"Defeated by a cat. Unbelievable."
The cat gives me another unimpressed look and curls itself into a ball. I climb under my freshly clawed blanket and try to calm my heart rate down enough to get to sleep.
The window was locked when I came into my room. In fact, everything in the house was shut and locked from what I can tell. How did it get in?
With no electricity I can’t charge my phone at all and have to hope the battery will last me until tomorrow.
When I finally do fall asleep I dream that Ella is the cat, sleeping on the end of my bed. I ask her why she keeps following me, but my Dad storms in and tells me to stop talking to cats or he’ll tell everyone I’m an Augur. I try to point out that it’s the cat who’s the Augur, at which point he grabs it and throws it out the window. I scream that he’s thrown my girlfriend out of the window and wake up shouting.
The comforting feeling of the cat at the end of my bed is gone. I open my eyes to see it sitting on my window sill, staring down the street below. It’s freezing in the room and I shiver.
"What are you looking at?" I ask it. It’s ear flicks as if to register the sound of my voice but it doesn’t take its gaze away from the spot in the distance.
I’m not sure why but I something makes me feel uneasy, so I throw my covers off and peer out the window myself. I follow the cat’s line of sight down to the end of the road. I freeze in sudden horror.
Standing at the end of the street, in a dressing gown and leaning against his garden gate is the cigarette man, returning my gaze. But it’s not the cigarette man that shocks me. It’s the fact that despite the distance I can clearly see his hand, hanging down by his side. His hand is a glowing ball of fire.
CHAPTER 5
I swear and duck down from the window. I dive under my covers, not being able to think of anything else to do. The cat doesn’t seem to be perturbed by either the suspicious Augur at the end of the road, nor my failure at any sort of bravery.
The dream I had woken up from suddenly dawns on me.
"Hey, who are you? Or what are you? Are you an Augur cat?" I ask it, trying to sound calm. The cat blinks and twitches its ear again as if to say I heard you but I’m not taking my eyes off this guy.
"Fair enough," I answer it, feeling a little stupid for speaking to a cat. It’s at this point that I wish I had some way of contacting Ella. The fact that she doesn’t have a mobile phone is infuriating now more than ever. She’d know what to do about a scary Augur standing at the end of my road, staring into my bedroom window.
I try to take some deep breaths and calm myself. Can I even call the police? The guy isn’t doing anything, and I wonder if I’m just as bad as the rest of the Augurists if I do that. Does ‘standing creepily at the end of my road with a ball of fire in his hand’ count as some kind of inappropriate behaviour?
It looks like the power is still out because the only light coming from outside is from the light pollution in the sky. Oh, well, that and the Augur’s hand, which isn’t bright enough to reach all the way to my room.
After ten minutes of sitting at the edge of my bed, shaking both from cold and fear I decide to take another look. The cat is still on guard although that doesn’t particularly make me feel any better. I peer over the window sill as stealthily as I can, but Cigarette guy seems to have disappeared. Climbing back under the duvet seems to be my only course of action.
Really? This is how you’re going to handle the situation right now? I ask myself.
A hurried knock at the back door nearly sends me shooting out of my skin. I swear under my breath repeatedly whilst pulling on a jumper and a pair of trainers. The knocking comes again, urgent and persistent. I cast my eyes frantically around the room for some kind of weapon. Crap. Crap, crap, crap. The Augur-Cigarette-man is probably waiting on the other side of the door with his burning hand ready to put me down as soon as I open the door. The sleep in my head doesn’t allow me to work out what I might have done to offend him.
The only thing that is heavy enough to do any damage is a trophy I won as Man of the Match in a high school football game. It’s the sort which has a little metal footballer on top of a faux marble plinth. I pick it up and weigh it in my hand, trying to figure out if it would knock someone out with enough force for me to get away.
When I open the door, the cat is out of there like a bullet. Damn. Maybe it’ll blow my cover. I try to sneak quietly down the stairs and into the kitchen, ducking behind the door frame so that I can unlock and open it from behind and hit whomever barges in over the head.
The bevelled glass shows the silhouette of someone tall and thin. Not the cigarette man?
"Curtis, bloody hell, it’s freezing out here. Would you open the door?" It’s Ella.
I nearly faint with relief. With shaking hands I unlock the door and let her in. She tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek, but I push her into the house and hastily lock the door behind her.
"What are you doing with that?" she asks, frowning at the trophy in my hand.
"I, er, oh. I thought you were someone else. Sorry." I put the trophy down on the kitchen counter and peer out the back window.
"There wasn’t anyone following you was there?" I ask hurriedly.
"No, why?" she laughs at my obvious hysteria.
"Because, er, I hate to have to tell you like this, but I just found out there’s an Augur living at the end of my street and I think he’s been spying on me," I say, the words tumbling out.
I can see she wants to laugh again but she feigns seriousness for a moment.
"Hang on a minute, Curtis, how do you know he’s an Augur?"
"Well, there was a power cut last night —I was having this dream and when I woke up the cat was staring at him on the street, and when I looked out the window he was standing there in his dressing gown with a glowing hand. A glowing hand! And the other night when I came home he’d been watching me from his window and then there was the note, and the cat, and oh my God, Ella, I think he knows that I know that you know—"
"Curtis, you aren’t making any sense. Come, let me make you a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it. But do you think we could get the heating on in here? I can almost see my breath," she fills the kettle while I go and turn up the thermostat. When I come back she’s already found the teabags, milk and sugar, but I have to tell her that I don’t drink tea, so I make myself coffee while she fixes herself one.
When we’re seated with our drinks at the table, the cat decides to make its entrance. It comes over to Ella and rubs itself against her leg, purring like a motorbike engine.
"Well, hello you," she strokes it behind the ears while I try to calm my nerves. "You didn’t tell me you had a cat. He’s lovely," she says to me.
"I don’t. I didn’t even know it was a ‘he’. Just turned up last night completely out of the blue. But he’s the one that had been watching me a few nights ago, and then I dreamed that he was an Augur." She gives me another one of her raised eyebrow looks and tells me to start from the beginning.
I fill her in, but when I get to the bit about the note she stops me.
"Do you still have it?" she asks, completely serious now.
"Yeah, I do, actually." I fetch it from my room and place my football trophy back in its rightful spot on my shelf. When I hand it to her, she reads it several times before fixing me with a glare with an emotion behind it that I’ve never seen before.
"You should have told me about this," she says, laying it flat on the table between us. She looks at it like it’s some sort of dead animal, there’s so much disdain on her face.
"Honestly, I would have, but I didn’t want to worry you."
"Curtis, this is my world. There is so much going on here that you don’t know, don’t understand. If people start threatening you about me, I need you to tell me," she says. I can tell she’s angry, but she talks to me as if I’m some kind of child that has stolen from the cookie jar rather than her boyfriend, if I can call myself that yet.
"And now to the Augur living on the end of your street. You said there was a power cut last night?" I nod in reply. "And that when you woke up this Augur had energy in his hand?" I nod again. She thinks for a minute. "Could be related, could be a coincidence. But if I can get a look at him I can probably identify him, or know someone who can."
"Seriously? Is the Augur community that small?"
"Sort of. I mean it isn’t, but I have a friend who has a knack for ‘identifying people’, shall we say."
"Wow, so that’s an ability too?" I can’t help but be fascinated by that thought.
"Yeah, everyone has a little specialist skill. Some don’t have much more than a better ability to fry eggs than other people, but every Augur leaves a little signature when they use their abilities, so even if I can’t ID him myself, Jer could probably do it by standing outside your neighbour’s house."
"Jer? Is that a guy or a girl?" I don’t know why I ask.
"Jer is short for Jeremy as far as I know, so definitely a bloke," she replies casually.
"And is he an old, ugly bloke by any chance?" I know it’s stupid to feel jealous. Of course Ella will have Augur friends who are guys. She said something about there being a whole group of them. I’d just thought they’d all be really hot girls.
"No, Curtis. Jer is about our age, a bit older perhaps," she’s trying not to laugh at me again. "But he’s not my type," she says and picks up our empty cups, kissing me on the cheek playfully as she does so. I don’t feel any better for it, really, but the kiss helped.
"Now, I don’t know what plans you had for us today but I’m afraid your note kind of throws it all out the window," she says, washing the cups and placing them on the draining board. I love how she acts like she belongs here, which to me she completely does.
"Oh, that’s a shame. I’d had a great day planned of binging on popcorn, chocolate biscuits and watching movies," I smile and wrap my hands around her waist.
"That sounds like a wonderful idea. Maybe next time," she turns from the sink and kisses me hard, placing her still-wet hands on the sides of my face. When she pulls away, my entire body feels like it’s going to explode. I haven’t quite gotten used to being kissed by her like that. "But first, go take a shower and put something on that’s a bit more presentable."
"Why, what’s wrong with the jogging bottoms I sleep in?" I joke.
"Well, thanks to all the excitement and attention that’s now on you, Curtis Mayes, I’m afraid I’m going to have to introduce you to my sister."
I do as I’m told and head upstairs. Ella and the cat stay downstairs and she finds one of Mum’s magazines to flick through while I get ready. I feel weirdly nervous. It’s almost like meeting her parents, but worse because her sister is an Augur.
Dressed in black jeans, trainers and a slightly better-looking jumper, I come downstairs.
"Ooh, you even combed your hair," she says as I come back into the kitchen.
"Yeah, I really went the extra mile for her. I hope she appreciates it." I grab my jacket and, on her advice, I take my scarf and gloves too.
Ella agrees to leave the house before me to check that the coast is clear of any ill-doers or smoking Augurs that might be outside. I follow a few steps behind, feeling calmer with her there. As we walk to the bus stop, she threads her arm through mine, which calms my nerves like some kind of human security blanket. Despite the earliness of the hour, it’s Monday and of course there are people everywhere heading to work or school or wherever. The bus stop is full and the bus even more so, but we squeeze our way upstairs and sit at the back of the double decker, taking heart in the fact that we’ve got at least twenty minutes undisturbed in front of us.
She threads her fingers through mine and rests her head on my shoulder the entire way as we look out of the window at the passing buildings, a blur of greys and browns.
The route we followed on Friday night is pleasant in the daylight and I spot her road from where we get off the bus immediately.
"Just be yourself, but don’t let her get into your head, okay?" Ella says as a word of warning.
"You make her sound like she’s going to interrogate me," I laugh, but she doesn’t answer which is disconcerting. We walk briskly up the path to the front door that we had kissed in front of what feels like a lifetime ago but in reality was only a few nights ago.
Without hesitation, Ella puts her key in the lock and turns it. Rather than the bubble of noise I heard escape last time, the house seems silent. There are lights on somewhere upstairs that spill onto the staircase, illuminating the dull green carpet and a few paintings hanging on the walls.
I don’t have much time to take it in though. Ella puts her finger to her lips and looks at me urgently, pulling me to one side. We creep up the first flight of stairs, me copying her tiptoes as best I can past the cracked-open door on the first landing.
"Is that you, Ella?" comes a quavering voice from inside.
Ella motions for me to stay put and keep quiet.
"I know he's here too, so you might as well bring him in," comes the voice. Ella rolls her eyes and ushers me into the room, following closely behind.
"Aggie, I wanted to introduce you. Why'd you have to go and ruin it?" Ella says as I enter a strange, chintzy room.
Floral wallpaper on every wall, a large Persian rug on the floor and flanked on all sides by furniture, the room looks like something out of the late eighties that has never been updated.
Its single inhabitant is a short, squat blonde woman whom I assume is Ella’s sister only because they share the same sky-coloured eyes. She stands in the centre of the outdated chaos with both hands on her hips, hair every which way, a little like she lost her hair brush several months ago. In a peculiar flowery dress and cardigan that looks like something my grandmother would wear, she examines me, and I feel strangely stupid, unable to stop staring at this interesting person.
"I've seen him, Ella. I'm not stupid, and neither are you, so I'm not sure why you brought him here," she says, not unkindly, but there's a disappointment in her voice.
"Curtis, this is my sister, Agnes," Ella introduces me, ignoring that last comment.
I extend my now sweaty hand to shake hers, but she doesn’t take it.
"And you're trouble," she says to me before I can open my mouth.
"Excuse me?" I reply, a little unsure of myself. Something about this young woman is very unnerving. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I know she's not even thirty but looks like a fifty-year-old, or that she has obviously taken a dislike to me before I've had a chance to say ‘hello’.
"You might as well come in and stop standing there like a banana," says Agnes, retiring to a scruffy armchair in the corner. I look puzzlingly at Ella, mouthing ‘banana?’, but she rolls her eyes and makes a ‘crazy' circular gesture with her finger.
"I know what you're doing," calls Agnes, and Ella abruptly stops.
Following her lead, we take a seat on a short chaise lounge which is pushed against the window. We're wedged between Agnes and an ancient TV set which is silently spilling images of the news.
I take in the scene. A large cork board is pinned to the wall opposite a small bed, with multiple pictures tacked to it and pieces of string connecting words written on scraps of paper connecting bits of information to each other. A conspiracy theorist, I'm thinking.
There’s a small wardrobe, a table and a chest of drawers. On pretty much every flat surface there are piles of paper. I take it all in; the rough drawings scrawled on napkins, large words circled multiple times that, on their own, mean nothing, like ‘chaos’, ‘chipped’, and ‘hospital’.
One name appears multiple times and, surprisingly, I recognise it.
"Carlton Munday?" I say out loud. Ella hits me
on the leg, but apparently it's too late.
Agnes’s eyes light up and she takes them off the television for a moment.
"You know him! Yes, yes indeed," she says fixing me with an excited stare.
"Oh God," Ella says under her breath.
"Carlton Munday, Civil Defence Minister. Also an Augurist. Single-handedly responsible for the new legislation which, by the end of tomorrow, will force us all to register, and there begins the slippery slope for Augurs everywhere," Agnes's quavering voice is quite angry now.
"But you said he's an Augurist. Wouldn’t that be grounds to lose his job?" I question.
"Indeed, but first and foremost he's a politician. And I'm afraid that his political aspirations will rise above his need to protect his people, if indeed he cares one little bit for us."
Ella sighs and pulls out a piece of paper from her pocket. "Aggie, the reason we're here isn't to discuss your theories about Munday. Curtis received this shortly after we started, um, seeing each other." My heart does that little flip flop thing when she says that. I mean, it’s ridiculous because we're obviously seeing each other. But the dark voices of doubt always creep in and say that she's going to turn around one day and say it was just a bit of fun. She's a ten. I’m barely scraping a six. But that feeling of unreality I've had these past few days is finally starting to fade.
"Is he alright?" Agnes's voice pulls me out of my reverie.
"Sorry, yeah. I'm fine," I say and run my hand through my hair nervously. Agnes looks unconvinced but takes a look at the note in Ella's hand, reading over it with interest.
"Probably best not to further contaminate it. Give it back to Curtis and we'll get Jer to look at it."
Ella hands it back to me and I carefully fold it and slip it into my pocket. There's that guy’s name again.
"There's also an Augur living at the end of Curtis’s street that I'd like to get checked out," Ella says. Agnes nods in agreement.
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