Darker London

Thomas was nervous as he stepped into the hospital Scarlett had been living in for years. She had warned them that she had good days and bad days and he hoped so hard that today was a good day. Part of him believed that if Scarlett came back to them, then everything was going to be okay.

He gave Stephie's hand a squeeze, and slowed down. "I feel like stalling," he admitted quietly, glancing sidelong at Nancy as well. "Like if it stall as long as possible, then we don't know for sure what's waiting for us and we still have hope."

Josie spent the days after the blackout worried, stressed, and angry. It wasn't unusual, but it had more of a focus and that focus was Dead Meat and an upcoming fight. Josie couldn't foresee a future where there wouldn't be a fight. It seemed inevitable and it pissed her off that she wasn't ready.

Rosa had gone home with Stephie and Thomas and it pissed Josie off even more that she wasn't ready for that, either.

( ... )

Stephie lay out the road atlas across the bedroom floor in the small inn in Clun, and Marcia weighed down the rolling edges with plain white tea cups taken from the communal kitchen.

“I’ve always wanted to go to the Green Man festival,” Marcia was saying to Nancy, as she traced a black felt down the roads they’d traveled today, marking off each unsuccessful leg of their search. She was talking to Nancy because Nancy was much more receptive of small talk than Stephie, who sat on the floor scowling at the satellite map on her laptop, making hopeful orange crosses on the paper map whenever she saw an aerial shot of a potential big house somewhere in the country, as Astrid had described.

“It would be nice,” Nancy said, with a smile toward Marcia. “It’s quaint here.”

“Quaint is good,” Stephie said, without breaking her scowl as she looked up at them. “Quaint is more likely to be hiding something. If I was going to kidnap people, I’d pick somewhere quaint and lovely. I have a good feeling about Clun.” She dropped her gaze back to the map and made another X.

( ... )

Ko had never been on a boat before, and he didn’t like it. The ground was not behaving like ground and no matter how accustomed his stomach was to the drops and turns of flight, he was not used to this. He gripped the railing and looked out over the sea, out toward England as they pulled out of Calais. He could have flown this distance; he and Lucine both, and it would have been better, but for Ailbhe’s vision. (He ignored the question of luggage because it ruined the fantasy of flying over a sea he'd never seen before. He'd never seen any sea before, never been totally surrounded by water.)

Despite the hypnotising constant swell of the water stretching on forever, didn’t linger on the railing long, but began to move through the ferry, searching. Lucine had taken the lower decks, either sympathetic to his stomach or (Ko suspected, but not till later) because she wanted him to find the other deathless first.

( ... )