The Convergence (The Imprint Quintet: Book Two)
Releasing August 28th 2025

Synopsis

They survived the gywandras. Now, a new threat emerges.

Four years after the battle of Pendeen, the Gorenn Three become separated when hunting Edward Penrose.

A wave of mass faintings ripples through Manchester. Rasha is certain the Hive, a clandestine cult, is connected. They close in on Rasha, forcing her to survive by any means necessary.

Sam discovers the home of the remnants, imprints with otherworldly wisdom. They offer prophecies at a deadly cost, and Sam must form unlikely alliances to evade their clutches.

Trish returns to the ombrederi where the Skethrek destroys everything in its path. To stop it, she will need to confront her childhood trauma.

Disgraced police officer Noel Ward joins Rasha. He suppressed his witnessing abilities his entire life. The Hive offers him sanctuary, but has greater ambitions for him.

The Hive’s plans unfold. The dead are restless, and they hunger for power.

Exclusive Excerpt

Chapter One

1996

NOEL WARD FOUND THE ultrasound photo in an old Family Circle biscuit tin. His grandparents weren’t the sentimental types, and so assorted knick-knacks were dumped there. Photographs, Christmas cards, wedding RSVPs, and outdated takeaway menus were thrown together with shortbread crumbs so stale they resembled sand.

He had unearthed it from his grandparents’ sideboard, hidden on a shelf amongst dusty vinyl records. Sat in the corner of their living room, Noel rummaged through the tin’s contents. The Wards rarely talked about their pasts, so Noel looked at the invite to Mr and Mrs Thompson’s wedding and the photographs of his grandparents at a seaside resort, attempting to piece together their life before him, whether it was a happy one. Truthfully, the twelve-year-old was trying to distract himself from the conversation his grandparents were having with his mother, Janet. About him.

‘Fighting again,’ Janet whined to Granny and Grandad from their corduroy sofa. ‘Reckoned the kids were gossiping about him. Mrs Berridge said the class were silent and he was making it up. I’m at my wit’s end.’

Noel hadn’t lied. The boy sat behind him made observations about his peanut-shaped head, how he had one brown eye and one blue, and unsavoury words for his black skin. He couldn’t, however, tell his mother he often heard people say things without them speaking. She wouldn’t understand.

Noel shot a fiery glance at the Wards. Janet and Granny were practically identical: heads far too large for their small frames, coarse hair falling in sheets around their pinched faces. Janet rarely parted with her grey trench coat; many sizes too big, it drowned her in fabric. Grandad was different again, his belly pillows of fat, bald head so shiny it reflected the light of their floor lamp.

‘Noel, the last thing your mother needs is trouble,’ Granny said accusingly, leaning forward in her chair. ‘She’s got enough on her plate.’

His grandfather picked up the TV remote, mindlessly flicking through their four channels.

‘It’d do him good to give him the hand,’ he told Janet, voice thick with a Jamaican accent. ‘Didn’t do you any harm.’

Noel remained silent, absent-mindedly shuffling some sun-bleached photographs. He found one of his mother, posing in a beer garden in St Peter’s Square. The photo was torn in two, ripped at her left shoulder. Noel knew the other half had featured his father. He used to hit Janet, so when she fell pregnant, she left him and got a court order to keep him away. Noel never found out who he was, and it was a positive thing according to the Wards.

He was digging deeper, hoping to find the other half of the photo with his father, when the ultrasound photo fell into his lap. There was a square of smoky white noise. At the centre was a black bean, and within that were two white blobs. Written in the white space beneath it was: The Twins, Nov 1983 - Nine Weeks.

‘Who had twins?’ he asked out loud, turning to look at them.

Their conversation died abruptly. Granny’s eyes went as wide as saucers.

‘Friends of the family,’ Granny stammered as Janet tried to pluck the ultrasound from Noel’s grasp.

‘What friends?’ Noel asked, knowing full well the Wards had only acquaintances at best.

‘Give it here already,’ Janet said. Tears shone in her praline-brown eyes.

‘1983, you were pregnant with me then.’

Janet froze, wrapping her coat tightly around herself, as she always did when she was uncomfortable.

‘Mummy, do I have a brother or sister—’

Janet ripped it from his hands.

‘Do I? Do I?’

‘Son, leave it,’ Grandad hissed from his chair.

‘Janet, I’m so sorry,’ Granny said. ‘I thought I got rid of it, I—’

Janet rose, stiffly thanked her parents for tea, and left their house in Greater Manchester with Noel in tow. She dragged him through streets and underpasses, ignoring his questions. All the while, the anger boiled inside of him. A big secret had been kept from him. His sibling, no, something more – his twin. Didn’t twins have the same DNA? A part of him was missing.

They reached Victoria station. Janet ushered him inside onto platform two, for the train back to Salford. Janet sat on a bench, and he loitered behind her, kicking his heels.

‘But where are they now?’ he continued to pester.

‘It died, alright,’ Janet hissed. ‘In the womb, with you. Is that what you want to hear?’

Noel kicked a bin next to an archway – big mistake, it was solid steel. He bent over, rubbing his toes through his trainers. A giddiness overcame him. Cold sweat trickled between his shoulder blades, and pins and needles clawed at his skin. He held the back of the bench for support.

As he waited for the dizziness to ease, a woman on the opposite platform caught his eye. She was like something out of Pride and Prejudice, wearing a flowing bustle, her tight curls stuffed beneath a lace bonnet. She pushed a rickety pram across the platform. Noel presumed she was an oddball from the performing arts college. Any notion it was an impromptu reenactment vanished when he heard a baby cry from within the pram.

A rumble in the distance signified the approach of their train. The woman turned on her heel, facing the pram towards the tracks. Noel gasped. Her eyes were hollow black pits into her skull. Her form seemed to glow and flicker, like a VHS tape rewound too many times.

Noel was frozen to the spot. He wanted to scream at the woman, to tell her to stop, to think about the baby. He wanted to tell the other passengers to look at the woman without eyes. He couldn’t.

With a crooked grin, the woman raced to the platform’s edge and tumbled in front of the oncoming train. Noel turned away. He found his voice and screamed at the top of his lungs.

Janet dragged him from Victoria station. He wailed and kicked to go back.

‘We need to help the baby!’ he cried.

‘The baby?’

A platform assistant came out of the station. He reassured them that no one had jumped from the platform. Janet thanked him and apologised for causing a scene. The assistant went back inside.

Janet pushed Noel against the wall beside the station’s front doors, her nails digging into his shoulders.

‘I know what I saw,’ Noel said.

‘No, you’re being a vicious little prick, making it up because of the ultrasound photo. Doing it to spite me.’

She spun Noel around and slapped him on the arse twice, then once more for good measure. She turned him back to face her.

‘I swear I saw it,’ Noel said between sobs.

‘No you bloody well did not! I will not have a repeat of this, you hear me? It’s all in your head, so keep it there. Bury it deep.’

Knowing she would not listen to him protest, Noel nodded, wiped the tears from his face, and followed Janet back into the train station. It wasn’t the last time Noel would see a ghost, but he did what his mother had told him. He buried it deep for the next twenty-four years.