Jack of Ravens

5

After detouring to a costume shop in East London, Shavi had a black leather eye patch covering the empty orbit. ‘Strangely, it no longer hurts,’ he said as he gingerly probed around his cheekbone.

‘Good. So you’re ready to answer some straight questions,’ Laura said sharply from the driver’s seat. ‘You gave up your eye on purpose? Just to get a few answers?’

‘I did not know that would be the price.’

‘Then you’re more of an idiot than I thought,’ the Bone Inspector growled. You think they’re going to take something that’s not important?’

Shavi was surprised by how hard Laura had taken his sacrifice. She had already gone through disbelief, tears and finally had arrived at a cold, hard anger that currently was directed at him.

‘I think the eye patch from the costume shop is quite dashing,’ he said in an attempt to defuse the tension. It didn’t work.

Laura pulled the van over with a screech of tyres. ‘Is this what it’s going to be like, then? You give up an eye. I donate an ovary. You lose a leg. I hack off an arm. Is that it? Because if it is, I don’t want it.’

‘The burger bar is better?’

‘Yes, it is. Let somebody else do this stuff. We can go back to having fun.’

‘There is no one else.’

‘You two shut up.’ The Bone Inspector glared at them. ‘Here’s how it is: you do this or the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders cuts you — and me — out of reality. Gone. Forgotten. Never existed.’ He turned to Shavi. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’

Shavi nodded.

‘Now find this Ruth Gallagher and maybe you’ll make a bigger spark. And then you find the other two, and then maybe we’ll discover what’s happened to the world and what the Enemy wants.’

They’d already tried a number of care homes near London’s bridges after consulting the Yellow Pages and the A-Z. There was only one left.

‘That’s it,’ Laura said nodding to a large, old house. ‘I hope she’s got more sense than you or we really are fucked in the head.’