Chapter NineHE HALTED IN FRONT of a small house that looked more like a mountain cabin, all wood and exposed rocks. We’d run across the fields to another narrow dead-end road. There, hidden under some branches, was a car. We found clothes and water in the trunk, then drove away. Shiki and Cristian had prepared for ambushes around the mansion. It was the one place where I was expected to be, so they’d had a lot of fallback plans.
Cristian had driven south toward London, so I guessed we were somewhere in Essex. It wasn’t a proper town or village, just a house off a side road. It was so close to the highway that I could hear the constant whoosh of cars passing by. Despite that, it was hidden by the winding road, a copse of trees too small to be a proper forest, and the small descending slope
