Spirit Prophecy (The Gateway Trilogy Book 2) (41 page)

I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I SAT ON THAT BENCH, eyes focused out on the Thames, but my thoughts focused deep inside. At last, the cool night air penetrated my reverie and I shivered into reality again. Annabelle had left me even more worried and confused than I’d been before I’d seen her, and my questions, rather than being answered, had multiplied. I stood up, pulling my cardigan tightly across my chest and pinning it beneath my folded arms for warmth. I started walking in the direction Savvy had gone, and pulled out my phone. She had texted me. I opened the message.

At the King’s Arms on Roupell Street. Come get pissed with me.

A quick internet search told me the place was not even a ten minute walk from the Tate Modern, so I pulled up the map and started down Hopton Street. I glanced at my watch. It was barely 11:30. Hopefully Savvy hadn’t had enough time to get too wasted. I mean, how drunk could the girl get in under an hour, after all?

The answer was very drunk. Magnificently drunk.

Savvy was waiting for me in the small, crowded pub on the corner. I could see her through the slightly steamy windowpanes, sitting on the bar surrounded by a small crowd of men, pounding her fists on the counter as they all dropped a shot glass into a pint of beer and drank them down in one. A red-faced man on the end finished first, slamming his glass onto the bar and raising his arms in triumph. Savvy laughed raucously, then grabbed the man by his collar and kissed him on the mouth.

“Ah, shit,” I said, and sidled in, squeezing between the tables until I’d reached the bar.

“Jessica!” Savvy shouted when she saw me. “A pint for my friend, here! Come on boys, cough up! Who’s going to buy this gorgeous girl a drink, eh?”

Several hands were reaching into their pockets for wallets, but I shook my head. “Thanks, boys, but I’m all set. Sav, we gotta go now.” My words were met with a chorus of groans.

“Now, now, love, let’s not spoil the fun!” the man on the end said thickly. He was wearing more of Savvy’s lipstick than she was.

“I’m sure you will all have plenty of fun without us. You’re big boys, you can manage,” I said, and held my hand out for Savvy’s. She grasped it and clambered with difficulty down from the bar.

“That meeting of yours was a lot shorter than I’d hoped,” she said, jutting out her bottom lip like a baby about to burst into tears.

“You seem to have made the most of it, though,” I said, jerking my head back toward the group of men who were still begging, with varying levels of coherence, for us to stay and have another drink.

“I always do,” she said, with a dazzling smile. “Do we really need to go already?”

“It’s a long ride back to Fairhaven,” I said.

She pouted a bit more, but nodded and followed me out of the door, blowing kisses over her shoulder as she went.

We started back for the Millennium Bridge, Savvy with her arm thrown chummily around my shoulders, causing us both to weave a bit.

“Sorry I’m so pissed,” Savvy said.

“That’s alright,” I said. “I had a feeling you might be, by the time I went to find you.”

“Thought I’d have a bit more time to sober up before you showed up,” she went on, trying and failing to walk a straight line.

“Honestly, I don’t mind,” I said. “My mother was perpetually ‘pissed’. I’m pretty used to it.”

“Oh. Mine, too.” Savvy said. I looked at her and she smiled sadly at me. We stumbled along in silence for a block or so, concentrating on not falling over.

“I never said sorry,” Savvy said suddenly and loudly in my ear.

“Yes, you did,” I told her with a laugh. “You just apologized a minute ago. I already told you, it’s fine!”

“No, no for that!” she said, punching my arm in what she obviously thought was a playful way, but actually felt like assault.

“Ouch! What for?”

“Do you forgive me? Do you really truly forgive me? Say you forgive me, or you’ll break my little heart right in two,” she moaned, clasping both arms around my neck and practically toppling me with a hug.

“What am I supposed to be forgiving you for?” I asked, grunting with the effort to keep us both on our feet.

“For gatecrashing your shower the first time we ever met! And you were so nice, covering for me, even though you had no idea who I was, and you were naked as the day you were born,” Savvy said.

“I forgive you,” I said, as I managed to get my neck out of what was now more strangle hold than hug.

“No, you don’t. You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” Savvy said. “See, you don’t even want my hugs.”

“Of course I do,” I said. “Your hugs are wonderful. You can give me lots of hugs later, when your balance is better, okay?”

“’Kay,” she said, and attempted to straighten up. “Can I make it up to you?”

“You don’t need to. I forgive you, I promise.”

“Yes, I do need to. I
need
to, Jess!” she said.

I stopped walking with an exasperated laugh. “Okay, fine. How are you going to make it up to me? You better make it good, now. I don’t want a half-assed apology.”

Savannah’s face scrunched in thoughtful consideration. Then she said, “Wanna see my tits?”

“NO!” I cried.

“You sure? They’re pretty great,” she said, reaching for the buttons on her shirt.

“No, NO!” I said, wrenching her hands from her shirt before she could start removing it. I tugged on her elbow and started to pull her forward again. “I’m sure they’re lovely, but I do not want to see your tits right now.”

“You sure?” Savvy asked.

“Positive. We’ll come up with another way to make it up to me.”

“’Kay,” she said with a shrug. Then after a moment’s silence, “But everyone loves ‘em. I’ve never had a complaint.”

“I bet.”

“It’s true! I bet anyone here would like to see them. I bet he would,” she said, and cocked a thumb back over her shoulder.

“Who?”

“That guy that’s behind us. He’s been following behind us since the bar. Keeps taking our picture.”

“Huh?” I stopped and whirled around. About fifty feet behind us, a man in a black hooded sweatshirt and dark trousers stopped in his tracks. He was holding a cell phone out in front of him, pointing in our direction, as though he’d just taken our photo with it.

“Say cheese!” Savvy said, flinging an arm back over my shoulders and posing. “How ‘bout it, mate? Don’t you want a photo now that we’re looking?”

He said nothing but continued to stare at us as he pressed a button on the phone and put it to his ear.

“Not interested? Oh, I get it, you’re an ass man, eh?” Savvy said, turning again and shaking her rear end in the man’s direction. “There you are, have a good look, then.”

My heart began to race. “Come on, Sav, let’s go.” I pulled her along, walking as quickly as I could.

“’Smatter with you?” Savvy said. “Why are you walking so fast?”

“I don’t like the look of that guy behind us,” I said, chancing a glance over my shoulder. The man was walking now too, still talking, maintaining a steady distance, but keeping pace with us. “Ah, come on. Don’t go all country mouse on me, Jess!” Savvy said. “We’re city girls, you and me, we know how to handle ourselves. He’s probably just looking for a good time, anyway.”

“I’d rather not find out what he’s looking for,” I said, as we rounded the corner onto Blackfriars Road. I took a deep breath as I walked. I tried to reason with myself. This guy could be anyone—a random creep, a drunk idiot. He could be a total pervert, cruising for vulnerable girls to attack. None of these things frightened me much. Savvy was right; I was a city girl, and I’d dealt with this sort of thing before. And not for nothing, but I was pretty sure that Savannah could beat the hell out of any guy who messed with either of us. What scared me much more was the idea that this guy might not be a random encounter at all. Maybe he’d been following me since we’d gotten into the city, or even before. He wasn’t dressed like a Caomhnóir, but then again, he might have dispensed with the obvious attire in hopes that I wouldn’t notice him. I couldn’t tell if I recognized him or not; his face was too obscured in the shadowy recesses of his hood.

And then there was Annabelle’s warning. There could be others out there besides the Durupinen who might want to follow us … “Savvy, keep walking, but listen to me for a minute. If you needed to run right now, could you do it?”

“What are you on about?” Savvy giggled, then caught sight of my face. Whatever she saw there wiped the grin off her own. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but I think we might be in trouble. Can you run?”

“Yeah, I can run. You want to tell me what I’m supposed to be running from?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t planned on telling her anything about my meeting with Annabelle, but it looked like I didn’t have a choice.

“A friend of mine found out too much about the Durupinen and now he’s missing. I’m afraid that guy following us might have something to do with it.”

“Is that why we’re here tonight? Because of your friend?”

“Yeah. I was hoping to find out what happened to him, but instead I think I landed us in a dangerous situation.”

“That bloke behind us?”

“Yeah.”

Savvy made to look back, but I grabbed her arm. “Don’t look! I don’t want to draw any more attention to us.”

“I got you. Hang on,” she said, and started digging around in her purse.

“What are you —”

“Play along,” Savvy muttered, pulling her phone out of her bag. Letting out a high-pitched laugh, she said, “Selfie on girls’ night out!” Then she pulled my head against hers, knocking them together as she raised the phone high in front of us and snapped a photo.

She pulled up the photo. “No, let’s take another one, my eyes are closed!” she said to cover the moment as we examined the photo, in which the tops of our heads were barely visible. But behind us, the man was still there, staring right at us, and much closer than when we’d first noticed him. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet away.

“No, let me do it, you take the worst pictures!” I shouted, pulling the phone out of her hand as we continued down the sidewalk. Then I added in a whisper, “Right, we run for the bridge on three and see if we can lose him on the other side.”

She didn’t even bat an eyelash. Her eyes, as she looked into mine, seemed to instantly sober up through sheer force of will. “On three, then,” she said.

“One. Two. Three!”

We broke simultaneously into a run, hands clasped, and sprinted as fast as we could for the bridge. I heard the man curse loudly and then his footsteps pounding behind us. I chanced half a glance over my shoulder. He was still on the cell phone, and was talking into it as he ran.

“Milo!” I called between my ragged gasps. I felt the connection open, like a tiny window in my brain.

“Don’t bother me, Jess. This Gucci trench and I are having a moment.”

“You need to come and meet us on Victoria Street where the car dropped us off. Now!”

“What, you’re done already?”

“Yes, and we’re in trouble. Some guy is chasing us.”

“What the hell —”

“Just do what I asked, please! We have to get out of the city now!”

“Okay, okay!” Milo said.

I broke the connection and we flew up the ramp onto the Millennium Bridge, our footsteps clanging loudly on the metal. Small knots of people were still strolling along it and stopping to take photos of London in the starlight. Savvy barreled through them, knocking several people into the railings as we pelted for the other side.

“We’ll have to try to lose him on the other side,” she said, shoving a man with an enormous camera out of our way. “Clear off, you! Then we can call the driver and tell him where to meet us!”

As we tore off the end of the bridge and onto the sidewalk, one of Savvy’s shoes caught in a crack in the pavement and the heel snapped off, sending us flailing in a heap onto the ground. We scrambled back up just as the hooded man reached the sidewalk. He ran toward us, arm outstretched as though to grab us, but Savvy pulled off the broken shoe and flung it, as hard as she could, at his head. Yelling, he ducked for cover behind a trash barrel as she reached down, yanked the other shoe from her foot, and threw that as well. We took off again, dodging into traffic, causing a cab to slam on its brakes and beep loudly at us.

“Oi! Watch where you’re going! What are you chasing after girls for, eh?” said a booming male voice.

We turned to watch as our pursuer ran smack into a knot of men, who began to shove and shout at him. He struggled to get past them, but they closed around him, jeering and laughing.

“I don’t think they fancy you!”

“How about I rearrange your face? They might like it better that way!”

They continued to taunt and push him in a bizarre display of alcohol and testosterone-fueled chivalry. He struggled, but couldn’t get around them. I could hear him cursing angrily over the laughing. Nearby, a car skidded to a stop with a deafening screech.

“Jessica! Savannah!”