Half Bad (23 page)

He’s a fain.

A fain!

So what was all that talk about being the son of two very respectable Black Witches?

And I’m shouting, “Get out!” as I hit him and he’s on the floor, blood on his face, and I’m swearing and using all the worst words I can think of and he’s lying on his side, curled up, and I stomp on his knees and I hate it that he lied to me and I hate how I was thinking he was okay but he’s just some lying fain and I have to walk out to the kitchen before I really hurt him. Then I walk back and lean over, grab his hair and shout at him. Properly shout, ’cause I can still see him staring at my back. And I hate it that he was staring. I hate that. And I bang his head on the floor and I don’t know why I’m doing that, except I’m so angry. I’m still shaking when I walk out of the bathroom again.

I pace around the sofa, but I have to go back and get my shirt.

Gabriel’s groaning a bit. He looks a mess.

I slide down to the floor next to him.

* * *

We’re sitting at the table, by the window. Gabriel is wringing out a cloth into a bowl of water that’s pink with his blood. His left eye is swollen shut. His right is a light brown with a few flecks of golden-green in it but no sparks. Definitely a fain eye. But he has told me that he wasn’t lying: he is a Black Witch but he has a fain body.

“So you can’t heal at all?”

He shakes his head.

He says that his Gift is that he can transform to be like other people. It’s the same Gift as Jessica’s, but he is different from her, opposite to her. He explains, “I like people. They’re interesting. I can be male or female, old or young. I can find out what it’s like to be different people. The only problem is once I became fain, to see what that was like, I couldn’t transform back.”

“You’re stuck then?”

“Mercury thinks I’ll be able to become myself again. She says it’s more than physical, or at least more than just my body, that makes me able to transform. She says she’ll help me find the route back. . . . But she’s in no rush.” He puts the cloth in the water and swirls it around then wrings it out again and puts it back on his eye.

“I’ve been with her for two months.” He looks at me. “She wants to meet you.” He pats the cloth against his cut lip, which is also swollen. “But she’s suspicious. And rightly. You have spent all your life with White Witches.” He shrugs. “You are half White and the perfect bait, just the sort of thing the Council or Hunters would use.”

“But I’m not sent by them.”

“And you’re not likely to admit it if you are.”

“So how do I prove to her that I’m not?”

“That’s the problem. It’s impossible to prove.” He dabs at his mouth with his fingertips. “Someone once said that the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” He carries on dabbing his mouth. But he’s smiling a little.

“Do you trust me?” I ask.

“Now I do.”

“Then take me to Mercury.”

He swirls the cloth in the water again.

“I can’t stay in this apartment any longer. I’ll go mad . . . or kill you.”

He puts the cloth back on his eye.

“Tomorrow.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Not today?”

He shakes his head. “Tomorrow.”

I get the tin and put it on the table in front of Gabriel and sit back opposite him.

“I didn’t read them.”

He pulls the lid off and carefully takes out the top letter, which has my sooty fingerprints on it. It’s folded over once and there is one word written on the outside in large curly writing. He pulls out the next letter, which is smudged with my black sooty marks too. He shakes his head.

“What are they?” I ask.

“They’re just love letters from my father to my mother, before . . . when they were in love.”

“So why do you hide them?”

“There’s something else in here. If Mercury succeeds in helping me, she’ll want payment. That is what I’ll pay her with.”

I don’t ask what it is. The words of a spell, perhaps, or maybe instructions for a potion.

He puts the letters back into the tin and gently presses the lid down, using the weight of his shoulders and chest but so gently.

“I didn’t read them . . . I can’t read.”

He waits for me to say more.

“I can’t sleep inside . . . or if I do I’m ill . . . sick. I’m not very good at staying inside at all any more. Electric things give me noises in my head. But I can heal fast. And I can tell if a person is a witch from their eyes.”

“How?”

I shrug. “They look different.”

He strokes his hand across the tin but then pushes it away. “So . . . my eyes? Are they witch or fain?”

“Fain.”

He doesn’t respond straightaway but eventually shrugs and says, “My body is fain now.”

Slowly he reaches over to my hand and touches my tattoo with his fingertips. “What are these?”

And I tell him about the tattoos. He hardly moves, doesn’t speak, just listens. He’s good at listening. But I tell him the tattoos are a brand, nothing more. I want to tell him more. I want to trust him, but I remember Mary’s warning: “Trust no one.”

Gabriel says, “Mercury said that you wouldn’t be able to sleep inside. And she told me to wear the sunglasses.”

So she knows Marcus and assumed I’d have the same abilities.

Gabriel says we will go to Mercury in the morning. He says that he spotted two Hunters in Geneva and wants to see if they are still in town. I tell him that they are, and they saw me and I think they recognized me. He doesn’t say much about that, but he wants to have a look around for himself and insists I wait in the apartment.

When he’s gone, the apartment feels like a prison and the terrace isn’t much better.

I wake up in the night. It’s raining but not heavily, just spitting. I expect to see Gabriel in his usual spot where he watches me from. He’s not there. I fall back to sleep again and have my usual alley dream. I wake drenched in sweat. It’s well after dawn. The sunlight is trapped on the terrace. Steam rises off the damp roof.
There’s a smell of coffee and bread.

Gabriel is sitting at the table surveying me as I survey breakfast. He has laid out the usual array.

I want to go to Mercury, and I don’t want breakfast. He puts butter on bread, chews, swirls his coffee. I pace around.

He says, “I saw a few Hunters.”

I stop pacing. “A few?”

“Nine.”

“Nine!”

“I watched one and followed her for a few minutes. Then I saw another. And another. They didn’t pay any attention to me. I’m just another fain to them. But you, I think, they must have recognized. Nine Hunters can only be for someone important.

“I skirted around town, went to see a contact of Mercury’s. Pilot. She didn’t know anything. I came back this morning and saw another Hunter on my way here. I thought I’d test something out and bumped into her shoulder. I apologized. She apologized back in poor French.”

He laughs.

“They don’t recognize witches by their eyes, like you do. Mercury says that Hunters are trained to detect Blacks. They notice the little differences, the way we walk, the way we stand, how we move in relation to other people. But I must have lost that.”

“I guess if you saw nine there are probably more you didn’t see.”

“Definitely.”

And yet Gabriel seems relaxed: he saunters around, bumps into a Hunter, and then wanders off for a leisurely breakfast.

He glances up at me, saying, “Don’t worry. If they knew about this place we’d have been bloody messes on the floor of some cell hours ago.” He drains the last of his coffee and says, “However, I think we should go to Mercury’s now.”

I try to sound coolly ironic, saying, “Take your time. Have another croissant.”

He gets up, smiles at me. “No. I don’t want to be late. Mercury’s expecting us, not you. She’s looking forward to meeting you.”

He beckons me onto the terrace then takes my hand, interlocking our fingers, and leads me to the spot where he always hunkers down.

“Keep hold of my hand. Tight.”

He slides his other hand, his left hand, through the air, as if he’s feeling for something.

“There’s a passageway here. You have to find the entrance—it’s like a slit in the air. We go through it and down the drain. It’s hard to breathe in there so it’s best if you hold your breath until you’re out the other end.”

At the base of the roof tiles is a narrow metal gutter running around all four sides, and in the corner is a drainpipe. Gabriel seems to find the cut and lowers his hand down into the drainpipe.

And down.

My body already feels different, light, and I slide up through the gap, following Gabriel, and then spiral down the drainpipe with him. It’s swirling blackness. We go round and down like going down a plughole, speeding up as the spiral narrows until I’m spinning so fast that I’m afraid I’ll lose my grip on Gabriel, but his fingers are solid, bound around mine. Then we’re spiraling upward and slowing and I can see past Gabriel’s body above me to light, and I feel myself being sucked out and my body stops.

I’m heavy again and gasping for breath, sprawled on my front on a hard slope. I’m glad I didn’t have breakfast, as my stomach is not happy with that experience. I roll over to sit up. I’m sitting on a roof of unevenly cut black slate. In front of me is a small expanse of grass, and beyond that a tree-covered mountainside rises so steeply that I have to tilt my head back to see the blue sky. My head and body feel like they are moving in circles at different speeds.

“We must stay on the roof until Mercury comes.”

Gabriel has scrambled up and is sitting astride the rooftop. I join him, moving cautiously.

The cottage is high on the side of a wide U-shaped valley passing down to the right. The valley is lined with trees, forest. At the top of the valley, to my left, there is snow and a glacier. The mountaintops that teethe the valley wall are snow-covered, and across the valley another glacier hangs in them. The whole valley is a huge fortification.

There are no bird sounds, but there is a chirping of crickets and beyond that is a constant, distant roar. The sound is not in my head, and there is no hissing of electrical equipment. The roaring is relentless and I realize it’s the river in the valley bottom. I smile. I can’t help it. The river must be big, powerful.

The roof is made of thick slabs of slate. There’s a stone chimney with smoke curling out. The cottage is at the top end of a meadow area that’s surrounded by trees. The only other thing in the meadow, much farther down the slope, is a huge, splintered tree stump.

“This is Mercury’s cottage. There’s a trespass spell to protect it. You must step off the roof only when you are touching her.”

“Where are we?”

“Another part of Switzerland. I sometimes come here by train or I hike. Or I use the cut. I can go back through there.” And he indicates a space above the drainpipe. “Mercury made the cut. Her Gift is control of the weather. It’s a strong Gift. It’s her only one, but she has learned other things and been given other things from the people she helps . . . that’s how she learned how to make the cuts.”

The latch of the door rattles. We both turn and are met with an icy squall as Mercury steps into view.

She is tall and thin, and her skin is translucently pale, almost gray. Her eyes are black holes but with sheets of silver passing over them. I think she’s looking at me but can’t be sure.

“I thought I smelled something good,” she says. The breeze becomes warm now. Humid and heavy. “Nathan. At last.”

Her voice almost doesn’t belong to her but to the weather; it’s as if it’s coming out of the breeze that’s passing around her body to mine. She walks to the back of the cottage. It’s built into the hillside so that the roof is only a foot from the ground on that side. She holds her hand out to me, beckoning me with her fingers. The wind picks up and is now swirling round me, pulling me to my feet and jostling me down the roof toward Mercury.

I reach for her.

At last!

It’s like holding hands with a skeleton.

I blink my eyes open. It’s still night. Gabriel is asleep near me. We’re in the forest above Mercury’s cottage. The cottage is special; I can sleep inside it, but I’ve only tried it twice. I’m too claustrophobic in there at night, though I don’t get sick. Anyway, I prefer it here in the trees. Rose sleeps in the cottage. I don’t know where Mercury sleeps, if Mercury sleeps.

The first night Gabriel said, “The cottage is the guest house. I think Mercury’s real home is far away.”

“A stone castle on top of a craggy outcrop?”

“That is more her sort of thing. I’ve seen her walking up toward the glacier. I guess there is another cut up there that leads to her real home. I’ve seen Rose go in that direction a few times as well.”

Rose is Mercury’s assistant and is in her early twenties. She is dark and curvaceous and beautiful but she is not a Black. She is a Shite—her name for White Witches—but she has been brought up by Mercury. Rose has the Gift of being a forgettable mist, according to Gabriel, which makes no sense to me, and he says it is best experienced rather than explained. Rose uses her Gift to acquire things for Mercury.

I’ve hardly spoken to Mercury. I’ve been here over a week and she hasn’t been back to the cottage since the day I arrived.

I told her that I needed her help. I explained that my seventeenth birthday was just over two weeks away. I was polite. And all I got in return was nothing.

Nothing.

Gabriel says she will see me in time.

But every day . . . nothing.

I know it’s some kind of game she’s playing. And—

“You awake?” Gabriel mumbles.

“Mmm.”

“Stop worrying about Mercury. She will give you three gifts.”

Gabriel always seems to know what I’m thinking, and I always try not to let him know he’s right.

“I’m not worrying. I was thinking about what I’ll do after I get my Gift.”

“And what will you do?”

Look for my father. If he wants to be found, I’m sure I can find him. And then I will somehow prove to him that I won’t ever kill him. But I don’t think he wants me to find him, and I don’t see how I can prove anything.

“Well?”

I haven’t told Gabriel anything more about myself: not more about the tattoos, not about my father’s vision or about the Fairborn.

I say, “I’ll develop my Gift. I don’t want to get stuck as a dog.”

“Yeah, being a fain is bad enough. And what else?”

“What makes you think there’s something else?”

“The way you go all . . . there’s an English word—mopey? Yes, I think that’s it. You are mopey sometimes.”

Mopey!

“I think you’ve got the wrong word. Thoughtful is more like it.”

“No, I think the right word is mopey.”

I shake my head. “There’s a girl I like.”

“And?”

“And it’s probably really stupid of me. She’s a White Witch.”

I’m expecting him to say it is really stupid and I’ll get killed and probably get her killed, but he doesn’t say anything.

* * *

The next morning we’re sitting on the grass by the splintered dead tree trunk in the meadow below Mercury’s cottage. The sun’s warmth seems magnified here.

“We could go for a hike,” I say, squinting up the valley.

“Okay.”

We don’t move.

“Or we could go climbing,” Gabriel suggests, and takes the long piece of grass out of his mouth but does nothing more.

We hike and climb every day.

“A swim?” he asks.

There’s a small lake, but today I don’t want to hike, climb, or swim. I want Mercury to come and tell me that she will give me three gifts.

“You know it’s only just over a week until my birthday.”

“You know, I may have said this before: ‘Stop worrying.’”

“And if I don’t get three . . .” I stop speaking as Rose has appeared from the woods below and is walking toward us, taking long, slow strides. Her thin dress clings to her curves. When she reaches us she drops on to the grass close to me.

She says, “Hi.”

“Hello, Rose.”

Rose giggles. She doesn’t seem to be the giggly type, but she does it a lot. She blushes a lot as well, and she doesn’t seem the blushing type either. It’s a bit baffling.

Rose looks at Gabriel. “You have to go to Geneva, see Pilot, assess how many Hunters there are, and report back to Mercury tonight.” That’s more the type Rose is.

She then plucks at some grass and says, “Nathan, Mercury says that she would be delighted to give you three gifts on your birthday.”

At last.

“She says it would be an honor.”

An honor!

“Will she expect some kind of payment in return? Or is the honor enough?”

“Not a payment,” Rose replies. “A favor. A mark of thanks and respect. It’s only natural to thank the giver. It’s polite.”

“And what favor does she want from me?”

Rose grins and blushes. “She wants two favors from you.”

So the honor definitely isn’t enough.

“What two favors does Mercury want?”

“She will tell you this evening.”

“Will she want the favors first? Or after the Giving?”

“She said one should be given before the ceremony.”

So one must be relatively easy, but I don’t know what it could be. I don’t have anything I can give her.

“The other is to be given afterward, as soon as you can provide it.”

“And what if I don’t ever provide it?”

Rose giggles but draws a finger across her throat.

* * *

Gabriel goes back to Geneva through the cut, and I go for a long hike to keep myself occupied. When we meet up again at the cottage in the evening, I have got myself psyched up. This is Mercury I’m going to meet. I have to be a Black Witch. I have to be the son of Marcus.

Mercury greets me formally with three kisses, but she gives them so slowly it’s as if she is inhaling me rather than kissing me. Her lips don’t touch me, but I can feel the chill off them. She says, “You always smell so good, Nathan.” Then she ignores me and asks Gabriel what he has seen in Geneva.

The Hunters seem to be using Geneva as a base, and Pilot says they are scouting the area, looking for clues, looking for the son of Marcus. Mercury seems satisfied that the cottage is far enough from them and the apartment is still safe.

After we eat she says, “You see my eyes differently, Nathan?”

“I’ve never seen eyes like yours before.” Looking into her eyes is like looking into hollowed-out sockets, completely black but with distant lightning flashing occasionally.

“You haven’t met many Blacks?”

“No.” I turn to Rose. “I’ve met White Witches, though.”

“Yes, Rose is a rare White Witch. Unusually talented and very able.”

Rose blushes on cue.

Mercury continues. “By birth Rose is a White Witch, but she is like a daughter to me now. She is at heart a true Black Witch. You, though, Nathan, are physically very much a Black Witch but I wonder about your heart. Is it that of a true Black Witch?”

“How can I judge? As I said, I haven’t met any Black Witches before.”

Mercury shudders and makes one wild laugh that sounds like an echo in a cavern. “We are a good mix here tonight.”

I lean back in my chair and look at Mercury. She is horrifically thin. But not weak, nothing about her is weak. Even her gray, almost transparent skin looks like it is bulletproof. She is thin like an iron bar, and brittle, and maybe flaking here and there, but as cold and heartless as an iron bar too. Her hair is a mass of wiry gray, black, and white in a swirling pan-scrubber pile of knots and plaits, all held up by long hairpins, which she occasionally pulls out to spin on her fingers.

She wears a long gray dress made of silk or rags, it seems, but parts of it float out when she moves or for no reason at all, as if she is underwater and they are drifting in the current.

I’d love to find out what she knows of my father, but tonight I stick to my Giving. I get it started by offering up, “Thank you for your kindness, Mercury. For looking after me, providing me with a place to stay,” as polite as polite can be.

She inclines her head a little in acceptance. Her dress dances around a little more.

“And thank you for your offer to give me three gifts.”

Again she inclines her head but as she raises it she says, “It’s your birthday soon.”

“Eight days.”

She nods.

I press on with my speech. “I would like to present you with a token, to show my gratitude. Perhaps two tokens, one before the Giving and one after?”

“That is appropriate. Yes. A small token before.”

“It would be a pleasure. Is there anything . . . ?”

Silence.

She loves playing these games.

A bit more silence before she says, “Some information.”

I wait a bit. Give her some silence back. Then finally: “Any particular information?”

“Of course.”

Mercury has her elbows on the table, her fingers rub together, and a long hairpin appears, twirling between them.

“Leave us. You two get out.” She doesn’t look at Gabriel and Rose as she gives her orders but keeps her hollowed-out stare on me. After they have gone outside the wind begins to rattle the door and the windows.

Mercury twirls her hairpin on the tip of her finger.

“The first favor is simple . . . a mere trifle. I’d like you to tell me all you know about those tattoos of yours.”

“And the other favor?”

“Slightly more difficult . . . but perhaps not for you.”

She stabs the hairpin into the table and moves it backward and forward until it comes free again.

“I can’t agree unless I know what the favor is.”

“There aren’t many other options open to you, Nathan.”

Mercury stabs the table again.

I fold my arms and wait.

Her mouth muscles tighten further, and then I struggle not to jump back as she lets out a wild cry, her laugh. The wind howls and Mercury leans across the table to me. Her hands raise and the pin reappears, spinning in her fingers. She speaks, and her breath is ice on my face.

* * *

“Why do you want him dead?”

I’m curious rather than angry.

Mercury leans back in her chair and looks at me, I think, though her eyes are just black chasms in her skull. “He has taken a life from me. The life of someone precious. And I intend to take a life from him. And as the only life he holds precious is his own, that is the one I will take.”

“Whose life did he take?”

“My sister. My twin sister, Mercy. He killed her, viciously. He ate her heart.”

Mercy wasn’t on the list of people my father has killed.

“I’m sorry about your sister, but killing Marcus won’t bring Mercy back. And Marcus is my father.”

“Is that a no?”

“I get the feeling that if I say yes but then fail to fulfill my obligation there will be consequences.”

“Of course. For you, your family, your friends. I detest those who break a deal. They must pay the highest price.”

“Then I think your price may be too high.”

She reaches over me with a finger and strokes the tattoo on my hand. “Your father is no hero, Nathan. He is vain and cruel and . . . if you were ever to meet him you would realize that he cares nothing for you.”

I slide my hand away and get up. I move to stand by the fireplace. “Perhaps there is something else you might accept instead.”

She surveys me. “Perhaps.” She gets up and comes to me and strokes her finger over the tattoo on my neck. “Yes, perhaps there is something else. Your services for a year.”

“Services?”

She screeches her laugh out again. “I am always in need of assistants.”

I don’t know if I can stand being with her for a week, never mind a year. I don’t like this at all, but what did I expect? I’ve nothing else to give her.

“I won’t kill people, if that’s what you want.”

She steps back and spreads her hands out a little. “Well, I understand you feel like that now.” Her dress flutters. “But in time . . . your attitude will change.” And as she says it I look in her eyes and I see Kieran on his knees in front of me, a gun in my hand. I blink and look away but I’ve already felt my finger pull the trigger.

She screeches her laugh again. “Killing is in your blood, Nathan. It’s what you are made for.”

I shake my head at her. Besides, if I’m going to kill people, I’ll choose who they are.

“Perhaps you don’t want three gifts after all.”

“I’ll work for you for a year. I won’t kill people.”

“I shall be delighted to remind you of those words in a year’s time.”

“Do. And I’ll tell you what you want to know about my tattoos on the morning of my birthday.”

A chilly gust slaps my face. “We are alone . . . now is a good time.”

“I’m sure we can find time to be alone on my birthday.”

There’s a lull, no wind, nothing but chill in the air. I wonder if she could freeze me to death—probably.

And I’m not going to tell her all I know about my tattoos and certainly not about Mr. Wallend. But I need to work out how much I can reveal to satisfy her.

She goes to the door and without turning to look at me says, “Pass a message on to Gabriel. There is another young person seeking my help. Gabriel must go to the meeting point in Geneva tomorrow.”