Empress of the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

out on to the street. He saw Jennings getting into a car. Fat bullies always get picked up by their mum. A moment’s thought summoned a twitch of power through Everett M’s EM pulsers. A targeted pulse shorted out the car’s ignition system.
    Get out and push, fat boy
.

5
    Everett M ran all the way down the Dog’s Delight and along Yoakley Road and the detour via Stoke Newington Church Road around Abney Park Cemetery. He allowed himself a tiny flicker of Thryn augmentation, adding twenty per cent to his running speed. Enough to get him home quick, but not so fast as to make him look like a superhero. Still, the runners in their winter-weight tights and thermal tops stared at the kid in the school uniform, the sensible shoes and the Spurs backpack effortlessly overtaking them. By the time he got to Stoke Newington High Street he was freezing and ravenous, but Everett M pressed on.
    He banged through the back door and up the stairs to his room.
    ‘Hi, Everett, hello, how was your day, good, and how was your day, Mum?’ Laura called from the kitchen.
    The jar. The jar was not on the windowsill.
    Everett M felt his brain turn to a pool of stupid, of
WTF
?
    The jar was gone.
    Something – he had to do something. Look for it. Maybe it had been knocked on to the floor and rolled under the bed. It’s still in the room. It has to be in the room. Everett M looked under the bed. He looked in the waste-basket. He looked in his drawers, along his shelves, pulled all the clothes out of his wardrobe, checked behind the desk and fittings, all the places an empty peanut-butter jar could not have got to by itself, could not possibly fit.
    The jar was
gone
.
    Everett M’s heart banged in his chest. The run home from school had not even stretched him, but now his breath was short and panting and panicky. Everywhere. He had looked everywhere. It wasn’t in his room. It had to be somewhere else. Get yourself together. You can’t let them see you like this. The Thryn had given him technological enhancements for everything except human emotion. Everett M fought down the fear. Breathe. Calm. Breathe.
    He went downstairs. Laura crouched in the blue light of the open freezer door, frowning at the choice of frozen meals to microwave for tonight’s dinner. Victory-Rose was at the table, painting something in pinks and purples. The radio burbled – DJ Simon Mayo on
Drivetime
. Laura was singing what she thought were the words to ‘Poker Face’.
    ‘We’re not eating till six, but if you’re starving there’s anew loaf in and sandwich stuff in the fridge,’ Laura said, picking through the ready meals.
    ‘There was a peanut-butter jar …’ Everett M said.
    ‘I replaced that. I know you’re just having a growth spurt and all that – you put on two inches over Christmas, I’m going to have to get you a new school uniform – but straight from the jar, Evvie! There’s a lot of fat in that stuff. I’m worried about your cholesterol.’
    ‘The old one, the empty one.’
    ‘The jar?’
    ‘In my bedroom. I was doing something with it. Did you take it?’ Even as the question left his lips, he saw the answer. Victory-Rose lifted her paintbrush and swirled it in a jar of water, turning the contents mauve. A jar. Of water. An empty peanut-butter jar.
    ‘Mum … that jar, was there something in it?’
    ‘Oh, like a spider or something. What were you keeping it for?’
    All Everett M could see was Victory-Rose’s paintbrush, rinsing in the water.
    Look at me, Vee-Arr
, Everett M thought at her.
Let me see your eyes
. There was the terrible possibility that if Victory-Rose looked at him he wouldn’t see human eyes. He would see the black shiny spider-eyes of Nahn invaders. The little girl kept her head down, tongue out in concentration, focusing on her painting.
Look at me
, Everett M willed her. He had to see. He had to know.
    ‘What did you do with the spider?’ Everett M fought to keep his voice normal. He could feel the blood