by E M Graham
As he gazed at me, he looked softly vulnerable, if one could dare to say that about Jonathon de Teilhard.
But it didn’t last long, not once he realized who I was. With two great strides, he was at the door, unlocking it even as he searched around the garden to make sure I hadn’t been seen. He pulled me in, snapped the locks again and drew the curtains against the afternoon sun.
“What is the meaning of this?” His voice was a sharp whisper. “How dare you?”
“Hey Dad, nice to see you too,” I said, pretending to be way more laid back than I felt. Fake attitude often helped cover up the quivering inside.
He merely stared at me, the thunder clouds gathering. All that anger was suddenly too much for me to bear. Couldn’t he be even a little happy to see me?
“I need your help,” I said, looking down at my right toe which was busy scuffing his expensive Turkish carpet.
He said not a word in reply as if I didn’t deserve an answer.
“Someone I know has been caught by the fairies up on the Southside Hills.” I was begging already, so much for my bravado. “I need to help him get away.”
“Not my concern.”
“But they’ve enslaved him and...”
“How do you know what they’re doing with him?”
“Well, I saw, didn’t I? First it looked all lovely and fun and glam, but then when I...” I caught myself quickly. He didn’t need to know about my forays into Alt. “Then I looked again and I could see what was really happening, and it was horrible and...”
“You went there?” He cut in and spoke over me. “You entered the fairy hall?”
“Yeah, I had to chase after his sister, Alice, my best friend, it’s her brother, and I needed to get her out of there before they got her too...”
I stopped. Oh, shit. By the look on his face I had really done it now, broke one of those basic Witch Kin rules that everyone was supposed to know, just like the ones about which fork to use at a dinner party, but how was I supposed to know which rules I was breaking if no one would even tell me what the stupid goddamned rules were?
He went back to his desk and sat with a heavy thump, then motioned me to take a seat opposite. He buried his face in his hands. After a moment he looked back up to me.
“Jesus Christ, Dara, are you telling me that you not only went into the fairy hall and got out again, but you saw them, I mean really saw them for what they are?”
I could only nod. My eyes must have been huge as I sat staring at him, waiting for the ax to fall. But at that moment I didn’t care what he did to me – he could cut me off without a cent if he wanted. Alice needed my help.
But when he began speaking again, it was like another man had taken the place of my father.
“I pay you money every month,” he began. His voice was gentle. “And I’m prepared to continue paying out that money every month of my life, and it is for one reason. Do you know why?”
He’d meant this as a rhetorical question, but I was so upset I didn’t see that.
“Because you hate me, and never want to see me again,” I blurted. “I know this. Look I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have asked, I wouldn’t have come here at all, except that it’s Alice that needs your help!”
He shook his head and sighed a deep one.
“You’ve heard about the body found in the woods the other day?”
I nodded yes, puzzled at this apparent non sequitur. That was the one Mark had told me about, and they had no leads on the murder at all, they only knew the victim’s name.
“What I am about to tell you isn’t to go any further,” he said, his face more emotionless than I’ve ever seen it. “Not to your aunt or her friend. And don’t ask me how I know this. But that woman was a visitor to the province. She was a half-blood who came looking for her roots.”
I didn’t want to hear this, and he didn’t want to tell me, but he forced himself to continue.
“Of course, none of my Kin were involved in this incident,” he said. “But, I’m trying to tell you that old sentiments die hard sometimes. And with certain economic factors in a downturn, well, some other Kin are looking for scapegoats.”
He crossed his arms with the shirt sleeves rolled up just so, and adjusted the tie he wore even on Sunday.
“I pay you that money to keep you safe, to keep you from using and developing any powers you have,” he said. “That is the condition. Too many people... too many know who and what you are already.”
Including Cate, I realized. It was on the tip of my tongue to blurt out the question I’d never gotten a chance to ask. What had he and Cate done to Mom?
7
AND I’VE BEEN THINKING,” Dad continued. “Perhaps I should actually send you away.”
“Banish me, you mean. Get me out of sight.”
He looked me directly in the eye. “That’s one way to put it.”
A knock sounded on the heavy oak door. He jumped up to answer it before the person outside could enter, and he shielded the room from their view.
I was too busy with my thoughts to pay attention to whichever of his brats was presently seeking his attention. He was not going to help with Benjy. In fact, he was prepared to sentence Alice’s brother to a lifetime of slavery and torture under the fae by sending away the one person who could help him. The one person who cared enough to do anything.
And here I was sitting in Dad’s home office, hastening his intent to get rid of me. I cursed my stupidity in not listening to Edna. The less he was forced to think about me, or even remember me, the less likely he would be to send me off to God knew where.
Dad closed the door and returned to his throne behind the desk where he resumed staring at me, stroking his chin while he did so as if in deep thought. He opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could get a word out, the door opened quickly, catching him off guard.
“I just forgot one detail,” Hugh stood in the doorway, holding out an old book as he spoke. He glanced round, surprised to see another person in with my father. “Lord, sorry Jon, I thought you were alone. This can wait. Cheerio, then.”
He gave a quick silent shake of his head to me before he closed the door again and disappeared. I think he was telling me to pick my jaw up off the ground and pretend I didn’t know him, pretend I wasn’t shocked at the sight of him in my father’s house.
I LEFT DAD’S HOUSE the way I had come in, sneaking through the garden door, my head buzzing all the way.
What the hell was going on? Did Hugh realize the danger he was in? A half-blood in Cate’s den – that could not turn out well.
If he actually was mixed blood, that is.
Mark had told us the details of the girl’s death, the body found out in the wilds behind Portugal Cove, way up on the top of the mountain where the glaciers had long ago scoured the topsoil off the granite head. Well, he had filled Edna in on the more horrible details after I had left the room, and I eavesdropped. Not my fault if they didn’t have the door closed all the way, was it? He didn’t usually talk about what happened at his work, but on this occasion he was so horrified he’d had to let it out.
Along with the burns, she had been tortured severely before she found release in death. She was in such bad shape, they couldn’t tell if she had been raped.
The police suspected a ritualistic killing of some kind. Although maybe three months had passed since the girl’s death before her body was found, Mark had said there were still faded chalk markings around the site. The RCMP had brought in a specialist folklore investigator who had suggested some relation to voodoo, but the cops had laughed at that. There wasn’t a big Carib population around St. John’s.
According to Dad, witches were responsible for the death of that poor girl, but I knew the only other clan around these parts was Cate’s family. The wedding of my father and his wife had been the contract of the century, a merging of the two great families, the final unification of the Avalon Kin. But they were still two unique factions, despite the hype.
> Hugh was playing with fire if he was hanging out at that estate because although my father had a powerful grip on the Kin, witches were a moody crowd.
Unless... unless Hugh had been lying about his status. I was beginning to suspect his honesty. There was no way on earth the St. John’s Kin would accept someone whose family tree wasn’t well known.
And if he was lying, well, that really wouldn’t surprise me. That’s just the sort of behavior I learned to expect from full-blood witches like my siblings. Lying to me in order to expose me, not just for mockery this time, but for a deadly game of cat and mouse.
And Dad – what was all that about threatening to send me away for my own safety? As if he cared that much. Hugh must have told him about my little spasm on the waterfront, and Dad was only worrying about his own image within the Kin.
Yet, no, Hugh had pretended not to know me, so it was unlikely he’d told Dad about meeting me.
As I coasted in free cycle all the way down New Cove Road, I wondered where my father might banish me to. The wilds of New Zealand, maybe, or to the deepest heart of Africa where no one knew the de Teilhard name.
Even though I was nineteen years old and long past the age of majority, if he said I had to go, I really didn’t have much choice in the matter. It wasn’t just the money aspect. I could turn my nose up at the monthly allowance, but he still had the unique ability to make my life hell even without magic. So the best thing I could do was just remain under the radar for as long as I could until he forgot about banishing me.
Hugh.
Crap. I didn’t know which story was real. And I was no closer to getting help for Alice and her brother. With the fairies, every day counted. Benjy might be enchanted into thinking he was having the time of his life, dancing, making love, eating sumptuous feasts, but in reality he was enslaved, beaten (and worse) and eating muck. He would quickly fade away until the fae got bored with this new toy and he would become like the shades I saw slaving at the rock walls in the hall.
Nobody deserved a fate like that, not even Benjamin Hoskins.
I REALIZED, AS I MADE MY slow way up King’s Bridge Road, that there was no living being I could ask for assistance in saving Benjy from the clutches of the fairies. Yeah, I toyed with the idea of getting Mark on my side. After all, cops were trained to be unimaginative and there was a slight chance that this lack of imagination would help him see through any enchantment... No, I was just clutching at straws, there.
And Zeta? Hah! Don’t make me laugh.
No, my only hope was Nan Hoskins. Despite the hatred she’d shown me, this specter might be persuaded to help her own great-grandson, if I could just get Alice to stay in the room with me.
I shot along Water Street in the sparse Sunday evening traffic, ignoring red lights and other rules of the road in my haste. Alice’s mom would be gone out to Bingo by now, and her father would probably be at ‘Bar’. Yeah, the tavern probably had a real name, but the neon sign in the window only said ‘bar’, and that’s all the little hole in the wall needed to communicate to those desperate enough to go there. Tucked under the overpass on the other side of the river from Alice’s house, it was a charmless place but the beer was cheap. Yes, there he was, toddling up the slight incline, right on time.
My bike bumped over the foot bridge and then I was at Alice’s. No need to lock up the bike as I dropped it by her back door, ran up the steps and rushed into the house.
“Alice? Alice!”
There were movements from upstairs.
“Dara?”
“Come down, we need to talk.”
“I’m writing up my lab reports,” she said as she turned the corner into the kitchen rubbing her eyes. She was in pyjamas already, and her hair was stuck up any old way on the top of her head. “What do you want?”
“Are you alone in the house?”
“Mm, I think so,” she said. She stuck her head back into the hallway and screeched loud enough to be heard up on the third floor. “Anybody home? Sal?”
Alice cocked her head. “I think Sal’s here, sounds like there’s music coming from her room, but she won’t bother us.”
It would have to do.
“Listen, I need you to explain to your great-grandmother that she has to talk to me.”
“Oh, no, I’m not going in that front room. Forget it. You go talk to her yourself. Leave me out of it.”
“Alice,” I said with great patience. “She is the only one who can help me help Benjy.”
I didn’t bother telling her about my visit to Dad, or even about Hugh. She wouldn’t understand, and it was too long a story.
“She’s a ghost, and she’s stuck in our living room,” Alice said. “How can she possibly help?”
“Look, we don’t have a choice.”
I made her sit down at the table and I began to tell her the bare bones of my life story, about the witch stuff and being half-blood and that’s why I could talk with ghosts and see through the enchantments of the fae. Then I told her everything that I thought I knew about those so-called ‘little people’, which was only what I’d picked up from reading and listening to stories.
“Benjy is in a dire situation,” I said finally. “I have no one to turn to for help, and no way of getting more knowledge about what to do. Nan Hoskins is the only one who might be able to give me a little more info, something I can use to get him away from them.”
I could see from her face that she was upset. Who wouldn’t be? Ghosts and fairies and witches – it was probably an overload of fantasy that her science brain couldn’t handle.
“I always knew you were weird, Dara, but this is too much.”
She pushed away from the table. I was losing her.
“You don’t believe me? Do you remember seeing Benjy this morning?”
She shook her head firmly. “That didn’t happen. I dreamt that. You were in my dream, you made me leave him there.”
Needless to say, I was flabbergasted at this response. My last ally was turning her back on me, and it was her brother I wanted so desperately to save.
“How about Nan Hoskins? Do you believe she’s haunting your house?”
She looked like she was going to burst into tears. “No, yes, I mean... I hate this! I can’t sleep. I need to do my lab reports. If I can do them, I’ll be okay. They’re real, not like this foolishness you’re filling my head with!”
And she turned and fled back up the stairs. It was just me then. I followed her out to the hallway, and paused at the parlor door.
“Nan? Nan Hoskins, can you hear me?” I narrowed my eyes to allow the Alt vision.
The rocking chair in the corner began to rock almost imperceptibly. It could have been a trick of the light.
“I know you don’t like me, Nan,” I said to the empty chair. “But Benjy needs your help. Your great-grandson. Can you just show yourself, so we can talk?”
I could see a distinct wavering of the light over the chair, but she still wasn’t appearing. I sighed. Damnit. I was going to have to go into full Alt and face her down on her own turf.
Closing my eyes, I relaxed my mind and let it happen. Fortunately for me, Alice’s house existed in Alt town too, probably because of the old lady herself. When I opened my eyes again, she sat glowering at me, her needles still furiously knitting.
“Benjy’s been taken by the fairies,” I told her. Might as well be blunt. I wanted to be in and out of Alt as fast as possible.
“Not my problem,” she said. At least this time her voice was normal, not the horrible demonical roaring she’d given me last time.
“But he’s your descendant,” I said.
“He’s a bloody hangashore, that one,” she said. “That’s the Smith blood in him, he’s none of mine. They were all pirates and Catholics.”
“You mean to tell me, that you’re going to let your great-grandson rot inside the hill up there, not a mile from your house, and you’re not going to lift a hand to save him?” I pointed dramatically in the direction
of the hill in the back of Alice’s home.
“Not the Southside Kith?” The old ghost screeched as she dropped her knitting. “They would never dare.”
I had touched a definite sore spot there, and quickly moved to take advantage of it. She knew of the fae up the hill, that was for sure, and by the sounds of it had developed a relationship with them over the years. Her daughter-in-law was right, Gran hadn’t just been a senile old woman rambling when she spoke of Nan and the fairies.
“Yeah, the Southside Kith,” I agreed. “Not very respectful of them, is it?”
I leaned against the doorjamb and crossed my arms.
“We have an agreement. They would never harm a Hoskins.”
“Well,” I said slowly. “Problem is, you’re dead now, so maybe they think that voids the contract.”
“I don’t believe you. You Witch Kin are all the same, you’re a lying cheating crowd and you always were.”
“No, Nan...” I was taken aback. “I’m not a witch. I’m not one of them.”
“Don’t be lying to me, I can smell the de Teilhard off you a mile away, even dead as I am, so you claim.”
“I’m a half-blood...”
“You all think you’re so special with your bloodlines and purity,” she spat out, not listening to anything I had to say. “You think you have the monopoly on supernatural blood, eh? Let me tell you, there’s more of that sprinkled through this town than there is Normal. Did you know that? And from lines far older than your Anglo-Saxon pretenders. Look at me, I’ve elf blood from the original pre-Celtic tribes. Diluted a lot over the years, yes, but it’s a far sight better than being a witch. And you never saw me going around, flaunting it in everybody’s face.”
Wow. I could see how Witch and Normals could mate, but elf and Normal? This was a day of discoveries, to be sure, and something I needed to think about later, when I had time. When I was out of Alt and Benjy was safe.
