Grimgrave bobs back, too much care on her face. “You sure?”

  I try to reply, but the lie chokes me half-dead.

  Back in the graveyard I couldn’t stop crying. Big and slow and wet and loud, total loss of control, a weakness worse than I’ve shown in years. Even now, after our flight through the streets, I can barely hold back, tears running free down my cheeks, throat desperate to whimper, hot shame and worse than pain tight and raw behind my eyes.

  Grimgrave’s hug was the only thing that got me underway; without her I would have wailed myself raw at the foot of my parents’ gravestone. No amount of occult trickery or density of fog could have saved me if some mundane authority had turned up to check on a young woman’s cries.

  Her warm little hands, slipping beneath my ribs, pressing against my back. The sudden shock of the weight of her body, her heat against my front. Her petite frame, so hard and real through the ghostly bulk of her white hoodie. The scent of her hair in my nose, shampoo overpowered by sweat and grease. The softness of her cheek against my chest, the hint of her cheekbone beneath. The way she moved as I responded — mostly by slapping at her without any strength, as if she was an insect landed on my flesh. But she held on regardless, until I gave in, until I followed her away from my parent’s grave.

  Grimgrave hugged me; she was the most real thing I’ve felt in years.

  Nonsense. Have I not hugged Willow before, more times than I can count? Why should this be so much more shocking? Why did this hug seem like a revelation?

  “Occy?”

  Another sob rips free, half-strangled by my throat; Grimgrave grabs me, harder than the tears, little arms going around my waist, enveloping me in her touch, squeezing me tighter than I believe I can bear.

  “N-no— no don’t— don’t—”

  “Let it out now, yeah?” Grimgrave growls into my shoulder. “No cunt’s gonna hear us up here. Let it out, let it go. Go on. Go!”

  Crying takes so long, and takes more than just time.

  Grimgrave holds me while I weep; tears come like the tide, crashing over a filthy shore and washing the muck out to sea. My whole body shakes, face running red, lungs heaving for breath. It goes on and on and on, raging without end, always ebbing away then rushing back for more, never over when I think, as if an ocean-wall inside me has crumbled in a storm.

  Eventually Grimgrave sits me down on the old sagging mattress, when the worst of the crying is behind us. She keeps one hand on my back, a raft on the waves. For a while I wipe my eyes and my snot on my poor abused sleeve. Grimgrave produces a massive white handkerchief from somewhere inside her hoodie, presses it into my hands. I soak it with tears and drench it with snot, until my eyes are red and sore, my lungs ache with effort, and I have nothing more to give.

  Finally the tide goes out and doesn’t return. I am beached and bedraggled, alone on the clean shore, staring at bare floorboards.

  Grimgrave taps her knee against mine. “Been a long time since you had a good cry?”

  “Nothing good about crying,” I croak.

  I feel wet inside, like waterlogged wood.

  “Better out than in, am I right?” Grimgrave makes an absurd little chuckle. “Shit and piss and tears and all that, gotta get it out, yo. Serious though, been a long time, yeah?”

  Feels like eternity. As if I haven’t cried in years. I should be shrugging Grimgrave’s hand from my back, pulling my knee away, parting from this sudden intimacy; but I can’t, because it feels like nobody has seen me cry, nobody has comforted my tears, not since my parents. But that can’t be correct. I’ve cried alongside Willow, and seen her cry too. A dozen times, a hundred, more. Alone and secret and together, entwined in each other, I’ve cried my heart out to Willow. At Willow. For Willow.

  But I can’t recall the last time that happened, as if the ocean of fog beyond the window has swallowed my memories. I’m simply too torn up for clear thought.

  A shrug must suffice.

  “Heh,” goes Grimgrave, awkward pantomime of a laugh. “Fair enough. But hey, you’ve done it now, right?”

  “I’ve done it now,” I echo, and I can’t meet her eyes.

  This snowdrop chimpanzee, this oversexed and under-disciplined goblin, this awful little woman who blew up my friend and keeps calling me a lesbian, has now witnessed me weep and wail. I have cried on her shoulder and clung to her body, shaking and shivering out in the open. She has everything on me now. I am done.

  “Sorry for like, hustling you along out there,” she’s saying. “But we had to get you out of that graveyard, you know? Can’t cry like that with cops looking for you, not even with all this freak-arse fog around to hide in. Sorry, yeah? Like, I really mean it. Wanted to just do it there, but you know, can’t cry if you’re dead.”

  “Right,” I croak, awaiting the hammer-blow. She’ll land it soon. “Can’t cry when you’re dead.”

  Grimgrave goes silent. Takes her hand off my back. Shuffles her bum against the bare mattress. Swallows too hard.

  I brace. Here it comes.

  “Just so you know, like,” she says, “I’m real shit at this. Like, mega-super-duper fucked-up shit. But … hey, you know. If you wanna talk about it? Here I am. I guess?”

  When I look up, she’s nowhere near a grin. But she’s done this before, she can turn in an instant. Green eyes glimmer in the white-glint fog-light, daring me to believe.

  “My grandmother poisoned me,” I say, before I can stop.

  And then I tell her everything. It pours out through my ruined defences, because Grimgrave has denied me time to rebuild. I tell her about the conversation back in Plato Base, everything she missed while she was away playing violence with Bright. I tell her of my arrival here, cold and alone. The police, the towers, the strange cat, the dead zoog. I tell her about my ransacked bedroom, my cut-open plushies, my stolen computers. And then onto my grandmother’s final and total betrayal. My half-crazed stumble to the graveyard. My parents’ resting place, which I wished was my own. The grey cats, Winter the occultist, the fog.

  But always, always, back to my gran.

  “She poisoned a cup of tea,” I repeat, words coming easy now I’m all cried out. “She insisted on making tea, one last time, because we might never have another. Peppermint. She knows I hate peppermint tea. She knew I would drink it just to be polite. She used that against me.”

  “Fuuuuuck. Occy, shit. I’m sorry, hey?”

  “My grandmother. She raised me. Since my parents died, she’s all I’ve had. Except Willow, I mean. She’s family, all the family I have. And she was doing it for my ‘own good’. So I wouldn’t fight when they came for me.”

  My prosthetic fist tightens on Grimgrave’s handkerchief.

  “I think I hate her now,” I hiss.

  “Yeah,” Grimgrave says in a low growl, one I haven’t heard from her before. “It’s always worst when it’s fuckin’ family, you know? Like, they’re the ones who should have your back, no matter what, but they don’t. Like I said, Occy. People like us, each other’s all we got—”

  “What would you know?” I hiss, turning her a cold shoulder.

  Silence. Slow wind drags against the derelict house, whistling through windows and the gaps between boards. Fog-light shifts, dimming toward darkness.

  The quiet unnerves me, forces me back round. Grimgrave’s gone dead-eyed, her hood pushed down, messy brown hair crimped in the collar. She stands up with a hop, paces to the peeling wall of the little bedroom, then turns and comes back, hands deep in her hoodie’s front pocket, shoes smearing the rainwater footsteps we’ve tracked inside.

  “Grimgrave?”

  She stops, faces me, looks down at the floor, eyes nowhere. “Did Nerys tell you how she got me?”

  “No. She didn’t mention that. Why?”

  Grimgrave runs her tongue over her teeth, trapped behind soft lips. Green eyes go dull as the light outside darkens. “Remember the I&O breakout back in ‘22? Up in Bedford?”

  “Vaguely. It was on the news. I believe they killed a guard?”

  Grimgrave raises her eyes, alive and bright again, grin slicing across her face. “Sure fuckin’ did. Wanna guess who did that?”

  I shrug. “You?”

  “Uh huh! And no magical girl powers back then, just two fists and a face full o’ teeth!”

  “ … you broke out of I&O Bedford, before you were a magical girl? That’s … I mean … it’s not impossible, okay, but … ”

  “Ha!” Grimgrave barks. “Nah, that’s the point, I never fuckin’ made it out! The breakout was an Opposition job. They had people on the inside, a handful of guards. Not actual DC or the headshrinkers, just contractors, they’d been joining up and getting in place for years. Real cloak and dagger shit! Nerys was there, and … whatever, I didn’t know about her then.” Grimgrave’s grin dies as she talks. She looks away again, first at the window, then grinding the toe of one trainer against the floorboards. “Long story short, I got left behind in the riot. Too small, too weird, you know? They busted open all the iso-cells, but the plan to lock up the screws and the psych-jobs went wrong. Big mess, lots of shit.” She shakes her head. “And this one headshrinker, he had it out for me, ‘cos he had it hard for me, know what I mean?” Grimgrave doesn’t wait for an answer, for which I am extremely thankful. “So the riot’s going on, shit goes bad, I’m trying to get out as well, and he comes to find me personally. Comes at me with a gun, shoots me like six times.” Grimgrave taps her chest. “I fall down and it’s like … ow, shit. You know? Hey, you know what it feels like, getting shot, right?”

  “I … I do, yes.”

  She shrugs. “After I’m on the floor, he comes over, bends down toward me, like he’s gonna, I dunno, fuckin’ do something to my corpse or whatever. But I wasn’t dead yet, just on the way there, and he only had one hand on his gun. So I grabbed it and twisted and—” Grimgrave mimes putting a pistol to her temple and pulling the trigger. “Pow!” She hops to the side, her whole body swaying with an imaginary gunshot. “Plugged him in the head, point blank.” She grins again. “Ever seen a skull go pop?”

  “Yes,” I hiss.

  Another shrug. “Fucker fell on me, which sucked, ‘cos I was already shot to shit. Nerys turned up five seconds later and made a contract. Otherwise I would’a bled out.”

  Why had I never thought about this before now? Of course Nerys’ other magical girls had been through something similar to me. How could they not have?

  “Still got the gun and all!” Grimgrave reaches under her skirt, hiking up the hem so she can reach, and produces a battered semi-automatic pistol, plain matte black, scuffed and scarred. She holds it out, lips split in a grin. “See? Cool, huh?”

  I can only shake my head. “Where are you going with this?”

  Grimgrave makes the gun disappear again. She doesn’t answer right away, walks to the window, stares into the thinning fog, chews on her tongue.

  “You wanna know why I was in I&O?” she asks.

  “Strange dreams?”

  “Pffffft,” she snorts. “Nah. Family dobbed me in. Dad and two sisters. Mum left when I was little, so maybe she wouldn’t have, but fuck it. She abandoned me too.”

  “Your family reported you?” Can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. “For what? If not dreams, then—”

  Grimgrave laughs, a nasty little chuckle. “‘Cos I’m an irritating little bitch! A freak-fuck messed-up cunt, crazy in the head!” She drills a fingertip against the side of her skull. “You think strange dreams is all they lock people in I&O for? Come on, Occy, you ain’t that sheltered.”

  “No, of course not. Is … is that why you’re … ” I gesture at her.

  “Like this?” She spreads her arms, big hoodie sleeves like the flaps of a flying squirrel. “A fucking cunt? You can say it, won’t hurt me a bit!”

  “No, no. I only meant—”

  “Annoying as shit!” Grimgrave laughs. “I know, okay? I know! I know I’m an aggravating little fuck, that’s just how I am!” She takes a deep breath. “Laugh so you don’t cry.”

  “Ah?”

  “Laugh so you don’t cry,” she repeats with a shrug. “Like, that’s what I do. That’s how I deal. Get it?”

  A big sigh, one I can’t hold back. “I get the impression that you laugh because you like to.”

  “Ha! That too!”

  “Besides, I don’t think I could do that.”

  “Wouldn’t want you to, it’s my thing! But hey, like, I know what it means, when family gives you up for dead. Or worse. When it’s ‘for your own good’ and shit. Traitors, all of them. Should all be lined up and shot.” She pantomimes a gun with both hands, aims at the wall, clacks down the hammer of her thumb. “Bam!”

  “Don’t say that about my Gran.”

  She looks away. “Yeah, I know. S’hard. Soz.”

  Quiet descends, another unwelcome intrusion. Fingers of wind wrap round the derelict house, though the fog against the window moves not an inch. I rub at my scar; it aches from all the crying, right eye raw and sore, the lid struggling more than usual.

  “How do I know you’re not making all this up?” I ask. “It’s a bit convenient we’ve both been betrayed by family.”

  Grimgrave snorts. “How do you think Nerys’ picks us?”

  “What, we’re all products of family betrayal?”

  “Naaaaah, not all of us. like, it’s just statistics and all that. Shit, Occy, why would I lie about this? So you’ll let me come on this doomed-as-shit mission to save your girlfriend? If I was lying, it would be a better one, to get you somewhere safe, like back to Plato!”

  I am forced to admit that Grimgrave has a good point.

  “Willow isn’t my girlfriend.”

  “Whateeeeeever you say.” Grimgrave sits back down on the bed, knees no longer touching mine, her shoulder against one wall. “Point is, I get it, hey? You ain’t alone.”

  Too many things I wish to say, too many others I wish I could, and yet more that I have no words with which to speak. Grimgrave is like a knot I cannot untangle; first she blows up Willow, then she shoots me, but afterward she helps me to bed, defends me from Bright, and throws herself at my attempt to leave. Yet she also insults me, accuses me of being things I’m not, and is fundamentally incredibly annoying. And now she is the first person in years to whom I have cried — excepting Willow, of course. Grimgrave is a little nightmare all of her own, the kind of person around whom I can never find safe footing. A clown one moment, a sad-faced waif the next, and I cannot tell which is real and which is falsehood.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Deep breaths don’t help, because it’s her scent I’m drinking, more potent than the old-mould and rainwater reek of the derelict house to which she has brought me safe harbour.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I … I think, anyway.”

  Grimgrave snorts. “You think? Wow!”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t whaaaaaat, Occy?” Her grin flickers on, like she just can’t help herself.

  “Is that why you want to be friends?” I snap. “Because we have something in common? Is that the only reason?”

  “No!” She laughs again. “Because you’re one of us, yo. Shit, like, I’d wanna be friends even if you’d been born with a silver spoon in your mouth and two perfect parents.”

  “My parents were perfect,” I say. “And what does ‘one of you’ even mean in this context? A magical girl? If I hadn’t made that choice with Nerys, I’d just be another face in the crowd, to get blown up by a bomb? You wouldn’t care if I hadn’t been made ‘special’? That doesn’t exactly endear me to you.”

  Grimgrave’s grin turns sideways. “Naaaaah, it’s not just ‘cos we’re magical girls. It’s about how Nerys picks people. Lets me know you’re one of us. Rejected! Chewed up! Spat out by all this.” She gestures at the walls with both hands, but I know she means England. “And people like us, we gotta stick together. It’s each other or death.”

  Grimgrave keeps making good points, and my counter-arguments are too empty to bother with.

  “Thank you, then,” I say, my voice growing thick, my eyes pointed elsewhere. “Thank you for coming down here for me.”

  Grimgrave punches me in the shoulder, a light little tap. I shoot her a glare. She shrugs and grins, her default for everything.

  “Friends?” she asks.

  My only friend is Willow. But Grimgrave’s smile is the one before me.

  “Provisionally,” I murmur.

  “Yeaaaaah!” Grimgrave throws her hands in the air. “See? See?!”

  Haven’t the foggiest what I’m meant to see, except Grimgrave’s idiot grin. I offer back her soiled handkerchief, but she gestures for me to keep it, so I stuff it in my pocket, then rise to my unsteady feet.

  My right arm and right leg are sturdy as iron, but the rest of me is so weak, little strength left in my core.

  “We need to go rescue Willow, then,” I say. “The sooner the better.”

  Grimgrave gives me the exact look I deserve — a sceptical smirk, as if even she cannot believe my stupidity. She doesn’t need to speak a word to make me look away.

  “I know!” I snap.

  “Didn’t say a fuckin’ thing!” she laughs. “Didn’t say a thing!”

  “But you’re going to. I know you’re going to.”

  “Pffffffffffft, yeah.” She snickers. “Occy, you’re drained! You can’t walk across town like that. Shit, you’ll fall down halfway there, and I can’t carry you the rest of the way. Would if I could, but nah, you ain’t going anywhere yet.”

  I sigh, lower my backside back onto the mattress. At least it’s dry. “I am exhausted again, that’s true. The poison, whatever it was, the antidote Winter gave me wasn’t enough.”

  “We gotta get you all juiced up,” Grimgrave says, nodding with her whole body so the bed frame creaks.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” I hiss.

  “Gotta gets you some giiiiirl-juice.”

  I huff a big sigh, but I can’t reject her now. “All right, how? How do I replenish my magic? And it needs to be quick, I can’t wait days. What do I do?”

  Grimgrave fights a grin for all of half a second. I almost appreciate the effort, but then she loses and it bursts onto her face, maniac insanity alight behind her eyes, toothy smile stretching out toward her ears.

  “What!?” I spit. “What does that mean!? Don’t do that!”

  Grimgrave giggles, high and sharp and full of spikes. “We ain’t in an overlap, right? So like, unless we wanna hang around all month for a Nightmare from London, there’s only one way to get you juiced up super fast. And shit, Occy, you ain’t ever gonna go for it. No fucking way!”

  A sinking feeling settles hard in the pit of my stomach. Cold sweat prickles on my brow. I ease back from Grimgrave, leaning away on the ragged old mattress.

  “What’s the method?”

  “Share it out!” Grimgrave laughs again, kicking her feet, dirty shoes waggling back and forth. “Share some ‘o mine with you!”

  “And how is that achieved, exactly?”

  Grimgrave snorts, her cheeks flushing red. She raises both hands in loose-fingered fists and mashes them together at thumb and forefinger. She sticks out her tongue and waggles it back and forth. Her hands shift position, miming two pairs of scissors, locking them together in—

  “Stop!” I slap her hands down. She puts them up in giggling surrender. “Stop it! You— you’re— you’re lying! That is a lie!”

  “Nah, for serious!” Grimgrave can’t stop laughing. “And I said you wouldn’t go for it, yo. I’m not asking you to! Just telling the truth!”

  Breath trapped in my throat, head all hot and tight and flushed, guts clenched with something more sour than fear.

  “You … ” I swallow, mouth gone dry. “No. No, no, no. You can’t be serious. How do you even know that?”

  Grimgrave shrugs, still grinning like a loon. “You don’t wanna know.”

  Look away, cross my arms, shake my head. Stare at the wall and deny the thought. I was right about her all along. A sexual predator, and I’m her prey.

  “I don’t believe you,” I hiss. “That’s obscene.”

  “Doesn’t have to be, like, actual fuckin’,” Grimgrave says, her voice a bouncing mockery. “Makeouts work too, as long as it’s heavy. But like I said, you ain’t gonna go for it. Seriously, Occy, I ain’t lying to you about this. Why would I?”

  “So you can sexually assault me in an abandoned house.”

  Silence.

  Swirling wind forces a sheet of fog tight against the window, thick grey light shading deeper toward the dark.

  Old roof tiles rattle. The dead bones of the derelict creak all around us.

  Grimgrave doesn’t defend herself, sure sign of a guilty mind; I was right all along, about her and the others too. Lecherous predators, perverts and deviants, using their little ‘revolution’ as an excuse to gobble up hopeless girls like me. No wonder Nerys has lost so many. No wonder they’re consigned to hiding on the moon. Monsters and cannibals, every last one. I was right, I was right, I was right!

  When I turn back to accuse Grimgrave’s guilty face, she just looks sad, insulted, alone.

  She’s not capable of acting, not like that.

  “ … I … I didn’t mean … ” Take a breath, straighten my spine. Own my mistake. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just … I can’t believe that’s the truth. You can’t expect me to believe that … s-sex is what recharges your magical girl batteries. Is that something you all do, all the time? Because if that’s true, I can’t be one of you, I can’t, there’s no way, I won’t. No … no offence, I suppose. I just … it’s not … I don’t want to.”

  Grimgrave pulls a half-baked smile back to her lips. “Nah. Pretty rare, actually. Usually s’just Nightmares, I told you last night. If you’re close when one goes down, you get a big hit of juice. Other than that, it’s sleeping in a Dreamland overlap. Food and sleep, all that, keeps you from running out.”

  “Okay. Okay, right. So … you and Signal and Bright … you’re not … you don’t … do that?”

  Grimgrave pulls a wrinkle-nosed grimace. “Fuuuuuck no. Those two? Ugh.” She sticks her tongue out. “Erugh.”

  “Okay. That’s … good to know. Thank you.”

  “Shit, Occy, I just wanted to be honest with you. I’m not trying to like, steal your first kiss or whatever.”

  Shake my head, unfold my arms, trying to live a true apology. “It wouldn’t be. And I wouldn’t anyway.”

  Grimgrave frowns. “Eh? You and your Willow?”

  “ … I’d rather not … I shouldn’t have said that.” And why did I? To defend myself against a kiss I don’t want. “Please just forget about it.”

  “Ehhhh?” Grimgrave tilts her head like a confused puppy. “So she is your girlfriend? You keep saying—”

  “We’re not like that.”

  “But—”

  “Drop it,” I snap.

  Grimgrave dissolves into giggles, all better again. “Yeah, yeah, sure, okay, whatever! Shit, if anybody tried to snog you, your head would explode!”

  Cross my arms again, sit up straighter, stare down my nose at this wanton gremlin. “I don’t even understand how you can hug somebody you barely know, let alone … that.”

  Grimgrave keeps giggling, kicking her legs. She shrugs with both hands, flapping her oversized sleeves. “Maybe one day you’ll find out, hey?”

  “Not likely.”

  A snort, but she backs down. “Kaaaaay.”

  “Is there really no other way to replenish my magical energy?” I ask. “Right now, today, not in a week or a month.”

  “Girl-juice? Ehhhhhhhhhh.” Grimgrave hops to her feet, shaking herself like a wet dog. “We’re not in an overlap, so it’s gonna be slow and shitty, like. But you could get a little bit, enough to walk the walk and not fall down. Food, sleep, that’ll do you a bit. Feel like taking a nap?”

  “Here?” I wrinkle my nose.

  “Duh. Either we use an empty house or we go down to see the ghouls, and you ain’t ready for that. Shit, I wasn’t ready for that.” Grimgrave shakes her head, pulls a weird tight-toothed grimace. “Nah, here’s best.”

  “There’s no ghouls beneath Oxford.”

  Grimgrave rolls her eyes. “There’s ghouls under everywhere.”

  “Oxford isn’t old enough,” I say, in full cognizance that I am repeating the government line; but the alternative is impossible. “The old city is, certainly, but the expanded metropolitan area isn’t anywhere near old enough for ghouls. There’s just not enough layers underground. The new tube isn’t extensive enough. And they sweep for ghouls all the time, there’s nowhere for them to hide. Don’t give me that look, there isn’t! There’s no ghouls under Oxford, I don’t believe you.”

  Grimgrave dismisses that with an infuriating smirk. “Whatev’s. Sleep, food, that’s all we got, if you don’t wanna swap spit or bump uglies—”

  “I do not. That is correct.”

  “Cool, cool.” Grimgrave puts her hands up in mock-surrender. “Sleep and food, then. Nap and yap. Num-nums and night-night.”

  I gesture at the mattress. “On this?”

  “Hey, I’ve slept on worse.”

  Control myself; she probably has. “I genuinely don’t think I can. I’m not being snobby, not turning my nose up. It’s just … this state of mind. And it’s cold here. I won’t have another dream like I did on the moon, will I?”

  “Nah, this isn’t an overlap.”

  “Still. I can’t sleep. Not here, not like this.”

  “Food first then,” Grimgrave says. “Fill your belly, maybe you’ll get sleepy, yeah?”

  “I … oh, alright, I suppose.” I move to get up again, but Grimgrave bounces in front of me.

  “Nah nah nah, they’re looking for you, dumb arse. I’ll go out and get food, right? And youuuuu.” She points at me with one outstretched finger, hand emerging from her oversized sleeve. “Don’t go anywhere. Like, enn-eeee-where? Got it? Not even out of this room. And don’t turn on your phone!”

  “Yes,” I huff. “I know that. But where on earth are you going to get food?”

  She shrugs. “Whatever’s nearest, whatever I can find. You allergic to anything?”

  “No. No, I’m not. I don’t mind what you get, I suppose.”

  Grimgrave hops to the door and pokes her head out into the corridor, as if some shade could have snuck up on us without making the floorboards creak. Halfway out she turns back to me.

  “Back real soon, k? Kay-kay? And stay right there, I mean it!”

  Nod. Deep breath. Watch her slip through the doorway.

  “Grimgrave.”

  “Mm?” Her head pokes back through.

  “Be safe in the fog,” I say. “It’s not natural, that occultist summoned it. And look out for cats.”

  “Eh?”

  “Cats. Domestic cats. Grey ones especially, the ones I described. Look out for them, don’t get spotted. And don’t lead them back here.”

  For a second I expect another irritating laugh. But Grimgrave just nods. “Got it! Sit tight!”

  She shuts the door with a dry and dusty clack. A second later the stairs creak beneath her feather-light footsteps, descending into the layers of fog. A moment later she’s out of the rotten house, but I don’t hear a sound.

  I stand up and go to the window, stare down into the sliver of street, sunk deep in soupy grey fog, a mirror to the dark and turbulent sky. The fog’s earlier moonlight clarity has all washed away, like black ink poured into swirling milk. It doesn’t look like Oxford at all, more like the half-glimpsed street of some nightmare-realm. Perhaps we’re lost somewhere deep in the dream; perhaps everything since I returned to Earth has been falsehood and fantasy, played out as I twitch and froth in some forgotten corner of London’s corpse.

  Maybe this is just a strange dream, best shunned like all others.

  A patch of darker grey suddenly slices through the fog, slinking along the pavement on the far side of the street, like a shark spotted through silt-choked waters, stepping with an unmistakable feline gait.

  I duck aside, away from the window. Hold my breath and hold myself still. Listen to the tiny creaking sounds of the house, the whisper of the wind, the settling of old floorboards.

  Count to sixty. One hundred twenty. One eighty. Two forty.

  Nothing.

  When I peek around the window frame, the grey cat is long gone. The fog is beginning to sink, revealing the roof-tips of the opposite houses, as if soaking into the earth, forced down by the great weight of the brooding skies. A skirmish of raindrops scatter against the window. I hope Grimgrave stays dry.

  Cold creeps up my spine, haunts the silence. I hug myself tight to stave off the chills. Perhaps Grimgrave will hurry back soon.

  I have preferred solitude all my life — except for Willow — so why do I feel a lack now? I don’t need Grimgrave, not strictly speaking, not emotionally. She is merely a good ally for the present moment, somebody I must use as best I can, somebody who can do things I cannot. But I don’t need her. Not her specifically. I don’t need anybody.

  Except Willow. Of course.

  But perhaps, if I ask in the right way, phrase myself from an unseen angle — and don’t think too hard as I speak the words out loud — then maybe Grimgrave might give me another hug?

  “What are you thinking?” I hiss.

  A rhetorical question, one I need not ask.

  “Stop. Just stop it. Stop doing this, right now.”

  Nobody’s here. I’m truly alone. Can’t I admit how good it felt? The sensation of that casual embrace. Her tight little hands. The weight of her body. Her scent, coming off her hair, a little unwashed. Her breathing, her heartbeat, the way she moved against me.

  “Stop … ” I bite my bottom lip. “You can’t … you … Willow would … ”

  Yes, Willow! That was far from the first time I’ve hugged a pretty girl my own age. And Willow is so much more beautiful than Grimgrave, an angel to her imp. Willow and I have shared so many hugs that I’ve long since lost count. And ours have been so much more intimate than Grimgrave’s fleeting moments of comfort for my tears, when I couldn’t even concentrate on how good it felt to be so close to another woman. Willow and I, yes. I’ve hugged her so many times.

  Haven’t I?

  Right now I can’t seem to recall; in my mind there is a generic hug, the same one we’ve shared again and again, but I can’t bring a single specific instance to mind. What does Willow feel like in my arms? What lines of her body press against mine? What is the scent of her hair or the shape of her hands? My imagination falters and falls, fouled on the rocks of Grimgrave.

  Has she put some kind of spell on me?

  “Don’t be absurd,” I snap, draw myself up, take a deep breath. “You’re exhausted and stressed, that’s all. Grimgrave hasn’t done anything, you’re just … ”

  Touch-starved?

  Didn’t I hug Willow yesterday, when we met in the morning, to go get our A-Level results? I can’t remember.

  “Just stop,” I hiss. “Stop acting like a child.”

  More important than daydreams about hugs that never happened, I need to check on the contents of my sports bag. Luckily I threw the clothes straight on top, so they’ve absorbed the scant rainwater which made it through the zipper. My laptop is safe and dry inside the waterproof bag, and nothing’s been broken by getting tossed around. I settle the contents as best I can, make sure the laptop is safe in the centre, and leave the bag by the foot of the bed.

  But then I’m alone again, with the memory of Grimgrave’s hands tight around my waist.

  Can’t stay still, not in this room. I crack the door and step out into the shadow-filled hallway, to look for a toilet. The bathroom is in just as sorry a state as the rest of the abandoned house, a gap where the tub had once stood, all the fittings gone except the toilet itself, a few shards of shattered mirror hanging loose above the ghost of a sink.

  There I am, same as always, a pinched face reflected in daggers of glass. I close my left eye, to see through the slit of my right. A slot of cold anger glares from behind thin lashes.

  I look even more lost than I feel.

  “Home is dead to me,” I say, “while I find refuge in graveyards and derelicts.”

  I also look awful, about ready to drop, dark bags beneath my eyes against mushroom-pale skin. Even standing here is a challenge, my legs weak with effort. Poison takes more than a pill to shake off.

  Can’t face myself much longer. I trudge back to the sad memory of a bedroom, shut the door behind me, sit down on the bed.

  I resolve to examine myself. I’m broken, that’s true, but I’ve always been broken, while this is new. Crying seems to have purged me of something, some burden or quality of which I was not aware. One by one I select the traumas of the past day and hold them up before me, turning them over to see from all the different angles. My grandmother’s face, creased with incredulous surprise when she realised she’d poisoned me. The Big Room in Plato Base, echoing with my own voice as I challenged Nerys to a fight. That awful cold slug in the back of my mind, like an alien compulsion pulling my strings. The dream from last night, the boiling red death-light, the weight of rubble on my broken bones. The cats in the graveyard. My room all ruined. Winter’s cryptic words. Grimgrave’s hug.

  No solution to any of this. No solution but Willow.

  Long minutes pass; I’m uncertain how many, as I grow colder and more still, alone in this ruin, as fresh rain taps on the roof and beads down the window, as I dream of a girl I met yesterday and cannot stand to be near. Ten, twenty, thirty times round the clock. Can’t turn on my phone to be sure, or the police will come to kill me.

  A tell-tale creak on the stairs breaks the sad silence, light little feet ascending to this rotten aerie.

  “Grimgrave?” I hiss, on my feet in a heartbeat. “Grimgrave! Grimgrave, is that you?”

  Raise my fist, halfway to a punch. If something else comes through that door, it will not find me easy.

  “Me!” Grimgrave calls, a soft voice from the shadows. “Me me me! Don’t shoot!”

  “ … right.”

  She opens the door and leads with a grin, holds up several plastic bags, bulging with the spoils of her raid. “Ta-daaaa!”

  “Welcome back. Come in, I guess.”

  Grimgrave pauses on the threshold and wiggles her eyebrows. “You left the room! Occy, I said stay put, yeah!?”

  “Only to the bathroom,” I sigh. “No, wait. How do you know that?”

  “Footprints in the dust, duhhhhh. This is why you gotta stay put! You can’t think like a detective. You ain’t got the smarts.”

  “Whatever. I’m fine, as you can see. Is that food?”

  “Nah, I thought I’d buy some elephant testicles instead.” She cackles. “Of course it’s food, dummy!”

  Grimgrave dumps the plastic bags on the bare mattress and guts them like fresh kills. Hot pastries and sausage rolls in paper, two baguette sandwiches with bacon and egg, four doughnuts, all chocolate, two bottles of water, and two fancy drinks — hot chocolate for me, a radioactive-orange energy drink for herself. She rounds out the feast with a fistful of napkins and a pair of plastic straws. Just when my stomach starts to rumble, she shucks another bag to reveal a blanket, still in plastic packaging. She holds it up and shreds the container with a twist of her hands, frees the blanket and tosses it over the mattress.

  “For a little nap!” she says in response to my quizzical look.

  “I can’t believe you bought all of this,” I mutter. “Where did you get the blanket? How much did this cost?”

  Grimgrave flashes a very smug grin. “Buy it? Naaaaah, I lifted all this.”

  “ … you shoplifted?”

  “Yeah! Gotta do what you gotta do, if you wanna survive.”

  “But … stealing? I mean … ”

  Grimgrave snorts. “You wanna sleep in the cold or you wanna be warm? Plus, hey, it’s just Greggs and a Tesco Express, fuckers can take a bit of shrink.”

  “Well, I suppose so … ”

  One final item presents a mystery, lumpy and loose, wrapped tight inside multiple plastic bags; Grimgrave carries it to the wall and sets it down on the floor, a funny look on her face, of blank acceptance and distant melancholy.

  “What’s in there?” I ask.

  “Ah? Oh … ” She glances back at the lump on the floor. “Dead zoog from the graveyard.”

  “What!?”

  “Went back to get it. I don’t like to leave them to rot, you know? People just throw them in the rubbish. Fuck that.”

  “Will you bury it? Him? Her?”

  Grimgrave blinks, then breaks into a little smile. “Yeah. Maybe up on Luna, you know? Didn’t think you got it, Occy. But you do, right?”

  “I didn’t. Until recently. Today, I suppose.”

  Grimgrave nudges me in the ribs. I flinch and tut as she ruins the moment.

  We sit down on opposite ends of the mattress, our backs to the wall, the food heaped between us. Grimgrave wiggles off her shoes and I follow suit, both too muddy for the brand new blanket, though Grimgrave seems unconcerned by the fringe of dirt on her leggings and skirt.

  She insists I take my ‘fair share’ of the food. I protest — breakfast was plenty, this is too much, and what’s fair about stolen goods? But before I know what I’m doing I’ve inhaled one of the pastries and eaten three massive bites of baguette, washing it down with little sips of hot chocolate. Hunger comes sudden and total and borderline animal, like the engine of my body was waiting for permission.

  “See? Told ya!” Grimgrave waves a pastry at me, shedding little flakes of buttery dough, talking through a half-swallowed mouthful. “Magical girls can pack it away, as much as you like. Especially when you’re down and out, yeah?”

  After my opening volley, I do what I can to slow down. My back conforms to the bedroom wall as I sink against the mattress. My eyelids grow sore, my fingers clumsy through my gloves, my gut unwinding from iron-hard tension. Grimgrave eating beside me is novel in a way I cannot unravel. Though the air is cold and the surroundings are far from pleasant, I feel warm in a way I haven’t in longer than I can make sense of. Must be the food.

  “I’ve never done anything like this before,” I say slowly. “Sitting in an abandoned house. Eating stolen food. With a … ”

  Grimgrave smirks, a wild-eyed goblin so briefly tamed. Do not fool yourself, Octavia. She’s still dangerous, unpredictable, predatory.

  “Friend?” she says.

  I sigh, louder than I intended. Take another bite, another sip, feel like I could eat forever. “While you were out, I was thinking. You were right, I don’t have a plan for how to rescue Willow. We need one. We need a way in, or something like that.”

  “Mmhmm!” Grimgrave grunts. “Scout from the road, get eyes on that bitch!”

  I give her a hard look.

  “The hospital, I mean,” she says with a laugh. “We can plan after we see the place, see what’s up and what’s what. Right now, you gotta sleep it off. Or sleep it on, or whatever. Get juiced up so you can go, ‘cos the moment we ring that bell, the Trio bitches are gonna be right on us.”

  “You think they’ll be at the hospital?”

  She shrugs, wipes a blob of cheese from her lower lip, sucks it off her finger with a loud wet pop. “Whatever happens, they’ll know where we are. When we transform down on Earth, they can like, pick up that we’re doing stuff.”

  “What, from anywhere?”

  “When we’re close enough, like. England’s small, usually they can’t miss us.”

  I let my head slump back against the wall. “Damn.”

  “I know, right?” Grimgrave snorts. “S’not fair. Not like we can do it back to them.”

  “No, I mean … that rules out flying to the hospital. We’ll have to walk, I suppose.”

  Grimgrave gives me a lazy grin, smug without her usual edge. “Hey, I’m not carrying you, Occy. Would if I could, but magical girl flight’s harder than it looks.”

  “How does it work?” I ask. “Can I learn to fly?”

  “When you transform, sure thing.”

  “When I transform, when I transform.” I tut. “That’s all you and the others say. When I transform. Until then I’m a cripple.” I gesture with my right arm, with the weight of my prosthetic. “Useless bitch, am I?”

  Grimgrave throws a wadded up piece of wax paper at me. “Fuck no! Fuckin’ don’t, Occy. Don’t call yourself that.”

  “I’ll call myself whatever I want.” I grab the paper and throw it right back, more anger behind my arm than I wanted. Grimgrave ducks, so much faster than me, and the projectile lands on the floor instead.

  She shrugs, a lopsided grin on her face. “Doesn’t mean it don’t hurt.”

  Before I can rouse myself to real anger at her over-familiar presumption, Grimgrave reaches inside the front pocket of her hoodie and pulls out a slender glass bottle. She cracks the lid with a twist of her wrist and pours a measure of clear fluid into her luminous drink. A sharp scent catches in my nose.

  “Vodka?” I ask, voice climbing too high. “And I suppose you stole that as well?”

  Grimgrave flashes a smirk and re-caps her alcohol. “Sure did. Want some?”

  “Huh!” I laugh, not the least bit amused. “You’re planning to assist this rescue while drunk? I figured you were mad, but this … ”

  “Heyyyyy, hey hey hey! It’s only a drop! And fuck, we’re gonna sleep it off anyway, right? Three or four hours from now? It’s nothing, Occy. You wanna try some? Might loosen you up?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “What, ever?”

  I shake my head. “Never.”

  “Why not?” She tilts her head sideways, an inquisitive puppy, her smile almost innocent for once.

  “ … I … ” Don’t lie. “I don’t like the feeling of having my consciousness altered.” Stop. “Being fuzzy headed. Inebriated, around anybody.” Why not just say? “I wouldn’t be able to stand it. It’s just not for me.” Liar.

  Grimgrave shrugs, moves to tuck the bottle away. “Cool, whatever.”

  “Willow doesn’t like it,” I say fast, as if speed might trick my brain.

  Grimgrave pauses, tilts her head the other way. Why isn’t she grinning? Why is this the one thing that doesn’t make her smirk like a lunatic? I need her to snort and laugh and insult me with a joke, or I’m going to—

  “Willow is my only friend, my best friend, my— my— my everything, so I can’t do things that she doesn’t want me to do. I can’t drink if she doesn’t want it. I can’t betray her like that. You have to understand. It matters that there are things she does and doesn’t want. It matters. It does. And she prefers me to be clear-headed. Prefers me that way. Willow doesn’t like it.”

  I’m panting, out of breath, flushed in the face. The cold slug in the back of my head is stirring awake, because I’m about to betray Willow, and I don’t even know why. Because of a single, meaningless, pointless hug?

  “Yeah?” Grimgrave says with a shrug. “Like I said, it’s cool. No pressure, like.”

  I stare at my hands, wrapped around my drink.

  “Orrrrrr,” Grimgrave purrs, a maniac smile lighting her lips. “You know, a drop of vodka would help you nap. Might make you sleep. Just a drop, in your hot chocolate. Won’t even taste a thing—”

  Pull the lid off my cup. Hold out the drink. Keep my eyes down. Don’t question my body. Act before I can think.

  “You, like, sure?” Grimgrave asks.

  “Yes. Yes! Before I change my mind.”

  She uncaps the bottle, pours a short measure into my hot chocolate. I know it’s an illusion, but I can feel the liquid grow colder against my fingers.

  Grimgrave’s a liar; I can taste the alcohol right away on the first sip, sharp and strong and weird going down, like it’s tainted the chocolate, turned it to oil and acid. Cold in my throat, then hot in my chest, a pulse of strange warmth flowing out from my core.

  The cold slug in the back of my head slips down into the dark.

  “You like it? Or not?” Grimgrave says, as I cringe. “Yeah? No? Bad? Real bad, huh?”

  “A little.”

  I discard the lid, drink the rest in one go, pour it down my throat. Then I hold out the empty cup, and take little pleasure in Grimgrave’s incredulous look.

  “More,” I say.

  “Yoooooo, Occy!” she giggles. “You gotta pace yourself! Like yeah, we’re gonna sleep it off, but give it a minute, you don’t even know—”

  “More. Just— just give me a little bit more.”

  Grimgrave cackles. “Fuck it then! Here we go!”

  Grimgrave snorts, pours me a shot, tainted with the droplets of chocolate in the bottom of the cup. I chuck it straight down, sharp and hot; tastes how it smells, awful, astringent, medicinal.

  But I feel it smother that cold slug in another inch of burning alcohol. For appearances’ sake I chase it with two bites of baguette, then hold out my cup again.

  “Occy, you’re going party mode!” Grimgrave giggles. “Give it a sec—”

  “Another. It’s not much! Another. Grimgrave. You said it might help me sleep. Another. This is barely affecting me. I don’t feel a thing.”

  “Occy—”

  “Now!”

  Another.

  And another. And another.

  Grimgrave cuts me off after half a dozen shots, makes the bottle disappear. Rain hammers the roof tiles, like lead shot on my eyelids. Grimgrave grins and I sneer back, imitating her stupid face, blinking out of sync, snorting dark and nasty at her bad jokes, though none of them make sense.

  Sleep comes faster than I ever expected, grumpier than it has in years, kicking at the blanket in wordless frustration.

  “Occy, Occy, yo, hey! You gotta chase it with some water! Sit up! Sit up, hey! You gotta drink water!”

  “Mmmm! Mmm … ”

  Grimgrave makes me do more things I don’t care about, but I drink her stupid water and wait her stupid seconds for her to shift the food off the stupid blanket. But then I curl up on my side and close my eyes and don’t listen to the rest, because none of it matters, not with the slug drowning in the back of my brain.

  I should put more vodka inside me, pour it on that thing till it dies. Whatever that sensation was, whatever part of me that emotion comes from, I want it dead, I want it gone. Burn it or drown it or cut it out with knives, I don’t care, as long as it goes.

  But sleep takes over before I can finish my latest murder.

  And in sleep lurk monsters that no mortal can dispel.

  the end. Onto arc 4! So you've got that to look forward to, soon enough! In the meantime, it's a season for naps and nightmares. At least Octavia isn't alone anymore, right? Good on you, Grimgrave.

  Maidens right away, you can:

  Maidens of the Fall is for all of you!