Guardian of the Dead (33 page)

‘You got an A+ out of Professor Gribaldi?'

I grinned at him. ‘It was an A-, actually. But don't tell our friend.'

Mark cracked up. I watched him wheeze for a second, then strode over to retrieve my bag. Everything was still in there, though a note informed me that airport security had looked inside. I wondered what they'd thought of Mark's wet, stinking clothes.

‘What was that about you asking him to teach you?' I asked.

‘I'll tell you later.'

He kept saying that. ‘Later will be soon,' I said firmly, and led him out to find a taxi.

The taxi driver was a dark-complected gregarious man who wanted to chat about the Eyeslasher murders. ‘And one in Gore!' he said. ‘Why would anyone go to Gore?'

I managed a laugh. ‘How about we take the scenic route?' I suggested, and managed to divert him to the topic of Napier's many sights to be seen. The people walking around looked happy and healthy, and I was reminded how disproportionately white Christchurch was, compared to the North Island towns. I'd got used to it, over the last months.

The sea glittered as we drove along the waterfront, gorgeously contrasted against the oily green of the Norfolk Pines that edged Marine Parade. I caught a glimpse of the statue of Pania of the Reef. Pania, the legend went, had been a maiden of the sea, secretly wedded to a human man. Betrayed by him, she'd run back to the ocean depths. Their son was supposed to be the taniwha who guarded the bay.

Until yesterday, the most attention I'd paid to the story had been mocking the tourists who liked to pose by the bronze statue of a topless girl smiling out to sea. Now the story made my flesh creep. I'd swum in that ocean.

I mentioned this to Mark when we got out of the taxi. He shrugged. ‘Her son isn't there right now.'

It hadn't been quite the response I'd been looking for. I'd wanted him to tell me that I was doing very well under the circumstances. ‘Is he dead?' I asked, lifting up the loose rock in the front garden to retrieve the key.

‘I don't know. Not there. Some stories say he had children and died, or became a rock.'

‘Which is true?'

He laughs. ‘Will you hit me if I say that it depends?'

‘Maybe,' I muttered, and pushed open the front door, reaching automatically for the light switch. The electricity bill would clearly show our presence here, but after my truancy had been reported to my parents, driving up the bill was going to be the least of my worries.

The house felt weird – cold and far too empty. I tiptoed down the dusty hall to my parents' room, and deposited my bag there.

‘I like your house,' Mark said, following me. I blushed, suddenly uncomfortable about the old-fashioned bedspread and the piles of golf books and gardening manuals and medical texts heaped around its head. Mark was looking at everything with a weird hunger, and I was very aware that I was alone with him in my parents' room, two steps from the bed where they had slept for over twenty years of married mostly bliss.

‘We shouldn't be in here,' I said, and backed him out, closing the door firmly behind me.

He looked only slightly disappointed. ‘Where's your room?'

I pointed. ‘That one, and Magda's room is beside it. I shared it with her, until Nanny Spencer died. Bathroom there. Kitchen and living room and laundry that way.' I shrugged. ‘It's nothing fancy. We only live on the Hill because my grandfather built here before it was fashionable.'

‘Where did your dog live?'

‘In his kennel when Dad could make him, and on Magda's bed when he couldn't. So, Magda's bed.'

‘And the ten thousand guinea pigs?'

‘Between guinea-pig funerals, in the hutch.'

‘I never had a pet. Can I see?' He was already walking through the laundry, heading for the back door. I trailed in his wake, wondering how I'd lost control of the tour so quickly.

He flung the door open, heedless of the white paint flaking onto his palm, and stepped out into the muddy green expanse of the backyard. The weeds were flourishing in the vegetable patch, and the old clothesline squeaked and groaned as it slowly turned. The guinea-pig hutch sat under one of the trees, much shabbier than I remembered, the chicken wire over the run sagging. ‘Oh,' Mark breathed. ‘Oh, wow.'

‘It's not much in winter.'

He pointed at my dad's roses in their proudly maintained mulch pits. ‘Those are not “not much”. ' ‘Well, yeah, but they're not blooming.'

‘Is that tree a magnolia?'

‘Yeah. You can still see what's left of the tree house.'

‘You hammered nails into a magnolia?'

‘Blame Magda; I was only seven. But we hung the tyre swing from the kowhai. No nails there.'

Mark smiled at me. ‘And the view . . .'

The view, I felt, I couldn't fairly disparage. The lawn ran down the slope for a quarter of an acre, to the low wooden fence that separated us from the well-kept houses below. And down, and down, dappled in the harsh noon light like a tarnished mirror, lay the ocean, embraced in the sandy curve of the bay and the reef beyond the breakwater.

My sight flickered and doubled, but I pushed it away with a firm effort of will. For this moment, I wanted only the familiar sight of home. I sat on the back step and hugged my legs against the wind.

Mark sat beside me. Even on the narrow step, he left a hand's-width of space between us, but I could feel him across the gap, prickling at my side. I stared at the lump under his jacket and wondered what his mother's gift had been.

But I couldn't ask that again.

Time to be brave about something else.

‘Um, so, at the airport,' I said, concentrating on tucking my arms firmly around my body. ‘Before Mr Creep turned up, remember how I said I liked you?'

He nodded.

I was positive my face was glowing with the heat of my flushing cheeks. ‘Well, uh . . . I do. Just saying.'

‘I can't understand why,' he said, looking uneasy.

‘Oh, I have no idea either,' I scoffed. ‘I mean, you're gorgeous, smart, mysterious, and when you make up your mind to talk, you have a lot of interesting things to say. What's to like?'

‘Mysterious?'

‘Chicks dig guys with a sense of mystique. It was in
Cosmopolitan
, so it must be true.'

He gave me that shy smile. ‘I like you too.'

My heart leaped, and I was reaching for him before I remembered. He leaned back warily, and I retreated, re-folding my arms to resist the temptation.

‘But it's complicated,' he added. ‘I mean. With what I am.'

Self-hatred was a serious turn-off, I decided, still dizzily turning over
I like you too.
He
liked
me.
He
liked me. He liked
me.
‘You're not off the hook for enchanting me,' I added. ‘That was not good. But I like you anyway.'

‘About that,' Mark said, smile vanishing. He'd picked up a stone somewhere. Now he turned it over and over in his hands. ‘I should warn you about Mr Sand.'

I settled back.

‘I came to him two years ago, three years after I'd left the mists. I could still travel under the earth then, so it was easy. I wanted him to teach me some magic, teach me how to protect Kevin.'

‘And he didn't?' I guessed.

He grimaced. ‘Oh, he did. He taught me everything I can do now.'

‘But you said Reka taught you.'

‘She did.'

‘Are you being confusing on purpose?' I demanded.

He weighed the stone in his palm, still looking at it instead of me. ‘Look. It's important that you understand that I'm still a monster. I still have the eyes, and I'll still live a long time, and the smell of cooked food makes me a little queasy, though I'm human enough to stomach it. Reka taught me how to walk the mists and make claws from my fingers, and charm people with flute-music or song. But I can't do that now. I can't use the patupaiarehe magic I was born to.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because Sand ate it.'

Shock curdled in my stomach.

‘It's really not that different from what the patupaiarehe are doing. Just less messy. I . . . I showed him some of the things Reka showed me in exchange for his teaching me and making the bracelet. I thought I was getting the best of the bargain.' He gestured at the kennel. ‘But I was stupid. While I slept like a dog in his yard, he gorged himself on the power I was born with.'

‘Like a vampire, but of magic?' I ventured.

‘Pretty much. He calls himself an animavore.' He shook his head. ‘He says he was old long before Greek got established as a language. He says he doesn't remember what he was called before that.'

‘He says?'

‘He says he never lies, and I think that's true. But he's worse than Reka. He'll twist the truth around on itself, and hand you the knot, and laugh when you can't find where it begins.'

‘Poetic.'

‘Thank you.' He flung the stone. It bounced off the guinea-pig hutch, taking a small chunk of rotting timber with it. He made no apology. ‘We've got some breathing space. Want a lesson in the theory of magic?'

It was a neat bit of misdirection, but he was hiding behind his hair again. ‘You're not telling me something,' I said flatly.

He brushed back his hair and glared at me. ‘Do you want to know the whole story?' he demanded. ‘Every little humiliation, every awful, petty task?'

I recoiled, cursing my impulsive tongue. ‘No. I'm sorry.'

‘Okay, then,' he said, and held up a finger. ‘There are three kinds of . . . well, ‘magicians' works. Three kinds of magicians. The first kind is born to magic. They're either supernatural creatures, or humans who are magic from birth. They're born with intrinsic power, and they learn how to use it as easily as you learned how to walk – it takes a little while, but it's instinct, and they'll always do it. That's rare these days, especially among humans.' He held up a second finger. ‘Then there's people like you and Kevin, people with potential, either inherited or a genetic wildcard. That's more like . . . uh, learning to swim. You
might
figure out how to swim if you just jumped in, because you have everything you need to do it. But you're much more likely to learn how – and survive learning – if someone teaches you. And a lot of people get by without ever learning.' He glanced at me.

‘Got it so far,' I assured him. His face was easing as he explained, and I watched the tension go out of his hands as he gestured.

‘And the third category is everyone else,' he said, holding up the third finger. ‘Almost anyone can learn to do spells, but if they don't have any power of their own, they need a power source, to see and to do. An object of power, or a tattoo, or a ceremony – something that charges them up. And they can't learn those spells by just messing away at them. It'd be like trying to put a computer together from the parts when they've never seen one before. They need an instructor, or at the very least a manual.'

‘So the patupaiarehe are . . . category one. But they're stealing extra power to tug at the fish.'

‘Yes.'

I grimaced, and pursued another line of inquiry. ‘You said
almost
anyone can learn?'

‘Some people can't even use stored power. I don't know why. It's like some connection is broken.'

‘Huh,' I said, and thought about it. The world was much stranger than I had ever supposed.

‘People will be on the way. I better let them know where to come. Can I use the phone?'

I stood too, disappointed that the moment seemed to be over. ‘Yeah, sure, I think it's still connected.'

Someone thumped on the front door, and Mark started, grabbing at his wrist.

‘Ellie?' a familiar voice called. ‘Ellie, I know you're there.'

‘Shit,' I said, and shook my head at Mark. ‘No, it's just the neighbour. You make your calls. I'll get rid of her.'

He let go of his bracelet, tension easing, but I wasn't as confident as I sounded. Hinemoana Simpson was not the sort of person you could just get rid of.

Without letting myself think about it too much, I fetched the handbag holding the mask.

I summoned a smile before I pulled open the door, my cheeks aching under its manic force. ‘Hi!'

Hinemoana seemed unmoved.

I liked her a lot; she'd lived next door all my life, a no-nonsense midwife who'd brought over casseroles and baking long after the rest of my parents' friends' donations to the Cancer Year had slowed to a trickle. But she had my parents' itinerary and the list of their hotel phone numbers in case of emergency, and she was absolutely the last person I'd wanted to notice I was back.

‘Hello, Ellie. What are you doing here?'

‘Home for a brief holiday,' I said. ‘Just checking up on the place, you know.'

‘I've been doing that,' she said. ‘Watering the plants, taking the mail. Your parents didn't mention you were visiting.'