The Stronghold

Ghostly Trix

Tom, Elenia and I dragged Trix away from everybody else before the police arrived. We tugged him back to Elenia's flat and made him swear to secrecy. On a whim I made Elenia swear to secrecy too.

"She can be trusted," Tom protested.

"Not to me," I replied, forcing Elenia into a second hard-backed wooden chair. Trix was sat in the first, looking about curiously.

"This place is like my mental state," he announced randomly.

"What do you mean?" I frowned.

"It's a mess."

"Okay... Well, Elenia, you know our names already, I just wanted to hold you to something." I stopped and frowned again. "That sounded different to how I thought.

'Anyway, well, now you're both sat here and can do sod all about escaping-"

"I'm good at escaping," Trix interrupted. "Six mental asylums and not one can keep me!"

"He isn't staying," Tom muttered.

"What I was going to say," I said loudly, giving Tom a wide-eyed glare, "is that this is my way of taking control and making sure neither of you go blabbing about who we are. We're trying to start afresh over here, to live a little bit."

"Basically, he was bored and I threatened to tell someone about his radical plans and ended up dragged along with him," Tom explained.

"Basically," I agreed.

"Get to the point," Trix growled, eyes darkening. I raised an eyebrow and took a nervous step backwards.

"My name is Pepper," I said, "and Frost Boy is Tom."

"Pleasure to meet you, Weird Name and Normal Name," Trix said with a smile, normal once more.

"You really frighten me," Elenia said, standing from her chair and walking to Tom's side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she rested her head on him, smiling.

"Holy mother of rectangles," I said, rolling my eyes. "Trix, we're leaving."

"It's eleven o'clock at night!" Trix argued.

"Would you rather go out somewhere and stay in a hotel or something or would you rather stay in here, sleep on the floor and listen to the sound of creaking bedsprings all night?"

Trix considered my options. "Can I kill people?"

"There's only Tom and Elenia here, so..."

"We are leaving. Take Cat." Trix stood up and marched to the door. I picked up my ginger kitten and swiftly walked ahead, making sure Trix didn't run off and murder anyone before I had a chance to stop him.

"Where are we going to go?" Trix asked, linking his arm through mine and skipping alongside me.

"I'm not sure," I replied, shifting Cat to my left shoulder. "We could always go back to the clubs."

"By the way," Trix said, "when did Los Angeles become Las Vegas?"

"At some point in the past," I replied. "I can't really remember when. They just sort of... merged..."

"Didn't Vegas get taken over by gangs and then a chemical pumped through the plumbing to kill everyone then quarantined by the police?"

"Probably. I'm a bit sketchy on the details."

"So what now? Where do we go?"

"I-" I broke off halfway through my sentence, noticing a familiar person stood on the opposite side of the road.