Pull

by Anne Riley

  He sticks the tips of his fingers into his pockets and then rakes them through his hair. Worst-case scenarios race through my head—Papa led a secret life as a mobster, or Albert is the product of some alternate family Papa had. What if Albert and I are related? What would that make us—third cousins? Or would this be one of those “once removed” situations I’ve never quite understood?

  “Edward Clayton was one of the most active Servatores of our time,” he says with carefully measured words. “He’s averted more disasters than Casey, Dan, Isaac, and me put together.”

  A strange sloping sensation makes me grip the arms of the chair.

  Papa? A Servator? “He’s saved dozens of lives, usually without anyone knowing what had happened,” he goes on. “Your grandfather was a Servator legend.”

  He’s got to be kidding. “I’ve known Papa all my life. If he could manipulate time, I would have known about it.”

  Albert looks at me closely. “Would you?”

  The word “yes” is on the tip of my tongue, ready to break loose. But…would I have known?

  We come to London for eight weeks a year. That’s it. I haven’t really grown up around Nana and Papa. In fact, when you get right down to it, their presence in my life was never consistent. Sure, we’ve spent a lot of time talking, but keeping a big secret from us would have been pretty easy for Papa to do.

  And, come to think of it…I remember something about Papa saving someone’s life. Dad mentioned it, maybe four or five years ago, but I can’t recall any of the details.

  “Wouldn’t people have made a big deal about all the lives he saved?” I say. “My grandmother? My dad? I remember something about Papa rescuing a person from some kind of accident, but that’s it. Wouldn’t they have talked about the other saves?”

  “Not if they didn’t know. He made the news more than any of us, though—locally, anyway.”

  “He made the news?” So that’s what the priest meant. Some of the attendees only knew of Edward Clayton because they’d read about him in the news.

  I throw my hands out to my sides. “How could people not know you’re saving all these lives?”

  “Think about it. We rewind time. We make situations play out differently. Nobody knows what would have happened if we hadn’t intervened.” He bites his bottom lip, then mumbles, “Except you, of course.”

  I stare at the floor while my brain spins into overdrive. Papa was a strong man, sure, but he was hardly the superhero Albert’s making him out to be. I can’t reconcile this mega-Servator legend with the cardigan-wearing grandfather I knew.

  “Tell me how you knew him,” I say.

  Albert sits on the bed with a loud creak. Thanks to the room’s tiny dimensions, he’s unnervingly close to me, even from my station in the leather chair.

  “I met him when I was thirteen,” he says.

  His voice is so soft that it nearly blends with the chatter of the rain against the windows. I hadn’t noticed until now that it had started back up again.

  “He came to speak to our school about courage. How to be a hero even when you’re afraid. Even though only a few of his saves were public knowledge, it was enough to earn him a nickname. People called him the Blackheath Savior.”

  “The Blackheath Savior,” I echo. The name feels good in my mouth. I could say it a hundred times and still find it impressive.

  He nods. “While he was speaking in our auditorium, a girl had a seizure. She fell out of her chair and started convulsing so violently that she cracked her skull on the floor.”

  He looks down at his hands, which are clasped between his knees. He’s running a thumb over his palm. Rough callouses spread from the base of his thumbs to the edge of his hands. He didn’t get those from shelving books, that’s for sure.

  “She stopped breathing at one point, and everyone panicked. I looked at the stage and there was Edward, standing there with his eyes closed. He held his hands out in front of him and then everything started spinning. I felt like I was getting sucked into a black hole. There was a bright flash of light, and then we were all sitting calmly in the auditorium, just as we had been a few minutes before. The girl was in her seat again, listening to Edward speak.” He straightens up, making the mattress complain. “Any guesses as to what happened next?”

  Oh, I have a guess. I can see it playing out in my head because I’ve seen how Albert operates. “He stopped her seizure from getting out of control.”

  “Yep. He came down into the crowd, pretending to choose volunteers to reenact one of his saves, but in reality he was just placing himself near her. He caught her when she fell out of her chair, and they were able to keep her from hurting herself until the convulsions passed.”

  “And you and Casey were the only ones who felt the Pull.” I imagine younger versions of Albert and his sister sitting together in an airy auditorium, feeling something inexplicable. Something that would change their lives forever.

  “We were losing our minds,” he replies with a laugh. “I asked the bloke next to me if he felt it, and he looked at me like I was insane. I remembered the way Edward closed his eyes, and the way he held his hands out, right before everything rewound. Casey didn’t want to ask him about it. She was afraid I was wrong, that he’d think we were crazy. But I had to know. I approached him after the assembly. He listened as I told him what I’d felt, and then he gave me his card. Told me to phone him if I wanted answers.”

  “Did you call that night?”

  He shakes his head. “For weeks, I swung from one side to the other, hurrying to the old payphone down the street but then never actually phoning him. I must have chucked his card in the bin and fished it back out a dozen times. Eventually, though, I went through with it.”

  I fold my legs into the chair and rest my elbows on my knees. “Is that when he told you about the Pull?”

  “He told me a little on the phone, yeah. Enough to convince me he knew what I’d felt, and that it was something real.” Albert mimics my position on the bed and leans toward me. For two people who aren’t even sitting on the same piece of furniture, we are oddly near each other. “So many strange pieces of my life clicked into place during those few weeks.”

  “Like what?”

  “Casey and I both knew we could Pull. We’d done it before accidentally. It requires a huge amount of focus, but sometimes, that focus takes the form of panic.” He fiddles with the edge of the quilt—a patchwork type thing, the kind Nana used to make before the arthritis in her knuckles put a stop to it. “We didn’t have a name for what we’d done, and Casey didn’t like to discuss it. Talking to your grandfather was like the sun coming out after years of rain.”

  “Why did he never say anything about this?” I didn’t mean to let the hurt creep into my voice, but there it is. “It seems weird that he never told us.”

  Albert gives me an understanding smile. “Didn’t want people thinking he was a lunatic. That’s why we all stay a bit underground. It’s hard to save lives when you’re trapped in a mental institution.”

  “Right,” I say. “So he kept up with you all these years?”

  “Yeah. We lived in the dorms at school—this bloody pretentious place with gates and gargoyles.” He rolls his eyes. “But he visited all the time. He practically became a father to us.”

  I wait a beat before asking my next question. “Where’s your real father, Albert?”

  His eyes shift to the floor. “He’s away.”

  “And your mother?”

  He starts to answer, but an eruption of thuds and a panicked shout—“Al, get down here, quick!”—from the ground floor sends both of us rocketing toward the door.

  “What is it?” I yell.

  Albert’s eyes are lit with alarm. He flies out to the landing and grips the banister, leaning over the staircase. “I don’t know. Hang on.”

  He’s halfway down the first flight of stairs and I’m hot on his trail. We can’t see anything, but the grunts of the struggle have grown louder. Gl
ass breaks somewhere below, and I flash back to the pub, to cowering inside the men’s bathroom as Albert defended my life.

  I won’t cower this time.

  A wiry, dark-haired woman with a vicious face is trying to force her way into the house. Dan has his whole body pressed against the inside of the door. He’s holding a broken beer bottle in one hand. Every time the woman sticks her arm through the gap in the door, Dan jabs it with the broken bottle, causing the woman to howl in rage and jerk her arm back out. She’s like a zombie, only faster and more aggressive than the lumbering creatures I’ve seen on TV. There’s a lump of horror in my throat that I can’t swallow. When Dan sees Albert, the panic in his expression recedes a fraction.

  “Not the biggest of problems,” Dan says with a grunt. “Just a Bestia. Still, she’s got a bone to pick over something. Help?”

  “Go back upstairs,” Albert calls to me over his shoulder. He throws himself against the door and the woman growls in protest. “Get in my room and lock the door.”

  Even though he can’t see me, I shake my head. There’s no way I’m sitting on the sidelines again.

  TWENTY

  THE WOMAN IS SCRAWNY, WITH DIRTY, GRAYING SKIN and wild eyes. She’s not in her right mind; the evidence lies in every miscalculated grab of her hands, every rage-filled shriek that follows Dan’s repeated bottle-jabs.

  “Ran out for the mail and this lovely bird tried to follow me back in,” Dan says to Albert, his face strained with effort. “Couldn’t close the door fast enough.”

  “Don’t worry about it; let’s just get her out of here.” Albert throws his weight against the door. His hands turn white at the edges from the pressure. Even with Dan doing the same thing next to him, the gap in the door keeps getting wider.

  “Bit strong for a Bestia,” Albert remarks pointedly. “Look at her!” Dan cries, adjusting his footing. “What else could she be? Certainly not a Magus, is she? Does she look capable of enchanting anyone?”

  Suddenly the woman’s entire rain-streaked head thrusts, snarling, through the gap in the door. Dan’s shoes squeak as he scrambles for traction, but he can’t find it—the gap in the door is a few inches wider now. Even though Dan recovers quickly and throws himself against the door, the woman thrusts one bony arm into the house and rakes her claw-like fingernails across Albert’s neck.

  “Isaac!” Albert shouts. “Get in here!”

  “He and Casey went out, mate,” Dan says. “It’s just you and me.”

  Except that it isn’t.

  I leap off the stairs and wedge myself between them. If another body against the door is what they need, there’s no reason I can’t be that body. But, as expected, Albert turns to me with fire in his eyes.

  “Rosie! What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Helping,” I grunt. Man, this Bestia is strong. “What does it look like?”

  Albert shakes his head. “I don’t want you down here—”

  His words cut off as a hand clamps down on the woman’s face from outside the house, pulling her away from the door. It slams shut with the sudden loss of pressure, but Albert flings it back open so hard it bounces off the wall. He and Dan leap onto the front stoop. Isaac, who must have come home just in time to see what was happening, has the woman in a headlock.

  “To the cellar,” Albert says. “Take the outside stairs, though. I don’t want her in the house.”

  Isaac nods.

  “What’s in the cellar?” I ask.

  Albert watches Isaac drag the Bestia halfway down the front stairs. “A disposal system.”

  The words give me a sick feeling. “What kind of disposal system?”

  Isaac lets out a sudden howl as the woman’s ragged fingernails rake across his forearm. He loses his grip and she tries to escape, but Albert darts through the door and catches her arm. She wails, wraps her free arm around Isaac’s neck, and all three of them tumble down to the sidewalk. Dan leaps down the stairs after them, trying to help wrestle the Bestia back toward the house, but she slips out of the fray and darts across the street to the heath. Albert, Isaac, and Dan sprint after her.

  I hover in the doorway as the fight migrates onto the heath. The rain has lightened, but the ground is still a wet mess. Dirty water sprays around the group as their feet scramble to gain traction in the mud. Albert jumps on the woman’s back and punches her in the ribs, in the face, wherever he can reach. The woman swings her arms uselessly as Albert tightens an elbow around her neck. But then she throws Albert to the ground. He hits hard, flat on his back, and his face crumples in pain.

  “Oi,” calls a raven-haired girl running up the steps to the house. It’s Casey, Albert’s twin. “You must be Rosie.” Her eyes—that same sea-green as her brother’s—shift from me to the violent scene on the heath. “Since the three of them are occupied, you and I will stay in here. It’s good to have one Servator whose hands are free, just in case.”

  She slams the door and her fingers fly down the line of deadbolts. Her movements remind me of a lioness— careful, calculated, and fluid as water. She’s thin, but not skinny. The lean muscles in her arms twitch with every twist of a lock.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, mistaking my open mouth for a sign of confusion. “They can get in if they need to. Those three, I mean. We don’t use keys, we use—”

  “Your thumbs,” I finish. “I saw.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” She smiles, and it’s a wide, welcoming kind of thing that sets me so at ease, I nearly forget the fight outside. “Let’s go up to Al’s room. We’ll have a good view from up there, and I’ll know if I need to Pull.”

  We jog up to the third floor and into Albert’s bedroom, where Casey locks us in. There is only one deadbolt this time—a detail I failed to notice before.

  “Now,” she says, moving to the window Albert leaned against only moments ago. “Let’s see what’s what.”

  “Aren’t you worried about them?” I gaze over her shoulder to the heath. We’re just in time to see Albert land a vicious punch to the woman’s ribs. The force of the blow makes me wince. I know how he fights—I’ve seen it firsthand. But the power he delivers in a single jab takes me by surprise every time.

  “Not terribly.” She waves a hand at the fight. “It’s three against one, and she looks like a Bestia. I’ll fight if they need me, of course, but like I said, it’s useful to have one Servator not tied up in the skirmish.”

  “Albert used that word, too,” I say. “‘Bestia.’ What does it mean?”

  “It means ‘beast,’ of course.” She smiles and offers me her hand. “I’m Casey. Don’t think we’ve met properly.” Her voice goes quiet. “So sorry about Edward. We attended his funeral—but you know that, I suppose. Al said he spoke to you at the burial.”

  I nod, noticing the redness in her eyes and the worry that lurks just behind her confident demeanor. She’s acting like she’s not upset, but I see it in the slump of her shoulders and the false smile she keeps giving me. It’s the same smile Nana wore when we first arrived. The one that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Thank you,” I say, and I want to talk more about Papa, but a cry of pain from the heath jerks my attention back to the fight. “Are you sure they’re going to be okay? That woman is a monster.”

  The Bestia has jumped onto Isaac’s back, and for one horrifying second it seems like she’s getting the upper hand. Then Isaac flips her over his shoulder and lands a kick to her stomach. A few people have gathered around the edge of the heath, and several are on their phones, probably calling the police about the three guys who appear to be attacking an innocent woman. A couple of men run out to help her, but as soon as they get near the fray, Albert shoves them back.

  “The Mortiferi are all monsters,” Casey says. “They’re used to it.”

  So Casey thinks I know what the Mortiferi are.

  “That woman out there,” I say. “What is she, exactly? Is a Bestia the same as Mortiferi?”

  Her gaze turns piercing. “You don’
t know what the Mortiferi are?”

  “Albert told me they were a gang, but somehow that feels like an incomplete definition.”

  “A gang,” she says with a sigh. “I love my brother, but honestly. A gang?”

  “I need to know,” I say, punctuating every word with as much insistence as I can.

  “Well,” she says. “I’ll tell you what Albert didn’t. But I’ve got to warn you, it’s not pretty.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, squaring my shoulders. “I can handle it.” This may or may not be true, but either way, I can’t take one more minute of suspense.

  Casey gives me an appraising look. “Okay then. A Mortifer—that’s the singular form, you know—is a person whose soul has been darkened by sorcery.”

  My eyebrows arch. “Sorcery? Come on.”

  She shrugs. “It is what it is, mate. Believe it or not.”

  It’s true that I’ve seen some crazy stuff lately, but this seems too far over the top. If Casey’s telling the truth, then the man who attacked me on the heath and then came into the pub was filled with black magic. So is the Bestia woman who just tried to break in.

  “Sorcery,” I say again, letting the word soak in my mind. Is it possible that black magic exists? That people could be infected by it like a disease?

  I’m having a hard time telling reality from fantasy these days.

  A gunshot echoes from the direction of the heath. We both jump. Casey flies to the window, black hair billowing behind her like a cape. Her jaw goes slack and she exhales in a rush.

  “What?” I shout. I want to look out the window, but I’m frozen in place, unable to do anything but watch her reaction.

  She spins around. “I don’t know. I… Stay here for a minute, okay?”

  I force myself to the window. Albert, Dan, and Isaac are stumbling toward the house, their faces stricken with panic. A man with white hair is running in the opposite direction, toward the church, and it looks like he’s got something in his hand—it must be a gun. Even though the man’s hair suggests he’s old, the powerful way he runs proves otherwise. Something about him seems familiar, though I don’t know why; I’m sure I don’t know him.