Hafsah was in the throes of hell in front of me, and the only way I knew how to save her was to perform the ritual. I still had a few vials of elderflower tincture in my briefcase, but none contained the blood of anyone she had wronged.
The door croaked shut behind me, and she slowly turned her head around to face me. Her dark eyes were burning scarlet red, and her teeth were clenched together in a vicious snarl.
A single split second passed, and then she lunged at my throat.
I let her.
I let her clamp her stone-cold hands around my neck until my vision swam.
And then I lifted my briefcase and swung it as hard as I could at the back of her head.
She fell to the ground like a deadweight. My throat throbbed in protest as I coughed uncontrollably. When I finally recovered, I knew what I had to do.
Hafsah was out, but not quite out cold; she writhed and frothed on the ground like a dying thing. Now that she had harmed me, I could perform the ritual for her, but I had to act fast.
After retrieving a vial of tincture from the notches in my briefcase, I lifted the hem of my navy satin shirt and looked down at the wounds Lottie had so carefully bandaged up. I tore away the topmost bandage to reveal a seething red cut spanning from one side of my torso to the other. There were faint streaks of faded pink where Lottie had gently rubbed at it with an antibacterial wipe, and the thought sent a curious flutter through me. Lottie’s hands had been on my stomach; her fingertips working their way over soft, exposed skin.
Gritting my teeth against the impending pain, I pinched together the very edge of the wound and dug a fingernail into the cut until it reopened. Hot blood trickled out in fat globules, and I caught them into the unstoppered vial. Grimacing, I rewrapped the bandage, dropped my shirt and hunched down to Hafsah.
She was beginning to convulse as though in a seizure. Her fingertips gouged at her eyes, pulling down the lower rim so all the fleshy pink was visible. When she sensed me nearby, she swung an arm in my direction, but I ducked back just in time to dodge the blow.
I swallowed my terror, grabbed her viciously by the jaw and all but threw the contents of the vial down her throat. As I tried to pull away, her teeth bit down hard on to my finger, and I let out an involuntary shout of pain.
As the liquid hit her gag reflex, she released her bite, coughing and spluttering helplessly. I used the split-second advantage to grip her by the ankle and drag her into the nearest cubicle, her head juddering dangerously against the floor as we went.
I couldn’t lock her in, with the sliding mechanism being on the inside, but the door opened outward into the bathroom, so I was able to block her in by sitting in front of it. It was an old, full-length door so she couldn’t lash out at me through the gap underneath. I sank to the floor, pushing back against it as my ragged breathing slowed.
She slammed and slammed and screamed and screamed, throwing the full weight of herself against the back of the door, but still I held on, pain in my stomach, throbbing in my bitten finger, cold sweat dripping down my brow, and horror in the deepest, darkest parts of me.
And then she stopped hurling and started to talk.
And just as Lottie had said, it was too low, too hoarse, too monstrous.
‘I’m going to fucking kill you, I’m going to fucking kill you, I can’t wait to kill you, it’s going to feel so good, you horrible piece of shit, my hands around your throat as I feel the life seep out of you, I will be here waiting and waiting until you slip up, you fall asleep, and then it’s over, and then I get tokillyou, get to drink your blood forever, watch your parents weep over your lifeless corpse –’
I clamped my hands over my ears like a toddler, but it was no use. I could still hear her. The voice was like loose screws rattling in a throat.
There was every chance I was shut in a bathroom with Poppy Kerr’s murderer, and yet all I could think about was the fact Lottie had heard me talking like this.
What did she think of me?
And why did itmatterso damn much?
*
The hours dredged disquietingly by, with a constant soundtrack of dark threats. The voice never let up. It told me of the thousand ways in which it could kill me, what it could do with my skin and my organs, how good it would feel to tear my muscles from my bones, how much my loved ones would suffer at the sight of my mangled corpse.
Every few minutes, Hafsah threw herself at the door with her full strength, the whole thing shuddering and reverberating through my spine. Twice it almost gave out, a few centimetres opening between door and frame before I could shove backwards with all my might and close them again. Sweat poured down my neck and face, both from the effort of keeping her out and the fact the painkillers for my stomach were rapidly wearing off. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to sit strong. If she got out, there was no telling what she might do to me.
Still, I didn’t have the strength to hold on for much longer. Dread held me in a vice grip. How long would this last?
I couldn’t stop thinking about Lottie. She’d felt this same fear, and she’d still bandaged up my wounds. She’d still offered me her bed. She’d still let me fall asleep with my face pressed against her arm.
Was shethatkind? That brave? Or just that stupid?
A few people came into the bathroom while I was stuck with my back against the door, frowning at my position on the grotty linoleum floor, but I made some needlessly detailed excuses about my friend’s food poisoning and they soon left us alone. With the bone-grinding voice and the sweat glistening on my forehead there was no way they believed me, and yet nobody seemed to want to stick around to find out what was really going on.
Finally, after nearly three hours, the voice tailed off into silence. I was relieved for a moment, but what if she was trying to trick me? What if she was pretending to have stopped so I’d open the door, and then she’d rip the arteries from my neck with her bare teeth like she’d been threatening to do? I was exhausted, listless, pain searing across my stomach. I couldn’t fight her off even if I wanted to.
But then a small, frightened voice said, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ And I knew immediately that the ritual had worked. Hafsah had been brought back around.
Through the relief and the exhaustion, one question chimed with the clarity of a single church bell: had Poppy Kerr succumbed to the same fate I’d so narrowly escaped?