Denial

by R. M. Walker

  She opened the back door and stepped through. There was one more thing she wasn’t going to forget. “Don’t you ever use that, or any spell, to come into my bedroom at night, or you will never see me again outside of college.” She saw his lips twist into a smirk which he wiped away quickly as he straightened up.

  “You have my word,” he said solemnly.

  “I mean it!”

  “I know you do, which is why I gave you my word.”

  She held his eyes a moment longer then went out, shutting the door behind her. She drew in a deep breath; the cold air was like needles in her lungs, and she shivered. Her jacket was light and not up to keeping out the cold, so she stuffed her hands into her pockets and made her way through the car park. The Land Rover was parked at the entrance. As she drew closer, the doors opened and they all got out.

  “You didn’t have to skip college for me,” she said.

  The twins trotted towards her and latched onto her arms. Jake bent his head, pressed his nose into her hair and kissed her. Josh mirrored him on the other side as they squeezed close, not allowing any space between them and her.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Josh whispered into her hair.

  “I’m fine. Honestly. I’m his daughter. I don’t think he’s going to hurt me.”

  “We’ve a lot to talk about,” Nate said. “Have you eaten yet?”

  Lily shook her head, not even sure what the time was.

  “Mum and Dad are working. Let’s go there, have something to eat while we talk in our bedroom,” Josh said.

  Matt and Nate were both rocking on the balls of their feet, watching Lily.

  “Shit, bugger the fucking neighbours,” Nate muttered. He reached out, grabbed the collar of her jacket, and dragged her into his arms. Matt pressed close, and between them, they were holding her tightly.

  “Boys! Boys!” Her face was squashed against Nate’s hard chest. “I need to breathe.”

  “Hold your breath for a second,” Matt replied. “You have no idea what we’ve been thinking about, knowing you were in there alone.”

  “Did it have anything to do with being ravaged over the kitchen table before being sacrificed in a blood ritual?” Her voice was muffled against Nate’s woollen coat.

  “Yeah, pretty much. Please tell us that didn’t happen, or at least the first bit,” Jake said. “Obviously, the sacrifice bit didn’t happen.”

  Matt and Nate let her go. “None of it happened. We talked, and... Can we go somewhere warmer first? I’m freezing.” She shivered as the breeze picked up into a cold wind whipping around them.

  “Of course, here.” Nate took off his coat and draped it around her shoulders.

  She thanked him and slid her arms into the sleeves, glad of the warmth and feeling of safety that enveloped her.

  The twins pulled her between them again, and with their arms around her, they started to walk back towards the car park entrance. There was so much to say, and she knew that she needed to tell them. She needed to talk it out. Not just so they were up to speed, but to help her process it. Her head was whirling with information, and underneath it all was a ripple of awed fear. Up till now, the words Seer, witch, fae, and magic had been like listening to a story about someone else. Nothing extraordinary had happened to her. She hadn’t developed a third eye or her skin turn green. But now? Now, she could light candles with nothing but her mind and that was both frightening and exhilarating.

  Show and Tell

  The planets spun slowly in a never-ending circle around the sun. Mercury vied for space with Venus and, judging by how faded Neptune was looking, they’d been in orbit for a while.

  “Dad helped us make that when we were ten for a school project.” Josh plonked himself beside her on his bed, following her line of sight to the mobile hanging from the beams above their heads.

  “It’s great. I like it,” she said, watching Earth continue its course around the sun.

  Jake and the others were downstairs getting some food together while Josh had shown her their room. The extension had made it possible to fit in two single beds, one against each wall, with two bedside cabinets between them under the window. They had a double wardrobe against the other wall and a small bookcase squeezed in at the end of Jake’s bed. Candles lined the window and the top of the bookcase. An upside down iron horseshoe was nailed into the wall beside the window, and hanging from the beams above each of their beds were dreamcatchers.

  “I know he’s saying you’re his daughter, but that doesn’t always make a difference to some bastards.” Josh caught her attention. “He doesn’t have any parental relationship with you. He doesn’t know you from Eve. Well, it does worry us. You were joking about the kitchen table, but we weren’t.” He kissed the top of her head and pulled her to lean on his shoulder, his arm tucked around her.

  “Honestly, he didn’t try anything or even suggest anything. He caught me nosing around his place, and all he did was suggest drinking tea and having a chat.”

  “He what? Caught you?” He leant forward, turning so he could see her face. “You went in before he got there?”

  “I knew he was at college, and I wanted to have a look around before he got back. I wanted to see what I could find before I spoke to him.”

  “Jesus, Lily—”

  “What? You broke in. Besides, he’d already told me I could let myself in if he wasn’t there. He told me where the key was. Granted, I don’t think he had in mind me searching through his things, but he wasn’t angry. And how come you can do it, but I can’t? Especially as I wasn’t even breaking in.”

  “Why did he do that? Why let you go in there if he’s not there?” He ignored her point about equality.

  “He was going to teach me how to make a plant book, like Jonas has. He has one too. I borrowed it from him, and I really wanted to try it. It’s not magic; just normal herbalist stuff, I guess.”

  “And he what? What was he saying you could do if he wasn’t there?”

  “He said I could set up whatever was needed there. I was fairly sure even back then that Mum wasn’t going to be over the moon if I had a cauldron brewing in her kitchen.”

  He clicked his tongue, and she knew that he was still worried over the whole thing. She drew her head away from him and lifted her hands to his cheeks. He met her eyes, and she saw his worry clearly.

  “Everything he said matched with Mum’s. All he did was fill in a few blanks. I don’t think he wants to hurt me; I think he wants to get to know me. Is that such a bad thing, Josh? I think I want to get to know him too.”

  “It’s not a bad thing, baby.” He brought his hands up to her face. “It’s not a bad thing wanting to know who he is. He is your father. It’s just...” He hesitated. “Just don’t trust him too quickly. Keep your guard up until you’re certain he’s got your best interests at heart, and not his own.”

  Her heart flipped over at his care, and she closed the gap between them, brushing her lips over his before easing back. “I promise you, I will be careful.”

  He dragged her against him, her hands moving into his hair as he held her tightly, his head buried in her neck. “I keep saying you’re my girl, but I’m yours too. You own me. I don’t want to lose you or see you get hurt.”

  She closed her eyes and hugged him tighter. His words swept over her, taking her breath away, making her heart beat double time. “I don’t want to lose you either,” she whispered into his ear, kissing it gently. He shuddered, a bone deep shudder that made his arms tighten as a groan slipped from his lips.

  “You will never lose me, I promise.” His lips brushed against her neck.

  She rarely, if ever, heard the word ‘I’ from either him or Jake. It was always ‘we’ or ‘us’. For him to say ‘I’ cemented it deeper in her heart. He meant it, she had no doubt over that.

  The door opened, but Josh made no move to let her go.

  “Left alone for five seconds, and you’re jumping her bones,
Joshua!”

  “I’m not jumping her bones, you moron!”

  Josh moved back from her as Jake came into the room with a tray in his hand. There was humour in Jake’s eyes, and he winked at her when Josh turned away to make room on the bedside table for the tray.

  “Who’s jumping—what have you done?” Matt was on her instantly. He lifted her hand, looking at the bandage. She’d forgotten all about it, and it struck her how there was no pain, not even when she’d put her hand into Josh’s hair.

  “What happened?” Nate demanded and shut the door behind him with his foot. He had a tray of mugs, and he put them down by the other tray. He came over and saw her hand. “How did you do that? Did he do that?” Anger curled through his voice.

  “No. He didn’t do this, I did. I’ll get there, there’s so much else to tell you first. This was my fault and had nothing to do with him.”

  Matt sat on her other side, and taking her hand, he undid the bandage. He revealed the greenish goo on her palm, and she winced at the state of the blisters that had formed on her skin. She still couldn’t feel much, but when he straightened her fingers, pain bit sharply.

  “It’s a burn,” Matt said, looking up at her. “How did you do it?”

  “On a flame. A candle to be exact. It was my own stupidity and nothing to do with Drew.”

  He traced his fingers from her fingertips down and straight over the burn, making her cry out. The pain passed as quickly as it came, leaving her palm healed without a sign of the burn. She looked up at him, expecting to see blood flowing from his nose, but there was nothing.

  “Your nose isn’t bleeding,” she said stupidly, and he looked up at her with a grin.

  “It only bleeds if the wound is particularly large, or magically induced. If he’d done this with magic, my nose would bleed ‘cause it’d be so much harder to heal. But this was just a superficial burn.”

  “You’re amazing.” She kissed him firmly on the lips. He caught the back of her head before she could move, and he kissed her back quickly.

  “So, Lily May.” Nate sat on the bed opposite her with a plate in his hands. “Eat and tell us everything from the beginning.”

  ~*~*~*~

  “I didn’t like him before. Now I hate the fucker,” Jake said. “He stripped souls. How the fuck did he do that if he isn’t a vampire, Nate?”

  “I don’t know.” Nate had started off sitting on Jake’s bed with him but had ended up pacing back and forth at the bottom of the beds. “Lily, I know you don’t trust him, but we really, really need Jonas to know some, if not all, of this.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t know about the Council?” she asked Nate.

  He had his hands in his pockets. “No. He had absolutely no idea. He’ll have ways of finding out the truth that we just don’t have. I know I keep saying this, but honestly, out of the two of them? I’d trust Jonas with my life. I wouldn’t trust Drew with an empty cardboard box.”

  “I don’t think he’s that bad,” Lily said.

  “He stripped souls,” Jake reminded her. “Do you know what stripping souls really means?”

  “I don’t know, I guess same as taking blood like vampires, well, fictional vampires.”

  “Stripping a soul from someone kills them,” Josh said. “There’s nothing left of a person if they strip the soul. Nothing at all. They can’t move on, they can’t go beyond the veil because there is literally nothing left to go through.”

  “When someone dies, the soul moves on. It goes through the veil that separates the living from the dead. When a vampire strips a soul, he feeds on it. It sustains him much like blood is supposed to in fictional vampires,” Matt added.

  “So, he... ate them?” She shuddered in revulsion.

  “No, not like you’re thinking anyway. I don’t know how he did it though.” Nate shook his head. “I need to talk to Jonas. I didn’t even know it was possible to strip a soul unless you were a vampire.”

  “What has he told you?” she asked.

  “I still haven’t heard from him.” Nate rubbed his eyes behind his glasses and turned to look at Matt. “When you went upstairs, did you go into the back bedroom?”

  “Yeah, I did. All his stuff was there, like you described, Lily. But there were no flies.”

  “They covered the ceiling. He said he got them to guard the room,” she said.

  “So why didn’t I disturb them?” Matt asked. “Where was he when you came out of the room?”

  “Coming up the stairs.”

  “Maybe he tried to frighten you by summoning them when he got there.”

  “Or more likely, he asked them to guard it after you broke in,” she pointed out. “He knew you’d been in there. He told me to tell you not to do it again.”

  “Fucking hypocrite!” Matt snapped. “He breaks into my home, scares the living daylights out of you, wrecks the fucking room, and then gets all righteous when we return the favour, minus the fear and mass destruction of property! Git!”

  “He said that he had a few reasons for doing that.” She frowned as she remembered his words. “He wanted to know I was safe because he thought you four were going to seduce me into some sort of gangbang orgy thing.” She heard Nate snort loudly in derision. “He also wanted to scare me away from you. He said that backfired as instead of running from you, I went to you. He was trying to implant into my mind that I couldn’t trust you.”

  Now she was talking it through with them and she wasn’t with him, she was beginning to see why they didn’t trust him. As words, just words, it was painting him black. But when she’d listened to him, it hadn’t seemed dark at all. His reasons were sound. He was gentle with her, and he’d saved her life.

  “He saved my life,” she said. “I forgot that bit. When I burnt the living room rug, he knew I was in danger somehow. He used a form of that projection thing and kept the fire back from me until the fire brigade got there.”

  Nate grunted as his shoulders slumped. “I was hoping that was you that did that subconsciously.”

  “Me? What do you mean?” His words took her by surprise.

  “You said you fell by the rug and it caught fire; seconds, minutes, and you’d have burnt to death if the smoke didn’t get you first. I figured something had kept you safe, especially as you weren’t harmed at all.”

  “It never occurred to me,” she said. “I just... I just seem to accept things blindly. Mum said I was lucky, and I didn’t question it. He said she must have known and that was why we moved several hundred miles away as soon as I was released.”

  Jake grunted and squeezed in next to his twin. He leant forward, resting his arms along his thighs, his hands clasped between his legs as he stared at the floor. “There are no words that can convey just how much I hate that man. Even if he did save you, I don’t for one moment think it wasn’t self-serving in some way.”

  Josh laid a hand on his back, keeping his other arm around her waist.

  Nate stopped pacing and stood in front of Lily. His hair was all over the place from running his hands through it so much. His tie was partially undone and was twisted to one side as if it was trying to strangle him. His jumper had gone a long time ago, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows. A muscle ticked in the side of his jaw as he looked at her. His intelligent eyes behind his glasses were shining a brighter blue than usual.

  “Everything he says has just the right cadence to it,” Nate said. “He admits he’s wrong, but it’s all for a good purpose. A good reason behind the bad decisions. I trust him even less now. He’s playing a game, but I can’t see what it is.”

  “He wants me to go back to his place in Wells for the half-term hols.”

  All hell broke loose.

  They reacted instantly, loudly, and at the same time. She found herself looking up at a line of four shouting boys, but it was clear that behind the sudden explosion of anger was worry. And not just worry, there was a real fear for her safety.


  “I’m not going, of course,” she said, and just as quickly as they started, they stopped. The silence was heavy. “I’m not saying that I won’t ever go if I get on with him, but I’m not going back this time. It’s too soon.”

  “Can we deal with that at a much later date? Like in fifty years?” Jake asked. “With any luck, he’ll be dead before then.”

  Her phone started to ring, and she jumped. She took it out of her pocket and saw her mother’s name on the display.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you okay? You’ve been gone for a long time. I didn’t know what to do about lunch.” Her mother’s tentative voice came over the line, and Lily closed her eyes, sighing.

  “I’m sorry. I’m fine. I forgot the time. I’m with the boys; they’ve made lunch for me.”

  “Aren’t they at college?”

  “They came back. I’ll be back later for tea.” She made no mention of seeing Drew.

  “All right. I’m going to try and get some painting done. I’ll stay here for today. I’m here if you... well, if you need me.”

  “Thanks, Mum,” she whispered, closing her eyes. The pain was a dull ache, and she didn’t think it would ever leave her. This woman was the only mother she’d ever known, and everything she’d done had been because of love. But that didn’t ease the betrayal or pain Lily felt.

  “Okay, darling, whenever you’re ready.” Her voice was brighter, and Lily knew it was because she’d called her Mum.

  “Love you, Mum,” she said. She heard the hitch and the slight sob.

  “I love you too, darling.”

  She put the phone into her pocket. “She’s my mum really,” she said, shrugging.

  “You don’t need to convince us,” Matt said. “Blood isn’t everything. In some cases, it isn’t anything. Love and acceptance makes a family, not blood.”

  “But she is still your blood anyway,” Jake reminded her.

  “Is he still home? Drew?” Nate asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. He may have gone back to college.”