0E: OLD WOUNDS

Some time later, as Emilia is walking into her apartment building, Nadia pokes tentatively at her mind.

?, she asks.

"Maybe not right now," Emilia replies.

YES, says Nadia diffidently, and falls silent. Emilia can sense her eagerness to be off her shoulder and out of range of her emotions. She can't blame her, honestly – natu are not good with human feelings – but some small vicious part of her does anyway.

She can tell that Nadia senses this, too. There's not a lot she can do about that.

As soon as they're inside, Nadia flutters quietly away towards the kitchen, looking for her seed mix, and Emilia leaves her to it, going straight for Effie instead. She is where she left her, fruit just as bloated and as ugly, and when she sees her Emilia's anger fades, just like that. The reckless, furious energy drains out of her, and she drops her bag and half-falls next to it, to reach out and hold Effie in her hands.

It's too much. Effie, and breach, and now this. She could fight the tears, if she really wanted; she could straighten up and smooth her hair and find something better to do. But to hell with it. She is tired of control, tired of kindness and smiles and competence, and even if there's nothing left of her beneath the mask she just can't keep it up any more, not today.

So. Tears, and swearing, and the ugliness of emotion. It's fine. This kind of thing is like a steam valve; it has to happen eventually or else you explode, and Emilia has been putting it off for a long, long time. She lets it happen, and then when it's passed she kisses Effie (no risk now; no pollen left to poison her) and stands up and wipes her eyes.

"Okay," she says. She can't seem to find her usual voice. This one is hoarser and less approachable, from a time before she made herself mimic the other, wealthier students on her law conversion course. "Okay, well, it doesn't change anything. I have to fix this, League or not." She checks her phone: three in the afternoon, give or take. "Lunch first," she commands herself. "Get changed. Then … then you can't search for Abigail Grahame, because your account's locked. So … uh." She thinks for a moment, then sighs. "Lunch first," she repeats, and goes into the kitchen.

Nadia is there, pecking at the bowl of feed that lives permanently on the kitchen counter for her to snack on, carefully removing all the sunflower seeds to be saved until last. She looks up sharply when Emilia enters, obvious unease rippling through her mind in a way that leaves Emilia feeling guilty.

"I don't know how much of that you understood," she says, searching in the cupboard for bread. "I've been suspended, Nadia. Which I suppose means we've been suspended, since Lorelei didn't ask me to return you."

I STAY, announces Nadia, and despite it all Emilia smiles.

"Yes," she says. "Yes, you do."

At this point, even if she quit the League entirely, they probably wouldn't ask for Nadia back. Not only is she too attuned to Emilia to work with anyone else, but after all this time she's as much her partner as Effie ever was, and the taboo about separating human and pokémon partners would apply. Nadia isn't like a regular animal; with the uncomfortable exception of the Fuji Labs' copyrighted clones (and that is something the League is getting close to being able to overturn), pokémon cannot legally be owned, in Kanto at least. Technically she is an employee of the Indigo League, not its property, and if she decided one day that she'd had enough there would be nothing anyone could do to stop her leaving.

Emilia makes herself a sandwich and sits down at the table to eat with her, concentrating on not thinking ahead, on keeping herself in this moment and not mired in whatever difficulties are coming next. It's not easy. There's the suspension, of course, and really that hurts, especially coming from Lorelei; Emilia truly did think that she trusted her more than that. Perhaps she did, before Emilia confronted her about ROCKETS. And then there's Giovanni, which is just infuriating. She can picture him now, sitting across from the internal review team in the Viridian Gym conference room, all smiles and innocence. Oh, but I think I see where this misunderstanding has come from, he says. Unfortunately, I suspect your informant has failed to vet their source. You see, Miss Apanchomene is …

That stings too, really, although she has no right to take it badly. Artemis was perfectly within her rights not to volunteer personal information about her mental health to some suspicious League woman, and Emilia knows this, she really does; it's just that if she had told her, then maybe Emilia would have taken the last few days differently and maybe she wouldn't be sitting here right now, eating sandwiches while Giovanni carries on summoning eldritch abominations.

She is not, it has to be said, doing a particularly good job of keeping herself in the moment.

Emilia sighs.

"How's the birdseed?" she asks.

SEEDS, replies Nadia, and levitates one to show her.

"Okay," says Emilia. "Good. I guess. Yeah, good."

She finishes eating, puts the plate in the almost-empty dishwasher and goes to shower and change; she's been in these clothes since she flew out to Cinnabar. Habit almost sees her put on a different suit, but she forces herself to stop and go to the other side of her wardrobe instead, where dresses she bought because they were pretty and never wore because they were not professional languish in obscurity. Some are even dusty, she notices. Actually dusty. Come on, Emilia. You call yourself organised.

She sighs again, and slowly puts herself back together. When she's done, the Emilia in the mirror looks strange to her, in her unfamiliar summer dress and braided belt. Tired, but maybe younger. Definitely less … less something.

"You look nice," she tells her reflection, or perhaps her reflection tells her, and then Emilia throws up her hands and goes back outside, unable to deal with the weirdness. Nadia gives her one of those looks, and Emilia sighs yet again, shakes her head. "Don't even say anything," she warns her. "I know already."

COLOURS, says Nadia, tilting her head dramatically to one side like an owl. Emilia is reminded of the way that she stares at the TV, entranced by the light.

"Colourful, yeah," she says. "I know, it's strange."

SUNFLOWER EMILIA, replies Nadia, hopping closer.

Emilia stares, touched. Sunflower seeds are her favourite; just as what she hates is furret, so what she likes is sunflower.

"Yeah?" she asks. It's ridiculous, but she almost feels like she might cry again.

Nadia broadcasts confirmation. Emilia smiles a wobbly kind of smile.

All right, she thinks. Maybe she can work with this after all.

It's not so bad, this boat thing. There's the waiting, of course; that hangs over their heads, ominous and heavy. But the boat ride itself is actually pretty good. Both Artemis and Cass have training to do, and unlike the ferry from Pallet, this ship is big enough to support it.

After lunch – they somehow manage to spend the rest of the morning doing nothing in the lounge, trying to stay connected to the crappy ship wifi for more than five minutes at a time – they go out on deck to see if there's space to run through some moves. There are a lot of people sitting out here, taking advantage of the sun, but there are also a couple of kid trainers drilling their ivysaur and butterfree in a complex dance of whipping vines and fluttering wings.

"Aw," says Cass, pointing. "Rosewing! Those are so pretty."

Artemis has to agree. The butterfree's delicate wings are a beautiful mix of pinks and reds, swirling around vivid eyespots.

"What's your favourite kind of butterfree?" asks Cass, as they make their way down the deck, giving the sparring pokémon a wide berth.

Artemis has never thought about this. She doesn't have a ready answer, and leaves Cass hanging far too long.

"Uh …"

"It's okay if you don't have one," says Cass, reddening a little at her obvious embarrassment. "Mine's eclipse."

"Mm," says Artemis, mentally kicking herself for not just picking one and going with it. "Yeah, they're nice, I guess."

Past the kids and their pokémon, there's a stretch of empty deck that they feel should be all right, as long as they're careful with moves like ember. Brauron slithers down from Artemis' neck, Ringo takes up a position opposite her, and they get to work.

It goes well enough. Some Googling has identified Brauron's weird blue-fire move as dragon rage, and Artemis works on bringing it properly into her repertoire, trying to gauge whether the eerie flame draws on her poison stockpile or whether she can use it freely. It seems to drain her energy fast, and she has to keep still when using it so the force doesn't knock her off her feet, but her mouth is still wet with venom at the end of it. Artemis doesn't push her too hard; it's still not been that long since her Gym battle, and she has no desire to tire her out before she's got her full strength back.

Ringo, for his part, still hasn't quite got mirror move, which is understandable; it's a complicated one, especially for a pokémon that doesn't usually have to deal with moves any more complex than peck and fury attack. He does finally nail pursuit, blurring forward to strike in a dark flash when Artemis has Brauron turn her back to him, and both Cass and Artemis have to admit that he seems to be hitting harder than usual.

"Maybe he's getting ready to evolve?" suggests Artemis, as he knocks Brauron back a step. "Spearow grow fast, right?"

"Maybe," agrees Cass. "That'd be cool, although if you do that, Ringo, you don't get to ride on my shoulder any more. I love you, but I love having both my arms still attached more."

He squawks and flutters back, not quite dodging a swipe from Brauron that knocks him off balance and has him flapping wildly to recover.

"She's getting tough too, huh," says Cass. "Do salandit evolve fast? I mean, you're really good so she'll probably evolve sooner rather than later, but like, what's normal?"

Artemis shrugs, as if she hasn't looked all this up already and does not know that salandit typically reach maturity in two to three years, where spearow take one.

"Couple years in the wild," she says. "I think. So maybe we'll manage it before I run out of time, maybe not."

"Before you what?"

Artemis blinks. She's told Cass so much recently that she'd forgotten that she hasn't actually told her everything.

"I only have a year," she explains. "I have a place at university. It was … kinda the only way my parents would let me go."

She waits for the response. Cass could say but you know they can't stop you, could point out that Artemis is an adult and can make her own decisions; she could say that trainer journeys are enshrined in Kantan law and culture, and it is illegal to coerce people into giving them up. She could say all these things and Artemis would not be able to explain herself, not in the face of all those words.

Cass does not say it. She sighs, and runs the fingers of one hand through her hair.

"Yeah?" she asks.

"Yeah," says Artemis. "I … we don't …" She forces herself to stop and breathe. "If they knew about me, they'd …"

The silence is as heavy as the waves or the sunlight. Cass sighs again.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Parents can be shitty."

So she knows. God. Maybe Artemis can trust her and maybe she can't, but she knows.

"I just needed to leave," says Artemis, feeling tears pricking at her eyes. Cass nods.

"I know," she says. "So did I." Brauron and Ringo are silent and still, watching their partners carefully. They sense something is up, although they don't know what. "I … have to admit, I spent the last few weeks before I left town at a friend's house," she continues, not quite looking at her. "While I was waiting for the League paperwork to go through. So yeah. I get it. The parts of it I can get, anyway. And, uh … I don't really know what I'm doing after this."

"Yeah?" asks Artemis.

"Yeah," says Cass. "I'm trying not to think about it."

A short pause. The chatter of the other passengers rises around them.

"I don't know either," says Artemis. "I really don't want to go."

"To uni?"

"Yeah. I mean, I want to get away from home, I want to not fight about – about things with my parents, but I … they chose the course. Like they choose everything."

It's the first time she's ever said it. Artemis is shocked to hear the words coming out of their mouth, how clear and bitter they are. Like a mouthful of broken glass.

"Right," says Cass. "It's like that, huh."

"Yeah," says Artemis. "It is."

Something scratches Artemis' ankle, and she looks down to see Brauron by her foot, looking up at her with wide eyes. She smiles and bends to pick her up.

"I'm okay, kiddo," she says, rubbing a knuckle gently against her head. "I have you, don't I?"

Brauron hisses and clings tightly to Artemis' chest, claws snagging the fabric of her top.

"Yeah," says Artemis. "That's right."

Ringo flutters up to Cass' shoulder. She strokes him absently, without taking her eyes off Artemis.

"Tell you what," she says. "Since even our pokémon have decided that we're done training, how about we take a break? It's hot out here, and I'm pretty sure that if I keep looking at the light reflecting off the deck I'm gonna go blind."

Artemis has to laugh, a little bit at least. Cass is nice: that's what it is, when you get down to it. She's very nice, and that's probably why she betrayed Artemis, because if she knows what it's like to have bad parents then she must have leaped at the chance to please her aunt, to earn someone's respect, without even thinking about the consequences; and it's why she confessed to what she did; and it's why she's doing this now. She's nice. Artemis isn't sure if she can see past what she did, but she is nice.

"Okay," she says. "Let's go in."

The cabins on the ferry sleep four, with two stacked bunks against each wall. Artemis and Cass have to share theirs with a young couple in their early twenties, with whom they exchange strained pleasantries and who stare at Artemis without apparently realising that she can see them doing it. She's reminded of that school trip four years ago, sleeping badly in a room full of strangers, and wishes there was room to let Brauron out of her ball so she could feel her comforting warmth.

But there isn't, and anyway Artemis is still afraid to have Brauron near her while she sleeps in case she somehow manages to crush her with her clumsy bulk, so she just closes her eyes and tries to ignore the eyes weighing on her like pieces of lead. She has a dream in which ghost people crowd around her, or maybe she wakes up and hallucinates them, either one, and gets up early, eager to fit her face back together and get out of the cabin before anyone else.

It's six am. The ship is quiet and cool and feels all but uninhabited, as if Artemis is alone on a ghost ship, sailing over forgotten seas far away from Kanto and its dangerously cracked reality. She steals out onto the deck, into grey light filtering through bruise-coloured clouds, and watches the waves moving like great dark slabs of muscle beneath her.

"Another storm," she says to Brauron, or rather she whispers it, because the early morning calm hangs around her too softly to break with raised voices. "That's gonna be fun, out here."

It's soon for another one. Each of Kanto's summers has been stormier than the last, in recent years. Probably global warming. Artemis tries not to think about it too much because her powerlessness scares her, but she read somewhere that many climatologists agree that Vermilion and Pallet will be underwater with Miami and Alexandria by the end of century, even in the best-case scenario.

Artemis pulls back from the railing, unable to bear the water any more. It's probably time to go inside, anyway. If the sky is any indication, today is not going to be a good day for being out on the deck.

The storm breaks around noon, after a morning during which everybody hangs around uneasily inside, peering out at the windows in search of rain. As soon as the boat starts rocking, Ringo and Brauron both clamour to be let back in their balls, and frankly Artemis can't blame them; a summer storm out on the ocean is, as it turns out, really kind of unpleasant. The ship heaves, bucking and swaying beneath her like a drunk horse, and with the furniture sliding around dangerously in the lounge everyone returns to their cabins, to sit on their bunks and try to make conversation through the thickening nausea and the deafening pounding of the rain on the deck. Artemis and the young couple take turns throwing up in the little bathroom; Cass, for some reason, is entirely immune, and sits there looking increasingly apologetic as everyone around her gets increasingly miserable.

"I'm sorry," she keeps saying. "Like I have no idea why I'm not barfing too."

"'S fine," mumbles Artemis, voice lost in the boom of thunder. "Wouldn't actually wish this on you."

Eventually, after ninety per cent of everything anyone has eaten so far on this trip has left its consumers' stomachs, the storm begins to slacken, and the waves to shrink. Artemis has thrown up far too much, and has banged her head from the swaying about sixteen times, and at least once the lumps of silicone she wears against her chest have jumped mortifyingly free beneath her dress and exposed their fakeness, but she is at least still alive.

"Ugh," she grunts, lying on her back, eyes closed. "Why do we even have boats. Why. Who even sets sail when this is what's out there."

"I guess we're probably just not used to it," says Cass unhelpfully. "Like all the crew seemed fine."

"Okay, but I'm not the crew and I'm not fine."

"That's … fair, I guess? I dunno."

It's late by the time people begin to venture out of their cabins, and prematurely dark with rainclouds; when they do, Artemis sees the same look of faint surprise on everyone's face at the fact that the ship seems to be absolutely fine, aside from a few chairs falling over. She's surprised herself. It felt like half the boat should have been destroyed. But no, apparently the ships that regularly sail in weather like this are in fact built to withstand it fairly handily. Honestly, she feels like she should have seen that one coming.

The rain comes down all night, cracking against the windows like whips, but the wind and the thunder have gone and the water, though a little choppy, is nowhere near as rough as it was previously. Artemis and Cass eat bar food, stretch their pokémon's legs after their hours in their balls, and go to bed early, exhausted.

This, fortunately, is the last night on the water, and Artemis looks forward to being free of her unwanted roommates. Morning arrives, grey and drizzly and suffused with post-storm calm, and a couple of hours later Vermilion finally becomes visible through the rain, a dull smear on the horizon. It is by all accounts not an unattractive city, but even as they come into port it's hard to see much of it; the rain blurs out distant buildings and turns the nearer ones grey and unappealing. At any rate, they don't stay long. As soon as they get off the boat, Artemis and Cass take the bus down anonymous rain-slicked streets to the train station, and get on the 3.19 to Lavender.

It feels wrong. Artemis wonders if it's just her who senses it, but Cass is uncharacteristically quiet too, and she has the feeling that this has something to do with it. This isn't what either of them left home for. They came out here to walk and train and okay, maybe they would have ended up camped out in a thunderstorm and had their tents collapse under the rain but that's fine, that's something that happens to everyone at least once on their trainer journey. This, taking the train, not stopping in Vermilion – this feels off, somehow. Like they've slipped halfway back into real life. Not so far back as to have ended up back home, but far enough to have left the trainer magic behind.

Maybe it's just the rain, making her glum and mawkish. Artemis puts in her earphones for the first time since meeting Cass, and stares out of the window at the drizzle turning the Vermilion suburbs into impressionist watercolours, letting the music fill her head in place of thoughts.

Just a detour, after all. There's no need to worry.

Emilia's good mood isn't lasting. It's not that anything bad has happened, it's that nothing has happened at all, and it's starting to unnerve her. For the past few hours, she has been sitting in her apartment, occasionally reaching automatically for her phone before remembering her account has been locked and she can't get to her emails, and trying to figure out what she is supposed to be doing.

Morally, ethically, the answer is pretty clear: she should be trying to take down Giovanni. But actually practically, in terms of things she's capable of doing now, with the resources to hand – that's a harder one. She could call people, but what's she going to say? There's no point gathering information now. Nobody's going to listen to her, not after that last call with Lorelei.

And it's that, more than anything, that really throws her. Nobody's going to listen to her. Emilia's life is the gathering and curation of information with the aim of presenting it to people who will make things happen as a result. With the exception of breaking into Giovanni's office the other week, every part of her investigation so far has relied on her connections. Now – well, now if Emilia calls people they'll have to choose between her and Lorelei. And when one option is a legal counsel who's just been suspended and the other is one of the most important women in Kanto, it's not a very difficult decision to make.

Emilia has for decades now maintained that there's always a solution, if you're creative enough and expend enough resources. Now she doesn't have any resources to expend, and she knows all too well that those without resources find that creativity has its limits.

She sits there, aching for something to do (and, in counterpoint, something to drink). She tries to catch up on missed TV, but she can't concentrate; Giovanni and Artemis seem to hover on either side of her, pecking at her like biting flies and pulling her mind back to the responsibilities she cannot now fulfil.

In the end, she gives up and sits with Effie instead, staring at her in what she is vaguely aware is probably an unhealthy kind of way. Outside her window, the sky dims and the apartment building across the street lights up; at her side, her phone stays dark and silent. Sometime in the evening it goes off and she seizes it immediately, but it's Lorelei, and she finds she cannot bring herself to answer. She puts it down and listens as it rings and rings and at last goes to voicemail.

This is childish, she knows. But for once – and worryingly, for someone like her – she can't seem to find it in her to care.

Nadia suggests, at one point, that she might like to eat something. Emilia does not respond. She presses her forehead gently against Effie and closes her eyes, resolutely silent.

For some reason, she finds herself thinking about Sam again, about that day eight years ago when she went home to visit her parents and did not live to come back again. Or no, not for some reason; Emilia knows exactly why. That was the last time, after all. After Sam, Emilia stopped seeing her other friends; if any more are dead, she doesn't know about it, and that's how she prefers it. So the last person close to her who died was Sam. The last person before Effie.

Emilia was not invited to the funeral. Sam's family did not know her, as they did not know most of her Saffron friends. She always kept her family out of her personal life like that. Some lingering resentment. Emilia knew all that, but still, it hurt. She and Sam were best friends, had been since law school. They'd never really thought about what would happen if one of them died, but if they had, each would have wanted to give the other the send-off she deserved.

And then: lightning, a closed-casket funeral, a church service that Sam would have hated if she'd been alive to suffer through it. Emilia heard about it all secondhand, from a friend who did go, and that weekend (she refused to take time off work, refused even to show that she felt anything) she went out to Cerulean to find her grave for herself. Effie came too, she remembers. She was excited on the train because Emilia had told her they were going to see Sam, and then when they got there …

Emilia cannot bear to complete the memory. Even the beginning of it feels like a scar on something vital deep inside her.

She turns the thought over, and comes to a decision. It's time. And sure, it isn't going to fix anything; Giovanni is still triggering breach events and Artemis is still in trouble. But all that can wait for a day, right? It's not like Emilia has any immediate solutions, anyway. And she definitely isn't coming up with any just sitting around here, feeling guilty.

"Nadia," says Emilia, without moving. "Nadia, find the train timetable website, please. I need to visit an old friend."

The next day, the storm clouds are gathering overhead. Emilia puts on another dress she hasn't worn in years – still fits, she notes, so at least the exercise regime is doing its job – and heads out with a pre-emptive raincoat draped over one arm, ready for the downpour when it comes. On her way to the station, it occurs to her that Artemis is probably on the ferry now, and the thought is so nasty that she physically winces. She feels seasick even thinking about being caught on a storm out on the water.

It is one of very few thoughts that make it through the weird haze of low-level despair that seems to hang around her mind like the black clouds above. She takes a measure of comfort from this, although not a particularly generous one.

The train journey is fast and uninteresting; the maglev trains connecting Kanto's major cities travel at blistering speed and don't afford much time for seeing the sights. It's a point of national pride that the trains are ten times as fast as in Johto, although Johtonians claim that their slower public transport creates a much better environment for pondering ideas. Old debates. Kanto and Johto have a long, rich history of claiming to be better than each other, even now while the Kantan Tiger economy grows and Johto sinks deeper into austerity and recession.

Cerulean, when it arrives, feels cold in a way that cuts straight through the warm, close air of the gathering storm; coming out of the station, Emilia looks up at the blue slate roofs above the chain stores and anonymous housing and is unaccountably depressed. Nadia puts a questioning thought into her head, and she shrugs.

"I don't know," she says. "Sam, I guess."

Nadia broadcasts understanding, and falls silent. She has worked with Emilia for ten years, plus two of training, long enough to have known Sam almost as long as Emilia herself. It's difficult to say what she remembers of Sam – natu memory is complicated by their capacity to see into the past – but she certainly knows what Emilia thinks of her. Maybe even better than Emilia does herself.

It's a long way out to the graveyard. Emilia could take a taxi, but for some reason she doesn't want to, even though the humid pre-storm heat is making her hair frizz out of its usual tight control and her breath come in what feel like sticky lumps of air. She walks through the town centre out towards the east suburbs where Sam's parents live, an unfamiliar lightness in her step from wearing her old sneakers instead of heels, and when the lightning cleaves the sky and the rain begins to fall she just shrugs on her raincoat and keeps on walking, nestling Nadia inside the hood next to her cheek.

Everyone is ready for it: in minutes, the other pedestrians have mostly vanished, and the cars get much less frequent. The rain comes down in drops so bloated and numerous they are almost sheets, hammering the pavement, roaring on Emilia's plastic hood. Around her, the buildings turn soft and blurry beneath veils of falling water, and Nadia shivers in the sudden cool and presses herself against her partner's cheek.

BAD SKY, she says, which strikes Emilia as a peculiarly lovely way of putting it.

"Yes," she agrees. "It's not great."

The rain falls; Emilia walks. It's pleasant, even as the water splashes against her bare shins and trickles down to wet her feet. She can't remember the last time she was out in a storm and it was anything other than an annoying impediment to whatever she was doing at the time. But now she has no job to do, and she can just … walk. And enjoy the rain as it comes down, the petrichor smell of it rising from the soil around the trees, the dull roar, the heady boom of thunder and white flash of lightning scattered across shop windows.

Well. Not so much the lightning, maybe. That one's still a slightly sore point, especially today. But it's been eight years, and Emilia can appreciate this for what it is: something huge and beautiful and boundlessly aggressive. There is, she reflects, a reason why gods live in the heavens.

Cerulean is not such a big city, compared to Saffron. An hour later, Emilia has begun to squelch slightly, but she's getting close to her destination, moving through row after row of suburban houses. They all look the same, especially with the rain obscuring the personal touches added by each resident; still, she remembers the way even without asking Nadia to play back the memory of her last trip here. Not consciously, perhaps, but her feet make the turns and carry her closer without her having to think about it.

In the distance, dim through the twilight of the storm, she sees the spire of a church, and walks faster. Her path takes her down a tiny little shopping street that serves the local area, convenience store hairdresser phone repair florist, and without thinking Emilia pushes open the door of the last shop and buys a dozen white lilies.

"That's some dedication," says the woman behind the counter. "You came through the storm to get these?"

Emilia smiles without feeling.

"Well, it's been a while," she replies. "I have some making up to do."

The woman smiles back and hands her the lilies, wrapped up in plastic to protect them from the weather.

"Good luck with that, then," she says. "I hope they like them."

Emilia shrugs. She doesn't bother to correct the florist's assumption.

"I guess I'm going to find out."

She pays without even listening to how much she's being charged and leaves again, flowers clasped carefully against her chest.

Down the streets, skirting puddles, getting wetter. Sam's parents live around here somewhere, she knows. She wonders what they would think if she turned up now, eight years later, with the ghost of their dead daughter hanging around her neck.

Probably it's best not to stir things up. With an effort, Emilia shoves the thought from her head and pushes open the gate to the churchyard.

This part she does remember: two-thirds of the way down the path, six headstones to the left. Emilia walks up to the grave and stares. SAMANTHA VILLIERS, 1978-2009. And some biblical quotation underneath that Sam would have laughed at, had she been around to see it.

"Hey," she says. "I know it's been a while." She pauses. The rain tears at the grass, as if trying to grind its way down through the earth and dig all these corpses up again. "Eight years, actually. Probably too long."

No response. Emilia is not expecting one, but she feels its absence anyway.

"Effie's dying," she says. "Sorry. That's a heavy thing to start with, but it's true. She's dying. And – and I've been suspended, because apparently I was wrong about having more allies in the League than Giovanni." Another pause. "He's doing something bad," she adds, by way of explanation. "I'm doing a terrible job of stopping him."

The carved letters stare back at her like accusatory eyes. Emilia tries to hold their gaze, but at times she feels herself slipping.

"I … I'm kind of stuck, Sam," she says. "And I'm beginning to think that maybe I shouldn't have stopped talking to everyone when you … when you left. There's this kid, Artemis, and she …"

No more words. Emilia sighs and shakes her head.

"I guess that doesn't matter so much," she says. "Look, I just needed to clear my head. Get out of Saffron. And I haven't visited much, so I thought I should fix that." Nadia presses up against her cheek, warm and comforting, and Emilia is profoundly grateful. "I just wish I knew what to do," she says. "If I could find real proof, then maybe … but Lorelei's not going to listen to me, not now." She sighs again. "Anyway, I brought flowers. That's what you do, right? For a … for a grave."

Emilia unwraps the lilies and puts them down in front of the gravestone. They last barely a minute before the rain tears them to shreds, but it's the thought that counts. She hopes.

"Sorry," she says. "The weather's not cooperating today. I was hoping for better."

She stands there for a long moment, slowly running through things she could say to try and make this work. None seem up to the task at hand.

"Okay," she says, in the end. "Okay, Sam. I guess that's it." There is one thing she wants to say, but after eight years it feels too ridiculous for her to even consider letting the words leave her mouth. "I'm going to come more often," she promises instead. "I don't know if I'll always have anything to say, but I'll come." She hesitates for a moment, then reaches out and rests her hand atop the gravestone. "See you around, Sam."

It is time. Emilia turns and leaves, feeling – she isn't sure what; some kind of sorrow, sure, but something light and buoyant, too. Like a debt has been discharged. Like a failing connection has been restored. She tells herself that this is silly, that it's been eight years and that that's longer than she and Sam even knew each other; still, the feeling lingers.

Maybe she should have taken time off to grieve after all. But that's in the past now. And all Emilia has to work with is the present, and the future.

? asks Nadia, as they make their way back through the suburbs towards the city centre.

"Oh, I don't know," replies Emilia. "It just feels different, somehow." She takes a deep breath of cool, rain-scented air. "Let's go home, Nadia," she says. "Let's go home and then let's fuck the furret man."