When Katie walked through the recessed side door to the club, she realised she had been wrong. Very wrong indeed. There were monsters shouting at TV screens, clinking glasses way too loudly and being very vulgar in their speculations of each others parentage and generally creating chaos, and it was frightening. So frightening that she was tempted to turn tail and run home. She was considering this when Shimma, the owner/manager of the club spotted her from behind the bar and pointed to her while talking to somebody on staff she didn’t know. The lunch shift on Sunday was not part of her regular shift pattern but every few weeks, Shimma held a football day at the club where all the lads – and a handful of the girls – could hole up and get tanked up in front of a full day of live matches. The aggression tended to be turned towards the referee or dirty players and lager tended to loosen their wallets as well as their tongues.
“Hi.”
“You doing okay, chick?” Shimma said back. He didn’t really want an answer, it was just how he greeted most people. “Right, there’s a hundred in already.” Jesus, no wonder it was noisy. “But it’s still early. Big matches start in half an hour and it’ll get busy so I need you out front stamping wrists. When kick-off comes, I’ll pull you back in to start taking food orders.”
Katie hadn’t even taken her bag or coat off but Shimma had already dashed off elsewhere without even waiting for an answer. She saluted his disappearing head. “Yes sir.”
Bag and jacket safely stashed upstairs in the break room, Katie took a seat behind the hatch just inside the main doors. It was her job to check ID, take entrance money, stamp hands with a bold, black S, and point people to another hatch where another girl – Felicity maybe? Felicia? – would take their coats and anything else they wanted kept safe. One of the bouncers she had called Skinhead when she had turned up for a shift and now answered to little else, nodded to her and mouthed “Get ready.” Then he opened the door and let the first half dozen people in. Katie plastered her work smile on and went through the speech she had down to a T. “Welcome to Shimma. No violence, no touching, no shirking on the tips. Money and ID please.” It was short and sweet but it made the point that bad behaviour was not something you could get away with here. And if anyone started arguing, she just pressed a little bit harder than she needed to with the stamp. “Have fun!” She always ended with those words and a smile. It improved the tips if people recognised a smiling face.
It went on like that for half an hour or so – Skinhead would let in a handful of punters at a time – the miniscule reception area got suffocatingly crowded very quickly otherwise – and Katie would pass them into the club. And then she heard voices in the main room roar as the game kicked off. No-one but a few stragglers would come in until the afternoon match. She was only working the build-up to that one.
“Yo, time to change.” Shimma came out of the club and waggled his fingers through Felicity or Felicia’s hatch. “Not expecting anyone in for a few. You can cover both.” It wasn’t a question or a request, but it wasn’t quite an order. Shimma was too confident to give orders – he just knew what each member of his staff could and couldn’t do. He just didn’t know when they were illegally working in a place where alcohol was served.
The police are hardly likely to come and arrest us both though, are they? Can’t even be bothered to investigate the fire this morning. That tugged at the edges of her mind. When her break rolled around, she wanted to check something out.
“Right, pencil and pad.” Shimma held up a finger like he was trying to hold onto a thought, and reached behind Katie to a tower of wooden drawers. Out of one of them, he plucked a HB pencil like she had learnt to write with in primary school and a thin pad of paper hooked into a board covered with black leather and branded SHIMMA in red on the bad. “Redesigning the brand. Red and black’s cliché. Needs a female touch.”
Felicity or Felicia glanced over at them. “I’ll do it!”
“No rush, girl.”
“Whenever. I used to study media and image and things. I know I can come up with something good.”
“Sure. You whip something up. We’ll talk.”
“Tables,” Katie reminded her boss, then leaned back through the hatch. “Subtle. Keep it looking sexy and sophisticated. It’s not the Wacky Warehouse.” She had spent many happy hours playing in the Wacky Warehouse when she was growing up – racing other kids to the slide, diving into the ball pit, climbing foam stairs to the plastic tunnel... But that was childhood, that was over. This was adulthood and it was right here and now.
“Drinks and sides get written down. There’s an electric board you can carry for proper food. Numbers on every table corner. It’s Sunday – flirt a little, they tip better,” he finished with a wink. It was like he knew that money was tight. “You’ll be fine.”
Katie wasn’t as certain. She had never had to take food orders from tables before, they normally had to queue at the bar to order, but she gulped down her fear and gripped her pad and pencil hard enough to snap. Then she straightened her clothes and headed out into the riot. It was clear to see the supporters of the two teams and the neutral observers stuck in the middle. There was still quite a bit of noise but it was all friendly which was a bonus. She grabbed the electronic order board from Mikey on the bar, and started to make her way around the tables. “Hi guys,” she greeted the first group she came to. There were two young mean and two bored-looking young women, presumably girlfriends. “Can i get you refills, snacks, your half time order?”
“Yeah, thanks.” One of the blokes waved to the selection of bottles and glasses on the table. “And burgers for half time. With onion rings.”
Katie pressed the right buttons on her board and peered at the labels on the bottles to get the order.
“Oh, foul! That’s right ref, pretend you didn’t see it. Wait, I’ll take these back,” he said, noting her strapped up wrist.
“You don’t have to.” She loaded everything onto a beery tray and worked for a better grip. Carrying full trays with only one hand wasn’t easy but she had devised a system of tucking everything else into the waistband of her jeans or the pocket of her top so she could keep one hand free for balance. “It’s my job.” But she let him, pressed the SEND ORDER to the kitchen and moved on.
Mademoiselle Romani had been right. There had been a lot of hands trying to touch – not outright groping but certainly lingering a little too long on casual touches, or ‘accidentally’ brushing against her when they jumped up to celebrate a goal. Nothing she could handle. And, if anyone did get a bit lairy, Skinhead would throw them out or have a word to calm it down. When the whistle blew for a fifteen minute break, Katie thought her feet were going to drop off, but there was no time to rest. The bell in the little kitchen was dinging furiously and she had to start taking the trays of food to the right tables. Each tray had a sheet of paper with a number written on it – the table it needed to go to. The first tray she picked up was for table 2. What was wrong with number 1 she wondered. More bell dings and Mikey and Shimma appeared from nowhere to help. She wouldn’t even get the trays out in a quarter of an hour let alone while the food was still hot.
In a flurry of motion, the plates were out and most people were eating. With everybody happy, Katie saw an opportunity to take a much needed break herself. “Going for my break,” she yelled across the bar and legged it upstairs to the break room before anyone could haul her back for more jobs.
The breakroom was a small room – maybe twice the size of her bedroom – with a few seats and a low table, a kitchen area with kettle, mini fridge and microwave, and a row of lockers for the staff. Katie was the only one who hadn’t decorated hers in some way. The smiley face stickers were inside her locker, she was planning to form a large K with the little metallic circles, but they hadn’t made it onto the outside yet. Well, now was as good a time as any. She got the stickers out and started peeling them off, using h
er other hand to flip through channels on the battered portable TV until she found a local news show.
“Some time early this morning, a fire broke out at a body art shop in downtown Northwood. The shop, Ink Exchange, is believed to be beyond repair.” Nothing about how the fire started or that there were people inside. The report didn’t even say that the police or fire brigade were investigating anything.
That’s because they’re not. It’s up to you now, girl.
The inner voice was not a comforting one.
“In the wake of this blaze...” There was an accompanying image of the tattoo shop – burnt out and cavernous – but the buildings on either side of it looked almost untouched. There were some dirty marks and a few slipped tiles – nothing that couldn’t be put right with a days’ hard work. The fire service must have contained the fire in a hurry so it didn’t… hold on. There hadn’t been any sirens approaching when Katie had fled the scene, nor was there any evidence of emergency intervention on the TV pictures – no vanishing vehicles, no water marks on the ground.
“Katie!” a voice bellowed up the stairs. She grabbed a sandwich from the fridge and had it halfway stuffed down her throat by the time she even got to the door. Thinking so much had distracted her too much – she now had precisely seven and a half minutes to feed herself. “Katie! Boy says he knows you.”
She squinted down at the dark-haired young man Skinhead was looking threatening next to. “Never seen him before in my life.”
“Right then. Out!” he ordered.
“But-“
“Pay and behave or move on, boy.”
Katie didn’t wait to here the rest of the protests. Skinhead had a way of winning arguments. She glanced at the ticking wall clock. Six and three quarter minutes. This was going to be the quickest lunch in the history of lunches.
Six minutes and counting.
The door creaked open and Shimma strode in. “Scrub boy’s back.”
“I know.”
“Wants to see you.”
“I know.”
“You want to see him?”
“Not really. Think I have to though.”
“Um-kay.” He stuck his head back out and fetched a dark-haired boy into the room. “Yo, boy toy. You’re in luck.”
Katie curled her legs under her on one of the chairs and concentrated on the rest of the lunch she had put in the fridge. Shimma turned the kettle on and emptied a packet of soup granules into a mug. It was clear that he had no intention of leaving the two of them alone in the room, probably mindful of the chaos the pair had (separately) caused on their first visit to the club, although he pretended not to be paying any attention. Leo sat down two seats away from her and dumped a handful of papers on the seat between them.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too, bitch.”
“Leo, this is my work, my job. This is where I leave personal shit at the door.”
“Yeah, good plan, now if you could just tell it to stop there.” And without even waiting for Katie to finish the bite she was eating, Leo stuck a colour photo under her nose so horrific it nearly made her gag. It was blocky and blown up to A4 size, cheaply printed on copier paper, but it was an unmistakably real image. Nobody would want to doctor something this disgusting. “Took it on my phone. This is what we found.”
No more explanation needed. The whiplashes that stripped half the skin from a back, that left clothes in pretty little ruins, and the blood – oh God, the blood – were recognisable. This was Mademoiselle Romani. It seemed worse, somehow, viewing the injuries with the distance of time and a camera lens. Worse because Katie was darkly attracted to this bodily devastation. And she was trying to be ashamed of it but the shame kept slipping through her fingers. Stop staring. Stop enjoying it.
Then another voice joined in. One she knew not to listen to but it was getting louder with each passing hour. Look. Remember. Lose yourself in blood and pain and glory and there’s no blame on you. You didn’t do it. You were just there. Just standing there. Watching and waiting, just reacting to things… getting a little old.
“And then I Photoshopped the blood out of this one. Notice anything?”
Katie took the other sheet he was holding out to her. It was the same shot only most of the blood had been erased from this scene, leaving slashes and curved cuts that drove deep into the flesh – much deeper than she had noticed – and they seemed deliberate and sadistic. “Other than these were made by a raving psychopath? No. Should I?”
“Think.”
Something about them seemed familiar but… “Nothing.” But the marks stirred up good feelings inside her – ones that made her stomach flip and her heart double in speed.
“Okay, we’ll come back to that.” Leo stole a couple of biscuits from the open packet on the table, then sat back with a frown. “The fire. Who knew you were going there this morning?”
“Nobody. Nobody but you three. And that was only because you were there.”
“You didn’t mention it to anyone else?”
“You mean Jack.” If Leo and Jack didn’t get over this casual mistrust soon… every time something went wrong, Leo would instantly jump on the other boy and ream him out. “He can’t be your scapegoat forever, Leo. You might not like him but he’s a good guy. And I’m sure the feeling’s mutual anyway. I mean, you’re not exactly Mr Healthy Attitude either.”
The criticism went right over his head. “You’re sure you didn’t tell him anything?”
“I didn’t even think about him.”
“Okay. I believe you. No way would he have let you go if he knew anyway.” He shrugged. Katie glanced at the clock again. The last 60 seconds of her break were ticking away. “Anyone else even know about that place – know that you were there yesterday.”
“Just Marcie. She met me down there but she wouldn’t… she would never…”
”Sure about that?”
If there was one thing Northwood did for its residents it was to teach them, very quickly and very definitely, that people were never just what they looked like. There was always something more. Something that tore apart everything you had thought you knew. “Sure as I can be. She’s got a kid. She’d never do anything to endanger him.”
“No-one else? No-one even in passing?” He shoved another print-out towards her. Just a drawn face. “The picture you wanted.”
“Henry?”
Leo sighed. This girl was hard work today. “No, it’s the Honey Monster.”
Katie resisted the urge to smack him and pickedup the old portrait. “I’m late for the rest of my shift. Two hours. Wait here,” Katie instructed him. It did not look as though Leo was planning to move in any case. Shimma left his mug in the sink and followed her down the narrow stairs.
“What were you whispering about? Sounded intense.”
“Trying to solve a murder.”
“Fair enough.”
The conversation ended as quickly as it had started.
The final hour and a half of her shift passed in a blur of drinks, snacks, voices and tips. She put half the tips in the jar that got shared out with their wages and the other half in the pocket of her top. This was more of a break than her actual break had been. It was too busy to stop and thinking of anything but the next mass of bodies coming her way. She kept one eye on her watch – it was one of the rules not to have clocks in the club – but Shimma had never said anything to her about watches. The minutes wound down and then Katie was handing her things off to Mikey. God, she was dreading going back to that break room.
“You’re still here.”
“Don’t sound so excited.” Leo was looking through a notebook he had brought. There was some writing on the first page but it was squashed and messy – illegible. “Thought of anything?”
She felt her mind race back to their earlier discussion and her mind filled with sick photographs of
Mademoiselle Romani. “It… I don’t want to say.”
He just stared at her with those crushing eyes, the blue of deep space.
“I like those pictures, okay! They make me feel sick to my stomach and I hate myself for feeling this way but they make me feel good.” She finished her confession in a whisper. It was the darkness trying to turn her whole soul black doing this. Had to be.
“What?”
“I told you. I can’t fight this dark thing any more. It’s stronger than me.”
Katie walked over to her locker and saw a green note stuck to it. The note just had the words USEIT written on it in block capitals. “Notes? I’m standing right here.” She ripped it off, checked the other side for any more words – none – then balled it up and threw it at his head.
“Wasn’t me.”
“Use it. Use it. Use what?”
“Okay, think on this, yeah. These marks are in precisely the same pattern as the scars on Jacks back.”
That was why they had looked familiar. She remembered how she had made Jack tremble and shiver when she had traced those scars with her lips a few weeks ago. The memory made Katie shiver herself. It had been the last time either of them had let themselves get lost in the joy of being together. They’d been hyped up on hormones and adrenalin. Since then, physical contact had been limited to the kind of hugs friends give each other and the odd night spent wrapped in each others arms – fully clothed so they didn’t get carried away. Not that their relationship was cooling down – if anything, they were getting more involved with each other, falling harder and harder in love, each time they met – they were just careful, trying to find ways to be close without putting anyone in danger.
You’re about to die. You’re really bothered about danger now?
Yes. She was.
She couldn’t quite explain why she was worried about the consequences of kissing Jack again but she was.
“Hey. Real world.” Leo snapped his fingers in front of her face to bring her out of her thoughts. He was suddenly standing right in front of Katie and she found herself fixing on those dark blue pools, wanting to get lost in them again.
Nothing happened.
Maybe it was because her ultravision had died out with the fire that morning. She knew instantly that her senses were the problem. No matter how hard she looked or listened, Katie could not pick up any energy trails from anything in this room. Last night, the colours and sounds of everything in the world had been crashing through her skull, assaulting her five senses and more that she had never even imagined, brought on once more by the sharp sting in her hand. And now, there was no vision of colours. The room was simply furniture and carpet and windows – nothing more, nothing less. Nothing worked the way Katie wanted it to. There was a blur. Katie smacked her aching wrist into one of the lockers almost hard enough to dent, hoping that the blast of white-hot agony would shock the ultravision back into place.
Nothing happened.
There was a bone-shattering jolt of pain that brought tears to her eyes and set her teeth on edge. Nothing more. As she tried it hopelessly again and again, knowing she was doing little more than heightening the risk of a re-break, and swallowing back screams that escaped as breathless sobs of absolute anguish, Katie thought of a little boy. Cold and dirty and trapped in a bubble. This pain was worth it if she could get back to him.
Leo caught hold of her wrist just above the strapping. “Stop this, you idiot! You’re just hurting yourself.”
“Me?” Incredible. “Take a look at yourself.”
She tried to pull away from him but Leo kept scrambling for a better grip and somehow he finished up with his lips on hers. And Katie wasn’t trying to get away. This was the moment he had been trying to convince himself he didn’t want but now it was here Leo didn’t want it to end.
Christ, this shouldn’t be happening.
The reasons Katie wasn’t trying to escape from this embrace were two-fold.
First, she hadn’t had such pure and raw passion next to her skin in a long time. Not like this. Since she and Jack had kissed when they were caught in the End Place (where normal rules didn’t apply) and they had set the world alight, a kiss was all Katie had been craving. Every inch of her cried out with need. A warm body, flesh and blood, and for now it was hers. She had to hold on to this moment, make it last, because there was no way of knowing when it might happen again. Katie let Leo press her up against the lockers and surrendered to him.
The second reason was that she had found herself dragged straight through a path of golden lightning strikes and swirls of rainbow colours, until she could see a boy trapped inside a transparent ball. As thin as glass but utterly unbreakable. She reached a hand out to him and an invisible hand towed her through more colours and vapour streams she guessed were memories and regrets. And then she was stood outside the bubble, watching a young boy toss and turn in his fitful sleep. She sank to her knees and watched for a few minutes more. Everything around her seemed to freeze in place, looking in that direction. It felt like the world was holding its breath. I wonder what for. Katie laid a hand on the cool surface of the ball and the boy awoke at the same moment.
“Hi.”
“You came back,” the little boy – she realised, all a once, that the boy was the child Leo had once been, or at least his own image of that child – said with something like awe in his voice.
“I promised I would.”
“He promised to come back too. He said that he would let me out one day, that I could play again.”
“But he didn’t.”
Little Leo shook his head violently, his dark curls flying all around his head. “I wasn’t bad. Least, I never meant to be. But he wouldn’t listen.”
“Are you talking about Leo?” A nod. “And you’re Leo too?” Another nod. “Do you remember why he shut you away? Did something happen?”
He put a finger to his lips. “Sssh!”
Doesn’t want to talk about it. Or can’t. Katie thought fast. She wanted to keep the conversation going with little Leo. He needed a friend – his tiny face had lit up when he had seen her on waking. “It must be boring for you. No toys to play with or books to read. Not even some pens to draw with.”
“Sometimes. But you’re here now and you’re my friend. Aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.”
“I get lonely sometimes. I never ask for games and things though.”
“Why not?”
“I used to. Just at first. When Leo used to look like me. But then he went to that big cross place and took away all the fun.”
“No, he never laughs either. Not properly,” Katie said, quietly and to herself.
“Why did you come here? Are you going to take me away?” Far from being excited at the prospect, Leo looked terrified and pressed himself tightly to the wall of his bubble. There was a word for this… Institutionalised. This transparent prison was the only home he had known for many years – anything that might lie beyond it was unknown and threatening.
“I have to do some things first to make it safe. One day, I’ll come back for you. That’s a promise, Leo.”
He nodded, crumpling back into the curled up position he had been sleeping in. “I’m tired now. You woke me up.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean to.”
“S’okay,” he mumbled, a thumb working its’ way up to his mouth. The habit made him look even younger. “Nice to have a friend. No-one else likes me.”
“I’m sure they do.”
“No. I don’t always like me either. The big me.”
“Does he like you?”
“I told you, no! He blames me for the bad thing. Should have been there, should have been better, should have tried harder. But I didn’t and now I don’t deserve good things. I said sorry! I said sorry!”
“Sorry for what, Leo? Sorry for what?”
“Sssh.”
&n
bsp; His dark blue eyes fluttered closed and his breathing deepened, evened out. It was almost painful not to be able to put her hand out and touch the boy, just to comfort a sleeping child who probably never known a human touch in the seven or eight years that divided the young and old versions of Leo. Katie settled for putting her hand on the bubble as close to his curly mop as possible. He didn’t wake up.
What could she do to help this boy? You’re already doing something. Katie glanced down and saw little Leo sleeping peacefully beneath her hands. it was a small improvement from the restless slumber he had been trapped within just minutes earlier. A change that might not mean anything but it was progress and it was enough. The half-life was better for the kid, even if it was only the banishment of nightmares.
At the word, something black and evil uncoiled inside Katie – she felt it move and wanted to be sick – it was there all along, watching, waiting, now it’s going to take me away – and she clenched her fists. If she slowed her own breathing, calmed every- too late. The darkness was trying to fight its way out through her abdomen.
Let’s go see where my handiwork ended up?
It was not her own voice. This one was broken glass and fingernails on blackboards. It was agony and ecstasy and everything in between. It was horrible. And Katie silently begged it to continue speaking. But this voice – this not-hers voice only laughed-
Shattered rainbows
and propelled her past colours and lightning strikes. Purity in visible form.
Beauty.
In the next instant, Katie came to her senses as a slippery, purple black leech grew another inch and settled back into a contented slumber, sated and happy to know its host was in turmoil and the world would be burning when it emerged, fully grown and truly evil. She found herself staring into a dying galaxy. Leo. His fingers were caressing the exposed skin between her work tee and her jeans. And the warm touch of a man’s hands on her bare skin was so good it made her shiver.
He mistook this tremor for a shudder and tried to move away.
She knew what he was thinking, pulled him close and breathed a “no” against his lips. The closeness of another human couldn’t be ripped away so quickly – she couldn’t stand that. After the passionate but oddly cool moments she had spent being close to a Shade, the heat of another human body was exactly what she needed.
But that body was Leo.
Leo!
Alarm bells rang from the roots of her hairs to the tips of her aching toes. She pushed him away, grateful he didn’t put up a fight and refused to look him in his dying blue eyes. What would happen if she did that, what would happen if she let herself get sucked back into them? Nothing good, that was for sure.
Nothing Katie wanted.
Nothing Katie should want.
She rescued her bag and jacket from her locker and escaped from the room, face burning. In one morning her problems had gone from small but significant to life-changing and enormous. And, as she raced for home, they were right behind her and gaining ground.
Chapter nine
Unfinished Business (The Shades of Northwood 3) Page 9