Guardian of the Dead (37 page)

With the handbag under my arm, I wandered the beach, totally useless.

The council were taking advantage of the daylight and digging in to protect the hook. Driftwood fires burned, and every now and then someone would grab a slice of something from a plastic bag and throw it on a grill. No one seemed to be eating much, but the air was smoky with the scent of roasting meat.

Other than that, much of the activity was totally opaque to me. The woman in the yellow sari was carving wavy lines into the sand with a piece of driftwood, the muscles in her wiry arms standing out with the effort. The bikers had stripped to the waist and were smearing something reddish over their chests and faces. Past them, I saw Mark standing carefully upwind of the food smells, speaking intently to the boy with the moko again.

He hadn't spoken to me since the meeting, and had left without waking me. I thought about pretending that I hadn't been looking for him, and then I thought about the risks we were facing and whether I
really
wanted to waste my possibly last hours on earth in a snit, and went to say hello.

In the daylight, I could see the curves and lines of the boy's moko didn't sit on the skin, but were actually grooves cut into his flesh. It had been done in the old way, with chisels. He jerked his chin as I approached. ‘What's she doing here?'

I blinked. ‘I have to be here. I was born here.'

‘But you don't know anything,' he said reasonably. ‘You can't fight.'

‘Listen, kiddo—'

Mark shook his head. ‘Ellie.'

‘Fine.' I folded my arms and waited for them to go on.

They stood there for a moment, and then the boy said, not rudely, ‘This isn't your business.'

‘Because I'm a girl?' I demanded.

He rolled his eyes. ‘No.'

‘Matiu,' Mark said calmly.

‘Look,' the boy said. ‘You don't know anything, understand? You're like my two-year-old brother. Always asking stupid questions and wanting to do stuff he's too young for and breaking things by accident. You're just going to get yourself killed.'

Mark sighed. ‘Ellie, can I talk to you for a second?' he said, and shifted me away while I was still trying to come up with a response. I moved with bad grace, glaring at Matiu. He looked unperturbed.

‘How old is he, anyway?' I muttered. ‘Twelve?'

‘Fourteen. He's right, you know. I mean, not that you shouldn't be here, but that it's going to be dangerous. And you can't listen to us – that's secret knowledge. You're not entitled to it.'

‘Oh, come on, it's all magic, isn't it?'

Mark halted, still upwind of the bonfires. ‘Matiu is discussing the knowledge of his people. He gets to decide who hears it, not you.'

His voice was quiet, but it stopped me in my tracks.

‘The way I look . . . I know I'm not, but I pass as completely P
keh
,' he said. ‘My dad doesn't.' He winced. ‘Didn't. In the sixties, when he first came back and I visited him for the first time . . . you should have heard the things they said about the crazy brown guy, Ellie. Don't think it's all gone now, just because the signs on public buildings are in M
ori as well as English.'

I bit my lip on my immediate response, which had been
I don't really think of you as M
ori
, and instead felt self-disgust rise in my throat. ‘I'm sorry,' I said after a moment, hoping he could hear the sincerity in my voice. ‘Can you tell Matiu I'm sorry?'

He nodded. ‘What did you want to see me for?'

I hesitated, but there was no helping it. ‘I just wanted to say hi. I know you're not avoiding me or anything, but this is all scary and I only—' ‘I am.'

I squinted at him. ‘What?'

His mouth was tight. ‘I am avoiding you.'

‘. . . oh.'

‘You don't— I want to touch you, Ellie. I want to kiss you, all the time. I want to talk to you for hours, and . . . I don't know.' He scowled at the ocean. ‘Watch bad TV with you. Sit beside you in Classics and scribble on your notebook. Whatever normal people do. I just . . . I wanted you to know that.'

I eyed him carefully, trying to think over my own excitement. The words were exactly what I wanted to hear, but the resigned, bitter tone didn't fit. ‘So why avoid me?'

He grimaced, and glanced over his shoulder at Matiu. ‘Look, I've gotta go. I'll talk to you later.'

‘Sure,' I said, and watched him walk away. I turned, meaning to find Professor Gribaldi, and stopped when I saw the dark, stocky shape moving towards me.

‘That was a brief conversation,' Mr Sand noted, stepping out of the clouds of smoke.

‘Eavesdropping?' I asked, scowling.

Crisp and cool in his white linen suit, he deflected my question with an airy wave. ‘I notice that you didn't speak of
me
. I'm deeply wounded.'

‘I
wish
.'

He laughed, a thin, nasty sound like metal scraping. ‘You little partisan.'

I set my legs and let my arms rest ready. ‘Little?'

‘Oh, dear girl, I'm not looking at what you see in the mirror. Although I wonder what you
do
see in the mirror.' He lifted an eyebrow but I declined to answer, glancing down the beach and wondering how to get him away. I had no intention of turning my back on him.

He extended his hand suddenly, and I stepped back to clear kicking range before I realised that he wasn't holding a weapon, but a glass bottle full of sparkling water. ‘Have a drink.'

I took the bottle. It'd make a good weapon.

‘It will be a full moon tonight. Not my kind of time, Ms Spencer. I danced with your grandmother once, on a night with no moon at all. There was a pretty woman.' He paused. ‘Tasty too. Did you know yours was
inherited
potential?'

I went dizzy with rage, shifting my weight as my focus narrowed to the bridge of his nose. He'd preyed on my Granny Spencer, who had stopped seeing ghosts. ‘You son of a bitch.'

‘Oh, don't. A fight would be terribly dreary for me and deeply humiliating for you.' He waved at the hook of the bay, and the bonfires. ‘Besides. You really don't want to experience what happens to someone who breaks the bond between guest and host.' He grinned. ‘Just one blow, and you'd be mine, and everyone here would give you to me.'

I lowered the bottle, fighting back the fury. ‘You ate my grandmother's power. Like you ate Mark's.'

‘No, not like Mark's. I didn't eat your grandmother's power before she passed the potential on. Good husbandry on my part, and only wise. Your father didn't manifest the power, of course, nor your sister, but
you
certainly did. Mark was an entirely different matter.' He looked at me. ‘You think I'm a monster.'

‘You're going to tell me I'm wrong?'

‘No. But tell me, darling, what dark deeds would
you
perform to ward off starvation?'

I started at the question. He smirked as if he'd expected no answer, and seated himself on the damp sand as neatly as a cat folding itself up for a nap.

‘My dear girl, when the days of magic faded and the age of iron began, I could no longer dine on the power that had once saturated the air and trembled underfoot with every step. I did try to do without. It left these islands a little later than in most places. But hunger is an incredible force, you know. One can survive nearly forty days without food, while your body eats itself. It devours the fat reserves, feeds on all the large muscles. Finally, desperately, the heart.' He twitched his fingers impatiently, the first unpolished gesture I'd seen him make. ‘So it was for me. Metaphorically.'

‘Boo-hoo.'

‘Would you condemn a woman who steals bread for her starving children?'

My throat was dry. I took a swallow of the water. ‘There's plenty of bread in the world.'

‘There's still some magic too, but most of it is sadly attached to beings and things reluctant to lose it. And only one animavore left, reduced to explaining himself to callow children. I don't usually
kill
people, of course. Fights are terribly risky, especially with those who know what they're doing. I prefer . . . bargains. Should you ever need something from me, rest assured that I'll be eager to trade.' His smile was sharp.

I thought of my grandmother, who had once seen ghosts, and lost the power after her son was born. ‘Bargains, and people who can't fight back,' I said.

‘Indeed. It's only sensible, isn't it?'

I took another long pull of the water to give myself time to think. ‘Does Mark know? That you need it to live?'

‘Oh, yes.' He grinned horribly. ‘If Mark were me, he'd make my choices.'

‘You're wrong.'

‘I'm afraid he's not as noble as you think him, dear girl.

When he asked me to eat his power, I was happy to oblige.'

My heart stammered. ‘You're lying.'

‘No. I don't do that.'

‘He said you stole it. He said he showed you patupaiarehe tricks, in exchange for — He said you
took
his power.'

He laughed. ‘Oh, that's delightful! A truly tragic tale. The truth, Ms Spencer, is that he wanted to stop being what he is, and he asked me to help him do that. He was wise enough to specify without killing him, or it would have been
much
easier. But he didn't want to be powerless either – some nonsense about a kinsman in trouble. No, he wanted knowledge in exchange.'

I'm a monster,
Mark had said, sitting on the end of my bed, vulnerable and sad.

‘So – with his full participation – I ate the power he was born to, and I bound up certain useful bits and pieces into that charming bit of tat. And in fulfilment of our bargain, I placed on him a rather tricky and very ancient curse of transference and transformation. I rather suspect he wasn't expecting that, but that was hardly my affair. I did what he asked for.'

‘But he's still patupaiarehe,' I pointed out. ‘You didn't fulfil your side of the bargain.'

‘Oh, but I did. I created the circumstances he needs to achieve humanity. He will stay patupaiarehe until the day he dies. That is, unless someone confesses their heartfelt, drippy, squishy love for him. Then, poof! The curse kicks in. He'll be a real boy. And the poor devoted lover, on the instant, won't be human any more.'