Jamie didn’t think he would be able to sleep when he lay down on his dormitory bed fifteen minutes later, but he was out as soon as his head touched the pillow. His sleep was long and dreamless, and when he awoke, his body feeling rested but his mind racing with the enormity of the task before him, he saw that it was past three in the afternoon.

He showered, dressed quickly, made his way back down to the detention level, and walked quickly down the long block. When he reached her cell, he looked into the square room, and found Larissa standing in her underwear, pulling on her jeans. She was facing away from him, and he hurried back along the corridor, flushing a fiery red.

“I can hear you,” she said conversationally, and he closed his eyes and groaned. “You might as well come out.”

He stepped back in front of her cell and looked at her. She was now fully dressed, standing easily in the middle of her cell, looking at him with her head tilted slightly to the left.

“Your heart’s pounding,” she said. “I can hear it. Is that embarrassment or excitement?”

“Embarrassment,” said Jamie. “Definitely embarrassment.”

“Pity,” she said, and flashed him a wicked smile. He blushed again, his face now feeling as though it must erupt, it was so hot, and then a thought occurred to him.

If she can hear my heartbeat, she must be able to hear my footsteps like an elephant’s. Why didn’t she hurry up and get dressed when she heard me coming down the block?

“Because it’s fun to tease you,” she said, and Jamie took a shocked step backward.

“How did you know—”

“You’re a smart boy,” she said, smiling again.

She floated across the cell and spun elegantly onto her bed. She laced her hands behind her head and looked at him. “Did you talk to the monster?” she asked.

“I did.”

“And?”

“I wish I hadn’t. But I’m glad I did. Does that make sense?” She smiled at him, and Jamie’s heart leapt in his chest.

“I know exactly what you mean,” she said.

Jamie composed himself. “I want to take you up on your offer,” he said. “I don’t have permission to take you off the base, but I’ll do it if you to take me to the person you think can help me.”

Larissa untangled her fingers and pushed herself up on her elbows. “Are you serious?” she asked. “This isn’t you getting back at me?”

“I’m serious.”

“What brought on the change of heart?”

“I’ve got no choice,” he said. “I don’t know what else to do. I get why Alexandru wants to hurt me now. I know about what my father did. You were right; it all started with him.”

She looked at him with kindness in her face. “I bet that hurt to say,” she said.

“A little bit, yeah.”

Larissa flipped up off the bed, soared slowly through the air, and landed silently in front of him, a look of excitement on her face.

“Let’s do it,” she said, eagerly.

“You’ll need to wear an explosive belt.”

“Fine.”

“You can’t leave my sight.”

She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Why would I want to?” she purred.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“You take us to this person who can help, we get the information from them, and then you come back here. Quietly and peacefully.”

“Of course. Let’s go, let’s go.”

Larissa was hopping gently from one foot to the other, such was her excitement at the prospect at being allowed to leave her cell, to stand under the open sky again, to feel the night air in her hair.

“Not just yet,” said Jamie, and smiled at her.

She stopped still and looked at him.

I don’t like that smile, she thought. I don’t like it at all.

“Why?” she asked, cautiously.

“You’re going to tell me something first. And you’re going to tell me the truth.”

28

ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR

Reading, England

July 24, 2004

Larissa Kinley knew it was early before she opened her eyes; it was too dark in her bedroom, too quiet. She forced her gummy eyelids open and saw that she was right. The digital alarm clock on her bedside table read 5:06 in glowing green numbers. She sat up in bed and stretched her arms above her head, yawning widely. It was the eighth night in a row that she had found herself awake when she should be asleep, watching the green numbers tick over until she could legitimately get up and go in the shower. She hadn’t told her parents about what she was beginning to think qualified as insomnia; she knew that they would nod, halfheartedly sympathize, and then go back to whatever they were doing.

Larissa rolled out of bed and walked over to her bedroom window. She was about to open it, to let some fresh air into the room in the hope that it would tire her out, when she looked down into the small garden at the back of their little semidetached house and clapped her hand over her mouth so she didn’t scream.

The old man was standing in her garden, looking up at her with a gentle smile on his face, his gray overcoat wrapped around him, his hands casually in his pockets. His eyes were bright in the soft orange light of the streetlight that stood beyond the garden fence—and horribly, revoltingly friendly.

She took a step backward and tripped over one of the leather boots she had dropped at the end of her bed the night before. Her arms wheeled as she tried to keep her balance, but it was futile. She fell to the floor, hard, her teeth clicking shut on her tongue and sending a dagger of agony through her head. Tasting blood in her mouth, she scrambled to her knees and crawled back to the window. She inched her head above the windowsill and looked down into the garden.

The man was gone.

There was no more sleep for Larissa that night. She lay on her bed, playing the events of the previous two days over and over in her head, looking for a way to put the pieces together. She was still trying when she heard her brother’s bedroom door thump open, and she got up and raced across the landing, shoving him out of the way and closing the bathroom door behind her. Liam hammered halfheartedly on the door, but they both knew how this game went, and he quickly gave up and went back to his room.

Standing in front of the mirror, Larissa poked her tongue out and looked at the tiny cut her teeth had made. She sucked the blood away, watched it instantly well up again, then brushed her teeth, carefully, and stepped into the shower. She emerged twenty minutes later with her mind no clearer. Every time she managed to push the old man out of her head and think about something else—her coursework, the fair she and her friends were going to that evening—he would suddenly appear, smiling his soft smile, staring at her with those wide, friendly eyes.

Her parents already sat at the table when she made her way downstairs to breakfast, her wet hair wrapped in a towel and piled on her head. Her dad was reading the business section of The Times and slowly demolishing half a grapefruit, while her mother nibbled unconvincingly at a piece of toast and stared into thin air. Neither of them said anything as she sat down and poured herself a bowl of cornflakes and a glass of orange juice. She again considered telling them about the old man but decided against it.

No point in talking to them at all these days.

She knew Liam felt it, too, although he refused to talk about it with her. Their father had stopped going to Liam’s soccer matches at the start of the summer, without ever offering an explanation or an apology, as though he had simply forgotten that it was something he used to do. Larissa knew it had hurt her brother more deeply than he would ever admit, particularly to his big sister, but he had never questioned his dad about it. It was obvious that something bigger than football was going on: A thick cloud of disinterest had settled over their parents at the start of the year and showed no signs of lifting. She was sure that telling them about the old man would bring nothing more than tired suggestions that she had had a nightmare, that there was nothing to worry about.