The Fandom Rising Page 9

  Thorn approaches the giant wood stack. Flames and menace light up his eyes. He passes the torch between his hands, quickly and precisely so that the fire leaves a single, orange streak. He grins. ‘This is what happens to traitors, Baba.’

  For a moment, I think I’ve started to scream. Then I realize it’s Saskia, her voice fraught and high. ‘No, no. Please, God, no.’

  It seems so selfish in the circumstances, but I ask the question anyway, guilt pooling in my stomach. How do I get home? There’s no canon, no story to complete.

  Oh, my child. There is always a story. And in our world, you are the one true saviour. You must do what you’ve always done – save the Imps.

  From what? I ask.

  Thorn stands beside the mound, his head level with Baba’s feet. He raises the torch high above his head, perhaps for drama, perhaps so the flames are in her line of sight.

  I must break our connection now, she tells me. Or you will feel what I will feel.

  But I can hardly make out her words. No, Baba. I can’t bear this. Tears stream down my face and it feels like somebody’s sitting on my chest.

  She smiles. Do not fear for me. The greatest story I know is not one of sacrifice, but one of rebirth. Remember that, my child.

  You will be reborn? I ask. But as the pain lifts entirely from my eyes, I know she can no longer hear me.

  Everyone seems to hold their breath.

  The only sound is the torch as it crackles and snaps like a pack of hungry dogs.

  I wait for the flames to fall towards the wood.

  But instead, Thorn turns to Nate and says, ‘It has to be your word.’

  Nate pushes his hand into his hair, lifting it from his sweat-drenched brow. And that’s when I see it. A tiny mole just above the inside of his wrist. The same mark as the Gem President. A single word repeats over and over in my head: Traitor. My heart darkens with rage.

  Nate pauses, his face caught between horror and acceptance. Then, his features seem to reconcile. ‘Let them burn,’ he says.

  I’d expected a sudden movement, a vicious jab. But instead, Thorn touches the flame to the wood slowly, almost lovingly.

  Once the kindling grabs hold of the fire, there’s no stopping it. A dreadful whooshing noise fills the air as the flames sweep around the stack, immediately transforming it into an ocean of reds and yellows. Lapping higher and higher.

  And finally, Baba begins to scream.

  A noise as thick and black as the smoke itself.

  13

  ALICE

  I tear through Fanboy’s final post, completely hooked. Baba takes the blame for Nate. She protects him. She dies for him. Thorn burns her at the stake. And Nate lets her burn. He actually lets her burn. The guilt he feels is overwhelming, but somehow he manages to twist it in his head. He thinks he’s setting her free. Free from the prison of her body, old and disabled. Where have I heard that before? We’re setting him free. The exact words Violet’s parents used about Nate. Very strange.

  I wipe my eyes with trembling fingers. Violet and Katie are there . . . right now . . . and Nate, he’s there too . . . it’s not his fault Fanboy is turning him into a massive dick. The three most important people in my life are in the most dangerous place I can imagine. And what with Thorn setting his mates on fire and Howard Stoneback plotting to destroy the Imps, the danger has just multiplied tenfold.

  I try and control my breathing. Maybe I’m jumping the gun. Maybe this is as crazy as it sounds . . . I need to see the tattoo for myself to know that it’s real.

  The reporters are at the hospital already. They’ve obviously been banned from the building, so they hover at the main entrance like the vultures that they are. I walk past and they shout questions and snap away at my face. I stare at the ground, but I don’t shield my face with my hands celebrity-style. I’ve got a good profile . . . they can have that for free.

  The receptionist recognizes me immediately. She’s the one Violet always calls ‘Crazy-mop-top-Millie’. I’ve no idea what her actual name is, but I don’t think it’s Millie somehow. Violet’s got this lovely way of poking fun at people without being harsh. If I were to do that, it would come out bitchy.

  ‘They’re in the ICU,’ Millie says. Her eyes bulge with sympathy. She looks like a bug in a wig.

  ‘Thanks,’ I reply.

  ‘Do you want someone to go with you? It must be tough, you know . . .’ she tails off.

  I force a smile. ‘I’m fine.’

  Everyone stares at me as I make my way to the ICU, where Katie and Violet are. I’m used to people staring, like I said, but I will never get used to the whispers. I expect the usual. Well, she clearly thinks she’s God’s gift; I bet she goes like a bunny; She obviously isn’t a natural blonde. And my all-time favourite: Somebody really should tell her that the Baywatch auditions were last century. But today, nobody whispers. They know who I am: the only member of the Comic-Con four who isn’t in a coma.

  I don’t stay with the girls long, because that’s not really why I’m here; not today. I take a deep breath as I enter Nate’s ward.

  I sit beside him for a few minutes, my heart beating in my mouth. If that tattoo is on his arm, then it means two things:

  1. Nate is alive in the world of The Gallows Dance.

  2. Fanboy is changing the world of The Gallows Dance with every post.

  I take a deep breath and rotate Nate’s arm so I can see the underside of his wrist. There’s a little black loop all right. Time seems to slow down as I grab my phone from my bag and do exactly what Violet must have done only yesterday, take a picture so I can enlarge it.

  It’s a rat eating its own tail. Ew!

  This confirms everything.

  The world around me blurs, my head begins to throb. I feel completely overwhelmed and consider just running out of the hospital there and then. Just heading home, downing a bottle of fizz and falling asleep in a sweet fug of nothingness. But I need to help my friends. I need to be strong. I take a few deep breaths and try to think clearly.

  Nate is alive. OK. This is awesome.

  Fanboy is cocking everything up. Anything but awesome.

  I need to contact this Fanboy and convince him to stop posting. And I’m Alice Childs, author of The Gallows Song. That must mean something. And if it doesn’t, if he won’t stop, well, I’ll hunt him down and grind his bloody keyboard to dust with my Jimmy Choos.

  I go straight to the Fandalism site on my phone. The barbed wire motif suddenly seems all the more jagged, all the more dangerous. I scroll with urgent fingers. There isn’t a contact page. I do a bit more snooping, but he isn’t on social media or the internet more generally. The guy’s a cyber ghost. How on earth did he get so popular?

  This complicates things.

  Deep breaths. New plan.

  I need someone to help me. I’m hopeless with computers. Which sounds daft coming from a girl who spends most of her spare time glued to one. But that’s different, that’s writing. I know diddly about how to track down another user.

  What I need is an IT nerd.

  I open Facebook and follow a friends of friends trail until I find the perfect geek. A nerd who I really owe a drink, and who, historically, owes me a favour.

  That night, I meet Danny in a gastro pub. Without his Gandalf costume, he looks younger, the slightness of his build more apparent. He sees me and smiles.

  I slide into the seat opposite and lean over the table, offering him my cheek to kiss. I’ve spent way too long with editors and bookish people, because he clearly has no idea what to do, and a little awkwardly places his cheek against mine. He smells of paper and mint.

  I grin at him. ‘Thanks so much for meeting me.’

  ‘No problem.’ There’s a slightly awkward pause. ‘So how are Violet and Katie?’ he asks.

  ‘Still unconscious, but they’re stable . . . whatever that means.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘The stable thing, not the coma thing.’

  Another pause. I wan
t to tell him how much it meant to me, him being there when I found my friends unconscious. He felt familiar, safe, an anchor when I felt I might just drift away. I can’t find the right words, so I settle on, ‘Thanks for helping at Comic-Con. Sorry Russell was a bit of a twat.’

  He grins. ‘A bit?’

  ‘He got worse in the car, talked about movies the whole way to hospital. I swear he’s on another planet.’

  ‘Yeah, he did seem a bit me-centric,’ Danny says, laughing. He has a lovely laugh, almost musical. Slowly, his face falls. ‘I really am sorry about your friends. You must be beside yourself.’

  I nod, tears immediately filling my eyes. I grab a menu and pretend to read it, desperate to change the subject. ‘So . . . what you up to these days?’ I ask.

  He must realize I need the distraction, because he plays along without question. ‘I’m working at a Tech firm down the road – they’re going to fund my uni place, so long as I return there after graduating.’

  ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I look up from the menu. He’s studying my face, looking confused. Eventually, he says, ‘So you said in your message you needed my help again?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, I know it’s a big ask considering I haven’t seen you in a year, except for yesterday, and you barely spoke to me at school.’

  He frowns. ‘You didn’t speak to me at school.’

  ‘Did too. I asked to borrow your calculator. Three times.’

  ‘I’m not sure that counts,’ he says, smiling. ‘It’s OK. I think I would have freaked if you’d spoken to me back then – you were super scary at school.’

  ‘I wasn’t scary.’

  ‘You wrote all that amazing fan fiction that everyone loved, and you were taller than everyone else in the year by the time you were twelve, and you were so pretty . . .’ His eyes drop to his hands, which I notice are fiddling like crazy with a sachet of sugar.

  ‘That doesn’t make me scary,’ I reply.

  He grins. ‘Maybe not to you. Vampires aren’t afraid of vampires. Zombies aren’t afraid of zombies.’

  ‘So now I’m a zombie?’

  ‘A metaphorical zombie, yes.’

  I smile. ‘You read my fanfic?’

  ‘Course, I was super curious. A glimpse into the psyche of the elusive Alice Childs. It was really good, I was quite surprised.’ He has this eager way of talking which totally makes up for any rudeness.

  I burst out laughing. ‘You were surprised?’

  ‘Yeah, well, you look like –’ he points the mangled sugar sachet at me – ‘that.’ He fidgets in his seat. ‘Sorry, that was so not cool. I’m just really nervous.’

  His honesty really appeals to me. I would never dream of admitting I was nervous – it’s like admitting you’re weak, and weak people lay themselves open to attack. But telling me this, Danny doesn’t seem in the least bit weak. It’s as though labelling the emotion takes away some of its power.

  The waiter comes over, notepad and pen at the ready. My stomach rumbles, so I order a veggie burger with extra chips. Danny follows suit.

  The waiter leaves and Danny raises an eyebrow. ‘So, I’m assuming the help you want isn’t exactly above board.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You wrote an international bestseller, which was very good by the way.’

  ‘Surprisingly good,’ I say.

  A grin flashes across his face. ‘Anyway, I’m guessing you can afford to pay a professional. But instead, you came to me, which means you want it off the books . . . excuse the pun.’ He rips the sugar sachet by mistake, sending a shower of crystals across the table. ‘Thank you for what you did for me, back in Year Eight, by the way.’

  It catches me a little off guard. I didn’t think we would actually talk about it. I assumed it would just be this unspoken debt he would silently pay off. I mean, he already chipped away at it at Comic-Con, for sure, but my spare-calculator-lending Comic-Con saviour is, on balance, probably still in my debt. He doesn’t exactly look comfortable, brushing the sugar away and avoiding eye contact, but all the same, he’s putting it out there, on the sugar-coated table.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I say.

  ‘You really think that?’ He looks up at me. He doesn’t have a perfect cupid’s bow, Nordic cheekbones, or a jawline from the Hemsworth gene pool, but his eyelashes are immense.

  I shrug. ‘OK, it was kind of cool.’

  It was kind of cool. We were at Sara Cummings’ birthday party back in Year Eight. Sara was one of the mean girls – she was beautiful, clever and made it perfectly clear she thought she was better than everyone else. I was friends with her for a few weeks, trying on the ‘popular’ girl thing for size, but she was horrible. Bullies who look like princesses are the worst kind, because nobody expects Lady Diana to gob in your drink. Plus, her parties sucked and she didn’t like Harry Potter. I soon found my way back to Violet.

  Anyway, God knows how Danny ended up invited to Sara’s party – he must have been friends with one of the hot boys – but there he was all the same, sitting opposite me in a circle, playing spin the bottle. And when it was Sara’s turn, it landed on Danny. She started to laugh and said, ‘I’m not going into a cupboard with him.’ And then she whispered, really loud so everyone would hear, ‘He’ll make it stink of jerk chicken.’

  Danny’s family are Jamaican, so this comment was bang out of order. ‘She was an evil witch,’ I say, suddenly guilty I’d willed Danny to remember this just so he’d feel compelled to help me out.

  But Danny’s eyes are alive and filled with joy. ‘You took my hand and led me into the cupboard and shouted over your shoulder –’ he does this high, girlie voice – ‘“There’s only one jerk around here.”’

  I cover my face with my hands. ‘Christ, Danny, I’m so sorry. I’d hoped you’d remember so you’d help me, but now you’re saying it out loud—’

  He cuts over me. ‘Don’t apologize. I was a king amongst the geeks for the rest of high school because of you.’

  We stayed in that cupboard for the full seven minutes. We didn’t kiss, we didn’t even touch. We just stood there grinning unashamedly at each other, breathing really heavily and revelling in our victory over the horrid Sara Cummings.

  I think maybe this is why I wanted Danny’s help more than anyone else’s. Not because he owes me, not because he helped me out at Comic-Con, but because he didn’t try anything in that cupboard. Because he helped me remember I was so much more than a pretty girl at a party. And I realize how the scales are really looking . . . I owe Danny.

  He places his hands on the table and leans towards me. A hint of peppermint moves through the air. ‘You were awesome.’ He has beautiful hands, his skin darkening at the knuckles and nail beds.

  That familiar guilt squeezes my stomach again. ‘I don’t know, I didn’t feel very awesome, I ditched Violet for that party just so I could hang with the mean girls.’

  ‘But that’s the thing, you could have been a mean girl, but you chose to hang with nerds.’

  ‘Like when Harry was sorted,’ I say, without thinking.

  He scrunches up his face and does the best sorting hat impression – possibly the only sorting hat impression – I’ve ever seen. ‘Not Slytherin, hey? Are you sure? You could be great, you know.’

  Hold the phone. He speaks Harry Potter.

  I burst out laughing and then mutter, ‘But I am Slytherin, you know that, yeah?’

  He drops his voice to a whisper. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  The food arrives. The chips taste amazing, and Danny obviously thinks the same, nodding his approval and shoving several into his mouth at once. He swallows. ‘So what do you need my help with?’

  ‘I need to find someone.’

  ‘Wouldn’t a map be more helpful?’

  I waggle a chip at him. ‘No, no. I need to find someone online. I need to know who they are and where they live.’

  ‘Who they are may be tricky. You
can be anyone online. Where they live should be easier.’

  I grin, not caring that I’ve just taken a bite out of my burger. ‘Well that’s the most important thing. I need to be able to find them.’

  ‘Just how illegal is this?’

  ‘I want to talk to them, that’s all,’ I say.

  His eyes widen. ‘Who?’

  ‘Some blogger called Fanboy, he’s messing with my ratings, and more importantly my characters. He’s writing a fan sequel to The Gallows Song.’

  ‘You’re not going to go all badass on him, are you?’

  I wink, trying to close the conversation down the only way I know how: flirting. ‘Now we both know my ass could never be bad, don’t we?’

  He looks a little uncomfortable, spends way too long dipping his chip in his ketchup. ‘Sorry, Alice, I didn’t mean it like that . . .’ he tails off.

  ‘Relax, I’m just messing.’

  He clearly doesn’t relax, not straight away at least. Now here’s a slight problem: Danny is immune to my superpowers. And I’m not getting a gay vibe from him. I think, maybe, Danny is a gentleman. The kind of prince who would wipe away the dragon’s blood before kissing the princess. I should have known this, based on the cupboard experience, yet still it comes as a surprise. Because Danny doesn’t make me feel powerless, quite the opposite; he makes me feel like I can be a good person. Like I can put this Fanboy mess right.

  ‘I can find Fanboy’s IP address for you,’ Danny says, finally. ‘But why don’t you fight fire with fire?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Beat him at his own game. Start writing fanfic again.’

  I almost choke on a chip. Why didn’t I think of this before? If Fanboy can influence the world of The Gallows Dance through fanfic, then so can I.

  Danny Bradshaw is a genius.

  14

  VIOLET

  A riot breaks out around us – some Imps are trying to reach Baba and Saskia and Matthew, who are screaming on their pyres, but others are fighting back. I grab Katie’s hand and together we scramble up the bank, away from the fighting. I don’t know where we’re going, only that we need to escape the smoke, the screams, the crack of moist wood.