A cat jumped onto her lap, just as Owen came sauntering down the lane towards her. She could see his bright hair above the hedgerows. Lily rested her head against the back of the ancient deckchair, watched him and waited. She wondered whether she would see signs of Daniel Cranton on him. The thought was like something growing through her gums, slightly painful but irresistible to probing.
Owen spotted her as he turned onto the short driveway. Lily sensed his desire to pause, consider, even though he did not physically appear to hesitate. She could see the wariness in his eyes. He expected confrontation.
‘Daniel gone to school?’ she asked politely as he came into the garden.
‘Don’t start.’
Lily laughed. ‘Start what?’ She arranged the cat over her shoulder and stood up. ‘I presume you’ve been at Low Mede this weekend?’
‘And you’ve been here all alone?’
Coldness, barriers. This was not conducive to the sharing of secrets.
Lily went into the cottage, and Owen followed. She turned to look at him, and realised she hardly recognised him now. If she touched him, his skin would feel different. How much of him had Daniel touched? She felt a brief, proprietorial anger. ‘I have things to tell you,’ she said.
Owen’s face was expressionless. ‘I’m not sure I want to hear them.’
‘You will. Sit down.’
Owen paused before doing so. ‘Well? What is it now? Another confession? This is pointless, Lil. I’m not trying to get one over on you all the time. If you’ve been with Othman, I think you’re mad, and playing a dangerous game, but don’t imagine I’ve been at Low Mede just because of that.’
Lily realised a lie was necessary. ‘I’m not interested in why you’ve been at Low Mede. I don’t care. Do what you like.’ She paused for effect. ‘I want to talk to you about our father.’
Owen pulled a quizzical face. ‘I hope you’re not going to say it’s Othman.’
Lily shook her head. ‘No, but I know who our father is. In fact, while you’ve been amusing yourself elsewhere, I’ve discovered a lot of things about who and what we are.’
Owen’s expression was unhelpful. ‘Who from? Othman?’
‘No. Someone else. Someone who knew our mother well.’ Before Owen could speak, voice the question, she reached over the table and laid a hand across his arm. ‘O, we are Murkasters.’
She expected Owen to laugh and he did. ‘Who told you that?’
She wished now it had been someone else, someone whom Owen might respect. ‘It was Emma Manden, that is, Emilia Manden. O, you won’t believe what’s happened!’
Owen realised he might have been wrong to leave his sister alone for the past two days. Her feverish excitement unnerved him. ‘Lily, Emilia’s off her head. She’s lost it. You can’t believe what she says.’ As he spoke, he imagined he could hear a key turning in an old door, at the end of a long, dark corridor in his mind. Revelation, he felt, was unrolling like an ancient manuscript, each turn uncovering another brilliant picture.
‘It’s true, O. I know it is. Listen...’ She did not tell him about visiting the High Place with Othman, but related as much as Emma had told her about herself and Helen Winter’s relationship with Kashday Murkaster. Owen kept silent, regarding his sister with a blank face, almost as if he refused to be impressed or surprised. She expected a sarcastic outburst when she’d finished telling him, but when he finally assumed an expression, it was faintly worried.
‘Well, say something,’ Lily said.
Owen wriggled his shoulders. ‘You’ve either been hallucinating, or conned by a mad relative of the Manden’s, or it’s the truth. What else can I say?’ He frowned, wondering how much to tell his sister about Daniel’s visions. Explaining them might be embarrassing. He shook his head. ‘This is unbelievable, but I suppose it makes a crazy kind of sense, too. Daniel and I have been... investigating things as well, Lil. Now it’s your turn to listen. We know about the Grigori.’ Carefully, he explained about Daniel’s visions, omitting any mention of sex.
Lily began to shake as Owen’s story unfolded. She hugged herself in an attempt to stop it. Something is happening, and it’s happening to us. Messages. Dreams. Everything will change.
When Owen mentioned the names Ninlil and Shemyaza, she interrupted him to relate her dream of the garden. ‘It is the same, O,’ she said. Her face was white. ‘How can Daniel and I see the same things? All these names are new to us.’ She rubbed her arms fiercely. ‘It scares me. Did Shemyaza look like Pev to Daniel, too?’
Owen shook his head. ‘He didn’t say so, no...’ He paused. ‘There’s more though. Daniel had a peculiar experience in Cresterfield on Friday night. Listen to this.’
When Owen had finished speaking, Lily put her hands across her face. ‘Oh my God, what does this mean?’ She peered at Owen through her fingers. ‘Is Peverel Othman a murderer?’
‘What? How did you reach that conclusion?’
Lily gestured wildly. ‘Well, it’s possible, isn’t it? Daniel took the bangle, saw a murder, and picked up the name Shemyaza. Shemyaza is a fallen angel, a bad Grigori, and I saw Shemyaza with Pev’s face...’ She held out her arms. ‘Well? What does that say to you?’
‘It’s a bit far-fetched is what it says,’ Owen said, but he spoke without conviction. ‘It’s more likely to be symbolic. If we really are Kashday Murkaster’s children, and there’s some truth in the Grigori legends, then all this Shemyaza stuff relates directly to us. Racial memories? Shemyaza had a bad reputation, and subconsciously you could be putting that onto Othman. It would be too much of a coincidence if he’d murdered the girl Daniel heard about in Cresterfield. Wouldn’t it?’
Lily slapped the table. ‘O, I don’t want to believe it, of course I don’t. I’ve been alone with Othman, made love with him...’ She shuddered. ‘But in my heart, I feel he’s capable of anything.’
Owen stared into her eyes. ‘And does suspecting him of murder change your feelings for him?’
Lily glanced away. ‘Emma says we must use him. She thinks he can help us reclaim our heritage.’
‘Use him?’ Owen laughed without humour. ‘Lily, have you gone insane? We should get rid of him, get him out of our lives, report him to the police, anything! Even if we are Murkasters, what good is that knowledge to us, really? Do you want to break into Long Eden and set up residence there? Do you want to prove legally that the place could be ours? What is it you want?’
Lily closed her eyes to damp her irritation. She felt Owen was overlooking the obvious. How could they ignore the truth of who they were? ‘O, we’ve always known we are different. How many times have you said so? All I want is for us to know ourselves, to be aware of ourselves, and yes, I want to know our history, all of it. It’s got nothing to do with the house. Anyway, don’t we owe it to the people here to find our power? The Murkasters abandoned them, let them wither away.’
Owen jumped to his feet. ‘Listen to yourself!’ he exclaimed, throwing up his arms. ‘This talk of powers, inhuman relatives, is madness. We have to look at things objectively.’
Lily looked up at him. She felt slightly afraid. ‘Owen, I know it’s true. I just know it. There was no aunt in this cottage before us. Mum never had relatives here. She worked for a farmer named Lennocks. Emma told me. She only came back here because of who our father was. She thought Little Moor would protect us. And it has. Don’t we owe these people something for that?’
Owen shook his head vigorously, then sat down again. ‘The past has nothing to do with us, Lil. Supposing these Murkasters, Grigori, whatever they were, did have extraordinary power, and supposing, however unlikely it is, we could find it within ourselves, think about the responsibility that would bring. If we could give people longevity, we’d be... well, enslaved by them. They would be terrified of losing us.’ Owen rubbed his eyes fiercely. ‘No, this is too much to take in. It’s crazy. Emilia Manden is an old crazy woman, and you’re too dreamy, Lil. You shouldn’t listen to her. A week ago, you’d have
just laughed at all this.’
‘You haven’t seen her,’ Lily said calmly. ‘Talk to Emma, O, look at her, then tell me I’m dreamy! Listen to what she can tell you.’ She smiled weakly. ‘I know you must feel the same way I do. We know, in our souls, this is the truth.’ She touched the place between her breasts with a closed fist. ‘We are Murkasters, we are Grigori. Our suspicions were never wrong, O. We are different.’
In the afternoon, Emma Manden made an entrance. Owen was delving inside the car’s engine on the mud driveway next to the cottage, Lily reading one of her mother’s old books in the deckchair on the brown lawn, cats asleep beneath the shade of shrubs and trees. Emma came striding down the lane, her long hair swinging. She looked as if she’d just stepped from another, more magical world, into the sweltering, decaying autumn of Little Moor. Lily would not have been surprised to see seaweed in Emma’s hair, or desert sand upon her bare legs. Emma ignored the open driveway, and opened the little gate into the garden, stepping onto the lawn.
‘Owen, Emma’s here,’ Lily said, putting down her book.
Owen reared up from the innards of the car and stared at the woman, as if from behind a veil.
Emma smiled at him widely and lazily. ‘Hello again, Owen Winter. Haven’t seen you for a while.’
‘Let’s go inside,’ he said.
The kitchen was cool. Lily poured lemonade for everybody, ice-cold from the fridge, but unfortunately it had gone flat. Emma’s fingernails were long and red against the smudgy sides of a glass that had been in the cupboard for years. ‘You two, like this house, have been running to seed,’ Emma said, and took a long swallow of the drink.
‘I’ve told Owen everything,’ Lily announced, ‘and he has things to tell, too.’
‘I’ve no doubt of it,’ said Emma. She lit a cigarette. ‘Well, Owen, what do you think?’
Owen was openly staring at Emma. He was searching for signs of decrepitude, lines around the mouth, a crepiness of the skin. Emma was young. There was no doubt. ‘How do I know you are Emilia?’ he said.
Emma made a careless gesture. ‘You could ask my daughter.’ She laughed. ‘Poor Eva. She isn’t happy about this, but then, she always has been a jealous girl. Was a spiteful, secretive child, in fact. What I did to deserve such a lump, I don’t know!’
‘And Othman did this to you, gave you back your youth?’
Emma’s tone was flat, uncompromising. ‘Yes. Othman did this to me. I’m afraid I don’t want to go into too much detail, because it’s hardly a romantic story.’
‘This is all very hard to believe,’ Owen said.
Emma made a careless gesture, spraying ash into the air. ‘Of course it is. Departure from the ordinary makes people uncomfortable. The fabric of reality starts to fray. I quite understand. I myself am still utterly astounded whenever I pass a mirror, but my feelings are more of relief and joy than of fear.’ She paused to inhale from her cigarette. ‘So, Lily has told you about me, and about your father, and his family. Just for convenience’s sake, suppose that all this information is true. You can argue with Lily about it later, if you like. Now, what is it you can tell me? Lily seems quite excited about it, doesn’t she!’
Owen was reluctant to answer. He still wasn’t sure whether he should trust this strange, charismatic female who claimed to be Emilia Manden. ‘It’s not much,’ he said.
‘Owen!’ Lily scolded. ‘Just tell Emma what you told me. Please! I think it’s important.’
Owen shrugged. ‘OK. A friend of mine is psychic, and over the past few days has been picking things up about the Grigori. I suppose he could just be taking it out of my head, some racial memory or something. Does that make sense?’
Emma pulled a face. ‘Possibly. Your friend is Daniel Cranton, with whom you have an intimate relationship?’
Owen glanced at Lily in an accusing manner. ‘Yes. It’s not something I want to be general knowledge around the village, though.’
‘I appreciate that,’ Emma said, ‘although I think you’d find the true residents, those who were Grigori dependants, and their families, don’t care a twig about such friendships. Grigori rarely make distinctions concerning gender.’
‘I think Daniel’s father might.’ Owen grimaced. ‘Anyway, that’s irrelevant to this discussion. I want to know everything you can tell me about Peverel Othman.’
Emma glanced at Lily, who cast down her eyes. ‘Mmm. He is not as much of a problem as you seem to think. Not yet.’
‘Tell her about the bangle, O,’ Lily said. Her face had gone slightly pink.
Owen did so.
Emma listened, her eyes slitted against the smoke she exhaled. ‘First, I think you should consider that Daniel might have picked up the name, as a symbol to represent murder, from you, in the same way he might have received visions of the Garden in Eden. Shemyaza is a potent symbol of the Grigori. You know that. He is supposed to be able to love and kill at the same time, capable of ultimate compassion and ultimate cruelty. Ultimately, he is totally amoral. His symbolic appearance in Daniel’s mind is one possibility. The other, as Lily suggests, is that Peverel Othman did murder this girl in Cresterfield. Othman, or Shemyaza.’
‘Shemyaza,’ Owen said in a monotone, ‘is a mythical fallen angel, who if he lived at all, must have died about eight thousand years ago. I can’t see him hanging around night clubs in Cresterfield picking up girls and killing them.’
Emma smiled thinly. ‘I wasn’t speaking literally. I think certain Grigori traits are awakening within you, to which Daniel is sensitive.’ She leaned forward earnestly. ‘Owen, you are not without magical experience yourself. You should know how it is possible to invoke ancient mythical forms...’ She frowned at Owen’s blank expression. ‘Oh well, maybe not. But it is possible. As a matter of fact I don’t think Shemyaza is a real person walking around killing people. Perhaps Othman or another Grigori was stalking Cresterfield. But Shemyaza’s essence may well be behind what is happening. He was reputed to be beyond love and hate, the eternal dying king. A martyr and a seducer, the hanged man of the Tarot.’ She flicked ash into a saucer on the table. ‘These are concepts you ought to reclaim, investigate. Perhaps it would help you understand yourselves, your people, better.’
‘Where are our people?’ Lily asked. ‘Are the Murkasters the only Grigori?’
Emma shook her head. ‘Obviously not. The Grigori have always had a hand in human affairs, of that I am sure, even though my knowledge of their activities is limited. The Grigori want to keep humanity in the dark about this, of course they do. You are half human, and have a foot in both worlds. Maybe you can rediscover Grigori knowledge for your mother’s people, those whom the Murkasters abandoned to die. They all looked out for Helen. They deserve to be repaid.’
‘It could be dangerous to delve into these things,’ Owen said.
Emma exhaled a snort. ‘You!’ she exclaimed. ‘What have you been doing in Herman’s Wood all these years? You were playing with fire, the only fire, without realising it. That in itself was potentially dangerous!’
Owen stared at her, unable to speak.
‘What has he been doing?’ Lily asked.
‘Something similar to what you experienced at the High Place,’ Emma said, almost dismissively, with a sidelong glance. ‘Your brother thought he was acting in secret, but we, the women, we knew.’ She smiled at Owen, a knowing rictus.
‘What have you been doing up there?’ Lily demanded. ‘Was it with Othman?’
Owen pulled a sour face. ‘No! And I don’t want to discuss that now. It’s irrelevant.’
Emma laughed. ‘Hardly. But still, that is a private issue between you. The women of this village have used the High Place for centuries for their own rites. You were drawn to that place, Owen, because it was significant to the Grigori. Notice you never came across us on the Friday nights you went there. We were aware of your activities, and considered them essential. What you did there was a re-enactment of an ancient ceremony as old as the flame itself. ‘
‘What is the flame?’ Lily asked. ‘I think I saw it when I was at the High Place, in a room deep beneath the ground. It was in a vision, or a kind of dream, but it felt very real. A blue flame. I breathed on it to make it grow.’
‘The flame is the source,’ Emma said. ‘The source of their power. Othman wants you to reawaken it. The Murkasters dampened it before they left, perhaps to keep it in reserve for a future time when they would return here.’ She smiled bleakly. ‘They promised to return, of course.’
‘And what if they do?’ Owen asked. ‘What will happen to us?’
‘It is important for you to become yourselves,’ Emma answered obliquely. ‘That will give you protection.’
‘This is all too insane,’ Lily said, clawing her fingers through her hair. ‘I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find this was all a nightmare. Everything’s happened so quickly. I wish we could go back in time to last Saturday.’ She laughed nervously. ‘We should have ignored Pev when he came to us in the garden at The White House. None of this would have happened.’
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Emma said sharply. ‘I wouldn’t have let Othman leave this place without taking what was mine. You wouldn’t have been able to keep out of it for long, not once the process had started. I was waiting for this time, watching you in silence, but I knew the day would come when I could come to you and tell you both the truth.’
‘Do you think we will ever meet our father?’ Lily wondered. ‘Do you think he knows what is happening?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ Emma said. ‘I’ve no idea where he is, or what happened to him.’
‘Did he know about us?’ Owen asked.
Emma nodded. ‘Oh yes. That was why Helen was so well provided for. He knew about you.’
‘Then why has he never come for us?’ Lily said.
‘He might not be able to,’ Emma answered. ‘Let me tell you what happened the last night the Murkasters were here.
‘Several days before, there had been some kind of dispute between Helen and Kashday. As to what it was about, we only had rumours to go on, but it seems Helen wanted to have some Grigori power for herself. Kashday was besotted with her, but he must have resisted her demands. So, Helen had left Long Eden and returned to the farm where she worked. Kashday had tried to lure her out, but she was strong-willed, wouldn’t have it. She kept him dangling for three days. Then, he must have relented, because he brought her back to Long Eden with him. There were undercurrents of disapproval in the house. I know Lady Lilieth argued with Kashday about Helen.
Stalking Tender Prey Page 40