Hidden Among Us (17 page)

I stood alone on the lawn, watching the round disc of the moon shivering on the surface of the lake. The breeze died, and I turned to glance back at the house. There were only two windows lit, the hall upstairs for Rafe and the kitchen where I’d left Adam arguing with Miles.

I counted three windows along from the hall to Maman’s old room where Rafe and Lissy were sleeping: Rafe in the canopied four-poster bed, Lissy curled up in a travel cot she was already too long for. Rafe still had night terrors, a year after all the horror. I was worried Adam wouldn’t hear Rafe from the kitchen if he screamed.

Lissy’s gone! Lissy’s gone!

Rafe didn’t have to worry. Thanks to Larkspur, she was safe. For now. Another thirteen years. I came to dread every birthday.

Miriam
.

I heard the trees call my name. Shivering with horror, and anticipation too, I turned to face the water, standing alone on what had once been the lawn. Brambles trailed through overgrown tangles of thistles and bindweed. The Reach had fallen into decay, neglected and unloved. Miles thought about nothing but Rose, even though she’d already started to lose interest in him. His beauty was already fading, the years and his desperate obsession with her taking their toll. He wouldn’t go to the Hidden. Either too conscious of that ridiculous inherited duty he harps on about when he’s drunk, or too cowardly to risk stepping out into the sunshine again only to find three thousand years had passed, his mortal body crumbling into dust, no longer protected by Hidden magic.

Oh, yes, they can make you immortal, the Hidden, but only if you never leave their halls. Only if you stay for ever.

I didn’t want that. I was determined not to be like Miles, so desperate and hopeless. The Hidden are addictive, worse than heroin. Once tasted, their kiss – you have to get more. And more.

I was luckier than Miles. Stronger. I had Adam. My children.

I could no longer see the moon in the water, even though the pale silver disc still glowed in a cloudless sky.

I knew he would find me here. He was coming.

Shaking, I watched a mound of water rise out of the lake like a blister.

His head broke the surface, black hair shining wet, then his bare shoulders, pearl-white. His smooth chest. His arms. He looked up, smiling, and stepped out of the lake and onto the grass before me, water running down his chest, pale skin shining, wet fabric clinging to his legs, droplets shaking from the dull silver straps on his boots.

“Miriam.” And the Swan King stepped closer, still smiling even though I knew him well enough now to spot the raw hatred at the backs of his eyes. He reached out and ran one cold finger down the side of my face. He loved me, I knew that, but he always hated mortals. He loved me, yes, but despised me for what I was. For what we did to Larkspur’s mother. “You grow older.”

I shrugged, no longer half afraid of him as I had been once. “Two children,” I replied, and was about to say,
You try it
. But I had to choose my words so carefully. Making sure there was nothing he could interpret as an offer – another covenant – which might strike out the one I’d made with Larkspur. “Even you would look older,” I told him instead. “There’s no use asking for her. I won’t give her back to you. So don’t bother.”

A look of torment crossed his face. He was genuinely lonely, I’ll always believe that. “Then why are you here, Miriam? Why did you come back?”

“Miles. We’re trying to get him to leave Hopesay. He needs to forget about Rose.”

“He never will.” The Swan King smiled, bitter and cruel. “But Rose grows weary of him.”

“It’s not just her,” I said. “Adam thinks the Fontevrault suspect Miles. Not me, not yet – I’ve stayed away from you, and I’ve always made sure that Lissy isn’t seen by many people, just in case. But Miles can’t keep away from Rose. They don’t know the Gateway is open, but Adam thinks the Fontevrault are watching him.”

He smiled when I mentioned the Fontevrault. “They’re all fools,” he whispered. “They made me a promise and broke it. But they will learn.” I felt uneasy when he said that. “Oh, will you not come with me, Miriam? You could be young for ever. At my side always.”

“And never see the sky again? No thank you.” I shook my head. “It’s not just that—” There was no point making him angry by telling him that despite what had happened between us, I loved Adam, and wanted to love Adam more than him. “You must understand: I have a little boy as well. I couldn’t watch him grow old and die.”

“Bring the child,” the Swan King whispered. “Miriam, bring all you want to, bring your mortal lover if you must. In the Halls of the Hidden your hours will be as days, your years as centuries. Just come. Be with me for thousands of years, my love. My loneliness knows no boundary.”

“What about Larkspur?” I hardly dared ask.

He turned away. “His punishment will see no end till my daughter is at my side.”

That’s never going to happen
.

“What have you done to him?” I had to know. It was my misery that had condemned Larkspur to whatever fate his father had chosen, my misery and the spark of mercy that shuddered and flickered within the Swan King’s only son.

“He is an outcast among his own kind. He suffers, alone and despised. That is all. Another thirteen years you have with her, Miriam. Don’t forget.”

I didn’t dare say anything else. All I knew was that Larkspur had brought Lissy home, and if he would be an outcast for it till I gave her back, then he would have to be an outcast for ever.

I’m sorry, Larkspur
.

Connie’s eyelids shift and twitch. I wonder what she is looking at, there in the darkness of her dreams.

It’s my fault she’s in this hospital bed. I know why the antibiotics aren’t flushing the poison from Connie’s blood, why those steroid drugs are seeping into her body through a thin plastic tube but haven’t kick-started the healing process. I know more than the kind consultant and all the medical staff put together, but they would never believe me.

Connie is dying because I was cursed. I’ve spent fourteen years wondering how on earth I could fool the Hidden into not giving Lissy back. I thought I had till midnight to think of a way.

In the end, they just cheated me. They’re going to take Lissy, and they will have Connie’s life, too.

What about Rafe?

28

I tore across the field, wet mud caking around my soaked trainers, breath rasping in my chest. When I glanced over my shoulder no one was following.

Rafe must have been giving them some trouble.

For a second, I slowed, half stopping. Should I go back? Try to help? Had I made a terrible, gutless mistake? I should have ignored Rafe’s order to run and stayed to help him. There must have been something I could’ve done—

It was too late now.
Nice one, Joe
.

I was a coward.

Behind me, I heard the distant roar of one engine and then another. The grey car and then Rafe’s— Had he got away?

Or were the Fontevrault Group just removing the evidence? Impounding Rafe’s knackered looking Renault behind barbed wire in some innocuous suburb, like the police had done that time Dad parked in a loading bay.

High above me, a lone blackbird hung in the sky like a ragged shadow. Across the field, a church tower reared up above the trees, huge and grey.

Maybe I wasn’t being chased because they knew I had nowhere to go.

So I ran.

The straggle of houses looked familiar; when I passed the butcher’s shop I knew why. I was in Hopesay Edge, the village itself. I was so disorientated as we drove out of town I’d not realized we were so close.

There were at least four dust-caked cars parked outside the butcher’s; a load of old women and a fat bloke in overalls and workboots queued outside, eyeballing me. My trousers were soaked up to the knees, heavy with wet mud. My senses must’ve been sharpened by fear because I could smell blood: the heavy stink of wet rust. This was all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing out, so screaming obvious—

For the second time in one day I headed into the church. That freakish hippy woman had clearly known something. What if it
wasn’t
the Hidden she’d been so afraid of?

It was dark in the church even after the feeble overcast daylight outside. At first all I could really see was a huge stained-glass window I hadn’t paid much attention to earlier. It floated in the gloom: a tall figure surrounded by kneeling men with haloes and flowing robes.

I saw it differently now, that story told in the glass.

The tall figure in the middle had no halo. It wasn’t Jesus or some kind of saint but one of
them
: the Hidden. An immortal creature frozen in bright blues, greens, yellows and reds, arms lifted to the sky without appearing to notice the kneeling men clustered at his feet.

“What are you doing here? What do you want?” Virgie Creed’s voice rang out, high and breathless. “Stop meddling with what you know nothing about.”

My eyes were used to the dim light now; she stood up behind her table of random groceries, closing one boneless white hand over a black metal cash box.

I took a chance. “You know, don’t you? You know about everything. The Hidden. The—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped. I could hear cars on the road outside. Were the Fontevrault among them? Coming closer. Finishing the job.

“You’ve got to help, please. I’m being followed.” Where could I go? Who else could I ask? I was on my own. My whole body tingled with horror and fear.

Virgie shook her head. “I tried to warn you, didn’t I? Go through the lychgate. You’ll come out in the orchard – it’s a private way into the Reach. If that’s the Fontevrault coming you must go
now
.” She reached into a leather handbag and pulled out a folded wad of yellow paper, shoving it at me. I took it without even thinking. “Now go,” she hissed, fixing me with a wild gaze. “Shut the Gateway. You must shut the Gateway. Miles should never have opened it. I told him. Don’t fail. You can’t.”

“But I can’t shut it if I don’t know where it is.”

“You need to walk into the lake. That’s the way down.”

I stared at her.
What?

“Go! There’s no time to explain.”

I didn’t need telling again, just forced the wad of paper into my back pocket and went for it.

As I was about to run out the way I’d come in, Virgie shook her head, beckoning at me to follow.

Outside, I heard doors slamming. Driver’s side. Passenger side. Two of them after me.

Without a word, she rushed me into a chilly stone room where a set of long white robes hung from the wall. A place for the vicar to get changed before his services.

“Go,” she hissed, shoving me hard out of a narrow doorway; I was blinded by daylight. I’d come out by a high thick hedge. Right or left? She hadn’t said. I ran to the left, banging hard into a gravestone on the way. Pain shot through my hip, down my leg. It was only luck that took me to a faded oak gate, silvery grey wood against the greenery. I grabbed the rusting latch, shoved the gate open and found myself in an overgrown orchard, four times the length of a football pitch. Through some apple trees, I could just make out the Reach: black and white timbers, rain-wet stone, windows glittering like the eyes of a reptile.

I broke into a run, tearing as hard and as fast as I could across the grass till my chest was on fire and my lungs were burning. The house wasn’t getting any closer. A nightmare. I was going to be caught. Taken, like Rafe.

They will kill you.

Was Rafe dead?

I scrambled over a half-rotting fence into the back garden, past a long-neglected veg patch, the shell of a greenhouse and flowerbeds choked with weeds.

I could hear voices now – people shouting behind me, yelling at me to stop, but ridiculously polite. “
Excuse me! Excuse me! Can you stop, please?”

Not a chance was I going to stop for anyone.

By the time I reached the lean-to my chest was burning, sweat pouring down my face. I threw open the door and more broken glass smashed out of the panel Rafe had knocked through to break in. The kitchen drawers were all still yanked open where the Fontevrault had searched for Rafe’s manuscript. I ran down the dark corridor and out of the front door. On the overgrown lawn, I had to stop for a few minutes, gasping for breath. I could see the lake now, glittering and all innocent-looking, there by that big old yew tree.

All I could do was hope Virgie Creed hadn’t been lying, because I couldn’t see how this murky lake, with a couple of lily-pads floating there in the rain, could possibly be of any help to me now. The Hidden creature had gone in there. Just disappeared into another world.

I did the only thing I could.

I stepped forwards, into the lake, just my right foot. One step at a time. Cold water flooded my trainer. There was nothing to stand on, my foot just swished around in the blackness. It was deep, very deep.

That creature. The Hidden. He’d walked straight in, hadn’t he? I’d watched the waters close over his head.

“Excuse me! Can you please stop immediately?”

I had nowhere to go. There was no other way out. Because I knew that if I was caught now, I would be killed. Rafe had history with the Hidden. The Fontevrault Group must have been observing his family for years, suspecting they’d had contact but not doing anything about it. Which didn’t make any sense, now I thought about it. Whatever the reason, I was different.