by D. J. McCune
‘Adam!’ Chloe was looking at him with a mixture of awe and terror. She flicked her eyes sideways at Darian and then back to him. Adam could see the unspoken plea. He’s a Curator! You can’t speak to him like that! You’ll get into trouble!
‘Father wanted to talk to you.’ When Chloe hesitated, Adam exploded, ‘Just go!’
Darian made no protest as she left but watched Adam closely. ‘How dare you?’ The Frenchman was looking at him with more curiosity than anger and Adam realised he was asking a genuine question.
‘I know what you are.’ A tidal wave of memories came back, flooding through Adam’s mind, threatening to make him lose all composure. ‘I know what you want to do. Don’t pretend to like her. You hate us. You hate all of us.’
‘What dramatic assertions …’
‘I know! I know about your Marking ball! I know my mother rejected you and what you want to do to my family!’
The shock on Darian’s face gave Adam the briefest moment of satisfaction – until the Frenchman strode across the room, seized his throat and pinned him to the wall. ‘What did you say?’
‘You want my father out of the way so you can have my mother. She doesn’t want you! She HATES you!’ Adam’s voice was a strangled croak. He tried to bend Darian’s fingers away but the Luman was too strong. ‘Let … me … go!’
The pressure on his throat eased but Darian didn’t let go. ‘Be careful, Adam. You are talking about things beyond your understanding. Remember who you are speaking to.’
‘You think you’re so important, don’t you?’ Adam grabbed Darian’s fingers and jerked them off his throat, darting sideways and backing away from the Luman. ‘Morta was important but she’s gone now. You could be gone too.’
Darian’s face tensed. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes you do.’ Adam was shaking with something between fear and rage and exhilaration. He had spent six months imagining this moment; imagining getting to tell Darian exactly what he thought of him. ‘Stay away from my family or I’ll tell everyone what you really want and what you’ll do to get it.’
Darian blinked. Then, unbelievably, he smiled. He stepped towards Adam. ‘You do not know me at all, Adam. You seem to think I have some dark secret when my reputation is spotless. Perhaps there is a guilty conscience at work. You have a secret of your own, non?’
‘No, I don’t! Just stay away from my sister!’
‘What’s going on here?’ Nathanial was standing in the doorway, Uncle Paddy at his shoulder. His father stepped into the room and looked from Darian to his son. ‘I said what’s going on here?’
‘Your son was speaking in a disrespectful manner. That is all you need to be concerned about.’ Darian was icy calm. ‘Of course discourtesy and deception are not uncommon in your family, as I myself know only too well.’
‘Adam, go into the other room.’ Nathanial gestured to what seemed to be a bookcase but Uncle Paddy stepped forward and turned something. A moment later the shelf swung back, revealing a doorway into the room next door. ‘Wait for me there.’
‘He was with Chloe,’ Adam protested. ‘He was down here on his own with Chloe. Asking her stuff about our family. About betrothals!’
‘That’s enough, Adam. I’ll deal with it.’ Nathanial wasn’t looking at his son; he was looking at the Frenchman with the closest thing to hate that Adam had ever seen on his father’s normally composed face. ‘Leave us.’
Uncle Paddy nodded and gestured to the door. Adam had no choice but to give Darian one last glare and step into the other room. Uncle Paddy swung the door closed behind him and Adam was confronted once again with a bookshelf. He tried to press his ear to the door but he couldn’t hear a thing.
Frustrated, he turned away and tried to get his bearings. He was in the reading room, a large room at the far end of the house. It overlooked the Atlantic although it was too dark outside to see. A fire burned in the grate in spite of the pleasant day and Adam hurried towards it, desperate for some comforting warmth. As he reached it, something moved behind him and he gave a yelp of shock.
‘Sssssssssssh! It’s all right, it’s me!’
Caitlyn was lying on the sofa, wearing a silky dress the colour of slate. She had kicked off her shoes, revealing bare toes, the nails painted a shimmering dark grey the same colour as the dress. She was holding her phone and as she ripped out her headphones Adam could hear something dark and angry blaring out tinnily.
He scowled at her. ‘Thanks a bunch. You scared the crap out of me.’
‘What are you doing?’
Adam paced back over to the bookcase, struggling to hear what was going on in the other room. ‘Ssssssh! I can’t hear.’
‘Are you seriously telling me to shut up in my own house?’ When Adam didn’t respond there was a click and the angry music roared out of the speaker on her phone.
Adam glared at her. ‘How can I hear what’s going on next door?’
Caitlyn arched one eyebrow. ‘Why do you want to hear what’s going on next door? Who’s there?’
‘My father. And Darian, the …’ Adam tailed off, not able to find a bad enough word to describe Darian. Unfortunately, Adam was the only one who knew just how evil the Luman really was. The only other ‘people’ who had known what he was capable of had gone into their Lights, leaving him behind to deal with the mess.
‘Darian’s hot. Dunno why he never got married,’ Caitlyn mused.
‘Well, if he’s so hot, let him come and stay with you instead of us,’ Adam muttered, then immediately regretted it.
Luckily Caitlyn’s music had reached a thrashing crescendo. She turned it down. ‘Look, if you really want to hear what’s going on, take the books off the shelf just by the door handle. There’s a gap there. Not that I’ve ever listened in on anything.’ She stood up and stretched like a cat. The grey dress rippled and tautened as she moved, robbing Adam’s capacity for rational thought.
He turned away, feeling his cheeks flush, and busied himself finding the handle. But even as he slid the books out of their place on the bookcase he heard a door slamming in the next room. As he turned, Caitlyn moved up in front of him and pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Ssssh,’ she whispered, took his hand and pulled him away, back towards the sofa. ‘Whatever’s happened you’ve missed it. And I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be upstairs playing nice wee songs on the piano. So you can wait here and face the music but I need to move before I get busted.’
She was still holding his hand. Adam stared at her. Her eyes were dark and challenging. ‘I thought you were a good boy, always doing what you’re told. Maybe I was wrong.’ She smiled at him and pulled his hand onto her hip. The fabric felt cool and silky in Adam’s palm. ‘You could always come with me.’
She was looking at him expectantly and Adam knew that look now and knew what she wanted him to do. Six months ago, before he had kissed Melissa, he wouldn’t have had a clue. Now, instead of panicking, his mouth felt tingly, like it was expectant too. Only no matter how nice she looked and smelled and how soft her dress felt beneath his fingers, she wasn’t Melissa. And he couldn’t kiss her. He just wished his brain would hurry up and let his lips know because they were burning. But he wasn’t going to kiss her.
The second Adam realised this, Caitlyn seemed to realise it too. Something passed fleetingly across her face but by the time she lifted his hand off her hip it was gone. She bent and picked up her shoes. ‘I’ll be walking the dogs again in the morning. Maybe see you then.’ She smiled and slipped through the patio doors, disappearing into the darkness.
For a moment Adam wanted to follow her. Then, as the reading-room door opened, all thoughts of Caitlyn were lost as Nathanial’s furious face loomed into view.
Chapter 7
wenty-four hours later, Adam was back in London, lying on his bed and feeling moody. School started properly the next day and from his form teacher’s ranting on Friday he knew they were going to have about ten hours of homework
a night. Still, anything was better than being at home and in the doghouse.
After Caitlyn had escaped into the darkness the previous night, Adam had been left wishing that he had followed her. He had been on the receiving end of what could only be described as ‘the bollocking of the century’. Nathanial had paced round the reading room, berating Adam in low, angry tones while Uncle Paddy provided stony-faced, folded-arm back-up. He was told repeatedly that he had no right to speak to a Curator in such a manner, regardless of what he knew about the past. In fact, Darian would soon be their guest in Britain and it was therefore imperative that Adam went upstairs and apologised for his rudeness.
When Adam tried to offer a stuttering defence, he realised that he couldn’t actually say anything about what he knew. He couldn’t say that Darian wanted them all dead or at the very least ousted, just as he couldn’t mention the Frenchman’s conspiracy with Morta. He couldn’t even admit that he knew Darian was coming to Britain to spy on them because that would mean admitting he had been spying himself in the barn. All he could do was bleat unconvincingly about trying to defend Chloe’s honour because he thought that Darian might fancy her. Remembering the incredulous expressions on Nathanial and Uncle Paddy’s faces made his cheeks flush with humiliation all over again. They had looked at him like he was mad.
The worst bit had been actually apologising to Darian. No matter what harsh words Nathanial had exchanged with his nemesis behind closed doors he wasn’t going to let his son insult a Curator. Adam had been frogmarched upstairs, where he had been led into a small study and been forced into a mumbled apology and a sweaty handshake with the Frenchman. Every word had felt like a stone in his mouth. Darian had given him a cold nod and swept from the room with an air of injured pride.
He’d been too despondent to get up early that morning for a walk with Caitlyn. And, if he was honest, he’d been uneasy about it too. He hadn’t forgotten his treacherous lips the night before, tingling and telling him they would quite like to get acquainted with Caitlyn’s lips. Was it possible for your lips to cheat without the rest of you following? Adam pillowed his head in his hands and scowled at the ceiling. He’d been going out with Melissa for six months now. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t looked at any other girl in all that time (his eyes took that decision away from his brain most of the time) but this was the first time he had been tempted to do something more than look. It hadn’t helped that Caitlyn had known he was tempted. When he hadn’t turned up for the walk she had sent him a text, a single word: Chicken! She hadn’t returned by the time a tense Nathanial had led them into the Hinterland to swoop home much earlier than planned.
Adam sat up abruptly. Enough thinking. He needed a distraction. He had one last blissful evening without homework so that wasn’t going to work. He decided to go downstairs and forage for food and company. The den was empty although the fire was lit and a DVD was paused, a contorted face frozen on the screen. In the past it would have been a horror film but now it was something much more terrifying – one of Auntie Jo’s excitable, American fitness gurus. Adam sighed inwardly and went in search of the health convert.
Auntie Jo was in the kitchen, sitting at the scarred wooden table, leafing through a Sunday newspaper and swirling a large glass of something green and glutinous. Her face was shiny and her mop of black hair was pulled back off her face by a lurid green sweatband. She glanced up and did an exaggerated double take. ‘Cheer up. No one has died. Well, no one we know anyway.’
Adam rolled his eyes and grabbed the juice jug from the fridge. ‘Ha-ha. Hilarious.’
‘I thought so.’ Auntie Jo’s expression became glum as she contemplated the glass in her hand.
‘What is that?’ Whatever was in there looked almost … alive.
‘Super-bionic veggie-charged slime. I mean juice.’ Auntie Jo raised the glass to eye level. ‘Try some?’
‘No thanks,’ Adam muttered. ‘It looks too much like the last thing you made. The broccoli and banana stuff.’
‘Yes, the only thing that tastes worse than broccoli and banana soup is burnt broccoli and banana soup. Maybe if your mother had made it I could have stomached it. Anyway, bottoms up.’ Auntie Jo held her nose and took a deep gulp. A chunk of the green stuff slithered out of the glass and down her throat.
Adam turned away, feeling faint. It was still hard to believe he was looking at Auntie Jo sometimes. It wasn’t just the weight loss and the running. It was everything. The old Auntie Jo would have been snarfing down toast and whiskey at this time of the night, not drinking mushed-up veggies. She would have been mocking the stupidity of horror movie heroines, not jumping about in trainers. Now she seemed to have traded one addiction for another. At least the green stuff was hopefully better for her than the whiskey had been – although it probably wasn’t as appetising.
Auntie Jo sprang up from the chair, making a horrible yacking gargling sound and shaking her head vigorously. ‘It’s all right. You can look now. All gone. Well, most of it anyway. It doesn’t taste that bad as long as you can’t smell it. Not as bad as those Chinese herbs I had to boil up over the summer. Looked like someone had been out in their garden with a rake.’
‘Is it hard not drinking?’ As so often happened, Adam asked the question and immediately regretted it.
Auntie Jo didn’t seem concerned. ‘Sometimes. Social occasions seem to last a lot longer these days. That’s not always a bad thing though.’
‘You must have found it hard in Ireland though. When you saw Uncle Paddy’s whiskey collection.’
‘It wasn’t as much fun as I hoped it would be. Nothing to do with the whiskey though.’
Adam put on his most innocent expression. ‘Yeah, Father seemed to be in a really bad mood. He was downstairs with Darian for a while.’
Auntie Jo raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Adam. You were downstairs with Darian yourself for a period if I recall correctly.’
Adam scowled. It had been much easier to lure Auntie Jo into confession mode when she had still been drinking. ‘Want some toast?’
Auntie Jo held up an imperious hand. ‘I am immune to bribery. Whatever was going on, your father will tell us when he’s good and ready. You probably know as much as I do. Maybe more if you were foolish enough to start a shouting match with a Curator.’
‘I thought he was after Chloe,’ Adam protested, knowing how weak it sounded.
‘I wouldn’t put it past Darian,’ Auntie Jo muttered, shuddering slightly. ‘Anyway, I’m sure everything will become clear. Whatever he’s up to isn’t worth worrying about. He’s a fool.’
Auntie Jo was so wrong about Darian that Adam felt like shrieking a warning. Darian was many things but he wasn’t a fool. The problem was that Adam’s family insisted on seeing him as some kind of spiteful, lovesick puppy dog – faintly ridiculous and easy to push away. Maybe Nathanial was beginning to realise what a relentless opponent he was but the rest of the family were still blissfully unaware. Not for long though. He took his juice over to the table and sat down facing Auntie Jo.
‘There’s a big feature about Japan in the magazine section. New technology, economic recovery, that sort of thing.’ Auntie Jo passed the newspaper across the table and Adam stared at a glossy picture. A smiling geisha in clogs was talking on a tiny mobile phone while neon skyscrapers rose up behind her. Adam stared at the picture, imagining being there with his friends and Melissa. The longing inside him was so strong it was painful.
‘You really want to go, don’t you?’ Auntie Jo was quiet. When Adam nodded she sighed. ‘Your father isn’t trying to be unkind. You know we need to stay off the radar as much as we can.’
‘I know.’ He did know – only knowing didn’t make it any easier.
Auntie Jo sighed. ‘Look, I probably shouldn’t say this but I will. I think your father is going to agree to this. I think he wants you to have this chance and I think he will get you a passport. Your little outburst to Darian last night probably didn’t do you any
favours but I think you’ll be OK.’
Adam stared at her, feeling his heart beat faster. Had he heard that right? Was she serious? ‘He’s going to let me go?’
Auntie Jo nodded. ‘I think so.’
Adam leapt up, pushing the chair back so fast that it screeched horribly on the flagstone floor. ‘Yesssssssssss! That’s brilliant! I can’t wait to tell Mel— mates. My mates! I’m going to tell my mates!’ He turned away quickly, pretending to get more juice, cursing his own stupidity. Seriously, genius?! You actually just nearly told her about Melissa?! Well, watch that passport you’re getting go up in smoke – literally!
‘Adam.’
Something in Auntie Jo’s voice cut through his excitement and confusion. It was only one word but it was the way she was saying it. He pivoted on the spot and her expression made Adam’s blood run cold. It was a mixture of fondness and regret. ‘What? What is it?’
Auntie Jo bit her lip. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this either. But … I think you have a right to know. I think your father is going to get you a passport and I think he’s going to let you go on your trip. But I also think he’s going to ask you to leave school.’
‘When?’ There was a strange, icy feeling down the back of his head. Everything seemed very clear and bright. ‘When is he going to ask me to leave?’
‘Soon, Adam. I don’t know for sure but I think it will be soon. He wants you to have your trip but I think you should try and see it the way he wants you to. A chance to spend some time with your friends – and a chance to say goodbye.’
Adam blinked at her. ‘But why?’
‘Because you’re getting better, Adam. We’ve all seen it. You’re becoming a better Luman all the time. You’re finding your feet. School was never going to be forever.’ Auntie Jo sighed. ‘Try not to see it as a bad thing. It’s a sign that you’re ready to be a Luman. Your father wants you and Luc to come of age sooner rather than later.’
‘When did he decide this?’
‘He was talking about it today. I was surprised he seemed to be in such a rush but he obviously has his reasons.’
