by E M Graham
“How was I to know that?”
“You could have some sense!”
“And where would I have picked up this sense? At the school you sent me to? I learned all about Newfoundland history, funny they didn’t include the bit about Alt Town!”
I’d been sent to no school, of course, just the Normal public school system. It was his own fault I was in total ignorance of the supernatural conventions and laws.
“Right, that does it,” he said, the sparks now flying from his eyes. He didn’t like it when anyone pointed out his lapses in judgement. “You’re leaving. Tomorrow.”
“No!” Me and Edna both shouted at once. We looked at each other in surprise.
“You’re not sending her anywhere, Jon. She’s staying right here with me.” She gave me an extra squeeze with her arm.
“Edna, keep out of it,” he said. “You don’t understand the danger she’s put herself into.”
Danger? My heart sank. I didn’t need more crap piled on me at that moment. I was already steeling myself against the perils of making a raid on the fairy hall.
He must have seen the expression on my face, for he gave a quick nod.
“Yes, danger in spreading around the word that you’re a half-blood,” he said, his mouth set in a grim line, and turned to Edna. “You heard about the young woman’s body found out by Portugal Cove?”
I could feel her body stiffening. Her grasp on my shoulder was becoming painful.
“She was a mixed blood,” he continued. “Not from here, but from another branch of the family who’d left fifty years ago. She wandered into town looking for her roots. Didn’t understand the political situation here right now, and got in with the wrong crowd of witches. Need I say more?”
He didn’t. The persecutions were starting again.
“Right then. If you’re so determined to let everyone know you’re a daughter of mine, you’ll have to stay under my protection. Under my roof. At least until we get to the bottom of that woman’s death.’
This was an added complication I really didn’t need right then. That baby wasn’t getting any younger.
“Can’t I just stay here?” I pleaded. “I promise, Edna will know where I am at all times. You can ... you can even put a spell on the house, or me, or whatever you need to do.”
He shook his head. “You really are so ignorant, and I admit, it’s my own fault. I thought the best way to keep you safe was to remove you totally from the supernatural elements. Sorry, no spells. Things don’t work that way. No, you’ll be coming with me as that’s the only way I can protect you. Go, pack your bag with whatever you’ll need for the next few days.”
“But I have tests coming up! I’ll need to go in to university.” I was searching for any out I could find.
He laughed. It was not a pretty sound. “Now you worry about your marks? Don’t be ridiculous. Your life is far more important.”
I could feel Dad’s eyes on me as I slumped back at the table.
“Believe me, it’s not that I want you there,” he said, almost hissing his words. “You’ve brought this on yourself. It’s entirely your own work.”
Even Edna saw that she had to let go and give me up to his care.
“I want you to keep in close contact, okay?” she whispered in my ear as I was set to follow Dad out to his car. She held me tight as if she was never going to see me again.
My phone. Shit. It was still with Alice, and I still had hers.
“Look, me and Alice mixed up our phones,” I said quietly as my arms lingered in the hug. “So if you need to talk with me, call her cell, okay?” I knew she had my friend’s number somewhere.
I climbed up into the passenger seat as if it were into the jaws of a monster. Dad drove erratically all the way into the east end, which was not like him and just showed how upset he was. I didn’t realized he’d gotten on the Blue Tooth till I heard Cate’s hated voice fill the vehicle.
“Get the spare room ready,” he barked. “We have another visitor staying.”
“The painters are still working on the north room,” she complained. “Jon, I really don’t have room for another of your friends. This is the limit!”
“You can put her up in the garret, then, that’s even better,” he said.
“The garret? Are you mad?” Then she paused. “This isn’t that child of yours, is it? Jon, I said she was not to come into my house again under any circumstances, and you know I meant it.”
Great, now I had to look forward to Cate’s warm welcome.
“It would be easier if I just stayed home,” I remarked out loud. “I agree with Cate. And the feeling is mutual, by the way.” Bitch.
“Shut up, both of you,” he said in his grimmest voice. “This is the way it is, and I don’t want any more grief.”
She clicked off the line without another word, and he also said nothing else on the whole way to his house.
The private laneway was pitch black, and something small squealed as he tore up the gravel. I hope it jumped free, whatever it was, as he certainly wasn’t going to stop to check if it was hurt. The mansion loomed above us.
He kept my door locked as he jumped out and came round the vehicle, then a quick click. My father opened my door himself and grasped me by my arm, hauling me down out of the SUV.
“That’s really not necessary, Dad,” I said, wishing I could make myself sound less like a sulky teenager who’d been found in an all-night bar. I couldn’t shake off his grip, no matter how hard I tried.
He shoved me inside the back door and through the passage into the kitchen. It had been renovated in the many years since I’d been there last, all gleaming steel appliances with everything else black and white, right down to new the chequered marble floors. It looked cold, efficient and soulless, not like Edna’s run-down room with the wheezing fridge and painted cupboards and colorful works of art everywhere. Cate must feel really at home in this space.
And Sasha. My half-sister was sitting on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, the bright shiny expensive chrome ones. A sneer was already on her sharp face.
“Oh, Dad,” she said. “Really? Since when have we accepted her into the family?”
“It’s not my choice, believe me,” I told her. “I don’t want anything to do with this house or its inhabitants.”
“Show her up to the garret, Sasha.”
“What, you’re locking me in the room all night? I‘ve been bad, so I have to go to my room without any supper?”
He sighed as if the robes of villainy wore heavily on him.
“Sash, what’s in the fridge? I could do with a bite too.”
She shrugged. “Your supper’s still in the oven,” she said. “I suppose you can share it with her.”
And that’s all the help she was prepared to give. With a flick of her long black hair, she stalked through the kitchen door and into the depths of the house.
He turned to one of the wall ovens and opened it.
Okay, I hate Cate, right? But that witch can cook. The smell was divine, even though I’d filled up on Indian food a few hours before.
“Tetrazzini okay for you?” He asked this in a tired voice.
I nodded. He got down plates and silverware and glasses. I would have helped, but I didn’t know where anything was in this house.
He took a bottle of red wine from the fridge, and cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t drink alcohol much, hardly at all these days, but I figured this was a good night to start. It might help me to think, because I needed a new plan, and soon.
13
DAD BROUGHT ME UP to the garret room after we’d finished, leaving the dirty dishes in the sink. Cate was probably going to freak out at that, too, having disorder in her perfect kitchen. Good for him, I thought, stand up to the witch.
He brought me up the back stairs (yes, the old servants’ staircase, making sure I knew my place, no doubt.) The uncarpeted steps to the attic level were narrow and cramped, and
ended in a small landing with four doors off it, no windows.
He opened the second door to the right and switched on the overhead light. It was the round, turreted room.
Now, I had always been jealous of Sasha’s gorgeous round room on the floor below. At least, back when I thought everything pink and princess was the ultimate in cool. And now I had a round room all for myself, but it was hardly as light and airy as I remembered hers to be.
Being in the attic, the ceiling was low. It held a bed with a quilt on it, a rickety table beside it, a saggy looking old armchair and a beat-up chest of drawers. That was it.
Oh, except for the bars on the window.
It wasn’t decorated very nicely either. It looked more like a Seventies’ half-assed renovation job – someone had attempted to cover up the old Edwardian stripes of white and yellow with the god-awful earth-tone designs of that later era. They tired of the effort mid-job and wandered away, never to return to finish the work.
I dropped my knapsack onto the old plain rug which covered most of the floorboards, and we both stared around at the unwelcoming space.
“Well.” Dad cleared his throat. “It’s not for long.”
He looked over to the windows, the bars visible through the lights of the city far below. “It used to be the nursery once upon a time. Really, this is the last spare room we have.”
“Oh, well, here we are,” I said. “Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out.”
“Christ, Dara! You’re not a prisoner,” he said, towering over me with a face like a thundercloud. “This is for your own safety, can’t you see that? You’ve been meddling in things beyond your ken, you’ve reneged on our agreement, and this is the only way...”
“The only way you can control me?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that, but if you insist.”
I plunked myself onto the single bed. The old iron springs creaked. I was confused, but he was beginning to get through to me. His actions stemmed from love, or responsibility, or something like that, not because he hated me.
“There’s no TV in here,” he said in a much calmer voice. “You’re welcome to come down to the... family room.”
“Right,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just stick in my room for tonight. I have an essay to finish, and studying to do, you know.”
He nodded. “The bathroom is across the hall. There’s always towels there. If you get hungry or need anything, just go down to the kitchen and look for it,” he said. “And please, treat my home as yours.”
Before he left the room, I stopped him.
“I don’t suppose there’s a spare reading lamp? I hate the overhead light, it’s too bright.”
A smile slowly worked its way across his face. “Marian was particular about lighting, too,” he said softly. “Let’s look in the other rooms up here, I’m sure there’s got to be something.”
We poked around in the other two attic rooms. They held the detritus of years, things too good to be thrown out or given away, but still not to the liking of the present inhabitants of the house.
“This is pretty cool,” I noted, pointing to up a heavy looking lamp tucked away in a corner. It was made to look like a huge old lantern, the kind with a glass base to hold the oil and another glass funnel to contain the flame, where the modern light bulb sat. There was an oversize shade to go with it.
Dad reached over and affixed the shade, then picked the whole thing up.
“This is a solid one,” he said, grunting with the effort. “Let me bring it in for you.”
He laid it on the small bedside table and plugged it in. The bulb still worked.
I looked at the layer of dust over it all, and at his shirt front.
“Uh oh,” I said, pointing at the soiled white silk.
“No matter, it’s only dust,” he said as he brushed at it. “A trip to the drycleaners, and it’ll be as good as new.”
He paused at the door. “Dara,” he began.
I looked up at him. The expression on his face was almost tender. “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “I mean it. Sorry for... everything I did.”
I bit my bottom lip. I really was sorry for the havoc, and he didn’t even know the half of it yet. He would be absolutely furious when he found out.
He nodded. “I know you are,” he said. “We need to talk, but there’s lots of time for that tomorrow. Have a good night.” He flicked off the overhead before shutting the door.
I lay back on the pillows and stared around at my new refuge. In this softer light, it really wasn’t so bad. The Edwardian yellow stripes actually worked with the mustards and reds of the seventies abstract blobs, in a weird sort of way. And after a while, you didn’t even notice the bars on the windows.
I could hear the muffled sounds of Dad’s family in the house below me as they did their evening things, and through the closed window the faint sound of a car pulling up. I didn’t know who all was home or which of the four kids were still living here, aside from Sasha of course.
There was not going to be any studying happening that night, I soon realized, as the math book lay forgotten on my lap. My head was too full of things I needed to sort out.
Like... Dad. His mention of Mom had really floored me. I took out the photo from my wallet, the one taken one summer day so long ago, years before she disappeared. She was dancing in a field of daisies, it must have been July, maybe somewhere in the fields around Torbay, and I was trailing behind her in that pink chiffon dress with the sequins dotted over the skirt. Back when I thought pink was cool and fairies were friendly.
The photographer had captured her smile and delight in life, in that moment of time. I sat up. Who had taken that picture? Whoever it was, there was a strong bond between them, you could see the adoration in her eyes as she looked their way and sense that there were no barriers, no guardedness there.
Was it Dad behind the camera? He had spoken her name with tenderness. And... I’d never thought about it before, but he must have loved her tremendously to defy the strict conventions of his life and position, to take up with a Normal and even have a child with her.
He couldn’t be the one behind her disappearance, the love and pain in his eyes told me that. Which left only one other person who could be responsible. It had to be his wife.
What had Cate done to my mother?
I lifted my head and stared at the window bars in horror. He had brought me to her house and effectively jailed me in the lair of my mother’s enemy, the woman who had to be responsible for – what? Mom’s death?
No. She wasn’t dead, at least she hadn’t been when she’d hidden the book of spells in the library book case.
Yet if she wasn’t dead, why would she have left me?
I couldn’t even think of what that witch had done to my mother.
And if Jon had loved Marian so much, how could he have allowed this to happen? My heart was torn between wanting to believe that their love had been real, yet seeing the evidence before my eyes, the fact that he had opted to stay with Cate even after she had removed his loved one. Had his love for Mom been that false, that shallow?
No, I couldn’t believe that. My mind was racing so much it didn’t know where to land. I threw myself back on the bed and shut my eyes tight and forced myself to breathe deeply.
Yes, perhaps Dad did love me, even if only for my mother’s sake, but his caring actions had only made my present job harder. It was going to be difficult to get away from this prison and make my way across town to meet Dirk and Alice in time for our raid on the fairy den tomorrow evening.
And I didn’t have a plan ironed out yet, either. How on earth would the three of us manage to swoop in, take what we wanted to and get out without being torn apart by those sharp fairy teeth?
Alice was the weakest link, I knew. Despite the signs of her being part elf, she had no notion of what power she had or how she could use it, if she did in fact have any. Perhaps I could task her with grabbing the baby while Dirk guarded her with his iron sword.
Saving the child was, after all, the most important objective.
Me and the dwarf would be able to see through the enchantments, while Alice could not. So I would run towards Benjy and unloose the bounds the fairies had placed on him and drag him out. Yes, he was a full grown man and I was smaller than him, but he would also be weak from being in the hall for so long. Even if he struggled against me, I figured I could take him on.
How Dirk would access the fairy gold I knew not and cared less, as long as I got the humans out of there safely.
A faint sound caught my awareness, a stealthy foot on the creaky wooden steps to the attic. It wasn’t Dad’s confident tread, and there were no other inhabited rooms up here, I’d seen that for myself. The person making their quiet way up those stairs was coming with the sole intent of seeing me.
And torturing me, I had no doubt. A sibling? Or worse, Cate herself.
I tensed, ready to jump up and attack if necessary, or at least scream the roof down.
A soft knock came at the door and I let out my breath. At least it wasn’t going to be an angry confrontation.
It sounded again.
“What? Who is it?”
The ancient brass door knob twisted slowly, and the door opened.
“Okay to come in?” I heard the soft northern Scottish accent as he peeked his head round the painted wood.
“Hugh? What are you doing here?”
“Same as you,” he said as he entered the room and quietly pushed the door closed to it clicked. “I’m a guest of Jon’s. Cate’s not too happy about having me here, either. Oh, and keep your voice down, Sasha’s room is right below us.”
He looked around. I scooted my legs over to allow him on the bed. The slight fragrance of his soap brought a welcome freshness to the dusty stale room and as he shifted himself back onto the mattress, the muscles on his shoulders moved against the fabric of his t-shirt.
“I didn’t know you were staying here,” I whispered as I laid my long-forgotten text book aside.
“Jon invited me when the first rumblings of trouble began,” he said. “When the prejudice began to rear its ugly head again. He wants to open the minds of the Kin, help bring them into the twenty-first century. It’s only through working together can we thrive, as a group.”
