I went to Joe’s garage.

It was closed on Sundays, but Mum had been hovering since Jess had left and I needed some head space. I had to figure out what was going on and what I was going to do about it.

I felt crushed and bewildered by Jess’s reaction to my declaration of affection and was still furious with Dee, but I tried to push both problems out of my mind. The hacker had offloaded some interesting information, and I needed to work out what it all meant.

I spent a couple of hours patching up the bodywork on a drop dead gorgeous 1950s four door saloon Morris Minor. The car was a real beauty, but it would take weeks to get it back into full working order.

That was the job, so I got to it.

After that, my head felt clear enough to think things through. I sat in Joe’s office with a pad of A4 paper and a pen, making notes, trying to figure everything out, and what any of it had to do with me.

If I’d learnt one thing from watching all of those detective series with Mum, it was that there are no coincidences. As chaotic as it all seemed, I was sure that everything that everything was connected.

I jotted down a few questions.

What am I/Where do I get my powers from?

Who bound Dee to me, and why?

Where did the demon hound come from?

Is the Bussage murder connected to this?

Why was there an attack on Section 13, whilst I ‘just happened’ to be there?

Who is the hacker?

What do immortal pensioners have to do with this?

I still didn’t know what I was and was hoping Victoria would find out. She was the only lead I had to go on as far as that went.

I wondered if Wilson had survived the injection Victoria had given him. I wondered if Victoria really would have let him bleed out and die if I hadn’t intervened. It seemed ruthless of her, maybe even vindictive, but then again Wilson had threatened herself and her brother at gunpoint.

Was it possible Vincent was the warlock that had bound Dee to me? If he was, why would he keep it from me?

Unless he didn’t know it was me he’d bound Dee to? I had been about two years old, so he wouldn’t recognise me if he’d done it. I question marked the idea, carried on sorting through what I’d learnt so far. Trying to put the pieces together.

What else did I have?

‘Operation Blackstar’ - some secret op run by Section 13 around the end of World War Two. Three apparently immortal beings who used to work for the government. One of them was now dead, killed around the same time the demon hound had appeared. The demon hound, which, according to Dee, shouldn’t even be here because it came from another dimension.

Then there was the attack on Section 13 that had happened a few hours later, with the attackers looking for some files. Could the files that the MLF had been after be connected to the three (now two) immortals? I liked that idea, circled it.

What if the three immortals are on some kind of hit list? One down, two to go? I added in the pad’s margin.

That seemed to add up.

Could the immortals be vampires, after all? Or a different type of supernatural creature? Were vampires even immortal at all? What about werewolves, demons, angels, djinn? How long did they usually live for? How much of what I knew from fiction and television was real and how much of it was misinformation?

“Gee, Ethan,” I muttered to myself as I scribbled my questions and speculations, “If only you had a friend who knew all about the supernatural world and could help you out here. Oh, that’s right, you did, but you told him to get lost. Smart move.”

Dee thought the demon hound had been tracking him, in which case none of this was connected to me. It was all just a coincidence sparked by the fact that Dee had been bound to me. But why had he been bound? Was any of this anything to do with my missing father?

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Would finding out about my father give me answers to what I was?

And just like that, I was right back where I’d started: What was I, why had Dee been bound to me and how was any of it connected?

I groaned, realising I was going round in circles. A lot of questions, but no answers.

It was early afternoon, and the speculations just kept piling up.

Worse, my friends were angry with me, I was still a freak, and I had no clue what was happening.

All I had were a bunch of puzzle fragments that didn’t fit together.

“Alright, to hell with this,” I muttered. “Time to get some answers.”

I had one possible lead, provided by the hacker. The addresses of the two remaining immortals.

I checked train times on Joe’s office computer. I was wary of using my phone for anything, knowing that it was being monitored. I checked the addresses of the two other immortal pensioners the hacker had told me about. It was a three and a half hour journey to Christchurch and the trains on a Sunday were useless. High Wycombe was two and a half hours, and the times fit. I could hotfoot it over there, try to talk to one of these people who’d been involved in Operation Blackstar and be back in the evening before anyone realised I’d gone.

At that moment, getting out of town and getting away from everyone seemed like a great idea, so after changing out of my overalls, I headed to the train station.

I was, as they say, ‘On the case.’

*

Stepping out of the garage and heading to the train station, I noticed something off. A pale blue Ford Focus, arguably one of the blandest of cars in existence. Nothing unusual or out of the ordinary in itself, apart from three things:

First, it was parked right at the end of the street, just far enough away to be unthreatening, but close enough to monitor the garage. Second, I was sure I’d seen it hanging around in similar locations at least twice in the past week. Just on the edge of where the occupant could observe me, not close enough to really be noticed. Third, as on the other two occasions, I could make out the shape of someone sitting in the driver's seat.

I knew, without any doubt, that I was being watched.

I considered all kinds of options, but what kind of evasive maneuvers was I supposed to take in a small town? Even if I’d known anything about losing tails, there was, I decided, a better approach.

I headed straight towards the Ford Focus.

I was two cars breadth away when whoever was inside realised I’d made him, revved up and drove away.

I glimpsed the face of a sandy-haired killer as he pulled off.

His eyes briefly locked on mine, and a sneer curled his around his upper lip. He was pissed that I’d made him.

Don’t ask me how I knew he was a trained killer. I just felt it in my bones. There was a deadness behind his eyes, something about the way he sat in the car, something… I don’t know. Just that moment of our eyes locking and the sneer was enough.

Terrific, I’m under surveillance on top of everything else.

I backtracked to the garage. I was going to have to get sneaky if I wanted to shake any tails. I dipped into the petty cash box, dropped an IOU for a hundred pounds, and called a taxi. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the train station, but I guessed that, aside from being physically watched, there were two other ways to track my movements; via my cash card and via my phone.

I had the taxi driver drop me off at the top of town, then took a circuitous route to the train station, keeping an eye out for the Ford Focus, or any other suspicious vehicles. Paid for my ticket in cash.

Wondered how long it would take anyone tracking my phone to realise I’d left it in the taxi.

This might come across as the most improbable part of the story, but the train arrived on time.

*

I had to change twice to get to High Wycombe, and I made both connections with a few minutes to spare both times. It felt good to be on the move, to get away from everything for a few hours as I investigated.

It occurred to me that the hacker could have been lying or even setting a trap, but it seemed unlikely. As a trap, it was a pretty feeble one, and why would anyone go to such lengths to make something like this up? ‘Sam’ had shown me screenshots of various documents to back up his or her assertions.

The train arrived in High Wycombe, and I flagged a taxi. The address the hacker had given took me to an unremarkable small house in an unremarkable small crescent.

I stood in front of a faded blue door.

The television was on inside, so the man I was seeking was at home. I rang the doorbell. It buzzed angrily, but there were no sounds of movement from inside. A second and third ring and still nothing.

The curtains were partially drawn. I tried to peek through the gap but could only make out the flickering glow of the television.

I went around the side of the house through a small unlocked wooden gate and into an unkempt garden. Feeling like a burglar, I stepped onto the cracked patio at the back of the house. A large double glazed sliding door led into the living room. A man was slumped on the sofa, staring at the television with vacant eyes.

I rapped on the glass and the man turned his head to look at me, doing it so slowly that for a second I wasn’t sure he was moving at all.

His pale eyes barely seemed to register me, and when they did, he looked as if trying to comprehend what I was. Then, with a visible sigh, he struggled up off the sofa.

He couldn’t have been older than forty, but he moved like a hundred-year-old man. You could practically hear his joints creaking as he walked towards me. His face was blank. He didn’t appear angry or afraid, or nervous.

He didn’t display any visible emotion at all.

He pulled open the sliding door.

“Yes?” he said.

“Hello, Sir. My name is Ethan Hall. I’m with Section 13. I need to ask you some questions about Operation Blackstar.”

I was taking a gamble here. I knew he was connected to Section 13, and I hoped that merely mentioning them by name would be enough to get me through the door and get him talking.

If not, I’d have a lot of explaining to do.

He didn’t ask to see any credentials. He just nodded, as if he’d been expecting this for some time.

“Training them young these days, I see. Well then, you’d better come in.”