by Laure Eve
But he never did, and eventually I fell asleep.
In the morning, my head had the raspy furriness of a hangover. I lay in bed for a while, hoping to hear telltale noises of the family stirring. But there was nothing, so I got up and crept into the en suite bathroom.
I started to get the distinct feeling that the house wanted me out. Every move I made was an intrusion. I had a hasty wash, too nervous to take a proper shower, and tried to make my hair look perfectly messy, but it just looked messy, and I gave up.
When I went down to the kitchen, Thalia, Summer and Wolf were there, but there was no Fenrin, and my heart sank. Wolf was slouching against a countertop and stirring coffee, his feet bare. Summer’s long dark hair was loose against her pale skin, dripping over her arms. She looked tired in a glowering, rock-music-photo-shoot kind of way. I wanted to brush her hair back, take it in my fingers. I wanted to be allowed to do that. She wasn’t good in the mornings, anyway, but with a hangover she barely raised her voice over a grunt. Thalia looked impossibly fresh and luminous, which was pure sorcery – maybe one day she would admit to me what she was and then give me the spell that made her look like that.
Breakfast was all business. They barely looked up as I came in. Wolf wasn’t a Grace. Wolf was an outsider, too, surely – but I was the one who felt like I shouldn’t be here.
The dining table was piled with different breads and pastries. Melon slices. Bowls of freshly cut herbs scenting the air. Expensive-looking muesli with ingredients I’d barely heard of in sleek packages from health food shops. I grabbed a piece of melon and sat awkwardly, ekeing out the minutes until Fenrin came down.
But he didn’t show, and he didn’t show.
I’d finished my melon, and then a pastry.
The house seemed to shift, bearing down on me.
I cleared my throat.
‘I think I have to go soon,’ I said into the quiet. ‘My mother’s expecting me. We’re going shopping today.’
‘See ya later,’ said Thalia absently. She was reading a book, her hands gripping a mug. As I watched, she reached out to a bowl and took a handful of green leaves, dropping them into her mug. Wolf was staring out of the window. Summer was making more coffee, her back to me.
What had happened since last night?
Had I done something wrong?
Was this it, now? Were they dropping me?
I stood up and left the kitchen, fumbling in my haste to make it look like I couldn’t care less about staying. I’d left my bag by the foot of the stairs, and I picked it up. Their parents were nowhere to be seen. After the encounter with Gwydion in his study, and everything Fenrin had told me, I wasn’t exactly anxious to seek them out, even though I knew it would be rude not to say thank you – but just then I heard voices from another room down the corridor and a tinkling laugh.
‘Hey,’ said a voice behind me.
I turned. Summer had appeared, one foot resting on top of the other, her hand wrapped around a staircase post.
‘Hey,’ I said.
We stood. She seemed awkward.
A sudden need to tell her about Fenrin, about our conversation and our closeness, pushed at me. I resisted it. I couldn’t risk being that obvious – not yet.
‘It was fun last night.’ Her tone was more like a question.
‘Yeah,’ I said. I tried to reassure her. ‘It really was.’ It was the most fun I’d ever had, but that was something I’d never admit to. Needy people didn’t keep friends like the Graces.
‘Next time let’s just you and me hang out,’ she said. ‘We can do anything you like.’
‘Okay,’ I said. Maybe I was too eager because it seemed to take her by surprise.
‘Okay?’ she repeated.
I was grinning. ‘Yes, idiot.’
The corner of her mouth was tugged into a half smile.
‘You don’t have to go right away, you know,’ she said. ‘You could stay—’
‘Are you heading off, River?’ came a voice behind us. I turned.
Esther and Gwydion Grace, together at last.
She was like an elf queen; he a fairy king. Of course this was a family of witches – you just had to look at them. Gwydion had his arm round Esther’s waist, and she nestled back into his shoulder.
It didn’t seem like she was having a string of affairs. It definitely didn’t seem like he knew about it. Had Fenrin been messing with me? But I remembered his face and his voice. No. They were good at secrets, this family. Good at glamour, hiding the cracks underneath.
‘My mother’s waiting,’ I managed, stammering in the face of them. Why was it so hard to talk to beautiful people?
‘Will you be able to get back all right? Is she coming to pick you up?’
‘Oh no, it’s fine. We’re going to meet in town, so I’ll get the bus.’
Esther frowned at that, but Gwydion squeezed her side.
‘All right then,’ she said. ‘It was lovely to meet you.’
‘Thank you … thank you for having me.’
Esther’s eyes slid over Summer. ‘Feel like hanging out with your mother after breakfast?’
Summer folded her arms tightly. ‘Yeah,’ she said. She’d been smiling just a second ago.
Esther and Gwydion walked off.
‘Um,’ I began, unsure how to ask her what was wrong. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, of course. She just wants a report on last night, that’s all. Make sure I didn’t say anything to you that she wouldn’t want me to,’ said Summer, and then she turned abruptly. ‘See you Monday, then.’
She went into the kitchen, leaving me alone. I waited for a long moment, but she didn’t come back.
I took a key dangling off a carved set of wooden pegs on the wall next to the front door, opened it, shouldered my bag, locked the door, posted the key back through the letterbox, and walked away as softly as I could.
*
I went home to a heavy quiet. I knew I shouldn’t, but it was all too easy to compare my house to the Graces’. Theirs was a warm, deep place, each room seemingly designed to evoke a cascade of memories. A place to get lost in. Ours was blank, beige, tiny and cramped. Dim and dusty. Plastic chairs in the kitchen. Sagging couch. A temporary box to hide away in.
The ceiling creaked as I stood in the hallway. Mum was walking around in her bedroom. Even in a new house, the sound of her tread was so familiar to me. It was the only thing I had left of our old life, apart from the Giger and Matisse posters on my wall, with their curling edges I could never stick down no matter how much Blu-tack I used.
I went upstairs and knocked on her door. She didn’t answer. She never answered. I went in, anyway.
She was folding her laundry. ‘There’s a pile on your bed,’ she said. ‘Put it away or it’ll crease something chronic.’
‘Don’t you want to know who I’ve been with all night?’
She shrugged. Her hair crinkled as it met her shoulders. ‘I thought you said you were at a friend’s house. Why, are you trying to tell me you were out all night clubbing?’ Her grin was hopeful.
‘No.’
‘It’s fine if you were, you know.’
‘Seriously. When was the last time I went out clubbing?’
‘You might do it all the time, for all I know,’ she said. ‘You’ve got some new friends, have you? Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Things seem to be going better here. You’re different.’
‘Different?’
‘You just seem happier the last few weeks. I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You know how you get all worked up, sometimes. But you’ve been out of the house a lot recently. It’s good. It’s a good thing! We moved here to make a fresh start, didn’t we? What’s that face for?’
‘Moving towns doesn’t make everything magically okay.’
She sighed, a here-we-go-again kind of noise. ‘Why are you spoiling for a fight? I’m not in the mood.’
Why won’t you just tell me that you think it’s my fault?
I took i
n a deep breath, testing the waters. ‘Have you spoken to Dad since we moved?’
Her face turned hard. ‘You know I haven’t. He’s gone. So get it out of your head, okay?’
‘He can’t just disappear like that and never even talk to us again.’
She sank down onto the edge of her bed. ‘Well, he did.’ She was unusually quiet instead of angry, so I felt safe to push.
‘Maybe you could give me his number,’ I tried.
‘Love – why are we going backwards? I thought we’d moved on from this the last couple of months. I thought you were better.’
‘I just want to talk to him. I just want to know he’s still … he’s still around.’
She raised her arms and her voice. ‘Well, he’s not! He’s not hiding under the stairs, is he?! I just … look. If it’s going to be like this again, maybe we need to have a talk about that medication you were on before we moved. Maybe it was too soon to stop taking it.’
‘Oh yes, Mum, lovely. Dope me up and shut me up!’ I said, suddenly furious, at myself most of all. This was her favourite distraction tactic – get me focused on the hated pills she’d guilted me into taking after he’d gone.
‘That’s not the point of them at all,’ she protested. ‘Just … you’re not so up and down all the time on them, you’re more—’
‘More normal,’ I said bitterly. ‘Yeah. I know. Just like you always wanted.’
She didn’t even try to deny it. Her silence followed me all the way back to my room, until I slammed the door on it.
The thing was, six months ago, my father disappeared off the face of the earth.
No explanation, nothing. Police not interested. Another missing person report.
Mum closed off the whole thing for good just before we moved. She said he’d suddenly been in contact. He said he was up north somewhere and he didn’t want to talk to us – he just wanted us to move on without him.
I needed to believe her. I really, desperately did, and just one phone call would do the trick, but she said she didn’t have any contact details for him. He’d called her from a private landline while I was at school, and the number hadn’t shown up on the phone. He’d only talked to her for as long as it took to reassure her that he was all right. He had a new girlfriend and a new life. He was happy. And he wasn’t coming back.
I hadn’t heard his voice or seen his face since the night he supposedly walked out. I say supposedly because he didn’t even pack a suitcase. His razor was still on the side of the sink, wiry chin hairs caught in its blades. Not one item of his was missing. Who decides to walk out of their house, walk out on their family, without even taking a change of underwear?
No one. That was who. One day, Dad was in our lives. The next, he wasn’t. And I’d been the last person to talk to him. To drive him away. Mum kept saying I’d heal on my own, but you couldn’t heal from that kind of guilt. It was my fault he was gone.
It was because of what I did.
CHAPTER 12
I leaned against the railing, the wind rolling off the sea and streaming my hair back from my face.
My gaze jumped between the three surfers, each one popping up out of the waves every so often. They had a small crowd watching them, mostly girls, calling cheerfully to one another, fit to compete with the cries of the seagulls circling overhead. It was late afternoon on a Sunday, a pretty strange time to pick considering the tide timetable, but coincidentally perfect for drawing bystanders to the seafront, a rare tourist or two in the mix, shading their eyes and pointing them out with grins, clapping when they rode a wave even for just a couple of seconds.
I’d gone for a walk, hoping to accidentally run into a Grace. I’d caught sight of the surf crowd and wondered if Fenrin would be among them. He wasn’t, not today, but my house was empty and it made me itch restlessly inside, so I lingered to watch them.
It was Jase Worthington and two of his friends. His new girlfriend, Seela, was among the crowd on the beach, waving and laughing. She had shorts on to show off her tanned legs, as if the cold didn’t even give her a moment’s pause. I watched Jase emerge, gasping, from underneath the water. Seela blew him a kiss.
I remembered him calling Summer a stupid goth bitch.
His friend Tom managed to crawl up onto his board and stood for several seconds, howling to the beach crowd, who responded with claps. A tourist not too far from me leaned against the railing and joined in, indulgent and eager for a show. Tom wobbled and then dived neatly back into the sea to prevent an embarrassing tumble off.
There was a time before moving here, a time I would have watched that crowd on the beach and hated them. Hated them because I didn’t want to admit that I’d have given anything to be down there with them, so carelessly accepted. Belonging. I couldn’t seem to get on with people who wanted so much to belong, but underneath that, I knew that I wanted it, too. Now, though, the hate was gone. Envying a group like that seemed pointless when you had the Graces.
Stupid carny fakers, Jase had called them, hadn’t he?
I’d grown tired of the whole parade, and I watched Jase come up again, bobbing and shouting, until something about the shredded note in his voice and the stillness rippling through the group on the beach caught me.
He wasn’t shouting any more. He was screeching.
Seela went down to the water’s edge.
The wind turned and I heard her. ‘Tom!’ she screamed into the sea. ‘Go get Jase! Something’s wrong!’
Tom turned, his head slick as a seal, catching sight of his thrashing friend. He dived for him, their other friend reaching them both a moment later.
Sea spray and confusion for long, long seconds. Heads bobbing up and diving down.
I watched them drag Jase out of the surf and onto the beach. As soon as his foot touched down on the sand, he squealed, piercing and sharp. Nearby gulls lurched out of the way and took off clumsily, panicking.
‘Shit,’ I breathed. ‘He’s broken his leg.’
‘It could be a shark or something,’ said a voice beside me, tinged with nervous fascination.
I glanced around.
It was Marcus.
He was gazing at the scene, his hands braced on the railing. The wind in my ears had covered his approach.
‘It’s not,’ I said. ‘Round here?’
‘Has someone called an ambulance?’
I pointed to the crowd. Several of them had phones in their hands. Jase was sobbing now, wobbling wails drifting across the sand.
‘Poor guy,’ said Marcus with a frown. ‘That’s bad luck.’
‘Yeah.’
He cupped his hands round his mouth. ‘Do you need any help?’ he yelled to the crowd.
Only one of them looked up, and when she saw who was shouting, she quickly glanced away again. Jase had disappeared beneath a knot of bodies. I felt Marcus watching me.
‘You look like you think I’m planning to stab you,’ he said. ‘I guess you’ve heard all the rumours about me.’
‘I’m pretty new,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know anyone well enough to make assumptions about them.’
‘And yet.’
This nettled me.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
‘Can I talk to you a second?’
‘What about?’
His voice was quiet. ‘Maybe stop acting like whatever I have is catching and just have a conversation with me?’
I shifted, awkward. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry, I get why. It’s what happens.’ His face was open. It bothered him, but he didn’t try to hide it. That was brave. I hid everything I could.
You have good reasons, whispered my coal-black voice.
Sirens floated to us from the distance. An ambulance was on its way. The crowd at the seafront had swelled, and I felt suddenly uncomfortable with so many people around, so many gawping vultures, and me standing there like I was part of them, watching the show.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here. The cavalry
’s arrived.’
*
We walked away, back into town.
I resisted the urge to look at him as he moved beside me. Marcus inspired curiosity. Everything I’d heard implied he was crazy or dangerous, but he didn’t seem it, and I enjoyed that. More importantly he’d managed to catch a Grace, and I wondered how he’d done it. I wondered if he could help me.
I skirted past the entrance to the Mews and moved us into the rest of the town centre – what I now thought of as the normal, boring bit – wandering aimlessly along the tiny cobbled streets. I always tried to wear the thinnest, flattest shoes I had when I went into town because I loved the feel of the smooth rounded stones against my feet. They felt ancient and immovable, fixed points in time. People would flit over them, people would come and go, come and go. The stones would remain the same.
‘I heard you changed your name,’ said Marcus, as we walked.
I didn’t reply.
‘It’s cool,’ he said quickly. ‘I mean, people can call themselves whatever they want.’
‘You’re two years above me in school, right?’ I said, to change the conversation.
‘Yeah. Same year as the golden twins. Where are you from originally?’
‘City suburbs. Totally different from here.’
‘How come you moved away?’
I stopped. I would not be delving into my past with a stranger. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘It’s just conversation,’ he said.
‘Look. I feel like I should say that Summer kind of told me all about you.’
Something skittered across his face – an expression I couldn’t quite catch before it was gone. He glanced up and down the street. It was a grey, half-light kind of a day, and most people were holed up inside.
‘What did she say?’ He tried to look casual, but desperation stood stark on his face.
‘That you’re obsessed with Thalia.’
‘Yeah, yeah. That I’m a stalker.’ He snorted. ‘Oh good. How original.’