Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1) (41 page)

“Nicholas Donal,” she whispered.

“I’ll take you home. It’s time for you to leave, Sean.”

“Sarah …” he pleaded.

“I’m warning you …” Nicholas’s eyes flashed, and there was the sound of wings flapping, somewhere among the trees.

“No, Leaf – Nicholas. No. Let him go!”

“He killed your cousin.”

Sarah shook her head. To see Sean covered with those ravens, like Cathy had been …

“Please let him go.”

Nicholas held her close. “All that matters now is you,” he said, and his words sounded like a lullaby. She closed her eyes, resting her face on his chest.

Nicholas Donal. His name twirled in her head in a whirlpool of dead leaves and ravens.

“Take me home,” she whispered.

And the words we said became

Echoes of nothing

She had to be on the edge, looking down. She had to be sure the end had come. I wanted her to feel total despair, complete and utter lack of hope, before I intervened. The more pain she’d felt, the sweeter my arms would seem to her. The more afraid she was, the safer I would make her feel.

To see Cathy’s reaction was hilarious. She thought I was a helpless boy, a toy she could break to hurt Sarah. Her face when I froze Nocturne! And the best thing – her expression as my Elementals descended on her. I wish my father could have seen that. I suppose pain was her redemption. And there must have been a lot of pain.

It worked. Sarah believes in me now. And how beautiful she looked, so pale, so frightened. Her blood is very red; her fear smells like nightly flowers.

Nicholas Donal is now my name – how ironic, another man who can’t tell her his real name, just like Sean. But that’s all behind us now. Now we can start thinking of our life together.

Salty tears in salted water

The hand I couldn’t see

To hold my restless thoughts

In his loving palm

Sarah couldn’t remember how they made it home. It was as if she’d blinked, and they were there. He was opening her door, leading her in. They stood in the darkened hallway.

“Nicholas … The Secret Families … are there more like us? Like the Midnights?”

“Many more. And we’re all in danger.”

She moaned softly. Her ribs were hurting.

“Shhhh. You need to rest now. I’ll keep watch, don’t worry.”

Will you stay?
she nearly said. But she stopped herself. She needed to be alone. She needed to take it all in, Leaf ‘s identity, Cathy’s death. The Secret Families. Sean. The Sabha.

“When will I see you again?”

“Soon. I promise.”

Sarah’s face was raised towards him – and it would have been easy, so easy for their lips to meet – but Shadow came running down the stairs on silent paws and jumped straight on their entwined arms, so that Sarah had to catch her.

“Shadow!”

“Hello, lovely cat,” whispered Nicholas. Shadow hissed. Nicholas ignored her. “Will you be OK? Do you want me to help you to bed?”

Sarah blushed. “No, no.” She pulled away, holding on to Shadow like a barrier between them.

“I just meant …” He sounded embarrassed, confused.

“I know. I know.”

“I’m going, then. Don’t worry, I’ll keep watch. You’re safe.”

Sarah nodded.

“Thank you. Nicholas, I need to know. About the Secret Families, and the Sabha. I need to know everything.”

“I’ll tell you everything. They hid the truth from you. Sean, your parents … But I’ll tell you everything.” Sarah flinched at the mention of her parents. Cathy’s revelations had been unbearable, so painful that she wished she hadn’t known.

A soft kiss on her hair, one last breath of leaves and smoke rising from his chest, and he was gone.

Sarah took her clothes off carefully, trying not to rub against her cuts and bruises. She stepped into the shower. The scalding water washed away the blood, the dirt, the smudges of ash that had risen from Nocturne’s pyre. She stayed under the shower for a long, long time, trying to untangle her thoughts.

Her parents’ murderer had been a broken woman who had learnt the black arts. And that was all.

Or maybe not. If there were more Secret Families, more people like her, maybe there were other Valaya too. And a Council – Sabha, they called it – some sort of organization that united the families. But not her own. And not Nicholas’s.

It was all a mystery. She couldn’t wait for Nicholas to tell her everything.

Sean was gone. The thought flashed into her head, and she felt a stab of pain. Every time she’d woken up terrified after a vision, he had been there, watching over her. She thought of his arrogant smile, his fearlessness, the way he made her laugh even in the most frightening of situations. She thought of his eyes, so clear and bright. His voice, so soft – as familiar to her as her parents’. She could still hear it. She longed to speak to him so much – no, not Sean. Harry. She wanted her Harry back. She just wanted to close her eyes and listen to his voice.

But it had all been a lie. He was a murderer and a liar.

Sarah couldn’t stand upright any more. The pain in her ribs was unbearable. She turned off the water, and wrapped a towel around herself, carefully. A deep tiredness overwhelmed her, and she could hardly move. She dried herself a bit, but had no energy to dry her hair. She slipped on her shorts and T-shirt, and lay on top of the blankets. A few minutes later she was asleep.

Shadow nestled herself against Sarah, and closed her amber eyes. She saw a black shape outside the window, and froze. It was the ravens. She jumped on the windowsill.

“It’s OK, Shadow. They’re friends,” whispered Sarah, her head on the pillow.

But Shadow kept watching the ravens, her tail tapping the window seat in an anxious rhythm.

In closing her eyes, Sarah had hoped with all her might not to dream that night, to be allowed to rest. But what she wanted bore no influence on her visions.

She dreamt she was underground again, just like in the vision she’d had in the library. She was trapped in a little cave under a standing stone. Again she freed herself, squeezing out into the open. She found herself in the circle of stones in the middle of the night, under the whitest, purest of moons. The wind was cutting her face, and it smelled of winter.

There were lights dancing in the sky above her, changing colour as they moved – green, blue, yellow. The Northern Lights. It was beautiful beyond words.

Her heart missed a beat when she realized that Nicholas was there once more. His pale face, his black, burning eyes …

He raised a hand and showed her an opal resting in his palm. The quartz was shining with a light that came from its centre – a whirling light, turning and turning into the stone. Sarah took a step towards him – but Nicholas took a step back, as if wanting to stop her from coming near him.

Sarah felt that the opal was pulling her, as if she and the stone were somehow connected. She saw that what was swirling in the stone was a little white cloud, frantically folding and unfolding, trying to free itself.

Sarah looked at Nicholas, losing herself in his black eyes. His expression was unreadable at first. Bit by bit, Sarah saw his eyes changing. Something was taking shape, an emotion that she couldn’t identify.

Guilt. Yes, that’s what it was.

Nicholas’s eyes were asking her to forgive him.

For what? He saved my life!

Sarah woke up. For a few seconds she waited for Sean to come in and ask her if she was all right. He’d sit on her bed and take her hand, leading her out of sleep and into reality. Out of fear, into a world she could control.

She forgot the vision; she forgot the swirling quartz and the circle of grey stones. She thought of Sean’s hands holding hers, and burst into desolate tears.

The world without you

The endless regret

The choice

“Harry … has gone to London for a few days. For work. To tie up loose ends or something. I don’t know for sure.” Sarah felt a bitter taste in her mouth. “No, there’s no need, he’ll be back soon … Thank you. Yes, I’ll come up for dinner. See you tomorrow, then.” She put the phone down.

I haven’t lost it. I can still lie through my teeth, like I’ve always done
. Not that she enjoyed it – actually, she hated it. To tell Juliet that Harry was in London had been a walk in the park, compared to the stories she’d had to invent to justify her chaotic, strange life.

“
Don’t lie about anything, ever, except for one thing: if it’s to defend our secret. In that case, lie to your family, lie to your friends, lie to anyone who’ll listen, and be convincing
.” That was what her father had said to her when she was five, and she had never forgotten it. She had never betrayed him, even when she would have wanted so desperately to reveal the truth, to lighten her burden a bit.

She had never allowed herself to do that.

She felt a wave of misery wash over her, and swept the immaculate coffee table with her hand, brushing away invisible particles of dust. Her eyes fell on the framed photograph of her parents’ wedding. Anne was wearing a long white dress, and she had a bunch of heather in her hands, tied with a purple ribbon. She’d picked the heather herself, up on the moors, the day before the wedding. She’d said her bouquet smelled of Scotland.

You were so beautiful, Mum.

Sarah steeled herself. She had to keep Harry’s disappearance hidden, at all costs, whatever it took. She couldn’t leave the Midnight home. It would be like losing her parents all over again.

A week had gone by since the night Cathy had been killed, and with her, the Valaya. A week since she had lost Harry …
Sean
. Or whatever his name was. She missed him with an intensity that was almost physical, and it frightened her. She hated him for having killed her cousin, for having stolen his life – and still his absence was like a hole in her heart. The rip had been so sudden that she couldn’t make sense of it; she thought he’d come into the room any minute, that he’d phone her any minute.

Why can I not stop thinking about him, why can I not tear him out of my head?

She had dreamt of Harry nearly every night. And they hadn’t been visions, just dreams. Like normal people have. She had dreamt of a party in the Midnight house, on a warm summer night. The garden was dotted with paper lanterns, and there was a long table, full of lovely food and decorated with dozens of candles. Her parents were there, smiling, happy, and all their friends and family, the McKettricks, Bryony, Alice, Jack … And Leigh. They were laughing, eating, dancing. For once, their home was open to the world, not closed, hidden, isolated. Harry was standing beside her. He had turned around, suddenly, and kissed her bare shoulder. She’d laughed, surprised.

It had been a wonderful dream, so wonderful that when she’d woken up and she’d realized it wasn’t true, she had felt breathless with grief.

Her parents were dead, Harry wasn’t Harry after all, and Nicholas had disappeared. Again.

She sat at her window, contemplating the white light of the moon. She had wrapped herself in her woollen cardigan, and Shadow was asleep on her lap. She was holding the photo album with the silver cover, the one Aunt Juliet had given her. There were no photos in it, just dried leaves, some red, some brown, some yellow, carefully arranged, one in each transparent pocket.

I really am alone.

The garden was wrapped in shadows. She could barely make out his shape, as he came out of the trees and made his way among the bushes. But even before she could see him clearly against the white gravel of the path, she knew who it was that had come to see her.

Sarah ran down the stairs and opened the door with her heart in her throat.

“Nicholas!”

“Sarah. God, I missed you. I’m sorry it took so long. I had so much to sort out. I’ll tell you everything.”

“Come in,” she whispered, not trusting herself to say any more.

There was a man leaning against Sarah’s oak trees, invisible, still as the trees themselves. His hand was curled around a little red pouch he wore around his neck.

The man saw Nicholas walking up the path, and Sarah opening the door. He saw the black-haired boy walk in, into Sarah’s home, into her heart, and then the door closed. To the hidden man, it felt as if the door had closed on all that he’d ever loved and wanted.

Hair is seaweed

Skin is scales

Eyes are sea-shells

Breath the waves

Lips of coral

Heart the tide

Grand Isle, Louisiana

Mike opened his eyes in the grey light of daybreak. The first thing he saw was a white face, with red-rimmed eyes and blue lips, leaning over him. It was the face of a drowned man. His pale hands had him by the shoulders, shaking him.