by Rosie Best
“It’s Meg.” I closed my teeth over the words. Victoria raised her eyebrows at me.
“I’m sorry. Meg. You know how I know, don’t you?”
“You killed Angel. You’re the –” I stopped. I wasn’t going to say “wizard” out loud to this person, sitting on my sofa, drinking my tea. I just refused. “You’re in control of the fog?”
“I know it’s not at the school.” She turned and looked out of the front window, and I twitched back as I followed her gaze. There was a pigeon outside, its red eye pressed up to the window. “My fog has just been there, it found nothing.”
A thrill curled in my stomach, something like victory – and nothing like it. I’d outwitted her so far, but it wasn’t much comfort. I looked up, certain I’d find the grey tendrils of the fog hovering over my shoulder, just waiting to drag me in. The air was clear.
“Now, you will tell me where the stone is,” Victoria said. “Or I’m afraid I’ll have to hurt your parents.”
I glanced at Mum and Dad’s blank faces again. “Hurt them?” No. She’d been to my house, she’d done business with Dad – probably with both of them. She’d voluntarily attended one of my mother’s parties, for God’s sake. “You can’t be serious. They’re your friends!”
“They’re scum,” said Victoria.
The words They’re not crowded up to my lips, like screaming passengers trying to escape a sinking ship. But I wouldn’t let them out. I looked Victoria in the eyes. I saw what she was doing. She wanted me to leap to their defence, to think of everything I loved about them, so I’d get all sentimental and hand over the location of the stone.
Well, joke’s on her, I wasn’t going to do it. She could explode my head if she wanted. She wasn’t going to hurt her friends, and I wasn’t going to defend them.
I forced out a shrug. “You won’t hurt them,” I repeated. “I’m not telling you anything.”
Chik.
I looked up. The pigeon outside the window was tapping on the glass with its sharp, curved beak.
Chik. Chik.
Was that supposed to put me off? I turned my gaze back to Victoria, fixing her with what I hoped was a steady, resolved glare.
“Is it in the house?” she asked me. “I could tear the place apart, but I’d much rather not.”
I shook my head. “I’m not telling you.”
Chikchik. Chikchik.
My eyes were drawn back to the window. Another even grottier-looking pigeon, tapping on the glass, its rhythm not quite syncing with the first one. As I watched a third flapped down, trailing dust and blackened feathers, and joined in with the others. Chik chikchik chikchik chik chik.
“Is that... what are they doing, like Chinese water torture or something? Am I supposed to be scared?”
“No, dear,” said Victoria. “They’re not for you.”
Chikchik chikchiktap.
Tap.
Mum’s long, thin middle finger pulled back and then swooped down, every tiny movement seeming huge and terrifying, and tapped a slow rhythm on the side of her china teacup.
I felt as if the breath had been stolen from my chest.
“Mum?”
Her face was blank but her finger kept tapping.
Taptap.
“Dad. Stop it.”
His finger came down on the coffee table. His face was as blank as Mum’s.
The chorus of chipping from the window was growing louder. I tore myself away from my parents’ blank eyes and glanced up. There were more pigeons – five, six, eight of them. And Mum and Dad were staring ahead, their eyes empty and their fingers dancing on the table.
Chikchiktap chiktap chikchiktapchikchiktap
A crack snaked across the window.
“Stop it,” I hissed at Victoria.
“It’s too late,” she said, and leaned back in her seat.
The glass shattered around the pigeons and they flocked into the room, a flapping and fluttering crowd of dirty pecking clumps of feather. I shrieked and ducked my head, threw my arms up to shield my face.
A crackling sensation shot through my sinuses and there was that taste again, stronger this time, like fizzy sweets dipped in battery acid.
Air buffeted my shoulders and pulled at my hair, and I tensed for the feeling of claws raking my skin and beaks stabbing into my neck. But they didn’t attack me. I peered through my fingers, my eyes watering, and saw them settling on Mum and Dad’s shoulders, flapping all around them, totally obscuring both of them from view.
I lunged out of my chair and made a grab for the iron tools beside the fireplace, seized a heavy black iron shovel and whirled around to swipe at the pigeons.
My weapon sliced through the air, and the fluttering mass of birds scattered to the far corners of the room, taking up positions on the sideboard, the back of the sofa, the mantelpiece.
Mum and Dad were gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My hand went limp and the shovel crashed to the floor, leaving a black wound on the carpet and a resonant thunnng ringing in the air.
“I did tell you.” I turned to see Victoria standing up, brushing a mottled grey feather off her cream shawl. “I’m not messing around, Meg, I want that stone.”
“But they’re–”
“My friends? I wouldn’t go that far. I did get on with your father,” said Victoria. “They’ve both been very useful to me over the last year or so. That’s the only reason I didn’t kill them.”
“But they…” I spun around, searching for any sign she hadn’t disintegrated Mum and Dad, but I saw nothing but pigeons.
One of them flapped down onto the arm of the sofa.
I looked into its red eyes and saw twitchy rage staring back at me. It was... familiar, but twisted, filtered through a mad, feral animal.
I mouthed the word “Mum”, but no sound came. I cast around the room for Dad, but I couldn’t pick him out of the crowd. Any one of the pigeons could have been him. I felt dizzy and clutched my hands in the empty air, feeling like I was trying to hold on to my sanity by my fingernails.
How many other people’s dads were staring at me now with their weird orange pigeon eyes?
Victoria reached out a finger and touched Mum – the pigeon – on the back of the head. She – it – opened her beak and let out a long cooooo. “Now, be a sensible child and tell me where you’ve hidden my stone, or I shall have your mother peck you to death.”
“Waterloo Bridge,” I said.
Victoria’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, good girl! I really thought I might have to murder you.” She scooped up a brown handbag and hooked it over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said.
“Wait,” I croaked. I swallowed hard. “If I help you find it, will you turn them back?”
“Of course,” Victoria said. “I’ve no need to hurt you if I’ve got the stone, right?”
I didn’t believe a word of it.
“OK,” I lied right back. “Then let’s get this over with.”
The back seat of Victoria’s silver Jaguar smelled of new leather and made a low squeaking sound as I scooted along to try to keep my distance from the two evil pigeons that used to be my parents.
I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I hadn’t really freaked out until the car started to pull out of the drive.
Then I looked down and saw that my hands were shaking. A throbbing pain stabbed into my ribs. I felt like I’d just run the full length of Oxford Street. I couldn’t look at the – at my – at them. I twisted away and huddled up to the window to watch my house vanish as we cruised away down the road.
It was all gone, just like that.
My mum. My dad. My house. My room, with my laptop and my paints and my horrible bathroom carpet. The party fridge. The wardrobe. Dad’s study. Mum’s Cabinet memos, all her secrets and plans.
My life as I knew it had just come to an abrupt, feathery end.
And Hilde and Gail… where were they right now? Had Victoria got rid of them already? If they were dead, how l
ong would it be until someone called the police? Until the police came round to my school asking who’d seen me last? How long until the papers got hold of the story? Where would I be, when the happy family picture hit the front pages? Who was going to explain to my Granddad that his whole family was missing?
I felt too frozen with panic to really cry, but two big, splashy teardrops fell on the cream leather seat back, and I balled my hands in my sleeves to soak them up.
It took a few tries, but eventually I forced myself to turn and face my parents.
Mum looked madder than Dad. She was mostly grey, and she looked sleek – but not like a well-looked-after pet. More like she’d been caught in a clear oil slick. She was emaciated. I could see her ribs through the thin down on her breast. She dug her talons into the seat, the claws tearing through the leather just like they’d tear through skin.
Dad was bigger, darker-grey and brown, and messy. The down stuck out between the feathers of his wings. He pecked around in the foot well of the seat. He didn’t seem at all interested in me. I guessed if Mum decided to peck out my eyes he’d be right there with her, tearing at me with that heavy grey-yellow beak.
Story of my life.
Victoria had said we should bring them along so she could turn them back when she found the stone. I stared at their sharp beaks and claws, and I knew that as soon as she found out I’d lied to her she would have them tear me to shreds.
I forced myself to turn away, my eyes stinging with tears again as I stared at the City of London passing beyond the Jaguar’s tinted windows.
It’s my fault. Just for once, it really is all my fault. I’m so sorry.
Mum made a little bubbling sound in her throat and her body twitched. I could’ve let myself believe it was a response – one I couldn’t translate, to a statement I hadn’t even made out loud – but a thin, trembling line of rationality prevailed. She was a pigeon now. She was just being a pigeon.
I leaned forward, my head almost pressing against the back of the driver’s seat, and tangled my hair in my hands.
We were drawing closer to Waterloo Bridge. So much had happened since I’d read the location of E3’s latest graffiti on graffitilondon.com. It felt like a hundred years had passed. But the information had lodged in my mind and then risen to the surface, like a drowned corpse in a river floating up in the spring.
The corpse of an old life. Even if I survived the next hour, what was my life going to be like now, without a home, or a family? What the hell was I going to do now?
I had to get out of here. Abandon Mum and Dad, for now, and run for my life. I tried the handle on the car door as we pulled up to a red traffic light, hoping to just tumble out onto the road… but no luck. The child locks were on and I was trapped.
I’d have a better chance of getting away if I were a fox, but when could I change? Even when Victoria unlocked the car to get out, she’d be watching me. Plus, I’d be slowed down by my clothes. It was a shockingly practical thought. The trousers might be OK by the time my legs had shrunk to fox-size, but I’d almost certainly tangle myself in my school shirt and my bra, and by the time I wriggled free I’d be pigeon-food.
Victoria stopped the car and I raised my head to glance outside.
We’d pulled up right underneath the bridge, where it crossed over the top of the Victoria Embankment, parked half on top of the pavement. I was pretty sure you couldn’t park here, but an hour ago I was pretty sure people couldn’t be turned into pigeons.
On the other side of the bridge, the setting sun was glinting off the Thames and casting bright patches of light and shadow across the road, between the huge trees and the spiky forms of tour boat moorings. Under the bridge the shadows were dark, but the light reflected from the water danced prettily on the bricks. A young couple with matching Mohawk haircuts – except one was pink, the other blue – strolled along the river, hand in hand. I think one of them was singing. I watched them with tears in my eyes.
Victoria swivelled in the driver’s seat to look over her shoulder at me.
“Where?” she asked.
“Um... I hid it...” I swallowed back the tears and stared out of the window, desperately trying not to look like I was making up the details on the spot. I pointed. “See there, where there’s building work?” There was a tall plywood fence up around part of the wall, plastered with the logo of the coffee shop that was going to be there when the building was done. “I got through the fence and hid it, in a hole under some bricks.”
“A hole,” said Victoria. She stared at me for a second.
That’s it, I thought, bracing myself and casting another terrified glance at Mum and Dad. She’s on to me. I’m going to die.
“Stay here,” she said, and got out of the car. I grasped for the door handle, but her hand shot into her purse before I could turn it and there was a kathunk from all four car doors. The lights on the dashboard went out. I tried the passenger door, then leaned over the driver’s seat, tugging on the door handle. No good. I stabbed at the buttons on the dashboard, looking for an on button or a door release, but it stayed resolutely dark.
I was locked in.
My skin prickled and froze as she walked towards the fence without looking back at me. She wasn’t going to let me out of the car at all. She wasn’t going to let me out. I couldn’t get out.
I couldn’t breathe. My chest was hitching like a trapped animal, I could see it, I could hear the air passing through my throat, but I felt like I was drowning. A black haze swirled at the corner of my vision, and I tried to turn, thinking it was the fog again. A wave of dizziness carried me up and beached me with my head against the cold glass of the window.
I couldn’t get out. She was going to find there was no stone and give the signal and I’d be pecked to death by my own parents, right here, pressed into the new leather seats. I’d die bleeding into Victoria’s foot-wells, shreds of my skin scattered across the darkened windows. She wasn’t going to let me out.
I yanked at the buttons on my shirt and tore it off. The pigeons flapped and cooed, but a terrified moment of staring out of the window told me Victoria couldn’t hear them. She was inspecting a hole in the fence. I managed to undo my bra on the second try and then leaned into the front seat, running my hands over everything in search of something hard that I could pick up. I fumbled into the glove compartment and my heart pounded in my chest – there was an ice scraper with a hard, pointy end.
I grasped it and pulled back to the passenger window. I took a split second to brace myself, gather my strength. The instant I hit the window Victoria would know. I’d have no more than a handful of seconds to make a hole big enough and change.
I felt a pinching, stabbing pain on my elbow and yelped as looked back. Mum had pecked me, hard, and drawn blood. I gripped the ice scraper like a dagger, and stabbed. The window cracked, but stayed in place. A moan escaped my throat and I stabbed again, and again, until finally the window shattered into a hundred chunky pieces of glass. They sagged out but hung on to the window frame, held together by the tinted layer of plastic.
“Hey!” Victoria’s shout rang out, muffled, outside the car. “Stop her!”
Another shove with the ice scraper sent the whole shattered pane of glass toppling out onto the floor and I twisted into fox shape just as the pigeons’ claws came down, raking across my back. I felt deep wells of pain open up in my flesh, jolting energy through me as my perspective shifted. The colours faded, and the scent of blood and foulness overwhelmed me.
My back legs scrabbled for a grip on the shiny leather even as they were still forming, and I pushed up and out, tumbling half-changed through the window. My tail burst from my back and my hands shrunk into paws, just as I came down hard on the shattered glass on the road. I stumbled, one of the shards slicing through my right front paw pad, but I heard Victoria shriek with rage and the flapping of two pairs of wings, and I didn’t stop to look back.
I sprint-hobbled down Victoria Embankment, half-blinded by pa
in, in and out of the slanting shadows. There had to be a way off the road, somewhere I could hide, somewhere I would be safe...
I ducked under a bench, almost on pure instinct, and a second later, a fluttering thump hit the slatted wood over my head. There was a hoarse croak and a shower of foul-scented dust, and I looked up to see a snapping grey beak and one mad red eye.
Mum.
I opened my jaws and hissed, and she snapped at me again. I could feel blood trickling though my fur. This wasn’t safe. I couldn’t stop.
But Mum...
“Please,” I whined. “Mum, don’t you know me? Can’t you...”
I stopped myself. There was no point. She wasn’t really Mum right now. I’d find a way to put this right, I had to, but right now she would kill me if I let her.
I took a second to lap at the wound on my paw, and then braced myself to spring out of my hiding place.
I shot out from under the bench and ran straight into a warm, feathery mass – the heavier, mouldier pigeon that was now my Dad. He pecked at my flank and I swiped, my claws springing out by instinct. I felt one of them catch, and Dad fell back with a burst of feathers. My paw ripped away, a few drops of fresh blood trailing through the air after it.
Oh God. Dad!
A fresh wave of horror hit me.
Dad, I’m so sorry. Please be all right. You shouldn’t be here. This is all my fault. I’m sorry…
Pigeon-Dad twisted back, black beak open wide. I got a split-second’s glimpse of a freakishly pink tongue lashing like a worm on a hook, before he went for my eyes. I twitched away just in time and took off running again.
My heart felt broken, like it was hanging loose and useless in my chest. Like I’d died, and I just hadn’t stopped moving yet.
There! Finally, I saw hope open up in front of me. A hole, a blessed, heaven-sent hole, right at the base of one of the buildings. It looked like it was supposed to have a metal grille across it, but it was open and dark. It smelled of dust and things that snuffled and scurried as I threw myself inside. It was just wide enough to take me, and so dark I might have been about to knock myself out on a dead end and I wouldn’t know it, except that I could feel air rushing through my fur, stirring the sensitive hairs around my muzzle.