Hex and the City by Kate Johnson

Author:Kate Johnson [Johnson, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008551148
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter Ten

Outside the church, the streets were full of panic. People rushed by with wooden buckets, and still more hurried the other way with handcarts and armfuls of possessions. Mothers ran with crying babies in their arms.

It didn’t take much to see what they were running from. The glow rose behind the church, so huge and red it was as if the sun was setting right in the middle of central London. A strong, hot wind blew towards it, tugging at Poppy’s skirt. The roar of the fire was like a solid wall of sound, and the heat coming off it could be felt several streets away.

But how many streets?

Snow fell, only it wasn’t snow. Poppy had never seen ash come down from the sky before. It swirled and eddied in the wind, settling hot on her skin. Her hair shook it off.

‘We have to go,’ she said. She grabbed Alex’s hand as he stood, dumbstruck, outside the church. The woman within had dismissed them in no short order as ‘vagrants and fornicators’ and spat at them as they left. Outside the church, people barged and shoved, carrying possessions to be stacked inside.

Poppy looked around madly for fire engines, police, any sort of sanity.

A man ran down the hill with a pig over his shoulders.

‘What is happening?’ she whimpered. Five minutes ago she’d been coming her brains out and now the city was on fire and people were running around with pigs. ‘Pigs,’ she whispered.

‘Poppy? Poppy! Snap out of it. Nothing’s on fire. You hear me? This is some kind of illusion.’

‘What?’

‘Look around you. The people. The buildings. This church!’ He waved at the very solid stone church that had been a ruin the last time she looked at it. The church where they’d just had sex. Really, really good sex. ‘This isn’t real. It can’t be. Look, those shops have thatched roofs. I’m pretty sure that was, like, an office building last time I looked. No thatch.’

Poppy looked where he pointed. It was true. The buildings looked medieval, all exposed timber and patched up plaster. There was nothing like that in London now, specifically because of the Great Fire that had burnt most of the old city and killed several of those ghosts in the church.

The ghosts…

She looked doubtfully at the people hurrying by. In the shadows the fire created, everything was dark, and there were no streetlights. But it was enough to see the clothing of everyone around her. The long dresses and full skirts, the doublets and breeches.

‘Maybe these are ghosts?’ she said. ‘Like the ones in the church?’

‘Yes,’ said Alex. He took both her hands. ‘Exactly. This is all like those ghosts. Has to be.’

Hot wind blew her skirt stickily against her legs. ‘Has to be?’

‘Trust me, I’m an illusionist. This is like my glowing hands trick.’

‘Yes, how do you—’

A boy nearly ran into them, begged a quick pardon, then raced up the hill to a house where a man in knee breeches stood anxiously looking out.

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