I often wonder whether we left you there too long...

'It wasn't your fault. It was my destiny.'

You never had a destiny. You had a duty. Sighed with soft sadness.

'Everything happens for a reason. Your own words, I believe?'

What a cliché.

'This is my reason now. I can see that it always was.'

Then you must find a map. A blessing. Almost.

'Noli me tangere, noli me tangere!' Eutopia mumbled, frowning as she tossed uncomfortably on the sofa. A light, warm touch on her forehead made her eyes snap open and she gasped at finding Jinn's face just inches from her own. His feline-like eyes were narrowed slightly and his striking face was creased with concern.

'Are you alright?' he asked gently, pulling his hand away as Eutopia sat up, shoving the hair from her eyes with one hand.

'Yes, I think so... I don't know what happened. I just feel so tired. I haven't eaten in a while, maybe it's that.' She gave him a small smile, feeling confused at his worry. As quickly as she had noticed it, the look hardened and his indigo eyes darkened. He sat back on the floor, having been crouched in front of her.

'I told you not to touch anything.' Jinn's words were terse.

'I didn't, I... oh.' Eutopia remembered and glanced up at the mantle where the gleaming silver sword rested once more, replaced on its stand. She frowned again. 'You really shouldn't keep faulty electrical items on display. I might sue you next time.' She rubbed her palms together with a little shiver, remembering the blue sparking light, the heat on her hand. 'That thing is dangerous. What is it anyway? Some sort of novelty lamp? If I were you, I'd take it back. It must be wired up wrong or something.'

'Alastor,' Jinn muttered, his eyes catching and holding Eutopia's own to watch a glimmer of emotion, a flicker of something as the girl tilted her head at the strange word. 'It isn't a lamp, and it isn't a toy. You shouldn't have touched it. It isn't polite to go around touching other people's things. Are you hurt?'

'Umm... no. I don't think so.' Jinn took both of Eutopia's hands in his, looking intently at her for a moment before he tore his eyes from her face and examined her palms to find them unharmed. Eutopia visibly flinched at his touch, but didn't pull away.

'I don't think you'll be suing anyone just at the moment, anyway,' he said quietly, jerking his head at the television that was still on behind him, the sound evidently on mute. 'I doubt you'll want to go anywhere near the courts just now.'

Eutopia looked up at the big screen to find that the news channel was re-running the murder story. The grey sketched face, so similar yet so different to Eutopia's own, glared down at them both as the Crimestoppers telephone number slid along the bottom of the picture.

'Shit!' she cried, jumping up from where she was sat and almost landing in Jinn's lap as she tripped over him. He reached one arm out to steady her automatically and watched as she made it to the door to grab her backpack that still lay there. 'I have to go, I have to go,' she was intoning, still barefoot as she flipped the latch and pulled on the front door. It was locked. She turned to Jinn wildly. 'I have to go!' she begged as Jinn came to stand before her, his thickly muscled arms crossed over his chest.

'Where will you go?' he asked, simply. Eutopia shook her head, cascading the tangles of her hair into her eyes. She tugged at it, hopelessly, running a hand through it in an attempt to pull it back from her face. 'If you return home, that will be the first place they look. Someone who knows you is bound to recognise that picture and give the police your details.' She knew he was right, but what else could she do?

'Maybe I should turn myself in,' she muttered, glancing up at the TV again, though the newscaster had already moved on to the next item.

'Why?' Jinn asked, looking slightly bemused.

'I've killed two people!' she glared at him, dark blue eyes wide and frightened. 'Haven't you heard? God knows how, but I have. I'm not going to go on the run. I've been running for most of my life and I finally thought this would be the time to stop, that things were going to be ok. I thought wrong, I guess.' Jinn was shaking his head as she spoke.

'You didn't.'

'Didn't what?' Eutopia had turned back to the door and was fiddling with the latch.

'You didn't kill those men. I did.'

She gasped and swirled to face him.

'You?'

'Yes.'

Eutopia leant back against the door, her backpack dropping at her feet as she stared at Jinn in shock. A bombardment of images flashed through her memory but came to an abrupt end, drawing a blank from Ash's final blow to her face and to waking up the next afternoon on Jinn's sofa. In her pain and confusion she never had given much thought to how she came to be there instead of stuffed in the boot of some car; which is where, by all accounts, she should be.

'Oh. Well. I guess that changes everything. Unlock the door please.' Jinn's admission should have terrified her. He had murdered two men and she had been sleeping on his sofa. But she felt strangely calm.

'Where are you going?'

'Well the police want to talk to me about what happened and at the moment I'm probably their number one suspect given that there doesn't seem to be any other witnesses. I need to tell them the truth. You're the one they need to speak to, not me, because I can't really remember what happened that night.' Her voice was pained, eyes pleading with him.

'You can't remember?' Jinn asked.

'No. So please, just let me speak to the police. I won't even mention you if that's what you want. I'll just tell them the truth, I promise. I was there, but I can't remember how it happened because I blacked out.' Eutopia reached down for her backpack again, but Jinn shot a hand out to stop her, catching her wrist and pulling her up straight before she managed to snag the strap.

'They have your DNA. They'll arrest you.'

'How do you know? They didn't mention anything about that on the TV.' Eutopia pulled her wrist from his grip and Jinn didn't stop her.

'Look,' he said, pressing the fingertips of both hands together in a pleading gesture as he took a deep, steadying breath, trying to keep his calm, 'they were attacking you. There were three of them. When I... found you, you were unconscious and one of them was... well,' Jinn turned away from Eutopia, his fists clenching at his sides as he asked softly, 'please, just sit down. For a minute. Let me explain, and then you can decide what you want to do. I'll let you go after that, I promise.'

For a moment, Eutopia didn't move and Jinn turned back to her, wondering at her silence. She nodded once, her delicate jaw set in determination.

'Fine. I'll hear you out and then I'm leaving.' Eutopia picked up her backpack, hugging it to her like a shield as she came to sit on one of the sofas and Jinn settled himself on the other. He took another deep breath.

'There isn't really much more to tell. There were three of them,' Eutopia nodded. Ash. Davey. Jason. She could see two of their faces in her mind, their photos from the news appeal burning in her memory. The other one, Jason, was not so clear. But his dark laugh resonated in her head.

'I know.' She said.

'One of them, Davey I guess, had a car waiting at the other end of the alleyway to take you away somewhere. Ash was too busy with you to notice anything else. I couldn't let it go any further than it already had,' Jinn ran a hand through his hair, eyes fixed on the floor as he spoke and Eutopia noticed for the first time how it fell in gentle, unruly waves that emphasised the strength in his chiselled jaw and she suddenly found his words hard to concentrate on.

'There was blood,' he continued, 'I could see it. On his hand, on your chin, I thought Ash had really hurt you. So I had to stop him. I just had to get him away from you,' Jinn met Eutopia's wide gaze and his indigo eyes flamed with anger, though the smallest of smiles curled his lips. 'It wasn't until afterwards that I realised you had bitten him.' Eutopia winced as she remembered all too clearly the crunch of her teeth on bone, the saltiness of blood on her lips.

'The other two, Davey and Jason, came to see what was taking Ash so long. They didn't see me at first. I suppose they thought I was Ash as I had you in my arms. Davey was the first one to realise, so he had to be the next one to go. I had to put you down to... take care of him, and Jason was so frightened by what he saw that he lost complete interest in you. I suppose you were just a bit of... entertainment for them, and when the going got tough, Jason bottled it.' Eutopia had a feeling that Jinn was holding back on something, but the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit the blanks.

'Why didn't you just call for help for me, or call the police? Wouldn't that have been the most sensible thing to do? You're a murderer,'

'I've been called worse things in the past,'

Eutopia frowned. 'But it's because of me. You're a murderer because of me,' Jinn opened his mouth, like he was about to say something. His dark eyes were soft, but he obviously thought better of it. Eutopia growled in frustration, flinging her head into her hands.

'Oh God, this is such a mess! This wasn't meant to happen. I had it all planned out. Two years I've waited for this and now it's never going to happen.'

'What have you waited for? What were you going to do in London?'

'I was hoping to find my brother,' there was a sadness in Eutopia's voice that made Jinn frown too.

'He is missing?'

'Sort of. We haven't seen each other for about fourteen years,'

'That's a long time. What happened?' Jinn asked, gently.

'We were separated when they put us into care. Our mother died when I was six and Will was eleven, she had cancer.'

'I'm sorry. You were very young.' Jinn said. Eutopia nodded.

'Yes. But in a way, that was a good thing. I was young enough to be wanted by a foster family, I was easier to place. But they didn't have room for my brother.' She paused for a moment, her eyes narrowed into thoughtful slits as she focused on the soft rug on the floor and let the old memories drip back into her consciousness. 'Because he was older, a lot of families thought he would be too much trouble, so he was placed in a children's home. At first Social Services and my foster family both went out of their way to make sure we had regular contact, we saw each other a few times a week and spoke almost every day on the phone. Eventually though, he became a little wild. He fell in with the wrong crowd, started drinking and smoking. People began to stop putting themselves out to help us stay in touch and the contact began to dry up. My new family didn't want me to be influenced by his behaviour, so they wouldn't help me to see him. But once, just before Will turned sixteen, he came to see me,' Eutopia smiled, and Jinn could see that her blue eyes shone suddenly with unshed tears as she looked up at him.

'He climbed up a tree in the back garden. Its branches were long enough to reach my window. They used to tap on the glass in the night and frighten the life out of me,' she shivered, 'I was convinced it was a witch or something tapping for me to let it in. I've been afraid of the dark ever since. When we lived at home Will and I used to share a room. He had a torch; you know one of those little red Playskool ones with the different coloured filters?' She steamed ahead without waiting for Jinn to acknowledge the childhood artefact and he let her talk. 'And whenever I felt afraid in the night he would let me climb into his bed and he would pull this torch out from underneath his pillow and shine it into every corner of the room and then leave it stood on its end on the windowsill, still turned on. He said the beam made a force-field that monsters couldn't cross. He let me have that torch when they split us up but it never worked after our mother died, not even with new batteries. My foster family said it was silly to be afraid of the dark at six years old, so they wouldn't leave the landing light on or even buy me a nightlight. My foster-father took the bulb out from my ceiling light when I went to bed. I guess they hoped it was something I would grow out of. I never did though.' She smiled a little apologetically at Jinn, and he smiled back silently, not wanting to interrupt.

'So the night Will came to see me, it was as dark as anything. My bedroom was at the back of the house, with that tree tap-tapping on the glass. I remember being so scared I hid under the duvet. I was eleven and I still hid under the duvet like a four year old!' Eutopia laughed softly, 'But Will made the branches tap even louder as he climbed the tree. It took him ages to convince me to open the window because I thought he was some kind of, I don't know, ghost or apparition I guess. I left with him that night. We made it all the way to London on the train. We got thrown off twice for not having a ticket, and no one seemed to think it odd that two kids were travelling alone in the middle of the night. But we made it all the way to Waterloo station.'

'And then what happened?' Jinn asked, softly, as Eutopia paused, remembering the cavernous, echoing hall station still teeming with all sorts of life in the darkest hours of the night. She glanced up at him and Jinn saw the tears had fallen from her eyes to roll silently down her cheeks.

'We got caught there, at Waterloo. Someone had reported us at the station because Will jumped over the barrier to use the loo, neither of us had any money on us. Will was quick though, he was always good at running. I was too frightened to run. Will shouted at me as the policeman was taking me out of the train station to put me in the car, he said he would wait for me there, in London, that I was to find him.'

'And you think he's still here?' Jinn asked as Eutopia wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand that she hadn't felt falling until that point.

'I don't see why not. It's worth a try, anyway. I don't really have anywhere else to go. After the police took me back to my foster family, I didn't stay there much longer. I guess I had itchy feet. I wanted to get back to London to find Will. Social services put me down as a lost cause because I wouldn't stay anywhere they tried to place me. I just ran and ran and ran. Foster families refused to take me eventually because I would just disappear for days on end, get myself into trouble, until I got caught. I got good at it though, running away. Eventually I just dropped through the net I suppose and they stopped looking for me.'

'But where did you live? You must have still been a child…' Jinn asked with his softened eyes wide in disbelief.

'I slept rough for a little while and made friends here and there with people who helped me out. I begged, stole mostly, when I had to. I'm not proud of it. Eventually, when I turned sixteen I managed to get a job in a little cafe, clearing tables and washing up, things like that. The owners had a flat above the cafe, they let me live there because they'd just bought themselves a house. It was nice. I never really left after that. I started saving up my money, ran double shifts in a local nightclub too when I turned eighteen, serving drinks until I had enough to last a little while. And here I am two years later. Stuck in the middle of all this bloody mess.' Eutopia began to chew a nail, a habit she had previously grown out of.

'You've come back to London to find your brother. The last thing you need is to be caught up with the police. It wouldn't do for either of us to get tangled up in this. Those guys aren't worth it. You've come so far now; you can't give up what you came here to do.'

'No, I know. But I'll never be able to find Will if I don't get out there and look,' she said, motioning to the lounge window, where darkness had once more fallen outside.

'Then let me help you. Where were you planning to stay?' Jinn asked, standing up.

'I did have a room booked in a hotel,' Eutopia rolled her eyes, dabbing at the scab on her split lip with one fingertip, 'But I messed that up.'

'You don't have any friends or contacts in London?'

'There is one guy I know, a friend I made years ago when I was on the run.' Jinn nodded.

'Right, so we have somewhere we can start to begin looking for Will?'

'Yes, he did live in London for a while before he started going back and forth between Basingstoke, which is where I first met him. We haven't spoken for ages but last I heard, he had moved back to Peckham, I think,' Eutopia agreed, eyeing Jinn with sudden caution, 'What's this 'we' business, though?'

'Well, I figured you'd need a little help. Plus, I have nothing better to do with my time now either, other than avoiding the police.' Eutopia smiled, sheepishly.

'You don't have a job?' she asked.

'Not exactly. I have, ah, an inheritance. There isn't much need for me to work.'

'Oh.'

'So, I have this place outside of London. Maybe it would be best to leave the City tonight and we can work from there as a base. It's not far, maybe an hour's drive or so?'

'I can't drive,' Eutopia said, 'And I couldn't afford a car, even if I could.' Jinn shook his head, pulling a set of keys from his jeans pocket.

'Don't worry about that. Is all your stuff packed?' he asked, nodding at the backpack Eutopia still hugged. She nodded. 'Then lets go.' Eutopia stood and waved a hand around.

'You aren't taking anything?'

'It's mostly rented, the furniture and things. I just need to grab a few bits. I'll meet you downstairs in two.' He tossed her the keys which Eutopia deftly caught. 'Black Mercedes,' he said, before he twisted the lock on the door. Eutopia pulled on the now open latch to find a very short and plainly decorated corridor outside, leading to a flight of blue carpeted stairs heading downwards. She followed the little bend in the stairwell, walking past two other doors on two separate landings. Other flats, she guessed. When the stairs came to an end she found herself faced with a large red door. Eutopia twisted the round silver handle and the door opened silently inwards, letting her out onto the well-lit street. Jinn came up behind her, twitching the key from her fingertips, making her jump. He grinned.

'Sorry,' he said, leading her down the five stone steps and onto the pavement below. 'My car is just here.' Orange side lights flickered on a shiny black Mercedes SL65 parked right in front as Jinn pointed at it with the key. He took Eutopia's bag, giving her an opportunity to look around them as he popped the boot open to load their things. She noted he also had a backpack, though it looked much newer than hers.

'Where are we?' she asked him, tilting her head to take in the tall houses crammed side by side down the whole length of the street. Wrought iron fences and balconies decorated most of them, as did stone flourishes and columns, eked out of clean white stone that looked dull beneath the glow of the street lamps. Everything was so still. Eutopia jumped again as Jinn closed the boot with a thump and snapped open the passenger door for her.

'Kensington,' he replied, closing the door after her before moving around the front of the car to slip into the driver's seat. The engine purred gently and Jinn slid the car into gear before pulling out smoothly into the deserted street. Eutopia glanced at the glowing clock on the dashboard. 22:53. Where was her life going to? All these lost hours... She watched as the tall houses paraded past the window for a little while, the hum of the engine making her eyes feel heavy.

'Do you have any music?' Eutopia reached out to fumble with the confusion of glowing buttons that faced her only to find her hand knocked out of the way by Jinn's as he switched on the radio to prevent her from blasting them with the arctic air-con.

'...on the Mellow Magic Music Hour,' the radio presenter announced softly, the gentle tones of Ed Sheeran filling the air. 'White lips, pale face, breathing in snowflakes...' Eutopia settled back in her seat, tucking her bare feet up beneath herself and pulling the seatbelt around her drawn-up knees.

'You aren't wearing any shoes,' Jinn observed, glancing at Eutopia's feet before looking back at the road as he drove into a busier part of town.

'Oh. I must have left them at yours. I don't like wearing shoes much anyway, I'm always leaving them places.' Eutopia shrugged unworried, her head almost resting on her left shoulder as she continued to watch the shops and houses and little knots of people sliding past her window as Jinn managed to keep a steady speed.

'...sells love to another man, it's too cold outside for angels to fly, angels...' A little burst of static made Eutopia sit up, glaring at Jinn as he smiled apologetically. 'Sorry. That song was making me sleepy.' He kept his finger down on the search button, looking for another radio station and then held a hand out to Eutopia when nothing seemed to catch his attention.

'I've got some CDs in the glove compartment, you want to choose one?' Eutopia clicked it open and drew out a small but heavy leather case, flicking quickly through the selection. She squinted in the half-light of the street-lamps as they passed, but it didn't help her make out many of the bands. She picked one at random and placed it into Jinn's waiting hand. Jinn fed it into the CD player and immediately began to tap out the beat on the steering wheel with a grin.

'Good choice,' he said, catching Eutopia's slightly wrinkled nose. 'You don't like AFI?'

'Um... I've never heard of them. My music experience is limited. Leave it though, its fine,' she said, reaching out to stop Jinn from ejecting it. 'I'll listen to anything, if it's good.'

'AFI aren't good, they're great,' he informed her with a withering look. 'I can't believe you would be so small minded.'

'I'm listening to it aren't I?' she smiled, hands up in mock surrender. 'I'll give it a chance.' Eutopia settled back into her seat again to listen to the heavy beat of the music.

'Where are we going?' she asked, trying to get her bearings from any landmark she might recognise as Jinn drove.

'I have a house in Surrey. It's only small, nothing much.'

'Which part of Surrey?' Eutopia asked with a twist in her stomach, thinking of Guildford. Though it wasn't as big as London, nowhere near, she remembered the heavy, tired concrete of the buildings, the crush of offices and shops and the vein of traffic that constantly pulsed through the imposing town centre from her youth. She was a country girl, born and raised in rural Hampshire for the first six years of her life. Eutopia had never forgotten the freedom she had felt as a child in that countryside, the lush green of the hills and hedgerows; the sheer exhilaration she felt simply by looking up at the vast blue sky and realising how tiny she was in comparison. Climbing trees with Will, splashing in ponds on frog hunts. Not that her childhood had been rosy, but it certainly glowed with movie-like innocence compared to what had awaited her on the other side of her tenth birthday. Jinn caught the strained note in her voice.

'My house is in Farnham. Are you ok?' he shot a glance at Eutopia, who was fiddling with the CD case again, barely looking at any of the discs as she flipped over each plastic sleeve.

'Oh. Yes, fine. I know Farnham,' she smiled, feeling the knot in her tummy relax. 'Nice place.' Jinn nodded, and they both lapsed into silence.

'...Your sins into me, oh my beautiful one, your sins into me...'

Jinn snuck another glance at Eutopia, who was absently stroking the fingertips of her right hand over her left arm, her eyes glazed as she stared out of the windscreen ahead. In the half-light of the dashboard he could make out the faint scars that he knew criss-crossed the inside of her wrist in a silvery web.