A Hero at the End of the World (22 page)

“What did you do?”

He asked it in such a knowing way that Oliver lost his temper and snapped, “Nothing, I just carried out my own investigation without telling anyone, and now everyone’s angry with me. But what was I supposed to do, keep them in the loop?”

“Sound logic,” Archie replied.

“Okay,” said Oliver, grimacing, “now that I’ve said it out loud, it does sound bad.”

“I think you did a fine job,” said Archie dismissively. “You should stick to that method. I was thinking that when we find Ewan and save the world, you could keep quiet. There’s no need for anyone to know, is there? It could be our little secret, just like before.”

“No, not this time,” Oliver said, surprising himself.

Oliver flinched when a car backfired. He was standing in a car park behind a supermarket, friendless and virtually unemployed. His stellar record was tarnished. Ewan was gone, Sophie wanted nothing to do with him, and he had failed to discover what Gardener Hobbes’ grand plan was.

At that moment, it hit him exactly what he had done wrong.

“We need help,” he said.

Archie suddenly looked nervous.

¤

As the Overground train sped south, past the docklands and the Thames and down through the quiet, green neighborhoods of South London, Oliver tried to picture what Sophie would say when he told her about the end of the world.

Sophie lived by the park that held the exquisite Crystal Palace, a fragile structure conjured out of glass in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and then moved south. It belonged to English Heritage now and required a full-time staff just to keep up its protective wards. Despite having been born and raised in London, Oliver had never visited it—something which Sophie, having come to London from a small town in Somerset, had always thought odd.

Stepping out of the Overground station, Oliver craned his neck to try to catch sight of one of the animatronic dinosaurs that famously lived in the park, but he was disappointed to find that he couldn’t see much beyond the trees and the glittering façade of the Palace.

When Sophie answered the door, she was wearing a jumper and black and white polka dot pajama bottoms.

“What?” she asked, self-consciously crossing her arms over her chest. Her damp hair was draped over her shoulders.

He grinned. “I didn’t think you owned a pair of pajama trousers.”

Her arms dropped to her sides. “Oliver,” she sighed, “you shouldn’t be here.”

Without waiting for his reply, she turned around and walked back inside. He followed her. He’d been to her flat once before, which was a cozy two-bedroom she shared with a friend from uni whom he had never met; as he trailed behind her, he glanced around at her rows of bookshelves, photographs of her parents and grandparents, and homemade cards from her nieces and nephews. The front room was overcrowded with a couch, two armchairs, three tables, and a bookcase that stretched along the entire wall.

A calico cat was sunbathing on the carpeted floor; that was new. Oliver knelt to scratch its belly, and it rolled over and purred at him.

“That’s Paul,” said Sophie. She took a seat on the couch and folded her feet under her. “He doesn’t normally like people.”

“He seems to like me well enough,” said Oliver. Paul nipped his fingers.

“That’s because he doesn’t know you,” she replied acerbically.

Oliver graciously chose to let that go. “I need your help with something,” he said, straightening back up. “Archie Gardener Hobbes came to me.”

Her jaw dropped. “Where?”

“At the supermarket.”

Sophie stared at him in disbelief. “At the supermarket,” she repeated.

“He wants me to help him find Ewan,” Oliver said. “He said—”

“You can’t do an investigation without the support of the SMCA,” Sophie exclaimed, shooting up straight. “You’ve been suspended. It’s gone up to the Unsolvables—it’s utterly out of our hands now.”

“I can’t trust the SMCA with this,” he insisted. “Archie says that Ewan has a mechanism created by Ralph the Ravager that could destroy the world, and that Louise Gardener Hobbes knows about it. We need to find it before she does.”

Her brow furrowed. “How can something destroy the world? Nothing could be that powerful.”

“He said it would destroy the whole of the universe, actually.”

“And you believe him?” she asked.

Something in her voice made Oliver unusually anxious. He managed a smile. “Yeah, I do, strangely enough,” he said. “According to him, Ewan picked up a mechanism from Louise Gardener Hobbes that, once activated, will be the end of everything. She’ll stop at nothing to get it back. I have to find him before she does.

“What do you say? You in?”

But Sophie was gazing at him as though he were a stranger. She shook her head in a short, jerky movement. “You’ll trust him but not me?” she asked, her voice breaking. Her hazel eyes misted over.

“No,” he interjected, startled, “what?”

“I’m so furious with you, I can barely stand it,” Sophie said, burying her face in her hands. At her tone, Paul leapt to his feet and dashed under the couch. “You don’t trust me at all, do you?”

Oliver was gobsmacked. “
Of course
I trust you,” he insisted. “I trust you more than anyone. That’s not what this is about—it’s about saving the world from Ewan and Louise.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me about Ewan?” she demanded. “I had to find out about it from the Disciplinary Panel, Oliver. They sent someone to question me, to make sure I wasn’t involved. Do you know what that was like, being told by a stranger that
my
partner was up to his own, secret investigation?”

“I needed to handle it alone,” he said for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Why?”

“I just did!”

Her lips flattened into a thin line. “And what? Now you’ve decided that you need me?”

“You’re my partner,” he said.

Somehow, she looked even sadder. “I thought I was more than just your partner.”

Oliver’s heart stuttered. He backed away, rubbing the side of his arm. “You want to talk about that
now
?” he asked.

At the way the muscles in her face tightened, he felt like a massive twat. He glanced away, dragging his gaze over the framed watercolors on the wall and the floral-patterned fabric of the armchairs. Cat hair littered the floor, and there was a half-full cup of tea on the table under the window.

Ewan had been honest enough with himself to admit that Oliver had been right about Louise. Ewan, of all people, had been brave.

Oliver sucked in a deep breath.

“I was a prat,” he confessed. He looked her dead in the eye, squaring his shoulders. “What I did was selfish. But I was wrong; I need you, and I want you by my side when I’m fighting evil again. Because you’re right, you’re more than just my partner.”

I’m a little bit in love with you
was on the tip of his tongue.

He swallowed it back. It wasn’t the time or the place, and, frankly, he wasn’t entirely sure that Sophie wanted to hear it.

Her face softened. “Really?”

He nodded vigorously. “Really.”

“I suppose I can learn to forgive you then,” she said, and the tension in Oliver’s back relaxed. “Not to be dramatic, but if you ever do anything like that again, I’m requesting a new partner and never speaking to you again.”

“If I do something like that again, you should do, because it’ll mean that I’m too stupid to be your friend,” Oliver said.

They smiled at each other.

Someone knocked on the door, ruining the moment.

“Oh, right,” Oliver said, jostling himself, “the end of the world.”

Rolling her eyes, Sophie disappeared into the hallway. She reappeared a moment later, looking unimpressed. “It’s your new friend,” she grumbled, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. She threw herself back on the couch; if she had been anyone else, Oliver would have said she was pouting.

Archie trailed in behind her, looking smug. Somehow, he looked even less put-together than before.

“How did you get here?” Oliver demanded.

“A bus.” Archie gave him a look that spoke volumes about what he thought of Oliver’s intelligence. “I used a location spell to track you.”

Oliver wiped his brow with his hand. “No, you imbecile,
how
did you get here? I left you tied to my radiator.”

“Of course,” replied Archie. He held up his wrist; he had half a cable tie wrapped around it. “You should probably ring a handyman about that later.”

“What did you do to my flat?”

“
This
is the person you want to trust with preventing the destruction of the universe?” Sophie asked, throwing Oliver a surly look.

“So you think I should stay out of it,” Oliver said grimly.

“No, I don’t,” she replied. She stood, and Paul poked his head out from under the couch, his ears back. “If what you’ve said is true and he has something that can blow up the universe—”

“Not entirely sure it’s blowing the universe up,” interrupted Archie, “but, yes, it’s true.”

“—Then we need to find him before it’s too late.” Sophie put a hand on her hip. “I’ve met Ewan, and he seems like the type of person who would destroy the world by accident.”

“Sad but true,” Archie chimed in.

“No one asked you,” said Oliver.

Chapter 23

S
ophie insisted on putting on trousers before they decided what their next step in saving the world would be.

“Her place is nice, very... pastoral,” Archie murmured, picking up a framed photo of one of Sophie’s sisters and nieces. If Oliver remembered right, this was Ophelia and her daughter Kat; the sister, who had cropped hair and a square jawline, didn’t look anything like her, but Kat was all Sophie.

“Don’t touch anything,” Oliver said briskly, and Archie dropped the frame and backed away as though it had burned him.

Sophie reappeared a few minutes later in a black jumper and jeans, her hair pulled back into its customary ponytail. She also brought along a tray carrying three mugs of piping hot tea. Oliver’s stomach growled, reminding him that he had missed dinner; eating had been the last thing on his mind when he had been tearing through his flat, searching for a spare cable tie to keep Archie from running away.

“I have a plan,” Oliver said, accepting his cup, “but you won’t like it.”

Archie’s eyes lit up. “You do? Already? Well done, hero.”

Sophie sighed. “There’s already so much about this I’m unhappy with, so you might as well tell us.”

“Because of the proximity issue, casting a location spell to find Ewan is out of the question,” explained Oliver. “We could contact local authorities across the UK and have them sort it out, but that won’t help us if Ewan’s made his way to Ireland or Europe or, worse, America. No one in their right mind would send out a spell just because we’ve asked them nicely. And even if he
is
still in the UK, it could take days for us to get a response.”

“So what does that mean?” Archie asked, a confused look crossing his face.

But Sophie got it without him having to say it. “Oh no,” she replied, her voice heavy with dread.

Oliver drew in a deep breath. “Yeah. It means we’re going to use the Closed Circuit Hlidskjalf.”

“Bless you,” said Archie.

“This is where it gets tricky,” Oliver said, glancing away from Sophie, who was vigorously shaking her head. “The Home Office has dozens of wards on it. I’ll—erm,
we’ll
have to deactivate them one by one.”

“But—” Sophie began.

“Can’t we use a masking incantation to obscure our faces?” Archie asked. “Or, better yet, some sort of confusion spell to fool security into thinking we have proper IDs?”

“Why don’t—” Sophie said.

“The moment we entered the premises with enchantments on, the alarms would go off,” Oliver replied. He was already contemplating the type and order of spells that he would have to use; he would have to be quick enough to do it before the wardens caught on. It wouldn’t be easy—in fact, as far as he was aware, it had never been done before. “You’re required to drop any spells before entering the building, so we’d still have to deactivate the wards from a safe distance.”

“This is proper Guy Fawkes, bring-down-the-Government plotting, isn’t it,” said Archie, his eyes widening.

“It is,” Oliver replied grimly.

“Or,” Sophie cut in loudly, her hand on her hip, “instead of getting us arrested for breaking into a Government facility at best and treason at worst, I could sign you in as visitors, and we can walk around without anyone stopping us.”

“Oh,” Archie replied, looking disappointed.

Oliver cleared his throat. “Or we could go with Sophie’s plan.”

She scowled at the both of them. “Life isn’t a film, you numbskulls,” she said. “We can’t break into a Government building.”

“You’re right, as usual,” said Oliver.

She eyed him. “Don’t patronize me. It’s not going to make me forgive you any more quickly.”

¤

It was disturbingly easy to get into the Home Office once Sophie called ahead and had them added to the visitor list. It reminded Oliver of back when he had killed Duff Slan and the ease with which they had stormed through the magical barriers of his castle. Potentially, no one stopped them because it was a Saturday and not many agents were in; still, Oliver had really been hoping that the Government had learned a thing or two since the former Prime Minister had been murdered in his home.

After making it past the first checkpoint and being scanned by wardens to ensure that they had no active spells running, they were let into the actual building. The visitor’s badge Oliver had been issued felt heavy on his chest.

“I adore the architecture of this place,” Archie said appreciatively. He gazed up at the black gates as they creaked open. “It’s so dark and menacing.”

Oliver hadn’t been let in through the visitor’s entrance since his post-uni interview. Somehow, he had forgotten about the triangular arch over the entrance. When clouds passed overhead, twisted shapes appeared, as though sculpted into the metal façade: a large skeletal figure surrounded by smaller, cowering bodies.

“Yeah,” he said as they passed under the arch and into blackness.