by Laure Eve
I bit back a hysterical laugh. ‘Thalia, you … had a knife. You said you were going to kill me.’
She shook her head tightly. ‘Because you kept lying to us. We just figured, if we threatened you, we’d bring it out of you … and you’d bring him back. We weren’t really going to kill you. I never meant it.’
But her words sounded hollow. I remembered the wild dark in her eyes as she crouched on me. I remembered the white-hot wire across my chest.
Thalia would do anything to protect her family.
She was facing me, but her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. She looked so strange and thin shorn of her hair. ‘So if you can’t bring Wolf back,’ she said haltingly, ‘then we’re quits. Please just … promise to stay away from us. I think it’s best. And we promise we’ll stay away from you. Okay?’
Okay?
Fenrin dragged himself up to standing, but he wouldn’t look at me. Thalia clutched his sopping sleeve, and she wouldn’t look at me. Summer’s eyes were on them and she wouldn’t. Look at me.
‘But …’ I said stupidly, and then stopped.
No, no, this was all wrong. This was my worst nightmare come true.
They were supposed to understand. They were the only ones in the world who could understand. In fact, they were supposed to hug me, reassure me, delight all over their faces, because they knew how to harness it. They were supposed to know how to point it and urge it and calm it and direct it like a horse. They were supposed to think it was wonderful, what I could do, and embrace me as one of them.
I was one of them.
But the fear that had stopped me from being truthful, on top of the doubt that I was even causing anything at all, was this: that they’d look at me and see the same thing my parents had.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I know I … look, I should have told you from the beginning, but I was too scared, okay? All I’ve ever wanted was to find someone like me. I just wanted to know what I am. And I finally found you, and I … I thought you could help me.’
‘We can’t help you. No one can help you.’ Fenrin put his arm round Thalia as he spoke.
‘But … you can. You can.’
Thalia’s voice rose up and down, up and down the hysteria slide. ‘No, River, no. What you do … it’s evil. You said it yourself. It’s only bad things that happen around you. What if we fall out again? Will you kill us, too?’
Black despair crawled up my back and over my shoulders, settling on me solid and heavy, a cement cloak. ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Please, please don’t be afraid of me.’
But they were. Oh, they were.
Summer unfolded herself. She looked like the ghost of a drowned rat. She paused, as if to say something. Above the noise of the sea, I heard Fenrin call to her, Thalia pressed to his side. He held out his hand.
For a moment, Summer stood still. Her gaze roved over my face.
Then she moved forward and slipped her hand in his.
They took the path that led them up over the dunes, and then eventually to the back of the grove. They were going home. They did not want me to come with them. They didn’t want me at all.
I watched the rolling dunes swallow their shapes. They would go back to that house, dressed up with its objects that made its owners feel like they had power. Pretty, vacuous objects to display their pretty, vacuous lives. They would touch the seashells, the soft charm bags hanging from the lintels. The horseshoe over the front door for luck. They needed these things that helped them make sense of the world; otherwise it all just descended into confused, miserable chaos. I understood the comfort of that.
But I was not one of them.
That moment, when it came, was small. Just a quick, fleeting twinge of realisation, there and gone. That was where the power was, wasn’t it? It lay in small moments, small realisations:
He doesn’t love me.
She is afraid.
He thinks I’m crazy.
I’m alone.
I’m going to die.
I’m not one of you.
I’m not one of you.
I’m one of me.
Right then, I knew what was coming. I knew what I had done.
I sat on the beach and waited, watching the sea.
CHAPTER 36
It took a few minutes for the shape to emerge.
It crawled out of the sea like a pale, jerking spider.
I thought I was full numb now, full dead inside, but not quite, not all the way, because I felt a surge of stuttering panic. Everything about this pale spider thing was wrong. It stopped, right on the tideline, its limbs braced into the sand. Then it collapsed into a heaving lump.
It reminded me of a documentary I saw once about the strange creatures that lived way down in the dark, in the blackest sea depths where the pressure would cave in your chest in seconds. They were translucent, with flat dish-plate eyes and needle teeth so long they could never close their mouths. If you brought them near the surface, they’d gasp and flop, blubbery lumps on their way to death.
The tide receded as the sea retreated from what it had vomited up.
I saw the lump shift, ever so gently.
I heard a sound like a long, whistling groan.
I knew what it was, but I was afraid. I was afraid of what it wasn’t.
I stood up, unsteady, and forced my stiff body to walk. My chest gave a sharp ache, and then quieted, throbbing. I couldn’t think about the cut Thalia had given me right now – I’d clean myself up later. The lump grew in my vision as I approached, and it stopped being a shapeless spider mass. A back appeared, the long groove down the spine. Legs. Arms. It was curled on its side. I had to walk all the way round it to find the head. Hair matted with sand and dripping. Eyes closed. It coughed, a rattling sound.
I leaned forward, my head screaming stop. Pressed my hand into its chest to roll it onto its back. The skin was cold and wet, but there was life underneath there. I could feel it.
It rolled, unresisting, and opened its eyes. They were unfocused, but they found me eventually. They latched on to my face. Confused. Blank.
I swallowed, forcing my voice out. ‘Hey.’
The body moved. The limbs wavered.
‘Hey,’ I tried again. I had to be calm. I had to be unmoved. Maybe it could hear fear. ‘Say something.’
Its mouth opened, but nothing came out. Its eyes rolled away, focused on nothing. Its bare limbs twitched in the cold.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We have to go. You’re going to freeze to death. Come on. Get up. Please, you have to get up.’
It took some pushing with my hands, ‘please’ and ‘get up’ trickling out from my mouth like a litany, but it managed to roll onto all fours. I crouched beside it, putting my shoulder under its arm, trying to lift it to standing. It dragged itself up. Its skin was cold marble against my side, and its arm weighed a ton, biting into my neck.
‘We have to go,’ I said, and pulled forward.
It took a long time to get up to the dunes. It fell twice. The second time its arm wrenched my neck, and I was terrified it had broken me and itself. But my neck stopped flaring, and it got up again. When we reached the dunes I climbed up slowly and it followed, head hanging down, wet gritty hair plastered over its skull. Unformed – that was the word it made me think. It looked down at its legs like it had never seen legs before. It must have been so cold, but I had nothing to give it. All I could do was get it home as quickly as I could.
When we got to the top, I put its arm over my shoulders and my neck creaked in protest. I ignored it. A little pain was needed. A little sacrifice of mine.
It stumbled beside me. I tried to think of things to ask.
‘Are you okay?’
But it never replied.
‘Do you know where you are?’
It was silent. The only sounds it made were the grunts when it fell.
I didn’t know how long this took.
It wasn’t even that far away, but it felt like we stumble-walked together for hours and hour
s. The clear night helped, and the path was lit with cold, white light from the moon and the stars. It should have felt magical. But magic never felt magical, I’d come to learn. It was hard, and weary, and sometimes awful.
My clothes were still wet and my muscles ached, but at least they’d warmed up now that we’d been moving a while. We reached the Grace house. I considered going round to the back garden, but it was leaning against me so hard by this point I didn’t think we could get much further.
We made it underneath the little stone canopy that framed the front door. I pushed the body gently against the wall so it didn’t fall down. It stayed. Its head almost brushed the underside of a little charm bag hanging from a nail on the wall.
I knocked on the door.
I knocked and knocked and knocked.
The door opened. It was Fenrin.
The gust of warmth from inside the house was enough to set me shivering again. They were all dry and dressed in clean clothes. Thalia looked drawn and odd without her hair.
They stared at me. I stared back.
‘River, please don’t come back any more,’ Fenrin said to me. ‘Please, River. Please leave us alone, or we’ll call the police.’
He was trying to seem strong, but he was frightened.
If I hadn’t been so weary, I think that would have irritated the shit out of me.
‘I just have something for you, that’s all, and then I’ll go,’ I said through chattering teeth. I pulled on the arm of the body beside me, and it stumbled into the light spilling from the house.
Naked and trembling, it stood there.
I stepped back.
‘This is my apology, okay?’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. So I made it right.’
I caught Summer’s eye. Her jaw had dropped open. Her eyes were so wide.
The light and warmth spilling out from the house was sapping the last of my fire. The front of me strained towards it. The back of me still faced the dark. All I wanted to do was fall down and sleep.
‘You said I couldn’t do good things.’ I took in a deep breath. ‘But you were wrong. You were wrong.’
‘Wolf?’ said Fenrin. His voice had gone unnaturally high like a child’s, quavering and lost. ‘Wolf? Wolf?’
All he did was repeat his name.
Wolf did nothing except stand there.
I no longer had a part in this. It was up to them now. I forced myself to turn my back on them and walk up the lane. As I walked I could hear their fluttering, panicking voices like birds. The front door shut with a bang. He was inside. He was safe, with them.
I hugged my arms to me. I was so cold, and the walk back was going to take a while. At least I could get a shower at the end of it. It was this that made my legs move, over and over.
I thought of my small house and of how much more comforting it now felt to be going back to it. I wondered if my mother was worried that I hadn’t come home yet. I’d tell her everything was fine.
I’d tell her everything was better than it had ever been before.
I’d tell her that maybe Dad didn’t have to be gone forever, after all.
CHAPTER 37
In the new year, I begin my third transformation.
I have a feeling this one will stick.
I miss school assembly and am ten minutes late to my first class of the term. I walk in as our English teacher, Mr Sutherland, is waxing lyrical on chapters ten to fifteen of The Innocent, which I should have read over the weekend.
He looks me up and down and tells me that bare shoulders are inappropriate attire for school, and do I have a cardigan. I tell him I’m in costume as someone who doesn’t give a fuck, and I get detention for not backing down. And for the swearing.
The whole class is staring. Their attention doesn’t make me want to shrink into myself any more. I can feel eyes on my shoulders, my jagged hair. I look odd. I’m not beautiful, and I’m not cool, but I don’t care. Finally, I look how I am.
There is a Grace-shaped void in this school, and I am going to fill it.
*
Marcus and I have been avoiding each other. It’s easy when you’re in different years, and he’s barely been around, anyway – the seniors are all studying their lives away for their final exams.
I haven’t talked to him properly since the night of the party. Part of it is embarrassment, part of it is that I just haven’t been able to face him. Sometimes, with Marcus, it feels too much like looking into a mirror. I understand all the little moments that had to happen in order for him to get to this point. I understand his frustration and his obsession and his rage. Whether it’s because of a curse or not, there’s something special about Marcus. He knows about magic. He’s been around the Graces for a long time, a lot longer than I have. Like me, he’s been loved by them and like me he’s been rejected by them. Now we both have to learn to live without them.
But that doesn’t mean we have to do it alone.
‘Why do you want to talk to me?’ he says, placing his messenger bag on the table as he sits. I notice the tense set of his outline. ‘If it’s about Thalia, I’m not interested. It’s over. I haven’t seen her in months. I haven’t seen any of them in months. No one has, not since Wolf died.’
We share a look of mutual, fleeting, complicated pain. It’s gone again from his eyes just as quickly, neatly hidden. I wonder if it lingers in mine. I steel myself for what comes next.
‘I’m really sorry for what happened, Marcus,’ I say. ‘Everything that happened to you. I think it’s really unfair what they did. But they never suffer for it. It’s always everyone around them.’
He stares at me. His expression tells me that he is trying to make me out.
‘What do you want?’ he says.
‘To show you something. And then to ask you a question.’
He struggles, as if he senses a trap, but his curiosity unfurls before me.
I reach slowly into my rucksack and pull out a stiff cream envelope. Inside is a rough woven card, impregnated with tiny seeds and edged in gold foil. It is printed in a classic, elegant script.
As soon as his eyes fall on it, my question is answered.
For a moment, he seems too confused to speak. He stares and stares at the card, deep in thought. Then he reaches into his bag and withdraws his own envelope. Without a word, he unsheathes the card inside and hands it to me. It looks just like mine.
It reads:
The Grace Family & the Grigorov Family
cordially invite
Marcus Dagda
to the coming-home party of
Wolf Grigorov
I look up at Marcus.
‘You got one, too,’ I say.
We stare at each other.
‘Screw them,’ he says with a sudden flash of savagery. ‘I don’t know what kind of game they’re playing now, but I’m done. I never want to see them again.’
It’s obvious he doesn’t mean it.
‘Marcus,’ I say, and my tone turns his eyes back to mine. ‘Do you believe in magic?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do you believe,’ I say patiently, ‘that some people can do things others can’t?’
His body is cautious. His eyes are wary. But I can feel it, the subtle shift in him. The coal-black core of him is leaning toward the coal-black core of me, hopeful.
‘Yes,’ he replies, finally. ‘Are you going to treat me like I’m crazy for it?’
My smile is genuine. ‘No. Because I have something to tell you.’
And I tell him everything.
I list them all, every single one I can think of. Every moment I’ve caused.
I tell him about Wolf’s death.
This hurts, but it feels shamefully good, too, like digging out a black poison thorn that has been lodged in me for a long, long time. I wait to see revulsion in his face, but all I get is a confused frown.
I tell him about my father, and Niral. Esther’s choking fit, and her clay pots. Jase’s leg.
And Wolf, again, resurrected. Here again, alive. Alive. That was me. He’s alive and that was me and I’m fixed now. I’m not damaged and I’m not wrong because, finally, I can take it back.
I watch as his face shifts from utter disbelief, and then to something else.
‘Well?’ I say finally.
This is his test. Does he realise it?
Marcus stirs. ‘Well, what?’
‘Do you believe me?’
His mouth opens, closes. Opens again. ‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘I don’t know. I think it’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard.’
That’s fine. I know how he feels – it’s taken me a lifetime to accept it myself.
‘I remember that night,’ he says, suddenly. ‘The night of the party. For a second, I thought – I really did think – it was you who broke the pots. You were so angry, and they all just … smashed. But I was drunk. I just thought I’d made it up somehow.’
I hold my breath.
His eyes rise to meet mine.
‘And you’re telling me Wolf is alive again.’ He touches the edge of his invitation. ‘That this, this – is real. And it’s because of you.’
I am silent, waiting. I will not push.
He leans back, shakes his head. Sighs.
‘I don’t know. I’d love to believe that it was real. It would be incredible. But I don’t know.’
‘You don’t have to know,’ I assure him. ‘Not yet. I get it. I just want your help, that’s all.’
I watch him recover from this latest bombshell.
‘Help with what?’
‘Help to understand it. You know so much more than me about this kind of thing.’
He contemplates this. I wonder if he realises all the things I don’t say that I am asking of him. I’m asking for more. I’m asking for friendship. I’m asking to not be alone in this.
He realises. His eyes are thoughtful when they come back up to rest on my face.
‘I’d like that,’ he says. ‘To help.’
That old glow starts to spread its wings in my chest, but I pin it before it can get too far.