by Mia James
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, glaring over towards Chessy, ‘they haven’t seen the last of me yet.’
April’s heart sank as she saw Ling and Simon get up and approach their table. Simon was wearing all black, with thick make-up around his eyes. He didn’t look much like the Simon who had befriended April back in the autumn; he looked harder, more edgy. Ling, meanwhile, was wearing a tight mini-dress and looked as if she had made the complete transformation from geek loser to fully-fledged Sucker. Had she really made the final step and been turned?
‘Now then, who do we have here?’ challenged Ling, leaning on Simon’s shoulder. ‘Is it the Face of Ravenwood?’
‘Listen, Ling, if you’ve just come to ...’ began Davina, but Simon stepped forward.
‘She wasn’t talking to you,’ he said with disdain. ‘She was talking to the new Head Girl.’
‘Head Girl?’ said Davina, her eyes flicking to April.
‘Dr Tame asked me this morning after assembly,’ April said sheepishly. ‘I couldn’t very well turn him down.’
‘And why should she?’ said Ling looking contemptuously at Davina. ‘She’s the perfect girl for the job.’
Davina looked as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She had always been top dog at the school, undisputed queen of the Faces and, all in the space of a few days, she had been demoted and marginalised. April saw the hurt in Davina’s eyes, but could also understand why Ling was so gleefully twisting the knife. Davina had never exactly made her followers feel as if they had any significance; rather she treated them as if they were just minions she would graciously allow to bask in her reflected glory. The truth was, Davina really could be a grade-A bitch, but even so, April couldn’t stand to see her squirm.
‘Thanks guys,’ said April quickly, ‘But I think there are better candidates. I just think the headmaster’s trying to help me out a bit. You know, after all that’s happened?’
‘Oh yes, I heard about your dad’s grave,’ said Ling, ‘So creepy. You’re so brave to come in to school after all that.’
The truly “creepy” thing was how much Ling sounded like the old Davina, how effortlessly she had adopted her mentor’s techniques of offering up compliments that were actually barbed putdowns. Davina, for her part, looked as if she was trying to sink through the cracks in the tiles.
‘I just wanted to come over and see that you were okay,’ said Ling. ‘Hey, why don’t you come and sit with us? You can bring your ... friend if you like.’
‘No, that’s okay,’ said April. ‘I’m fine here.’
Caro walked over carrying a tray laden with food. ‘Hi,’ she said shyly to Simon.
April watched Simon’s reaction – she was sure his smile was genuine. Maybe Ling saw it too, because she slid an arm around his waist.
‘God, Caro, are you going to eat all that?’ said Ling, laughing. ‘If I even looked at those chips, I’d blow up like a tyre.’
‘I guess you and me are different, then huh?’ replied Caro, jamming a doughnut into her mouth.
‘Thank God for that,’ sneered Ling, dragging Simon away, waggling her fingers in the air by way of a goodbye.
‘Yeah, thank God for that,’ said Davina quietly. April almost shivered at the look on her face: pure, undisguised hatred, and something else. Hunger.
Jeez, if looks could kill, she thought.
But at Ravenwood, it wasn’t the looks you had to worry about, was it?
Chapter Seven
April slid her key into the lock and pushed open the front door. ‘Gramps?’ she called, her voice echoing around the marble entrance hall.
‘Your grandfather is in the kitchen, Miss April.’
April jumped as she saw Stanton, Thomas Hamilton’s butler standing in the shadows. What the hell is he doing hiding there? She wondered. Does he spend all day just lurking in the hall waiting for someone to come in?
Nodding her thanks, she headed down the stairs towards the basement kitchen, letting out a long breath. The butler wasn’t the only reason April was finding her move to her grandfather’s Covent Garden house difficult. For one thing, it was about ten times the size of her old place in Highgate, filled with narrow passages and dark corners. The other was the feeling of being watched, not just by the skeletal Stanton, but also by her grandfather. Ever since she had arrived with her little suitcase, Gramps had been unusually attentive, fussing around, making sure she had everything she needed. Of course she knew that he meant well, but what April needed right now was some space, to be left alone to sort things out in her head. There were so many unanswered questions buzzing about inside, she felt as if she might explode. Still, it made a change from living with Silvia, she reflected. At least here, she felt she was wanted.
‘Here she is!’ shouted Thomas as April reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘My Princess has come home.’
April had tried unsuccessfully to get her grandfather to stop calling her “Princess”. She had pointed out she was no longer a six-year-old girl who dressed up in fairytale costumes, but she might as well have saved her breath. To Grampa Thomas, April was a cute little pink-cheeked four year old and she always would be. Secretly, April quite liked it. In the tangled mess of her life right now, it was nice to have some sort of certainty and she knew that this giant bear of a man would do anything he could to keep his adored granddaughter from harm.
‘So come on, sit down. I’ve just made tea,’ said her grandfather, pulling out a chair for her at the wooden kitchen table and reaching for another mug. ‘Now, tell me all about your first day back at school.’
April pulled a face. ‘We met the new headmaster,’ she said as he poured milk into her tea.
‘You didn’t like him?’
April shrugged. She knew she had to be careful, as Grampa Thomas was connected somehow with the Ravenwood hierarchy – the main reason she had got into the school in the first place was because of him. ‘Well, he seemed to like me. He wants me to be head girl.’
‘Head girl? Oh darling, that is marvellous!’ he boomed, scooping her up into a huge hug. ‘I am so proud of you. See? Things are starting to turn around. I told you they would.’
She nodded sadly, staring into her cup. ‘Sorry Gramps, I knew you’d be pleased, but it’s kind of hard to get all worked up about it at the moment.’
‘Yes, Dr Tame said that this might happen.’
She looked at him sharply. ‘You’ve spoken to Dr Tame?’
‘Don’t be angry, Prilly. He was only worried about your welfare. After you were rescued from that fire, he called to warn me about the possible long-term trauma – he is a psychologist, after all. He said you might be suffering from PTD or PTS, something like that. He said the shock waves would keep coming, especially after all your other troubles.’
Damn, thought April. She truly had underestimated Dr Tame. Had he had been planning to take over Ravenwood all along? Maybe he’d even been in league with Benjamin – some plan to remove Mr Sheldon as headmaster ... no, that was just paranoid – and she reminded herself that this was Dr Tame’s speciality – planting doubts in your mind, keeping you off balance.
‘Maybe he’s right Gramps,’ she sighed. ‘But I’m doing my best.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ smiled Thomas. ‘You’re a strong girl; you get knocked down – you get straight back up again. It’s the Hamilton way.’
She didn’t feel strong, she never really had. But there was something about her grandfather, a solidness, a stability that she trusted. April knew she didn’t have to pretend when she was around him.
‘There’s one thing I can’t seem to get past though,’ said April quietly, ‘I keep closing my eyes and seeing the tomb, you know, with the door open.’ She felt tears beginning to well up and wiped them away. ‘Sorry, it’s silly isn’t it? I’ve been strangled and almost roasted alive, but the one thing I seem to be bothered about is somebody breaking into a grave site.’
‘It’s not silly,’ said Thomas firmly, squeezing her hand. ‘Someone has stolen your
father’s body; anyone would be upset by that. And believe me, I will move heaven and earth to get it back – and I will make sure whoever did it is punished.’
He put his arms around her and held her tightly. April hugged him back, but was dismayed that she could feel his ribs. She pulled away from him and looked into his craggy face. He still seemed the same man – huge head, overlong wavy grey hair, bushy eyebrows and deep laughter lines around his mouth – same old Gramps, but were there deeper bags underneath his eyes perhaps? A slight paling of the skin? Or was that only her nervous imagination?
‘But you’re okay, aren’t you Gramps?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ said Thomas banging his chest. ‘Strong as bear.’
Not “strong as a bear”, noted April with an inner smile – her grandfather had integrated well into British society, but occasionally his mask slipped and his Eastern roots showed through a little.
‘It’s just it feels like you’ve lost weight.’
Thomas laughed. ‘Ah, you females and your obsession with weight. You complain when we’re too fat, complain when we’re too thin; you’re never happy. Your mother? She’s always telling me I eat the wrong things and that I should join a gym. I tell her “I get enough exercise running around after my girls.”’
April giggled, but then looked at him. ‘I just don’t want anything to happen to you ... I’ve already lost dad.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Thomas. ‘I fully intend to live until I am one thousand years old. And even then, St Peter will have to bring a team of horses to drag me through the pearly gates.’
‘Sorry,’ smiled April. ‘I just get worried.’
Thomas nodded and patted April’s hand. ‘I understand. Worries can be good, worries can keep you safe. If no one worried about falling off cliffs, the human race might never have made it out of the caves. But you can’t let worries rule your life. You are young, you should be going out into the world, enjoying yourself,’ – he nudged her with his elbow – ‘kissing this boy Gabriel, eh?’
April felt herself blush. ‘Gramps!’
‘Hey, I know you young girls, you think of nothing but boys, boys, boys. Your mother was the same.’
April twisted her mouth. ‘I don’t think she’s quite grown out of it.’
Thomas’s smiled faded a little. ‘No, and I don’t condone what your mother has done. It was a bad thing, a very bad thing. One thing I value above all others is family and Silvia?’ he shook his head. ‘She has turned her back on it. But still, I love her, and I think you do too.’
‘Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I want to be around her at the moment.’
Thomas tipped his head to one side and looked at her shrewdly. ‘But I think you’re worried about her too, yes?’
April shrugged. ‘I suppose. I mean, she’s up there in Highgate all on her own and there’s still some maniac on the loose. I don’t want anything to happen to her.’
‘She will be fine, Prilly. I know you laugh at me for saying that Hamilton women are strong, but it is true. I had a sister, did you know that?’
April shook her head. Thomas paid constant lip-service to the importance and strength of the family unit, but beyond her mother, father and grandfather, with rare visits from Uncle Luke, April hadn’t got the foggiest idea who any of her extended family were. She had a vague idea that there was a tangled family tree of cousins, half siblings and uncles three times removed back “in the old country”, but no one had ever taken her to a family gathering or talked to her about family history. April had always assumed there was some sort of family feud going on that no one wished to acknowledge. Not that April had any particular desire to go to dull family parties where she’d have to make small talk with strange old ladies and eat weird pickled fish, but even so, she had always been curious about the strange dark portraits hanging in Thomas’s hallway.
‘Your mum’s Aunt Katrine – she was your great aunt, I suppose,’ began Thomas, a smile drifting onto his lips as if he was picturing her. ‘God, she was a feisty child, but her mind was always on other things. Once our mother scolded her for something – letting the milk boil over, not feeding the goat, something like that. Well, Katrine ran out of the house, went to the forest and, using a forked stick, picked up a bee’s nest and dropped it through the shutters of our cottage.’
‘No way!’ gasped April. ‘What happened?’
Thomas shook his head. ‘I was only a baby at the time, but they tell me I was stung all over my body. In the confusion, my father kicked over a lantern and almost burned the house to the ground.’ He chuckled softly. ‘That is what I mean when I say strong. We have fire in our bellies. Back in the old country, they used to say that the first head of our family was half man, half dragon.’
April looked at him wide-eyed, then Thomas cracked up laughing.
‘That kind of nonsense was one of the reasons I left the country. They believe all that crap over there, I swear.’
April laughed along, but inside she was thinking that maybe being a Fury wasn’t so unusual after all. Maybe it ran in the family.
Settled in her bedroom, April curled up on her bed and picked up her mobile. It had been a terrible day by anybody’s standards and she was desperate to speak to Gabriel about it all. She had only just persuaded him to join the 21st century and get a mobile, but it went straight to voice mail.
‘Hey babes, just wanted to hear your voice,’ she said. ‘Been a crazy day at Ravenwood. Or should I say another crazy day. Call me, huh? Kiss.’
She dropped the phone and looked up at the ceiling, wondering how often her mother had lain in this very spot, looking up at the same ceiling; had she ever felt the same way?
April’s room, if she could really call it that, was a rather grand bedroom on the first floor overlooking the street. It was the same room which had once belonged to her mother. April smiled as she imagined Silvia growing up here and in equally grand houses in Belgravia and St. James’s. With that sort of upbringing and Gramps’ endless declarations about how she was his “special princess” how could she have failed to turn out like she did: arrogant, snobbish and rude? Oh, and explosive, don’t forget that one. Around April Grandpa Thomas was sweet and gentle , but when he and Silvia got together, it was like a match had been tossed into a box of fireworks.
April giggled: were those cracks in the ceiling the result of endless shouting and throwing of ornaments? But the smile quickly faded; thinking about her mother only made April feel sad. She felt a horrible sense of guilt at having abandoned her in Highgate, but what else could she have done? Shrug and say her mother’s actions were okay? April knew making a stand had been right, but that didn’t make it any easier. The truth was: April was lonely too. However useless Silvia was as a mother, at least she was there – most of the time anyway. Increasingly, April felt that she was getting further and further away from a place of safety. It was as if she had fallen overboard in the middle of the night and was watching the boat sailing into the distance without her. April hadn’t even realised she was crying until she felt the warm tears trickling down her cheeks.
‘Sod this,’ she muttered, wiping her face. She grabbed the phone and scrolled down to “Fee” and pressed “Call”.
There was a long pause, and just as April was thinking about hanging up, she heard her best friend answer.
‘Sorry babe,’ said Fiona, ‘Just playing high-stakes poker on the net. Had two pair – didn’t want to miss the bet.’
April laughed and immediately felt better. The world could be falling apart and you could always rely on Fee to be thinking about something else.
‘How are you doing?’
‘Oh, about a mil and a half up. Loads of idiots in Slovenia who don’t know a flush from a straight. Not real money, unfortunately, but one of these days when someone lets me have a credit card, I’ll buy an island in the Caribbean and we can all move there.’
‘Knowing my luck, it’ll be full of zombies.’
&n
bsp; ‘Ah, do I detect my favourite vampire hunter is feeling a bit down?’
April smiled. ‘You could say that. Sometimes it all just feels a bit too ... much.’
Fee clucked her tongue. ‘That’s only a natural reaction, hon. It is all a bit too much. You’ve basically got the weight of the world on your shoulders – if you don’t sort this crap out, we’re all going to hell in a hand basket.’
‘Oh, thanks for the uplifting pep talk,’ said April, sarcastically.
‘Sorry, but if your best friend can’t tell you the truth, who can? It’s serious, babe. I really don’t need to tell you that. People keep trying to hurt you, and, unlike my game, the stakes are as real as it’s possible to get. But even so, you can’t let it overwhelm you; let’s be logical here. Start with what’s most important to you.’
April thought about it for a moment. ‘Gabriel,’ she said, blushing a little as she said it. ‘I – I’m worried about him, Fee.’
‘Worried? What about? I thought you were all loved-up together now.’
‘We are – at least I think we are. But he’s been acting strange. He couldn’t remember what happened at Sheldon’s house that night. I can’t put my finger on why it bothers me, but it’s odd.’
Fiona paused. ‘Well ... the night of the fire was traumatic for him too, you know. He got set on fire, then had to fight the head of a vampire clan. It’s a lot to deal with.’
‘Maybe, but I’m still desperate to get him out of this dark hole he’s in. I—I just want him back.’
‘Okay, let’s work out how to do that.’
April shook her head. ‘It all just seems so impossible, like I’m weighed down by everything.’
‘I know, I know. But just take it one step at a time. What’s the first thing you need to do? To get Gabriel back, I mean?’
April looked down, thinking about Gabriel, seeing his face. And to her surprise, she didn’t think of the sleek, polished Gabriel, the dashing young man in the dinner jacket at the Spring Fundraiser – she thought of him as he had been that morning, sitting at the top of Primrose Hill: ill, grey-skinned, in pain. That was the real Gabriel. Yes, though frail and sickly, at the same time he’d been so real, so alive, someone who could register pain and cold and the passing of the hours. And she knew she had to do everything she could to get him – the real Gabriel – back.
