Skulk

by Rosie Best

  I wished they were dead. I wished they’d just died. I’d have cried, and then I would have been free.

  Some normal way, like a car accident? Like Mo’s parents? Just what kind of an awful person thought like that? Hot tears of shame coated my eyes and I squeezed them shut.

  I had hope that they might come back, that they might one day be able to make amends. That was more than Mo would ever have again. I didn’t want it, but that was just tough. I had to make the most of it.

  “Can I help?” Mo said softly.

  I took a deep breath and spread my hands on the table, steadying myself on its inarguably real, sticky, pockmarked surface.

  “I’m OK. Just thinking about Mum and Dad.”

  There was an awkward silence. Then Mo stretched hugely, his long gangly arms seeming to reach halfway to the ceiling. “All right. Tell me again. Tell me everything.”

  I talked him through it, focusing on that first night – but nothing I said seemed to strike him as out of the ordinary, once you’d discounted the murder and shapeshifting. I dragged a fine tooth comb through my memories, but there was nothing to suggest I wasn’t a Skulk shifter.

  “You’re sure?” Mo frowned. “You’ve never changed into anything else?”

  “Never,” I said. “I went fox that first night completely on instinct.”

  “So who do you think it is?” Mo asked.

  “Well, not Fran.” I held out six fingers and folded one down at once. “We know she’s only got the fox shape, because she tried to take Blackwell’s. And,” I realised, my heart lifting a bit, “she must not know the metashifter was in the Skulk all along, because it would be much simpler to just kill that one person than try to collect the set.”

  “What about Don?” Mo asked. “Didn’t you say that shifting runs in his family?”

  “Yeah… his father and grandfather were in the Skulk. But I don’t think it’s him. If he could change into a butterfly he would’ve been up at Kew telling you all what to do as well as us. It’d give him a legit excuse to be lord of all he surveyed. He couldn’t keep something like this a secret.”

  “So who’s left?”

  “Addie, Randhir, James, and… Ben.” I blinked as I said his name and the wrong face automatically sprang to mind. “The real Ben.” I took the tiniest sip of coffee known to man, barely wetting my lips. It tasted of burnt plastic. “It could be him. I don’t know anything about him. It could be Rand – but he didn’t say anything about it. And if he could be in any weard he wouldn’t pick the Skulk, because it means he has to hang out with Don.”

  “James?”

  “Maybe.” I thought of his glittering dragon’s cave. “Do ravens like things that are shiny?”

  “I think that’s magpies.”

  I thought it might be ravens as well, but I shrugged. “He could be. But then wouldn’t he fly away from the scene of the crime, rather than wearing a bag round his neck?”

  “So what about Addie, then?”

  “I want to say no.”

  “But you can’t?”

  “I…” I tapped my fingers on the table. “I think she’d have the most reason to lie about it. She has everything to lose. I wouldn’t begrudge her not telling me, not for a second.”

  “So we think it could be Ben or Addie?”

  “I think so.” I leaned forward and let my head rest on the table, gently pushing the coffee out of the way with both hands as I slid down. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do now.” I took a deep breath and lifted my head. “My dad partly built the Shard, did I tell you that?” I said. Mo shook his head. “His company was involved in the inside architecture. The apartments are all custom-built. He knew Victoria, as a client, before I ever became a shifter. I’ve actually been up there. They had a party for all the architects on the top floor, right before they opened the View.” If I’d only known then that there was a homicidal sorceress living right below me…

  “Dad’s plans might help us get in, maybe even show us where to look for the stones, and I can get them off his laptop, but that means we need to go back to my house, and I’m...” my throat closed over the word “scared” but I swallowed and plunged on. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea.”

  Mo reached over the plastic table and put his hands on mine where they cupped the dribble of cold coffee in its paper cup.

  “Well, I’m a little unsure about going up thousands of feet in the air to battle a sorceress,” he said. “So how about I look after you in your house, and you look after me in the Shard?”

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  Dawn eventually broke over the high street, and we staggered out, bleary-eyed, into the awful daylight.

  It was only 7am and still dark when we got back to Susanne’s house – and both of us breathed a sigh of relief when we saw that the lights were on. Whether that meant they’d found the new Rabble shifter, or lost them, I didn’t really care right then. As long as they were OK.

  Mo slipped his keys in the door.

  “Hello?” said a voice I didn’t recognise.

  As we opened the door into the hall, a woman stepped out of the living room. She was short and slight, with close-cropped black hair. She was wringing her hands, twisting a ring with a tiny diamond on it round and round her finger.

  “Are you – who are you?” he asked. “Where’s my mum?”

  “She’s not here,” the woman said. “I had to break in. I’m so sorry, I’d never normally do this, nothing’s actually broken, I promise.”

  “Who are you?” I repeated. She was wearing jeans and a white shirt, but I smelled something oddly familiar, even as a human – the smell of hospitals. Her shoes were bright blue crocs.

  “My name’s Roxie Shinawatra,” the woman said. “I’m from the Horde.” The shoes and the smell all clicked into place.

  “It’s true,” I told Mo, “She was there when I went to find them. She did this to me,” I said, pointing to the scratches across my face, which would’ve been much more dramatic if they’d been a bit bigger.

  “You’re the Skulk girl?” Roxie cringed. “Listen, the Skulk’s never been good news for the Horde, and then you come – well, skulking into our meeting place in the middle of the night. What were we supposed to think?”

  “Well, perhaps you could’ve heard me out before jumping on me,” I snapped. “I was trying to tell you that you were all in danger.”

  Roxie’s face crumpled. “And we should have listened to you.”

  “Let’s go inside,” said Mo, gesturing to the sitting room. “You can tell us what happened.”

  Roxie nodded miserably. As she turned away to go back into the sitting room I saw that she had a big plaster on the back of her neck.

  Roxie settled on the sofa and Mo vanished for a minute and came back with a big jug of water and three glasses, only two of which had Simpsons characters etched on them. Roxie picked the Lisa Simpson glass and poured herself a drink.

  “We were betrayed,” she said, as if she were dragging the words up from somewhere deep inside her. “One of us turned. Ryan. I can’t… I still can’t believe it.”

  “What happened?” said Mo gently.

  “He came to the meeting late. His fur was ruffled and he had a scratch on his ear. He told us the stone was in danger, and we had to move it. He said the Skulk was behind it all – that you’d just been the first, and the others were coming, and we had to get out...” She took a long swig of water and went back to twisting the ring round and round on her finger. “He was very convincing. I mean, he was one of our own, we – it never occurred to us not to believe him.”

  Mo and I exchanged significant glances. For all that I wished I could put this down to the Horde’s insular, untrusting ways, it hadn’t occurred to the Skulk to mistrust Fran, either.

  What if she has spies in every weard? I wondered. What if Helen was no drug addict after all?

  Roxie went on. “We took the stone, broke the shield and carried it with us–”

>   “Wait, so, you do have your stone?” I said, eagerly, and then felt awful. They had their stone.

  “We were moving it, and then there was this… this fog.”

  My hands flew to my mouth.

  “It came from nowhere,” Roxie said. “We knew something was wrong, we were deep underground and it just surrounded us, like a solid wall. Orion tried to barge through it, and it sort of picked them up, and… and spat them back out.”

  I blinked. “He, um…” It suddenly occurred to me that Roxie hadn’t said “he” – or “she”. But that wasn’t the mystery I was worried about right now. “They – Orion didn’t die?”

  “The Horde stone was right there,” Mo pointed out. “Victoria wouldn’t have needed to read any of their minds.”

  “It sucked us all in,” Roxie said. “All except Ryan. He sat there, with the stone between his paws, and he cleaned his whiskers. While we all yelled for him to help us. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t even say anything. That was when I knew he’d betrayed us. The fog started to move. It dragged us away down the tunnel. Amanda and Olly both tried to change but they couldn’t, it was like the fog was keeping them as rats.”

  “How did you get away?” I asked.

  “Luck. Pure luck.” Roxie raised a hand to her mouth, which twisted as if she might cry, but she sniffed it back and went on. “The fog was rolling along the tunnel, with all five of us writhing around inside it. I managed to catch an exposed wire on the side of the tunnel with my tail and tug myself around to grab it with my paws. The fog went on without me, I just fell out of it. I sneaked back, managed to creep up on Ryan. We fought. He bit me on the neck but I turned human and grabbed the stone, and legged it down the tunnel as fast as I could.”

  I realised I was holding my breath.

  “I got away,” she said, and I let the breath out.

  “Do you have the stone?” Mo asked.

  “I’ve hidden it. I didn’t want to bring it anywhere there were going to be other shifters.”

  “Good,” I said, slumping back in my chair. “That’s two she definitely hasn’t got.”

  “Who is this she?” Roxie said, her shoulders sagging. “What is going on?”

  I glanced at Mo, and took a big gulp of water before launching into the situation as I saw it.

  “So this woman has your stone,” Roxie said afterwards, “She’s got at least one other, maybe two, and Ryan and Francesca. And now she’s kidnapped the Horde, everyone but me.”

  “Meg,” Mo said. He looked up at me with an expression like a kicked puppy. “We left the Skulk. They were all together – apart from James – and they didn’t believe that Fran was a traitor. If she’s taking people now...”

  I sprang to my feet, my hands tangling in my hair. “We’ve got to get back there. God damn Don, I told him not to believe her…”

  Addie. Oh my God. Please be safe. Please don’t be taken.

  “Hang on, hang on,” Mo said, scrabbling between the biscuit tin and the remote controls on the coffee table for a pad of paper and a pen. “I’m leaving a note for Mum.” He hesitated, and then wrote: We came home, we’ve gone again. Horde are in trouble, Skulk may be too. We’re going to

  He hesitated for a long few seconds, and I knew what he was thinking. What were we going to do?

  If Victoria had them all captive, there was only really one thing we could do.

  see if they’re OK. Mo wrote at last. I’ll call you when I can.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  They were all gone.

  I banged on Don’s front door and yelled for Addie, with Mo and Roxie both hanging back on the street, until his neighbour came out in a fluffy dressing gown and yelled at me again.

  “Listen,” he said, leaning over the front garden fence and clutching the dressing gown over his hairy chest. “I don’t know what kind of drama you people have got going on – shouting and screaming at all hours – but I’m going to make a complaint if you don’t shut it.”

  “Did you see where they went?” I asked him.

  “Oh yeah. Could hardly miss it. Half past six in the morning, yet more yelling and carrying on, and then they all got into this big van and drove off.”

  “They – they got in a van?”

  “Half of them were barely dressed,” sniffed the neighbour. “I swear, that little girl looked practically feral with her hair and no shoes. What’s going on, anyway?” he asked, about four hours too late. “The Olayes have always been good neighbours. Quiet. And then you lot show up.”

  I just turned away from him.

  “Addie,” I said, feeling hot tears prickling at the corners of my eyes. “Addie lives as a fox. She wouldn’t have turned, not for anything.”

  “You think she was forced somehow?”

  “I… I don’t know.” I folded my arms, trying to pin my shaking hands against my sides.

  “Sorry, sir, it’s a family issue,” said Roxie, stepping forward.

  “Do you think I should’ve called the police?” said the neighbour, all the fight gone out of him.

  “No, no, we’ll handle it.” She put a clinically caring arm around my shoulders and steered me away. “Come along, dear, you need a rest, don’t you?”

  I did, actually. But I wasn’t going to get one.

  As soon as we heard the neighbour going back inside, she dropped my arm.

  “I’m not abandoning my Horde,” she said.

  “Nor me my Skulk,” I agreed.

  “Why did she take them?” Mo wondered, shaking his head. “I don’t get it, if she’s got the Skulk stone already, how come she needs the shifters?”

  I tried to imagine what horrible thing she was planning to do. “I’m not sure I even want to know,” I said. “All I know is it’s not going to be anything good.”

  “How do we do it?” Roxie asked. “Break in, get them back?”

  “Break into the Shard,” muttered Mo. He glanced at me.

  “It’s time, isn’t it?” I groaned. “OK. All right. We need my dad’s plans – he helped build Victoria’s penthouse,” I explained to Roxie, whose eyebrows shot up, and I didn’t blame her. “And we need to find James, if he’s still… around.” I hated myself for even thinking it, but we couldn’t make any assumptions. I took a deep, steadying breath. “My house probably isn’t very safe. Roxie, can you meet us at London Bridge?”

  Mo pulled out his phone and checked the time. “It’s nine now. Call it midday, by the ticket queue inside the Shard.”

  “Mo, do you want to go with Roxie?” I said. “It’s my house, after all. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  “Haha, nice try,” he said, seeing through my pathetic attempts to let him off the hook. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

  Mo started to look around warily as we approached my house, as if he’d been willing to follow me anywhere, but hadn’t quite expected that to include leafy Kensington. He stared at me as I let myself in by tapping the code into the back gate and then turned off the alarm system.

  “We should climb the fire escape, go in through my bedroom,” I said. “It’s not alarmed, so even if Mum did get around to gluing it shut, we can smash our way in.”

  Mo looked up at the tall, pristine whiteness of the house, and stifled a horrified look. “Why would your mum glue your window shut?”

  “Oh, she found out I’d been sneaking out.”

  “So she glued it shut?”

  “Remember the Thorn Queen?” I said, starting to climb the fire escape.

  “Ye-es?” Mo didn’t sound like he really wanted to know where this was going.

  “That was a portrait of my mother.”

  Mo didn’t reply.

  “She was a human being and she deserved better than being made into a monster,” I said. “But she was a pretty terrible mother.”

  The window wasn’t glued shut. I guess she never got round to it. I tugged it open and climbed through.

  The smells of home hit me as soon as I’d put my head in
to the room. Even as a human, it was almost overwhelming. It smelled of status quo and of safety, if not actual happiness. But it wasn’t safe, not any more. I pushed through it as though through a cloud of smoke. I was here for Dad’s files, that was all. Then, as I reached the door, I hesitated.

  “Wait.” I turned back, threw open my wardrobe doors and dug down into the trunk, throwing aside ballet programmes and secret sketchbooks, tugging out the backpack. I pulled out the plastic bag, and stared at the clothes inside. They were still crunchy with the mysterious shifter’s blood. If I had a forensic lab at my disposal maybe I could figure out who he was with his DNA. As it was, I put the bag aside.

  It was the backpack I was after. I emptied the paints out onto my bed and stuffed in a spare T-shirt, jeans, my secret emergency cash, and – shielding the drawer from Mo with my back – a couple of pairs of knickers and a bra.

  Then I took the black and the white paints and stuffed them down inside the backpack too. Maybe they were good luck charms. Maybe I just wanted something to remind me I had a life, beyond Mum and Dad and school, beyond Victoria, beyond Don and Addie and the Skulk. I had something I’d chosen for myself.

  Then I led Mo out of the room and down the long climb to the ground floor.

  There was a foul smell on the landing outside my parents’ room. The lilies on the table by the window were going mouldy. I wondered again what’d happened to Gail and Hilde, whether they’d been removed by Victoria, or by the police when they discovered we’d vanished into thin, feathery air. Had the police even come? Or had Victoria cleaned that up in advance too, faked a sick note for Mum and Dad like she’d done for me? Mo was trying not to stare at the massive rooms and the artificial cleanliness of it, the kind you only get with an honest-to-God housekeeper. I could tell by the way every time I glanced at him he suddenly looked at his shoes. I thought about telling him it was OK to look, that there really wasn’t much to look at – the mirrors glinted and the little pointy ornaments gleamed, and the stern faces of old portraits glowered down at us, and nothing was out of place or wonky and everything matched. I bit down the simmering resentment. There should be bigger things on my mind than my mother’s taste in home decor. I should be holding my breath for any sign of creeping fog, eyes and ears peeled for beating wings. But the air was clear and silent, except for our breathing.