by Kim Curran
“What are you doing here?” Aubrey said, as she let herself in.
“I was worried about you.”
“Yeah, well you needn’t be.” She kicked off her boots, threw her keys on the floor and went into the lounge. I ran back into the kitchen, grabbed her jacket off the chair and followed her into the front room.
“You forgot your jacket.”
“I didn’t forget it, Scott. I quit. I don’t want anything to do with that place or that man again. Can you believe him? What an arrogant arse. I didn’t think anyone could be worse than his son. But apparently I was wrong.” She wasn’t meeting my eyes.
“Aubrey, it’s OK. Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! I will not calm down.”
“So stay pissed off. Just tell me this: why didn’t you Shift?”
She spun around and glared at me. “Why didn’t I…”
I sensed I’d said something really stupid, but I didn’t know what. “Yeah, why didn’t you just Shift when Sir Richard pulled the gun?”
She ran her fingers through her shaggy hair and her fringe remained standing upright, revealing the thin red scar that ran from temple to temple. “You just have no idea, do you?” she said, shaking her head.
“So tell me.” I held her wrist and pulled her close to me.
“You’re an idiot, Scott Tyler, do you know that?”
“Yes, you tell me all the time.”
“I didn’t Shift because I couldn’t. Because when they called and said you were in trouble I thought you were… I don’t know. Hurt? Dead? So, I didn’t stop to think. OK?”
She sounded as annoyed with herself as me. Annoyed that she’d been stupid enough to race into a situation without planning her options and all because she thought I might be hurt. I fought back a grin.
“It was like when I heard about Mum all over again,” she said, turning away from me. My smile froze on my lips. “I remember when Abbott called me back to HQ because he had to tell me something about my mother, and I just knew. I knew she was dead. So when I got that call tonight…” She chewed at the edge of her thumbnail. “God, I need a cigarette.”
“It’s OK. I’m OK.”
“Yeah? Well you’re not the one who had a gun pointed to your head. You’re not the one who thought you were going to die. You’re not the one who was…” She looked at me, eyes brimming with tears.
“Who was what?”
She bit her bottom lip. “Nothing. Forget it.” She wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.
I tried to wrap my arms around her but she shrugged me off. “Aubrey, look at me. I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault he’s an evil git.”
“I don’t mean I’m sorry about him. I mean I’m sorry about me. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.”
She fiddled with a book on her shelves, trying to fit it in the row of other books packed tight between the two ends. It wouldn’t go.
“Aubrey,” I said, resting my hand on her shoulder and turning her to face me. “I tried.”
Aubrey sighed and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I know you did.”
I rested my forehead against hers. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I couldn’t do it again.”
“Maybe whatever it was, was just a one-off thing. Maybe it only works if you’ve just come back from the dead. Who knows? I just hope we never have to find out,” she said.
“I’m so sorry he did that to you, because of me.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have expected anything of you.”
“I was so scared,” I said, lifting her chin to look at me.
“Me too,” she said.
We kissed, our mouths slotting together, comfortable and familiar. She tasted of mint and alcohol.
“You were at Bailey’s?” I said after we’d pulled apart.
“Rosalie says hello. And Jake wants to know how we’re getting on with Project Ganymede.” She still sounded annoyed, but her guard was back up, the emotion she’d revealed hidden away again.
I remembered my meeting with Benjo. “Actually,” I said. “I have a lead on that.”
“What?”
“Anderson is a she.”
“What?”
“Frank is short for Francesca. And Anderson is her married name so no wonder we couldn’t find her on the ARES database.”
Aubrey shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!”
“None of us did. But it’s OK, now we know we can track her down.”
“How did you find this out?” Aubrey said, still sounding annoyed with herself and a little annoyed at me for getting the first breakthrough.
“Um…” I started. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Aubrey about Benjo. Not after the day she’d had. But she’d find out soon enough. “You’re probably going to want to sit down,” I said, leading her towards the sofa.
“Scott?” she said, warily. “What have you done?”
“I’ve not done anything. Only…”
“Only what?”
“Only I found Benjo. He’s alive.”
She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
“But it’s OK,” I said. “He’s in an ARES’ cell now. I arrested him.”
“But he’s dead. You said he died in Greyfield’s. That you made him eat his tools.”
“He escaped.”
Her breathing was ragged, her pale face flushed with anger. “After what he did, to us, to those kids, to Heritage! He deserves to be punished,” she said standing up, fists curled into tight balls.
“He has been, Aubrey. He’s a broken man.”
“I’ll break him again,” she said.
She paced back and forth in front of her bookshelves. Suddenly, she stopped and looked at me. “How did you know?”
I stood up and joined her. “It’s a little complicated.”
“Well, I should say so. Someone we thought was dead is now alive. Did he come after you or something?”
It had just been a coincidence that the man from the alley, the man claiming to be Aubrey’s father, had said the word green. He couldn’t have meant Benjo Greene. It had just set off a chain of thoughts in my mind. I wasn’t going to tell Aubrey about the man. She’d had a crappy enough night.
Then a book on her shelf caught my eye. I reached out and pulled it out.
A hardback, golden-bound edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
“What’s this?” I said, opening it.
“What do you mean? It’s a book. Don’t change the subject.”
On the first page, underneath the title, there was a scribbled note.
“A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.”
To my heart, my hope, my Aubrey. Love always, Dad xxx
“Your father gave you this book?”
She grabbed it off me. “So what? It was the only thing he ever gave me.”
The wicked witch. The flying monkeys. It was all making a kind of weird sense.
“What’s this all got to do with Benjo?” she said.
“Your father, Aubrey. He led me to Benjo.”
There was a loud bang as the book fell to the floor. “You saw my dad?”
“I think so. Thomas Aubrey Jones?”
She gasped at the name.
“Captain Thomas Aubrey Jones, Mapper, Fifth Class?”
Aubrey’s brow furrowed and she shook her head. “No, he was just a guy. Some loser guy who walked out on my mum. He wasn’t a Shifter.”
I looked at the book on the floor. “I’m not sure, Aubrey. I think he was. I did a search on him on ARES’ database…”
She ran back into the hallway and pulled her tablet out of her bag. Her hands were trembling still, but I didn’t think it was from anger now.
“I never thought…” she said as she turned the table on. “I mean, I Googled him, I just never.” Her words caught in her mouth as the picture of Captain Thomas Jones appea
red on the screen.
She stared at him. And now I saw the resemblance was unmistakable. He can’t have been much older than her when the picture had been taken.
“No,” she said finally, and threw the tablet on to the sofa. It landed face up, Captain Jones still staring out at us. “No!” she said, louder this time. “Because, if he’d been a Shifter – a Mapper – he would have known.”
“Known what?”
“The consequences,” she said, her voice broken by emotion.
And I knew she meant her mother’s death. Her own burning guilt. The one thing she never talked about.
“He said he had to leave to protect you.”
“Protect me?” she said, a hopefulness creeping into her voice. “From what?”
“I don’t really know what he was saying, to be honest. He was a little…” How was I going to say this? “A little mad.”
She walked over and picked the book back up, brushing her hand over the embossing on the front. “I always wondered where he was,” she said, so quietly I could hardly hear her. “What he was doing. If he ever thought about me. Why he’d just left me alone. When I was little, I used to dream he’d come and find me and take me away. Like some knight in armour, you know? But when I got older, I decided Mum was right about him. He’d never wanted me or her. I hated him so much, I thought if I ever did see him, I’d…” She bit down on her bottom lip so hard I was worried she’d draw blood. “So why now?” she said. “Why you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. He was babbling all this weird stuff about a wicked witch having taken all the children and Pandora…”
“Pandora?” she said.
“Yes, but he wasn’t making much sense. He went on about a box of hope and how I had to find green. And, well, green made me think about Benjo and how we’d never found his–”
“I remember hearing something about Pandora,” Aubrey said, ignoring me and picking up her tablet. “A charity for Shifter kids. Lane told me about coming across it when she was in Africa. I remember because I asked her if it had anything to do with saving pandas and she laughed so hard I thought she was going to choke.”
I tried to hold back my own grin.
“What?” Aubrey said, annoyed. “I didn’t know you don’t get pandas in Africa. Look, I’m a bloody good Shifter, right? I never bothered much with zoology. Stop smirking.”
I tried.
“Pandora Worldwide,” she read out from a website she’d just pulled up. “Providing hope for lost children. There’s stuff here about how long it’s been running, how many children it’s helped,” she muttered, scanning the page. “Here!” she said triumphantly. “It was set up by a woman called Francesca Goodwin. Francesca! You were right. And would you look at that?”
She handed me the tablet that was showing a picture of a woman. She was gazing into the camera, a soft, almost sad smile on her face. It was the same face I’d seen before from the ARES’ files, only older. She had a long, thin nose, large full lips and scar on her forehead that managed to make her look even more beautiful somehow. Highlighting her otherwise perfect face.
“Goodwin?” I said. “Not Anderson?”
“Maybe she married again. I don’t know. But look at her scar,” Aubrey said tapping the picture.
There was no denying it. This was the woman we were after.
“It could just be a coincidence.”
“Another one? Like Greene was a coincidence? I don’t believe it. He was right,” she said. “He wanted us to follow the trail to Pandora. To her.”
The excitement in her voice made my stomach twist. Because I knew it wasn’t the idea of finally finding Anderson that interested her. It was finding her father. I shouldn’t have told her. I should have lied. I should have kept my stupid mouth shut. The idea of her seeing that broken, crazed man, rather than the knight in shining armour she’d dreamt about as a kid, was crushing.
“She doesn’t look much like a witch,” I said.
“He said she’d taken all the children?” Aubrey asked.
I nodded.
“Well, that’s what she does.”
“To help them,” I said, pointing at the website. “To give them their hope back.”
“We can’t be sure unless we go and see for ourselves,” Aubrey said and I couldn’t read her expression. Was it anger or hope?
I shook my head. “No way. Sir Richard told me that the Ganymede file was shut. That I was to focus on the attack on the President.”
“Oh, come on Scott!” she shouted, throwing her arms in the air. “You were the one who wanted to find Anderson. Unfinished business, remember? What was it you said you wanted? Closure? Well, maybe if we take Anderson in, you’ll get it. Maybe you’ll finally sleep again.”
She was wrong. The closure I needed had nothing to do with finding Anderson and bringing her to justice. It was about me and what I’d done with my power. In fact, I wanted to forget all about Ganymede and Greyfield’s and Abbott and everything that had happened that night. For the first time in months, I felt like my power could be put to some good use in finding whoever tried to kill the President.
“He won’t be there, Aubrey,” I said, and she flinched as if I’d slapped her. “I’m sorry. But if you’re hoping to find your dad, he won’t be there.”
“Why not?” she said, fighting back the tears that threatened to come again.
“Because he said he had to stay away from you. If that man even was your dad and not some nutter.” I took her hand in mine, marvelling at how tiny it was.
“But we could try,” she said looking up at me, her eyes glittering like still pools.
Any resolve I had melted.
“OK,” I said, letting out a long sigh. “I’ll tell Sir Richard that Anderson is tied up in the attack somehow.” Aubrey smiled. “But,” I added quickly, “when we’re done you have to help me find out who was really responsible.”
“Shifter’s honour,” she said, holding up three fingers.
“There’s only one problem,” I said.
“Which is?”
“You quit,” I pointed at her jacket, which I’d thrown over the arm of her sofa.
She picked it up, brushed dust off the arms, then slipped it on. “Well, maybe I can hold on for a little longer.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The building looked ancient. More like a castle than a stately home.
I’d driven this time. Although I wished I’d let Aubrey take the wheel. The whole way down she’d huffed and rolled her eyes at how slowly I was going.
“This is going to take forever,” she said, when we had just got onto the motorway.
Turned out, she was right. We’d got stuck in the worst traffic I’d ever seen and the journey that should have only taken two hours ended up taking five.
My legs were aching by the time we pulled into the long driveway. I parked in front of the house and killed the engine. The sudden silence was eerie. I was used to the constant noise of London, the background buzz of life. But here, I couldn’t hear anything but the ticking of the engine cooling and the wind blowing in the trees.
“We’re here,” I said, unnecessarily, as I opened the door.
Aubrey jumped out of the van. The gravel crunched loudly under her feet. She looked up at the house and whistled. “Fancy,” she said.
“Spooky,” I said. “So how are we going to play it this time?”
“Well, I guess we start by knocking.”
We stepped up onto the porch and I reached out to the brass lion’s head. I jumped as I heard a scream in the distance that sounded like a child being murdered.
“What the hell…?”
“It’s just a peacock,” Aubrey said, laughing at me.
She pointed at a scrawny-looking peacock. Its beady eyes were trained on me. I raised the knocker and let it fall. All I needed now was for the door to creak open and reveal a hunchback.
Instead it was opened by a small girl, with enormous hazel eyes and a hairless
dolly tucked under her arm. She was sucking her thumb.
“Kushi! What have I told you about opening the door?” A tall, dark-haired woman wearing a pair of green combats, no shoes and a large scarf strode into the hallway.
She patted Kushi on the head and pushed her gently away. The little girl waved the hand of her plastic doll at us. Aubrey waved back. The girl burst out laughing and then ran away through one of the many doors in the hallway.
“Sorry about that, we don’t get many visitors. Especially not from ARES,” she said, eyeing our Bluecoats.
“Are you Francesca Goodwin? Previously Francesca Anderson?”
“Yes,” the woman replied. “How can I help the old agency today?”
“I’m Aubrey Jones and this is Scott Tyler,” Aubrey said. “We’d like to have a word with you.”
“Aubrey Jones?” Frankie said, tilting her head and looking intently at Aubrey. “What a… lovely name. Come in. I’ll make you some tea if you like?”
Aubrey gave me a look that I struggled to read. But as far as I was concerned, tea was a good sign. Number four had made us tea.
“That would be lovely, Mrs Goodwin,” Aubrey said, barely hiding her distrust of the woman.
“Oh, call me Frankie,” she said, waving away Aubrey’s formality. “Everyone does.”
We followed Frankie into the hallway, through a long room lined with shields and swords. A group of kids ran past, chasing each other, their high-pitched laughs echoing around the room.
Frankie didn’t even tell them to slow down, she just laughed along. She was not like any of the members of Project Ganymede we’d come across so far, that was for sure.
She led us down a narrow flight of stairs into a huge kitchen. Two boys of about twelve or thirteen were sat on either side of the wooden table playing cards. They had black hair and wore shabby, loose fitting T-shirts and scuffed trainers. They were engrossed in their game and didn’t look up as we came in. I watched as the cards that were already on the table suddenly flipped, replaced with another set. The kids were definitely Shifters. The boy on the left threw his hands up and started complaining loudly in a lyrical language I couldn’t understand. Arabic maybe?
“Boys, behave now. We have guests.”
