Solace & Grief (7 page)

‘Who
wrote
this?’ Solace asked, holding the paper at arm's length and turning it over, half expecting to find an author's name on the back. Instead, there were just more questions. Jess leaned over and scanned them.

‘Oh, look!’ she said. ‘They even ask if you can speak in tongues. Just as well we're not Pentecostals, or we might skew the statistics.’

That got a laugh, but afterwards, everyone finished off their respective surveys silently and in their own time. Evan looked slightly annoyed to finish first, while Solace and Manx tied last, as each of them seemed to find more questions that required explanatory answers.

‘Well,’ said Jess, when everyone was done. ‘When do they go in?’

‘We're actually handing them in?’ asked Electra, looking around for someone to contradict her. Oddly enough, no one did. ‘Oh,’ she said, and then again, ‘
oh
! Well. That's fair enough. I guess.’ Tentatively, she held her page out to Evan, who took it. With only a little reluctance, everyone else did likewise.

‘Cross my heart I won't read them,’ Evan said solemnly. ‘We can take them back tomorrow morning, unless anyone objects.’ He paused. ‘No?
Excellent
. In the interim, I propose we draw on Glide. Any takers?’

‘Draw
on
him?’ Solace asked. Change of subject notwithstanding, her head felt numb. Evan didn't even have the grace to look guilty.

‘Only a little,’ he said, with winning cheerfulness. ‘No takers? Anybody? I promise enjoyable hijinks for all. Well, except for Glide, but that's only because he might not actually have a sense of humour. Or, you know, a pulse.’ He glanced round, false innocence radiating from every pore. ‘Going once? Twice? Third and final?’

‘Oh, very well,’ Manx drawled, but as he stood, he flashed Solace a look that asked
talk later
? She nodded. Manx's mouth twitched. Their exchange having gone unnoticed, he returned to Evan. ‘You'll need the artistic support, if nothing else.’

‘Excellent!’ Evan cackled, in apparent ignorance of both glance and joke. ‘And now – to our noble purpose!’

‘Yeah,’ Manx echoed, grinning at the others. ‘Noble.’

Tingling faintly, Solace watched as the soon-to-be miscreants jostled one another up the stairs. Questions buzzed under her skin with the urgency of regrown cells, so that the force of her mingled awe and curiosity seemed to extend outwards from her body like a new sense, made hypersensitive by anticipation.

‘So,’ Electra murmured, after a moment. ‘Those were some pretty original surveys. Which, coincidentally, Evan seems to have left behind – remind me again why we let
him
be in charge?’

Jess shrugged languidly, pouting as she noticed that someone, probably Manx, had finished the rest of her milk. ‘Not a clue. Lapse in judgement, anyone?’

‘Did we just –’ Solace interjected, then stopped. Jess and Electra were watching her, not quite grinning, not quite calm. Frazzled, she rubbed her eyes and blinked. ‘I mean, did we all just admit… are we, um… do we all have… super powers?’

Jess held the now-empty glass upside down over her mouth and tapped on the bottom, inducing a stray drop of milk to drip onto her tongue. She licked it away, quickly, then said, ‘Yes.’

‘Right,’ echoed Solace. ‘Right. Just so long as we're clear.’

‘We're clear,’ said Electra, glancing longingly over her shoulder towards the kitchen. ‘Kitchen’ was a loose term: there was a big wonky table and a dilapidated, ancient fridge clustered next to a stand-alone metal sink that looked as if it had once been destined for life in an industrial laundry. ‘On an unrelated note, do we have any chips?’

‘I think Glide took them,’ said Jess, whose eyes had closed.

‘Damn. I could really do with some chips.’

Solace burst out laughing.

Jess opened one eye and watched her from under thick lashes. ‘And our lack of chips is funny because…?’

‘Because I threw a table at Kelly.’

‘Ah. This must be what linguists call a
non sequitur
. Table? Kelly? Context?’

‘Sorry.’ Solace clenched her hands to stop the fingers trembling. ‘It was the first freakish thing I'd ever done. After that, I just kept getting stronger. Kelly was the catalyst. But just then, I started thinking of Spiderman, and it was like: my radioactive spider-bite was a kitchen table. How weird is that?’

There was a pause, during which her friends gave this statement due consideration. Then Electra snorted.

‘It's funny,’ said Jess, ‘how easy it can be to accept what you are, no matter how crazy it is. I've got this theory that deep down, most of us want to believe in magic, even if we'd never say so out loud. All it takes is the right perspective, the right moment, and suddenly something that seemed impossible five minutes ago makes perfect, logical sense.’

‘Is that how it was for you?’ asked Solace.

Jess's smile faded a little. ‘In a way.’ She dropped her gaze. ‘The problem is other people.’

From there, the conversation changed course, slipping back towards mundane topics: their most recent excursion to the Gadfly, favourite colours and why, precisely, Evan was so fond of drawing on Glide.

Solace was about to ask Jess if her brother's weirdness had manifested in childhood or if it was the product of later psychological issues when a sonorous booming started to issue from the kitchen. As neither Jess nor Electra was startled by this – and as, in fact, Electra promptly stood up and headed towards it – Solace concluded that the noise was both familiar and benign, if startling to the uninitiated. Puzzled, she turned to Jess. ‘What is that?’

‘Nobody told you? Evan found a baby dinosaur wandering the streets. We keep it chained under the sink as a garbage disposal unit. We haven't used it lately, though, so he must be getting hungry. His name's Dimitri.’

Caught off guard, Solace blinked. ‘Really?’

Jess frowned. ‘No, you moron – someone's at the door! Who is it, Lex?’ This last to Electra.

‘Me!’ sang out a familiar voice.

It was Paige. Waving, she followed Electra back through the kitchen and into the lounge, where she proceeded to drape herself comfortably over a broken-down armchair, flipping threads of purple hair out of her eyes.

‘Hey, Jess. Hey, Solace. Where're the guys? Out?’

‘Upstairs. Drawing on Glide.’

‘Cool.’ Paige stretched luxuriously, wiggling her fingers. She was wearing a pale yellow T-shirt bearing the legend
dancing pandas!
directly above a cavorting cartoon conga-line of the promised species. ‘They going to be long? Only we're having a kind of impromptu picnic-party-thing down in Hyde Park. You know: rugs, cheap wine, a little music, a little mockery of the corporate set trying to reconnect with nature during their half-hour lunch. Also, we're going to chip in five bucks apiece if Tryst can catch an ibis. Fun for the whole family.’

‘Ibis? We're catching an ibis?’ From upstairs, Evan poked his head over the banister nearest Glide's room. ‘Awesome!’

Despite having welcomed a nocturnal life with open arms, Solace was shocked to realise how little sunlight she'd seen in the past two weeks. Normally, her dizziness didn't kick in for at least forty minutes, but now the effect was like being hit with a sledgehammer, blurring her vision from almost the moment Paige led them outside. Her thoughts were veering in an uncomfortable direction: that if an aversion to daylight really was integral to her vampire nature, then being – for lack of a better term –
less vampiric
was something she'd have to work at. Actively.
Assuming that's what you
really
want,
muttered the Vampire Cynic, but for once Solace felt treacherously disinclined to agree. Bleached skin or not, she liked the sun – or, more importantly, the freedom to walk about under it without bursting into flames.

‘Note to self,’ she mumbled, ‘get more vitamin D.’

‘You okay?’ asked Evan with indecent cheerfulness. He was, it seemed, still flush with the novelty of having drawn on Glide, who had managed to remain asleep throughout the entire process and was subsequently now covered in intricate illustrations of pheasants, if Manx was to be believed. ‘You're swaying a bit.’

Solace shook her head. ‘I'm fine. It's just the sun. I get dizzy easily.’

‘Oh.’ He shrugged, accepting it, and changed the subject. ‘Nice outfit, by the way. My sister help?’

‘Yes,’ said Solace, blushing only a little. After her first night at the Gadfly, Electra and Jess had banded together to find her some new clothes amongst their old ones. With their help, she'd selected mostly blacks and reds, the kind of things Mrs Plumber and Miss Daisy would have frowned upon. She was hardly on par with Laine, but nonetheless secretly thrilled to be choosing her own things. Today, she'd dressed in her old boots, a reddish satin skirt fringed in burgundy lace and a fitted black singlet beneath an ageing leather jacket so large that her hands were lost in the sleeves. This last was merited despite the sun: for all the sky was periwinkle blue, the air was verging on chill, even more so in the shade.

‘Cool,’ said Evan. Then he paused, studying her with an expression of unusually appreciative clarity. ‘Anyway, it suits you.’ And before she could answer, he tipped her a wink and sauntered ahead again.

‘Flattering wretch,’ Solace muttered, but her eyes sparkled.

By the time they reached Hyde Park, she was finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other, despite having shrugged off further offers of help from both Manx and Electra. Just as she was on the brink of giving in, she spotted Harper waving them over to the shade of a particularly large and ancient tree. Calling a quick hello, she made a beeline for the tree trunk, and with a sigh, slumped heavily down against it. With pleased relief, she surveyed the spread. As advertised, there were picnic rugs (helpfully weighed down against the breeze by several wine casks, and to one side, a portable stereo playing the Dandy Warhols), several barbecue chickens, a bowl of potato salad, plastic cups and people, all of whom, Solace was delighted to realise, she knew. Helping herself to a drumstick, she took a bite and waved the remainder at Tryst, catching his attention rather successfully.

‘So. Caught the ibis yet?’

Tryst laughed. He was a sociable type: tall, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with an infectious sense of humour. From where he was crouched, he tucked his fists against his chest and made his elbows flap, all the while making a disconsolate ibis-honk.

‘That means no,’ he called out. Solace giggled.

Once she'd recovered from her time in the sun, the afternoon proved exceptionally pleasant. For the first time since seeing her at the Gadfly, she managed a proper chat with Laine, who, it turned out, was both softly wry and fiercely intelligent – or at least, that was the impression she made on Solace. Jess, Electra, a blonde called Claire and a brunette called Phoebe plaited long blades of grass into one another's hair, then fell, shrieking with laughter, into a short-lived game that consisted of trying to wipe as much sap and chlorophyll residue as possible onto each others’ faces. Tryst almost caught an ibis, but was thwarted at the last moment by a flying tackle from Evan. In an almost preternatural display of nimbleness and dexterity, Paige stole Harper's wine, clamped the edge of the plastic cup between her teeth and shimmied up the ancient tree without spilling so much as a drop, whereupon she clambered out onto a prominent branch and downed the lot. It was, in short, a glorious, silly, wonderful afternoon, and as the setting sun threw bright gold ribbons glancing through the foliage, Solace felt something in her heart twist. She'd done nothing more spectacular than play tag, climb trees, roll down the grassy slope with Jess and Paige, laze in the sun, drink alcohol, laugh, talk, eat; and yet it was beautiful, the best day she'd ever had. No matter what happened, the memory of it would be hers, forever. She felt her throat tighten.

‘More wine?’

It was Manx. Obligingly, Solace made room for him to sit – which he did – but shook her head at the cask, which dangled loosely from an outstretched hand.

‘Maybe later.’

Shrugging amiably in the manner of
your loss, my gain,
Manx poured himself a generous cupful and took a long draught, studying Solace's face sidelong as she, oblivious, watched the city. Her fingers twitched on the picnic blanket. Hesitantly, Manx reached over and squeezed her hand. Startled at the sudden contact, Solace jerked her head around before meeting Manx's mismatched eyes. He smiled crookedly and winked at her. Solace laughed and squeezed back self-consciously. For a while, the two of them sat like that, content on the edge of a tartan rug as Sydney moved around them. Eventually, however, Manx broke the contact, leaning back on his arms to speak.

‘Those surveys we did today,’ he said, carefully. ‘We both took a while to finish.’

‘Yeah. They were pretty crazy. Fun, though.’

‘Mm.’ He seemed to be considering something, mulling it over. Solace waited. Since moving into the warehouse, she'd spent most nights in Manx's bed, mostly because his was the most comfortable mattress. They weren't lovers, or partners, or people who technically were one or the other but claimed to be
just friends
– they genuinely
were
friends, and slept side by side as innocently as kittens, with only marginally less kicking, biting and affectionate swiping at around 4 am. Even without a sexual aspect, being so close to another person was a new experience for Solace, heady and scary and wonderful all at once. And yet, for all that, she knew very little about Manx; as little, in fact, as he really knew about her. Until today, their understanding had been silent, intuitive, unaided by explanation.