The Phoenix. Тилли Бэгшоу

left of her life. Spyros and Athena had robbed her of her family, but she still found some solace in books, in the literature of tragedy and loss and rebirth that had been her academic world since her own student days.

      Until now.

      Her gaze returned to the screen.

      One picture, one emblem, and it all came flooding back.

      Another dead boy.

      Somebody else’s son.

      Nobody could have survived that crash, Noriko told herself, forcing her rational brain to kick in, to override her emotions. No human could have lived through that fire.

      But perhaps Athena Petridis wasn’t human? Perhaps she was truly a monster, a devil, an evil spirit like the Japanese Kamaitachi, mythical sickle-wielding weasels who would slice off children’s legs. Perhaps she was a witch.

      Professor Noriko Adachi sat at her desk and let the hate take over, pumping like poison through her veins.

      If Athena Petridis is alive … I’ll kill her.

       Los Angeles, California

      Larry Gaster pulled over on Mulholland Drive, his silver Bugatti Veyron gleaming in the sun. On the passenger seat, the image of the drowned child’s branded heel filled the screen of Larry’s iPad.

      It was a struggle to breathe. Reaching forward, the legendary Hollywood producer opened the glove box, fumbled for the bottle of Xanax, and crammed three pills into his mouth, grinding them between his porcelain-veneered teeth with grim desperation.

      A profoundly vain man, Larry Gaster looked much younger than his sixty-five years, thanks to the efforts of LA’s most talented surgeons and their patient’s limitless funds. Larry’s skin was smooth, his brown eyes bright, and his luxurious chestnut hair still only lightly flecked with gray. Unlike most of Hollywood’s big hitters, Larry Gaster wasn’t satisfied with having young actresses line up to go to bed with him simply because he was powerful and rich. He wanted them to want him too. To desire him, physically. These days, despite his best efforts, that was becoming harder and harder to achieve. Some people might put that down to his age. But Larry Gaster knew different.

      It was Athena. Athena Petridis.

      If only he’d never laid eyes on her!

      Larry Gaster had been forty-seven and one of the most desired men in Hollywood when he had agreed to produce a biopic about the great Greek beauty’s life. Athena met him at the Beverly Hills Hotel for lunch in a white flowing dress that made her look like an angel. It was the beginning of the end for Larry. He fell in love with her immediately and although they never slept together, never even kissed, Larry’s obsession for Spyros Petridis’s wife became the driving force in his life.

      Athena was a victim. A good woman, a perfect woman, trapped in a violent marriage to a monster. That was the truth, and it was what Larry Gaster portrayed in his film. Larry wanted to rescue Athena from Spyros. He wanted to keep her in America, to build her a palace up in the Hollywood Hills where she could live, safe in his protection, eternally grateful for his gallantry like Queen Guinevere to Larry’s Sir Lancelot.

      But things hadn’t happened like that. The day after production wrapped on the movie, Larry Gaster was kidnapped outside his office on Sunset Boulevard in broad daylight. No one knew what had happened during the week the producer was missing, and no one ever would. Larry had said nothing – to the police, to his family, to anyone. He’d simply shown up at the gates to his Beverly Hills estate one morning in a state of shock. The fourth finger of his left hand had been severed and the letter ‘L’ had been branded on the base of his right heel.

      L for Larry. That was what he told people who noticed it in later life.

      The film was never released.

      And Larry Gaster never saw Athena Petridis again.

      After the helicopter crash, little by little, Larry resumed his career, picking up where he’d left off. In the last decade he’d produced four blockbuster hits and remarried. Twice. Life was good. Until this.

      Winding down the window, he picked up his iPad and hurled it out of the car, over the edge of the precipice that dropped down to the valley.

      Then, like a small child, Larry Gaster began to cry.

       London, England

      Peter Hambrecht closed his eyes and lost himself in the music, his baton moving through the air with a grace and fluidity that set him apart from all the other great conductors. Hambrecht was the maestro, the undisputed best in the world. Every musician in London’s Royal Albert Hall felt privileged to be there that night. Because to be swept up in Peter Hambrecht’s genius, even for a moment, was to play to one’s full potential. To shine like a star.

      ‘Thank you, Maestro!’

      ‘Wonderful performance, Maestro!’

      After the concert, Peter shook hands and signed autographs with his usual good grace. Then he put on his thick cashmere overcoat and walked the few short blocks back to his flat on Queensgate.

      The next morning, he saw the picture, the same day it was published. An old friend emailed a copy.

      ‘I thought you’d want to see this,’ the friend wrote.

      That struck Peter as odd. Who in their right mind would ‘want’ to see a picture of a drowned child? But of course, his friend was not referring to the child, only to the emblem burned into his flesh, as if he were an animal or a piece of meat. Peter winced, imagining the pain the poor little boy must have suffered.

      Later, the friend telephoned. ‘Do you think Athena …?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘But Peter …’

      ‘Athena is dead.’

      Peter Hambrecht had known Athena Demitris, as she was then, since they were children, and had loved her all his life. She was his best friend, his confidante, the sister he’d never had. In the tiny village of Organi where they grew up, blonde, blue-eyed Athena had been adored by everyone. Dark, shy, effeminate Peter, on the other hand, with his German father and his strange accent and the little piccolo he carried with him everywhere, was an outcast, a favorite target of the local bullies.

      ‘Hey, Sauerkraut!’ they would taunt him. ‘Why don’t you wear a tutu, so you can dance to that gay classical music you’re always playing? You want us to make you a tutu?’

      ‘He can borrow my sister’s.’

      ‘I don’t think he wants a tutu. I think he wants us to jam that flute up his ass. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Sauerkraut?’

      Peter never rose to their jibes. But Athena always did, roaring to his defense time after time like a lioness, taking on his tormentors, alive with righteous fury on his behalf.

      ‘How can you let them talk to you like that? You have to fight back!’

      ‘Why?’ Peter would ask.

      ‘They’re calling you gay!’

      ‘I am gay,’ he shrugged.

      ‘No,’ Athena insisted, with tears in her eyes. ‘You aren’t gay, Peter. You love me.’

      ‘I do love you,’ he assured her.

      ‘More than anything?’

      ‘More than anything. Just not like that.’

      Athena covered her ears with her hands. ‘No, no, no. Stop saying that. You’re confused. You’ll change your mind, you’ll see. When we’re married.’

      Peter laughed. ‘It’s