Going Your Own Way, but with Magic

Chapter 12

I run fast, and for a while everything feels okay. It doesn't last, because I have to stop. I have run quite a way. I don't know where I am. At some point, I am going to have to go back to the hostel and apologise for being stupid. The fact that I know I'm wrong conflicts with my desire to be right all the time. I was an idiot. I screamed at him and flounced off. It's my first emotional outburst in a decade or so and it doesn't feel cathartic. It feels wrong to have lost control so completely.

He's sitting right where I left him, reading. The cover's fallen off, so I can't see what.
"I'm sorry."
"No, I'm sorry."
"What are you sorry for? That's dumb." I was going for sweetly apologetic, I ended up at insulting. "No, sorry. Ignore that. I am...processing...or not processing...some emotional stuff. With families. And I processed it by being a dick. Sorry." I want to punch myself, and not metaphorically.
"It's okay." He looks like he's about to say something wise, so I wave my hands around.
"Anyway. We need a plan. We don't have a plan."
"I have a kind of idea?" I do not deserve this boy. "We look for possessed people, see if they lead us anywhere. What do they look like?"
"It's not very obvious, but there's something...off. They look like zombies." It's a plan. It's a better plan than 'wait outside until she heads to Sainsbury's and then do something unspecified'.

All commuters look like zombies and idle conversation is hard after the Fight. Or after my ridiculous storming off. Saving the world (or at least a part of it) is boring. We sit on a wall, sharing sweets. For a non-date, it's quite date-esque.

There's a guy. Dark hair, blue eyes, coffee cup. Slumped with dead eyes, but that's nothing unique. I nearly miss it – it's the way he moves that tips me off. Not even commuters are that robotic. I tug Jamie's arm, ignore the stupid jump my insides do. We have a two-second, entirely wordless conversation and then we're weaving through the crowd after him. He's definitely possessed, I can tell. But possessed or not he's going through a normal daily routine. We're both slowing down, and at I am about to give up when he walks into a shop. Mini supermarket and off-licence, open 24 hours. There's a sheet of smoke over it, making it waver at the edge of my vision. Trying to keep looking at it hurts my eyes. Someone doesn't want this place disturbed. I nod to Jamie and we do a terrible impression of nonchalance.

This place has no soul. I can't think of a less hippy way to put it. All buildings, no matter how corporate depressing, get souls. They're shaped by the people in them and the people who make them. This building has nothing. Noticeably. The nothing is physical, an absence you can feel. Outwardly ordinary, this place has no soul.

Worse are the people. Lots of different people, at first. Londoners. But they all have the same greenish undertone to their skin, the same robotic movement and the same face. Every single person. There's something in the air and it makes me sick. It's a funeral smell, a hospital smell. They spin simultaneously to look at us and I swear there is recognition in previously flat eyes. Jamie is rooted to the spot and I have to physically drag him out the door. I am too scared for my insides to flip this time. They show no signs of following, but I run away, clutching his arm. I need the endorphins, a reminder that I'm alive.

We find a park and collapse onto the grass, too out of breath to talk. I notice things about his face I have no business noticing, until I could draw it blindfolded. Which is really saying something given I can't draw.
"That was weird," Jamie says. It's such an understatement I want to laugh. So laugh. I laugh. It starts as giggling, but giggling becomes hysterics pretty fast. Sometimes, you have to laugh. Stops you from screaming. Somewhere in the distance is the notion that I have to stop before Jamie thinks I've completely lost it. That notion gets even further away when I see that he's laughing too. His face is very beautiful when he laughs. He really has no business being that pretty. We laugh together, because it's funny. All this shit is funny.
"Yeah. Very weird." It takes us a few minutes to recover from my very not-funny joke.
"Seriously, though," he starts. I have to hold my breath to get my composure back. "There was something wrong. More wrong than the obvious wrong. It felt like they were dead." It should be funny. It should be unnecessarily dramatic. It's neither. It's true. Those people looked like corpses slapped on puppet strings. Nothing living was meant to be in there. "Why did you drag me out?"
"She can see through them. I think. She knew things there was no way for her to know, and she said something about 'borrowing their eyes'." He winces. "Besides, did you see their eyes? They got something close to life when they saw us. They recognised us. Or they recognised me at least." We share a shudder. These are not comforting thoughts.
"Creepy. But all of this is creepy. What do we do now?" His tone is light, joking, and completely artificial. I appreciate the effort.
"I want to get inside that shop. That's a lie, I want to get as far away from that shop as humanly possible. But we want answers and I think there'll be some in there." For a girl who has no idea what she's doing, I sound pretty confident.
"Or – and hear me out here – we could burn it to the ground and never go back?" I swat him on the arm, and my stomach flips again.
"Well, if some people aren't going to take it seriously," I reply. Playful, light, funny. One short sentence for Max, one huge leap for human social interaction with a boy.
"Okay, seriously. How do we get in?" I would have preferred we stick to joking.
"We can disguise ourselves a bit. There's a cloak over it, but if she can't recognise me she'll think we're nosy spellcasters." Disguise. I sound so glamourous.