A Hero at the End of the World (14 page)

“Probably,” said the doctor.

But Sophie’s blood-curdling glare let Ewan know that her worry wasn’t with the hospital. Feeling victorious, Ewan plonked himself into the chair beside the bed. “Oi, Oliver,” he asked, “do you want to go to McDonalds for breakfast?”

¤

It was late into the evening by the time Ewan dragged himself home, Oliver having finally fallen asleep around eight. His parents were sitting on the couch in the front room, gazing at the TV and sharing a small bowl of preserved plums. On the telly, celebrities in glittering ball gowns danced to the cheering of a live audience.

For a moment, Ewan felt as though he were watching himself from the outside. It was hard to believe that while his parents were watching reality TV, he had spent much of the day lying to everyone about having shoved his former best friend into a clearing where he would be ambushed and forced to kill someone.

“You all right, son?” his dad asked, finally looking away from the screen. “How was work?”

Ewan, who had been kicking off his shoes, went still. This was the first time in as long as he could remember that his father had asked him about his day.

“Oh, um,” he replied, unsure of how to respond. Both his parents turned to look at him expectantly.

How
had
his day been? He couldn’t very well say that, in the span of a few hours, he’d helped kill someone evil, lied to the police, and been hit with the realization that killing someone bad hadn’t magically rebooted his life. Also, apparently he had joined a cult without knowing it. That was so typical.

Ewan shoved his feet into his slippers to avoid making eye contact. “The usual, I guess?” he lied.

“Did Oliver find you?” his mum asked.

Ewan gaped at her. “Did who what?”

“Oliver, silly,” she admonished. She wiped her hands on a tea towel in her lap. “He came here looking for you. He said you had something of his in your room. Do you want—Ewan!” she called after him as he rushed up the stairs two at a time.

He gently pushed the door open—and froze. His could see that his bedroom was a complete tip. It looked like a hurricane had passed through it.

Ewan took a step inside, shocked. Immediately, he heard a loud crunch, and pain shot up through his foot; he glanced down to see that he had stepped on one of his old action figures that Oliver had dumped out of a storage bin. What would have been a sharp stab in bare feet was, thankfully, a dull ache, the sole of his foot protected by the thick fabric of his slipper.

Grimacing, he slowly raised his foot. One of the action figure’s little plastic arms had snapped off, and its helmet had rolled under the wardrobe. The rooster logo on its chest had been nearly scratched off.

“Sir Cockerel!” he gasped.

He looked around at the mess. The storage tubs under his bed and the boxes on his bookshelf had been emptied out onto the floor, rendering it barely visible. But he was filled with relief at knowing that whatever Oliver had been looking for, it looked as though he hadn’t found it.

Chapter 13

O
liver’s alarm went off at six. He woke up twisted in the bedsheets. His hands were clenched tightly around his duvet, half of which was draped onto the floor, and in the middle of the night it seemed that he had thrown his pillow across the room. Through sheer force of will he made himself roll out of bed and grab his running clothes as he tried to shake off a feeling of dread.

Just as he was about to shove his feet into his trainers, he remembered that he didn’t have to go into work because he had been put on sick leave due to having his head done in by a spell. And also because he’d killed someone. Again.

He sat down heavily on the end of his bed, dangling his right trainer in his hand. His chest ached just like when he pushed himself too hard on a run.

The radio on his alarm switched back to life, reminding him to get a move on before his entire morning routine was ruined.

“
In London news, Oliver Abrams, the slayer of Duff Slan, was held overnight in St Rumwold’s Hospital after being injured in an incident two days ago
,” the radio announcer said calmly. “
Abrams was out with a friend in Hampstead Heath Wednesday when he was ambushed by Ralph Grant, otherwise known as Lord Ralph the Ravager. Grant was the author of several esoteric books which proselytized the use of magic without totems, and his name had appeared in conjunction with
—”

Oliver hit the off button with a tad more force than necessary.

He resolutely didn’t think about that horrible, empty spot in his memory while he made his breakfast. There was nothing for him to contemplate, anyway; the police hadn’t stopped by since their initial questioning in hospital, so the case hadn’t been thought serious enough to involve the SMCA, much less get a rise out of the Met. Yet simply the idea that he was missing a fortnight was enough to make Oliver sick. He could have done anything, said anything…

More importantly, what had he been doing that had resulted in him killing the head of a cult, one so evil that no one seemed all that bothered by his death—yet not evil enough for the SMCA to have ever heard of him?

Oliver dropped his spoon and scrubbed his face with his hands. Suddenly he wasn’t in the mood for muesli and yogurt anymore.

From outside his door came the familiar scuffling sound of someone walking down the steps. Oliver lived alone on the lower ground floor of a brown-brick terraced house in Islington, right off of the canal; it was close enough to Angel station to be expensive but far enough away to avoid the mobs along Upper Street. It was also posh enough to have a name:
The Phorcys’ Daughter
hung proudly over the street level door, above the number thirty-three. Oliver had Flat A. To get to his door meant walking down an iron staircase, but the gap between the street and the flat let in enough light for it to still be a lovely, comfortable home. He was rather proud of it.

“Oliver?” Ewan called through the door as he knocked. “You in?”

When Oliver opened the door, Ewan was holding up a coffee and a paper bag. “I brought breakfast.”

Ewan hadn’t really changed all that much, Oliver thought. Just being around him made him feel like a kid again. Though he looked nearly the same as Oliver remembered, there were little changes that reminded him that things were different now: his face had lost some of that childish roundness, and there was something harder behind those dark, sloe eyes; he had let his hair grow out from the buzz cut his mum had always given him, and he had changed his wire glasses to plastic ones that made him look, at least from the neck up, stylish. Even now, he was wearing a blue and white scarf that had a public school’s crest sewn on the end.

Oliver grinned and opened the door wider. “Back so soon? I would’ve thought spending all day with me yesterday would’ve been enough for you to leg it.”

“What can I say, it’s better than going to work,” Ewan said dryly, heading to the kitchen.

“What do you do again?” Oliver asked. He pointed to his temple. “Amnesia, remember?”

Ewan scratched the back of his head, his eyes darting round the room. “Uh, I’m a personal assistant,” he muttered.

Oliver was filled with an odd feeling, like the back of his brain itched. “For some reason, I expected you to say you worked at a coffee shop or something,” he replied.

“Ha ha,” Ewan said loudly and piercingly.

Oliver stared at him.

Ewan thrust the coffee out at him. “Um, this is for you. I don’t drink coffee. See, I can’t work in a coffee shop—can’t stand the stuff.”

“I was just joking,” Oliver said.

Ewan’s eyes widened a bit from behind his spectacles, and for a moment he looked skittish. He wrenched open the paper bag and pulled out a couple of croissants. “So was I,” he murmured.

A faint annoyance tickled at Oliver. He had forgotten how truly awkward Ewan could be sometimes.

He was saved from having to reply by his mobile ringing. “Sorry,” he said with relief, picking it up off the counter, “it’s Sophie. Hello?”

“Are you alone?”

“Good morning to you, too,” Oliver said. One-handed, he pried the plastic lid off of his coffee. “You all right?”

Sophie’s breath hit the receiver as she sighed loudly. “Is Ewan there again? I really need to speak with you, but I can’t do if he’s listening in.”

Oliver glanced over at Ewan, who was innocently nibbling on a croissant. “He’s here.”

Ewan’s head snapped up. Oliver shrugged at him.

“When’s he leaving?”

“Don’t know,” Oliver replied. “Yesterday he stayed until I went to bed. The doctor gave me these painkillers that put me right to sleep.”

“Is he behaving… normally?”

“As normal as he’s ever been,” Oliver replied.

Something odd flashed across Ewan’s face, but he smiled back thinly.

“Call me when he’s gone,” Sophie insisted. “Or come by work tomorrow if you can’t get rid of him.”

“Okay,” Oliver replied, scratching the back of his neck.

“I mean it,” she said. “I can’t stress how important this is. And, please, don’t trust anything that he says.”

“Is Sophie coming round later?” Ewan asked once Oliver had hung up.

“No, she can’t,” Oliver said absently. “She’s very serious about her Thursday night zumba classes.”

Even as he said it, his mind was reeling at what she had asked him. She had sounded as though she believed Ewan was there to hurt him—him, the most powerful man in Britain,

hurt by Ewan Mao of all people.

“Sophie’s right, it doesn’t make any sense,” Oliver said abruptly.

Ewan choked on a bite of croissant. “Wh-what?” he demanded, coughing.

“When I was in hospital, she said it didn’t make any sense that Ralph the Ravager tried to kill me. I’m beginning to see her point. Usually, the people who want my power aren’t very powerful themselves—they’re mostly nutters, to be honest. Although there was that one time the Duke of Luxembourg tried to kill me... something about the Hapsburgs or the Bourbons, I don’t know. You know, royalty,” Oliver explained at Ewan’s look. “Anyway, it just seems rather odd that someone Sophie claims is evil would suddenly attack me for no reason at all. If he was that bad, he must’ve been planning something and needed enhanced powers to properly do it.”

“So maybe he was,” said Ewan. “What does it matter?”

“It matters because no one’s following up on it,” Oliver replied vehemently, and Ewan scooted back a little. “I need to know what happened. Wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Ewan said carefully. “I think I’d be happy that I was alive and he was dead.”

Oliver gazed off into the distance. “You can’t understand,” he huffed. Ewan could never know what it was to be him—to have the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“No, I reckon I can’t,” replied Ewan.

When Oliver glanced up, Ewan was staring at the kettle, his face clouded over. His fingers were busy shredding the paper parcel their pastries had come in.

“What am I thinking,” Oliver said, feeling dumb, and Ewan blinked at him. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

Chapter 14

T
he first face-to-face meeting Ewan had with the Gardener Hobbeses post-Ralph the Ravager was two days after Oliver had been released from the hospital. He had been in contact with Archie during the entire ordeal (mostly to complain about what an unbearable prat Oliver was, but also to let him know that he was neither dead nor wasting away in prison), but Archie hadn’t mentioned his mum even once. Then, on the third day after Ralph the Ravager’s death, he received a brisk text:

“
Lunch. Half two. E1 6ZZ. LGH
”

The post code led him to what turned out to be Ralph the Ravager’s favorite pub in the East End, the Strangled Hen. Unlike the Slaughtered Shepherd, this pub was a single, square room made of dark, almost black, wood paneling. It had been filled with black roses, and a framed portrait of the Lord Ravager hung over the fireplace. A banner over the bar said,
Lord Ralph the Ravager,

R.I.P.
May His Sadistic Horror Be With Us Always.
The great, bearded barman repeatedly dabbed at his eyes with a crumpled napkin; he was the only person there aside from the three of them.

“
And
his flat is nice,” Ewan went on. He downed the rest of his pint and set the empty glass down loudly. “All this time I’ve been living with my parents, and he could’ve offered me a place with him. Selfish git, probably afraid I was going to make him look bad.”

“Did you steal anything?” Archie asked, glancing up from his glass of red wine for the first time since he’d begun rambling about Oliver. “I would’ve stolen something.”

“Yeah,” Ewan said sarcastically, “I grabbed a handful of his pants as I left. I plan on wearing them underneath my clothes so I can feel closer to him.”

Archie rocked back in his seat, gazing at him thoughtfully, his eyes flickering across Ewan’s body. Remembering that he was wearing an ill-fitting jumper that was slowly unraveling and a pair of jeans speckled with mud, Ewan’s ears burned hotly with embarrassment. He tilted his pint glass, pretending to be checking to see if he had any ale left.

“Boys,” Louise interrupted with a put-upon sigh.

Ewan cleared his throat. “Isn’t it convenient that the only part Oliver forgot was the bit where I lured him into a trap?”

“He must’ve been hit with a shatterblock spell,” Archie deduced. “It leaves you with a concussion and can damage your memory if it’s strong enough. We learned it in secondary school gym lessons,” he added with a scoff. “You went to a boys’ school, weren’t you taught how to maim other students in sport?”

It sounded somewhat familiar. Ewan bristled. “I knew that. But it’s a little odd, though, don’t you think?”

“We live in strange times,” Archie said dismissively.

“I think it’s fortuitous,” said Louise, interrupting them. She steepled her fingers; her diamond ring, glittering in the dim light, seemed out of place in a dark, dodgy pub like the Strangled Hen. “Knowing that Abrams would be inevitably injured during the duel, I’d had a plan in place for whilst he was in hospital... but I’m so glad we didn’t have to resort to that. It would’ve been horribly messy.