A Hero at the End of the World (4 page)

“Look,” Sophie said quietly. She nodded over his shoulder.

One of the officers had lingered behind and was waiting for them to finish their conversation. He shuffled his feet. “Sir? I hope you don’t mind, but can I have your autograph? It’s for me little girl, Grace. She wants to be a hero like you one day.”

“No problem,” Oliver replied. From the inner pocket of his bomber jacket he pulled out one of the photos he carried around for exactly this sort of thing. “
To Grace
,” he read aloud as he scribbled on the back, “
all the best, Oliver Abrams, slayer
.”

“I think I’m going to vomit,” said Sophie.

The officer thanked him and took the picture, all the while glaring at Sophie.

“They don’t like it when you malign their heroes,” Oliver said. He nudged her shoulder with his.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “They didn’t watch you eat three hot dogs at the cinema last week.”

“Well, I’ve seen
you—
”

Suddenly, a flash of memory struck Oliver.

“Cor,” he said. He covered his eyes with his hand. “I’ve remembered what Zaubernegativum is.”

Chapter 3

A
bored-looking Archibald Gardener Hobbes was sitting on the front steps of Ewan’s parents’ flat when he arrived home from the shops.

Ewan had spotted his stupid golden head from down the street, but hadn’t fully grasped who it was until it was too late. Surely, he thought, Archie wouldn’t be so thick as to hound him again after he had told him to piss off. Yet there he was. He looked well out of place among the worn-out red-and-white terraced homes that lined the street; it was doubtful that Archie’s neighbors tossed their rubbish into each other’s gardens or had broken upstairs windows from where the kids had been playfully throwing spells.

It had not been too long since Ewan had dashed out with the excuse that they didn’t have what he wanted for tea. His parents had just returned from a monthlong holiday in Hong Kong visiting relatives, and Ewan hadn’t been able to take any more shouting about how he hadn’t cleaned up in a month. Seeing Archie now made him hesitate; he was tempted to head off to the park to wait him out.

But a quick glance through the bay window showed Ewan’s parents in the front room. They were oblivious to the fact that some knob was sitting right outside the door. Something twisted in him, and, furious, he marched up to the idling Archie, gripping his carrier bag tightly enough to turn his knuckles white.

“How’d you find out where I live?” he demanded.

“I have my ways,” Archie replied haughtily. This time he was wearing a heavy cabled cardigan with a pale blue scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. His hair shone in the gray afternoon light. Ewan was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt advertising Disneyland Paris.

Ewan stared him down until he admitted, this time less brashly, “Location spell.”

“You do know this is unhealthy behavior, right?” Ewan growled. “I should ring the police.”

Archie held up a finger. “But you won’t. Because you’re curious—”

Ewan dug out his mobile phone.

“—And because I’m deeply sorry for this gross violation of privacy?” he continued in a rush, climbing to his feet.

“I told you I wanted to be left alone,” said Ewan, but he reluctantly slipped his mobile back into his pocket.

“Mum wants you to come to dinner.”

Surely Ewan had misheard. “You told your
mum
about me?”

Archie looked at him as if he had said something ridiculous. “Yes, I informed her of the wonderful coincidence of running into the former slayer of Duff Slan whilst on my very important work errands.”

If Ewan remembered correctly, when they’d met, Archie had been carrying a bag from Gluten for Punishment, the cake shop down the way from Eine Kaffee.

“Right,” he said, “errands.”

“So you’ll come?” Archie asked eagerly. “Tell me you’ll come.”

Flustered, Ewan exclaimed, “No, I won’t meet your mum! Are you mad? On second thought,” he added, holding up the hand that wasn’t clutching his carrier bag, “don’t answer that.”

“Oh, ha ha,” Archie said sarcastically.

The front door opened with a loud creak. Much to Ewan’s horror, his mum popped her head out, gazing up at them in confusion. But that lasted only an instant before the deep smile lines around her eyes crinkled, and Ewan knew exactly what she was thinking: Ewan had a friend.

“Who’s this, hun?” she asked, wiping her palms on the bottom of her shirt.

Ewan grit his teeth. “No one, Mum, he’s—”

“I’m Archibald, Mrs. Mao,” Archie said brightly. “May Ewan please come to dinner with my family tomorrow?”

“What,” said Ewan.

His mum smiled at Archie. “Of course he can. How lovely of your parents to invite him.” She turned to Ewan and cupped her hand around her mouth as if she were sharing a secret. “Now you
have
to do laundry.”

“Get your handsome, persuasive face away from my mother,” Ewan snapped, stepping between them with spread arms so as to block his mum’s line of sight. The only reaction he received from Archie was a slightly creased brow.

“Ewan, don’t be rude,” said his mum. She opened the door wider. “Archibald, would you like a cup of tea? We brought some lovely biscuits back with us from Hong Kong.”

“I’d
love
some,” Archie replied, looking smug as he moved past Ewan and into the house.

Once they were inside, his dad took a look at the three of them and hurried away to the back garden, murmuring something about weeds.

“But it’s autumn,” Ewan said plaintively as he heard the door in the back of the kitchen slam shut.

Ewan lingered behind the others to take off his trainers and slide into his slippers. His mum, he noticed, didn’t say a word as Archie walked through the flat with his shoes on, even though inside she must have been shuddering.

“I’m sorry for ambushing you like this, but it’s been
so
long since Ewan has had a friend over,” his mum called over her shoulder as she led them into the kitchen in the back. Ewan, who had always loved their home, was suddenly aware of how many horrible baby pictures there were all over the walls and of how many pieces of furniture were falling apart and in need of a good scrubbing.

“It’s no bother at all, Mrs. Mao.”

“Georgia, please.”

Ewan rolled his eyes.

The cupboard hinges squeaked as Ewan’s mum pulled out the nice tea instead of their usual brew. “Ewan, the kettle, would you?” To Archie, she asked, “And what is it you do, love? I’m assuming you don’t work together.”

She said this in such a way that Ewan glanced down at his tracksuit bottoms and then back at Archie’s cardigan, which had probably cost more than their sofa.

Archie took a seat at the table in the chair where Ewan normally sat. Ewan glared at the side of his head, but, honestly, he was a little curious himself. “I work for my mother’s nonprofit organization,” Archie replied, pushing a few crumbs away. “It’s a terribly important job.”

“Have you been working there long?”

“Since I finished uni. I have a Bachelors of Arts in Equestrian Psychology, but it was never a question that I wouldn’t join the Society; my mother had been planning it for at least a decade.”

“What about your dad?” Ewan asked. He poured boiling water into the glass teapot his mum had handed him, watching as it turned a nice, golden brown. “Was he okay with that?”

Archie shrugged one shoulder. “He died when I was a child. It was a freak accident. He was a dréag, you see, and he was struck by lightning whilst we were on holiday on the Apulian coast. He used all his power protecting himself.”

“He died from that? I thought that all that happened once a dréag used all their power was that they couldn’t use magic anymore?” Ewan asked. A creeping sensation danced over his skin; even thinking about living the last few decades of his life without magic deeply bothered him. And dréags died so young, aging rapidly once they had burned through their power.

“Oh, he didn’t die from using all his power,” said Archie. “He died when the lorry hit him immediately after.”

“Oh, no,” Ewan’s mum said, looking stricken. She handed Archie a piping hot cup of tea as though she were passing along a cure for his heartbreak.

“That’s terrible,” Ewan said with feeling, thinking of his own dad, who had nearly killed himself that morning using a knife to fish his toast out of the toaster.

“Yes, very terrible,” Archie agreed. He turned and gave Ewan a long, searching look, and whatever he saw made his face soften. “But thank you. My mother was quite embarrassed over his death. She’s always said she wanted better for me.”

“That’s really—wait, what?” Ewan asked.

“I think it’s lovely that you work for your mum, dear, and especially that you’ve stuck with your long-term goals. Ewan was almost somebody, I’m sure you know. But he just didn’t have it in him.” His mum leaned forward. “That’s why he and Oliver aren’t friends anymore. He’s embarrassed.”

Archie furtively glanced over at him. “I did wonder.”

Ewan clenched his jaw. “That’s not why,” he grit out.

Growing up, Oliver had been Ewan’s only friend. Adults had always told Ewan that other kids were intimidated by him; Oliver had said that none of the girls had fancied him because they were all worried he’d die in the final battle, and no one had wanted to deal with that particular heartbreak. Yet Ewan had always known the truth, deep inside: kids his age had avoided him because they knew that they would be in trouble for bullying him.

He had always been given a pass in school—whether it was teachers giving him higher marks than he deserved or turning a blind eye when he showed up late to lessons. Realistically, he should have been kicked out long before he was. But it wasn’t until the final year that suddenly the combination of his poor marks and frequent absences meant he couldn’t reenroll.

Ewan Mao, the prophesied slayer of Duff Slan, had been strange.
Different
was the word his school counselor had used—the bad sort of different, not the interesting, extraordinary kind of different that had always been used to describe the great heroes in books and films.

When they were little, Oliver had been awkward just like him. But once they’d hit secondary school, the things that had made Oliver an outcast before had suddenly become the sort of traits that made him popular. Ewan had gone from being the hero to being Oliver’s shadow. But he’d had one crucial thing going for him: he had a destiny.

And then Oliver had killed Duff Slan.

“Georgia, these biscuits are scrummy,” Archie said as Ewan seethed silently. “What are they called?”

“I don’t agree with your mum,” he told Ewan as he was leaving a quarter of an hour later.

“Watch yourself,” Ewan threatened.

He tried to close the door on Archie’s face, but Archie stuck his arm in the door, blocking it. The small blue carrier bag of almond biscuits and fruit Ewan’s mum had insisted he take dangled from his wrist.

“Steady on,” Archie replied. He held up a hand. “What I meant was, I don’t think she should dismiss you so easily.”

Ewan almost didn’t believe his ears. “What now?”

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You were able to alter the course of your destiny. Even the gods can’t stop Ragnarök.” Archie cocked his head to the side thoughtfully. “But I do agree that you could do better than working at that, quite frankly, appalling coffee shop.”

Aside from that strange and old-fashioned reference to the end of the universe, this was the first time, to the best of Ewan’s knowledge, that someone had told him that what he had done hadn’t been cowardly.

“I,” he began, but then he stopped, not sure of what he was trying to say. He shook his head in disbelief. “You said just the other day that I was a loser.”

“No, I said it was a shame that the former slayer of Duff Slan was working for minimum wage.”

“Do you think I’m brave?” he asked hopefully.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Archie. “At any rate, I think what Britain needs now is real reform. It’s not as though getting rid of Duff Slan really changed things around here. We don’t need heroes. We need radicals.”

Ewan nearly had a go at him, ready to protest—but then Archie turned a wide, dazzling smile on him, and he suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands, which seemed too big for his skinny arms. He shoved them into the pockets of his hoodie, whatever he had been about to say long forgotten.

“Give me your number,” Archie abruptly insisted. He dug a mobile out of his pocket; it was one of the new, expensive models with a camera and the ability to send photos through a centralized Government service called MMS.

“Um,” Ewan said before stuttering out the eleven digits and watching, horrified, as Archie entered them into his mobile.

“I’ll send you the address tomorrow,” Archie declared. His gaze pointedly flickered over Ewan’s outfit. “Try to find something clean to wear.”

For an instant, Ewan let himself pretend that Archie was asking to hang out with him. It wasn’t until the door slammed behind him that Ewan remembered that the entire reason he’d come round was to convince Ewan to join his society. Depressed now, he padded back into the kitchen, where his mum was washing up.

“Do you have any other friends you’re hiding?” she asked.

Unable to tell if she was kidding or being serious, he replied, “Not unless you consider game NPCs friends.”

“I don’t know what that means, love.” She handed him the damp mugs. “Anyway, Archie seems nice.”

Ewan glanced out the window; his dad was sitting in a garden chair and watching the sun set. “Yeah,” he replied, thinking it was shame that he’d never see Archie again. “I suppose so.”

Chapter 4

O
liver had done History at A-level. They’d spent half a term on Early Modern Magic and the Freezing Cold War. He remembered getting a particularly good mark for his essay, “The Colonial Legacy in Modern Indian Magical Practice: Was the British Empire really so terribly awful, when you think about it?” Most of the magical theory and practice that had popped up during the British Empire had fallen well out of fashion, but Zaubernegativum was somehow still around today. There were a number of Sazzies—or Zaubnegs, as they’d been called back then—in the history books who’d been notorious, though Oliver couldn’t remember exactly what for. Until now, he had never met one.