“Jessa?! What are you doing here?” said Flynn. Jessa propped herself up on the door frame and tried to catch her breath. “Did you run here? What’s wrong?”

“Cecily…” She exhaled deep and slow. “I saw her with the two men. I think she’s involved with Silas Lynch.”

“Come inside.”

In the stairway up to Flynn’s flat, Jessa could smell grease from the chip shop on the ground floor, but as soon as she entered the living room, the fatty smell was overridden by a very pleasant herbal one.

“Sorry for the mess, I was just doing some ironing.” There were bundles of clothes along the sofa seat. He quickly pulled them into one large pile and loaded them back into the basket. “Here, sit down.”

“I can’t believe I’ve never been to your flat before.”

He looked embarrassed. “It’s not that nice, so I don’t really invite people over.”

“Is your mum at work?”

“Yeah.”

Jessa sank much further into the sofa than she expected but found it perfectly comfortable. She looked around at walls that were covered in photographs of Flynn throughout his life. It reminded her of Francis Jackson’s house, pictures upon pictures, memories upon paper, old-fashioned and warm.

She gratefully took from him a chipped ceramic mug steaming with hot coffee. She hadn’t even realised how cold her hands were until her fingers began to tingle from being warmed up.

“You have so many photographs.”

“Oh, yeah. My mum couldn’t afford a regular camera so when I was a baby she got one of those old ones where you have to put a film in and then get them printed. We still have it, actually. I told her we should save up for a normal one and just use the little chip to put in the digital frames, but she says she likes doing it this way. The photos don’t look as clear, though.”

“I think they look great. My grandparents had a camera like that when I was little. But now, whenever we take photos, we always take a few shots and then choose the best one. These pictures look different. You can tell they capture really special moments.” Her gaze stopped on what appeared to be the most recent image. It showed Flynn’s mum with her arm around her son and a huge smile on her face, as Flynn held up his acceptance letter to the Winsbury School of Parapsychology.

“So tell me about these men that you saw,” said Flynn.

“They were tall, wearing dark coats, just like Mr Jackson said, and just like I saw in the vision of Annora.” She ended her sentence definitively. Flynn waited for more, but it didn’t come.

“Is that it?” he said.

“Well, yeah.”

“So you didn’t see their faces?”

“No.”

“And they weren’t doing anything suspicious?”

“They were with Cecily Graves.”

“Jess.”

“What? We know her family is rich and elitist, and it’s totally reasonable to imagine they could be involved with a crazy guy who thinks parapsychs are superior to laterals. Remember what she said to Maggie that time?”

“Jessa, do you remember what the detective at the Agency said? Evidence has to be real and tangible. Those men could be anyone.”

“I am just remembering, she did say she was with two of her dad’s staff. But maybe…”

“No. You need to stop. You have to be careful about these things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you have to take care of yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Since all this started, you’ve just been a bit different, that’s all.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. Tired. Distracted.”

She thought nobody had noticed.

“I’ve been finding it hard to sleep, but other than that I’m fine.”

“Well, I know you got in trouble with Mrs Dusto for not handing in your geography homework, and I noticed on your French test you got a D—”

“Okay, wait a minute,” she interrupted. “Firstly, Mrs Dusto can shut up because geography is rubbish anyway, and secondly, I’m just not very good at French. It has nothing to do with all of this.”

“Really? Because you used to get mostly Bs and even a few As. Look, I’m not judging.”

“It sounds like you are,” she sulked.

“I promise I’m not. I just want you to be all right. We’re in this Silas Lynch business together, so I don’t want you to feel like you’re taking on more than you have to. And if you need help with school stuff, you just need to ask.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” his mouth turned up gently. “Where did you see Cecily, anyway?”

“At the mall.”

“What were you doing at the mall?”

“My mum and sister wanted a girls’ day out shopping.”

“Oh yay, you love shopping!”

“Shut up!” she playfully pushed his leg with her foot.

“So anyway,” he said, changing the subject. “I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure how this stuff works, but there has to be footage from surveillance cameras on the streets. So maybe if there’s a way we can get video from the night any of the three victims went missing, maybe we can find the moment they were attacked and see exactly what happened.”

“That’s a good idea! We should ask Maggie tomorrow. She’s good at the computer stuff, so maybe she’ll know of a way to do that.”

Flynn clicked on the television and flipped through some of the channels.

“Do you watch much TV?” he asked Jessa.

“Not regular TV. Mostly just subs. You?”

“Not a lot. But we don’t have any subs. Mum doesn’t think we have enough spare time to make it worth paying the subscriptions.”

“Yeah, it’s not cheap. My dad’s obsessed with all those detective dramas, and he reckons he has to get his money’s worth. So basically he just watches TV every second he’s home.”

“That’s the thing, isn’t it? If you pay for the subscription, then you feel like you have to make the most of it. So we just have normal telly and barely watch it because it’s all adverts.”

“Oh wait, go back! That was Cecily’s dad.”

“His moustache looks weird.”

“He’s so gross. Unmute it, let’s see what he’s saying.”

“…the sheer volume of donations that the party has received tells me that people are indeed ready for a new way of thinking. It’s my view that Prime Minister Linden has been somewhat indoctrinated by these so-called liberals, enough so that he’s not truly following through with the ideals he originally set out to pursue. My vision is for the PIP to bring those values to the forefront of society. Our goal is a modern Britain. One that strives for economic stability, true justice, and of course, one that gives a much more appropriate application of commendation to the parapsych population. Parapsychism is the evolution of humanity, and the PIP is the evolution of politics—”

“Shall we see what else is on?”

“Please.”