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it’s that you do take it up. The space, I mean.”
    “Right.”
    “And Noah’s girl’s getting serious, sending out the signals, you know? And let’s be honest…” Brian finally met Dan’s gaze, as if the word ‘honest’ required a certain degree of connectedness. It was only a brief moment and then Brian rolled his eyes and looked to the ceiling.
    “Yeah.”
    “Ever since you and Stacey and the party…”
    Brian waved the details away with his hand, eye contact well and truly gone. It was as if he was waving away the details they both thought they knew while neither one really had any idea at all. There was some confusion over whether Noah and Stacey were still seeing each other, some escalating flirtation and then a morning that followed which featured an explosive Noah and an awkwardness that just never seemed to dissipate.
    “Noah’s been weird about it,” Dan suggested.
    “We’re all a little weird about it, Dan,” Brian said.
    “No, Noah’s gone and … and gone weird about it. But he’s weird about a lot of things lately, as if you haven’t noticed. Like the newspaper, the crappy newspaper every morning, folded just right. And how he has to be the first to use the coffee plunger, as if we’ve all got leprosy or something, and don’t start on about the bloody cups.”
    Dan stood up and a pulse of angry energy rippled through the lounge room, making the lights shimmer slightly and setting the clocks on the DVD player back to a flashing default. He pulled back on the wave, hoping Brian hadn’t noticed, but Brian hadn’t really paid attention to anything apart from the ceiling features.
    “It’s our name on the lease,” he said.
    And that was when Dan realized the truth. In classic shared accommodation style there were the official occupants and then there were the sub-letting, sub-human occupants who slept on a pull-out bed in the study nook.
    “Are you going to give me notice?” Dan asked.
    Brian waved his hand again and Dan wanted to yell at him to stop playing the hand waving act. Instead he stood there and watched Brian walk back into the kitchen.
    “This is notice, Galkin,” Brian said.
    Dan felt his fists clench and he raised them up so he could see the whites of his knuckles. Just below the surface he knew that he was capable of letting loose, that if he wanted to, he could turn the apartment into a swirling maelstrom of lightning and destruction.
    He could hear his grandfather’s voice. The coaxing, reassuring commands.
    He shot a glance at the kitchen and heard Brian preparing something. He looked back at his fists and unclenched them, freeing his fingers and watching them separate slowly.
    Dan didn’t follow his grandfather anymore.
    He wasn’t a brainless kid.
    The room was suddenly too hot and too crowded, even though Dan was the only one left. Brian’s continued presence was felt, but the noises coming from the kitchen provided nothing but a dismissive reminder that he wasn’t wanted anymore.
    His sofa was still in its place, wedged into the nook which looked smaller than it ever had before. There was no way he would sleep in it again, no way he could pull it out and crawl inside the covers. It had always been an inconvenience, jutting out into the lounge area, but now the whole idea of it was suddenly and irreversibly gone. Like dust.

Chapter 6
    The Small Gods
    The Grampians, Five years before
    D ust.
    It was everywhere, covering every surface in the dimly lit basement. The old man was standing in the middle of the room with his eyes looking up at the ceiling, his wild grey hair standing up in tufts like he’d only just woken up. And that newly awake look was in his eyes too, with flashes of light reflected from the torches they’d brought down with them.
    “He looks crazy,” Bree said softly, shifting the weight of her backpack from one slender shoulder to the next. Dan shrugged. He’d seen crazy before.
    His grandfather had brought the four of them on a hiking