Mind Blind (14 page)

I didn’t want to pay another taxi fare, because I’d been spending money too fast and using a cash machine could reveal our location. We had enough time to take a red London bus towards Victoria Coach Station.

We climbed to the top deck, sat on the line of seats at the back, one at each window, and ignored each other.

Lucy’s levels of hate were subsiding. Perhaps she couldn’t maintain an absolute desire for revenge for long.

Halfway to Victoria, Lucy swivelled round to face me and put her feet up on the seat. “So, how does hiding in a book work? Why did it hide me from your family, but not from you? Don’t you use the same tricks as them?”

I didn’t answer.

But she was determined to have a friendly conversation. “Were you trying something new? Something your family don’t do?”

I shrugged. “Kind of. I’ve noticed people’s minds are harder to grasp when they’re reading a book or watching a DVD than when they’re listening to music or playing with their phone, because they’re lost in a story. I thought it was worth a go, to protect you.”

“So you were guessing? You were experimenting on me?” She almost smiled. “Now I’m not a skinny stray cat, I’m a guinea pig.”

“It was not an experiment!” What did she think I was, some kind of sadist, who would
experiment
on her? “I would
never
experiment on a person. That would be sick.”

“But you did experiment on me. You had a theory, that your
family wouldn’t detect someone if they were reading a book, then you tested your theory, by telling me to lose myself in the story, and now you have a result, because you detected me and your family didn’t. Your experiment worked. So you
did
experiment on me.”

“No I didn’t! I was just trying to keep you safe!”

“I know you were trying to keep me safe. I’m just saying it
was
an experiment.”

“No it wasn’t! Experiments are torture, like rabbits with shampoo in their eyes or dogs smoking cigarettes. Experiments are scientists in white coats, with electrodes and flashcards. I would never do that.”

Her family would though. Her nana experimented on Billy Reid, with wires on his head and chest. I bet her family would still experiment on me. I bet her Edinburgh uncle is a doctor or a scientist, wearing a white coat and cutting up frogs.

Lucy was just as bad, with her constant curiosity about how my powers work. Curiosity leads to questions, to tests, to experiments.

“I didn’t experiment on you. And
no one
will ever experiment on me!”

“Calm down. It’s not a war crime. It’s only science. And that thing you did in the car park, was that more guesswork?”

She just wouldn’t stop pushing me!

“What was it? What did you do?” She leant forward eagerly, keen to find out more with her nasty scientific mind.

So I told her. “I went into your sister’s death. I jumped into the last moment of her life, when her terror shut down, her thoughts broke off and her mind went dark. I hid in the shadows of her death. So Vivien kept me safe. Thanks, Viv.”

I turned away. But I sensed Lucy’s shock and revulsion, I heard her sudden gasping tears.

Served her right for asking too many questions.

He used her. He used her terror and pain to protect himself. He wrapped himself up in her death like an invisibility cloak.

That’s so
low
. Almost worse than killing her. Like he was sucking up the last moments of her life to make himself stronger. What a disgusting slimy creep.

We were nearly at Victoria. I had to decide. Was I travelling north with him? Was I going to sit in a bus for nearly ten hours with him, knowing he was keeping Viv’s fear and death like a trophy, knowing he was using her murder for himself?

Could I even bear to be near him?

I wanted to protect Uncle Vince and I wanted revenge on Ciaran Bain. And now I knew more about Bain, I had a clearer idea how to get revenge. Also I didn’t want to stay in London, near his brassy mum and scary cousin.

So I’d get on the bus, but not as his travelling companion. I’d get on the bus as the devil on his shoulder, as my sister’s revenge, as his worst nightmare.

What an idiot! Telling her how I had hidden my mind, telling her how useful her sister’s death was to me.

I’d wanted to punish her for going to Kings Cross, for pushing for answers, for winding me up about experiments. I’d wanted to shock her.

I’d done all that and more. I thought she hated me before. But now she was boiling over with disgust and contempt.

This bus journey was going to be fun. A whole day in a metal box with someone who would happily wind my guts round my neck and watch me choke to death. Also the toilets would probably smell and there would be old ladies talking loudly about their bladder problems. I should just have gone
to bed last night and not got involved in this Shaw job at all.

We didn’t talk when we arrived at Victoria. I checked for any surveillance teams or hunters, but apparently no one thought we’d travel by bus, because I didn’t sense anyone watching for us. So we walked together, still not talking, to the ticket office.

I bought my ticket. A single to Edinburgh.

She bought hers, with my money and not a word of thanks. She got a return. Optimistic.

Then she headed round the station towards the gate, while I bought supplies at the newsagents. More chewing gum, because after throwing up, my mouth felt the way Roy’s dirty-washing heap smelt; water and chocolate to keep us alive; a few more books; an
A–Z
of Edinburgh. Then I found the right gate and sat at the other end of the bench from Lucy. No one watching us would know we were together.

We weren’t together. We’d never been further apart.

I should just leave her here. Right now, she was a danger to both of us.

But before I could work out a way to leave her behind safely, the bus arrived and she was showing her ticket. I let the few other passengers get on, then I followed.

Lucy was sitting a couple of rows from the front. She smiled like a hyena and patted the seat beside her. I shook my head and walked towards the back of the almost empty bus. I chose a seat far enough from the toilets not to be overpowered by air freshener, and far enough from Lucy not to be overwhelmed by her simmering hatred.

As the bus drove off, I was checking the other passengers and the driver for problems and scanning as far as I could outside the bus for any hunters.

Had we left the surveillance teams behind in Winslow? I caught the odd whiff of police pursuit as we drove through the city, but nothing that related to us.

Where were my family? Were they still heading north?
Would we be travelling on the same motorway as them? I had to stay alert.

I’d bought a book for myself. Something I’d never normally read, a book with dragons and swords and elves. I wasn’t sure whether my family would recognise me if I was lost in a story, but it might be useful to find out. It wasn’t an experiment though.

I’d bought Lucy a couple more books, to last her all the way to Scotland. But she wasn’t reading, she was sitting still, wrapped in her hoodie and her hate.

I balanced down the bus and leant over her seat.

“Read,” I whispered. “Please. They might be driving up to Edinburgh too, or they might be waiting by the motorway to check all the buses going north.” I offered her another book.

She shoved it away. “I’m not taking advice from you. Especially untested experimental advice. If they’re going to Edinburgh, they’re already miles ahead of us. And if they’ve guessed we’re taking a bus, then as this bus has “Edinburgh” in bright orange letters on the front, I don’t think reading a book is going to save me. So don’t you try to protect me with your nasty little theories.”

I staggered back up the bus. Two old ladies showed me their bright plastic teeth as I passed. Sympathy for the nice boy with the grumpy girlfriend. Aye, right.

I read anyway. Not just to protect myself, but also because it was too frustrating to think about the mess I’d got myself into when I couldn’t do anything to solve it for hours.

I read a page, then checked inside and outside the bus for problems, then read again, then checked again. Except during battle scenes, when I occasionally forgot to check for a few pages.

There were no problems though. No one was following the bus. No one was searching up ahead. The only person on the bus who wasn’t either asleep or bored or chatting about trivia was the one-girl vendetta down at the front.

Then she stepped up the aisle. “Did you buy water?”

“Do you want a bottle?”

“Do I have to ask nicely? I don’t think I can be polite to you.”

“Here. No please or thanks required.” She grabbed the bottle and the chocolate I held out. She turned to go. Then she turned back and sat down beside me.

I moved my leg and shoulder so we weren’t touching.

She gulped a mouthful of water. She was grateful, but didn’t say thanks. She glared at me, because she knew I could sense her gratitude. It was quite fun reading someone who knew they were being read. She knew she couldn’t hide anything from me and she really resented it.

Her hatred of me was building and sharpening, then I sensed her make a decision. With a flash of fear I wondered if she had a weapon.

But she wasn’t focussed on anything about her body apart from her hands holding the bottle. She wasn’t concentrating on a weapon. I was safe.

Then she shifted. Away from the aisle, right up against me. Shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh.

And I saw a picture of Vivien. Alive. Laughing.

Lucy was remembering her sister.

I jerked away, pushed myself against the window.

So that’s what she had decided on. A bus journey full of punishment, of guilt, grief, pain. Like in her grampa’s flat, but for a whole day.

She put her warm hand on my cheek.

Her parents crying, gulping and snottering.

I shoved her hand away.

Should I fight her off? But we couldn’t spend the whole day wrestling at the back of a bus. Someone would notice.

She grabbed my wrist and wrapped both hands round it.

Her parents telling her that Viv was dead.

Her shock.

Her disbelief.

Her frustration…

“Fight me, Bain. Don’t just sit there, fight me.” She let go. “Wimp. I know it hurts, so fight back.”

She was sitting so close. The seams of our jeans were touching. I had no  space to move.

I could feel her breath, her heat, her hate, her anger at me, at herself, at her sister, at her parents. She
really
wanted a fight.

“Fight me, Bain!”

“You want me to fight you? I could break your neck right now.” I lifted my hands.

I sensed her sudden shocked terror. How could she keep accusing me of murder and forget that I could easily kill her?

I lowered my hands. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Well I
do
!”

With all the confidence of someone who’d just seen their enemy surrender, she ripped off my left glove, held my hand tightly and…

And I realised she had stronger weapons now than in the flat last night, weapons too strong for me to bear.

Wimp.

Wilting sodding pathetic
wimp
!

He’d just given up. Wimp.

So I hit him with everything I knew about him, everything that hurts him most.

I locked him in a bright white room, and added equipment from my dad’s clinic. Opthalmoscopes and retinoscopes on a shelf. The huge many-eyed refractor head hanging from the ceiling. The black leather chair with its motor and levers, and extra straps and buckles.

I mixed in a dentist’s surgery, with probes, needles, tubes,
sinks and the smell of disinfectant. Then the science lab at school with Bunsen burners, goggles and glass containers.

He was shaking, gritting his teeth. Trying not to move, trying not to make a noise.

He’d be
screaming
when I was done with him.

I thought the word
experiment
.

Experimenting…

Proving…

Testing…

Theories…

Facts…

Science…

I thought of wires, stopwatches, pulses, temperatures, doctors, consultants, researchers and professors.

Then I had a better idea.

An MRI scanner. Lying flat in a metal tube, trapped, unable to move while doctors, nurses, researchers, professors,
scientists
studied his brain. Read it, scanned it, printed it, stored it on a computer.

I pinned scans of brains, all the colours of the rainbow, on the white walls inside my head.

He was gasping for air now, his eyes were tight shut. The left hand, the one I was holding, was hot and shaking. His right hand was clenching, gripping, loosening.

Why wouldn’t he
fight
, the coward?

I tried to build a wall against her. I really did try.

The wall that had worked at the hospital:

solid

smooth

high

silver

hate.

She was forcing pictures and noises, words and ideas into my head. Clinical cold flat voices speaking my name, then lists of theories and experiments and conclusions.

I had to hate someone.

Hate Vivien for dying?

Hate Mum for protecting her family?

Hate Malcolm for doing his job?

Hate Daniel for being better than me?

Hate Lucy for seeking justice?

I couldn’t.

Faces peering at me, bright white lights.

I was shaking too much to hold onto the hate.

Cold metal touching me, white coats around me.

I tried harder. I hated myself, for being cowardly and cruel and selfish and useless. I could hate myself easily enough. But I hated myself for the same reasons Lucy hated me. So my sweet silver hate just built a ramp for her crusading hate to storm up and attack me.