Before I can argue, Connor is back on his feet, and out of the room. I look at the disassembled sandwich. No thanks. Connor's gone for longer this time, and the more time I spend in silence, the heavier the darkness around me becomes. How am I going to get out of here? It's impossible. I'm stuck to this goddamn radiator, and there's no way I can even get to that window, let alone rip the boards off it. Why am I even bothering to think about it? It's too late. I know this place is making me feel even worse, but that doesn't mean I'm not right. Curse or no curse, I'm trapped. Why doesn't he just kill me?

Connor returns, this time with a roll of toilet paper, and a bowl of something clear. He sits back down in front of me, pulls some paper from the roll, and dips it in the liquid. When he lifts his hand and nears my face, I pull away.

"It's just water," he insists.

I don't care enough about whether he's lying to resist a second time. With any luck, it's actually hydrofluoric acid.

Connor carefully rubs the damp tissue across my cheek, and when he moves it to my nose, I flinch. It is just water, but my nose must be sore from where he hit me back at his flat. Connor keeps cleaning my face as he starts speaking again.

"The first Tracker found you, what, almost a year ago now?"

He sent those. Of course he did. It was more like eight months ago, but I don't bother correcting him. Connor throws the tissue he's using onto the floor. It's red all over. He pulls another reel of crumpled tissue from the roll, and dips it in the water.

"Those things are useless. No sense of geographic location whatsoever, I swear," he continues. "But without them we wouldn't be here right now, so I can't complain. I had to figure out who you were, what you were doing, the kind of life you had. I couldn't just barge in, could I?" He lifts the tissue to my face, and starts cleaning again. I almost want to laugh at how gentle he is. "When one touched you, that was it. It was perfect. From there, your visions were completely bendable, so it was just a case--"

"What? What do you mean?" I ask, then flinch when Connor presses a little too hard on my forehead.

"Sorry, just say if I'm being too rough," he apologises. "I couldn't create new memories, not really. I had to stretch a bit with the one of me in the forest, but we got there. I had to take fragments of things that happened, and twist them a bit. Easy enough when you know how. I couldn't alter your visions myself, obviously, I had to rely on the Trackers for that. We're not all as privileged with our abilities as you are."

It's impossible not to detect the bitterness in his voice as he utters the last sentence. He presses down harder on my forehead as he cleans, and it makes me wince. He apologises. That's why I saw Connor in the car before the crash, not Annabel. Why Annabel sounded so agitated when she was protecting me. How could I be so stupid?

"You were a bloody pain in the arse though, by God. You have the most erratic energy I've ever come across, I mean, holy hell, I lost count of how many times one of my dark spirits locked onto you, only for it to lose track completely."

Ha. See. To think everyone complained about me being a constantly fluctuating mess. Turned out it saved our arses. My elation is short-lived. It saved us until now. Stupid. You're stupid. My own voice rings in my head, and I try to force it out. Ignore it. It's just this house, this flat, this... whatever it is. This place.

"Oh, and of course--Hey!" Connor pulls away from me, and turns his head towards the doorway. "Hey, come here!"

What the hell is he doing? He drops his used tissue to the floor, and pulls more from the roll. He calls to the door again. I'm fed up of this now. I want him to go away. I don't want to speak to him, I don't want to speak to anyone. The heaviness is lurking again, and there's no point fighting it anymore.

You have to. Don't give in to it.

I want to give in. I want to give it up, just let it infect my mind.

Fight it. Dad's voice flashes in my mind. Get out of there.

It's only in my head, and the reality is that it's my own voice, not Dad's, but it's enough. I force the heaviness to lift, and focus on Connor. He's looking towards the doorway, and I follow his gaze. Standing there, looking the meekest I've ever seen her, is Lucy.

It dawns on me. Lucy's here. She can't tell Annabel about what's happened. No, she won't tell Annabel. She's not on my side. She was never on my side. No. No, no, no. How is Annabel going to know what's happened to me? How is she going to tell Ava? How is she going to tell Ava anything without Lucy around? She's by herself. Annabel's by herself. She doesn't even have me. She doesn't have anyone. No, no, no.

"I tried to help you!" I yell at Lucy. "I could've just left you, not bothered with finding your phone, or your stupid boyfriend, or--"

"Don't shout!" Connor snaps at me. "Look, buddy, don't take it personally. If it wasn't her, it would've been a different spirit. She found you before any of my spirits did. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time--Well, right place at the right time. You just don't see that yet." Connor sighs, a damp tissue in his hand.

I stare at Lucy. She doesn't say a word. She just stares back, scanning every inch of my face except for my eyes. She's rhythmically twirling a strand of hair around her finger, and her dirty turtleneck looks like it's about to swallow her whole.

"I found her when you were up in Scotland. One of my spirits came back to me and said you had this fresh, new spirit following you. I would've been stupid not to take the opportunity, and she didn't exactly take much convincing."

"He's going to tell me what happened, how--how I died," Lucy pipes up from the far end of the room. "And he can get my boyfriend out of trouble."

"You believe that? You actually believe that?" I try, and fail, to hide the anger in my voice.

Connor tells me to be quiet as he leans forward with a wet tissue. I bat him away with my free hand, and the toilet paper flies across the room.

"No!" I yell. "No, I'm done! I'm not listening to this bullshit anymore. I'm not helping you." I lower my voice. "I'm not ever going to help you, so you might as well just kill me."

I flinch and close my eyes as I await the blow, but it never comes. Instead, Connor takes a breath, and I open my eyes to see him standing back up. He nods.

"You will," he says simply. "Don't worry, I'm not angry. I have a lot of patience. You just need time."

The guy is delusional if he thinks I'm ever going to change my mind. The heaviness is looming more than ever before, and this time, I don't bother stopping it. There's no point. I'm stuck here. The one living person left in my family is a murderer, and the only person who could even try to save me has no way of even knowing where I am, let alone what's happened to me. At least my friends are safe now. He doesn't need them. I hope they don't bother looking for me.

"I just--This never had to happen!" Connor blurts, his calm disposition shattered again. "If it wasn't for our stupid, stupid parents, this never would've happened. Why didn't they just listen to me? When I realised Dad had wiped your memory, I was--I was livid. Nearly ten years, it took. Ten years for me to finally find you again." He's pacing around the room. "And Annabel. Bloody Annabel. To this day, I've never met a more arrogant, self-righteous bitch in my life. She thought she could fix it by herself. She literally sneaked out in the middle of the night and boarded a flight to England by herself, thinking she could find me and get me to stop! Have you heard anything more arrogant in your life?"

Connor starts laughing, but it's harsh. It's just him and me now. Lucy's disappeared. My vision, the one where my parents and I were leaving our Irish home. Annabel wasn't there because she, a sixteen-year-old girl, had fled the country to try and reason with a grown man who had already murdered half the family.

"I was trying to help the family, help everyone, help you! But oh no, you wouldn't even entertain it. 'Annabel said I can't, Annabel said that's bad'. Fucking Annabel this, Annabel that. You were obsessed with her. I'm your brother, for Christ's sake! You're meant to look up to me! Not that bitch." He pauses, then kicks the radiator I'm stuck to. "I had to resort to calling our parents' stupid family friends to find you, and even that was pointless! They were useless! Everyone else was bloody useless! I'm telling you now, Felix, don't ever bother relying on other people."

The Murrays. They'd said Connor had called shortly before the accident, didn't they? It's all staring me in the face now. How could I have been so blind to it, so stupid? Stupid, stupid, stupid. You're so stupid. The heaviness engulfs me, and the light filtering in from the doorway is still on, but it's dark. Everything is so dark, and it's never going to be light again.