The one person he wished it wasn’t.

“I have to go,” he said, and turned towards the door.

“Hey!” shouted Julian. He stepped forward and took hold of his son’s arm. Jamie turned his head and stared down at the hand until his father released his grip and stepped back.

“What?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”

“This isn’t how I wanted this to go, son,” said Julian. “This isn’t what I wanted at all.”

Jamie laughed, incredulous. “Even now?” he said. “Even now, what you want is all you care about.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” said Julian, his face reddening. “You know it isn’t. Why are you making this so hard?”

“And now you’re blaming me?” asked Jamie, his voice a low hiss. “You actually have the balls to stand there and blame me for this? You did this, Dad. You did it all on your own. I don’t know why you’ve decided to reappear now, and I don’t know what you want from me, but I have to go. Now.”

Julian stared at him. “Don’t you even want to know how I did it?” he asked. “How I faked my death?”

“I couldn’t give less of a shit,” said Jamie. “And I’ll tell you something else, something that you can think about when I’m gone and you’re on your own again. I’m ashamed to be your son. Do you hear me? Ashamed.”

The red in Julian’s face darkened. “That’s enough, Jamie,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t care what’s happened, or how angry you’re feeling right now. I am still your father and you will not speak to me like that.”

Jamie laughed again, a sharp grunt of derision, and turned to the door. Again, his father stepped forward and took hold of his arm, and Jamie felt heat burst into his eyes as his self-control finally failed him. He spun, eyes blazing, fangs gleaming, and shoved his father away, hard. Julian was thrown across the room, slammed against the wall, and landed in a heap on the floor. He stared up at his son with a face full of terror, the expression of a man who is watching his worst nightmare come true before him. Jamie stepped into the air and floated above the carpet, fixing his father with his terrible crimson gaze.

“I never want to see you again,” he growled. “Do you hear me? Never.”

His father’s face crumpled. Tears brimmed in the corners of his eyes.

“You’re my son,” managed Julian, his voice barely audible.

Jamie’s eyes darkened. “Fuck you,” he said, then turned and flew through the door of the cottage. He swept down the path, ignoring the sobbing sounds behind him, and flew back towards the idling SUV. He could see Frankenstein behind its wheel; the monster was staring through the windscreen, his face set in a stern line.

He knew, thought Jamie. He knew what I was going to find out, but he brought me here anyway.

For a moment, his heart softened towards the man who had sworn to protect him and his family, as he considered the position his father’s actions must have put Frankenstein in, particularly once the monster became acquainted with Jamie and his mother. But then the cold reappeared, freezing his heart solid.

He should have told me. I don’t care what he swore. He shouldn’t have left me in the dark.

Jamie reached the SUV and tapped on the passenger window. Frankenstein looked round, and wound it down.

“Is everything OK?” he asked.

“No,” said Jamie, and heard the catch in his voice. “But I think you already knew that, didn’t you?”

A grimace crossed the monster’s face. “What happened?”

“I know you knew,” said Jamie. “Please don’t deny it.”

“I’m not going to.”

“You helped him fake his death.”

“Yes.”

“And it was you that told him about Lindisfarne. About what happened to me and my mother.”

“Yes,” said Frankenstein. His face was very still, his grey-green skin paler than usual, his eyes locked on Jamie’s.

“So when you rescued me from Alexandru,” said Jamie, “you knew my father wasn’t dead, even then. You knew I hadn’t watched him die, and you never told me. Never told my mum.”

A look of immense pain creased the monster’s face. “I couldn’t, Jamie,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “I couldn’t do that to you. You have to understand.”

Jamie felt the block of ice in his chest crack sharply. Pain bloomed out of it, accompanied by a profound sense of loss, of awful, bitter grief.

“I do,” he said, and blinked away sudden tears. “So I want you to understand something. You and I are done. I want you to stay away from me.”

He tore his gaze away from the monster, leapt off the ground, and accelerated into the sky, desperate to leave everything, and everyone, behind.

Kate Randall took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the Security Division, trying to slow her racing heart.

It was ridiculous, she tried to tell herself, to be nervous about entering the wide suite of desks and offices that had essentially become her home in the months since she had accepted the offer to join Blacklight; her office had come to feel like a sanctuary, as chaos and darkness raged around the Department, and the Division contained men and women she would have readily trusted with her life.

But now the Division had changed.

Major Paul Turner, who had for a number of years been the Blacklight Security Officer and Kate’s immediate boss, was now Director of the entire Department, having been promoted following the loss of Cal Holmwood on the gravel surrounding Château Dauncy. Paul was unquestionably the right choice and, as a serving Operator, Kate was delighted; she had no doubt that he would lead the Department with the same bravery and dedication that had characterised his entire Blacklight career. But on a personal level, she was far less thrilled; she and Turner had become close over the preceding months, tied together by an unswerving commitment to the Security Division, by the punishing ordeal that had been ISAT, and by red-raw grief over the death of Shaun, who had been both Major Turner’s son and Kate’s boyfriend.

Inside Blacklight, Kate had found friends, Larissa Kinley, Jamie Carpenter and Matt Browning foremost among them, and she was grateful; she trusted them implicitly. But if she was completely honest with herself, which she always tried to be, it had been Paul Turner she had come to rely on most heavily, and her heart was racing because she was no longer sure that would be possible.

Kate stepped into the familiar hum of voices and activity that always filled the Security Division and made her way through the clusters of desks, nodding to colleagues as she passed, her eyes focused on the door of the office that belonged to the Security Officer. It was next to her own, a proximity that had given rise to a number of unkind comments in the early days of her transfer to Security, in the aftermath of ISAT. She knew that there had been plenty of whispered insults, accusations that she was Paul Turner’s pet, that she was given special treatment because she had been his dead son’s girlfriend. She had never confronted the charges, and done her best never to show how much they hurt her; she knew that Turner had treated her favourably, that she had become his most trusted Lieutenant in the Division – perhaps even the entire Department – but she did not believe that it had all been about Shaun. She was, all arrogance aside, a damn good Operator, and damn good at her job.

The new Security Officer was Angela Darcy, and Kate would never, even for a moment, have disagreed with her selection – not only was she personally one of Kate’s favourite people in the Loop, she was a genuinely outstanding Operator, one whose record more than justified her promotion, and Kate was looking forward to working with her. They had been scheduled to meet the following morning, as part of Angela’s first official day as Security Officer, but Kate was eager to get the formalities over with. She reached the door, took a deep breath, and knocked sharply on it.