Finn gave her a guilty look. “Kind of. I mean, me and Dad still train a lot, but now I’ve nothing to use the moves on.”
“Welcome to my life,” said Emmie.
“He doesn’t like to show it, but I think Dad’s bored too,” said Finn. “He spent weeks on the Infested Side and, even though all that time he just sat there, waiting to escape, it was still like nothing anybody had done before. Well, nobody except Niall Blacktongue, but no one likes to talk about that.”
“At least people know he went to the Infested Side,” said Emmie. “I’m back at school in the city and no one there has a clue what I did. They just think I was away for a while with my dad’s work, but they have no idea what he really does.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That he’s a travelling DJ.”
“What?” laughed Finn.
“I didn’t know what else to say,” she said. “And it sounded kind of cool.”
“DJ Steve.”
“Hmm. Maybe not so cool.”
Finn threw a green sweet into his mouth.
“Anyway,” Emmie said, “you must be all set for the Completion Ceremony, right? It’ll be a big deal. The whole Legend Hunter world is going to be watching.”
Discomfort immediately contorted Finn’s face.
“Sorry,” Emmie said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No,” he grimaced. “Be careful of those green stripy sweets. They’re really sour.”
She laughed at that. He swallowed the offending sweet with an anguished wince.
“Oh, I wish they’d go away,” said Finn, nodding towards a couple of Half-Hunters across the street, irritating locals by taking pictures of every hole in a wall.
“Maybe we can sign another autograph.”
Finn grimaced at the thought. “Or maybe we can get out of here before they spot us,” he said, pushing himself up and heading away from the obelisk.
They darted round a corner, across a couple of narrow alleys with walls that rose high over them and were topped with whatever sharp objects might keep a Legend out. But here and there were gaps, where nails or broken glass had fallen free and not yet been replaced by whoever lived behind the walls. There had been no Legends in a while. The people of Darkmouth were growing a little too used to that.
Down a cobbled lane, Finn and Emmie encountered a couple of Half-Hunters in fur coats rushing excitedly to the spot where Mr Glad’s shop used to be. It had been gutted by fire on the night Mr Glad had turned on Hugo, nearly destroying the town as a result. That was almost a year ago now, but to Finn it was beginning to feel like a lifetime away. It was certainly long enough that the shop had since been rebuilt as a hairdresser’s. Those Half-Hunters in furs would leave not with pictures of the lair of an infamous traitor, but of Snippy Snips.
“Down here,” Finn suggested, and the two of them slunk along an adjoining laneway, in and out of the town’s maze of streets, until they squeezed through a gap and on to the strand close to the slumped remnants of the cliffs. Surrounded by busy Half-Hunters in boiler suits, a scaffold was rising from the ground. It was a stage, still just a half-formed skeleton of steel rods, with huge rectangular pieces of floor leaning against them ready to be put in place.
“Is that it?” Emmie asked.
Finn nodded. This was the place where, the following night, he would become Complete. No matter how incomplete he felt.
“Is that a cannon up there?” said Emmie, looking closer.
“Apparently so,” confirmed Finn.
“And over there, in those tubes?”
“Fireworks,” said Finn, not even looking at them.
“That’ll be enough of a racket to, like, wake the dead,” said Emmie.
“I wouldn’t mind a bit of Legend Hunting,” said Finn. “It’s just becoming a Legend Hunter in front of everyone that I’m not so keen on.”
That triggered something in Finn, and he reached in under his hoodie to withdraw a silver chain. On the end was a cylindrical locket, an ornate swirling pattern on its case surrounding a small window that revealed sparkling scarlet dust within. “Do you still have yours?” he asked.
Emmie pulled out an identical locket from beneath her jacket. Inside was dust and sand, the last pulverised remains of the crystals they’d found in the cave before it was destroyed. Finn’s dad had presented one to each of them, as a reminder of what they’d been through together. “It was nice of your dad to give us these,” she said.
“I know,” said Finn. “For my last birthday he got me a box of spanners. But I think his time on the Infested Side has mellowed him a bit. He’s softer on me too. Some of the time.”
“Even my dad wears his locket,” said Emmie. “Although he says it itches a bit.”
“It does itch,” admitted Finn, rubbing at the front of his neck.
“It’s better to be itchy than dead,” Emmie smiled. “Or worse.”
“Yeah. Suppose.” Finn pushed the locket inside his clothes, tilted his head back to shake out the last sticky shards of sweets from the paper bag. A couple of them fell into his nostrils, irritating his nose. He sneezed.
Down the road, away from the strand, they heard the screech of a car, the growl of an engine.
“Since the Infested Side, my sneezes can, you know, set things off. My parents look at me funny if I get annoyed about anything, like I might blow up the kitchen,” Finn said. The car engine grew louder. “But this is a new one.”
The growling grew nearer, and a moment later a large black block of a car hurriedly took the corner.
“It’s Dad,” said Finn.
The car pulled up in front of them. The tinted window on the passenger side whirred down and Hugo leaned towards them.
“Get in,” he said urgently. “Something’s happened at the hotel.”
Finn, Emmie and Hugo stood at the entrance to the hotel room. Dust still swam in the air from where the door had been roughly pushed open.
But the dust was not what they were looking at.
“I should never have reopened this place,” the hotel owner said, pushing in between them. Mrs Cross held a fluffy yellow towel, or at least half of one, torn raggedly. “But I was begged to. Pushed into it. Convinced it’d only be a few days and they’d be no bother. But it’s been only bother from the start. All I’ve had is complaints since your lot started arriving here. The beds are too soft. The pillows too feathery. The shampoo smells too fruity. And now this.”
From downstairs came the ting of the reception bell. She ignored it. Instead, she pointed at something very strange in the air.
Finn’s father stepped forward to examine it. On the far side of the room, just to the side of a narrow window, about two metres off the ground but fixed and unmoving, was a scar in the air. Three gouges, as if great cracked nails had clawed at empty space.
Ting, ting went the reception bell downstairs.
Hugo