THE BEAST ─ five hargreeves

[ 031 ] at least he has pants on

XXXI.

a t l e a s t h e
h a s p a n t s o n

—EVERYTHING HAPPENED VERY quickly when they reached the Academy. It was a sharp contrast to the car ride, when the world seemed almost to move in slow motion. It was not like that now. The events of the next few hours blurred together to such an extent that Zara, thinking back, could hardly remember what had happened.

Something to do with . . . Grace? Yes, Grace! She had swooped in like some maternal swan-like creature and whisked Five away to what must have been an operating theatre, returning him to where he now lay in his bedroom. She was sitting on the bed, dabbing something over the bandage placed on the boy's shrapnel wound.

The rest of them huddled outside the room like little children, looking in through the doorway.

Allison said, under her breath: "We should've taken him to the hospital."

"He'll be okay," said Zara, a faint colour rising in her cheeks. "I really do think he'll be okay. And we couldn't have taken him anywhere else. A kid with a shrapnel wound would raise questions."

"Yeah, well, so does the murder shrine in Harold Jenkins' attic."

Zara bowed her head. She showed no particular emotion.

Diego glanced over at Allison. "Anything?" he asked in a flat voice.

Allison twisted up a curl reflectively behind her ear. She leaned against the doorframe. "There's no answer at Vanya's place. And the receptionist from her music school said she was a no-show for her lessons today."

Zara looked over sharply. "Be careful of Vanya," she warned. "It's always the quiet ones . . . the ones who have years for the resentment to build up. When she snaps—" she made a vivid dramatic gesture at her own neck, as if it were being cut right up under the ears, "—it won't be pretty."

A beat of silence elapsed. Diego and Allison looked at one another.

"Well," said Diego. "Now I see why Five likes having you around so much."

"Don't worry about Vanya," Allison assured her warmly. "She's our sister. She wouldn't hurt a fly."

Zara sighed. She looked back to where Grace was slowly and methodically dressing the wound.

"Won't you come into my parlour? said the spider to the fly," she mused quietly to herself. She turned back to Allison and Diego and flashed a quick, charming smile. "Alright then. Forget about Vanya."

They went away from the door and into the hallway outside.

"We need to go," said Diego. "There isn't enough time."

Allison caught his arm as he brushed past her. "I don't know, Diego. Five is laying there, unconscious. We need him."

"What? No, we can do this ourselves."

With a gentle tone that was too far from her normal one to be taken seriously, Zara added: "You already did, remember? You all ended up dead."

Diego set his mouth in a grim line. "Yeah, but Five said—"

"I know what he said. But Five is wrong. This thing . . . it's happening, one way or another. There's nothing any of us can do to prevent it."