There has to be a way out of here. Places like this get raided. There'll be some kind of emergency escape route. I just have to find it. Into an empty room with a fire escape. It's locked but I've already got my picks in my hands, and it barely even slows me down. Down the stairs I can see a bunch of TST officers. So I go up. Onto the roof. There's buildings nearby. Maybe I can jump.
I'm not alone on the roof. There's a man sitting there. Handsome, chizeled, wearing a kimono. The man the spider creature turned into when he pulled on that second skin. I keep my eyes on him until I have to look away to make the jump, and when I look back he's gone. Then I hear a voice behind me.
He offers me answers. He sure hasn't offered me any so far. But he can tell me about Lily-Rose, and maybe some answers about her are worth this Hannibal Lector quid pro quo bullshit he wants me to go through. And now I understand why he went after Beatrice. Because he's got a contract he wants me to sign, and he says if I sign he'll lay off Beatrice and things will be OK but if I don't he'll tear apart everything I care about. What's it going to cost me? Only my soul.
Something snaps in my mind. I know damn well I should be walking away, but the pen is in my hand and my name is on the paper, and we're not on the roof any more. We're in an office. He gives me some real answers about Lily at last. She's not dead but not exactly alive either. Her spirit is with Mary. Her body is in a suitcase under a bed somewhere in Holborn.
Mary. I need to find her. She's not exactly on earth as we know it. But neither am I right now. There's a lift. She's on the sixth floor.
The lift door opens. Mary is there, dripping blood, with Mildred Lawson bending over her trying to make her sign a contract. No. I'm not letting Mary make the same mistake I just made. My first shot goes wide, but the second one takes her between the eyes. I've got her attention now and she's coming for me. But at the last moment, Mary stabs her with the pen she's just been handed and she dissipates into mist.
No time to even try to make sense of that. Mary's got a massive hole in her leg. She need a hospital right now. Good thing she's not heavy. I get her into the lift, press the only button and hope like hell it takes us somewhere else while I try to stop the bleeding with some bandages Mary's torn off her clothes. The bleeding slows, but the pen she was holding falls from her grasp and somehow sucks up the blood that's dripped onto the floor. She grabs it, and shoves it and the contract into different pockets. Then the doors slide open, and we're in a hospital. I shout for help, and Mary's whisked away.
I've been sitting quietly trying to calm down when I see a familiar face. Nathan. Seems he wants to talk. Seems he's had as bad a day as Mary has. He suggests we make each other emergency contacts. Not the worst idea. He's got a burner phone for Mary as well. We swap numbers and add them to the new phone. We need to talk once he's out of here. I visit Mary to give her the phone and tell her the same thing. She's too out of it on morphine by then to talk sensibly, but I tell her to call me when she's ready to leave and I'll come and pick her up.
One last bit of business to attend to before then. Calling Beatrice. She's ecstatic. Damian's been revealed as a fraud, and she's getting compensation. Paying my bill is no longer a problem. I've probably made the biggest fuck up of my life signing that contract but at least I kept my word to Beatrice.
A few days later I get the call from Mary. She's still on crutches, so the scooter's no good. I pick her up in an Uber, and Nathan helps me get her up the stairs to my flat. It's time to compare notes. Mary wants to know if Nathan remembers her being part of the cult. Seems her brother remembers things very differently. Nathan remembers that there were kids there. But he's not sure about her. He doesn't even remember Milly Lawson having children.
I tell them my story. Finding Lily-Rose, still looking like she did when I last saw her. Following Damian, which I was doing for work and not being weird, and watching him in the brothel, which again is a totally normal thing I do for work because I follow cheating spouses and sometimes have to take photos of people doing...stuff. But not ripping their skin off. Nathan thinks I mean the flayed corpse we saw at Paradise Gardens, so I have to explain about the spider creature. And that I signed the contract.
Mary thinks she can get more answers if she calls upon her mother. Not on the phone. Some other way. And she gets an answer. The room turns black. It's still morning, but it's pitch black, and now I can hear something. A gurgling, sucking sound coming from the doorway. What the fuck has she invited into my flat? I can hear it moving closer. And then it speaks, using Mary's voice because it has no voice of its own. Closer. And now I can see it even in the darkness. It's Lily-Rose.
Not the way I remember her. Her throat is slashed and dripping blood, and she's covered in occult looking symbols branded into her skin. She says we can ask questions, but we have to be fast. I can barely move, let alone speak. This is what people mean by paralysed by fear. One of the others, I don't know who, asks about the contracts. We shouldn't sign. She's very clear. And finally I get my mouth to work. What happens if I already signed?
Then I'm already damned.
It's several days later when I manage to start pulling some remnant of Isabella May back together. I look up from my bed and find myself looking at the whiteboard. A photo of Lily-Rose as I remember her, smiling down at me. I can't. Not now. Take it all down. Neatly this time. Everything tidy in a box. Empty board back on the wall. Then I survey the rest of the flat.
It's a while since it's been this bad. I've managed to eat something, but that just means rotting food and flies. I've managed to get into my pyjamas but not out of them again. And I've wasted what energy I had dealing with the whiteboard. Time to bite the bullet and ask for help. At least Raven can probably get a poem out of this.
Or could, if he was answering my text. I'm going to have to actually go and knock. But that means I'm going to have to actually step outside my front door, and right now that seems like the hardest thing in the world. Wait. No. I am Isabella fucking May and I am not going to be defeated by my own goddam front door.
Raven doesn't answer.
Now I'm worried. Where the fuck are my lockpicks? I can't handle this alone. So I text Beatrice. She's worried too. Apart from me dropping off the face of the earth, she hasn't seen Raven in two days. She's on her way.
Mary texts me while I'm waiting. She wants to meet up again. She's the last person I want to see right now, but it must be important. I'll meet her. So long as she doesn't do that again.
Beatrice arrives and I suddenly realise how this looks. Raven's dealt with this shit before. Beatrice has never seen me on a really bad day before, and can't hide her look of disgust. She asks for the marigolds, throws me a pair, and we get to work.
It doesn't take long. She cranks up Guns N' Roses while we're working, but when we're done she switches it off and starts asking for an explanation. What am I supposed to tell her? That I found Lily, twice, and both of them were wrong? She's not letting it go. So I tell her what I can. That I've met up with some old friends from the cult, and that I'm seeing old cultists everywhere and they're messing with me. She thinks I should call the police, of course. That's what I'd tell someone else to do. I don't know how to explain. I can tell Nathan and Mary all the crazy shit because they know what's up, but if I tell Beatrice I sold my soul to a spider demon in exchange for her safety she'll have me sectioned.
Finally she realises she's pushing too far and lets it go. We've got another problem. Raven. Beatrice prompts me. Where do I start with looking for a missing person? Depends on the person. A coked-up wannabe poet? Well, he's a dealer, so there's whoever he buys from, and the people he sells to, any of whom could be pissed off with him for some reason. Either way, the first place to look is his flat. Thankfully Beatrice has found my lockpicks and can't wait to see me do my thing. I ignore the fact she's watching me and take my time. We're in.
The place has been trashed, and that's really bad. Raven's even more of a neat freak than I am, and he doesn't have bad days like I do. What the hell happened here? Beatrice finds a vinyl record snapped in half. And then I notice something else. Scorch marks. Scorch marks around the mirror.
I don't know what it means. But I'm sure Raven's in trouble. And I have to find him.
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