‘I know,’ she said, feeling a burst of irrational anger that the world was this way and not some other, more convenient arrangement.
She turned back to the valley and then, without thinking about it anymore, she moved across it. It wasn’t as slippy as she’d expected and the roof on the other side was wider.
‘Bloody hell,’ Mal said from behind her, and then he had crossed the channel and was crouched next to her.
There was definitely more room on this side, and Rose felt less in danger of slipping and tumbling over the edge. And it was in that precise moment, when some of her clenched muscles relaxed the tiniest amount and she shifted her weight to relieve the pressure on one leg, that her foot slipped on a tile. It skidded out with such force that her balance toppled and the other leg followed. In less than a single second, she was flat on her stomach on the roof, both legs over the edge and without purchase. The breath had been forced from her lungs with the impact of falling but there was no time to contemplate the pain in her body, only to realise that she was still moving, slipping down the sloped tiles, her fingers desperately scrabbling on the smooth surface, trying to find purchase.
Mal grabbed hold of her wrists and she felt the tug in her arms as he stopped her from moving. One leg was off the roof and dangling into space but she was able to pull the other up, getting her knee onto the edge and trying to push up from it.
Mal was still holding her, but then she felt them both begin to move. He was slipping too. His greater weight gathered momentum quickly and within moments her body was shooting down, over the lip of the roof and freefalling into space. Mal was still gripping her wrists and it hurt where he was holding so tightly, but she knew that he couldn’t save them. They were both falling.
Chapter Fifteen
Mary King had been running businesses in Edinburgh for a very long time. She remembered when thieves were hanged in the Grassmarket and Waverley Station was nothing but a swampy loch. The same stinking loch which was used to drown witches and to drain the filth from the piss-reeking tanneries and back-room stills. She remembered when the air was black with soot and the tenements ran with cholera and she would have thought that a soul departing from that world would be glad to leave. The city hadn’t quite loosened its grip, though, and the spirit that became Mary King endured.
She hadn’t always been called Mary, of course. She had taken that name from a woman in 1616, and it pleased her to see it on the street sign in the city and in the tourist guide books. It made her feel like an institution, all respectable and proper. Of course, those nobs in the New Town still wouldn’t have anything to do with her directly. Pringle always used intermediaries, like he was above all that gutter stuff, like he was above her. She licked her lips. He was going down a peg or two and that would be bleeding delicious. That would be a feast, all right.
Mary King ran her hand over the can again. It was definitely the real deal. It was humming with the stuff. The can was black and orange, with ‘48-hour protection’ printed on the side. It was a spray to stop you from sweating, a twenty-first century, mass-produced object, with a thousand identical copies available in supermarkets and chemists around the country, but this one was special. It had been taken to a remote tribe in South America, a place the people had never seen microwave popcorn, tarmac roads or television. They had played with the can, stared at it, wondered at its smooth surface and glossy black. She could feel all that interest and attention, all that wonder. It had seeped into the can and she could feel the tingle of power it had left behind. That was the thing with objects, they picked stuff up. Even mundane humans instinctively liked old things or, depending on their sensitivity and the object’s history, feared them. People felt it when they held something random like an arse-ugly little troll doll or a shiny foreign coin, and had the sudden urge to close their fingers tight and keep the thing forever, even though there was no logical reason. Attention and desire, clinging to the object, making it shine.
She tucked the can into her pocket and adjusted her butter-yellow cashmere wrap more securely across her shoulders. A hundred people would walk past the deodorant can and never think to touch it. If someone picked it up, even a pedestrian little human would feel a tingle, a slight thrill of otherness and longing. For Mary King and her kind, it was like putting her hand in a flame. Of course, there was a world of difference between sensing something other and knowing what to do with it. Luckily, she had the wisdom to go along with the sight. It was what had made her an unstoppable success and now, finally, she had enough juice to wash away the last pretender to her crown. She smiled, imagining Pringle’s expression when he realised his mistake. If he had joined Mary when she invited him, he would get to survive and thrive. Now, she was going to destroy him utterly and then she was going to Valvona & Crolla for an early dinner.
Back at her office, Mary King dealt with the client who had been waiting for an hour and who had the clout to move forward the property development deal she was cutting in Leith. After the hand-shaking was finished and she had a fresh coffee, she opened her hidden wall safe and put the deodorant can away. The small opening expanded to the size of a door which led to a small storage room, lined with shelves. The can sat next to a plastic doll with a hole in its rosebud mouth and a Bucks Fizz seven-inch record in a plain black paper cover. She touched a finger to a couple of items, as if greeting them, then picked up a ball of gardener’s twine on an old wooden spool. Books were often powerful. People assumed this was because of the words inside, but that wasn’t quite correct. People held books for long periods of time, they concentrated on them, they communed. They worshipped. That was what gave books – some books – power. The hush in a library was reverential for good reason.
A knock on the door disturbed her pleasant ritual and she closed up the safe room, stepping back into her office as the door swung open to reveal her assistant, Edward, looking flustered. She hesitated – she hadn’t known Edward could look anything except composed – but there wasn’t time to ask him what was wrong.
A tiny blonde girl, no more than five feet in her high-heeled boots, squeezed past Edward, who shrank against the wall.
‘Astrid, my dear, what a lovely surprise.’
The girl’s name had appeared to Mary King and she had used it, expecting the small human to look frightened and confused. Instead, the girl tilted her head to one side and said a single word. ‘Interesting.’
Mary King hesitated. This was not the reaction she had expected. She looked carefully, but the girl still looked like a girl. Undersized by modern standards, with pale yellow curls and a kissable Cupid’s bow mouth. ‘How can I help you?’ Mary King said, playing for time.
‘My friend has gone AWOL,’ Astrid said, looking around the office with open interest.
‘Oh dearie me,’ Mary King said automatically. She was peering at Astrid with all of her sight and then, just at the edges of her perception, she caught it. A glimmer of light. ‘That’s careless,’ she said. ‘Lots of bad folk in the world. I assume your friend is… delicate?’
‘Not really.’ Astrid’s mouth twisted. ‘She’s attracted attention, though, got herself a fanclub.’
‘Who might belong to that club?’ Mary King cautioned herself to stay calm. This girl had a glimmer, would make a tasty meal, but there was something off about her too. Something that was making Mary King want to step backward, not rush in.
‘An old-school hunter. Mal Fergusson,’ Astrid said. ‘But first I’d like to hear more about this Pringle fellow.’
Mary King sucked in her breath. A human throwing Pringle’s name around as it were nothing. ‘How do you—’
The girl smiled widely looking, suddenly, nothing like a girl at all. ‘Oh, you’d be amazed at the things I know.’
* * *
Blinding white. Like a hundred LED bulbs shining into her eyes. Rose blinked to try to clear her vision. She wasn’t falling anymore, but perhaps that was because she was dead.
As the bright white light
faded, she realised that she was no longer in Edinburgh and that her body ached in a way she didn’t think it would if she was dead. Surely spirits didn’t feel pain. She must have travelled, but she didn’t feel sick the way she had in the catacombs in Paris. She didn’t know if that was because she was getting used to doing it or whether it was because there was a cooling breeze on her skin and she wasn’t underground and surrounded by bones.
Everything was still white, though, until she lifted her chin and saw bright, azure blue. Mal was sitting on the ground a few feet away, his hands on his knees. He was taking deep breaths like he was trying not to throw up.
‘It’s the sea,’ Rose said, finding the word for the vast bright blue, sandwiched between the white sand and the pale blue sky. The sun was shining and the turquoise water belonged in some exotic location in the tropics. ‘Where are we?’
‘Scotland.’ Mal was looking around with a strange expression.
‘No chance,’ she said. The breeze sprang up, and it contained a chill. ‘Really?’
‘We’re on Iona. I came here with my family once.’
‘Holiday?’
‘Work,’ Mal said. ‘But we did stay on for a couple of days after. Survival training.’ He turned, shading his eyes from the sun, and looked back towards the land. ‘This looks really familiar. It might have been near here.’
Rose sank to the ground and raked her fingers through the fine white sand. It was real. The salt on her lips was real.
Mal came and crouched next to her. ‘How did we get here?’
‘It seems to be a thing I can do. When I did it before, we landed in Paris.’
‘But you can do it, not me. Why am I here? And how did you move Astrid?’
‘Astrid said I stay still and change the world around me.’
‘That doesn’t help.’
‘I know,’ Rose said. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’ve never known this kind of power before. Not without symbols and objects. Spellwork.’
He was looking at her with admiration and fear. It stirred memories. People had looked at her that way before, long ago. Rose swallowed. ‘But I don’t know how to control it. I don’t know what I’m doing.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Would symbols help me with that? What can they do?’
‘I’ve got this one.’ He pulled up his sleeve and showed her a black-ink tattoo. ‘It means that I heal faster.’ He put his head on one side. ‘Have you really not heard of them?’
Rose shook her head.
‘And you don’t have any tattoos?’
‘Just this.’ She pushed her sleeve up and showed him her rose. ‘It’s made without ink so it just fades over time.’
‘That’s not a symbol I know.’
‘It’s a rose,’ she said, feeling stupid for stating the obvious.
‘I know that.’ He gave a small smile. ‘I mean I don’t know it as a power symbol.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it is,’ she said. ‘I just started getting them to help me mark time. When I blank out, I lose time, sometimes lots. I don’t always have a watch and it all felt a bit unreliable, so I thought this would be a good way to be sure. Sometimes it’s completely gone, the skin totally healed, and then I know it’s been months.’
‘You’ve forgotten months of your life?’
‘I think I’ve probably forgotten years,’ she said, forcing the words out. It felt good to say them. Frightening but honest. And they had the ring of certainty. Her mind felt as if it was clearing, here in this wide space, with the wind blowing and the smell of salt in the air. ‘Astrid knows something about it,’ she said, feeling her mind getting clearer with every breath. ‘We never argue. Never. But I was angry and I told her to leave me alone and she walked off and I haven’t seen her since.’
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ Mal said.
Rose took another deep breath. ‘You don’t understand. She’s never left me before. I don’t remember the last time I went more than a few hours without seeing her.’ Except when she was asleep. Or having a blackout. And those times didn’t count in her mind, because the time slipped past in the blink of an eye.
Mal hunched his shoulders inside his jacket, like he was trying to make himself smaller. ‘Okay. Putting that aside, what do we do now?’
She loved that he’d said ‘we’. Loved it but felt the guilt like a two-by-four hitting her around the head. ‘You don’t have to do anything. Walk away. Get as far away from me as possible.’
He looked towards the dunes as if searching for a path, a way out. She smiled encouragingly. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Thanks for not killing me.’
‘We need to get moving. We don’t know if the Sluagh can follow us here.’ He stood up and held his hand out to help Rose to her feet. His grip was warm and she found herself wishing he hadn’t let go once she was upright.
‘I don’t think they can,’ she said, trying to hide her relief that he wasn’t walking away. She felt the loss of Astrid like a hollow and, selfishly, she didn’t want to lose the only other person she knew.
‘Still,’ he said. ‘I’d feel happier on the move.’
Rose’s legs buckled and she sank back onto the sand. It was all too much.
‘Rose?’ Mal was frowning. ‘I really think we should move on.’
‘In a minute,’ she said. She still felt shaky and weak. She sat on the beach and looked out to sea. The sky met the sea and the sea met the land and it was all of one piece. Images were clicking together. Thoughts and memories rising, rebuilding structures which had fallen into disrepair. She was in an empty room. A second later she identified it as a pub. There was sunshine coming through the windows, throwing squares of light onto the floor. A young woman stood behind the bar, stacking glasses from a trolley onto the shelves. She turned, her mouth forming a perfect ‘o’, a comedic expression of surprise.
Then Rose was back on the beach. She felt as if she had been tugged back, like a rope was connecting her to this place and it had been yanked hard.
Mal sat next to her, his hands around his knees. He looked so young. Beneath the stubble and the scars, his bones were so fragile. She had to tell him but she knew it would be the end of their partnership, friendship, whatever had begun to build. ‘You were right,’ she said.
‘About what?’
‘Me. There’s something wrong with me.’
‘Well, that makes two of us,’ he said. He leaned over and she felt his arm around her shoulders, his warm hand on her arm. ‘I was raised to hunt demons and now I’m working for one. I’ve betrayed everything, done bad things…’ He trailed off for a moment and Rose waited. After a few moments, with the sound of the waves lapping the shore, he said: ‘I just sometimes wish I was normal, you know? That I didn’t know the things I know. That I had never been taught to see.’
Rose reached over and took his hand, squeezed it for a moment in lieu of speaking. Her throat felt thick and she knew that any words would be clumsy.
‘Anyway,’ Mal said, giving a little laugh as if he was embarrassed. ‘Everyone hates their lives. It’s the human condition.’
‘What about demons? Or things like me. Are we happy?’
‘I’ve never met anything like you before,’ he said.
She took a deep breath. ‘And your boss wants me because of the things I can do?’
Mal looked out at the sea for a moment. ‘I’m supposed to take you to him. It’s my job. But I think he killed other girls. Girls with powers like you. There was a girl down in Peebles who had telekinesis, might have been psychic, too. I don’t know.’
‘He killed her?’
‘I think so,’ Mal said. ‘And now he has sent the Sluagh.’
‘I don’t want to die,’ Rose said. His arm tightened and she wished she could lean into him, put a head on his shoulder and pretend she was a normal girl. A human who could kiss and love and feel and live.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I won’t let anything hurt you. I’m not going to take you to Pringle. I’m sorry I f
rightened you but I’m going to help you. I just need to get back to Edinburgh so that I can move my brother. You can go wherever you want. I’d recommend far away.’ He gestured around. ‘This isn’t a bad start, but I think you should keep moving. For a while at least.’
‘You were right about me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I can control it. What if I hurt somebody?’ She didn’t say the words she was most frightened of – what if she already had?
‘There are people who can help. I see this guy for my spellwork. There’s probably a symbol that will give you the control, and if not, there are other places we can go, people we can ask.’
‘I’m remembering things, places I think I’ve been.’ Rose kept her gaze on the sea. She felt his arm tighten around her for a moment. ‘But it’s all fractured. I don’t know who I was or what I’ve done. It could be anything. If your boss wants to own me or kill me, that doesn’t sound good, does it? That suggests that I’m something bad.’
‘He’s a bad thing. Doesn’t mean that you are.’
‘I feel sick,’ she said. ‘I’m so frightened but there’s a part of me that is acting frightened. I feel like I’m going through the motions, but I haven’t even got a script to follow. I can’t remember if I’m the kind of person who would panic or be calm, be cruel or kind. I don’t know what films I like to watch or books I read. The more I think about my life the more insubstantial it seems.’ She took a breath. She didn’t say the last bit, but she thought it. ‘What if I’m not even a person?’
She felt Mal’s hand leave her shoulder. He leaned forward and she thought he was preparing to stand up. Instead, he took her hand in both of his and pushed something into her palm.
‘Here,’ he said, closing her fingers over the object. ‘Can you feel this?’
She closed her eyes for a second, then nodded.
‘This stone is real. It’s from this place and this moment. Whoever Rose MacLeod was in the past, this stone is for the Rose MacLeod who is sitting here on this island with me.’ He frowned with concentration as if willing her to understand. ‘Keep it with you. It means you have a choice. You can choose to be this Rose MacLeod.’
The Lost Girls Page 18
