I dial the number and listen to the phone ring on the other end. When he answers, I hand Rachel’s phone over to India. I nod at her reassuringly, urging her to speak to him. To say all the things I have coached her to say.
She looks kind of pathetic, still kneeling on the tarmac of the parking bay, trusting me like a newborn lamb.
She holds the phone in trembling hands, and says in a trembling voice, “Hello, this is India Lawrenson.”
She winces at the sound of his voice on the other end. She clutches my hand. She takes a deep breath and says, “I know what you did. I want you to meet me.”
Her breath is coming out in shallow gasps. I stroke the back of her hand to reassure her. He is speaking to her on the phone and she is listening.
“I need to be able to trust you,” she says. “Tell me your name.”
She listens. She looks at me. I give her a nod of encouragement, reminding her of what I instructed her. She gives a convulsive swallow.
“No. Don’t lie to me,” she says into the phone. “I know that’s not your name. Tell me your real name.”
She listens, and nods. She whispers the name he has told her.
I nod at her, and am careful to hold back a smile of satisfaction. He must want her badly if he was prepared to give up his real name to her.
“I won’t tell anyone what you did,” she says. “I don’t want them to know. I… I just need to see you.”
He’s saying something to her. I can just about make out his tone on the other end of the phone. It is hushed and urgent.
She nods. “I was scared. You frightened me. I didn’t realize what you were. But now I know why you did it, and I understand. Please, I just need to see you. Tell me where to meet you.”
He says something, but she shakes her head. “No. I’m not at the hospital. I came back to the bar to get my memories back. I needed to know what happened to me. And now I remember. Can we meet somewhere near here?”
He says something again, and this time she nods her head. “Yes,” she says. “Yes I can meet you there.”
She hangs up the phone. She wipes her tears away. She looks exhausted, her eyes slightly blank, as if she has been through a great ordeal. “He fell for it.” She gives me the address that he asked her to meet him at.
It takes me an hour to get rid of her, and to get back to the address that he had wanted to meet India at. It is an abandoned building, the shop in Shoreditch that she had been caged in. It is within the perimeter of the places that the Agency had searched, but this particular shop must have escaped the list. It is a small private property. Empty now.
I have arrived fifteen minutes before he is due to meet India here, but I approach it warily, aware that he may already be there watching me. I see no signs that he is there, no car outside, but I still take care to tread quietly as I go down the alley that runs along the side of the shop, following the route that India had told me she had taken as she ran to escape him.
At the back of the building is a rusting door. It is chained and padlocked shut. It takes me some minutes to pick the lock. There is no way for me to remove the chains quietly, but I do so as swiftly as possible. I place them carefully on the ground. I am hoping he will come in by the front entrance and he won’t notice that I have entered already.
When I pull the door open its hinges squeak loudly, and echo inside the emptiness of the building within. I wait for a long moment listening for any sound before I step in. I am reassured by the silence inside.
I tread carefully, stepping lightly into the corridor within.
In the back room is the cage India had been in. A cage designed to hold a full strength werewolf at full moon. One that the beast can rage against all he likes but never break out of. It is a seven foot tall contraption made of a steel bars and tightly interwoven black metal. A commercial werewolf cage on the cheap end, the sort that werewolf parents buy while training their children to control their monthly lunar transformations. I can’t see them in the dark but I know there are little magic sigils carved in
to the steel rods of the cage. Without them the integrity of the metal wouldn’t last long under the repeated abuse from an angry werewolf.
Just enough light comes in through the boarded up windows for me to see that the cage’s door is slightly ajar. That’s good. There is no electricity. That is good too. It is better if it is dark. There is still some old furniture in the room. To the side of the cage is an old cupboard. The perfect hiding place.
I go quickly to the door of the cage now, worried that he might arrive at any moment. I hate being worried. Worry is for the weak. But I’m no fool. Compared to him my body is weak. And I have no desire to damage my precious self.
There is a little crystal in my hand. I toss it into the cage. All of my recent dull reading had come in useful. For example, I had learned there is an incantation that will make this little crystal light up at my whisper. A crystal suddenly lighting up in the darkness, oh what a curious thing. It is going to lure him in.
The little crystal clinks as it lands on the ground inside the cage. I turn towards the cupboard. Time to hide and wait.
He charges at me out of the darkness behind me, so fast and so quiet that I do not have time even to turn. He smashes bodily into me. I fly forwards into the cage, falling on the ground, him landing on top of me. He grabs my hair and smashes my forehead into the ground. Pain explodes in my skull.
On top of me his body stiffens. He knows something is wrong. I’d sprayed India’s perfume on me and worn her jacket to try to mask my scent, but he has sensed I am not her. He turns me over. He can see my face in the darkness though I cannot see his. He has recognized me.
“Fooled you,” I say.