He handed one end to me and the other to CJ, and looked expectantly at us.
“Who are the High Sidhe?” I asked.
“Bingo!” Dad actually clapped, but I got no more answers.
With the scarf in our hands, we could speak freely even without touching. I tied one end around my wrist, and CJ did the same. It beat holding hands all day.
Mum’s car came into the garage, and soon Mum appeared, looking flustered. “Did you know there’s a TV van parked outside?”
“Really?” CJ ran to peek out the front window, so I had to go, too. A bored-looking guy lounged against the side of the van, but he straightened when he saw us at the window and gestured to his companion, who pointed a camera our way.
“Come away.” I grabbed a handful of silk and yanked. I did not want to be the light relief story on the news tonight, squeezed in after all the wars and politics, just before the weather, where they usually had the story about the performing dog or the crazy small-town fundraising idea. The human interest story, where the newsreader was finally allowed to crack a smile after pulling their serious newsreader face for half an hour. I wasn’t a performing seal, and the attention I’d already drawn at school was more than enough to convince me that a life in the limelight was definitely not for me.
Mum came in and closed the blinds. “Let’s not encourage them. Come and have some lunch.”
We sat at the kitchen table, watching her make sandwiches. I tried a few questions, but she was just as tight-lipped as Dad. Being given the brush-off by both of them didn’t improve my mood any.
“I saw Dorian at the office,” she told Dad over lunch. “He thought we should bring the girls in.”
“For testing?” He spoke round a mouthful of sandwich, but for once Mum didn’t tell him off. “Don’t need to. I’ve got everything here.”
“I think he was more concerned about publicity. He felt it might be better to go into hiding for a while.”
That sounded promising. Maybe we’d finally find out what the hell was going on.
CJ’s ears pricked up too, though not for the same reason. She had other priorities. “For how long? It’s the Year 12 formal on Friday night. We can’t miss that.”
“I told him we’d think about it,” Mum said. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we can still get you to the formal.”
“Who’s this Dorian guy anyway? Is he your boss?”
“No. We don’t actually have a boss. He’s a warder, like us.” She took a deep breath, as if handing out a few crumbs of information was some big scary deal. “There are seven of us, and we all have an equal say in the affairs of the Council.”
“Only seven of you?” I pushed for more. Crumbs weren’t going to be enough to satisfy my appetite. Not when their secret magic crap was screwing up my life. “No wonder we have to keep moving so often.”
“Oh, there’s lots more people in the organisation. I think we have a couple of hundred now. But only the seven warders—it’s a hereditary position. We’re the descendants of the original seven who trapped the Sidhe.”
“Why’s it hereditary?” CJ asked.
“And how come you and Dad are both warders then?”
“The original seven were the greatest mages of their time—possibly of all time, which is why they succeeded where others had failed,” Dad said. “Since magic is passed down in family lines, it only made sense to ensure that the subsequent warders were from those same families, to keep the power strong.”
Mum had an odd look on her face, but I was too focused on what Dad was saying to pay her much attention.
“You mean you can do magic?” CJ looked openly sceptical.
It was hard not to be. Dad was great with gadgets, but he could barely boil an egg, or put together an outfit on his own that didn’t make your eyeballs bleed. The idea that he might be a powerful mage was kind of hard to swallow.
“No.” Well, that was a relief. At least I wouldn’t have to rethink my whole worldview. “The great irony of it was that, in locking the Sidhe away from the human world to protect it from their magic, the Founders also locked their own powers away.”
“How did they do that?” My brain was racing, trying to keep up with all this new information.
“They drained all the aether from the world, sucking it into the Sidhe realms, and created a force to hold it there. Magic can’t be worked without aether. In a nutshell, the magic’s all in Fairyland, and we’re out here. We can’t get in, and they can’t get out, and no one on the outside can work magic any more.”
“But now something’s leaking out, right?”
“Right.” He looked troubled. “Well, I won’t find any answers sitting here. Best get back to work.”
Mum and Dad disappeared into the study, and I tried to focus on the Ancient History essay I had due on Friday, to take my mind off all the crap that was going on. It was a pretty half-hearted effort, though. I mean, it’s not every day you find out that magic is real and your own parents seem to know all about it. Crazy stuff. But in between my visions of mages and fairies, a certain dark-eyed boy kept popping up. How could I ever face Zac again? What if Dad couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of these stupid frogs?
CJ didn’t seem too fussed. She spent most of the afternoon texting back and forth with someone on her phone, but I ignored all my incoming messages, and ended up turning my phone off. Most of them were from Sona, and what could I say to her? Yeah, apparently I have a magic curse, but it’s okay, my parents run Alcatraz for fairies, and they’re working on a way to fix it. The only thing I was sure of was that Sona’s reaction would be loud.
Mum’s phone rang just after three, and then Dad’s, and there was a hurried discussion before Mum appeared, car keys in hand again.
“I’ve got to dash back to the office,” she said. “Another crisis.”
“To do with us?”
“No, no. I’m sure it’s nothing. Some crazy readings on the activity monitor. I’ll probably get there and find it’s just a malfunction. Everyone’s just a bit jumpy lately, so I have to go in and soothe a few people.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s a lot of that in this job.”
Wondering what the hell she was talking about sure made it hard to focus on Ancient Greek politics.
“Apparently Dad’s descended from someone called Maeve the Red,” CJ said, when Mum had been gone a while.
“Really? Sounds like a pirate.”
“Yeah, he was telling me when you were in the bathroom. The greatest witch in Ireland, according to him.”
“Our great-great-whatever-grandmother was a witch?”
“Well, he might have said ‘mage’, but whatever. Same thing. Bet they called her a witch in those days.”
“What about Mum? Who’s her famous great-great?”
“Edmund Anderson.” She paused. “Or maybe it was Andrew Edmunsen. Whatever. He was English.”
“Hmm. Not as cool as being Maeve the Red.”
CJ shrugged. “It probably just meant she had red hair.”
Like me. Bet she had the glow-in-the-dark skin too.
“I guess. Who are you texting?”
She tilted the phone away from me. “No one.”
That was just an invitation for me to pry but, luckily for her, the doorbell rang. She shoved the phone in her pocket. “Come on.”
I hung back. “What if it’s someone from the press?”
She leered at me. “What if it’s the man of your dreams?”
“I don’t think Hollywood actors do house calls.”
She flung the door open, and for a moment I was too blinded by flashes going off to see who stood there. The one van from the morning had turned into five or six, plus assorted photographers who’d arrived in cars. The street was as parked out as Josh’s place had been on Saturday night.
“Girls, over here!”
“Violet, say something!”
“CJ, are those diamonds real? What are you going to do with all the money?”
“Vio
let, what’s it like having frogs come out of your mouth?”
We fell back, open-mouthed, as the whole pack surged up the driveway. Zac stood on the doorstep with shoulders hunched like someone who’d been sent to the principal’s office. I was so surprised to see him I just froze, but CJ grabbed his arm and hauled him inside, slamming the door on the crowd.
We were going to look pretty stupid in some of those photos, like two fish gasping for air on the doorstep. Even CJ looked shaken.
“There’s so many of them,” she said.
We huddled by the front door, staring at each other in shock.
“You guys are big news,” Zac said. “Have you been on the internet today? That video of you in class yesterday has gone viral. I heard it was on the news, too. People are wondering if it’s connected to that thing with the girl in the glass coffin.”
“But how’d they find out where we live?”
“All they had to do was turn up at school. Half a dozen reporters were hanging around this morning until the teachers chased them off. But they found plenty of kids happy to talk.”
“And what are you doing here?” CJ asked, with unusual bluntness. She bristled like a dog standing guard, as if she suspected Zac of trying to cash in on our fame by turning up here and digging for goss. I pressed against her side, hoping Zac wouldn’t notice the silk scarf that tied our wrists together. I didn’t want him thinking we were into some weird kind of bondage.
He flushed at the sharpness in her tone. “I came to return Vi’s calculator.”
I’d forgotten all about lending him my calculator. “You didn’t have to do that. You could have given it to me at school.”
“I was kind of worried about you.” He grinned, and the dimple peeped out. “And so was Sona.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t come herself.” He was worried? That was so sweet.
“Oh, she wanted to, believe me, but she has tutoring on Tuesday afternoons. She said she’d sent you a million texts but you hadn’t replied to any of them and she was starting to worry.” He gave me a quizzical look. “I guess you got over the laryngitis?”
Heat flooded my cheeks. He may as well have said So, you were lying about having laryngitis, huh?
“Yeah. Just in time for the holidays.”
“Oh, and speaking of holidays: don’t worry about that essay for Ancient History for Friday. We’ve got all holidays to do it now.”
“How come?”
“Mr Chadwick fell down the stairs yesterday afternoon and broke his leg. We’ve got this new teacher, Miss Moore, for a few weeks. She said we can hand it in next term.”
“Cool. Guess she didn’t feel like doing any marking in the holidays.”
“Guess not.”
Dad cleared his throat behind us.
“I heard the doorbell …” He frowned at Zac. “Who’s this?”
“My friend, Zac. He dropped in on the way home from school to return my calculator.” Maybe more than a friend. He’d said he was worried about me. The thought warmed me, but it made it kind of hard to look at him. Plus I was still blushing. Stupid pale skin. “Zac, this is my Dad.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr Reilly.”
“Pleased to meet you, too.” He didn’t look pleased, though. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. We’re in the middle of something rather important.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” God, this was awkward. Zac looked back at me. “Will you be at school tomorrow?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Okay.” He hesitated, as if he would have liked to have stayed longer, but Dad stood there, all stern and impatient. “Well, see you round.”
He slipped outside and disappeared into a roar of shouted questions and an explosion of flashes.
CHAPTER NINE
“What the hell is that racket?” Grumpy as a bear waking up from hibernation, Dad glared at the front door as if he was holding it personally to blame.
“It’s the press. They’re still camped outside.”
“The press?” He strode into the lounge room and peeked through the slats of the venetians. “Bloody hell!”
He wasn’t always the world’s best listener. It was quite possible he’d been so caught up in whatever he was doing that he hadn’t even heard Mum mention the first TV van. Even if he had, he’d probably dismissed it as something Mum would deal with, and not given it another thought.
“Bloody hell,” he said again. “Have you seen how many of them are out there? It’s a circus. We can’t have this kind of attention! Where’s your mother?”
“She went into the office, remember? Something about a malfunction.”
He looked at his watch. “That was an hour ago. Okay, let me make a phone call. Get your shoes on, girls, we’re going out.”
“Where to?” CJ asked, but he headed back to the study without answering. “I can’t go yet, I haven’t done my makeup!”
“Better hurry, then,” I said.
She dashed upstairs, but as it turned out, she needn’t have rushed. Dad didn’t reappear for another half-hour.
“Ready?” he asked, as if we’d been keeping him waiting, instead of the other way around. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as we got into the car.
“To the office.” He paused with his finger on the button to open the garage door. “Better keep your heads down.”
I slumped down in my seat, feeling like a criminal on the way to trial, as he backed the car out. At the bottom of the driveway the media swarmed the car, thrusting cameras and microphones our way. So many shouting faces! I shrank back in alarm as they buffeted the car. Dad continued to reverse slowly, so they had to get out of the way or be run over.
The whole pack of them spilled onto the street, still shouting, but some of them broke away, heading for their vehicles. Dad roared up the street, and three vans pulled out straight away, determined to give chase. I looked back and saw car doors slamming as others prepared to follow.
“How are we going to shake them off?” I asked.
Dad actually grinned. “Watch this.”
He took a fast right at the end of the street. Behind us, two big black cars pulled smoothly away from the gutter where they’d been waiting and parked end to end across the intersection, blocking the end of our street. The row of vans pulled up, unable to follow us. The driver of the first van leaned on his horn and yelled out his window, but the black cars didn’t budge. The glass of their windows was tinted so dark I couldn’t see who was in them.
“Friends of yours?”
“Just a couple of boys from the office.”
“Won’t they get into trouble? What if those idiots take their registration numbers and report them?”
“I don’t think the police would be all that sympathetic in the circumstances. Don’t worry about it, honey.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “Haven’t you got plenty of better things to worry about?”
True enough. I sat back and watched the world go past. It occurred to me I didn’t actually know where Mum and Dad’s office was—not that it would have meant anything to me if they’d told me. We hadn’t been in Sydney long enough for me to know my way around.
We swept up the huge hump of a multi-lane bridge, and off to the left I saw the city laid out, pretty as a postcard. The waterways snaking towards the distant Harbour Bridge shone a vivid blue in the sunshine and the buildings stood tall and shining. The strange top-heavy silhouette of Centrepoint Tower was the only one I recognised.
Closer in, the city lost its sunny sparkle. Down on street level there was the usual grime and graffiti you find in every big city, and the roads were choked with traffic. In amongst them, the height of the buildings wasn’t such a great thing. They leaned over the narrow roads, blocking the sun and creating shadowy canyons.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we stopped at yet another set of lights to let crowds of pedestrians stream across the road. Now some of the skyscrapers had been replaced b
y smaller, older buildings. Most of them glowed a honey gold in the sunshine, and some had intricate scrollwork and other decorations carved into the stone.
Dad noticed me looking. “A lot of the older buildings in Sydney are made from the local sandstone. Headquarters is in a part of the city called The Rocks. Very old, full of lots of historic buildings.”
Up ahead a huge sandstone arch soared over the road, and I realised that the Harbour Bridge loomed to one side.
“That’s the Argyle Cut,” Dad said, indicating the archway. “It’s so old part of the work on it was done by convicts. The harbour’s just over there.”
We turned off after the Cut, running through narrow streets barely wide enough for two cars to pass, lined with rows of tiny narrow houses on either side. Suddenly the view opened up and there was the harbour, laid out in a spectacular vista. Ferries criss-crossed the blue water, churning up a white wake behind them.
“Wow,” said CJ. “I didn’t realise Sydney Harbour was that big. Where’s the Opera House?”
“Over there,” Dad said. “You can’t see it from here. Our building’s down this way.”
We turned away from the view and took another narrow street, then turned abruptly down a driveway to an underground carpark. I’d barely had time to notice the building itself. I had a brief impression of dark bricks and arched windows, maybe two storeys tall, and then we were pulling into an empty spot in a rather cramped garage.
Mum’s car was right in front of the lift.
“Which floor?” I asked when we stepped in, my finger hovering over the buttons. There were only four to choose from: P, B, G and 1. Not a very big place, then.
“Ground,” Dad said.
Up we went, the lift making a rather unnerving clanking as we started off. Hopefully it wasn’t as old as the building appeared to be. But when the lift doors opened, I discovered that, however old the exterior looked, the inside was reassuringly modern. A large reception desk made of a polished red wood faced us, and thick, expensive-looking carpet muffled our footsteps as we approached. The place smelled faintly of paint, as if they’d redecorated recently.
The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) Page 8