Lily

by R. M. Walker

  ***************

  “Lily, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I can’t carry you in, darling. Not these days.”

  Her mother’s voice in her ear woke her up. She opened her eyes, disorientated for a few seconds. The interior light illuminated the car enough for her to see her mother leaning towards her. She licked her lips and stretched. It felt like she’d been asleep for hours, when in reality it was probably only a few minutes.

  “How’s your head? Take some paracetamol when you get in.”

  Lily frowned. Her headache had gone completely, not even leaving the twinges she sometimes got after a seizure.

  “It’s gone.” Relief flooded through her that she wouldn’t have to suffer through another migraine.

  “Gone?” Her mother’s voice was confused. “How can it just go?”

  “Maybe I slept it off.” Lily undid her belt and got out of the car.

  “You did go out like a light,” she agreed. “Maybe it was the stress of your mother meeting your boyfriend, when you hadn’t even told her you had one,” she added slyly.

  “What?” Lily hesitated in opening the door to look around at her mother. She grinned and got out.

  “Matthew.”

  Lily jumped out, closed her door and glared over the roof at her mother as she locked the car. “He’s a friend, Mum. Just a friend.”

  “Of course, dear. June is as happy as I am. She likes you.”

  “Mum!”

  “What?” Her mother swept up the path and unlocked the door, the little light above the front door lighting her way.

  “He’s just a friend!”

  “Of course he is, that’s the best way to start a relationship,” she called out, and went in laughing.

  Lily rolled her eyes and shook her head as she started towards the cottage. There would be no convincing her mother.

  “Lilith.”

  Lily whirled, certain she’d heard her name. She looked up and down the badly illuminated lane; only one street light lit the area and that was further down towards the green. She could see no one.

  “Come in and stop sulking,” her mother called out.

  Lily shrugged, it must have been her mother. She stopped in her doorway and looked up and down the lane, but there was still no sign of anyone. She looked over at the cottages opposite. Lights were on in the windows at either end, but the one in the middle looked dark and unlived in. A movement caught her eye and she peered into the darkness of the door. A glow of red that disappeared seconds later startled her until she realised it was the end of a cigarette. Someone stood in the door smoking.

  “Lilith! You’re letting in the cold air, shut the door!” her mother shouted. She saw the door open and whoever it was went inside.

  She closed her own door and realised she still had Matt’s jacket on as well as his mother’s boots. She would return them tomorrow when he picked her up.

  “Lily, are you okay?” Her mum stepped into the light of the hallway from the living room. “Are you sure it was just a headache tonight?”

  This was her chance, she could tell her mother that her seizures were changing again. That hallucinations were now part of the deal. But something held her back from saying anything.

  “Yeah, just a headache.” She shrugged out of his jacket. The moment she set it on the coat peg she missed the feel of it surrounding her, missed the smell that was particular to Matt.

  “I think I’ll get an early night,” Lily murmured, and pried the boots off her feet. She kissed her mother goodnight and made her way upstairs.

  Hallucinations. She didn’t know what to think of it yet, and it was one of the reasons she’d held back on telling her mother. If she shut her eyes, she could still hear the screams, see the boy try valiantly to reach the other child before falling in himself and being mercilessly pulled under the wheel by the flow of the water. She wasn’t sure how much she could take if her seizures started adding full technicolour drama like that.

  But she still didn’t want to tell her mother just yet. When her seizures changed from absent seizures to tonic-clonic, her mother had been distraught for days. It had triggered a move as well. It was one of the rare times that her mother uprooted her mid school year.

  Lily didn’t want to move again. She wanted to stay here, she wanted to stay with her friends. Friends, who not only accepted her seizures, but cared enough to find out what to do if she had one when she was with them. She’d never had friends who had done that before. So she would tell her mother only if she had to, and not before.

  Jonas

  None of them went home, instead they’d crept up to Matt’s room to wait for him to come up from saying goodbye to Lily.

  “That wasn’t an epileptic fit,” Josh stated as soon as the door shut behind Matt.

  “No, it wasn’t,” agreed Nate. He was sitting on the end of Matt’s bed. He leant forward, stretching his arms along his legs. “But if it wasn’t, what the hell was it?”

  “Not to mention what she said she saw.” Jake shuddered.

  “Just give me a moment. I remember something. I’ll be back in a minute.” Matt left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  “She just went down,” Nate murmured, clasping his hands together, his hair falling into his face.

  “She struggled to get free,” Jake said. “We weren’t expecting her to launch herself forward like that.” His worry showed clearly.

  “She was trying to crawl across the ground like she was fucking possessed,” Josh agreed. He slung his arm around Jake’s neck, and they sat down on Matt’s window seat.

  The door opened again, and Matt came in, his normally cheerful face was sombre and his eyes guarded.

  “I think I know what she saw.” Matt shut the door behind him. He had a brown book in his hand that looked like an extremely old ledger.

  “What?” Nate sat up as Matt crossed to the bed and set the book down on it.

  “This is the diary of the last vicar that lived here, and these”—he brought forward a grainy photograph that was clearly Victorian in age—“are his children, Charles and Martha. There are several entries from the beginning of July 1888 and onwards that are sad. He had two children, these two. They both drowned by the mill, but it doesn’t give any details on how it happened, other than the children’s nanny found them slightly downstream. The vicar’s wife went into shock and never recovered. She was sent to an asylum four months later. My great-great grandfather saw an opportunity and took it, that’s how he got this place at half the normal sum from the church. I remembered reading this years ago.”

  “So she’s not epileptic.” Nate rubbed his forehead, his breath leaving him on a sigh.

  “Fucking hell.” Jake’s voice was hushed. “So what are we saying? She’s a Medium? She can see the fucking dead? Jesus Christ!”

  “No.” Matt shook his head. “Or at least I don’t think so.” He looked at Nate for confirmation.

  “So what the fuck are we saying?” Jake demanded.

  “I think Lily may be a Seer,” Nate spoke up. He moved to push his glasses up his nose and gave a noise of disgust when he realised they weren’t there.

  “A Seer?” Josh repeated the word as if he’d never heard it. “A Visionary? You think she’s getting visions?”

  “I think we need to talk to Jonas.” Nate looked at Matt.

  “Agreed,” Matt said quietly. “Now?”

  “Now.” Nate nodded. “We need to be on top of this by the time we pick her up tomorrow.”

  “And if he says we need to stay away from her?” Jake asked doubtfully.

  “We tell him to go fuck himself,” Nate snapped. “She thinks she’s epileptic and she’s clearly not! She needs us.”

  “Yes, she does,” Matt agreed.

  “She’s ours now, whether she knows it or not, Jacob,” Josh said.

  “Ours?” Matt looked at him, one eyebrow lifted. “You think you’re the only one with a connection to
her? She’s not yours.”

  “Not now.” Nate got to his feet. “Let’s just get to Jonas.”

  ***************

  Nate rang the doorbell several times and then knocked impatiently. A light came on behind the frosted glass door, and it was opened by a sleepy looking man in his late forties who frowned, drawing his dressing gown around him tighter.

  “What do you lot want?” he inquired. “And at this time of night?” He didn’t wait for a reply, he just turned and started to walk back into the house. They trooped in after him, Jake brought up the rear, locking the door behind him.

  Jonas led them into his living room and slumped into his armchair. He rubbed at his face, watching as they collapsed down into the various sofas and armchairs that were around the room. Books and papers were stacked everywhere. They were on the floor, and on the coffee table which was set in front of an open, unlit fire. Bookcases lined three of the walls and were stuffed full of books and magazines. The house was Victorian, and although there was electricity, all the lights were still the old-fashioned gas lamps. Lamps which Jonas controlled with a snap of his fingers.

  “Okay, who’s died?” he drawled and crossed his pyjama clad legs. His tartan slipper slid down his foot and dangled from the end of his toes, but he made no move to put it back on properly. His hair was a sandy blonde colour and all over the place from being asleep. Shrewd blue eyes, which caught more than they missed, watched the boys. His voice was a slow rumble that held people’s attention without him even trying.

  “No one,” Nate said. “We have a question.”

  “You do?” Jonas slapped his lips together and folded his arms. “If it’s to do with schoolwork, I’ll turn you all into toads. You do realise what time it is, don’t you?”

  “It can’t wait,” Nate said and got up. He crossed to where a globe stood on the desk under the curtain covered window. He spun it gently, a frown between his eyes. “It’s about a girl.”

  “A girl?” Jonas shook his head. “I’m thinking it must be more than hormones at question here. What’s she done?”

  “We don’t know. She’s only just moved here and has epileptic fits, or at least she thinks she does.” Nate watched Jonas’s reaction and wasn’t surprised when he saw him sit forward slightly, uncrossing his legs. A cat slinked its way between Josh’s legs, and he bent to pick it up, scratching it behind its ears, making it purr contentedly.

  “Start at the beginning,” Jonas commanded, and for the next twenty minutes they told him everything. He listened carefully, his eyes on the cat in Josh’s arms.

  “By her own admission, her fits have changed,” Josh finished with a sigh. Jonas sat back in his seat and lit the fire with a casual flick of his fingers. He stared into the flames as he thought, not saying anything.

  “She only saw colours before coming here, now she’s seeing actual events,” Matt spoke up.

  “Is she seeing dead people?” Jake asked. “Well, we know she saw dead people, but is she a Seer or a Medium?”

  “I’d like to meet her,” Jonas said quietly. “I’d say from what you’ve described she’s a Seer. Traditionally they don’t come into their full powers before they’re eighteen, but it sounds like she’s been having breakthroughs all these years without even knowing. When is she eighteen?”

  “Twenty-ninth of this month,” Matt told him.

  “Odd for her to suddenly be experiencing full visions before then. But you may have caused that, especially if you’re causing her to experience an emotional connection with you. Is one of you her boyfriend? Are you physical?” Jonas asked, looking between each of them.

  Each of them started to say that they weren’t physical with her, but that they liked her. Jonas held up a hand for silence.

  “You all like her, but you’re just friends?” he asked and watched four heads nod reluctantly.

  “Oh, boy.” He snorted with laughter, rubbing at his eyes again. “Trust you lot to complicate things.”

  “We hardly complicated things,” Nate said, getting defensive. “We’ve all agreed to be her friend.”

  “Whatever. You’ll need to sort that out yourselves. Bring her here tomorrow to meet me. If she’s a Seer and she has no idea, she’s going to need help controlling it.”

  “So she could be Fae, like us?” Josh asked him,

  “Seers aren’t technically Fae. They come from another bloodline; one much darker than our own. They have their roots in a darker magic than ours, I’ve heard it said they are the human descendants of the first woman Lilith, but I’ve never been able to find the proof.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Josh snorted, and covered his eyes with his hand. “That’s ironic,” he muttered.

  “What’s ironic?” Jonas asked. “And watch your language!”

  “Her full name is Lilith,” Nate said quietly, and Jonas stared at him.

  “Ironic indeed,” Jonas replied. “Their roots are lost in history, much like our own. All I do know is that their roots aren’t Fae, but witch.”

  “She’s a bloody witch?” Jake shot out, and thumped his head against the sofa.

  “No, if she’s a Seer, then she’s a Seer, not a witch,” Jonas corrected him. “To have a Witch Seer is extremely rare. There would be other indications as well, she’d be able to do things that she couldn’t really explain. And she wouldn’t be confused thinking she had epilepsy. She would just know she was different, like you all did, even though you didn’t know why.”

  “So what do we do?” Nate asked. “To help her?”

  “Bring her to me, let me make absolutely sure she’s a Seer and not epileptic with a good imagination. We can go from there.” Jonas stood up. “You’re all welcome to camp out here if you want. Lord knows it won’t be the first time. I’m knackered; the little devils get worse each year. Or is it that I just get older?” he mused, making his way to the door. He hesitated in the doorway and looked back at them. “I’ve known you boys a long time now. You share everything, but you can’t share a girl,” he said quietly. “You’ll need to think on that.” He went out of the room and then stuck his head back around the door, a wicked smile on his lips. “Unless of course you don’t mind polyamory. Goodnight boys; if you’re up before me, leave me at least one egg and don’t drink all the milk this time, please. Mysty, c’mon,” he added. The cat leapt from Josh’s arms and trotted towards her owner. He closed the door, leaving them staring at each other.

  “What the fuck is polyamory?” Jake muttered, digging out his phone from his jean pockets and bringing up a search app.

  “You got that from what he said?” Nate demanded, making Jake look up at him.

  “What? I thought we were pretty sure she’s a Seer? He’s going to double check, but he hasn’t told us anything new.”

  “Except that she’s not Fae,” Matt pointed out, rubbing a hand down his face. “I’m knackered as well; it was an absolute nightmare watching her flip like that.”

  “Matt, send out a group text to the mums letting them know where we are,” Nate spoke up. “I’m too tired to drag myself back to the village. Let’s crash here.”

  “Well, bugger me.” Jake suddenly chuckled, shoving his phone under Josh’s nose. He took it and started to read.

  “What?” Nate demanded.

  “There’s a name to what we’ve been planning since we realised girls weren’t as gross as we first thought.” Jake chuckled again. “Polyamorous, like polygamy but reversed for us.”

  “You mean one man and several girls in a relationship?” Matt asked in surprised.

  “Yeah, but it’s one girl and several men,” Josh said, and lifting his hand he did a fist bump with Jake.

  “What the fuck are you two on about?” Nate snapped, feeling frustrated as well as tired.

  “We decided years ago that we were going to find a girl that would settle with both of us at the same time,” Josh said and handed the phone back to his twin.

  “You can’t share t
he same girl!” Nate exclaimed, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

  “Why not?” Jake demanded. “Think about it. If we both had girlfriends, they might not get on together. If they’re constantly fighting with each other how will we all live together? They might pull us apart as brothers.”

  “We made a pact years ago, a blood pact that nothing will ever separate us,” Josh added. “Not time, not distance, and not a girl. The best way for us is to find a girl who will share us.”

  “So you two really are okay with sharing Lily?” asked Matt incredulously. “Well, fuck you, she might not want you two! She already feels something with me, I can tell.”

  “She reacts to me, too!” Nate shot to his feet. “I’m not standing back for you lot.”

  “Hold on, hold on.” Josh jumped to his feet, followed quickly by Jake. “We thought you spouted all that shit about being her friend, not pushing her. Have you put the moves on her after telling us to hold back?”

  “No, I haven’t put the moves on her! But I think she feels something for me, too. I think if I kissed her, she’d respond. I’ve held her hand, stroked her cheek. And she liked it.”

  “I’ve held her hand, too,” Matt said to Nate. “And kissed her cheek. She responded to that. I saw it in her eyes.”

  “Fuck you!” Josh spluttered, his voice rising. “She’s our girl! We saw her first! You can’t get all on it with her like that!”

  “Your girl?” Matt and Nate turned to them, anger on their faces. “She’s not your girl! You can’t claim she’s yours just because you saw her first!” Nate shouted angrily.

  “We really like her, but you’re both just all about lust because she’s pretty. We want more than just a one night stand with her,” Jake said sharply, his hands clenched into fists at his side.

  “So do I!” Matt snapped. “I want more than that, and it isn’t just lust, Jake.”

  “But you never date them beyond one night stands,” Nate sneered.