LITMIR.BIZ

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I am startled again as I glance up, befuddled. My heart stops; I think it’s Alex. My heart flames with pain; my belly corkscrews.

      I won’t catch the man’s eye, although I can sense he wants to speak. I can’t bear to look at him. He might see what I’m trying so hard to hide, so I turn away again. I find my fists are clenched, nails dug deep into my palms. I twist my hair into a nervous rope, tucking it behind one shoulder. Even in my shadowy reflection I can see the red of it, the flame I can’t escape and –

      I see something else, something beyond the window, out there in the dark. I hold my breath in shock.

      What I see is fear. Pure and undistilled, the face I gaze into is mad with it, big eyes rolling back into the brain until they are all white; a nightmare vision that is in fact quite real. The nostrils flare in panic, the huge teeth bared in a grin of frothing terror, the mane flying in the wind. For one small second snatched in old time, the time that will soon become the time before – the safe time – I find I’m not scared. I want to stretch my hand through the window and smooth the trembling flank; soothe this rearing beast. But then my own terror crashes in around me and I feel very tiny. The horse’s great flailing hooves will surely pierce the coach’s metal side. Frantic, I press back into my seat, trying to flatten myself against the blow.

      The chance to find my voice, to shout a futile warning, has already passed. The lullaby is building to a shriek. The passengers are screaming, have begun to scream as one, because the coach is tilting, tilting on its axis until it cannot right itself again, until finally it topples. It skids across the road in hideous scraping chaos, on its side now – and still the coach keeps moving. I am level with the road; blue sparks fly up from the concrete before me as if a welder were torching the ground. Then I roll, slam hard into a body so all the wind goes out of me.

      I cannot see. My hands flail at the blackness. Panting with terror, I am thrown against some metallic edge. A flash of agonising pain fills my left shoulder as I crack it on what must be the ceiling. A child cries piteously. Someone’s foot grinds into my gut, a fist pummels my mouth in fear. I claw at my face as something oddly intimate drapes itself across me, a mouthful of hair that chokes and sickens me. I struggle to breathe, to let some air in. Any air. I panic that I am blind. We are still moving. Why the hell haven’t we stopped moving?

      A huge whump: the central reservation crumples as the coach crashes through, on its back now. It’s slowing, and someone near me is screaming, they won’t stop screaming, on and on –

      A terrible metallic crack ends the voice. The coach is jerked by force into the fast lane. My head whips forward, then snaps back again. There’s a crunch as the first van hits us head on, and folds: then the next vehicle, then the next. A hot flash up my left leg. Finally there is silence – almost silence. Just a single horn blaring into the complete darkness, then, soon after, another: a petulant electronic chorus. Closer to me, a whimpering that spreads like wildfire. We have finally stopped moving and now there is nothing. Just darkness. Just the sob of my own breath as I clasp myself and wonder: Is this death?

      Contents

       Copyright Title Page Copyright Epigraph AFTER: DECEMBER BEFORE: JUNE Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight A Conversation With Claire Seeber Acknowledgments About the Author By The Same Author About the Publisher

       Chapter One

      ‘Maggie Warren?’

      I am not ready for this.

      I was about to change my mind when the girl came to get me.

      I smiled. Such a false smile, it nearly cracked my face.

      She was a new girl; she must have started after the –

      Since I’d been away. She was confident. Supremely so. More confident than I had ever been at her age. At her stage. She was young and blonde

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