A Hero at the End of the World by Erin Claiborne Page B

had to put in a long night cleaning up the mess.
    He pointed to a table in the corner, where the mostly transparent form of Louise Gardener Hobbes was sitting with two men around Oliver’s age. She was glancing over her shoulder at the crime scene in disbelief, her pale, thin eyebrows arched into two peaks.
    But it wasn’t Gardener Hobbes that caused Oliver’s breath to stick in his throat.
    “I don’t understand how this helps us,” replied Sophie, though Oliver could barely hear her over the rushing in his ears.
    “Abrams said she was the leader of a cult,” Kaur argued. “I know how you and Abrams feel about cults.”
    “She’s not the head of a cult of chickens!”
    “She’s only part of why I’ve brought you here. See, the handsome one’s her son, Archibald Louis, but the other man, well, now, that’s the interesting bit.”
    Kaur pointed to the image of a man that Oliver was staring at. “Am I right, Abrams?”
    Whatever the expression on Oliver’s face was, it must have been horrible, because out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sophie looking at him in alarm. “Oliver? Who is he?” she demanded.
    He swallowed thickly, finally tearing his eyes away from the familiar bespectacled image. It had been five years since they’d seen each other, but Oliver knew that face like he knew the back of his own hand.
    “That’s Ewan Mao,” he said. “My best friend.”

Chapter 9
    I can’t do this.”
    “Can’t do what?” Archie asked, his first words in nearly an hour. Ewan found he had almost missed his sardonic drawl.
    Since Louise had left with Ralph the Ravager, they had been sitting at the table in silence as Ewan struggled to come up with a plan to get Oliver to meet him. Plucking ideas out of thin air had never been his strong point. So far he had considered kidnapping him, which he dismissed not only because Oliver could beat the stuffing out of him, but also because he didn’t know how he would get him all the way to Hampstead Heath, and blackmailing him into meeting him there, which he had vetoed because the worst thing he had on Oliver was that time he had cheated on their French test.
    Ewan buried his face in his hands. “How am I going to do this?” he moaned. “I can’t just ring Oliver after all this time and say, ‘Hello, friend who ruined my life, fancy a pint? Shall we go for a stroll by ourselves through this empty, wooded area?’”
    “Well, maybe not phrased like that,” Archie said. “But if you told him that you’ve been thinking about him...”
    “Nope, it’s too awkward. Besides, he was the one who broke off contact, that git. Always thought he was better than me.”
    “I’ll do it,” said Archie.
    Ewan’s head snapped up. He gaped at him. “You will?”
    Archie shrugged. “How difficult can it be?”
    He wordlessly stretched out his hand, and a telephone flew from a mahogany corner table and landed, a little clumsily, in front of them. A dull cream color, it was one of those old-fashioned telephones with the turn dial, yet it seemed well modern compared to the rest of the Victorian furniture in the room. In a state of shock, it took Ewan too long to realize that Archie was picking up the receiver and spinning the rotary dial, but hearing the dial tone spurred Ewan into action.
    Ewan grabbed at him, but Archie, who turned out to be much quicker than he looked, twisted away, dragging the phone along the table with him.
    “You can’t just—” Ewan began, rising out his chair to lunge at him. His palm slapped painfully against the tabletop as he missed: Archie had leaned back far out of reach.
    “Relax, we have someone in the SMCA,” Archie told him, dodging as Ewan swiped at him again. “Followers of Zaubernegativum are everywhere. Bernard?” he said to whoever was on the line.
    Ewan sat back down, his stomach churning.
    “It’s Archibald Gardener Hobbes. I need you to transfer a call for me. I need to speak with Oliver Abrams—yes,
that
Oliver