The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon

For a while, at least.”
    â€œSome odd things,” he said.
    â€œI’ve been around a long time. I’ve developed certain peccadilloes.”
    â€œIs teasing mere mortals one of them?”
    Nina looked at him, her face stern and so, so old once again. “I’m not teasing you, Scott,” she said. Then she looked across the road at the pub. “It’s time to go. Stay close.
We’re so close
.” She whispered the last three words, speaking to herself more than him.
    â€œIf these were the pages Papa had, you could have taken them at any time.”
    â€œHe hid them. And besides, it’s not only these pages we’re here for. It’s the clue Papa left with them that will lead us on.”
    â€œAnd that’s in his letter too?”
    Nina stood up and brushed grass cuttings from her rump. Her trousers were stained dark with her own blood, stiffened like cardboard, but even then she appeared the image of gracefulness. “No. I just knew him. The clue will be here, because Papa left it for you.”
    To begin with—before the blights came, and Scott fell, and things turned bad—events
flowed
.
    It seemed to Scott that Nina had been waiting for a convergence of chances. She had closed her eyes and listened to the surge of the world, and somehow she knew how long it would take her and Scott to stand, walk across the pavement, reach the other side, pickthe lock on the pub’s front door, and go inside. There were no pauses, no wasted moments, and he tried hard to work out why wasted moments should mean so much to an immortal.
    Nina stood and walked out into the road. She did not stop at the curbside and look both ways. She did not alter her pace. And Scott followed. They walked through the traffic, gliding through gaps between vehicles. Nobody tooted their horns because they were not risking their lives. Nobody gave them the finger and leaned from their window, shouting about what stupid assholes they were, because Nina and Scott steered through the traffic as easily as a bird flying through a forest.
    By the time they reached the opposite pavement Scott was sweating. He felt a mixture of elation and dread.
    Nina did not pause. She stepped between a tall blond woman scratching her nose and a short black man talking into a mobile phone, knelt at the pub door, and withdrew the ring of keys from her pocket. Scott followed, so caught up in her confidence that he did not look around to see whether anyone was watching. If he had looked he knew what he would have seen: someone walking by, glancing at their watch just as they drew level; a driver trapped in the slow-moving traffic, changing a CD in his car stereo; someone else staring into the comic shop window next door to the pub, something about last night drawn in their wistful expression.
    â€œAre you hiding us?” he asked.
    â€œI just pick my moments well.” Nina was working on the lock with her skeleton keys, her hands moving delicately as she manipulated the tumblers inside.
    Scott stood behind her, staring at her back.
Is she making them all ignore us, or can they just not see us?
He looked around at last and saw exactly what he knew he would see: the world continued, ignoring this brash crime in their midst.
    â€œIn we go.” Nina stood and shoved the door with her shoulder, glancing back and nodding Scott inside.
    He went in and she closed the door. “No alarm?”
    â€œHope not.”
    â€œYou mean you don’t know?”
    â€œI’m immortal, not God.”
    â€œYou believe in God?” It came naturally, but Scott suddenly realized what a significant question that might be.
    Nina looked straight at him, blinking slowly. Her coffee-colored skin looked almost too smooth to touch. “Now that really is a question for another time,” she said.
    â€œOkay . . . another time. Right now we’re in a closed pub. You think Papa hid the stone tablets in