The Dying of the Light. Derek Landy

things is not cleaning them.”

      “Do you want to know what I did wrong?”

      He sighed. “Yes.”

      Clarabelle scrunched up her mouth, like she did when she was figuring out the best way to say something. Before she could confess, the front door opened and Thrasher walked in.

      “I’m home!” he called, even though he could see them both standing in the kitchen.

      “Gerald!” Clarabelle said, bounding over to him. Thrasher hugged Clarabelle, wrapping her in his massive, muscular arms. “Did you have a good day? Did anything fun happen?”

      “Every day is a fun day when you’re doing what you love,” Thrasher said, and flashed an eager smile at Scapegrace. Scapegrace ignored him, walked to the fridge and left them to their chit-chat. He poured himself a glass of milk, leaned his hip against the cooker and drank.

      It was sad how quickly he’d got used to normal things again. Life as the Zombie King, as self-deluded as he’d been, meant that magic had sustained him and his steadily-rotting body. But after Doctor Nye had placed his brain into its new home, he’d had to deal with the gradual reawakening of natural bodily functions. Normal things like eating and drinking had become astonishing adventures in sensation. A glass of milk was a delight. But now? Now it was a glass of milk again. How quickly it had lost its thrill.

      Thrasher and Clarabelle came into the kitchen, still talking. He ignored them. He did that a lot lately. He just couldn’t summon the anger he used to direct Thrasher’s way. It was … gone. It had slowly evaporated these past few weeks. Thrasher had noticed, of course. Thrasher always noticed things like that. But where he had assumed that it was as a result of living a normal life, maybe even of a softening of attitudes and a growing fondness, Scapegrace knew better. The anger was gone because the anger was beaten. There was no point to it any more. It had lost.

      Scapegrace was living in the suburbs of a city full of sorcerers. He was no longer deluded enough to call himself the Killer Supreme. No longer dead enough to call himself the Zombie King. He was just another citizen, just a regular guy who’d had his brain transplanted into the body of a beautiful woman. He was normal. He was average. And this was his life.

      “Master?” Thrasher said.

      Scapegrace brushed his luxurious hair from his face and looked up. “Hmm? What?”

      Thrasher and Clarabelle looked at him with real concern in their eyes. The old Scapegrace would have heaped scorn upon them. The new Scapegrace didn’t see the point.

      “I was saying that I washed the floor in the pub, just like you asked,” Thrasher continued.

      “And I was saying you shouldn’t get Gerald to do that every time,” said Clarabelle. “He’s not your slave.”

      “I don’t mind, really,” Thrasher said, blushing.

      “You should mind,” said Clarabelle. “Scapey, it’s just not nice, the way you treat Gerald. He’s your best friend in the whole entire world and you two are my best friends in the whole entire world and best friends shouldn’t treat each other like that.”

      It had been a long day. All Scapegrace wanted to do was have a shower and go to bed. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

      They stood there and blinked at him.

      “You’re sorry?” Thrasher asked.

      Irritation flared in the back of Scapegrace’s mind, then sputtered out. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

      “You … you’ve never said that to me before,” Thrasher said, tears in his eyes. Dear lord, he was going to cry.

      “Then I’m not sorry,” Scapegrace said hastily, in an effort to hold off an embarrassing display of emotion. “Does that make you feel better?”

      Thrasher’s hands went to his mouth as tears spilled down his perfect cheekbones. “You’ve never cared about how I feel before.”

      Scapegrace went to roll his eyes, but lost his enthusiasm halfway through and ended up looking at the ceiling.

      “Are you feeling OK?” Clarabelle asked.

      For the second time in the last few minutes, Scapegrace sighed. “I’m fine.”

      “But are you really?”

      “Of course. The pub is doing good business. We have a loyal customer base. Most of them are in every night. What’s to complain about?”

      “I don’t know,” said Clarabelle. With natural grace, she sprang on to the kitchen table and sat there, cross-legged, while the dishes she’d knocked off crashed to the floor around her. “You tell me.”

      Scapegrace hesitated. He’d always viewed himself as an old-fashioned type of guy, not the kind to talk about whatever was troubling him. But circumstances, he supposed, had changed. One glance at his reflection in the window proved that.

      “I always wanted to do something important,” he said. “I wanted to be someone important. I wanted to make a difference.”

      “You make a difference to me,” said Thrasher.

      The old Scapegrace would have thrown something at him for that. The new Scapegrace didn’t bother.

      “I never wanted to be normal,” he continued. “But here, normal is all I am. In Roarhaven, I’m … unexceptional.”

      Clarabelle frowned. “Do you want to leave?”

      “No. Nothing like that …”

      “But if you do leave,” Clarabelle said, “do you promise to take me with you?”

      “I’m not leaving.”

      “OK,” Clarabelle said happily. “Just don’t decide to leave one morning before I get up. Then I’ll get up and you’ll be gone and Gerald will be gone and I’ll be all alone in this house and I’ll have no friends.”

      Thrasher wrapped his gigantic arm round her shoulders. “We’re not going anywhere.”

      She nodded. “Because I have trouble making friends. People think I’m weird, just because sometimes I see things that aren’t really there, and just because I say things they don’t understand. They don’t want to be my friends. But you guys don’t care about things like that. You two are really nice.”

      “I’m not leaving,” Scapegrace said. “I’m just feeling sorry for myself, that’s all.”

      “Why?”

      “I don’t know, I … I suppose I can just see myself living out the rest of my life as an ordinary person.”

      “You’re not ordinary,” Clarabelle said. “None of us are.”

      “I get sad, too,” Thrasher said. “I don’t like to bother anyone with it, but … I mean, my new body is very nice. It really is. But every time I look in the mirror, I see someone that isn’t me. I don’t think that feeling is ever going to go away.”

      Scapegrace nodded. “You’re always looking into the face of a stranger.”

      “That gets to you,” said Thrasher. “After a while, the novelty wears off and you just want to see your own face again.”

      “You forget where you came from,” Scapegrace said softly. “You forget who you are.”

      Clarabelle leaned forward. “Would it make you feel better to remember?”

      “It would.”

      She smiled. “Then the news I have is good news. I went exploring today. I’ve never been to the left side of the Medical Wing before because, when I walk in the door, I always turn to the right.”

      Scapegrace frowned. “Why?”