Guardian of the Dead (2 page)

The Anglican settlers, in their inspired wisdom, had established the city of Christchurch, jewel of New Zealand's South Island, in the middle of a swamp. Every leaden day of this winter I had longed for my hometown in the North Island, for the clean lines of Napier's Art Deco buildings and the scattered sunlight on the sea, much brighter in my memory than it really was. In my head, I knew that I hadn't liked winter in Napier either, and that Christchurch had its fair share of crisp, bright days where the smog kept to a decent altitude. But on bad days, the musty-smelling fog seemed to rise out of the sodden ground and ooze along it, seeping into streets and buildings and my skin.

Every time I went past the drab stone mass of Sheppard Hall, I was glad I didn't have to live there with the younger girls. Sheppard had central heating and an impressively weighty tradition, but it also had lights-out times, hall patrols, and ground-floor windows that didn't open all the way. The Year Thirteen buildings were brand new, meant to prepare us for independence at university next year, and conveniently free of most obstacles to rule-breaking late-night visits.

When Mansfield had first gone coed, the board of trustees had spent some time debating where exactly the new boys' hall should go on the undeveloped land. Eventually, they'd paved Behn Street beside the girls' hall, and plunked down brand-new and well-lit rugby fields on the far side of the new road. Pomare Hall, all steel and glass, and much nicer than Sheppard's draughty tower, sat smug and distant at the edge of the fields, as far from the girls' side of the boarding area as possible. The trustees hadn't been very trusting.

There were plenty of boys trudging along the path beside the fields, but no one tall enough to be Kevin. If he'd been caught, he wouldn't give me away. But if he was suspended or expelled, I'd suffer all the same. He was all I had here.

I wasn't quite sure how this had happened. I hadn't been really popular in Napier, but I'd had friends, even if I'd drifted from most of them during what I thought of as Mum's Cancer Year. When she'd recovered, she and Dad had decided to spend the remainder of the inheritance from my Granny Spencer on their lengthy trip around the world. Still suffused with relief at the recovery, I hadn't minded being left behind. I
had
minded Dad's response to my suggestion that I spend the year with my older sister in Melbourne. He was worried about her ‘influence', which neatly translated to: ‘But, Ellie, what if you also catch the gay?' And none of my remaining friends' parents had the room for me to stay.

‘Boarding school,' Mum had decreed. Sulking at losing my Melbourne dreams, and angry on Magda's behalf, I'd arbitrarily applied to Mansfield instead of to any of the North Island Catholic high schools Dad would have preferred. To my own shock, I'd been accepted – at least, by the selection committee. The students had been less welcoming. They weren't really
mean
; just unwilling to open their tight social circles to a new girl. And, as I privately admitted when I wasn't too busy feeling really sorry for myself, I hadn't made much of an effort. Kevin had been a fortunate fluke – most of his friends had been in the year above. While plenty of people wanted to know him better, including most of the girls in our year, he'd settled on newcomer me.

In light of last night's confession, picking the one girl his age who wasn't eager to make kissy-face with him took on a more sinister dimension. But it had worked out well for both of us.

Unless, of course, he was expelled.

I waited at the pedestrian crossing with a cluster of younger Pomare boys, all of whom were happy to ignore me in favour of talking about the latest Eyeslasher murder.

‘—heard that he keeps them around his waist like a belt.'

‘Yeah? My cousin said it's this cult, and the cops know who it is, but the Prime Minister's son is mixed up—' ‘She doesn't have any kids, you munter!'

‘—
secret
kids—'

I rolled my eyes and outpaced them when the light blinked green.

Busy mentally snorting at the appetites of fifteen-year-old boys for grisly conspiracy fantasies, I was going way too fast to stop when the girl in front of me halted abruptly at the gate. I tried to dodge sideways and ran straight into Mark Nolan, day student, loner, and focus of more than a few of my Classics-period daydreams. Everyone but me had got used to him and his enigmas; as a newbie, I still had some curiosity left.

Embarrassing, then, to crash into him outside the school gates.

‘Oof,' he grunted, and tried to sidestep around me while I wobbled a few steps and bounced into the rough wall. He about-faced and grabbed my elbow. It was presumably to prop me up, but he didn't have the weight to support me. Caught off-balance, I staggered into him again, threatening to send us both to the ground. Giggles bubbled out of my throat, dancing on the dangerous edge between amusement and mild hysteria.

‘This is no good,' he said decisively, and braced himself against the wall while I put myself back on even keel. ‘Okay, I'm letting you go on three. One, two, three.'

‘Ow!' I protested, my head jerking down.

And a tingling shock ran down my spine and through my veins. It reverberated in my head, like a thunderclap exploding behind my eyes. It wasn't static electricity; it was nothing I'd ever felt before. Startled, I met Mark's eyes, and found no comfort there. The perfect planes of his pale face had rearranged themselves into something frightening. It was the same face – same high cheekbones, same arched, feathery eyebrows, same thatch of shaggy red hair – but frozen into unnatural and shocking stillness. He stared at me, inhaled sharply, and then, as I blinked and stuttered, made himself look almost ordinary again.

Mark lifted his hand, easing the sting in my scalp, and I saw the cause – a strand of my hair had come loose and wrapped itself around something silver shining on his wrist. In defiance of the uniform code, it wasn't a watch, but a bracelet made of links of hammered silver, small charms hanging off the heavy loops. The charms weren't like my childhood jewellery – no tiny ballerinas or rearing ponies – but a jumble of more ordinary things: a small key; a bottle cap; a broken sea shell; a tuft of white wool; a grey pebble with a hole in the centre; a stick figure bent out of No. 8 wire. My hair was twisted around the bracelet itself, caught between a stylised plastic lightning bolt and a rusty screw.

I'd never seen the bracelet before, and that was odd because I'd shamelessly memorised every visible inch of Mark, right down to the greasy tips of his hair, which he didn't wash very often, and the way his maroon trousers were worn shiny at the knees. And those weird, compelling eyes; not blue-green or grey-green or brown-flecked hazel, but a uniform dark green, a colour so pure and strong that it could (and often did) stop me dead from halfway across a room.

No one knew why anyone so good-looking seemed to make such an effort to disguise it. Rumour had it that he was super religious or a scholarship student, but the really religious kids tended to turn up well scrubbed, and the scholarships included uniforms. He took part in no school clubs, never had parents come for family days, and barely talked except in class. The only thing anyone knew for sure was that he'd been awarded the English and Latin cups every year at prize-giving, and never turned up to claim them. Samia thought he might be a communist. Kevin thought he had social anxiety. I thought he was far too pretty to be entirely real.

I'd never thought he could be
scary
.

He picked at the hair for a second, then met my eyes, now looking rueful and adorable. ‘Sorry, Spencer. Either I cut this loose, or we're stuck together forever.' I hoped I didn't look too awestruck. Was I a giggling idiot, to be struck by lightning at my first physical contact? But then, he'd felt something too. And he knew my
name
.

‘Option two is tempting, but . . .' I yanked at the wayward hair. It resisted, then snapped raggedly, leaving a blondish strand knotted in the bracelet. ‘Yuck. Sorry.'

‘No worries.' He rubbed thoughtfully at the knot and smiled at me, a sudden flash of white, even teeth. My breath caught in my throat and I felt the blush burn in my cheeks.

‘I like your laugh,' he said.

Apparently, that was a goodbye. He turned and strode through the school gate, head extended and fists clenched in his pockets to make bony wings, a heron stalking along a bank.

I stooped, fiddling with my shoelace until I felt my treacherous complexion was under control. That peculiar tingling sensation was still there, but it wasn't as strong as the rising wave of glee. Mark Nolan had noticed my laugh.

Mansfield's boarders' dining hall was happy to give us hot breakfasts and dinners, but school-day lunches were packed for us in the morning, and available for pick-up at the morning break. I sat huddled in my jersey at my usual bench in the covered area outside the Frances Alda music centre and occupied myself in picking the bacon out of my cold BLT. No matter what I put on the order form, I never got my vegetarian options for lunch. The kitchen staff was notoriously bad at ‘special' diets, although Samia's sustained campaigning had finally got them to have halal beef and lamb sometimes. I was glad for her, but it didn't do me or my mood much good.

Despite my best efforts at making eye contact, Mark Nolan had sat in the back row of Classics, and resolutely ignored everyone but Professor Gribaldi all period. It was his
modus operandi
, but I'd been hoping for more. Some shared joke, about my clumsiness, or his bracelet, or
something
.

‘Hey,' Kevin said, and dropped onto the bench beside me, large and resplendent in his blazer.

I sat up straight. ‘Hey! Are we expelled?'

He took the piece of bacon from my fingers and dropped it into his mouth. ‘Yep. We'll have to run away into the woods and live on nuts and berries.'

‘I could eat bugs,' I offered courageously. ‘When the hunger pangs get really bad.'

He grinned. ‘Nah, we're good. Walked in the door, told the guys I'd gone running. Even found a fresh pair of socks. Hey, did you hear there's been another Eyeslasher murder?'

I grimaced. ‘Samia said in Geo. A phone psychic in Tau ranga. God, I hope they catch the bastard soon.'

‘Me too. Murder's bad enough, but taking their eyes is sick.'

‘I think the murder probably matters more.'

‘Sure, but eyes are
tapu
, Ellie.'

I blinked at him. Kevin's parents, on the two occasions I'd met them for uncomfortable dinners, had been as stiffly Anglo-Saxon as posh New Zealanders came, but Kevin's light-brown skin wasn't the result of a good tan. I knew that his great-grandmother had been Ng
i Tahu, and that he was one of the leading lights of Mansfield's
kapa haka
performance group, but I hadn't realised his desire to learn more about his roots had meant this much investment in M
ori beliefs about the sacred.

‘You're right. Sorry. Wait, don't you have kapa haka on Wednesdays?' I made vague hand gestures meant to invoke the poi twirling the girls did; Kevin rightly ignored me in favour of stealing my apple and holding it above my head.