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Eloisa hanging around me much. But I was doing this for Kiera. I just wanted to find out what had happened to the world while we had been dead. That’s all I wanted from Sophie. It wasn’t like I had feelings for her anymore. That was a part of my life that had been pushed – pushed right away.
    The last time I knew Sophie, she had been living with her parents and had been studying music. She played the piano, and played well.
    Maybe she was some famous pianist now…or maybe not? What did she now do in this world that had been pushed?
    I raced through the air, soaring above the clouds so as not to be seen from the ground. The evening was turning out to be a cold one, but at least the rain had stopped. Circling above the town of Ripper Falls, which was on the western and most southern tip of England, I shrugged my shoulders so my wings rolled back, and I dropped through the night sky like a stone. Beneath me I could see Sophie’s parents’ house and I wondered if she still lived there with them. The house was set away from the rest of the town on a remote piece of farmland that her father had inherited from his grandfather, if I remembered rightly. The farm was surrounded by fields and in one of them I spied a scarecrow.
    Landing in the field just feet away from it, my wings disappeared into my back and I crossed the rain-sodden earth towards the scarecrow that lent over to one side. Its face was a cloth sack that had been stuffed with straw, making it look way too big for the rest of its body. It stood in a crucified position, and as I approached it, several crows that perched on its outstretched arms squawked at me. I shooed them away with a flap of my hands. Being stripped to the waist, I couldn’t very well go strolling up to Sophie’s parents’ house half-naked and ask if I could speak with their daughter. The scarecrow had been dressed in a long, black raincoat, so I took it and put it on. It was filthy dirty and torn in several places. I looked at myself in the long, dark coat and knew that either way, stripped to the waist or wearing this flasher’s mack, I looked like a pervert. But it would have to do. Pulling the coat tight about me, I headed through the dark towards the house which sat in the distance.
    A spiral of smoke curled up from the chimney, and I could see the orange glow of light through the windows. As I drew near, a dog started to bark wildly from within the house. There was a stone wall and a white wooden gate set into it. It wailed on rusty hinges as I pushed it open and the dog’s barking became wilder. As I approached the front door, I hadn’t even had a chance to knock when it flew open and a shotgun was thrust into my face.
    I recognised the man at once to be Sophie’s father. He looked older than I had remembered him. His eyes were circled with grey smudges and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. What was left of his hair was white and it stuck up all over the place, as if he had gone mad with a tub of hair gel.
    “Whoa, old man!” I said, raising my arms in the air to show him that I wasn’t any threat.
    “Take it easy – don’t get so excited!”
    Ignoring me, Sophie’s father shoved the end of the gun under my chin. God, what had been his name? I couldn’t remember now.
    “Who are you?” he asked me, and I could sense his fear. I glanced at his finger and I could see that it was pulling on the trigger.
    “I’m a friend of Sophie’s,” I told him, and tried to smile.
    “Bullshit!” he hissed, and a black Alsatian came tearing into the hall behind him. The dog barked at me, its jaws ferocious-looking.
    “Quiet, Archie!” Sophie’s father roared.
    The dog snarled at me and raced around its master’s legs, its tail flicking to and fro. Once the dog had quieted down, Sophie’s father looked down the barrel of the shotgun at me and said, “Sophie doesn’t have any friends.”
    “I went to college with her,” I tried to explain, my hands still