City of Halves Read online

  Lily snatched it back. ‘That’s my mother’s. I’m Lily.’

  He watched her for a second. The pump clicked. He looked at it, then cycled the lever a few times. His hands looked strong and capable. A strange black tattoo of what looked like flames sneaked from the cuff at his wrist and down the edge of his right hand.

  ‘Regan Lupescar.’

  That’s so not a real name.

  Confused, and suddenly afraid again, Lily tried to stand. Her knees buckled, and he caught her. He was so tall she had to look up, head spinning, to see his face. Over six feet to her five foot one.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome, but like I said, I think you should give it a minute. Let me disconnect us, at least.’

  Lily looked down quickly, then glanced up under her lashes and saw that beneath the open collar of his well-washed Henley the same tattoo also curled across Regan’s right collarbone, licking up his chest towards the hollow at the base of his throat. She realised she was staring and a blush stained her pale cheeks, the flush deepening as she registered him holding her body up against his.

  The pump whirred again and she slackened as the pressure in her bicep increased, the rush through her veins making her dizzy. He let her down slowly, and dropped back to his knees in front of her. The silence was awkward, only the noise from the pump breaking the air.

  ‘You live here?’

  Regan nodded.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ she said truthfully, as she looked around.

  ‘It’s called the Rookery. I inherited it. Along with the family business.’

  ‘What do you do?’ No electricity? No computer. Nothing.

  He stilled the pump and slid the needle from Lily’s arm, then his own. ‘Security. I work nights, mainly. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m still at school, you know.’

  He shook his head and pushed up from the floor, perfectly graceful. ‘Never went. How do you feel now?’ He disappeared into a tiny kitchen, the equipment in his hands.

  Lily got up slowly, hearing it clatter into the sink. ‘Better, thank you,’ she called after him. ‘Maybe I should—’ She looked down at her injured shoulder. The pain in her neck was gone. She looked, cautiously, beneath her clothes. Her eyes widened as she saw the massive bloodstain over her chest and shoulder, the torn layers of her clothing matted with it. She pushed them aside. Nothing, apart from smears of blood on her skin. Astonished, she touched her arm near the shoulder, which only minutes before had been ripped and bleeding. The blood was already tacky, sticking to her curious fingers. She examined her stomach, covered in clotted blood but unmarked.

  Regan reappeared and leant against the kitchen doorframe, crossing his ankles and drying his hands. His boots were dusty and ancient, with stitched leather soles and loose straps round the ankles, jeans tucked haphazardly into the gaping tops.

  ‘You got away lightly, all things considered.’

  ‘Lightly? How did you do that?’

  ‘Magic,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no such thing.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure?’ Ducking back for a second, he came over to her with a pair of scissors. ‘Hold.’ He put them in her hand.

  Lily looked up at him. He produced three large old safety pins and began to pin the ripped edges of her T-shirt back together on her shoulder. On the back of his left hand and on two of his fingers was tattooed a soot-black flight of birds on the wing, incredibly clear. Taking the scissors from her, he cut away the flopping sleeves, leaving her with half on one side and nothing on the other.

  He gave her a brief grin. ‘Could be a new trend.’

  Lily looked down at the deep rips in the material over her stomach. ‘Maybe for Halloween.’ She smiled up at him, liking his unexpected playfulness.

  He looked away abruptly and went back into the kitchen, shoving the scissors in the sink. Near Lily’s feet the medical book lay open. It looked decades old, the print cramped and small.

  Coming back to her with a damp tea towel in his hands, Regan cleaned the blood from her face with it as if she were a child. She noticed his top was covered in her blood.

  ‘Sorry.’ She gestured vaguely to the stains.

  He shrugged. ‘Occupational hazard.’

  What does that mean?

  ‘There, all done,’ he said. His gentleness was as alarming as his orders. He stooped slightly to catch her eye, hands pushed into the hip pockets of his jeans.

  ‘I should go.’ She stepped back.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

  She looked down at her bloody clothes. ‘Five minutes ago I was bleeding to death. Now I’m fine? And you’re . . .’

  ‘I’m what?’ he asked quickly, as if he really needed the answer.

  ‘Creepy,’ she said warily, stepping back.

  That didn’t seem to faze him. ‘I’ll walk you.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know. But I’d rather you got out of here in one piece.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, alarmed.

  ‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘Just what I said.’

  ‘Great,’ Lily said, loaded with sarcasm. ‘Because I’ve only been walking around on my own for about ten years.’

  ‘And you made a brilliant job of it today, Lily Hilyard,’ he returned with equal sarcasm, pulling on the long, dirty-white hooded coat Lily had seen on camera. As he did, he watched her.

  ‘You don’t have to use my whole name all the time. Lily’s fine. And do you usually stare at people like they’re an experiment in a test tube?’

  ‘Is that what I’m doing?’ He didn’t look away, settling the coat on his shoulders.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to know why you were in my yard. It’s not a place people just walk into.’

  ‘I’m looking for Harris Stedman.’

  His face became shuttered.

  Lily’s eyes narrowed. ‘He forges papers.’

  ‘No forged papers here.’ He waved at the flat.

  She glanced around, as if to study the place. ‘Yes, I’m sure what goes on here is absolutely legal.’

  He frowned. ‘I’m not sure it’s illegal. Although to be honest I’ve never really thought about it like that.’

  ‘Are you incapable of giving a straight answer?’

  He said nothing. Instead, he opened the door for her in a quaint show of manners. ‘After you.’

  Outside the door was a long balcony like a gallery, one of four running all the way around the interior walls of the building, flights of ancient wooden stairs connecting them. Doors led off at regular intervals. Did he carry me all the way up here? Lily frowned, burying her chin in her coat collar as she followed him down the switchback stairs.

  They passed the body of the animal. Lily walked over and studied it: the two massive heads, the powerful jaws. She shivered. Regan was standing behind her, watching. She turned away from the body.

  Through the alley they passed the little stationery shop and the coffee place. A man in his twenties with a neat goatee, wearing a tight white T-shirt, a black apron and a baker-boy cap, stood outside smoking.

  ‘Hi, Tom. There’s a job for Felix in there, if you see him.’ Regan gestured to the alleyway with a nod of his head.

  Tom’s eyes widened. ‘In there?’

  ‘I know,’ Regan agreed.

  ‘Okay, I’ll tell him,’ said Tom, and opened the door to the coffee shop, disappearing inside.

  Regan pulled up the wide hood of his coat, obscuring his face, and headed out of the alley. The coat looked handmade, antique. He strode out from the hip, totally relaxed. They walked through the busy streets without speaking until they reached Queen Victoria Street. Lily looked at the people passing them, hurrying through the cold with coffees, sneaking a cigarette outside the office fire door. It was a perfectly ordinary weekday, people still slow and grumpy after the Christmas break, facing the new year with heads down, hands in pockets.

  ‘Non
e of them would believe you,’ he said, as if reading her mind. ‘Attacked by a two-headed dog? Here in the City? Right.’

  ‘Stop trying to freak me out.’

  ‘If I wanted to hurt you, surely I’d just have left you to the dogge?’ He gestured across the street with a nod of his head, just as the pedestrian crossing turned green and began to bleep. They crossed and walked towards Blackfriars. The station was still under renovation, and scaffolding and workmen were everywhere. A thousand questions crowded Lily’s mind as she almost winced at the brightness of their fluorescent orange overalls. She felt strung out. Her clothes were stiffening with blood – her blood. Lily glanced down. Inside her dark coat, against her black clothes, no one could see. But she knew it was there.

  They passed a pub, men standing outside, smoking. Ahead of them was Blackfriars Road, the road built over the River Fleet. Suddenly, Regan jogged forward a few paces. At the bus stop, the tramp Lily had seen earlier was still sitting, can in one hand, bag of bread crusts clutched in the other. His head was tipped back, his mouth open as he slumped against the back of the shelter. He didn’t appear to be breathing.

  ‘Gamble.’ Regan shook his shoulder. ‘Gamble!’

  Gamble opened one bleary eye. ‘Whadder you want?’ he said grumpily.

  ‘To check you’re alive?’

  ‘Don’t know why you bother. No one else cares.’

  ‘I don’t know why I do either,’ Regan said, annoyed. Then his expression cleared. ‘I need to ask you something.’ He pulled Lily forward. ‘This is Lily. She just met her first bandogge in my courtyard.’

  The tramp squinted up at her. ‘Won’t be the last,’ he said prophetically, pulling a mouldy piece of bread from the bag and putting it in his mouth.

  ‘What?’ Lily exclaimed, looking over her shoulder at Regan, who was still watching Gamble.

  ‘Have you seen anything in the last couple of days?’

  ‘Nuffing I got any interest in sharing wiv you.’

  Regan’s eyes narrowed. ‘So that’s a yes.’

  ‘And if I’ave?’

  Folding his arms across his chest, Regan waited.

  Gamble took a long pull from the tin. ‘There’s a girl missing. Human. I fink the family are traders, in the market. Fruit, veg maybe. Dunno.’

  ‘Borough?’

  Gamble nodded, throwing the rest of his crust to a pigeon and taking another long draw on the can.

  ‘What has any of that got to do with us?’

  ‘You know that better than me. She was on the bridge, Blackfriars. I seen it. Seen her wiv you, and now she’s missing. An’ you should check out that building site near Ludgate Circus. The one with the blue boards up. Dunno why, just gotta a feelin’.’

  ‘Right.’ Regan turned away. ‘Like I haven’t got enough to do.’

  ‘’Ere! I want a donation for my trouble. Cost of living is only getting ’igher. Lucas an’ Elijah ain’t never very forthcomin’ where the spendies are concerned.’

  Regan searched through his jeans, pulling money from his back pocket and handing it over. Gamble took it and stowed it in his jacket. He grunted a thank you.

  As they walked away and reached the kerb, Regan turned to Lily. ‘Well, I guess this is goodbye, then.’ He looked down, lashes hiding his eyes. His face was unreadable. The moment spun out. He put his hands in his pockets and looked out at the busy road.

  Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘Very funny.’

  He looked unsettled. ‘I’m not joking. This is the City boundary. You’ll be fine from here.’

  ‘You and I aren’t parting company until you tell me how to find Harris Stedman.’

  He moved away. ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ he retorted, walking backwards for a couple of steps before turning. Retreating.

  ‘Nor yours.’ Lily skipped a step to catch up. ‘So that’s Gamble? Who’s he?’

  He gave her the side eye. ‘You need to go home.’

  ‘Yes, you said,’ she said blithely, carrying on undeterred. ‘But there’s a girl missing and Gamble saw what happened to her? And that has something to do with me? I want to know.’

  ‘I’m not sure if he saw it, or he just thinks he saw it.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Gamble . . .’ Regan began, then sighed. ‘Gamble is a schizophrenic, who goes off his meds constantly, and drinks too much, because he doesn’t like what he sees and hears. Sometimes, that and reality get a little mixed up. For instance, I was never on the bridge with a human girl from Borough Market.’

  ‘So he does see things?’ she asked as they headed towards Blackfriars.

  ‘Things to come, things that might happen.’

  Lily stopped in her tracks. ‘Wait . . . he can see the future? You just said he was mentally ill.’

  He turned to her and shrugged. ‘The two are not mutually exclusive. He can see lots of futures. It’s not always easy for him to know which one will come to pass. Drinking stops the visions, at least for a while. And then he sees things because he’s drunk. He often doesn’t know the difference. Now, do you want to play sidekick or not?’ He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, towards the river.

  They walked in silence to Southwark Bridge.

  ‘Sidekick,’ Lily muttered, her fingers curling round the phone in her pocket.

  ‘Go ahead, make a call,’ Regan said, without looking at her. ‘Think about what you’re going to say first, though.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to call anyone,’ Lily lied. I was going to text.

  ‘Text, then, or whatever it is you people do.’

  She let go of the phone, indignant. ‘Who’s you people?’

  ‘Humans. Everything else is Eldritche.’

  ‘Eldritche? And what do you mean, everything else? There is no everything else.’ Lily walked along rapidly beside him as he carved a track through the dozens of people crossing the bridge. They moved naturally out of the way to avoid him, yet most of them barely seemed to see him.

  ‘Shows what you know. You thought there was no such thing as a dog with two heads an hour ago.’

  ‘Wait.’ She caught his coat and he turned back. ‘You’re telling me there is something else?’

  He looked at her hand gripping his coat.

  Lily let go. ‘Are you saying . . . you’re not human?’

  His perfect face was impossible to read. ‘What do you think?’ He turned away, dropped down the bridge stairs and began to walk along the Thames path towards the Victorian railway arches of Borough Market. Lily ran after him.

  Covered stalls were everywhere, from butchers to fishermen, oyster shuckers and spice merchants, selling every type of food. One stand had pheasants and ducks hanging up by their necks, limp and dead. Next to it was a juice bar. There was a smell of coffee and baking bread, then the pungent stink of frying onions. The market was heaving with people shopping. Many stood on the corner at the pub, the Market Porter, nursing pints of beer in plastic glasses and chatting loudly. Regan stopped at a wooden stall selling brownies.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said, wrong-footing the girl behind the counter immediately. Hot, dark strangers crawling with tattoos don’t usually have manners like Oliver Twist, Lily thought. ‘I’m looking for the fruit stall.’

  The girl looked at him, grinning as if she couldn’t help it. ‘Which one?’

  ‘I don’t know. How many are there?’

  Lily watched as the girl gazed at him. Yes, he’s totally gazeworthy. But enough already.

  ‘Well, there’s the Shadbolts? Family-run, been here for generations.’

  ‘That’ll be the one. There’s a girl there sometimes, I think?’

  ‘You mean Vicky? They’re just there, under the arches.’ The girl pointed.

  ‘Thanks.’ Regan smiled at her.

  Beneath one of the larger arches, exactly where the girl had pointed them to, a big man was filling crates with fruit. Regan walked over to a brick ledge under the next arch and leant against it. He tugged Lily’s sleeve so sh
e leant against the ledge by his side.

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Checking out Gamble’s vision. But the probability is that the person responsible for the girl’s disappearance is someone she knows well, probably a member of her family.’

  ‘And if it is?’

  ‘If it is, then that’s not my remit, it’s a human problem.’

  ‘What, you’ll just walk away?’ Lily looked sideways at him.

  He shrugged. ‘Yes. Seeing as how most human girls are murdered by family members, not bandogges.’

  ‘Today is getting better and better,’ Lily muttered, folding her arms. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t look for the girl because, first, I don’t have time, and, second, I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t know what motivates you people.’

  There was a loud cursing from the stall as a bowl of apples tipped over. The big man – Shadbolt, presumably – kicked the crate hard. It broke, and fruit rolled out over the cobbles. He kicked it a few more times before putting his hands to his face, clutching at his hair.

  Lily frowned. ‘Shouldn’t we speak to him?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s upset, and maybe he knows something.’

  ‘Trust me, if someone’s daughter goes missing, they don’t want me showing up asking questions about her.’

  Lily looked him up and down. ‘Maybe not. But what about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I could have known her. We’re the same age.’

  He raised his eyebrows and folded his arms. ‘Go ahead.’

  Lily squared her shoulders and walked over to the stall. The heavy-set man was tidying up the broken crate, his face grim.

  ‘Mr Shadbolt?’

  ‘What?’ He turned on her.

  Lily stepped back. ‘I’m sorry. I was just looking for . . .’

  ‘Vicky? My Vicky? You know her? You know where she is?’

  ‘No. I thought she might be here.’

  ‘Well, she’s not. She didn’t come home last night. Do you know where she might be? Anyone she might be with? I’ve called all her friends. I thought she might have a boyfriend – she’s been coming and going at odd times – but no one seemed to know when I asked them.’