FINGERS OF DESIRE

Episode 2: The First Escape

"Turn the car around."

Damien did not turn the car around. He took a corner so hard that Leila's shoulder hit the door, and she grabbed the handle and kept shouting over the engine.

"She is sixty three years old, Damien. She does not run. She will go into that fire looking for me."

"She will not."

"You do not know that!"

"I do." He pulled a phone from his jacket pocket without taking his eyes off the road and dropped it into her lap. "Read it."

The screen showed a single message from a number with no name. *Woman from shop is out. Back lane. Smoke only, no injuries. Fire was bait.*

Leila read it three times. Her chest loosened by a fraction and then tightened again for a different reason. She looked up slowly.

"Someone of yours was at my work."

"Yes."

"Watching her. Watching me."

"Yes."

"How long?"

He took a long moment to answer, and the pause told her more than the answer would. "Long enough to be there when it mattered."

"That is not a number."

"It is the only one I can give you in this car."

She dropped the phone onto the seat between them as if it had burned her. Her hands were shaking again, so she pressed them flat against her knees and made herself breathe through her nose. She had been so careful for so many years. No photographs, no close friends, no routine anyone could use. And a stranger had been standing in her life the whole time, close enough to know when she was late.

"You called me by my name," she said. "In the alley, before I gave it to you. Do not tell me later. Tell me now."

His hands tightened on the wheel, only slightly, but she saw it. "I have known it for a very long time."

"Why?"

"Because I knew your mother."

The words dropped into the car like a stone down a well. Leila stared at the side of his face, at the muscle jumping in his jaw, and found she could not feel her fingers.

"I do not have a mother."

"Everyone has a mother, Leila."

"I mean I do not remember one." Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "I do not remember anything before I was ten. I have a gap and a file with a name in it. That is all I have ever had."

"I know."

"You know." She laughed, a short, cracked sound. "Everyone knows. The hunters know, the voice knows, you know. I am the only person in this city who does not know what is happening to me."

"That is not entirely true."

"Then tell me one true thing. One. You owe me that after what happened to the shop."

For a second she thought he would refuse. A truck went past in the other lane and its lights swept across his face, showing her something raw under the control, and then it was gone.

"Those men belong to the Order of Desire," he said.

The name settled in the air like something heavy.

"The Order of Desire." She repeated it slowly, as if tasting it. "That sounds like a cult."

"It is older than that. And better organised." He glanced at her. "They have been looking for you since you were four years old."

"Why?"

"Because of what you carry."

"I carry a bag and a bad attitude."

"Leila."

"I am serious. I carry a bag." She was talking too fast now, because the alternative was thinking. "Back there, with the man on the ground. He grabbed my ankle and then he dropped. I did not touch him. I did not do anything."

"You did something."

"What?"

He did not answer right away. The streets were changing around them, shopfronts giving way to long walls and then to a road lined with trees she did not recognise.

"I think you know," he said at last. "I think you have always known there was something under the surface. You just never gave it a name."

She thought about the pressure behind her eyes, the way it eased when she whispered not now, the way it had felt like being listened to. Her stomach turned over.

"There is a voice," she said, very quietly. "In my head. It has been there since this morning, and I think it might have been there longer, and I thought I was going mad."

Damien went still.

"What does it say?"

"That I am awake. That they are close." She swallowed. "That I carry a mark."

"Anything else?"

"Just now it said something about home."

"Home," he repeated, and for the first time he sounded afraid of her answer. "Did it say what home?"

"No." She turned toward him. "You told me not to answer it. In the alley. Why?"

"Because it speaks in your voice, and soon you will not be able to tell the difference."

"Who is it?"

"I do not know." He let out a breath. "That is the truth, and I hate it."

For a long moment the only sound was the engine. Leila watched the dark trees slide past and felt something inside her shift, slow and heavy, like a door she had leaned against for years finally starting to give.

"Are you one of them?" she asked.

"What?"

"The Order. You said they were looking for me. You said you were there when it mattered. You have a car and a phone and people on rooftops, and you knew my name." Her voice went flat. "Are you one of them?"

The silence went on a heartbeat too long.

"I was," Damien said.

She had known, and hearing it still felt like a blow. She turned her face to the window so he could not see it.

"Then why should I trust you?"

"You should not." His voice was very quiet. "Not yet, and maybe not for a long time. I am not asking you to. I am asking you to stay alive long enough to decide for yourself."

"That is a terrible speech."

"I have had practice."

She almost smiled, which made it worse. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass and shut her eyes.

"What am I?" she asked.

"Leila."

"Do not say later. I have heard later all day."

He took the next turn slowly, and when he spoke his voice had gone gentle in a way that frightened her more than the hunters had.

"You are the reason they are willing to burn entire cities," he said.

"That is not possible."

"It is already happening."

She opened her eyes and followed his glance to the side mirror. Behind them, small and orange against the dark horizon, a second fire had caught. It sat to the left of the first column of smoke, over a cluster of rooftops she knew by heart. Her street. Her block. The window with the kettle past its best.

"My flat," she whispered.

"They went there first."

"They went there before the shop?"

"Yes." He did not look away from the mirror. "They had your address for twenty years, Leila. They were only waiting for you to wake."

The flames grew in the glass, steady and patient, and the voice inside her stirred and said, softly, as if it were sorry:

Home is calling.