CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Last Stop Is Nowhere

The chariot bumped onto the grass, and the Queen pulled the horses to a halt. She turned in time to make sure her daughters had reappeared behind them. They nodded at her, and all three shared the same fierce grin.

“Did you feel it?” said the Officer.

“Feel what?” said the Gunner, looking up from where he sat next to Edie, a red-faced, warm-looking Edie swaddled in the Queen’s cloak and the Officer’s coat.

“Something followed us back,” said George, jumping out of the chariot and racing toward Edie. She grinned at him but threw up a warning hand—

“Mind the stones!”

The warning stones were spread out on the ground around them, and all were now dull. Except for a small blue one clasped in Edie’s hands, a blue the exact same color of the bonnet a duck had worn in a story that had been read to her as a child. A small blue warning stone that had been made into an earring.

George stepped carefully over to her, and not knowing what to do, punched her on the shoulder. She smiled up at him and punched him on the leg. And that seemed to be okay for both of them.

In the distance, George heard the strangely comforting sound of Big Ben sounding the hour.

“Get the boy that blanket,” said the Queen, pointing to the Unknown Soldier’s draped body.

“But . . .” said the Gunner.

“No buts,” said the Queen. “Boy’s catching his death; he’s already half dead.”

George put down his hammer and started to unbutton his soaking coat with fingers like frozen sausages.

“Nice hammer,” said Edie, a small hint of mockery at the back of her voice.

“Nice earring,” he replied, equally unimpressed.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s my mum’s.”

“What was it doing in there with the rest of—Oh,” said the Gunner.

“She went mad,” said Edie. “That’s what they said. That’s why she got taken away.”

She looked at the earring.

“No question about why she thought she was mad, and I guess—”

“She was a glint too,” said George.

“Yup,” Edie replied. “Only, nobody told her.”

“The question,” said the Queen, “is why all the other stones have faded, but it keeps blazing.”

The Gunner cleared his throat. “Those stones belonged to glints the Walker killed or sent off to die, mad in loony bins. . . .” He looked at the Queen. She nodded. He went on. “Maybe it’s still alight because she is too.”

“Alight?” said George.

“Alive,” said the Queen.

Edie looked down at the ground. She couldn’t speak. George looked at his arm. The second flaw that he had felt jagging up his arm when he’d accepted the Walker’s challenge had gone, as he knew it would.

He caught the Officer looking at it too. The Officer smiled. Held up three fingers, then folded two down.

In the background, George could see a police motorcycle flashing its blue lights as it roared down Piccadilly and leaned into the curve that would take it around Hyde Park Corner.

“One to go, boy. Good man.”

George wrapped himself in the blanket the Officer handed him. He decided he’d worry about the final duel with the Last Knight later.

“My mum could be anywhere,” Edie said in a very small, flat voice.

“Budge up,” said George, and sat down next to her. “The Gunner could have been anywhere too. And so could you. But we got ourselves back together, didn’t we?”

She nodded.

“There may be a bigger problem,” said the Officer.

They all looked at him.

“Can’t you hear it?”

They listened; there was only silence. And silence in London doesn’t happen, even at night.

“The city’s gone very still, and the clock just struck thirteen.”

They all stood up slowly and looked around.

The city was still. Unnaturally still. The city was so still that nothing moved.

There was no breeze.

No noise.

No people.

The few cars on the street had stopped dead.

George walked to the edge of the road.

The police motorcycle was frozen leaning into the curve. There was no rider.

George looked up at the familiar red mass of a night bus. There were no passengers, and no driver.

The others slowly walked out into the street, seeing what George was seeing.

Edie peered into an empty taxi and looked at George. “Where have all the people gone?”

He shrugged, turning in a slow circle, looking for signs of life.

“And why has everything just stopped?”

The only thing moving in the whole city was the thick snow that had begun to fall silently around them.

The five spits and the two children stood in the rapidly whitening road and stared about them as the shock of what they were seeing slowly dawned on them.

“Whatever we brought back with us,” said the Officer slowly, “I don’t think it’s good.”

Unconsciously, they moved a little closer to one another, each feeling strangely alone in the silence as they peered down the unmoving streets, too caught up in what was happening around them to notice what was happening above them.

Which was a shame. Because what was above was definitely noticing them.

The stone gargoyle was perched on the very tip of the giant stone field gun on the top of the Artillery Memorial.

The Gunner saw it first.

He stepped in front of Edie and George, fumbling for his pistol.

“Look out, here we go!”

Everyone turned suddenly.

George’s hand shot out, and he pulled the Gunner’s hand down hard.

“Wha—” began the Gunner.

“It’s okay!” said George. “It’s okay.”

“Gack?” said the gargoyle.

George grinned. “He’s one of us.”

They looked at Spout. Then at George. Then back at Spout.

The Gunner put his revolver away. The Officer gave him a cigarette, which he lit, and they all stood there looking at the grinning gargoyle through cigarette smoke and heavily falling snow.

“Blimey,” said the Gunner. “If he’s one of us . . . we’re really in trouble.”