Half Bad (24 page)

It’s a week until my seventeenth birthday. I’ve found Mercury and she will give me three gifts. Why do I not feel good?

Gabriel has gone to Geneva. He said he’d be back in the late afternoon. It’s hot. The sun is dazzling. A great day for a swim. The hike to the lake takes an hour, but I stop along the way to sit and look at the valley. I’m trying to work out what to tell Mercury about my tattoos but I’m not making any progress.

I lie back and look at the sky. The roar from the river seems loud. High above, a bird soars. It’s an eagle. A big eagle. I watch it for a long time then get up and run to the lake. I’m dizzy, almost stumbling on the path. A swim will wake me up. The lake is nothing more than a large pond really, surrounded by forest and a patch of tall grass on one side. I strip and plunge in.

I swim out a few strokes and am numb. The lake water comes from the snow melt. I roll on my back and look at the uninterrupted blue of the sky and see the eagle again, not so high now.

I watch it for a while, circling higher and higher and then dropping down lower, and then circling higher again, dropping down much lower so that I can see the individual feathers at the ends of its wings. It looks black with the sun behind it. And I sink beneath the surface and realize I’m cold inside, really cold. It’s murky underwater and there’s mud and weeds. I can see the surface above me. I can see it but it seems way above me . . . farther and farther away. I’ve stayed down too long . . . I fight back up but swallow some water.

I’m at the surface again. Water in my nose but gulping air.

“Relax.” It’s Rose. She’s behind me in the water. “Relax!”

I look up to the eagle. He’s back, low, still there hanging above me. I spread my arms out, floating.

“You’ve been in here too long. I’ll tow you in.” Rose pulls me back to the shore, rhythmically and slowly, by my hair.

By my hair!

“I don’t think that’s the right technique.”

“Stop complaining. I’ve always wanted to do this . . . to rescue someone.”

I smile and water goes in my mouth but I spit it out. I’m numb but I can feel Rose’s body with my shoulder. A small patch of warmth.

“You can stand now.”

“No, take me all the way in.”

She yanks on my hair, towing me a bit farther and then splashes a few drops of water onto my face. “I think that’s far enough.”

I find my footing in the mud and stand up. The water is below my waist.

Rose stands too. Her dress clings transparently to her curves and I have to look away.

She giggles. “Are you blushing, Nathan?”

I walk out of the water and let her guess.

I drop down on the grass on my stomach, but I’m shivering.

“You need to get dry. Can I use your T-shirt?” But she is already using it to brush the water off my back.

I wait for the comments about my scars, but she doesn’t say anything. The sun is strong still, but inside I’m bitterly cold. I shiver and can’t stop.

Rose lies with me to warm me. It’s strange, being so close to someone else. I’m sure Rose would slit my throat if Mercury told her to but Rose hasn’t been told to do that. She has been told to look after me. I roll away from her and dress.

Rose has some bread and cheese in her bag and we eat it together.

I thank her for rescuing me even though I didn’t need rescuing.

She giggles. “I only did it to make Gabriel jealous.”

“Of me?” I didn’t think Gabriel was interested in Rose.

“No.” She giggles and shakes her head.

I’ve no idea what she’s scheming.

“He would love the chance to rescue you. To show you how much . . . you know . . .” Rose giggles again. “To show you how much he loves you.”

“
What?
”

“He’s in love with you. Totally in love with you.”

Rose is just winding me up. “He’s my friend.”

“Totally. Desperately. Madly. And, alas, it seems, hopelessly too.”

“He’s my friend.”

“Oh, he wants to be so much more than your friend, Nathan.”

I shake my head. Gabriel is Gabriel. He likes being with me for sure. I like being with him. We climb and swim and talk. That’s what friends do, I thought.

He gave me a present a few days earlier. A knife. I take it out and look at it. It’s beautiful. A black, leather-bound handle and black plaited-leather sheath. The blade is shaped like a bowie knife. He seemed nervous about giving it to me. I could tell he really wanted me to like it. I do.

“Love is strange,” Rose says. She takes the knife and looks at it. “Gabriel would die to show you how much he loves you.”

Rose looks at her reflection in the blade.

“And who would you die for, Rose?”

“I’ve not met that person yet.” She gives me the knife back. “Have you?”

I think about it but don’t reply.

She says, “You’re like your father.”

“You’ve met Marcus?”

“Once. Ten years ago, when I was twelve. You look like him. Exactly. You sound like him. Even your silences are like his.”

“You remember that from when you were twelve?”

“He was memorable . . . and I’m not your average thick Shite.”

“No, you’re certainly not, Rose. Did you go to see Marcus or did he come to see Mercury?”

“He came to Mercury. He asked her for a favor. She refused, of course.”

“Because Marcus had killed Mercy?”

Silence. She’s letting me work it out.

“What was the favor, Rose?”

She giggles. “Maybe I’ll tell you . . . maybe not.”

She lies on her side to look at me.

“I love teasing you, Nathan. You get so wound up so quickly. It’s fun to watch.”

“Was Marcus like that? Quick to get angry?”

“I didn’t see him for more than a few minutes. He seemed quite calm to me. Mercury was rather more full of fury at the time.”

“And the favor was?”

“Can’t I drag it out a bit more . . . make you wait a little longer?”

“I’m sure you can.”

She giggles again. “The favor he asked of Mercury was that she should bring up his son. You. She refused. She doesn’t like little boys much.”

“Except in stew.”

Rose giggles again.

Mercury had said my father cares only for himself. She lies about everything. But Marcus must know that too, so . . .

“Why did he ask Mercury for her help?”

“I think she considers she made the wrong decision now. She would like to have a hold over Marcus. But at the time she was too angry about Mercy.”

“But why did he ask her?”

“He thought Mercury should help. You are related, after all.”

“Mercury is my relative?”

“Her twin sister, Mercy, was the mother of Saba.”

What?

“Marcus killed his own grandmother?”

“Not that unusual. But not something that Mercury is ever going to forgive. She loved Mercy. There can be no getting over that. Mercury might not die for the person she loved but she’ll kill for her. It makes me laugh. Black Witches are always killing their relatives, wives, lovers. Shites should just leave them to it and there’d soon be no Blacks left.”

I look up to the sky again. No eagle. Mercury is my great-great aunt . . . And my father has been watching me, watching out for me all my life.

I go back to the cottage and wait on the grass for Gabriel.

I’m excited about my father, pleased—elated even.

I want to tell Gabriel. But late afternoon turns into evening and then night. I forget my joy and think about Hunters. Geneva is crawling with them and Gabriel is too casual. He could easily make a mistake or be betrayed by the person he is supposed to be meeting or by one of the Half Bloods he keeps warning me about.

It’s nearly midday the following day when Gabriel appears on the cottage roof. He doesn’t smile; he looks like he hasn’t slept.

I tell him he looks terrible.

Now he smiles. “So do you.”

I leap up on to the roof and sit by him.

He says, “There’s a perfect English word for how I feel.” He flops back. “Knackered.”

“You didn’t try bumping into more Hunters?”

“No, but it got complicated. We had to make a detour . . . a serious detour. I wanted to spend the night with Pilot—she lives farther out of Geneva—but she took one look at the girl who was with me and said no. The girl’s a White Witch, as pure as they come, says she’s fleeing from the Council. But I don’t know what to believe. The girl was freaking out as well, which didn’t help. Basically it was a mess.”

“So where is the girl now?”

“In the apartment. Though I wasn’t sure about taking her there. I don’t trust her at all.” Gabriel shakes his head. “She won’t talk to me, says she will only speak to Mercury and, as you know, I can’t help her until she tells me more. She won’t. I won’t. We went round in circles for a long time. Physically and verbally.”

“It all sounds rather convenient that someone is fleeing from the Council and needs Mercury’s help when they are searching for me. Do you think she’s been sent by the Council or the Hunters?”

“I don’t know. I can’t work her out. She’s exhausted me. I need to forget her for a while and relax. I have some news from Pilot for Mercury. Then we can go for a swim.”

We wait for Mercury on the roof. I tell him what Rose told me about Marcus killing Mercy and then I tell him about the eagle. And that is when Mercury appears. She must have been listening to everything.

Mercury wants to know more about the eagle. Like me, I think she wonders if it’s Marcus.

I don’t answer but instead ask her, “Do you think Marcus watches me?”

I expect her to laugh. I feel ridiculous as soon as I say it.

She says, “He cares only for himself, Nathan. If he watches you it is for his own ends.”

And I can see that if Marcus thinks I’m going to kill him he would want to keep an eye on me. But I’m his son, his only son. And if I had a son I would watch him, and I would want to meet him too. I would want to see him in the flesh, to touch him as a child and hold him. But Marcus hasn’t ever come to see me, to hold me and—

“And you met the girl, Gabriel?”

“Yes. She’s at the apartment. I don’t trust her, but it’s the only place I could leave her. Pilot gave me another message for you. She told me that Clay was in Geneva. She said, ‘Clay has the Fairborn.’”

Mercury laughs her howl of a laugh, practically skips on to the roof, and grabs our hands. Roof tiles fly up and we seem to hover in the air on an upsurge of wind before she lowers us to the grass.

When we land Mercury strokes my cheek. “I’ve heard of a vision about the Fairborn and you, Nathan. And I think you have heard it too.” She pinches my chin and looks into my eyes. “Definitely.”

She strokes my cheek again before turning to Gabriel and saying, “It will be interesting to see how Nathan changes with that knife in his hand.”

Gabriel looks confused.

“Nathan can explain to you about the vision. And tonight we will discuss how the Fairborn can be taken from Clay and put into my—no . . .
Nathan’s
hands.”

* * *

We lie on the mossy bank of the small lake. We have run there, swum, and now we are letting the sun’s rays dry and warm us. But my head’s in a different place.

Gabriel says, “This morning I went to the house where Pilot said Clay was staying to check it for myself. Pilot gets things wrong sometimes. But she wasn’t wrong. Clay is there.”

“How do you know it’s him?”

Gabriel shrugs. “They have that look, don’t they? Arrogance. He’s the most arrogant of them all. The king of arrogance.”

It’s him.

“He has a girlfriend,” Gabriel says.

“You serious?” I remember his truncheon and being on the ground, trying to protect my head with my arms.

“Even more surprising . . . she’s attractive. Tall and slim and young . . . young for Clay, you know what I mean. Some women go for looks, some go for money, some go for power. She obviously goes for”—he shrugs—“arrogant old men.”

Gabriel’s trying to make me laugh, but I can’t see anything funny about Clay.

I say, “He’s not that old. He’s powerful. Has a certain position in society. He’s cunning . . . intelligent.” And brutal.

“So, a good catch for a White Witch.”

I sit up and look at the lake, the deep blue surface reflecting the sky, lime green underneath from the weeds growing in the water. It reminds me of Ellen. I tell Gabriel. “I met a Half Blood in London. She had amazing eyes. A bit like the lake, that mix of blue and green, only hers had turquoise and . . .” I run out of things to say. Clay’s eyes were like ice.

Gabriel sits up too. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve met Clay. Twice.” I remember his breath on my neck.

I want to tell Gabriel about the Fairborn and my tattoos and Celia’s training and Mary’s warning. But I don’t know what the first word is . . . where to begin. . . . Where do I start with all this stuff?

He says, “Tell me about this Half Blood. She sounds interesting.”

“She is. You’d like her. She’s smart.”

And once I start to tell him about Ellen it gets easier and I explain about Bob and Mary and then the assessments and Clay and all of it.

When I’ve finished Gabriel says, “Mary said you should trust no one. But you trusted Ellen and you’re trusting me.”

I shrug. I do trust him, though.

He leans over and hugs me. It feels a bit awkward.

Gabriel is convinced that Mercury will want to steal the Fairborn. Then she will pair me up with it and set us against Marcus. He says that if I work for her for a year she will use all her powers to manipulate me to kill Marcus. He thinks that is part of the pleasure she will have, setting me against Marcus, having power over his son. He says, “You’re right to believe in your father.”

He says he no longer wants Mercury’s help.

I remind him. “But I need her help. It’s only six days to my birthday. I need three gifts.”

“Yes, that’s a problem,” he says. “We need a plan.”

But a plan is hard to find. We agree that we need to destroy the knife, or throw it into the lake where it can never be recovered, but Mercury will be furious and out for revenge if we do that. And anyway my father may not believe what we have done. We could try to give the knife to him, but clearly this has the twin dangers of both getting it to him and giving it to him when he doesn’t trust me.

We decide to go along with any plan Mercury comes up with to steal the Fairborn as it’s better in her hands than the hands of the Hunters. We can only hope that after I have three gifts and I’m working for Mercury I will get an opportunity to destroy it. It’s not much of a plan.

* * *

That evening Mercury is in a celebratory mood. Rose has been to Geneva and is back. She tells us what she has seen: the same as Gabriel. Clay is staying in a house in the suburbs of Geneva. There are at least twenty Hunters in the area around the city, which is nothing to celebrate in my opinion. Pilot has left for Spain.

Mercury doesn’t sit, she stands and paces, but the fabric of her dress is dancing around in glee. She doesn’t seem to care how many Hunters there are. She wants the Fairborn and thinks Rose can steal it.

Gabriel says, “If Clay has it. Pilot has often been wrong.”

Rose says, “Pilot told me there’s a rota of people who guard the Fairborn. It’s Clay’s turn at the moment. Wherever he goes, the Fairborn goes.”

“Getting it from Clay isn’t going to be easy.”

“No, not easy,” Mercury agrees. “But quite within the capability of my wonderful, darling, genius Rose of a White Witch, who has the talent to take anything, however securely it is kept.”

Rose blushes and giggles.

Mercury says, “Tomorrow, Rose, you and Gabriel go to the house, find the Fairborn, and bring it to me.”

Just like that.

“And how—?” I begin.

Gabriel puts his hand on my arm. “It’s fine. We’ll be careful. Mercury is right. Rose is very good. Even Hunters are fooled by her mist. But we won’t take any chances. If the house is protected by trespass spells we won’t try. It would be impossible, even for Rose.”

Rose adds, “But Shites don’t like to use them in case fains get hurt. They wouldn’t want to kill a fain burglar. It can bring them into the limelight too much. Cleaning up after fains is a chore.”

I say, “So you’ll just walk into a house full of Hunters, pick up the knife, and walk out again.”

“They won’t see me,” Rose says.

“It’s too dangerous,” I say to Gabriel.

“You are becoming more fain than me,” he says. “We’ll be careful.”

Mercury laughs again.

“Then I’ll come too,” I say.

Mercury says, “No. You stay here.”

I curse her and she laughs. There is a clap of thunder above the cottage and hairpins spin around the room.

“And the girl?” Rose asks.

“Ah yes. The girl . . .” Mercury looks to Gabriel. “What did you say her name was?”

“Annalise. Annalise O’Brien.”

And when Gabriel says her name, it doesn’t make sense. Annalise can’t be trying to find Mercury. She can’t need Mercury’s help.

Gabriel asks me what’s wrong.

When I don’t answer he stares hard at me. “You know her?”

I don’t know what I say.

“She’s the one you . . . like?” And I can see the disgust on his face.

I say to Mercury, “I need to see her. She’s a friend.”

“How lovely.” Rose blushes.

Mercury stares at me too, her eyes flashing wildly. “A friend? Who arrives just as your birthday approaches, just as Geneva fills with Hunters?”

Mercury says to Rose, “You are going to get the Fairborn tomorrow night.” She stands to leave and goes to the door but then turns back and says to Gabriel, “Make sure Nathan doesn’t see the girl. Not yet. I need to think about her.”

To me she says, “If you go, Gabriel will pay for failing to stop you.” And then Mercury’s gone.

Rose looks from Gabriel to me and blushes, saying, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” She giggles and reaches out to hold Gabriel’s hand. “But I’m on Team Gabriel.”

Gabriel snatches his hand away from Rose and looks at me. “I knew there was something wrong all the time I was with her, Nathan. She’s a spy. She’s working for the Council.”

I shake my head. “She isn’t.”

“She’s come to capture you or spy on you or kill you. They are using her to get you.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Am I? She’s a White Witch. Pure White. I bet half her family are Hunters or Council members.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s like them.”

“Oh, of course not. She’s
different
.” His voice is mocking. “And she thinks you’re special, she understands you, she knows you’re not bad really, she doesn’t mind that your father is the most wanted Black Witch, she’s not interested in him, just in you. She sees the real you. The kinder, gentler you. And she swishes her blonde hair and smiles her bright smile and—”

But I’m out of there.

* * *

I run. It feels like the only good thing to do, running until I can’t run any more. I sleep in the forest, badly, even though I’m exhausted. I stay there for most of the day, walking, staring at the sky. It’s only five days until my birthday, and I feel like everything is spinning out of control. I can only imagine Annalise is here because things have got bad back at home with her family. And for her to risk coming to Mercury, it must be really bad. But she is not here for her Giving; she was seventeen in September.

Late in the afternoon I go back to the cottage. Preparations are underway for stealing the Fairborn from a house full of Hunters.

As I walk in, Gabriel continues what he’s doing, which I’m surprised to see is cleaning a gun.

“Do you know how to use that?” I ask. I can’t stop myself from sounding angry, even though I told myself not to be.

“I lived in the U.S. of A. for more than a year, didn’t I?” His voice is soft, joking.

“But have you ever actually shot anyone?”

He stops cleaning the gun and looks up at me but doesn’t answer.

And I almost see the Black Witch in him.

“Who did you kill?”

He keeps his eyes locked on mine and says, so I can only just hear, “A spy.”

“That’s your speciality, is it? Killing spies.”

“Nathan, don’t.” He starts cleaning the gun again.

“I’ve known Annalise a long time. She’s not a spy. I trust her.”

“Those are the ones they choose.”

“So that’s it? There’s nothing she can do to convince you otherwise? Everything she does will be suspicious because of who she is.”