Chapter Twenty-Three
When I wake up it’s light at the window and for a moment I’m lost, thinking I’m still in Bristol where I fell after killing the shade. I sit up and realise where I am, my eyes instantly going to the spot on the floor where Cray’s clothes are, or where they were at least. There’s nothing on the floor but a small pool of water and a blanched mistletoe stalk. I shuffle towards it, knocking the empty pan across the floor. They’re gone, that means…
“Cray?”
There’s no answer. I get up and throw open the door, crossing the hallway and looking into each room. Nothing. Downstairs I run into the kitchen, even go to the back door and look into the garden, but there’s no one there. He’s gone.
I lean my forehead against the cold glass, feeling sick. It worked, I know it did, but if that’s true then where’s Cray? Had he woken up on the floor and then just left me? I don’t want to believe it, but the doll I’d made is gone as well. Wherever he is he has total control over himself again. No one made him leave, he chose to abandon me. Perhaps he never loved me after all. Maybe it was all the shade’s doing.
It’s only as I go back upstairs to re-check the room for signs of the spell’s success that I notice my hand. Burns were the last thing on my mind when I woke up and there wasn’t any pain; probably because my hand is no longer there.
There’s a hand on my wrist and it looks almost like my hand, but as I flex my fingers I can see tiny joints moving, the grain silvery in the dim light. The wood is pale as the rest of me, smooth and cool. It could be a high end prosthetic, if it weren’t for the tiny offshoot on the little finger - two leaves and one white berry. Mistletoe.
I clench both my fists and look away from my hand. I don’t want to have to process that on top of everything else. The last twenty-four hours have changed my entire life. I’m exhausted and so miserable that my chest physically aches. The only thing that’s been keeping me going was the thought of saving Cray, but I’ve done all I can – done the impossible – and he’s left me behind. I can’t even begin to think about the others, poor Nara and Ilex, Chronicle and Campion. It cost me my hand to bring Cray back and I can’t even be sure what he’s come back as. The thought of him out there somewhere, half alive and half…it makes me want to put my hands over my face and sob.
I want out; out of Waywood, out of the nightmare, out of my skin and away from the horrible weight in my chest. There’s nothing for me downstairs, I go back up to the bathroom in a daze and find my bag, the pink one I used for sleepovers a lifetime ago. I don’t pay attention to what I’m putting in there, the familiar shapes of things; my few clothes, wash stuff, jewellery box, the ritual tools I gathered with the others, Cray’s cards. I remove my glamour and take off my bloody clothes, switching back to what I was wearing when I left home. I put the bloodstained things under a loose board in the bathroom floor.
Though I don’t want to go back to Sophia’s room I don’t want to leave the crystals from the other fetches there either. I cover my hand with a piece of green cloth from one of the cluttered tables and pick the crystals up one by one, tying them firmly into a little bundle. Maybe I can bury them later, even find where their bodies are. I think it all through a fog, walk with legs of lead.
Outside I put the house behind me and start walking, bypassing the campus entirely. I don’t want to see anyone, or wait for the bus to come and then make its way back into town; I need to be moving.
The driveway is longer than it seemed on the bus and the air is freezing, it almost hurts to breathe. I know I could glamour myself warm in an instant, the power in me is racing under my skin begging me to do just that. The rest of me might be tired, but the magic isn’t. It’s like being one of those Terminator robots – the outside of me, the Michaela part, is worn ragged, but all that strength underneath is unaffected. I put my old gloves on, mostly to hide my hand and pick the little sprig of mistletoe off, slipping it into my pocket.
The pavements are slick with ice where they aren’t wet with pinkish brown road salt sprinkled on them. I don’t see anyone until I’m off the main road, walking up through Twerton to reach my parents’ house at the top of the hill. I pass a few people there but keep my head down and avoid looking anyone in the eye.
Their house, my house, is just as I saw it on the astral, but when I work up the nerve to knock there’s no one at home. I think of Cray and his parents, who went on holiday and didn’t care that he might need to come home. I could have the door open in moments, I know that, or maybe walk right through the wall; I’ve no idea what this kind of power can do. I don’t want to know.
I put my bag on the front step and sit down next to it, feeling the cold instantly soak through my jeans. I’m there for a while before next door comes up the street with her dog and spots me.
“Michaela! Oh love where’ve you been?”
I can’t open my mouth to speak, I’m just too tired. She pushes open the gate, her little dog pulling her up the path, panting and bug-eyed as it tries to get to me.
“Do you want to come into mine while I call your Mum?”
I shake my head. Moving more than that seems impossible.
Next door bites her lip and glances quickly at her own front door.
“Wait right there, alright? I’ll be two ticks.”
She yanks the dog after her as she hurries into the house, leaving the door open. I don’t know her name, never have. In my head she was always ‘Next Door’ or ‘the woman with the annoying dog’, but she knew me, or at least, she does now that I’m the runaway teenager from the papers.
She comes running out again, skidding on the ice in her wellies. The dog is still inside, I can hear it barking where she’s shut it up at the back of the house. She shoves a Twix at me and squats down to talk, even though I’m not five and her knees crunch like Coke cans as she does it.
“Your Mum’s on her way. Just sit tight.”
She stands next to me, hugging her arms and looking up and down the road. It seems like forever but can’t be more than twenty minutes until Mum’s car is whizzing up the street and pulling up sharply at the curb. She doesn’t turn the engine off, just flings the door open and runs up the path. Mum bends down and I’m swallowed in the folds of her big wool coat, her gold brooch cold and smooth against my cheek. I hug her back, squeezing my eyes shut and breathing in the familiar smells of laundry liquid, deodorant and shampoo that cling to her, as well as the cooking smells that have soaked into her coat as it hung in the hall.
“Michaela,” her arms tighten around me, “where’ve you been?”
Hearing my name, my real name, from someone other than Cray, brings tears to my eyes. For the last twenty-four hours I’ve been living the life of Stone; shades and spells. All that’s gone now. I’m myself; greasy haired, wearing my own clothes and being hugged senseless by my Mum.
Eventually she lets me go and gets her keys out of the ignition. Next door’s gone back to her yappy dog in a rush of ‘Oh Bless’ and ‘Let me know if you need anything’. Mum opens the door and I follow her into the house, it’s only then I notice that I’m starving hungry and itching for a shower. Literally.
Mum stops in the living room and looks around like she’s confused about how she got there. She still hasn’t taken her coat off. The silence is heavy and uncomfortable.
“I need a shower,” I say at last, when she just stands there looking at me like I’m the second coming. I mean it to sound like a decision, but it comes out like I’m asking for permission.
“Alright. I’ll…put some tea in for us, and for your Dad. I should call him.”
I nod and take myself upstairs. Everything is familiar, like I only saw it this morning, but at the same time it’s like the light is strange. Everything’s slightly darker, a bit smaller than I remember it being. Even in my room where nothing’s been touched since I left that night. My pink furry bedspread’s in a heap on the floor, my drawers open where I packed in such a rush. It’s all my stuff, my make-up
on the dresser, my clothes spilling out of the wardrobe, my Rainbow-Bunny on the pillow with his one eye. The back of my neck prickles. It’s like I’m standing in a museum, looking at glass eyed dolls and brittle lace dresses – things that belong in the past, to a girl that doesn’t exist anymore.
In the bathroom I turn the shower on and have my first real wash since breaking into the student accommodation with Ilex. I let the hot water soak me all over and lather up with the bottle of shower gel I’d been using before I got kicked out. For a few minutes it’s easy to believe that I’m showering off traces of cross country after school, but soon I have to get out and go back to my room. My bag’s there as a reminder and I quickly go through it and take out my ritual tools and the pouch of crystals, hiding them in one of my old stashes – a hole cut into the mattress, hidden where it’s pressed against the wall.
Dressed in clean pyjamas, I look helplessly at my wooden hand. Thankfully my dressing gown has long sleeves. I have no idea how I’m going to keep it hidden after today.
I go downstairs to where Mum’s sitting on the sofa. I can see packs of frozen food on the kitchen counter, there are trays of it cooking in the oven. She’s made me a cup of tea and I sit down next to it. There’s an episode of Downton on the TV, but she’s not watching it, just gnawing the skin around her nails and looking at me.
“I saw that thing you put in the paper,” I say.
She takes her hand away from her mouth. “Is that why you came back?”
I nod. The truth is so weird she’ll probably have me locked up and peeing in a cup five minutes after I tell her. Even if there was some way she’d understand I know it wouldn’t make a difference. The word ‘witch’ stuck in my throat when I tried to throw it in Chloe’s face: to keep silent is one of the rules of magic, Cray taught me that - a rule that I can never break, even if I want to.
“I meant every word. Dad and I were so upset, we weren’t thinking when we locked you out. I was just so worried about you and the drugs.”
“I’m off it now anyway.”
She looks unsure. “Even if you aren’t-”
“I am. I didn’t quit or anything, but, I didn’t have any with me and then I didn’t have any money. I was too distracted to miss it.”
She relaxes, but I’m not a hundred-percent sure that she believes me. “That’s good. I know we made mistakes and it must have been hard for you…where were you? We looked everywhere.”
“Where do you think? Outside, sleeping rough,” I say, sharper than I intended. She’s sorry and red eyed and I don’t want to hurt her, but at the same time she hurt me. She let him throw me out onto the street.
“I know, I’m so sorry. I honestly thought you’d go to Tasha or Chloe and when your Dad calmed down you’d come back.”
“Well Tasha wouldn’t let me in and Chloe was on that stupid trip. Even when she got back and I met up with her she was a total bitch.”
“She saw you?” Mum’s eyes go wide, angry little spots of red on her cheeks. “She never told us.”
“She probably didn’t want to admit she’d told me I was a freak and that she hoped I was shooting up and getting AIDs.”
“Michaela!”
“That’s what she said.”
“Well, I’ll tell her parents and the school and the papers if I have to-”
“It’s not her fault, not really,” I say. “It feels like so long ago already.”
Mum’s quiet for a moment, eyes wandering to the TV, to the pictures on the wall.
“Michaela…I know you said you were sleeping rough but me and your Dad, the police, even people from your school. We were all looking for you, all over town. Even in Bristol.”
The mention of Bristol makes me stiffen. “I wasn’t in Bristol.”
“Or in a shelter or anywhere we looked. I just…I want to know if you were safe, if anything happened while you were on your own-”
“I wasn’t…there were a few of us, same age or a bit older. They were nice.”
“So you were with other kids?”
“I’m not a kid,” I say, exasperated.
Mum rolls her eyes and it’s almost like normal. “Fine. Teenagers – and they were alright, not…getting high or anything?”
“A bit,” I say, thinking of Ilex and the bag of weed he’d challenged me to take from that student’s bedroom.
“Boys?”
“Mum,” I snap, “what does it matter now?”
She still looks worried, and goes back to chewing her fingers.
I swallow. “There was one, a boy I really liked. But he’s gone now.”
“He left? That’s when you decided to come back?”
“He died.” I feel my eyes fill up and I break. “I was so scared, I tried to help him but he’s gone. They’re all gone.”
She looks completely freaked out, but she pulls me in and hugs me tightly, stroking my hair with her washing-up roughened hands, shushing me and rocking me side to side a bit, even though I’m not a baby anymore. I let myself howl for a while, then struggle to get my gulping sobs under control. Mum rubs my shoulder and offers me a tissue. I scrub my eyes and nose with it.
There’s the sound of a key in the front door, and my Dad’s voice travels through to us. “Love?...Michaela?”
The thought of having to go through a second inquisition makes me tear up again, but Mum stands up and squeezes my shoulder.
“I’ll talk to him. You just drink your tea.”
I hold onto the tissue and take the hot cup between my hands. It’s the Little Mermaid one they bought me from the Disney Shop when I was really, really little. That was the same year I had an Ariel cake for my birthday too. I scrunch up small and listen to my parents whispering in the hallway. I never want to leave this sofa, I want to stay squidged up and warm and smelling of vanilla shower gel in my pink dressing gown. I want to be the little girl with the Ariel birthday cake, not the girl who knows what it feels like to stab someone.
Mum and Dad come in from the hallway and I have to hold the mug one handed with the other tucked into my sleeve. I’m struck again by how tired Dad looks, how grey.
“Michaela,” he says stiffly, “welcome home, Love.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Mum gives me a reassuring smile as she goes into the kitchen and starts opening tins of beans. Dad hangs up his work fleece and sits down heavily on the sofa. I can feel how badly he wants to ask me about the last few months, but he doesn’t say a word. Mum must have really threatened him. She does that sometimes, manages to strong arm him into saving his bonus money instead of buying a huge TV, stuff like that. She hadn’t done it when he was kicking me out though.
We eat sausages, chips and beans in the living room in front of the TV and afterwards Mum puts on Easties. It’s been so long since I ate a proper meal, one that wasn’t made up of crisps and chocolate bars, or instant noodles. Even after two months Eastenders makes sense, nothing much appears to have happened. When I think about all that’s happened to me it seems incredible that Mum’s dinners and Phil Mitchell can still be the same. Outside of Waywood the world’s been moving at its normal speed, it’s me that’s lived a hundred years since I last saw this house.
It gets to about nine and my eyes feel dry, my head heavy. I yawn especially hard while Dad’s channel surfing, looking for Top Gear re-runs.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Mum says. “We can have a proper talk in the morning.”
I’m not thrilled at the idea of having a big talk about everything, but the thought of going to sleep in a proper bed has me nodding my agreement. As I shuffle upstairs I hear Dad say quietly, “She’s different.”
Mum shushes him. “She’s home. Do you know how lucky we are? You know how many kids never come home – never turn up at all.”
“Of course I do but-”
“But nothing.”
“But, we need to know where she was and what kind of trouble she was in to make her come home. That’s the only way we can help.�
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I close my bedroom door, not wanting to hear any more. Dad’s not stupid, he knows that me showing up after weeks of silence must mean something went wrong wherever I was hiding. Mum knows too, she just doesn’t want to admit it. I’ll have to tell them something. It won’t be the truth but I know I can make it convincing. I’m good at lying to them.
I take my dressing gown off and look at my hand. The only way to keep it hidden is to glamour it. However much I don’t want to use magic anymore there’s no way I can hide my hand otherwise. It takes seconds to get my hand looking normal again, but I feel anxious about it for hours afterwards, lying in the dark, unable to sleep. I don’t want to bring something that got so many people killed into my parents’ lives. I want no part in the magic that couldn’t give me back the one thing I wanted.
At some point I must get a bit of sleep, because I find myself waking up and not knowing where I am. After sleeping in a house out in the country where night meant total darkness, where ‘bed’ was a sleeping bag on the floor, waking up in a cushy bed to traffic noise and the orange glow of streetlamps is disconcerting. I snap the light on and it’s only the hand that claps over my mouth that muffles my scream.
The room is full of people. There are boys and girls of so many different ages, from a little boy that looks about five to a girl who must be over twenty. There’s even a baby in the eldest girl’s arms. The teenage boy who put his hand over my mouth takes a step back and looks to the girl with the baby.
“Who the hell are you?” I scramble up and look around at all of them. My heart’s already thumping too fast for comfort when I notice that none of the people in my room are solid. I can see the shapes and colours of my things through them. Frozen, I do a quick headcount. Thirty-nine...no, forty.
Sophia’s mostly hidden by the two guys standing in front of her, but I recognize her long gauzy blonde hair. The forty sacrifices.
“What do you want?” It comes out in a small squeak.
None of them speak. They just stand there, looking at me. Then the eldest girl nods to the boy who silenced my scream and he lays something on the bed – the Grimoires from Waywood. Sophia’s Grimoires.
Waywood Page 19