by Helen Slavin
“You think he didn’t do it?” Anna asked when the tears had dried over the tale of the sixth form’s current rumour mill mood and the message carried by the black web.
“It feels wrong.” Emz snuffed at her tears. “But I don’t like Caitlin, so I don’t trust myself,” Emz confessed. “And I’m not sure about Logan. They’ve been going out, but it doesn’t seem genuine.”
“Why would she say it?”
“Revenge? Drama?” Emz felt heavy thinking about it.
Anna mulled it all over.
“What happened, do you think?”
Emz shook her head.
“What if the rider of the horse is the person who attacked Caitlin?” Anna threw the thought out. “It’s possible. Whoever it is rolls up on their trusty steed, maybe they didn’t even fall off, they got off on purpose to attack Caitlin.”
Emz did not panic or protest. She stood for some moments considering.
“The horse protected her,” Emz said. “Winn was sure. Said the horse came to Prickles to get her, led her back to Caitlin.”
“So?”
“Well, if its rider was the villain, surely the horse would be transport? It wouldn’t protect Caitlin, it’d have carried her off.”
Anna felt relief flood over her.
“Good point.”
Emz continued. “To be fair, it amazed me that Caitlin was even in the wood at all. She’s not outdoorsy, and she doesn’t tend to do what she doesn’t want.”
“Puzzling. Maybe she just stumbled across the horse,” Anna said. Emz shook her head.
“Or the horse stumbled across her. In trouble.”
They thought about this.
“This is definitely a Havoc problem,” Anna decided.
It was over an hour later before Charlie arrived home looking cold and frustrated.
“What happened?”
“I followed it, and it was all fine until I got up to Quinn’s Gate, and I thought I’d lost it so I… I just let myself, you know…” She raised her eyebrows, her voice conspiratorial.
“‘You know’ what?” Anna was being dense. Emz gave her a shove.
“She used her Strength, you tit.” A smile illuminated Emz’s face at this news. “Go on, what happened?”
Charlie shook her head. “It was all over the place. The path lit up in front of me, only there was this frost shimmer to it, so in places I couldn’t even look at it directly. I had to look sort of sideways.” She plonked herself down in the chair. “It was as if it was just out of sight, and, if I looked directly at it, I could see the compass points spreading out over the landscape and spinning.”
Anna sat very still. Emz put her chin in her hands.
“Spinning?”
“Yes. Made me dizzy to look at it. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Charlie leaned back.
“Where is the Great Grey now? Did you bring him back with you?” Emz asked. Charlie revived for a moment, looking up with a smirk.
“The Great Grey?”
“Good a name as any,” Emz shrugged. Charlie nodded.
“No, the Great Grey is not with me. He vanished into the trees. Again.”
“Where?” Anna asked. Charlie wrinkled her brow.
“Can’t you guess?”
“Day’s Ride,” said Emz.
29
ICE
It began with the clock hands spinning. No one really noticed, busy at their tasks, tapping at keyboards, and skimming mice over mats as, in the observation room, Vanessa Way slept.
When Eleanor looked back over her notes and memories long, long afterwards, she would recall the idea that Vanessa slept like a princess in a fairytale, lying on her back, one hand rested on her stomach, the other by her side.
Eleanor kept paper notes that she wrote with a pen. She had learned from Professor Way that paper could not be shorted out, ink would not vanish in a corrupted file.
A spike registered on all the graphs and charts, screens and monitors, tall as a spear, and the lights blinked off.
“Whoa.” Dexter looked round as if someone had turned the lights off. “We’re up. We’re still online folks.” He was reassuring, his hands and eyes doing their swift dance between keyboard and touch screen.
Heart. Brain. Breath. Vanessa Way’s life signs etched and scratched themselves across the machinery.
The lights winked on, the computers blinking before the sudden fall in temperature accompanied by a tight cracking sound. The lab darkened, silence from the team, Rufus and Dexter playing symphonies of keyboard clacks.
“Nothing,” Rufus stated. “We’re offline.”
“No emergency backup.” Dexter confirmed in a calm voice. “No recording. Nothing live.”
“Except that.” Rufus pointed to the arm on the old encephalograph, which had begun a new and frenzied transcription across the paper. The sound rustled into the silence of the room.
“How? There’s no power.” He looked to Eleanor, who nodded, continued her vigil of Vanessa. The light altered around them, the darkness pierced with white crystalline spears and branches. In the pale illumination, they could all see their breath, and Dexter checked the thermometer and barometer on the wall.
“Spinning,” he noted, as the light altered.
“Shit.” Rufus’s voice was shaky. Eleanor held up her phone camera to the observation room window and checked it was recording, the light winking red.
She watched as, in the observation room, a green light rose from Vanessa in a shimmering curtain that whipped and furled above her. In the lab, Dexter called out a time code as the clock and barometer whirred round, unstopping.
“There was no power outage anywhere else in the building?” Vanessa, dressed in a white bathrobe, sat at the desk with Eleanor.
“Nope.” Eleanor shook her head. “Not a hint of an issue anywhere else on the entire campus.”
Vanessa considered.
“Did you work out the circuit loop? The extent of it?”
Eleanor pushed a schematic drawing across the desk. It had been scribbled on with a pencil. Vanessa noted the boundary of the power cut. The pattern it made. Mathematical and angular.
“I even took it up to Anthony in Facilities Management. Their computer registered nothing out of the ordinary.”
Vanessa nodded.
“Show me the footage again…” She gestured to where Eleanor’s phone rested.
“Can I ask a favour first?” Eleanor was shaken, her face, several hours later, still ashen.
“You can ask.” Vanessa gave nothing away.
“We’re Dark Lab. I understand the protocols of that. We need, no — I’m going to be truthful, I need — I need you to give the team your ICE contacts.”
Eleanor reached for Vanessa’s own phone, swiped at the screen. “I’m not being funny, but there is nothing in here that is of any help in a crisis. There’s me, there’s Dex, and Rufus…”
“What did you say?”
“I’m saying you need ICE contacts.” Eleanor was perturbed at the troubled expression on Vanessa’s face. She looked grey. “You okay?”
Vanessa was very still.
“Ice?”
Eleanor was wary, unwilling to distress Vanessa, though she herself was struggling.
“In Case of Emergency. I-C-E. ICE.” Eleanor forced calm through her voice. “We need your daughters’ contact details. In case of emergency.”
Vanessa stared at her for a moment.
“Show me the footage again,” she requested. Eleanor was about to open her mouth and protest, but she knew better. Vanessa leaned forward, grabbing the USB cable. “Let’s put it on the laptop.” A couple of clicks brought the images onto the laptop, grainy, but clear enough.
“This light emission, is it electrons or…?” Eleanor knew what it was but was struggling to pull her mind back into shape after the day’s events. “It’s the aurora, isn’t it?” she ventured. The clip ended. Vanessa took in a deep breath.
“You know where my daughters live.” She b
egan reaching for a pen, dragging a bit of paper from the back of Dexter’s notes. “Here are their numbers.” She began writing Anna’s number. “Only you, Eleanor. No one else. Not even Rufus or Dexter.”
Eleanor nodded, wiped at the tears that were filling her eyes.
“Okay.” Her voice was breathy and quiet as Vanessa folded the paper into her shaking hand.
30
Horse Sense
Borrower tracked the Horse from Day’s Ride. Its path in and then out of Havoc signified its true status as one of the Night Horses; a fact compounded, Borrower felt, by the way that it had thwarted his recent attempted acquisitions of a Woodcastle wife.
It was vexing, but he did not mourn the loss. One had been pretty, one had breathed heartache. He had not chosen wisely when he picked the one with red boots. Borrower would have his way, and, as revenge, he was determined that the horse would bend to his will and help him. It would learn a lesson in obedience beneath his reins and take him on his travels with his new wife. A Night Horse had passage anywhere and Borrower could not recall his last foray beyond Havoc.
The beast, he now saw, took specific paths through Havoc. Its route from Day’s Ride to High Foxes would tell him something of its origins, if he cared to look, but he did not need to know its history, only its future in his service.
When the Horse reached the darkest edge of Finches, Borrower watched as the Horse halted and looked up into the canopy, its mane tumbling like a waterfall over the muscles of that powerful neck. He held his breath as its eye turned directly upon him and he felt the pull, the drawing down, so strong that he was losing his footing in the branches of the tree. The Horse gave a low nickering sound that grated at Borrower. Was it mocking him? He was outraged and unsettled, his feet sliding, but his hand reached out for a switch of hazel as he fell. Draw him down? Ha. He would land on its back and teach it who was master.
He dropped. The air rushing him, the switch whipping in his hand. Again the low nickering sound rumbled as Borrower crumpled onto the leafy earth. He rolled himself over, angry.
The Night Horse had vanished.
With a spit and a curse, Borrower turned and wondered where he might spend the rest of this troubling night.
31
The Truth Will Find You Out
The rumours at school were no longer rumours. They had taken on the twist of truth by repetition. Officially no longer implicated or helping with enquiries, Logan Boyle had returned to his timetable and, for the most part, his fellow students had left him alone, scared that trouble might rub off on them like tarnish.
Only Mark Catton was openly hostile in the sixth form common room. Emz looked up to see the black web spooling from his mouth as he spoke to his former friend.
“Think you can keep your dick in your pants till home time?” was his withering jibe. The room fell silent, all eyes turned to Logan. It was clear, to Emz at least, that everyone in the room was suspicious of Logan. Some afraid, some gleeful at his downfall. No one, it appeared, as Emz scanned the real faces, considered that Logan might not have done this. The sixth form wanted the drama and gossip, not the truth, which was that the police were not interested in Logan. That a man with a tow truck and two of Logan’s brothers were witness to Logan not having done anything except wait at the roadside for assistance.
He hitched his backpack onto his shoulder and left the room. Mark Catton looked smug. “Who the fuck does he think he is?” Mark brayed, but most of the students looked away.
Emz made her way to Maths where Logan was sitting at the back in the furthest corner. He did not stay for the whole lesson, Mrs Kumar casting only a slight glance as the door closed behind him.
Emz had reason enough not to frequent the sixth form common room. She placed herself firmly outside the circle of girly politics and clique in-fighting. She knew Mark Catton always hung out there, viewing the slightly shabby first-floor room as his court. If the weather was bad, she hid in the library, but her usual hideaway was by the wildlife pond.
A small copse of birch trees and a range of shrubs had been allowed to grow wild, and, even in November and rimed with frost, the branches tangled above her head and made the place feel like a nest. She skirted the edge, which bordered the back of the Science block, and cut in through the gap between the hedging.
Logan started up from the bench concealed there, his face pale and thin-looking as he snatched up his backpack and turned away.
“You don’t have to run away from me,” Emz said. He hesitated and then put his bag down, retook his seat. Emz sat on the opposite end of the bench. There seemed a hundred, possibly a thousand, things she wanted to say to him, but she had courage to say only one.
“Need the notes from Maths?” she asked. He looked taken aback.
“You’d let me have them?” he spoke in a low, anxious voice.
“Yes.” She rummaged in her bag for her notebook and handed it over.
“You can correct it all as you go,” she said, and he managed a weak smile. He kept his face turned to the pages.
“I know you didn’t do it,” Emz volunteered. Logan gave an odd laugh, and she recognised, almost too late, that it was part sob.
“It’ll come good. The truth will—” as she spoke, he gave the terrible laugh, once more.
“Will what? Will be made up?”
Emz felt powerless; it made her feel wild inside.
“Can’t you make Caitlin tell the truth?”
Logan’s laugh was shrill, desperate.
“Someone should.” Emz heard her own instructions.
“I’m never going near her ever again. Christ.” Logan wiped his tears and stood up, gathering his strength. “I’m off,” he said. He took an apple from his pocket; it was particularly red, and he offered it to her.
“Hungry? ’Cause I’m not.” He tossed it into the air. Emz caught it and watched him move between the trees and out of sight around the Science block. In the near distance, a voice catcalled his name and there was laughter.
Emz stared at the apple. There was a message in it, but she could not fathom its meaning.
Her escape to Prickles was swift, and she wondered if Logan might have reached his home by the time she was standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. She had taken the short cut through Leap Woods in an effort to still her racing mind and heart.
Someone should.
She owed him nothing. In the light of their more recent interactions, she might be gleeful at his troubles. Emz did not function like that. The whole situation with Logan distressed her. As she reached for the teabags another thought struck her.
Something did happen to Caitlin.
That much was true, Winn had found her in the woods and there was no reason she would be there of her own free will. Caitlin was a townie to her core.
What happened to Caitlin?
Her thoughts were disturbed by someone calling from reception.
In the shop, Judith Killen, the stable girl from Caracole Stables, looked ill at ease.
“Any chance I can use your first aid kit?” she asked. “Only Greta has cut her thumb open on Pond Gate.”
Winn bustled in behind her.
“Who’s done what? Where?”
It was only a matter of minutes before Judith’s group of pony-trekkers were crowded into the kitchen. Judith patched Greta, and Winn was handing out cake and tea. The pony treks often cut through Leap Woods, especially in winter. Judith felt that a ride was only a proper ride if it ran through countryside. There was little or no point trotting at the side of a road. All her trek routes took in as little roadway as possible and were, as a consequence, the most popular.
“The Crow House track is a ski slope by the way, Winn,” Judith said as she picked up a wedge of Victoria sponge. “Want me to take a bag of grit up there on the way back?”
“No, don’t worry yourself. I’ll roll over that way in the Land Rover.” She picked up a pen and inked in a reminder “GRIT” on her left hand. As she did
so, she saw the smirched reminder “HORSE”. “Which reminds me, Judith, you don’t know anyone that has a really big horse, like a proper old-school draught breed?”
“Kent Willis has those Friesians, up at Willerwish?” Judith suggested. “They’re quite chunky.”
“But black,” Winn mused. “This one is grey. Mostly.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell with me,” Judith considered, shaking her head. “I can ask around for you,” she offered.
Emz watched through the back window as Judith wrangled the trekkers and their mounts. She moved amongst the horses with nickering sounds and sniffing nuzzles as if she was part horse and had considerably less patience with her two-footed charges. “Do you think…” Winn began, distracting Emz from her horse thoughts, “that there is any mileage in opening up the Orangery Tea Shop again?”
Emz was on alert.
“What made you think of that?”
“Oh, the Christmas brou-ha-ha. There’s that Winter Fair coming up at Kington Tower Gardens and I wondered if we could do the same.”
“Like a pop-up you mean?”
“Pop up?” Winn looked perplexed.
“That’s what you call them, you pop up, do the event and then pop it away again. Not permanent. No commitment long term.”
Emz could see a hint of anxiety in Winn’s face.
“Is this to do with the Wildwood lot?” Emz asked and was alarmed to see Winn flinch at the mention of the Wildwood Society. “Have they asked you to do a Christmas pop-up at Hartfield?”
Several expressions creased their way across Winn’s face and gave off a very mixed message indeed.
“What is it?” Emz asked.
Winn pulled a face.
“I have no idea what is going on with the Wildwood bunch,” she admitted. “They rescheduled the meeting again. And they haven’t paid the money they promised and so I… was wondering about a plan B.”
“It’s a good plan B,” Emz said.