The Illusionists Read online

  ‘Through the Castle you can,’ said the girl as she looked out across the corridor they sat in. ‘I can pull people here from my past. Only ever people I know, though. It’s like the Castle is a mirror of your mind; you can only find things in it that relate to you. You’ve seen the rooms. If you can find the right room with the right person in, you can pull the real person right here, through their dreams, at the point in their life that the room shows you. And, hopefully, I can get them to do things differently. I just have to persuade them. I have to make them see.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘What’s going to happen if they don’t change things.’

  ‘So what’s going to happen?’

  The girl was silent. Rue began to be afraid that she wouldn’t say.

  But then the girl looked at her. The scribbly eyes searched her face. ‘You don’t want to hear this,’ she said. ‘Just remember that I said that. That I warned you.’

  ‘But you’ll tell me anyway.’

  The girl’s mouth twisted, a bitter line. ‘I’m you. You’re me. We might have different pasts now, but I know you. You won’t ever stop wanting to know the truth.’

  Rue was silent.

  ‘Things were different for me,’ said the girl. ‘For a start, Wren never went away from White. When I started at the university, they were already great friends. Best friends. Everyone knew of Wren and White – they were inseparable. And that was the problem.’

  The girl looked down at her hands as she talked.

  ‘But I knew if they fell out, it would give me a chance to separate them. So I started to pull Wren here, when he was younger. Maybe … a year or two ago, now, in your time. We just talked, the first couple of times. He told me things about himself. He was curious about World. He longed for it. I think that’s what binds the Talented more than anything else. We all want to explore. We want it so much we’ve somehow managed to make it so we can, without the inconvenience of physics.’

  Gods, that’s right, thought Rue. That’s it exactly.

  ‘So I told him I could get him to World. I could find people to look after him. All he had to do was leave. But he was reluctant, at first. Because of … because of White. It didn’t take much, though.’

  Rue narrowed her eyes. ‘What does that mean? What did you do?’

  ‘Just … pushed him a bit. Told him some things about White.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Bad things, okay?’ she snapped. ‘It’s not like it took much. Wren was already jealous and paranoid. Look, they needed to be separated! It all goes wrong from there, in my version. Their friendship. That’s where it starts.’

  She leaned back against the corridor wall. Rue saw her visibly swallow.

  ‘You have no idea how powerful they are together,’ she said. ‘And then I came along. I tried to stop them, in the end. I really did. I started to realise what it would all mean. They were the two most Talented people in the world. No one else could have done it. I’m not even sure they could have managed it separately. But together … ’

  ‘What did they do?’ said Rue.

  ‘They worked out how to open the Castle.’

  Rue felt her skin fur as her hair stood on end, delicately rising.

  You don’t want to ask, but you have to. You have to, Rue.

  ‘What happens when the Castle is opened?’ she said.

  The Ghost Girl sat for a long time. Then, finally, her mouth opened and the words fell out like heavy stones.

  ‘Monsters,’ she said. ‘Monsters come. The ones that live here. They break out into the real world. And everyone dies.’

  Rue stared at her. ‘How?’ she said at last.

  ‘They use us as vehicles. Once the Castle is opened, anyone who comes here through their dreams, consciously or not, can be possessed by one of them. And so they come flooding out. Taking hold of us. What they like most of all is to kill things. We thought people were going mad, at first. People who’d never harmed a thing in their lives suddenly turning into murderers. But it’s them, inside us. And you can imagine what starts to happen once people in positions of power are taken over.’

  ‘Is that … Is that what’s happening to you right now? In your future?’

  ‘It’s already happened. There aren’t … There aren’t many of us left. I tried to stop it. I tried.’

  Her voice had faded to a scratching whisper.

  ‘What happened to White and Wren?’ said Rue. A horrible suspicion began to grow.

  The girl shook her head.

  Rue stared at her in horror.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He dies? White. Tell me. Does he die?’

  The girl said nothing.

  Rue felt her heart try and crawl its way up her throat.

  ‘That’s what you’re trying to do,’ she said. ‘You’re trying to make it so he never died.’

  ‘I’m trying to make it so no one has to die.’

  ‘Yes. But most of all you’re trying to make it so he doesn’t.’

  The girl didn’t correct her. How hard it was to keep the truth from yourself, when yourself was telling it to you. There was no escape from that.

  Selfish, thought Rue. She’s so selfish.

  That means I am, too.

  ‘So, what?’ said Rue out loud, her voice colder. ‘You’ve been pulling people here, manipulating them. Telling them things that aren’t true. Messing with them. What have you done to try and get him back?’

  The girl scoffed. ‘You make me sound like I’m some sort of master controller, everyone dancing to my tune.’

  ‘Aren’t they?’

  ‘Do you know how hard it is in this place? Do you think I can just easily find a room that gives me the right person, in the right time I need? Do you know what it’s like to hold different futures and pasts in your head at once, and try to decide which one will give you the outcome you want? And then work out a way to get to a room that will give you a point in the right person’s timeline, and pull them here to try to make them do something that might, just might, affect the future? All the while knowing that each visit you can’t take too long, you have to hurry hurry hurry, that you’re forever under a ticking clock, because it’s only a matter of time before the monsters come and find you?’

  Tears had started to slip from her eyes. She didn’t even seem to notice.

  ‘I set up the Talent programme. I visited people in World and persuaded them to do it. I visited Frith in Angle Tar and persuaded him, too. I did it to find White and Wren. How could I make sure they were separated if I didn’t even know where they were? Because I can’t do anything from here. I can’t change anything myself. All I can do is sit in the Castle, pulling people in, talking at them, hoping they might believe me, they might do something for me. Pulling random strings every so often, hoping against hope that the string I’m pulling is doing something useful and not just – oh, I don’t know – killing everyone in the world or screwing up my past so much that I don’t even know which version of me is me any more. I’m terrified of changing things so much that maybe White stops existing any more, or maybe even me. Or maybe we never meet. Do you understand how carefully I have to tread at the same time as having no idea what I’m doing? Do you know what that feels like?’

  She subsided, staring into nothing. ‘The only way I know if I’m having any effect at all is by going back into the real world, your future real world, to see if everyone’s still dead or not.’

  Rue shook her head rapidly. ‘I can’t –’ she faltered. ‘Oh gods. This is impossible. What you’re trying to do is impossible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve been trying to do it alone all this time.’

  Her thin shoulders shrugged, but there was a whole wealth of emotion behind that shrug.

  ‘I could have helped you,’ said Rue. ‘You could have come to me earlier.’

  ‘I had no idea what would happen if I pulled myself here. Can you imagine? I didn’t realise you could come here too with
out both of us … dying or exploding or never existing or something. I had to concentrate on finding White and Wren. There’s just not enough time each visit.’

  She laughed. ‘Not that time means anything here,’ she said.

  She didn’t look like Rue. There was nothing about her that felt like gazing into a mirror. But would anyone recognise themselves if they met another them in disguise? Everyone had the version of themselves they carried around. Was it the true one? Was there such a thing?

  ‘How long have you been coming here? I mean, to try to change the past?’ said Rue.

  ‘I told you. Time doesn’t really have meaning here.’

  ‘But how long for you, in the real?’

  She shrugged. ‘A few weeks.’

  Only weeks. Yet she had affected years’ worth of Rue’s time. Getting Frith to set up the programme. Having a young White recruited, and a young Wren. Then a few years later, persuading Wren to leave Angle Tar. All those little nudges and shifts.

  What would weeks’ worth of wandering around the Castle’s hallways and rooms do to someone?

  ‘How can you spend so long here?’ said Rue. ‘Those things. They come for you, don’t they?’

  ‘Every time, eventually.’

  ‘What are they?’ she half whispered.

  ‘I don’t know. But I think we give them shape. I told you that the Castle is a reflection of our own minds, well … I think they are, too. Who knows what they look like when we’re not here? I’m not sure they have a true form. They’re in-between creatures, just like the Castle is an in-between place.’

  ‘What are you saying? They exist because of us?’

  ‘Maybe. We’re like beacons to them. They like to eat us, but what they want most of all is to leave the Castle. Become flesh. They desire the real world. You should see them, out there right now.’ Her shoulders twitched in a shudder. ‘They love it. Running around, killing. They don’t get much chance to do that penned up in here, but when we opened the Castle we gave them a whole world to eat.’

  Rue felt her skin crawl.

  The girl was gazing out across the corridor.

  ‘One day I just won’t be fast enough, you know?’ she said. ‘The more time you spend here, the more you’ll understand. You start to … want it, somehow. You just stand there and wait for them to come. You have a tiny thought in the back of your mind that wonders what it would be like to just … let it happen.’

  Rue stared at her. ‘That’s called suicide.’

  The girl didn’t reply.

  An awful thought struck Rue.

  ‘If you died,’ she said, ‘would I stop existing, too?’

  ‘Yes. But … I don’t really know.’

  ‘But can the past me exist without the future me? I mean, there’s two of us, right here, right now … ’

  ‘The more you try to understand,’ said the Ghost Girl, ‘the less sense it makes. All I know, all I let myself think about, is that I can change the past from here. One decision at a time. I change my past to change my present. You being able to come here … you talking to me like this … ’ She laughed, a shocked little pant. ‘I had no idea it was even possible. Even now I feel like I’ve made it up. I’m at the end of my rope. I’ve got no options left. I don’t know what else to do. So maybe my mind has made you up to comfort me. Maybe I’m sitting here, talking to myself.’

  ‘Well … you are.’

  The Ghost Girl snorted.

  ‘But’, said Rue, ‘you have changed your past, haven’t you? I mean. You separated White and Wren. So they can’t open the Castle now.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s still open. Every time I go back into the real, I mean … Some things have changed, a little. But not much. Everyone’s still dead. I haven’t stopped it. Somehow, they’ll still open the Castle.’

  ‘Can’t you find a way to close it?’

  ‘Aren’t you listening? It’s too late for that. Closing it now still means they’re dead. I have to change the past so they’re still alive. So that it was never opened.’

  Rue tried to think.

  ‘What if we make it so they can definitely never meet again?’

  ‘And how would we manage that?’

  Rue swallowed. ‘I s’pose you’ve thought of the obvious.’

  The Ghost Girl raised her eyes to Rue’s and her voice was calm.

  ‘Kill one of them?’ she said.

  ‘No!’ said Rue. ‘Just … just Wren.’

  ‘Oh. So he’s more deserving of death than White?’

  Rue was silent. The girl reached out and took her hand.

  ‘I know Wren is more … difficult … in the version I’ve made,’ came her voice. ‘I carry that guilt with me. I try to help him. Because I’m responsible for screwing up his life.’

  ‘No, you’re not. People make their own choices.’

  ‘Yes. But sometimes their choices are limited by their situation. And I changed his situation. More than once.’ She sighed. ‘Would it surprise you if I told you that I loved the Wren I knew?’

  Rue met her eyes, taken aback. She smiled.

  ‘Like a brother. Like an annoying, bratty, brilliant, selfish brother. He was so Talented, Rue. He was like White. You could feel it oozing out of every part of him. He was passionate. They were like fire and ice together. So different but so similar. I loved him.’ She dropped her eyes. ‘You couldn’t take a life. Not if you were really faced with it.’

  ‘Not even to save everyone?’ said Rue.

  ‘Would you kill White to save everyone?’

  Rue stared hard at the ground.

  Would I?

  If I knew it could stop something awful happening?

  ‘No,’ said the Ghost Girl, whisper soft. ‘You wouldn’t. You’d try to find any other way to change it. You’d keep coming to the Castle, spending your whole life here while your body slowly fell apart in the real – keep trying, keep tweaking, keep doing anything rather than that. Separating them was the last chance I had left. Everything else had failed.’

  She snatched her hand back, violent. ‘And it’s still failed. I haven’t changed anything. The Castle will still open. Everyone will still die. I don’t … I don’t know what to do any more.’

  She didn’t even seem upset. Simply hollow, like everything had been scraped out of her and there was nothing left.

  Rue knew. She knew.

  ‘It’s on me now,’ she said.

  I can save it all. I can save him.

  ‘Rue … don’t.’

  ‘I’m not going to kill Wren,’ she snapped. ‘Look, you were right. He’s a git, but I’m not that, am I?’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘The truth,’ said Rue. As soon as she said it, it felt right. It felt good. ‘The truth. No one else has ever told the truth to each other. We’ll talk. We’ll make it right.’

  ‘You can’t bring them together. Don’t bring them together.’

  ‘I won’t. I’ll do it separately.’ She turned to the Ghost Girl. ‘Don’t you see? I’ve got more time than you. Out there in my world, there are no monsters coming for us. I can find them. I can make them see.’

  ‘I don’t know … ’ said the Ghost Girl, reluctantly.

  ‘Have you got a better plan, then?’ Rue replied.

  They looked at each other.

  CHAPTER 22

  WORLD

  WREN

  Rue’s disappearance was a complete and utter disaster.

  That sneaky little country rat. Pretending to be all high and mighty about the truth when she’d been keeping secrets of her own from him. She’d never been able to Jump by herself before. Had she been practising all this time?

  She was almost certainly with Cho. He’d never been to Cho’s apartment building so he couldn’t Jump straight there; instead he had to walk all the way. Not even Rue would be so stupid as to stay there where she could easily be found, but he had to make sure. And maybe he could pick up a lead on where she might be now.

  But t
here was nothing. Cho’s house friends were vague and unhelpful, even after he’d ramped up the charm. He’d managed to get a date with one of them later on that evening, but not one hint as to where Cho might be now, or even if she’d had a visit that day from a girl who looked like Rue. No one noticed anything any more. A fucking herd of elephants could go rampaging past, but as long as people were in Life, they wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

  He could order a location trace on Cho’s implant. But that would have to go through Greta, and she could not know about this.

  Stupid, stupid Greta. Why hadn’t she implanted Rue the moment she’d stepped onto World ground? What was the hold-up? Bureaucracy, she’d probably say if he asked. Bloody useless network of office drones, people who weren’t out in the field, people who wouldn’t know a Talented from a rock. That was one thing about Frith he did miss. The man got things done.

  Wren sat on his bed, rolling the little bottle in his fingers.

  He should be panicking. He should be planning on what the hell to tell Greta once she worked out that Rue was gone.

  But the bottle made everything else so far away, so overwhelmingly insignificant. So Rue was galloping around somewhere. They didn’t really need her. They’d find another way to get White back, if Greta had anything to do with it. And Rue would probably come back to him in a couple of days, anyway, all contrite and embarrassed.

  So Greta would be angry with him. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. But what could she do, really?

  Nothing mattered now that he had this.

  He brought the bottle close to his face.

  It was filled with little pill capsules. Colourless. Dull. The most powerful things often looked like nothing much. Dr Cheever had come through for him. One bottle was all he had managed to get for Wren, but it held enough pills for several trips, if he was modest with the dose. In turn, still riding on shocked ecstasy that it had been so easy, Wren had assured Greta that the technician had not a whiff of Talent about him. Whether she believed him or not would come out in time, he guessed, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. Because he had the upper hand now.