Guardian of the Dead (18 page)

I slowed my mad dash to a fast walk when I pushed open the heavy fire door. The desks lining the walls and clustered in the open spaces between rows of shelves were packed with harried people finishing assignments and staring blankly at heavy books, and, at one desk, huddled up and crying quietly over her Japanese text. This would be me, in a year.

Well, hopefully not the crying.

Hunching with my arms at my sides, in a vain attempt to be less intrusive, I made my way between desks and bags and legs tangled uncomfortably around chairs to the right section.

The bright red hair shone in the fluorescent lights, looking even more halo-like than usual. Mark was sitting slumped at a desk beside a window at the very end of the Folklore row, past the shelves on M
ori and Polynesian Mythology. Something flared hot and glad in my stomach, even above my resentment that
he
wasn't in uniform. He hadn't lied to me this time.
And
he'd washed his hair.

I tiptoed up and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hi,' I whispered.

He twisted, and the anger in his face drove me back a step. His bruises had developed nicely overnight, decorating his lips and chin in shades of blue and purple, edging toward black in the middle.

‘Where the hell have you been?' he demanded tightly. ‘You said you—' He waved at the stacks. ‘This isn't a game!'

‘I've been researching,' I said, confused.

‘No, you haven't! I've been here since it opened!'

I snapped my jaw shut and thrust the sheaf of papers in my hand into his chest, a little harder than I'd meant to. He rocked in his chair, automatically clutching at them. ‘What's this?'

‘I was
researching
,' I snapped. ‘With databases and search engines. It's the twenty-first century, Mark! And you haven't been at the library since it opened, because I was waiting outside when they opened the bloody door!'

‘Shut UP!' an anguished male voice howled from the stacks.

Mark ignored him. ‘So what did you find?' His tone was still terse, but there was a pink stain spreading across his high cheekbones, and the paper in his hands shook like leaves in a breeze.

This was more important than my temper. I swallowed my anger, and carefully sounded out the syllables. ‘She's . . . pa-tu-pa-i-a-re-he.'

Mark took a deep breath. ‘Yes!' he said. ‘
Patupaiarehe
. Yes.'

Satisfaction stretched my face into a grin.

Mark touched his parted lips with two fingers, eyes blank and unbelieving. ‘I can say it,' he said, and burst into tears.

Girls crying quietly in the library before exams mightn't be so unusual; a boy sobbing noisily was attracting a lot of attention. Mark gasped and shook, and didn't seem to be able to stop. Worried about librarian interference, I hustled him into the elevator and headed for the eleventh floor, under the hope it would be less crowded.

Fortunately, a clump of girls in headscarves cleared out of one of the group-study rooms just as we arrived. I shoved him in before the next group could arrive. When they did, I didn't even have to come up with an excuse – the three boys took one look at the tears streaming down Mark's face and backed away, looking more appalled than annoyed.

I sat at the wide table in the middle of the tiny room. From this vantage point, I could see most of the city's west side, and the farmland beyond, out to the hazy outline of the Southern Alps.

Behind me, Mark hiccuped a few times and drew in some long breaths. I gave him another minute, staring at the misted mountains, before I turned to face him.

‘Okay?' I asked.

He blew his nose. ‘Yeah. Sorry.' He didn't look sorry. He clutched the printouts and smiled as if I were some sort of dazzling divinity – Athena giving Perseus her bright bronze shield, maybe. Or M
ui beating the sun into submission so that his family could have enough light.

‘She really is?' I said. ‘A M
ori
fairy
?'

He shook his head. ‘Fairy's an English word. She's patupaiarehe. Or you could say
t
rehu
or
tiram
ka
, or one of the other names. There are different stories. And they're not M
ori. They're not human at all.'

‘What does she want from Kevin?'

‘The same thing she wanted from his great-uncle. The one who vanished.'

‘Robert Waldgrave?' I gasped, feeling my way toward the answers. ‘Well, what was that?'

‘She had his child,' he said, and touched his breastbone. I stared at him – the pale skin, the thick red hair, so like his mother's – and was unable to form a single coherent question from the dozens crowding my head.

I could feel my own face going peculiar, and very red. I tried a few responses out in my head, but settled for, ‘She wants another child.'

‘At least one.'

‘Ambitious. And what happens to Kevin?'

He grimaced and held my eyes.

I thought of Mark's father – Kevin's great-uncle – ranting on the steps of the cathedral; weeping and mad outside my dorm. My fists clenched. ‘No.'

‘We're going to stop her,' Mark said. His voice was grim, but so earnest he sounded oddly young. I suddenly realised I had no guarantee he
was
young. Reka looked only a few years older than me, but if she'd been around since Robert Waldgrave had disappeared . . . that was just before the Second World War.

And Mark was her son.

The wariness must have showed on my face, because he stiffened, then sighed. ‘Believe me, I'm not on her side.'

‘I don't have much choice but to trust you,' I said, which was entirely true, but probably not very comforting.

Mark stared at the ceiling for a moment, then drummed his fingers against the table. ‘Okay. Some history, then. She's of a species that made New Zealand their home centuries before humans settled here. When humans started migrating, her people withdrew almost entirely to the mists.'

‘First question,' I said, raising my hand, and he nodded.

‘The mists are . . . sort of a real place and sort of not,' he said. ‘They're connected to real places, in the bush and mountains and by the sea. Patupaiarehe can go deep into the mists and move through them, but others can't unless they're very powerful, or have something very powerful. And . . .' he hesitated. ‘They're real places to patupaiarehe. They make them real out of their belief. But if you go in and you don't
know
what you'll find, you could find yourself in any kind of place. You bring your own history, your own mythology with you.'

I resolved to think this over later and tried to look as if I understood.

‘Time works differently there, but they still get old, eventually, and die. Her father was human, but he married a patupaiarehe woman, and Reka was raised patupaiarehe. She's nearly the last patupaiarehe in the South Island. The last of her family.'

‘Well, not quite,' I pointed out.

He waved that off and went on. ‘In 1939, she joined the drama club to get closer to my father. From what I've worked out from Dad, she didn't have to make him love her. He really fell hard.' He rubbed at his eyes. ‘And then she took him away into the mists.