by Harper Fox
But poor Zeke just stared. Gideon should have remembered that the pastor didn’t decide about the hatches, the matches and dispatches: just dealt with them when they came his way, a kind of solemn midwife, a companion on journeys between the worlds. The only sounds disturbing the summer air now were Rufus Pendower’s heartbroken sobs. “I didn’t mean it,” he cried, voice cracking up and down through its register. “I didn’t mean to give up our secret, Locryn! But even now he doesn’t hear it, even now he won’t hear what he is. And you won’t tell him, and so the whole world falls apart. How do you know he didn’t die without you?”
“Because,” Lee said distinctly, with a deep-laid rage Gideon had never heard before, “we never fucking met.”
“But there’s a thousand ways it could have happened. Think of all the things you saved him from. Maybe that’s what the Beaumont Hall ghosts meant—when they said someone who loved you would die.”
“Do something for me, Rufus.”
“Oh, God, Locryn—anything!”
“Fuck off.” Lee turned the full silver blaze of his attention back to Gideon and Zeke, as if Rufus had never existed. “Listen to me, both of you. I did cut a deal with Alice Rawle, and I don’t have much time. I... I’ve done something stupid.”
A thousand alarm bells went off in Gideon’s head. Suddenly he was wide awake, gluing moment to moment, clue to clue across the last few weeks. He flew through inner data banks, every lost soul he’d encountered on his path through the wounded and desperate of the world. I’ve done something stupid—anything from bashing an errant spouse on the head with a pan to eating a month of prescription meds in one go. Lee had prescription meds for the headaches his visions sometimes brought on. “Shit. Something’s wrong with you. Have you taken something, some drugs, or—”
“Jesus, no, you beautiful bloody idiot.” Lee shook his head in disbelief: “Of course not. But I should never have driven, not when I’m like this.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t believe I did it. I drove Tamsie. It must be all part of... all part of what’s wrong, like...” He swayed, put a hand to his brow. “I think it’s coming. Like you not going to Trelowarren with me yesterday.”
“Like... Oh, fuck. Yes. Why the hell didn’t I go?”
“Alice, I think. At work on us, like she said—weaving her curse. But we let it in, Gid, just you and me. I should have talked to you, like bloody Sergeant Weird-Shit says. And you... Oh, God, my love, you wanted it. When some bad bastard does some evil thing on your turf, and the law can’t touch him, you want... You want...”
He dropped to his knees. Gideon went down too, like a stone, in time to catch him and break his fall onto the gravel and daisy-starred turf. “Sweetheart? Sweetheart?” He drew him across his lap, propped him and cradled him. “Shit, his nose is bleeding again. What is it, love? A monster? Something I can unmask for you?”
Lee stared up at him. In the course of six loving years—even in front of the registrar’s desk in Falmouth, clasped hand in hand while they said their vows—Gideon had never seen such a look as that, such a purity of devotion. He wanted to fall into it and drown. He’d been told by Zeke and Rufus Pendower that Lee was worth a hundred of him, that he didn’t deserve to touch the hem of his robe. Yes, let him drop and drown and dissolve in that pure silver love before Lee himself worked it out. “Gid,” Lee whispered. “My chain.”
“What? Is it hurting you? Can’t you breathe?”
“Just... take it off me.”
Gid couldn’t spare a hand. He glanced up at Zeke, who knelt awkwardly, reached beneath the back of Lee’s neck and undid the catch. “There,” Zeke said, with a deep, rough tenderness that was as new to Gideon as Lee’s sudden rage at Pendower had been. “What do you want us to do with it, Lee?”
“Give it to Gid. Tell him to... Tell him to find me in the cave.”
“I don’t have to,” Gideon broke in. “Christ, Lee, you’re right here. I don’t have to find you. Zeke, call an ambulance. He’s sick.”
“I will, but take the chain, Gideon. Let him see that you’re doing as he says.” Zeke eased the heavy silver links into the daylight, where they flashed and flared in the sun. He held the chain out to Gideon, who took it as if his brother had just laid Lee’s soul in his hands, and then—a heartbeat before Gid could burst into tears of raw terror and frustration—pulled out his mobile and dialled.
Zeke’s attention shifted to the verge by the Rover’s tyre, where a sheet of folded A4 paper was fluttering, ready to dance off on the breeze. He put out a hand to secure it, shook it out and scanned it while he spoke to the emergency-services operator, dryly reeling off location and details. He was grey by the time he hung up. He held the letter out to Gideon. “They’re on their way. This must have fallen out of Lee’s pocket. You have to read it.”
“What?” Gideon was too busy to attend. He was tucking away Lee’s chain, making sure that Lee could see he was doing exactly as he asked, that he always would. He found a scrap of tissue and began to wipe away the blood from Lee’s face. “Not now, Zeke.”
“Yes. Now.”
Gideon took the sheet from him. He left a bloody thumbprint on the letterhead of the Trelowarren hospital’s radiography department. He read—carefully, in the circumstances—from start to finish.
Then he closed his eyes. “Oh, Christ. Oh, Lee, my own lad. No.”
“They can save him, Gideon. If he goes to hospital now, he can be saved.”
Gideon only heard the last part. His mind, in frantic recoil from all the things he should have known, should have seen, should have done, leapt barricades of time and swept him back to the burning church. The last mists vanished and he understood how it was that he’d stood in that firelight, blood on his hands, a world ending around him, and woken up next morning—no, the morning before—clean and forgiven, and everything newly begun.
His daughter could turn back time. He sat up, raising Lee in his arms. “Zeke? Get Tamsie.”
His brother’s face clouded. But he too understood the little girl’s gifts, and when push came to shove was as much prey to human temptation as anyone. Had learned to love Lee just as much. He ran for the car.
He was back less than thirty seconds later: Gideon had counted each one in the jump of the pulse at Lee’s throat. “She’s asleep,” Zeke said, and his words fell like stones down a well. “We can’t make her do this. She’s just a little girl.”
“Oh, Zeke. Please.”
“She saved Ma for us. She saved my sons on the moor. She’s... wiped all the tears from our eyes, Gideon—changed the world twice. She killed someone for us today.”
“No. No. Alice is alive.”
“An empty shell.” Zeke got down stiffly onto one knee, placed a hand on Lee’s head. “Still,” he said brokenly, “I will go and fetch her if you wish. We can try.”
Gideon saw it, saw them trying. He wouldn’t let Zeke bring her: it would have to be his own work, to open the Escort’s back door and wake her up. For once she’d have cried herself to sleep. Her curls would be sticking to her brow, her fine skin flushed like Lee’s in feverish dreams. He’d have to lift her out into the sunlight, carry her, turn her so that she could see her beloved Lee, one of the two souls appointed as her guardians and guides through this world, laid out flat on his back and bleeding. He’d have to hope the sight of that would trigger her gifts. “No. No. I don’t even want her to see.”
As if he’d finally done something right, Lee shifted in his arms. His lost gaze focussed. He raised one hand: placed it tenderly on Gideon’s cheek. “Find me,” he whispered, and his smile dawned, the faintest reminder of the sweet light that had shone through all Gideon’s days since they’d met. “Find me and love me again.”
Chapter Thirteen (Prologue to Volume Two)
The World According to Alice
The Kemps lived in a tiny mid-terrace house on the outskirts of Dark. Gideon had attended there every day since Lorna’s disappearance. For his first few
visits, the family had seized upon him like an angel. What he’d become to them now, he had no idea. He was pretty sure he wasn’t helping any more. But he couldn’t stop.
He knocked tentatively at Sarah Kemp’s front door. After a few seconds Joe Kemp appeared behind the frosted glass. He looked very tired this morning, the waiting and watching beginning to take serious toll. He was one of the few in the village who could still find a smile for the visiting copper, and Gideon returned it gratefully.
“All right, Joe? How is she today?”
“Oh—about the same. Any fresh tidings?”
Always the same exchange. Gideon knew it could only alter now by a miracle, or the news that would end everything. “Nothing yet. I just wanted to tell Sarah that Lorna’s details are online now with the international missing-children’s database.”
“Thanks. International, though? She vanished while she was playing with the Prowse kids on the moor. She didn’t hop on a plane to Marbella.”
“I know, but...” Gideon hesitated. Joe had been fond of his brother for all his faults, and none of the leads to Alf had panned out. He was long gone. “Someone might have taken her out of the country. Anyway, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so. Look, before you go through... Sarah’s got someone with her.”
“Okay. I can come back later.”
“To be honest with you...” Joe scratched his head. “I’d rather you went in now. Sarah wants to try every avenue, but I’m not too happy—”
“Who’s with her, Joe?”
“Somebody called Lee Tyack. A psychic. Now, Gid, don’t be angry...”
Gideon wasn’t angry. There was no point in spending out good rage on these sticky bits of fluff who attached themselves to the edges of a crime scene. Cornwall had plenty of them. The important thing was to detach them, send them blowing off on the breeze, before they could do any damage.
He strode through the narrow little passage. Sarah Kemp was sitting at the kitchen table, Lee Tyack opposite her. Yes, a fine example of the type—long skirts, gold bracelets chiming. Probably good-hearted: they usually were, and certainly she was gazing at Sarah with genuine concern. Organised, too. A file was spread out in front of her, and she was wearing unusually sensible shoes.
He planted himself by the table. He didn’t often use his presence, his rugby-player bulk, to make an impression, but he wasn’t sorry when the fall of his shadow made the psychic jump. “Sarah,” he said, gently as he could, unable to keep an ancient Bodmin rumble from his voice. “I know you’re distraught. But I don’t think you’ll help anyone by listening to someone who’s a well-meaning idiot at best and at worst a charlatan.”
Oh, but he was angry, wasn’t he? Beneath an aching shell of self-restraint, angry and betrayed that Sarah had chosen this path. The charlatan stared up at him, not visibly insulted. “Oh dear,” she said. “I do seem to have come at an awkward time, Mrs Kemp. I tell you what—I’ll go and make my other calls around the village, and I’ll come back and see you later, eh?” With that she gathered up her folder and made for the kitchen door, nodding pleasantly to Gideon en route.
Sarah Kemp sprang to her feet. “What the bloody hell was that for, Gideon Frayne?”
He stared at her. Her eyes were raw from grief and sleeplessness. “I’m sorry. But I’ve got to protect you—”
“From my social worker? That was Sue Harley, you great plod!”
“Shit. Joe didn’t say she was here.”
“No, she came in the back way while Lee was talking to me. Oh, I see—it was him you meant to have a go at, was it? Why shouldn’t I talk to a psychic, Gideon? What bloody good have you done, to try and stop me finding help elsewhere? It’s been a fortnight—thirteen nights on that moor for my little girl, if she’s even still alive. You’ve been useless. You’ve done nothing. You’ve...”
Gideon stared down at her. There was nothing—no friend, no kindly held-out hand, no salvation in the world, to stop him from vortexing down with her into the bottomless pool of her grief. “And did he?” he managed at last, over her sobs. “Did he... Could he help you?”
“No. He was totally honest. He said he sees...” She rocked herself, tangling her fingers into her hair in a spasm of fear and misery. “He says he sees monsters, but they’re always wearing masks, and sometimes he can’t take them off. He left when Sue Harley arrived. It’s too late. You missed him. He’s gone.”
About the Author
Harper Fox has become a well-loved go-to author for fans of M/M romance. Here you’ll find immersive tales of excitement, magic, drama, all underpinned by the ordinary processes of love, hope and loss in an imperfect world.
Harper has garnered critical acclaim for novels such as Scrap Metal, Brothers of the Wild North Sea, Seven Summer Nights and The Salisbury Key. She is also creator of the enduringly popular Tyack & Frayne mystery series. Many of her ebooks are also available in paperback and audio format. You can find news of her current projects and full backlist at her website, www.harperfox.net.
A northerner at heart, Harper has returned to her native Northumberland after a spell in Cornwall. She travels between the two as often as she can, and feels she has a home in both magical kingdoms. She is married to Jane, and enslaved by three cats.
