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  He nodded.

  “A demon?” she said again.

  “Yes,” JD said. “Demon.”

  “Come on. Is this like some weird reality TV show?”

  “No, fighting demons is our job.”

  “Fighting demons? Running around with swords?” She gestured at the weapon in JD’s hands. “But you’re a…a boy band.” Milly stared at them all. “This has to be a joke.”

  “Does that look like a joke?” JD said, pointing to the body.

  Milly looked like he’d slapped her. She covered her mouth with her hand. “No, no it doesn’t. Poor Alice. I should have done something…I should have done anything.”

  JD knew how she felt.

  “There was nothing you could have done,” said Tom. “You were right to message us.”

  Niv dragged his index and middle finger across the back of his left wrist.

  “What?” JD said.

  “The police? Yeah, I called them too,” Milly said.

  “They’ll be here soon,” Connor said. “We have to go, like now.”

  Niv pushed his brother aside and pointed at Milly, his brow creased. Then, his palms open and facing each other, he made rotating circular movements with his hands.

  “Yes. My father was deaf.”

  “What’s going on?” JD said.

  “Um, I think Milly may know sign language,” Zek said.

  Niv started signing frantically, a huge grin on his face.

  “Whoa, slow down,” Milly said. “Can you repeat that? I’m a bit out of practice.”

  Niv did, slower this time.

  “Well, it’s not really amazing. I think sign language should be taught in all schools.”

  Niv threw his hands up in the air and nodded like a bobble-headed dog. He signed again, shaking his head and pointing at Zek.

  “But, if your brother doesn’t understand it then…”

  “Ha ha,” Zek said, grabbing his brother’s hands. “Of course I understand it. Niv is just messing with you, aren’t you, Niv?” He fixed his brother with a stern glare.

  JD didn’t know what was going on between Zek and Niv, but he was suddenly embarrassed. He knew the odd word that Niv signed, but he’d never bothered to learn properly, he just relied on Zek to do all the translating. And yet this girl could understand his friend perfectly.

  “We don’t have time for this,” JD said. “The police are on their way and we need to leave. Here’s how it’s going to go. When they get here, you say you heard screaming and locked yourself in your room. You tell them you saw nothing and heard nothing. Then you’re going to go and stay with someone and not come back here.”

  Milly dropped the bat. “You’re going to leave me?” She looked at Tom. JD could practically hear Tom’s heart melting.

  “Maybe we don’t have—” Tom started.

  “Yes we do.” JD cut him off. He and Tom stared at each other, a conversation as silent and yet as flowing as Niv’s going on between the two of them. They knew each other so well that they didn’t need words to make themselves understood.

  “But she’s seen us,” Tom said finally.

  JD looked back at the girl. Could they trust her to keep their secret?

  Niv tapped his shoulder and showed him a read-out on his phone. The police car was at the top of the road. They had two minutes to get out. He’d have to take the chance. Even if she told, who would believe her? He pulled his mask and goggles back on and turned to go.

  “Wait,” the girl said.

  JD felt himself tense.

  “Maybe…I can be useful?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude—” JD said, without turning around.

  “But you’re going to be anyway,” Zek muttered.

  JD ignored Zek and turned back to face the girl. “But exactly what use could you be?”

  “I have information. I heard them talking.”

  Niv tapped at his wrist. They had less than a minute before the police arrived.

  “Go on.”

  “I’ll tell you on one condition.” She paused, looking from boy to boy. “You take me with you.”

  JD stared at the girl through his goggles. She was small, her hair was a mess and her eyes were red from crying, but she looked determined.

  He heard the whoop-whoop of a police car. He had to make his mind up now. Leave her here and take the chance she could blow their cover? Take her and risk her finding out even more about them? He knew what Gail would do.

  “Okay, but we leave now.”

  “My phone,” she said. “I must have dropped it upstairs.”

  “No time.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her out the door. The boys followed close behind.

  “Where are we going?” Milly said as he bundled her into the jeep.

  “Agatha,” Tom said, sliding into the seat next to her.

  JD jumped into the passenger seat with Connor beside him as the twins squeezed in the back.

  Blue lights flashed. The police were almost here.

  “Who’s Agatha?” she said.

  “Just you wait,” Connor said, slamming the jeep into reverse and hitting the accelerator. “You’re gonna love her.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Tom said, showing Milly onto the bus.

  The first thing that hit Milly was the smell. Unsurprising really, given five boys lived here. She hadn’t been in too many boys’ bedrooms in her time, but she had been shoved into the boys’ locker rooms in one of her schools and this didn’t smell that different. Sweaty socks, deodorant and musty damp.

  “Um, wait here,” Tom said, holding up a finger and stopping her from going any further. He ran down the aisle, pulling discarded underpants off the seats and kicking shoes under the bunk beds at the back of the bus. He turned around and faced her from the end of the aisle, his cheeks tinged pink. “Sorry, we’re not used to company.”

  “It’s lovely,” Milly said, taking in the interior. The bus was lined with dark wood and tan leather and, other than the mess, looked more like a yacht than a bus. There were four flat-screen TVs lined up on one wall; game consoles; speaker systems. Three electric guitars rested on the sofas and a keyboard was built into the countertop. It was every teenage boy’s dream.

  “It’s our home from home,” Connor said, grabbing hold of a bar and starting to do chin-ups.

  JD hadn’t said much on the journey here but Milly had felt his annoyance the whole way. He made Milly feel so awkward; too aware of what she was wearing or what her hair was doing. She found herself fussing at her messy fringe every time he bothered to look her way. He was so different to Tom, who was doing his best to make her feel at ease.

  “Can I get you anything, Milly?” Tom asked, leading her to a comfortable chair and encouraging her to sit down. “A drink? Food? We have pretty much anything you can imagine.” Tom had stuck by Milly’s side since they’d left the house and she was glad of it.

  “No thanks, I’m…”

  She was going to say fine, but that seemed so wrong. She kept expecting to break down any second. But for now, all she felt was dazed. Like none of this was real. Maybe that was because it was all a dream and she would wake up from it any moment. That would make sense. Because a world-famous boy band turning up and saving her from demons did not.

  “You must be Lyudmila.”

  She looked up to see a tall woman walking down the aisle of the bus towards her. The woman had a glittering eyepatch and short hair, shaved on one side and longer on the other, and glowing, ebony skin. Her one visible eye was ringed in heavy eyeliner and she wore skinny black jeans and a baggy black vest that revealed a purple lotus flower tattoo across her shoulder. She must have been at least Milly’s mother’s age, but there was something youthful about the way she carried herself, despite the walking stick.

  “Milly. Most people call me Milly.”

  “I’m Gail.” She reached out a hand covered in silver rings. Milly took it, expecting a handshake, but instead Gail pulled her into a tight hug.

 
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re safe now.”

  The temptation to stay in that hug and cry and cry was so strong, but Milly forced herself to push away. If she started crying now, she didn’t think she would ever stop.

  Gail gave her a last squeeze that seemed to say the hug would still be there when she needed it and let Milly go. “Welcome to our home. Excuse the mess – I sleep at the back, the boys sleep in this pigsty.” She waved around at the bus. “I have taught them to fight demons but apparently tidying up after themselves would take a miracle.”

  “Um, yeah, about that…” Milly said.

  “Of course, you must have a lot of questions,” Gail said, gesturing for Milly to take a seat.

  She was grateful to take the weight off her shaking legs. “I don’t even know where to start. I guess, well, what are demons?”

  “Good question. In religious texts they’re seen as evil spirits or fallen angels. Some scholars referred to them as the embodiment of all that is dark in humanity. Those of us who have to fight the things? All we know for sure is that they come from a place called the Netherworld.”

  “The demon dimension,” Connor chipped in.

  “It’s said there was a time when humans and demons lived side by side, in relative harmony. But it wasn’t long before the demons tried to enslave humanity. The humans fought back using powerful magic long since forgotten, which blasted the demons out of their bodies and sent their spirits back to the Netherworld.”

  “Pow!” Connor said, miming blasting an energy ball out of his hands.

  “That’s why they have no physical form of their own in the human world,” Tom said. “They look like shadows. For demons to operate here, they have to possess a human host.”

  “Like my mother?”

  Tom nodded.

  “So is there a way to get the demon out of her? Like, an exorcism or something?”

  Milly watched as the boys and Gail all looked from one to another.

  JD was the only one willing to speak. “Your mother is dead.”

  “JD!” Tom and Gail said in unison.

  “What? She needs to know. What’s the point in wasting any more time?”

  “What JD is trying so very badly to explain”, Tom said, “is that the moment the demon took over your mother’s body, her…well I guess what you might call her soul, was lost. And once a demon takes possession there’s no coming back.”

  Milly covered her face with her hands. She remembered watching that black smoke invade her mother. She’d known then really, even if she wasn’t willing to believe it, that her mother was dead.

  “Aliens,” she muttered through her hands.

  “What?” Zek asked.

  Milly dropped her hands and looked up. “I thought she’d been taken over by aliens.”

  “I wish,” Connor said, launching himself into the air and landing on a nearby sofa. “Aliens would be well cool.”

  Niv clipped him around the back of the head.

  “So demons are real and they go around possessing people?” Milly said, pushing down her grief and focusing on the facts. “But why?”

  “What do you mean?” Tom asked.

  “I mean why? What do they want?”

  “The same thing many humans want,” Gail said. “Power. Some believe…” Gail hesitated, as if not sure that Milly was ready to hear everything. “Some believe that they’re trying to find a way to get back to our world. To finish what they started before and enslave humanity.”

  “Never going to happen,” JD said, opening a fridge and pulling out a bottle of water.

  “You sure about that, Jay?” Zek said, grabbing the water out of JD’s hands so he had to get a second one.

  “Deadly sure,” he said, twisting the lid off the bottle. “Because we’ll stop them.”

  “Damn straight we will!” Connor said, holding his hand up for a high five. JD left him hanging.

  “So that’s what you do?” Milly asked. “You…fight demons?”

  “We try,” Tom said.

  Milly looked from boy to boy, shaking her head. “But…but why you? Isn’t there, like, a department for demon-killing?”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Zek said. “We should set it up. And get badges – I’ve always wanted badges.”

  “Because adults are too easily corrupted by demons,” Tom said. “Too susceptible to promises of fame or fortune. Most adults, anyway.” He smiled at Gail.

  “When it comes to going up against evil, the more pure-hearted the person, the better chance they have of withstanding the demonic influence.”

  “Okay then, but the boy band?”

  “We needed a cover,” Tom said. “An excuse to travel all around the world, following the trails left by demons.”

  “Plus, the money is useful,” Zek said, looking at his perfectly manicured nails. “There’s not much money in demon hunting. So it was either boy band or international jewel thieves. I voted for thieves but I got overruled.”

  Milly sat back in her seat. None of this made any kind of sense. But she had left sense behind, along with the rest of her life. “This is crazy, you realize that? Completely and utterly crazy.”

  The boys winced.

  “What?” Milly asked, realizing she’d said something wrong.

  “We try not to use the word ‘crazy’ around here,” Tom said, looking over at Gail.

  “That’s okay,” Gail said, smiling softly. “Now, Milly, it’s our turn for questions.”

  “Oh, yes, right.” The only reason they’d agreed to take her with them. “What do you want to know?”

  “Start by telling us about your mother.”

  Milly took a deep steadying breath. She could feel the tears and rage threatening to break through, and she willed them away. For now, she was going to focus on what was in front of her. “Where to start? She is…I mean, I guess, she was an opera singer. She used to be a pretty big deal. The lead soprano for the Opéra de Paris, jetting all over the world. She met my dad in London, had me and just kept going. Berlin, Sydney, New York. Then when Dad died she had to look after me on her own. Well, it wasn’t easy for her.” Milly swallowed hard, trying to fight back the pressure of tears in her throat. “The jobs stopped coming, the phones stopped ringing. She managed to get a few chorus jobs at the English National Opera, till she had another falling out with the director. Then she got a new manager and things started to change.”

  “What do you know about this manager?”

  “Absolutely nothing except his name: Mourdant.”

  “The demon dude in the silver suit?” Zek said.

  “That’s him.”

  “And he knew us,” JD said.

  “What do you mean?” Gail turned to face JD.

  “He said that he’d been watching us, that he offered you some deal that you refused.”

  “Wait, silver suits? Does he wear sunglasses indoors?”

  “Ding-ding-ding! That’s the scumbag,” Zek said.

  “I…I had no idea he was a demon. I thought he was just a creep manager trying to get a slice of the action. How could I have missed that?”

  “He was seriously powerful. Like, boss-level powerful,” Zek said.

  “Hmm,” Gail said, clearly annoyed with herself. “Now, Milly, I need you to tell us everything about your mother’s possession.”

  “I…don’t know what I saw. I was so scared. And I think the champagne Mourdant gave me might have been drugged. It’s all so foggy.”

  “Try your hardest to remember.”

  Milly took another deep breath and relayed what had happened as best she could, describing the way Mourdant had forced her mother to stab Alice, how she had carved something into her own arm…

  “That symbol was to give the demon permission to possess her,” Gail said.

  Milly rubbed at her own arm in the place her mother had carved the mark, just above her wrist. “I don’t think she knew what she was doing, not really.”

  “They never do,” JD sai
d.

  “But if the symbol was all Mourdant needed, then why kill Alice?”

  “Some more powerful summonings require a sacrifice in order to bind the demon soul to the body. Often demons use animals: chickens, goats and the like. But when they want to summon something really powerful, well…”

  Milly swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat. How could her mother have agreed to this? Even though she’d tried to stop it when it came to it, she must have known what was at stake. Milly knew she had been desperate to become famous again, but she hadn’t realized just how desperate.

  “What happened, after the possession?” Gail said.

  “She was…different. And so was Mourdant. Before, he’d been the one calling the shots, but after he got down on his knees and bowed to her. Called her Zyanya, Priestess of Tes…” Milly racked her brain, trying to remember the word. “Tescat something. I didn’t understand the word, but it gave me the serious creeps.” Milly wrapped her arms around her body. It was warm in the bus, but she couldn’t stop shivering.

  “A demon priestess,” Tom said. “That…that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Gail said. “Milly said herself she wasn’t sure what she heard.”

  “She also said she had information,” JD snapped, “and she’s hardly told us anything useful.”

  “I…I’m sorry, I can’t remember,” Milly said. Up until now, the boys had looked confident, cocky even. The fearful looks on their faces were starting to scare her.

  “She’s told us more than enough for tonight,” Gail said, fixing JD with a meaningful stare. “We’ll talk more in the morning after some rest. It’s” – she checked her watch – “damn, it’s already morning. Okay, Niv, check the police report from tonight and make sure there’s no mention of Milly. While she’s with us, she’s a ghost. Complete scrubbing of her name from all databases. We can’t have the police looking for her.”

  Niv positioned a keyboard in front of him and started typing.

  “We’ll get back on the trail tomorrow. I’ll push back the meeting with the tech company, and see what I can do about the photo shoot with the coconut water people, but I can’t cancel the radio interview. Milly, make yourself at home. I’ll be in the room in the back if you need me. And, boys, I know I don’t need to tell you about how we treat guests. Especially female ones.” She gave each of the boys a withering stare.