“We could just go,” Nomad said.
“No.” Jack shook his head but did not bother trying to explain. Nomad was showing how far from being human she had drifted. He didn’t know how he would tell his friends what he was doing, but he supposed the words would come when they were needed.
Jack touched Lucy-Anne’s forehead, so gently, and looked at her terrible wounds before closing his eyes. They’ll fix her, he thought, but he could not be sure. Perhaps he was trying to feel better about not being able to fix her himself.
Still touching her feverish skin, Jack dropped into his vast universe of possibility. The red star of contagion still pulsed, signalling that he should approach, touch, and spread its news. He turned his back on it and steered away, paranoid that it could sense his true intentions. It felt like a sentient thing watching his actions. Maybe it was him ascribing intelligence to it, but he could not be certain enough to relax his caution. It won’t let me leave it alone, he thought, a strange idea that haunted him for every moment he was here.
He travelled, dipping closer to the points of light and then away again, searching, seeking the talent that would echo Lucy-Anne’s. But he could not find it. Hers was a naturally occurring ability, not one initiated by the external influence of Evolve. Perhaps her own universe was far different from his own.
And so Jack tried something else. Concentrating all his attention on one point, and always conscious of the feel of Lucy-Anne beneath his hand, he started to form a star.
Skeins of light surged across his vision. Heat and cold vied for supremacy, and such were their extremes that he could not discern a difference. Stronger swathes of light drifted in, and a swirling shape began to form before him. He was in a dream, and the shape took on the outline of a rapidly condensing star. Creation took place. Jack was its witness.
He bridged the void between himself and Lucy-Anne, creating a path between universes across which he willed every facet of her amazing power. The star grew with her potential, and for just a moment he peered into the mind of another. It was amazing, and humbling, and so different from his own that he drew back in surprise. And then the new star was complete, and his universe was alone once more.
Jack touched the star and felt himself swell with Lucy-Anne’s miraculous ability.
He sat back and sighed. When he removed his hand from Lucy-Anne’s face, the newfound sun faded quickly into the background starscape of his mind, settling as if it had always been there.
“You now have more than me,” Nomad said. She did not sound jealous, or amazed. She was simply stating a fact.
Good, Jack thought. I might need it.
“We should go,” he said. He took one more look around at his almost-motionless friends. Reaper was a little further out of his seat, and Jack would have to be ready for him when he flipped back to normality. But he was confident that he could handle Reaper. He only hoped he did not have to.
Without another word to Nomad he flipped back, and she followed him moments later.
Lucy-Anne cried out, a wordless sound so filled with despair that Jack almost regretted what he had done. Nomad was there, settled in her seat again and watching them all with interest.
Reaper stood.
“What have you done?” he asked.
“Nothing yet.” Jack turned his back on the man, trying also to shut Nomad from his view. He wished it was only him and his friends here for this final moment. But that was a selfish thought, and one derived from a naive mind that could exist only in a world that was fair and reasonable.
Lucy-Anne was trying to sit up, pressing the impromptu dressings to her face with one hand and reaching for Jack with the other. Jenna and Sparky tried to hold her back.
Jenna was staring at Jack.
“What?” Sparky asked. “What is it? What did you do? You…flipped, then back again. Where’ve you been?”
“Nowhere but here,” Jack said.
“Oh, Jack,” Jenna said, and he was filled with admiration and love for his friend, because she knew him so well.
“What?” Sparky asked again, frustrated.
“You’re too badly hurt,” Jack said to Lucy-Anne. He knelt before her and held her reaching hand between his own. She was breathing heavily through a bloodied nose, her airways cleared now, the wound in her throat covered with a wadded napkin. Jack had been able to close that wound, at least.
“Oh,” Sparky said. “So…”
“So Jack’s going to do the dreaming,” Jenna said.
Lucy-Anne shook her head, then slumped against Jenna when the action made her dizzy. She groaned again. Jack held her to him, stroking her hair and enjoying the warmth of her. He’d held her like this many times before, but never would again.
“So we’ll have to arrange where to meet you,” Sparky said. “And how to get out of London without them doing to us what they did to Reaper’s lot.”
“I won’t be meeting you anywhere,” Jack said.
“Huh?”
Jenna started crying.
“Oh, no,” Sparky said. “No mate. Absolutely not. Not after everything. No way. Not if I have to pick you up and carry you myself.”
“And I won’t let you do that,” Jack said. He moved closer to Sparky and hugged him close. “There are other reasons,” he whispered in his friend’s ear. He let him go and looked at Jenna. She met his gaze and wiped her eyes. He could see that she hated this, but also that she knew he was doing something important, and that she could never stop him.
He could not tell her right now, because Nomad was here. He only hoped they would work it out.
“You’d better move,” he said.
“Jack—” Jenna began, but Jack held up one hand. If they started a long good-bye, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to go through with any of this.
“Just…kiss Emily for me.” He took a breath, thought of plenty more he wanted to say…and then flipped.
For one final moment before Nomad followed him through, he looked at the best friends of his life. Lucy-Anne looked wretched, but he hoped she would not bear any guilt for what was his own decision. She was damaged in many ways, but she was also a clever girl. She’d understand.
Jenna’s tears glittered on her cheeks and her fluid eyes reflected Jack’s image. She and Sparky had such a future together.
And Sparky, his big strong mate, so ready with a quip but so sensitive underneath. He might suffer the most over what was to come. But Jenna would tell him why. Jack was confident of that.
He’d told her enough for her to work out why.
Jack left the club without taking one final look at Reaper. He preferred to remember his father as he had been two years before, and he hoped he would have been proud.
Out in the silent, still streets he breathed in stale air and waited for Nomad to join him. She came moments later. Without a word they set off for the museum.
Perhaps she still believed this was not the end.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ONE
Jack had soothed some of her pain, but Lucy-Anne could still feel the damage done to her face, and her friends’ expressions when they looked at her told her everything she needed to know.
But she did not care about that. Neither did she care about what Nomad had done to her, and why, though it showed once again that her dreams were ambiguous things.
She cared about Jack and what he had done. It had been her idea, and he had taken it away. Stolen it for himself. Lucy-Anne was the one who should have been in the museum with the bomb—her and Nomad—but now Andrew was with her again, and they were going to try to leave London at last.
Jack had been in her mind. He’d left a sense of himself behind, and it was an almost sensuous feeling, like the memory of a kiss or the promise of making love. She could not help feeling that she’d lost him again, but she would treasure what he had left behind. Maybe she could dream it afresh again and again.