South Street

This extract begins halfway through Chapter II of the novel with two unreliable narrators whose conflicting accounts gradually reveal a shared history. Their timelines begin two years apart, but the narrative weaves their stories together until the truth becomes apparent. In previous chapters Aoife, a queer American student, claims she was murdered during her first year at the University of St Andrews and reveals her twin brother Ace didn’t know this for two years after her death. Estranged from her conservative parents after being outed, Aoife moves to Scotland alone. She focuses on a university tradition of being adopted by an ‘academic family’ to make friends. Aoife meets Harlow, a third-year who invites her to a dinner-party. There, Aoife reunites with Siobhan, another first-year, and meets Guy, a second-year from Hong Kong, and Mircalla (Mer-Cah-Lah). The night ends in Aoife kissing Mircalla. Chapter III picks up the morning after this clubbing night. By the conclusion of Chapter III Harlow adopts Aoife. Chapter II jumps ahead two years and shifts to Mircalla’s perspective now in her third year. Her chapters are marked by grief: Siobhan vanished during a demon-hunting mission two years prior. This chapter introduces the supernatural elements of the novel. Mircalla and Siobhan come from a lineage of exorcists trained to protect the world from supernatural entities. Mircalla’s narration opens with the discovery of a gory, ritualistic ‘false altar’. This triggers traumatic memories of the night Siobhan disappeared. The extract begins after Mircalla’s superior, Palmer, orders her to not investigate the altar and to instead retrieve an American exorcist, Richard ‘Ace’ Best, transferring to their cohort to investigate reports of lycanthrope activity. Over a Guinness Ace asks Mircalla if she knows his sister, Aoife. Mircalla denies knowing her and this is where the two narrators’ stories begin to clash.