The hummingbird killer, p.32
The Hummingbird Killer, page 32
Some of the civilians try to follow her, but she loses them on the Sledmere border. Doesn’t help. Somebody else will recognise her soon, so she’s not safe. Never will be. Not here. Not in Espera. She’s gasping for breath and shaking with exhaustion by the time she reaches the building she’s looking for, and she pounds on the door.
‘Let me in! You’ve got to let me in!’
But nobody lets her in, and soon they’ll find her. She raises her gun again and fires, one bullet, two, into the glass, and it shatters, splintering around her like killing rain. She’s already running towards the cupboard at the end of the corridor.
‘You can’t be here—’ says a voice, and she turns to see Rae, the smuggler a half-familiar face in this waking nightmare.
‘I need the keys, I need to go, I’ve got to—’
‘You can’t,’ begins Abbie’s friend, but Isabel’s gripping the front of their T-shirt, desperate, begging.
‘Please. They’re coming for me.’ There’s so much blood. She’s dripping onto the carpet. ‘Everybody’s dead. I’ve got to go. They’re coming.’
Rae pushes her off and Isabel stumbles, helpless.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she repeats, and now she really is crying, sobbing, because she has nothing left and she can’t stop herself. ‘You’ve got to let me go.’
For a long moment she thinks: This is where it ends. This is where the road stops, this is where they find me, this is the place where I’ll die.
And then Rae nods, and takes the keys from their pocket. They unlock the door. Unlock the trapdoor. Step back.
They don’t say Good luck, because they don’t care if Isabel lives or dies. But they give her this lifeline, and Isabel sobs with relief and stumbles through the trapdoor, down the ladder with boots and hands too bloody to grip the metal rungs, into the dark of a tunnel she’s never seen that leads to a world she can’t imagine.
The trapdoor closes above her.
Isabel takes a moment to breathe, hands braced against thighs, arms red to the elbow, and keeps count. Mortimer’s dead. Daragh’s dead. Safest to think Laura’s dead, too, and kindest, since the alternatives are worse. Dead, dead, dead.
But Isabel’s alive, and if she keeps moving, she might stay that way.
The tunnel is dark and dank and all that waits for her at the other end is a huge, alien, impossible world – but she has nowhere else to go.
Isabel keeps running.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was even longer in the making than its predecessor, so my list of thank-yous is embarrassingly long and no doubt incomplete. To those I will inevitably leave out: I’m sorry, I love you, thank you.
Firstly, this book wouldn’t exist without those who have read and supported The Butterfly Assassin, from the booksellers who’ve championed it, to the ordinary readers recommending it to their friends. Not to mention the wonderful authors who gave their time and attention to blurb the book. Thank you!
It also wouldn’t exist without my agent, Jessica Hare. From the moment I showed up in her inbox with a redraft of this book that I’d written in the two weeks between her offer of representation and my accepting it, she must have known she was letting herself in for chaos. It has been one unexpected book after another, and she has handled it admirably, all while fighting my corner on the business side of things. Thank you for not running away screaming the first time I ‘accidentally’ wrote a completely different book than the one I was meant to be writing.
Thank you to Amina Youssef, my editor, who has had to put up with me being… exacting and determined (a stubborn bitch) about my creative vision, while pushing me to ensure said creative vision actually makes sense. I am so sorry that my emails are so long. A pile of thank-yous also to the rest of the team at S&S: Eve, Olivia, David, Laura, Dani, Leanne, Nicholas, Maud, Sophie and Dom, and more, without whom this book would not be in your hands.
Eternal gratitude to those who shaped this book in its earlier days: Torin, who read the very first draft and yelled at me about it; Cathryn, who read the original outline and told me what I was doing wrong; Eleanor, who has been watching me write this book for the entire eight years she’s known me; Emily, who read it before the continuity matched up with book one; and Caspian, who never read this one but dealt with me live-blogging the process for so long that they’ve probably picked most of it up by osmosis.
Special group-chat thanks to Write Club, who are always there for my deadline yelling, and to the 2022 Debut Stars, who’ve put up with far too much complaining from me. In a year where my life was deeply unstable and chaotic, they were there for me while I ranted about it, even when it had nothing to do with writing. I’m so grateful that they haven’t kicked me out for being annoying and off-topic.
Thank you to those who let me borrow parts of their names for characters (and for those whose names I stole without asking): Nicole Chartrand, Emily Miner, Sifa Poulton, Janice Davis, Morgan Owen, Ashi O’Loughlin, Gwen Lagioia, Heather Darwent, and of course, Rory Power.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout here to My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade was my editing soundtrack for book one and much of this one too, and, frankly, it slapped. And to the authors of all my favourite queer historical romance novels: you got me through lockdown and helped me survive publishing stress, so I owe you everything. Isabel may not be a fan of the genre, but this in no way reflects my own feelings.
Speaking of books, thank you to every library that has ever employed me (Sidcup, Blackfen, Bexley Grammar, Christ’s College, Casimir Lewy): you are part of the weave and the fabric of this book, and of Isabel’s library assistant life. I promise I never killed anyone in your basements.
My housemates: Lee and Katie, of The Bog House (2019–20), and Rachel, of The Void House (2022–present). Thank you for not poisoning me. My second toaster and I are very grateful. Oh, and the emotional support and company and all the in-jokes and memes were pretty great too. Long live Shoogle Geets.
Miscellaneous thank-yous to the usual Discord suspects: the denizens of the Muddle Ages and of Gasbags & Gondolas, as well as the NaNoWriMo London discord. The nerds on Tumblr whose real names I’ll never know, but who feel like friends anyway. The Ronan Anon Squad… okay, youse are Deeply Cursed, but your passion is delightful and I am grateful for it, though you made editing this book a very weird experience. Everyone at Quaker meetings who hasn’t been put off by my Very Stabby book. Simon Varwell, for the Esperanto help. My Oíche Comhrá, who have watched the slow progress of my Irish, the terrible blanket I’m knitting, and this trilogy all at once.
And, finally, my family, including the extended family, who turned out in such unexpected numbers to the launch for book one and who have been doing an admirable job of publicising the book. But no, Mum, you’re not allowed to read this one either.
More from the Author
The Butterfly Assassin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Jemma Elvin
FINN LONGMAN is a queer disabled writer and medievalist, currently based in Cambridge. By day, they’re a library assistant; by night, they kill (fictional) people in their YA and Adult novels. With a degree in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and an MA in Early and Medieval Irish, they spend the rest of their time having extremely niche opinions on the internet.
www.SimonandSchuster.co.uk/Author/Finn-Longman
First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
Copyright © 2023 Finn Longman
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Finn Longman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN 978-1-3985-0737-1
eBook ISBN 978-1-3985-0738-8
eAudio ISBN 978-1-3985-0739-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Finn Longman, The Hummingbird Killer
