HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2010
Text copyright © Jenny Valentine 2010
Jenny Valentine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Source ISBN: 9780007283613
Ebook Edition © August 2013 ISBN: 780007489305
Version: 2015–04–01
For Maikki Ranger, my accidental twin.
CONTENTS
I didn’t choose to be him. I didn’t pick Cassiel Roadnight out of a line-up of possible people who looked just like me. I just let it happen. I just wanted it to be true. That’s all I did wrong, at the beginning.
I was in a hostel, a stop-off for impossible kids in east London somewhere. I’d been there a couple of days, walked in off the streets half-starved, because I had to. They were still trying to get hold of me. They were still trying to find out who I was.
I wasn’t going to tell them.
It was a tired place run by tired people. It smelled of cigarettes and floor polish and soup. They gave me old clothes, washed thin and mended and almost the right size. They asked me lots of questions in return for two meals and a dry place to sleep.
I tried to be grateful, but I didn’t speak to them.
They locked me in a storeroom for fighting. Hot and airless, four pale walls, a shut and rusted filing cabinet, a shelf piled with papers, a stack of chairs.
The boy I fought with was hurt. That’s why I was locked up really, for winning. You’re not allowed to do that. I don’t remember his name. I don’t remember what the fight was about even.
I was in there for over two hours. I wanted to wreck it. I watched myself doing it, somewhere in my head.
I heard one of them coming, saw the wavering, moss-coloured shape of her through the mottled glass of the door. I banged on it hard. She stopped and turned and took a quick breath of her disappointed air.
Her voice was small and jumpy. “What do you want?” she said.
“I want you to let me out.”
“I