Shadows

by Paula Weston

  ‘It’s a long, complicated story—’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘—and we don’t have time right now. Not if you want to talk to Goldilocks. And I for one want to hear what he’s got to say. It’s way past time I was in the loop.’

  I rest my forehead on his chest and breathe in sandalwood and sweat.

  I want to know what happened between Rafa and me in the past—there has to be more than what everyone’s told me. But—

  ‘Yeah, we need to go.’

  His hand comes around to rest on my hip again, and then he pulls away and we’re no longer touching. ‘So, what’s his story?’

  I sigh. ‘You’re not going to like it.’

  NOTHING STAYS BURIED

  I tell Rafa everything Jason told me earlier tonight, sitting cross-legged on the bed—shirt back on and jeans close by. Rafa is leaning against the wall. He is quiet the whole time I’m talking. There’s no interjection or sarcastic commentary. He just listens, occasionally looking away and grinding his jaw. I wait for him to call Jason a liar, or threaten to tear him apart. But when I’m finished, he stares past me.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I ask at last.

  Rafa doesn’t look at me. ‘I’m going for a shower.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  He hunts around in a duffel bag on the floor and grabs a clean pair of jeans. ‘Just give me a minute.’ He goes to the bathroom.

  And then I get it: this is a big deal for Rafa. For me, it was the latest in a long line of bombshells, but for him it’s huge.

  The shower starts up across the hall and I briefly wonder how well his resolve would hold if I walked in there now. But I’d never have the guts to do something like that. I put my jeans on.

  He comes back into the room in a cloud of steam and apple shampoo, wearing only his jeans. He’s rubbing his head with a towel, and when he stops his hair sticks up.

  ‘I’ve got a question or two for that little fucker.’ Rafa tosses the towel over the chair beside the bed.

  My whole body relaxes. I much prefer Rafa being cocky or even childish: the pensive, silent version is too hard to read. He finishes getting dressed. ‘Ready?’

  I put my arm around him, ready for a quick shift, but he stands there for a moment, holding me. Two blocks away, the surf rolls in, and a car horn sounds somewhere on the esplanade. I feel every place his skin touches mine. He pulls me closer. And then we make the shift to the bungalow.

  We turn up in the kitchen—no polite hallway arrivals for Rafa. My eyes are still shut, so I hear Jason’s startled reaction: a cupboard thumping, and swearing.

  ‘Goldilocks,’ Rafa says.

  I wait a second for my body to settle, nodding my appreciation to Jason that he’s come back. He’s probably about to regret it. Jason is in fresh clothes, his hair in damp curls. The kettle is rumbling on the bench and he’s holding a mug in one hand and a box of tea in the other.

  ‘You want one?’ he asks me.

  Delaying this conversation is only going to make Rafa worse, so I blurt, ‘I’ve told him everything.’

  Jason takes a step back. ‘Look, I realise you’re probably angry—’

  ‘Why would I be angry?’ Rafa strolls over to the bench and runs his fingers over the handles sticking out of the knife block. ‘Just because I’ve been lied to my whole life, my best friend didn’t trust me, and you’ve played me for an idiot from the beginning—’

  ‘I haven’t played anyone,’ Jason says, his voice tight. ‘I didn’t know if I could trust you. I still don’t.’

  Rafa pulls out one of the carving knives and checks the line of the blade. ‘Let’s say you’re not completely full of shit. Let’s say your mother didn’t die, her cousin was Jude and Gabe’s mother, and they found you. And let’s say you’ve been hiding out all these years to avoid Nathaniel and the Sanctuary. Why have you crawled out of your hole now? What’s your game?’

  ‘I don’t have a game—’

  ‘Bullshit. Everyone’s got a plan for the Fallen. What’s yours? Hand them over to the Garrison or join them?’

  Jason slams the mug down on the bench. ‘Why does it have to be one or the other? We don’t even know what happened to them. Shouldn’t we find that out first?’

  ‘You want a counselling session, Goldilocks? You want to sit on a couch and hold hands with your deadbeat dad and ask him why he abandoned you?’

  ‘I want the truth,’ Jason says. ‘And I’d think you’d be a little interested in that yourself.’

  Rafa puts the knife down. ‘So, what, you’ve been looking for them all this time?’

  ‘No, I’ve been learning everything I can about angels and demons, trying to understand what I am. I’ve read thousands of books, studied theology, visited dozens of sacred sites and talked to just about every angel-obsessed expert—’

  ‘But you never went to Nathaniel.’

  ‘If he’s got all the answers, why did Jude and the rest of you leave the Sanctuary?’

  I think about all those books in Jude’s room on Patmos. My brother’s been searching for the same thing as Jason.

  ‘For the minute,’ I say, to stop their bickering, ‘I’m more interested in the last time you saw me and Jude.’

  Jason pulls a teabag out of the box and takes a deep breath. ‘I’ll get to that, there are just a few things I need to tell you first so it’ll make sense.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the real reason my mother panicked and wanted to leave Italy after you and Jude found us.’ He puts the bag in his cup and pours boiling water over it. ‘She fell pregnant again.’

  I frown. ‘Who was the father?’

  ‘Lucca, a fisherman from our village. He’d been in love with my mother for years. Always offering to make her respectable but she kept turning him down. That didn’t stop her sleeping with him, though.’ He gives a quick, tight smile. ‘But Lucca was good to me, even though he knew I wasn’t what you’d call normal. Anyway, when Mamma was carrying Arianna, she knew she was different too.’

  ‘Different how?’ Rafa asks.

  ‘She said she could feel it.’ Jason turns to me. ‘And she fretted you or Jude would visit and see she was pregnant, and let something slip in front of Nathaniel. I mean, we knew Arianna wasn’t going to be like me because Lucca was her father, but we shared the same womb. My mother thought there was a chance she’d still be special in some way and Nathaniel might come for her—and me. Lucca had family in New York, so Nonno sold our home and that’s where we went.’

  ‘And was she special?’ I ask.

  ‘On her third birthday, she told us there were devils in the apartment across the street. A week later it burned down. Arianna knew what I was before I ever tried to explain it to her. She had visions, premonitions—whatever you want to call them—about angels and demons, until she hit puberty. Then they stopped.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘We thought it was over. But years later she got married and had a daughter, Alessa, and she had the same gift.’

  Rafa jams the knife back into the block. ‘What the hell does any of this have to do with why you’re here?’

  ‘I’m getting there. In every generation of Arianna’s descendents, the first-born daughter has had some form of the gift as a child. Some saw things before they happened, others dreamed about battles between angels and demons. I kept track of new births and when that first daughter arrived, I’d visit the family after a few years, introducing myself as a distant cousin. But every one of those girls already knew who I was as soon as they saw me—’

  ‘So what!’ Rafa’s eyes flash. ‘Get to the point.’

  Jason squeezes his teabag and puts it in the sink. ‘The point is that the latest girl in Arianna’s line doesn’t have visions about angels and demons: she sees the offspring of the Fallen. She doesn’t just know about me. She knows about every single one of us. Sees things that relate to us.’ He looks back at me. ‘It’s the reason I made contact with you
and Jude after all these years.’

  ‘When?’ I ask, already knowing the answer.

  ‘A year ago.’

  NO GOING BACK FROM HERE

  ‘You know what happened to them?’ Rafa’s voice is low, frightening. ‘You’ve known all this time?’

  Jason backs away, his hands out in front of him. ‘No—’

  Rafa shifts and materialises a millisecond later. His hand is around Jason’s throat and he slams him into the fridge. It rocks back with the force.

  I grab Rafa by the arm. ‘Let him finish!’

  ‘I told you not to trust him.’

  ‘Just let him finish. Rafa, please.’

  He lets go.

  Jason doubles over when his feet hit the floor. He coughs and rubs his throat. He shoots Rafa a filthy look, grabs his tea, and pulls up a chair at the table.

  ‘The girl, Daniela, had a vision about you and Jude,’ Jason says to me. ‘She wanted to tell you about it—warn you.’

  Rafa prowls back and forth behind him, all fury and menace. ‘What was the vision?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me, but it must have had something to do with the Fallen. There’s no other reason she’d risk making contact with you.’

  ‘So you went running to Gabe.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I had no intention of doing anything about it. Too dangerous.’

  ‘For who, you? You are such a spineless—’

  ‘For Dani. She’s eleven.’ Jason scratches at a chip on his cup. ‘Like I was trying to explain, she has a link to us.’

  Rafa stops behind Jason’s chair. ‘She what?’

  ‘She meditates and can see where we are, where any of us are.’

  ‘Do you know what Zarael would do if he could get his hands on her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jason says slowly. ‘That’s why I wasn’t going to let anyone anywhere near her.’

  ‘What changed?’ I ask.

  ‘She wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’ve never seen her so wound up. She kept on and on at me to get you and Jude, and I kept saying no—and then she showed me a number she found online for the monastery in Italy and threatened to call and ask for you…There was no way I was going to the Sanctuary, so I got her to track Jude instead.’

  ‘And you went to him.’

  He nods. ‘I’m the reason you started talking again.’

  I blink and lean against the bench. The kitchen walls contract towards me.

  Rafa pulls up a chair beside Jason. ‘Then what?’

  ‘I took Gabe and Jude to see Dani. They stayed with us for a few days—’

  ‘The kid lives with you?’

  ‘No, with her mother, Maria. She was the first-born girl of her generation, so she already knew all about me, and the Fallen. She wasn’t keen on you two coming into her home, but Dani convinced her it would be all right. And then’—he snaps his fingers—’the three of you disappeared.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘One morning. Maria went ballistic. She turned the place upside down, screaming abuse at me until she found a note Dani stuck on the milk in the fridge. It said she was with you and Jude, and not to worry.’ He gives a short, humourless laugh. ‘Try telling that to a single mother whose only child has gone missing with a couple of half-angel bastards.’ He tugs on his earlobe. ‘Fifteen hours. That’s how long I spent shifting all over the world. I had no idea where I was going or what I was looking for, but I couldn’t just sit there.’ He blows on his tea and takes a sip. ‘And then Maria went into Dani’s room for about the hundredth time and found her asleep in her bed.’

  Jason pauses.

  I know what’s coming next.

  ‘We didn’t come back with her, did we?’

  ‘No. And Dani couldn’t remember where you went or what happened. She couldn’t even remember the vision that started it all. That freaked her out. When she finally calmed down, she was able to meditate and look for you.’

  ‘And?’ I glance at Rafa. He’s very still now.

  ‘She couldn’t find you. It was like you didn’t exist anymore. The only thing that made sense was that you were both dead.’

  Rafa stands up abruptly and Jason flinches, but he’s only going to the fridge. He digs out two bottles of water, and hands one to me. It’s cool against my palm.

  ‘But Gabe wasn’t dead, so how come this girl couldn’t sense her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The light above me is too bright. The floor is unsteady under my feet. I sit down.

  ‘You didn’t see my short story online, did you?’

  Jason turns his mug around on the table.

  ‘Two days after you disappeared, Maria and Dani left town. She rang me a day later and said she had to keep Dani safe. She wouldn’t tell me where they were, but said they’d stay in touch. I didn’t hear from them again until a week ago. Dani had a vision of Rephaim coming here, to Pan Beach.’ He turns to Rafa. ‘She saw you watching someone in a forest. She had the same vision three times before she realised the woman was Gabe. It threw her because she still couldn’t sense Gabe. She worked out the only reason she could see her at all was because you were here, looking at her.’

  Rafa grabs Jason’s cup to stop it moving. ‘So Jude could be alive somewhere, but someone’s hiding him, and your kid can’t see him because he’s not with other Rephaim?’

  Jason nods. ‘It’s a possibility.’

  I need air. I get up and open the window over the sink, letting the night breeze wash over me.

  ‘So, you’re here out of guilt?’ I ask Jason, not turning around.

  He doesn’t answer straightaway. I’m about to check he’s still in the kitchen when he says, ‘I wanted to make sure Dani was right and you were alive. And when I saw you walk out of that library…let’s just say my reaction was a little emotional.’ He keeps going, even with my back to him. ‘But I didn’t know if you blamed me for whatever happened, so I kept my distance for a few days. The first time I walked by you in the street I was ready for you to drag me into an alley and break a few bones, but you had no idea who I was. It wasn’t until Rafa turned up at the bar that I worked out you had no idea who you were either.’

  I stare out at the endless night sky. ‘Why did you stay?’

  ‘How could I leave? We were friends, Gaby. You and Jude had every reason to turn your back on Dani and me a year ago. You didn’t. And you didn’t tell anyone else about us. So of course I stayed. I wanted to know what happened to you—’

  ‘And if you found the Fallen,’ Rafa says.

  A sigh. ‘And that. Obviously.’

  I turn around. ‘So what now?’

  ‘We need to find Dani and Maria.’

  ‘What’s the point?’ Rafa says. ‘The kid can’t see where Jude is.’

  ‘But maybe being near Gaby will make a difference—help her see Jude, or even remember what happened.’

  ‘You haven’t found them in a year,’ Rafa says. ‘What makes you think we can? We start with the nurse in Melbourne.’

  Jason looks to me. ‘What nurse?’

  ‘The one who told me I’d missed Jude’s funeral.’

  He purses his lips and nods.

  ‘But,’ I say, ‘we’ve got other things to sort out too. We have to keep Mags safe. If we disappear, she’ll be the first person Nathaniel’s crew grabs—or Simon.’

  A motorbike stops in front of our house. A few seconds later, it revs, then roars off. The front door opens and shuts, and then Maggie walks into the kitchen, shoulders straight and face composed. She doesn’t acknowledge Jason.

  ‘He okay?’ I gesture to the street.

  ‘Sort of.’

  I tilt my head towards my room. ‘Got a minute?’

  Maggie’s gaze skims across Jason and Rafa. ‘Of course.’

  I point at Jason, and then the couch. ‘You can sleep there.’

  ‘I’m paying for a perfectly good bed on the esplanade,’ he says, watching Maggie walk down the hallway.

  He’s not go
ing anywhere.

  ‘What about you?’ I ask Rafa.

  He gives me a slow smile. ‘We’ll work something out.’

  Does he think he’s sleeping in my bed? How’s that going to work? Heat spreads across my chest.

  ‘Any chance you could organise something to eat in the meantime?’

  His smile falters. ‘Do I look like hired help?’

  Jason sighs and stands up. ‘We’ll get it sorted. You two go talk.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Goldilocks.’

  They’re still bickering when I close my bedroom door. Maggie is perched on the bed. I open the window and smell the jasmine. I don’t crowd her when I join her.

  ‘Remember when the weirdest thing about me was that story?’

  She manages a tiny laugh. ‘Yeah…’ The smile fades. ‘Does this still hurt?’ She gently touches my bruised cheek.

  ‘A little.’

  She pushes my hair aside to look at the bite on my shoulder. ‘Oh, Gaby.’

  ‘It’s not so bad now,’ I say. ‘What about you? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She sits back on the bed and crosses her legs.

  I give her a dubious look.

  ‘When I realised they weren’t going to hurt me, I was more worried about you. I can’t believe you went with Daniel to Italy.’

  I pull my boots off. ‘Yeah, well.’

  ‘You want to talk about it?’

  I don’t, but it’s what I promised her.

  I prop myself up with two pillows and tell her everything.

  ‘Oh my god, Gaby, you took my shift?’

  I nudge her with my knee. ‘Yeah, and Connie let me make coffee.’

  ‘Get. Out.’

  I laugh. ‘No, that would be ridiculous.’

  Maggie smiles, but it doesn’t last. ‘What about you?’ she asks. ‘How do you feel about being one of them?’

  I could get away with dodging that question tonight, but I owe her more than that.

  ‘I don’t know.’ My voice wavers. ‘I’ve been beaten up, lied to, and heard a couple of different versions of who I am and what I’ve supposedly done. And…’

  She squeezes my arm. ‘What if Jude’s really alive.’