Blackfin Sky (30 page)

I should never have come back here.

Low growls came from the Swivellers, too close for them to miss her much longer, but still she couldn’t move.

Then footsteps, racing over the grass above and behind her.

The Swivellers fell silent, and she opened her eyes just in time to see the last of them skulking off along the promenade. Sean hadn’t noticed them, though – his eyes were fixed on the pier.

No, not the pier.

He had already seen the white speck floating in the water just off the beach and was vaulting over the promenade railing and down onto the sand below.

Sean!

Whatever trigger connected her to her anchor was pulled in that instant. Sky faded out, disappearing from a past that she never ever wanted to revisit again.

Lightning flashed behind her eyelids, and for the first time she truly, clearly saw the pathways stretching out – around, inside,
through
her. More than that, she saw a beacon, shining golden at a point in her own pathway, running strongest through her. She followed it, and the weight of re-entering her own pathway was like the emptiness being refilled, and it was him.

Sean held her so tight against him that Sky couldn’t breathe, didn’t want to breathe ever again if it meant him letting go. She felt his lips, hot against her wind-bitten skin, and met them with her own, pushing him back onto her bed. The bed springs should have creaked in the empty house, but the Blood House swallowed the sound. Nothing else existed now beyond the room they were in. Not death or mind control or the dark water gnashing its teeth against the struts of Blackfin Pier.

‘Did you see what happened?’

Sky nodded, but couldn’t talk about that. Couldn’t let herself think about what she had seen, what had been done to throw her life into such chaos.

She needed to be lost, and for Sean to anchor her in that moment.

Sky leaned back, tugged the oversized sweater over her head. Sean stared up at her, eyes wide as they traced her skin. Still, he held back, silently questioning. She knew what he would ask, anyway, and gave him the only answer she could.

‘I need you, Sean.’

There were no more questions, only his arms around her, his heat against her skin, and the perfection of being lost and found in a heartbeat.

26

Sky awoke to the sound of the front door opening. Her heart leapt as she heard her father’s voice booming from the downstairs hallway.

‘
Coco?
’

They let him go!

She then froze as his footsteps began climbing the stairs, and Sean’s arm tightened around her waist. He’d heard it too.

‘The window!’ she whispered, and Sean’s eyes darted to it, but then he shook his head. He slid out of her bed and dressed hurriedly.

‘I’ll go and speak with your dad. I don’t want to go sneaking around behind his back.’

‘
Are you crazy?’

Sean smiled at her. ‘Maybe a little.’

‘Please, Sean! I couldn’t bear it if they told me not to see you anymore.’

The heavy footsteps continued their approach. They didn’t hurry, so Sky said a silent prayer of thanks to the Blood House for muting their conversation. Still, Sean hesitated, one trainer still unlaced. Sky dived for her dressing gown on the back of her bedroom door just as Gui’s footfalls stopped on the other side of it.

‘Please!’
she mouthed silently, and Sean moved reluctantly toward the french windows. They opened before he’d even reached them, allowing him a silent exit onto the balcony. He rolled his eyes, climbed over the railing, and disappeared.

Gui knocked on the door.

‘
Coco?
’

Sky fastened the tie tightly around her waist and opened the door, wearing what she hoped was a breezy smile. ‘Dad! You’re home!’

He narrowed his eyes at her, then they moved past her, searching her room. ‘Yes, I am home. Are you alone?’

Just at that moment, the roof of the jeep came into view as Sean coasted it out onto the road, and Sky felt the blood drain from her face. When she looked up at her father again, his skin had turned purple.

‘LILY!’ Gui had half-turned towards his own room, showing a rather impressive vein throbbing in his temple. ‘Lily,
venez ici!
’

‘Dad, please! Let me explain…. Wait, why are you yelling for Mum? I thought she was with you at the police station all night?’

Gui stared at her in silence for a long moment, too angry for her words to make any immediate sense. Finally, he shook his head. ‘She left to come home and see that you were all right more than four hours ago. She is not here?’

Sky’s expression spoke for her, and Gui barrelled downstairs to the telephone. He dialled Lily’s mobile, but the call went to voicemail. ‘Lily, please call me at once. I’m worried that you aren’t home yet,
mon coeur
.’ Gui replaced the handset, standing over it in silence for a minute like he was willing it to ring. Then, to Sky’s surprise, he picked it up again and dialled the number for the Vega household.

‘Holly? It’s Guillaume Rousseau. My wife left Oakridge Station four hours ago and hasn’t been heard from since then. Are you able to contact your colleagues at the station…? She was … yes, I’ll be waiting for your telephone call.’

He hung up the phone, but left his giant hand on it as though considering who he might call next.

‘Dad, what’s going on?’

‘I made the mistake of thinking I could protect you both against a madman.’ To Sky’s horror, Gui balled his free hand into a fist and punched a sizeable hole into the plaster near the front door. It was rare for the giant to lose his temper, and Sky had never seen his rage turn to violence, not once.

Gui turned at the sound of her frightened squeak, and his face instantly softened. Still, deep lines marred his forehead, the furrows of old worries resurfacing.

‘I should have known he would come back. But I didn’t mean to startle you,
coco
. I’m sorry.’

Sky went over and hugged her father’s arm. ‘Please, just tell me what’s going on. Are you talking about Gage?’

The shock was evident in Gui’s face.

‘You know of him?’

The muscles in the arm she was hugging flexed like a python. ‘I found out last night that he was the one behind what happened to me on my birthday. He knew what I was, Dad. What I would become.’

A moment of understanding passed between Sky and her father – the man who had raised her her entire life, and whom she would always consider her father, whether he was biologically or not.

‘Your mother told you?’

Sky nodded, and had to swallow hard before answering. ‘I more or less figured it out after I met Severin.’ Her father opened his mouth. ‘Please, Dad, I don’t want to go over the why and the how right now. I just want to know where Mum is.’

The phone rang, interrupting them. Gui snatched it up.

‘Guillaume Rousseau.’

Sky tried to listen to whatever Officer Vega was telling her father, but it was too quiet for her to hear. His mouth had hardened into a tight line by the time he hung up.

‘Dad? What is it?’

‘Your mother was seen with a man wearing a long black coat and a bowler hat outside the police station.’

‘Gage? But Mum wouldn’t have gone anywhere with him—’

‘He would not have asked her,
coco
. Gage, he plays tricks with the mind, bends the will to his own wants—’

‘Dad, I know. I saw him do it with the Swivellers; he had them acting like wolves to chase me off the pier. I saw him control Miss Schwarz, too. I’m betting he also made Felix Swiveller drive over the Point.’

Gui nodded. ‘It would seem so. Old Moley recognised him, but could not believe it was possibly him. We all thought Gage had disappeared forever after the fire sixteen years ago.’

‘How did Old Moley know him?’ Gui gave her a significant look. ‘Oh. He was in the circus, too, huh?’ She couldn’t imagine what the crusty old cur would look like in a leotard.

‘I have not a clue where she could be,
coco
. Could you… does your gift work at all like your mother’s? Could you find her, do you think, if you touched something of hers?’ He grabbed one of Lily’s scarves from the coat hook and held it out to Sky. She took it from him, even as she shook her head and her heart sank.

‘If it does, I don’t know how to do that.’

But she did know how to
go
to her mother. Even as the thought occurred to her, light maps threaded through her brain and into a million, trillion pathways, weaving in and out of each other in every direction. Space, time – all intersected in a giant multidimensional spider web, with her mother pulsing blue as Sky sought her out.

‘Skylar? What are you doing? Skylar, no!’

But Sky’s father’s voice was a distant rumble as she faded from the Blood House and reappeared a mile or so across town, in the ruined husk of the circus. The early morning breeze made Sky instantly regret not getting dressed, and she hugged her dressing gown tightly around her. Her feet chilled in the stiff grass growing through the ruins, but Sky picked her way through the debris towards the sound of her mother’s voice.

Sky caught sight of her just as the oddity of what she was hearing sank in. Her mother wasn’t talking to
someone
, she was talking to Sky.

‘…never wanted you to have that life, you see. I wanted
better
for you. So when I found out about you I had to get out, and I knew Severin would never leave Gage, couldn’t leave the circus behind…’

Lily sat with her legs tucked under her, one hand plucking idly at the charred grass which had already left dark stains on her dress. Gage stood next to her, a terrifying figure in his long, black coat and bowler hat, his skin almost as pale as when he’d worn the white face paint of a mime. His hand rested on top of Lily’s head, but his eyes bored into Sky as she stepped slowly into the tattered remains of the Big Top.

‘And he wouldn’t have let me leave either, if he’d known about you. So Gui and I made a pact: we would run away together, leave our life with the circus behind once and for all, because he truly loved me, you see, not like Severin…’

Sky had to swallow the rush of spit in her mouth as her stomach threatened to revolt. Seeing Lily’s dazed expression, hearing the distant quality of her voice, Sky was in no doubt. Whatever tricks Gage was able to play with people’s minds, he was doing it now to her mother.

Sky forced herself to take a step towards the unnatural tableau.

‘Mum?’

Lily’s gaze never wavered. She continued talking softly, as though she were lulling herself to sleep.

‘…never stood a chance once Gage knew who they were. He took the skull, used it against your grandfather, made him do unspeakable things. Gui has always maintained he never started that fire, but I wouldn’t have blamed him if he
had
done it, out of vengeance. Gage deserved to die. He stole so many children, so many…’

‘Mum, Gage isn’t dead. He’s standing right next to you.’

The only response Sky received was a terrible smile from Gage. His teeth were yellowed, his mouth a stagnant hole that they had rotted in.

‘I should never have run, never have gone with them, but Severin was so charming and I was just a girl, I didn’t know any better…’

‘Mum, please snap out of it now. You’re scaring me!’

‘You couldn’t
not
look at him. He was like a flame, he shone so brightly…’

Sky took one more step towards them, but Gage stopped her with a shake of his head. Still, he said nothing.

‘What are you doing to her, you freak?’

It was the worst insult Sky knew, but it only made his grin widen.