The Jack Hansard Series: Season One

Episode 13: Parasite

I grabbed her chin and forced her head to face mine.

"If they do, I'll know it's because you let them, Jo. Because you gave up, you quit. Because you left everyone who loves you, and you didn't bother coming back for them." I knew my voice had started to break. "Because you decided to stop fighting. Because you let yourself be bound to a chair and a room, and the inside of your own eyelids. I'll leave you here, I really will, because you quit."

Her brow creased, and there was a downturn at the corners of her thin lips.

"What are you talking about, Hansard?" she murmured. Light filtered back into her eyes.

I tried to mask my overwhelming relief. "You were gone with the fairies for a moment there," I replied, gruffly. "Stupid thing you did, but at least it worked. You want to let go of the crowbar now?"

"What? Oh." She released her grip and the iron thumped onto the grass. Four finger marks were scored into the metal.

"Huh," I said.

Her gaze followed mine. "What happened to that?"

"I think you hit reality with it."

"I did?" Her brow furrowed further. "I thought... it was almost like a dream. But it was all so clear..."

"Do you remember what you did?"

"There were those shadows, coming out of the Nether. We were going to die." Her eyes sparked. "Dying's not an option."

"It's certainly at the bottom of my list."

"There was this moment where it all made sense. Where I could feel, I don't know, waves of reality around us. Like currents in a vast, churning ocean. And  Icould just see which direction we needed to go in, we just needed, I don't know, a push, or–"

"A hammer."

"Exactly."

"Well, points for effort, but you've certainly got a lot of work to do in terms of finesse," I said. In truth I was intensely unnerved. It's never been that easy for me.

She seemed to take in her surroundings for the first time, the bridge, the tape, the reassuring absence of police. She shook her head as if trying to rid it of cotton wool, and then climbed shakily to her feet. I thought I saw a shadow fall across her face for a split-second, but it was gone as soon as I'd noticed. There was still something odd about her, something in the way she moved, that I suddenly found very off-putting.

"Are you all right?" I asked her.

"Sure. Why?" she replied, leaning heavily on the car.

I studied her carefully. "You seem sort of... fuzzy. Around the edges."

She shifted uncomfortably. "I'm fine, Hansard. Just a little woozy, that's all." She motioned to Ang, bundled in the back seat."Now what are we doing about your friend?"

I blinked. "We?"

"I seem to recall you were in a hurry to get her to a witch?"

"Yes, but I could drop you off in the nearest village or..." I trailed off under her hard gaze. She pointed to the dishevelled corpse lying by the roadside.

"Hansard, if nothing else, you are explaining the whole of this matter to me. I'm not going to let you just walk away with a dead body in your possession. Even after what we've been through, I..." she faltered, and her eyes moved off into the distance. An unnerving calm settled over her features again.

"Jo," I barked. "Dead body, right?"

Her eyes snapped back to mine. "Exactly. And maybe at the end of all this I'll arrest you, or maybe I won't, but I'm not letting you out of my sight until we've seen this to the end!" She marched over to the passenger door, yanked it open, and strapped herself in. She sat straight-backed, legs crossed, and arms folded sternly across her chest.