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“I quite like lessons,” said Bod. “If you paid more attention to yours, you wouldn’t have to
blackmail younger kids for pocket money.”
Nick’s brow crinkled. Then he said, “You’re dead, Owens.”
Bod shook his head, and he gestured around him. “I’m not actually,” he said. “They are.”
“Who are?” said Mo.
“The people in this place,” said Bod. “Look. I brought you here to give you a choice—”
“You didn’t bring us here,” said Nick.
“You’re here,” said Bod. “I wanted you here. I came here. You followed me. Same thing.”
Mo looked around nervously. “You’ve got friends here?” she asked.
Bod said, “You’re missing the point, I’m afraid. You two need to stop this. Stop behaving
like other people don’t matter. Stop hurting people.”
Mo grinned a sharp grin. “For heaven’s sake,” she said to Nick. “Hit him.”
“I gave you a chance,” said Bod. Nick swung a vicious fist at Bod, who was no longer
there, and Nick’s fist slammed into the side of the gravestone.
“Where did he go?” said Mo. Nick was swearing and shaking his hand. She looked around
the shadowy cemetery, puzzled. “He was here. You know he was.”
Nick had little imagination, and he was not about to start thinking now. “Maybe he ran
away,” he said.
“He didn’t run,” said Mo. “He just wasn’t there anymore.” Mo had an imagination. The
ideas were hers. It was twilight in a spooky churchyard, and the hairs on the back of her neck
were prickling. “Something is really, really wrong,” said Mo. Then she said, in a higher-pitched
panicky voice, “We have to get out of here.”
“I’m going to find that kid,” said Nick Farthing. “I’m going to beat the stuffing out of
him.” Mo felt something unsettled in the pit of her stomach. The shadows seemed to move
around them.
“Nick,” said Mo, “I’m scared.”
Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that
they’re scared for the fear to become real. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too.
Nick didn’t say anything. He just ran, and Mo ran close on his heels. The streetlights were
coming on as they ran back towards the world, turning the twilight into night, making the
shadows into dark places in which anything could be happening.
They ran until they reached Nick’s house, and they went inside and turned on all the lights,
and Mo called her mother and demanded, half crying, to be picked up and driven the short
distance to her own house, because she wasn’t walking home that night.
Bod had watched them run with satisfaction.
“That was good, dear,” said someone behind him, a tall woman in white. “A nice Fade,
first. Then the Fear.”
“Thank you,” said Bod. “I hadn’t even tried the Fear out on living people. I mean, I knew
the theory, but. Well.”