by Alix Marsh
Why? He’d thought he was buying the last couple of seconds of his life.
Not like he’d admit that to this toad.
Flynn shrugged. “I was bored.” He met Arran’s stare with an intensity of his own. “Not much happens in Little Rislin.”
The other boy’s nostrils flared. He didn’t challenge Flynn though, just glared at him a moment more, then barked, “Get out.”
“What?” Flynn glanced around him. The road they’d shot down ended against a wall of nature, nothing but giant ferns and moss-draped trunks and thick, squat bush. “You can’t leave me stranded here!”
“Pathetic,” Arran sneered. He popped his door open and hopped to the ground. “You’re going to die. Hopefully—” he yanked open the back door and dragged Flynn’s suitcase out and onto the ground “—you die alone and don’t—” the rest of Flynn’s bags went the same way as his suitcase “—endanger innocent lives.”
“What is your problem?” Flynn scrambled out and scooted around the Range Rover to where his belongings had been heaped. Actually, being stranded in the middle of nowhere sounded a whole lot better than spending another second with Arran Marshall.
“Atreus House is through there.” Arran pointed at a gap Flynn hadn’t noticed in the bushes. “Do you think you can find your way or do you need me to hold your hand?”
“Wow.” Flynn started grabbing his stuff. What had he ever done to this guy? “Where did your mother buy your personality?” he muttered. “At a car boot sale?”
The fist hooked his jaw, snapping his head back and knocking him into a sideways sprawl. It took a second for his body to register what had happened, and then the pain cracked along his jaw bone and up his skull. He stayed down, flat on the ground, blinking furiously until the sharp pain reduced to a dull thud along the left hand side of his face. Slowly, he picked himself up, working his jaw loose…something creaked—if the idiot had broken…no, not broken, but there was a metallic taste in his mouth and his tongue felt thick and his skull was still thudding and he couldn’t believe it!
He’d never taken a punch before. Never given one either. Less than ten minutes at his new school and he’d gotten into a fist fight. Great start, Flynn.
Arran just stood there, his arms hanging at his sides, the fist he’d used on Flynn clenching and unclenching to a slow, rigid beat. Good, Flynn hoped his jaw had left a whopping bruise on the boy’s knuckles.
He gathered his belongings, wincing when he saw his laptop bag had been knocked out of his hands earlier and flung against the rear tyre of the Range Rover. There went the next year of pocket money.
Shoulders set back, Flynn was determined to walk off with his throbbing jaw held high, but changed his mind at the last moment and swerved to stand right in front of Arran.
“I guess I deserved that.” His hand went to his tender jaw as he saw Arran’s fist was still clenching and unclenching. Maybe not from pain or a cramp. Maybe just keeping it warm in case he felt the urge to use it again. Bracing himself to not flinch away, Flynn looked the boy in the eye. “But I don’t deserve your crappy attitude.”
Arran’s gaze narrowed on him, but he didn’t say anything and he wasn’t throwing any more punches.
Deciding that was as sorted as it was going to get, Flynn moved on, through the gap in the bushes that took him down an overgrown path.
A couple of yards further, the path opened abruptly onto Atreus House. The house backed up right onto the dense forest, two storeys of white-washed stone capped with a dark-stained wooden roof that slanted low over the top floor of windows. The window frames were of the same dark wood, giving the place a cottage feel despite its size.
Flynn rolled his suitcase over stubby grass to what looked like the kitchen entrance, a plain door and light spilling from a window that was tented with white and red checked curtains.
The door opened before he could raise a hand to knock. On the other side stood a woman, not much taller than him and almost as skinny, silver-streaked hair swept back into a stern bun although the rest of her didn’t look any older than his mom. The jeans and shocking pink fleece worn over a white tank vest also seemed at odds with that harsh bun.
“Flynn Heath?” She didn’t wait for a reply, peering over his shoulder. “You didn’t arrive alone, surely?”
“Um, no.” Some of the tension rolled off his spine at her soft-spoken voice. She sounded quite kind, and concerned. “Arran Marshall—the student head of Perses House, he said, dropped me off.”
“Such a sweet boy, standing in for Charlie. You were quite the last minute surprise, you realise?” Her eyes came back to him, accompanied by a smile that quickly faded. “What happened to your face?”
“I, um…” Flynn swallowed. “I walked into a tree.”
She looked at him. It wasn’t an assessing look. She didn’t raise an eyebrow, like adults do to challenge what you said. She was just looking at him.
“It was a branch, actually,” Flynn said. “That path I came down is pretty overgrown.”
She looked at him some more.
Flynn got the feeling she could keep this up until he’d talked himself all the way around to the truth.
She didn’t. Maybe she felt sorry for him, being new and all.
“Well, welcome to Atreus House.” She nudged his chin up, her fingers gently prodding along the line of his jaw. “It’s not swollen much, but there’s going to be some bruising.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come on in.” She scooped his suitcase handle out from his clutch before he could protest, rolling it inside to prop against the wall. “Put your things down there for now, out of the way,” she instructed, walking around the huge oak table in the centre of the kitchen as she spoke. “I’m Mrs. Avery, your house mother.”
Flynn stacked his bags beside his suitcase. When he looked up again, the woman, Mrs. Avery, was nowhere to be seen. Through the archway to his left, a long hallway seemed to stretch the length of the manor, ending in a wide staircase. The double-volume ceiling gave him a clear view of the wrought-iron banister that wrapped around the upper landing. Cream walls and low lighting cast a warm glow over the cavernous space.
On the ceiling was some sort of painted mural. Flynn stepped through the archway to get a better look. It was a single giant leaf that covered most of the ceiling, the serrated edges and veins immaculately detailed in varying depths of green. The house, Flynn realised as his gaze wandered from the ceiling to the closed doors lining the landing upstairs, was also weirdly quiet.
“Where is everyone?” he asked, stepping back through the archway as he saw Mrs. Avery appear from a doorway that opened off the far end of the kitchen.
“At the dining hall. Supper is at seven pm sharp.” She piled a maroon heap onto the table, then checked her watch before picking what he now saw was a blazer from the stack. “They’ll be just about finishing now.” She held the blazer up, as if to measure the size against him, then exchanged it for another. “Have you eaten?”
Flynn nodded. They’d had a late Sunday roast, a send-off for both him and Nan, who was catching the overnight train back up to Edinburgh.
Each house had their own colours, Mrs. Avery explained as she fitted him with a blazer and issued him a maroon and yellow striped tie. And each house had their rules. She presented him with a folder, filled with loose sheets of papers, a starter pack which included, she informed him, a set of her house rules.
“I suggest you study them thoroughly,” she said in a firm voice, then in the very next breath, “I’m also a registered nurse, Flynn. But I’m never house mother and nurse at the same time. Do you understand?”
He nodded, although he didn’t really.
Mrs. Avery saw straight through him.
“No questions asked and no punishments when you need to see the nurse.” Her gaze dipped to his jaw, then back up. “I won’t have any of my kids bleeding out in their room because they’ve done something stupid and are too afraid to have me patch them up.
Right, come on then.” She ushered him to walk ahead of her. “Let’s show you to your room.”
BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE, BEFORE even nosing around the room, Flynn booted up his laptop. Please. Please. Please. Someone listened. There was a thin vertical blue line down the one side of the screen that hadn’t been there before, but other than that, his laptop seemed to have survived. It would do.
He closed the laptop, remaining cross-legged on the bed as he dug out his phone and called Rose.
She answered on the first ring. “What took you so long? We’re dying here!”
“We?” Suddenly he felt very lonely. Isolated. “Is Toby with you? What are you guys doing?”
“Just messing around in the square.”
“Dude, about time,” Toby’s voice butted in. “She wouldn’t let me go home. Scared you’d call me first and she’d miss out.”
“Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Talk rubbish.”
Flynn grinned, leaning back against the headrest. For once, he didn’t mind the bickering and then they turned on him, demanding to know everything at once. He told them what he could, which wasn’t very much since he’d only met Mrs. Avery so far and he didn’t think Arran Marshall was worth a mention.
He was sharing a room with someone called Jack Davendish, who’d thoroughly claimed the bed and surrounding space by the bay window. A large armchair stood in that corner, one of those antique wingback chairs with enormous arms and a rusty golden weave, barely visible beneath the clothes that had been thrown every which way over it. A slim white and red guitar was propped against the chair and glossy posters plastered every inch of the walls on that side of the room, all of rock bands and some solo artists, of which Flynn only recognised The Eagles and The Rolling Stones from his dad’s vinyl collection.
“I can’t believe you’re gone,” Rose said suddenly, her voice accusing him all over again.
“Same here,” Toby said quietly.
Flynn opened his mouth, wanting to blurt out the truth. Once again, the words refused to come. This time, he realised it wasn’t because he knew they wouldn’t believe him, but because they might.
What had that man said? Mr. Rook, the short, round one. The Touch of Zeus cannot be undone.
Without knowing exactly what he’d meant, Flynn was inclined to agree. Learning demons existed couldn’t ever be unlearnt. Whatever he told Rose and Toby, could never be untold. And why worry them? It wasn’t as if he could answer any of the millions of questions they’d have. Plus, there was the whole demon radar thing those men had mentioned as well. What if demons ignored you only so long as you didn’t know about them? In some small way, ignorance felt like the best way to protect his friends.
“I’m only three miles down the road,” Flynn said instead.
“You’re at Victor Grey,” Rose stressed. “Might as well be on another planet. It’s so weird, finally knowing someone who goes there.”
Toby made a sound of disgust. “Bet you can’t wait to use that on Adam Pine.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, seriously, what are you getting at?”
“You’ve been trying to impress him all year, that’s what I’m getting at. Not that I care, but—”
“If you don’t care so much,” Rose snapped, “why is your brain haemorrhaging and making you hallucinate?”
Flynn turned on the speakerphone and tossed his phone on the bed, unpacking his bags to the background of their squabbling until Rose let out a frustrated squeal and the line went dead. He supposed this was the new equivalent of Rose slamming the door in his and Toby’s face.
He sent Toby a message: APOLOGISE and went back to his unpacking. When he reached the dagger he’d snuck in when his mom wasn’t looking, he ran his fingers over the entwined snakes. He’d searched Darswich on the internet, thinking it might be a specific type or make of dagger, but found nothing.
Muffled noises from the passage outside drew his attention. He shoved the dagger under a pile of T-shirts in his wardrobe just as the bedroom door flung open, bringing in the full volume of footfalls and chattering as the returning pupils trampled up the staircase and along the passages.
A boy with floppy blond hair stumbled inside. His gaze landed on Flynn with a grin as he kicked the door shut behind him. “You’ve arrived. Brilliant.”
Flynn returned the grin. “I’m Flynn.”
“Jack Davendish.” The boy stood there, rocking on his feet, looking as though something was bubbling to burst from his lips.
The door clicked open and a girl popped her head inside.
“Ten minutes,” she told Jack, then, “That him?” as her eyes slid to Flynn. Once up and down the length of him. Without waiting for a reply, she said, “He can come if he wants,” and popped back out.
Leaving Flynn with little more than an impression of the most unusual, startling turquoise eyes. “What was that about?”
“You’re in.” Jack moved deeper into the room, tugging his cream cable-knit jumper over his head as he went. He tossed the jumper onto his bed, then started stripping down to his boxers. He gave Flynn a ‘hurry up’ look. “Change into something dark, black if you’ve got.”
Flynn was curious enough to not argue. He scrambled into his black PE running pants and exchanged his flecked grey hoodie for a flecked charcoal one.
They didn’t meet anyone as they ran along the passage of the boys’ wing and down the wide staircase, but the house was filled with muffled voices, doors slamming and, as they reached the hallway below, the muted thumping of people moving about upstairs. He kept close on Jack’s heels as they took a shortcut through the common room, down a narrow passage, through another doorway, into a magnificent entrance hall with marble tiles and a domed ceiling, and then out a set of elaborately carved oak, arched double doors.
They’d emerged at the front of Atreus House. Flynn saw it was much larger then he’d initially thought, two double-story wings jutting out from the main body to form a broad U around the cobbled courtyard. It was properly night by now, the half-moon in a clear sky and light spilling from the upper rows of windows basking the courtyard in a sort of twilight haze.
Flynn stood there a moment, transfixed by the hulking shadows of the forest reaching for the furthest edge of the cobbled paving. Two old-fashioned lampposts guarded the tips of the U-shaped building, the last defence between Atreus House and the encroaching shadows.
He wasn’t afraid of the dark, not exactly.
The last two nights he’d had the same dream, the same nightmare. Vulture-like claws dragging him beneath the dripping boughs of The Giant, an explosion of fire tearing through him, and then the nightmare started: his blackened-to-a-crisp body fused to the burnt-out shell of the willow, drooping from the tree along with the other scorched branches. He couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t feel his limbs, couldn’t do anything but scream soundlessly and frantically jerk his eyes as people passed by—Mom, Dad, Toby, Rose, other friends from school—glancing his way occasionally but not seeing.
But Jack was racing straight for the trees, or rather the figure silhouetted beneath one of the lampposts, which turned out to be the girl from earlier. She was completely done out in black, from her chunky boots to the hair scraped back into a high ponytail. She was also, Flynn couldn’t help noticing, very pretty.
“This is Flynn Heath,” Jack said, then flourished a hand at the girl and introduced her in a voice that sounded like he was juggling prunes in his cheeks, “And this is Icilia Lily-Anne Bridleton.”
“Very funny.” She rolled her eyes at Flynn. “Call me Ice. So, is it true?” She leant against the lamppost, sounding almost bored. “Did you really come in out of the cold?”
Flynn shrugged. That seemed to be what everyone kept saying. “I guess.”
“Brilliant.” Jack clapped Flynn on the shoulder enthusiastically. “I’ve never met a Cold Slayer before.”
&
nbsp; A smile cracked Ice’s flat expression. “That is rather awesome.”
She looked impressed for about two seconds, then pulled out a flashlight and led them straight into the thick of the shadows, down a narrow path strewn with obstacles Flynn kept stumbling over. The circle of light bobbing ahead of Ice wasn’t much use to Flynn, since they had to walk single file and he was right at the back.
“Where’re we going, then?” asked Jack.
“You’ll see.”
Every time a giant frond or prickly twig scraped Flynn, he batted it away a little too furiously, as if it might grab him and never let go. “What’s with this place and all these jungle trails,” he muttered.
“They stopped cutting back the forest ages ago,” Jack replied.
“Nineteen sixty,” Ice added from up front.
“Just after the first satellites were launched.”
“I honestly don’t know why they bother,” Ice huffed. “It’s not like we ever get to do anything the satellites might be remotely interested in.”
“Don’t mind her,” Jack said. “She’s been in a mood since February.”
Flynn had one last scrapple with an overhanging branch before the trail thankfully widened into a civilised path. Even the stones started to behave themselves, although that could have been because they could spread out to walk beside each other and share Ice’s flashlight. “What happened in February?”
“That’s when she arrived,” Jack said.
“Oh.” Flynn peered around him to look at Ice. “You also started here in the middle of the year?”
Jack bellowed out a laugh.
Ice shoved him. “It isn’t like he’d know how the Academy works, is it?”
“Yeah, right…sorry.” Jack swallowed his next laugh as he turned to Flynn. “Okay, you know you can only take the pledge between sunrise and sunset on your thirteenth birthday…?”