Page 1

Chapter 1

Nice Bush

Something cold breathes down the back of my neck.

I shiver, the good kind, the kind that starts at the base of my skull and runs all the way down my spine like someone has traced a finger along it.

I look up from my textbook, take in my surroundings, and startle.

The library is completely empty. Deserted. Lit only by the reading lamps on the study desks.

How did that happen? This place was bustling when I started reading. Absolutely full of students and their bags and trendy headphones and chatter. It was hard to find a spot.

I squint at the clock on the wall. Three a.m. Oh. I guess contract formation and the postal rule is even more riveting than I thought.

“Oops,” I say, to the seemingly empty library. “Law textbooks are terribly exciting, but I might have overdone it.”

The cold brushes past again, a little firmer this time. It’s the sort of thing you’d feel if someone leaned in close enough that their breath ghosted your ear. Except on this occasion there’s no breath involved, because the person doing the leaning doesn’t strictly breathe.

“In my defence, I did have rather a lot of coffee earlier,” I admit, mostly to be fair about the whole thing. “The customers kept buying them for me and it would have been rude to say no, wouldn’t it?”

The coffees were delicious, and hard to regret, each one a gift from a customer who felt guilty about something and decided the fastest way to feel better about it was to buy the friendly barista a caramel latte. I’m not complaining. Receiving free coffee is a lovely way to help people.

Suddenly, the cold interrupts my thoughts by settling over my shoulders like something waiting for me to catch up with the obvious. He doesn’t say anything. He never does, not out here. Not where anyone might overhear. Not where a security guard doing his rounds might wander past and see rather more than he should.

I sigh, and it’s a happy sort of sigh, the kind you let out when someone is being predictably wonderful about something.

“All right, all right. You’re quite right, I should go home.” I close my textbook, gather my highlighters into their little pouch. “I’ll get more done tomorrow anyway. Everyone knows revision after 3am produces absolute nonsense. I once wrote an entire essay plan that just said ‘ask a duck’ and I still don’t know what I meant by it.”

The cold eases back. Satisfied, I think, though it’s difficult to read satisfaction into someone who doesn’t always have a face. I’ve gotten rather good at it anyway. You learn to read a lot into silence when someone communicates almost entirely through silence.

I sling my bag over my shoulder, tuck my textbook under my arm, and take one last look at the empty desks and the reading lamps still glowing over nobody. Tomorrow I’ll be one of maybe two hundred people crammed into an exam hall trying to remember what an offer actually is in the eyes of the law. Tonight it’s just me, and the shadow being behind me who has been patiently waiting for hours before gently reminding me to take care of myself.

I smile softly and head for the stairs.

Bristol at three in the morning is different to Bristol at any other time. Quieter, obviously, but it’s more than that. The streetlights turn a softer colour somehow. The shop fronts along Park Street look almost gentle with their shutters down, like a whole street has decided to close its eyes for a bit. My footsteps are the loudest thing for streets in any direction, thump thumping along the pavement, and I hum a little to myself because these empty streets could do with a little more cheer.

Although, of course, these streets aren’t quite as empty as they might appear.

He’s behind me. Always three or four paces back, close enough that I know exactly where he is without turning around. Although if I did turn round, I probably wouldn’t see much. A thickening of shadow along the wall. The suggestion of something too large and too still for a city street.

He’s been doing this since the afternoon the coffee shop very nearly came down around us. Since a considerably larger and much less friendly shadow being called Wraith put me on the floor with a falling shelf. Dark was pinned three feet away, unable to get free, and he made a sound that afternoon I still haven’t found a proper word for. He’s kept three paces behind me most nights since, like he’s quietly trying to make up the distance he couldn’t close the one time it actually mattered.

He thinks he’s being subtle about it now. I find this completely adorable. A being who is, by all accounts, several thousand years old, and he is shy about it. Properly shy. He has never once shown himself while other people are around. Not at the coffee shop. Not on the street. Not anywhere there might be a witness. I’ve decided not to make a big thing of it. If he needs to pretend he’s a very committed patch of darkness, I’m happy to let him have that.

Abruptly my thoughts screech to a halt as a figure steps out of the alley right in front of me. The man is big. Bigger than me, though admittedly most people are bigger than me. He’s got the sort of walk that people practice, shoulders rolled back, chin up. The walk of someone who has decided menace is a costume he can simply put on.

My feet freeze and I clutch my textbook to my chest like it might be useful as some sort of shield, which it absolutely will not be, contract law having very few practical applications in a physical altercation.

“Oh no,” I say.

“Give me your bag,” he says. Not even a hello. Some people really do skip all the pleasantries.

“Please don’t mug me,” I say, because it seems worth a try.

He laughs, an ugly little bark. “Stupid as well as a pretty little thing. You really should walk around alone at this time of night.” He leers closer. “And you should look more scared.”

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “I don’t think I was clear. I meant, please don’t mug me, for your own good.”