It was pointless trying to talk either of them out of it. Despite knowing how dangerous this might be, they both insisted on coming. After twenty minutes of going back and forth on it, they wore me down. I wasn’t happy about it, but neither of them would budge.

As we were waiting, I cut off the plaster cast on my right arm. Flexed my fingers. The broken bones had healed. So had the wound on my stomach. The arm felt heavier, as if the bones had hardened after the injury. The area around my stomach felt tougher, too.

“Are you okay, Ethan?” Jess asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Where I was injured. It feels stronger. Heavier.”

“I heard bones grow back stronger after they break,” Dee said.

“That’s a myth,” Jess replied. “It could be a side effect of your healing abilities. We should get your arms x-rayed. See if there’s any noticeable difference. Maybe run some tests.”

Despite only having known about everything for a few hours, Jess hadn’t missed a beat. She’d taken it all in her stride and swiftly adapted to the new circumstance.

I grinned. “You sound like Victoria.”

“Yeah, I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Jess replied. “She sounds like the kind of woman I want to be when I grow up.”

“What, insanely rich and living in a huge mansion?”

“No, idiot. I’m practically doing all of that, anyway. I mean the doctorates. That stuff.”

Of course.

“Nerd.”

“Ha, that’s a nerd you love, remember?” Jess bantered back.

“What?” Dee asked.

“Ethan lurves me,” Jess teased. “He said so.”

I glowered at Jess.

“That’s not what I said,” I mumbled, my cheeks flushing. Getting stabbed by a demon and trying to save the world? No sweat. Having a pretty girl tease me?

Yeah, I still had some issues.

“You luuuuurve me, Ethan. You told me so.”

I gritted my teeth. After all this confession and honesty, this was my reward? It hardly seemed fair.

There was something playful in Jess’s tone that pulled me back from getting peeved about it, though. So instead of being irritable, I smiled and held up my index finger, shushing Jess.

“I said, if you recall, ‘I think I like, like you,’ and I’m rapidly revising that opinion,” I bantered back.

Jess grinned, content.

Right answer, Ethan. Ten points, well done.

Dee groaned and pretended to vomit. “Get a room already.”

Banter, jokes, teasing.

Things were almost back to normal between the three of us.

For a short while, at least.

*

The limo took an hour to arrive.

As it pulled up, Mum stopped the three of us at the door.

“Okay, what’s this all about?”

“It’s fine, Sally,” Jess replied with a disarming smile. “Dad’s got an underground film premiering today. He sent a limo to pick us up.”

Mum didn’t look convinced.

“Ethan?”

I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t want to worry her as well.

“What Jess said,” I nodded, “Just that.”

Mum pulled me to one side.

“Ethan, I know you’re not telling me something.”

“I can’t talk about it anymore,” I said. “It’s just… what is it you always say? Always do the right thing, no matter what, and no matter how hard it is.”

“Is that what this is?”

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“Yes.”

Mum looked at me sadly.

“Okay, Ethan. As long as you’re sure you’re doing the right thing.”

She let us go.

“Sweet ride,” Dee said as the limo pulled up. Jess looked less impressed. She’d grown up surrounded by rock stars and minor royalty. A snazzy car wasn’t anything special to her. We got in the back. The driver was the same one that had driven me to Avebury.

“Where to, sir?” he asked.

I gave him limited directions, enough to send us in the right direction without giving the exact address. I was getting better at the cloak and dagger stuff. Suppose the limo was bugged? That could have been the end of it there and then.

I congratulated myself on my improvements on the whole ‘spy’ side of things.

I also told our driver to keep an eye out for any tails, in particular a blue Ford Focus. The sandy haired killer was still out there, somewhere. I knew he had me under surveillance, although I still didn’t know which faction he was working for.

As we got into the limo, I realised I shouldn’t have let Jess and Dee come along. It was far too dangerous.

I knew why I hadn’t argued with them as forcefully as I should have, though, and cursed myself for it. The fact was, we’d been bickering and fighting for over a week about pretty much everything, and I couldn’t bear to start another disagreement this early into our reconciliation.

So instead of putting my foot down, I’d caved in and allowed them to come on the road trip, potentially putting them in harm’s way.

Now I had to keep them as far from the knife-wielding psycho-demon as possible, but I’d still let them come along.

Maybe Victoria was right, I thought glumly. Keeping my friends and family in the dark might well have been safer for them.

I hoped that there wouldn’t be another confrontation with the demon. It had taken him an hour and a half to catch up with me in High Wycombe. Although I still wasn’t sure how he’d tracked me, I figured this mission would have a much faster turnaround. All we needed to do was get to Christchurch, get the last cursed one, and get back to the sanctuary. It would take me ten minutes at most to persuade her she was in danger and that she needed to come with us.

Easy mission, no complications.

I tried to relax. With the right precautions, everything would be fine. There was no reason for Jess and Dee to end up in danger.

As for me?

Ever since Victoria had revealed what I was and where my powers came from, I was feeling more self-assured than ever before. The last week had toughened me up and knowing what I was created a new sense of confidence I hadn’t ever felt before.

I was an experiment, born human but with demon blood in my veins.

A hybrid, probably created by Henry Jefferson at Section 13. Presumably the plan had been to create better soldiers to help fight in the Invisible War against the supernatural.

There were still questions to be answered:

Who had bound Dee to me, why had my biological parents abandoned me? Why had I ended up in the adoption system after the experiment seemed to have failed?

Despite that, knowing what I was had cleared away a lot of my uncertainties. I owed Victoria for that. She’d made good on her promise to help me out.

I wasn’t thrilled that someone had injected me with an experimental demon-based serum when I was less than two years old, but at least I knew what had made me this way.

I was feeling in control of myself and my powers.

Enough for a rematch with Mr Stabby if it came to it.

*

Christchurch is a town on the south coast, a popular tourist destination during the summer because of its beaches and historic buildings. On a damp, windswept November evening, it’s less of a sightseeing spot and more of a ‘wrap up warm and stay indoors’ type of town. It was described by a national newspaper as “The Retirement Capital of the United Kingdom” because of having one of the oldest populations in the country. Over thirty percent of the residents were over sixty-five years old.

And one of them is over a hundred and ten years old. I bet they didn’t include that in any census.

The address the hacker had given me was on the outskirts of the town. It was dark by the time we got there. I directed the driver to park one street away from the house we wanted. Again, trying to be cautious. Trying to keep my friends out of danger. Wishing they hadn’t insisted on coming, but glad they were there all the same.

“You two stay here. It’s too dangerous now.”

“Ethan,” Jess said, “It’s going to be a lot more dangerous if we don’t stop this demon from killing the cursed one. You should take Dee with you.”

Dee did a double take at Jess volunteering him into danger.

“You know what this thing is,” Jess said, “and you have some power, no matter how weak it is.”

It was a good point. I’d seen what monsters could do to unarmed military personnel if they wanted to, and I’d only survived my last encounter because of my healing abilities and strength. Jess was just a teenage human. Dee was a supernatural. He could switch into his slightly tougher djinn form, which would protect him. I nodded, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Yeah, right, thanks,” Dee said. “You know I’m not Ethan’s guardian djinn anymore, right?”

“So why did you come along, then?” Jess bantered. “Old habits dying hard?”

“Something like that, I guess,” Dee muttered. “Why are you here, exactly?”

“To keep you two from doing something stupid, of course,” Jess replied with a smug grin.

Dee started to reply, but I cut in.

“Enough,” I said. “We’re wasting time. Okay Jess, you wait here. Dee and I will collect Marian. With any luck, we’ll be in and out before the demon gets here. That’s what I’m counting on.”

In the meantime, the chauffeur had gotten out of the driver’s seat as we stood outside the limo debating our move.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“I’m under instructions from Victoria to protect you, kid.”

“Right, sorry. I thought you were just the driver.”

“I did three tours of Afghanistan and five years in Section 13 before joining the Pryces’ private security. You want me by your side on this.”

He unbuttoned the jacket of his suit to reveal a shoulder holster with a pistol tucked under his left armpit.

“Fair enough.”

Up to that point, I had paid little attention to the driver. Now he was standing beside us, I realised that had been a mistake. He was a big bloke, over six feet, and built with it. He wasn’t packing a heavy-weightlifter level of muscle, but he had enough. He had a no-nonsense military discipline about his movements. An easy, trained killer’s confidence in his manner. His eyes swept the surrounding area out of habit, alert for any signs of danger.

I could think of worse allies to have.

He tossed Jess the limo keys. “Can you drive?”

“Sure,” Jess replied. We both had learner licences and had taken enough lessons to know the basics.

“Keep the engine running,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Jess slid into the driver seat of the limo as Dee, the chauffeur and I walked to the end of the quiet street.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Bill.”

We turned the corner into the street where the last cursed one’s house was. Like Paul in High Wycombe, Marian’s house was tucked away in a small, unremarkable cul-de-sac. Apparently, the government had decided in the late forties that the reward for an eternity of torment was a life of rotting in obscurity. Still, with the faint smell of the sea blowing through the streets, it looked like Marian had been given the nicest location of the three of them.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t at home.