The Magpie Effect - The Magpie Chronicles Book 1 (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 16.2

"Saffy," a voice broke through my terror. "Saffy?"

I winced once, twice, three times before Debbie came into focus. She was staring at me with a sense of offended disbelief. "Huh? What?"

"Saffy, I can't believe you. You weren't even listening to me, were you?"

I could see Lucy Lidlow just beyond Debbie's shoulder, through the glass of the window, reaching down to run her substance-less fingers through the water at her feet. The puddle didn't respond, it stayed as still as a sheet of ice.

"Saffy!" I winced as though I'd been slapped. Debbie was gaping at me. "You're doing it again. What's wrong with you?"

"I'm gonna throw up," I muttered.

"This is exactly what I was talking about, Saff- wait, what did you say?"

But I was already hurtling around the bar and towards the bathroom. I could feel the bile catapulting up my gullet and blistering my throat even as I threw myself through the doors to the girls' toilets and into an empty cubicle. I'd barely eaten anything since lunchtime, but somehow I managed to churn up whatever was in my stomach until the tears burned their way down my cheeks and my throat felt as though I'd swallowed battery acid.

Lucy Lidlow was dancing in the car park. The same Lucy Lidlow who had been missing for the past couple of weeks, who's angelic little face was stamped to every lamppost and bus-stop in town and across the entire county. Somebody should run out to the car park and bring her inside, and then Bev could ring the police station and the whole ordeal would be over, that was what I kept thinking to myself.

Except that was a ridiculous notion, because anybody else looking out the window would have seen an empty car park.

The blood ran cold in my veins as the realisation dawned. The real Lucy Lidlow wasn't dancing about outside. That was only a figment of her, a memory, the colours of her face and her clothes painted across the air for those sensitive enough to see. Which meant that the real Lucy Lidlow was somewhere else, perhaps not all that far away, cold and lifeless and alone in the night.

This was all too much. I thrust my head into the toilet bowl again just as the vomit surged up my throat.

When I resurfaced, there was a noticeable shift in the air. I'd felt it so many times before that it almost seemed like instinct, like an innate radar that nobody else could tune in to.

Mona stepped through the cubicle door, blocking the obscene graffiti that was scrawled across it. She wore an expression of concern that was cartoon-like, too colourful.

"Poor Saffy," she crooned, "you look terrible. Whatever's the matter?"

I wiped my hand at the corner of my mouth. "Don't pretend like you didn't see her, Mona."

"Oh, so what! The poor little girl is dead," she huffed. "Boo-hoo, let's all pity her."

I gawped at her, stunned by her cruelty. "Mona! How could you say that? What about her family? What about the investigation surrounding her and the other missing-" I froze mid-sentence. I hadn't thought about the three other people who'd gone missing over the last couple of weeks. Were they all connected, somehow? Had they met the same fate as Lucy, whatever that had been?

Mona bit her lip and scowled. "Fine, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I guess I'm just immune to all of this stuff. But I am sorry that you saw what you saw."

"So you knew?"

"Huh?"

"You knew?" I repeated. "That Lucy Lidlow was dead? And you didn't tell me?"