Read Online Falling Apart by Jane Lovering - Free Book Online Page B

driven him out of the building if I’d continued.
    Zan fiddled with the iPad, stroking its casing. ‘Hmm,’ he said, without inflection. A sigh. ‘Why is it that everything connected to you seems to become dangerous, Jessica?’
    â€˜I hope that’s rhetorical.’
    Another sigh. ‘Not really, I was hoping that you may have some profound insight. I really should have known better. We must let things take their course.’
    â€˜In other words, he’s dispensable. You’re not going to try to save him?’
    Zan’s attention floated back to the screen. ‘I very much fear that he has put himself beyond our help, Jessica,’ he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle, for Zan. ‘We must do what we can now to keep the Treaty intact until he is caught and justice is done.’
    He was doing it again, treating me as though I was almost … no, not an equal. Zan considered all forms of life to be mysteriously gregarious and unnecessarily emotional and therefore beneath him. But he was treating me as though I were
important
, somehow, which was only ever going to be true if there was a worldwide filing-related emergency or some kind of Otherworld uprising that could be beaten off with an electric pencil sharpener and a sheaf of expense claim forms.
    â€˜I’d better get out on those mean streets again, then,’ I said, stiffly.
    â€˜Yes. It is essential to keep calm. This kind of thing happens; it is no reason for general panic or lower-class rebellion. And, Jessica?’ he interrupted my attempts at a huffy exit. ‘Remember, it is essential that you keep doing what you do. Do not allow uncertainty to creep in to the general populace. York must hold to the Treaty.’
    â€˜Yes, all right, I know. Cool head, even keel, blah blah.’ And suddenly the streets filled with real, noisy people who didn’t have to wear latex to handle loose change and who didn’t regard receiving e-mails as a violation of their personal space was a much better place to be.
    But I slammed the door on my way out.
    I want my old life back. Even if it does mean wanting Sil but not being able to have him. I want to be human and boring again. I want to have nothing to bitch about but Liam’s odd habits and a lack of HobNobs. I want my best friend to moan to on dull evenings when there’s nothing on TV, and my sister to worry about Mum and Dad with. I want to be able to visit their little house on the moors, surrounded by sheep and brambles, and eat roast dinners and cheat my way out of the washing up.
All those things that had seemed so normal and … well, normal before had suddenly assumed huge, wish-fulfilment size, as though they were all I needed to be happy and skipping around the place like a five-year-old with a new skill to show off.
    Sunken deeply into thought, although nothing too forward-thinking, I didn’t dare allow myself to consider what might happen next. I wandered along by the minster, where not a single Otherworlder was to be seen, through the tourist-jams of Petergate, where a human dressed as Dracula was advertising A Real Vampire Experience – which was, as far as I could tell, mostly standing around in overpriced nightclubs in overpriced Armani suits, trying to pick up girls young enough to be their great, great granddaughters – and my phone vibrated in my pocket as I got a text from Liam.
    My hand went to it and then, as I remembered, stopped.
What if it’s bad news? What if
 …
But my brain couldn’t think any further, collapsing in upon itself with the possibilities, and duty cut in and took over.
    There’s a vamp out of area around the back of the minster. Female, name of Kitty Kelly, urgh, sounds like one of those manga characters, all eyes and tight sweaters.
    I texted back. Okay, watcher-of-way-too-much-TV. On it now.
    I dodged through the minster shop, flashing my library card in lieu of the