Solace & Grief (8 page)

Biting ruefully at the inside of his cheek, Manx exhaled sharply and tilted his head back, so that he was watching the sky. The corner of one eye flickered.

‘Solace,’ he said, ‘I can turn into a cat. A
big
cat. Not a panther or a lion or anything. Just a big. Damn. Cat.’ He straightened his neck again, facing her. ‘I'm told it's very intimidating, if you're drunk.’

‘That's… weird,’ said Solace, trying to imagine the sight and failing quite spectacularly. She'd braced herself for a revelation, but whatever she'd been expecting, this wasn't it.

‘I mean,’ he continued, ‘what would be so wrong with a leopard? Even an ocelot – I know they're small, but at least they look, you know, respectable. But a big house cat? That's just cruel and unusual.’ He glanced at her. ‘I think I understand why I don't shrink – distribution of mass, or whatever – but that doesn't explain why I'm just a bigger version of something small.’

Solace blinked. ‘Manx. You're trying to rationalise
shape-shifting,
a supposedly mythical process wherein you change
species
. If there's an explanation for what any of us can do, you and I included, then I doubt it has anything to do with commonsense, let alone the laws of physics. Or at least, the laws of physics as currently understood by normal people.’

He sighed. ‘I know. I just wish I was fierce.’

Solace smiled, toying with the empty cup in her hand. ‘So that's why you're called Manx - after a cat breed.’

‘Pretty much. I mean, I have a tail when I change, I'm not an actual manx. I just like the sound of it. It's more interesting than Matthew.’

Silence flickered between them. For a moment, Solace worried he'd change the subject, but after some moments had ticked by, he began talking again, more slowly than before.

‘It's… uncomfortable to change, less so to change back. The longer I stay a cat, the more I start to think like one. I don't know why. Even when I'm human, my hearing and eyesight are sharper than normal. I can –’ he grinned, briefly, ‘– talk to cats, and you'd be surprised by how interesting that really is. I mean, it
is
interesting. Cats get around. They see lots of things that people think nobody knows.’ He dropped his gaze and when he looked back again, his voice had quietened. ‘I found out when I was seven. The first time I changed, I almost couldn't come back. My parents are old-school Catholic. They thought I was possessed, tried to have me exorcised.’ He laughed, softly and without humour. ‘Eventually, I ran away. Found Electra when I was sixteen. Or maybe she called me. Jess told you about her Trick?’

Solace nodded, hardly daring to move, lest he change the subject. Around them, twilight flickered like a fading candle, sputtering sparks as the streetlights switched on. Manx plucked idly at a blade of grass, twirling it as he spoke.

‘She was twelve. I found her in an alley. Some people were attacking her, saying she'd stolen their things. Well, what she does isn't stealing, not really. We've figured out now that it needs to be lost, but it used to just
arrive.
She'd want, and the thing would come. And this one time, she'd wanted something pretty. Her family was poor, she was young. It was wishful thinking. Sure enough, a gorgeous necklace arrives, all silver and sapphires. It looked – it
was
– valuable. She almost got rid of it on the spot.’ He sighed. ‘The first day she wore it, a man claiming to be the original owner saw her, said she must've stolen it. He was a neighbour. Well-known. When Electra didn't give it back, he started spreading lies at the local pub, saying she was a burglar. People believed him.’

‘Why didn't she just hand it over?’

Manx shook his head. ‘Fear, I guess. She still didn't understand what she was doing, how she was doing it. Giving the necklace back would've been like confessing to being something she wasn't. Even the man admitted the necklace had been lost for years; it was just pure bad luck that he recognised it. It wasn't even as if he could prove it was his, you know?’ He laughed, angry.

‘One day, he and some other idiots cornered her. He'd got them liquored up, convinced that she'd been robbing them for years. She was poor, he was older and his mob was drunk. They were shouting, waving stuff at her. Like a witch hunt. I was a couple of streets over when I heard the yelling. Didn't even think; just changed shape and charged, fur up, claws out. Everyone screamed and ran off, thank God. Electra was pretty shaken up by it all – me, as well as them. Once they'd gone, I changed back, tried to calm her down. We both explained what had happened; we left together. Ended up here a few years back. There were others at first, but they wandered away. We probably freaked them out. Ran into Jess and Evan at the Gadfly; don't remember when, but a while ago. And here we all are.’

‘And Glide? Where'd he come from?’

Manx scratched the side of his nose and shrugged.

‘Glide just… turned up. One day we had a spare room – several, actually – and the next minute, Glide was living in one of them, mattress, crud and all. I'm still not sure what his deal is. I'm fairly certain he knows what we are, and as far as anyone can make out, he's like us, too. To be honest, I've never really asked. But I do know his dreams are vivid.’

Solace frowned. ‘How?’

‘He talks, sometimes. In his sleep. Different languages. Some I can recognise, some I can't. Truth be told, I've listened in more than once. He even muttered a bit today, when Evan and I were drawing on him. He's normal otherwise. For a given value of normal.’

He fell silent. Solace sat for a moment, taking everything in. Despite having come to terms with her own weirdness, Manx's unexpected honesty had both touched and confronted her. As he watched from the corner of one eye, she realised that it was her turn to speak, and that, what's more, she'd known all along what she was going to say.

‘I'm a vampire,’ she announced bluntly. ‘Or the nearest practical equivalent.’ Haltingly, she told him about her abilities, about finding the Gadfly, even recounting the story of Kelly and the table. She did not, however, mention the faceless man in the alley, whose presence had so unnerved her. Throughout her rambling narrative, Manx listened attentively, letting Solace speak on uninterrupted until, quite suddenly, there was nothing left to say, and night had fallen. Behind them, the opening chords of ‘Bohemian Like You’ filled the air, accompanied by plastic crackles as Tryst and Claire discreetly cleared away rubbish. Sensing a Deep and Meaningful in progress, the others had let Manx and Solace talk in relative privacy – relative, in that Evan and Jess had both strolled slowly past, grinning in their direction, while Paige had speculated loudly as to their reasons for sitting alone; private, in that no one had actually overheard anything. It was an occasionally frustrating compromise, but workable.

‘You know,’ said Manx, when Solace was done, ‘I wish I knew why people like us existed. I mean, I get why we stay secret – that's only commonsense – but there's got to be some, some
reason
for everything.’

‘You mean, like… God?’

‘Maybe.’ Manx shrugged, suddenly awkward. ‘Just because my parents were wrong about me, that doesn't mean they're wrong about everything else, you know?’

Solace opened her mouth to reply, but thought better of it.
What
do
I believe in?
It was strange to realise she didn't know. Instead, she reached across and tentatively took Manx's hand. Flashing a grateful half-smile, he squeezed her palm again, leaving Solace wondering how physical contact could so simply convey so much.

‘Hey!’ called Evan, finally breaking the moment. ‘We still on for tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow? What's on tomorrow?’ asked Paige, before Solace could answer. Evan poked out his tongue at her.

‘Secret warehouse business! Only those in the know may know, you know?’

‘Pssht!’ Paige waved a dismissive hand and turned back to Harper. As Evan was still waiting, Manx flipped him a thumbs-up. Evan grinned, nodded and went back to rubbish duty.

‘Guess we're going ahead with it, then.’ Manx exhaled. ‘You never know. Something interesting might happen.’

‘Maybe,’ said Solace, but inside, the Vampire Cynic was oddly cautious.

Interesting isn't the same as safe
.

Solace dreamed. Around her was darkness – not the black of a night sky, which has an open clarity, but the obfuscating, cobweb-oppression of shadow. Uncertainly, she walked forward. Her feet were bare, and the dream was sensory: asphalt pinched the soles of her feet, sometimes crumbling into the sharp asymmetry of individual rocks.
A road, then
. Momentarily, something grey flickered alongside her vision, there and gone like a wisp of smoke. The cause of it wasn't clear, but something in the action jogged her recent memory.

The alleyway
. As if the act of naming were an invocation, parts of the surrounding dark resolved themselves into lighter shadows – walls, bins, guttering – until her observation was made fact. The nape of her neck tingled. Solace felt her breath catch. She was too close, she realised – the faceless man was here, and she was too close. Unable to turn, she tried to walk backwards, but each step was like trying to free a gumboot stuck knee-deep in mud, slow and ineffectual.

From farther up the alley came the sound of dry laughter, like a skitter of autumn leaves. Solace felt the pulse leap in her throat. It was the faceless man, but this time, even his silhouette was invisible, so that all she knew of his presence was a measured, steady footfall and his rasping mirth. She struggled anew to free herself, but the faceless man came on, closer and closer, until it seemed that any moment he would step free of whatever force shrouded him, whole and terrible.

But the revelation never came. Instead, he stopped what felt like a scant metre from Solace, near enough that the sound of his breathing skirled around her in a rank breeze. She'd never been so terrified, but now her legs wouldn't even twitch, remaining as motionless as if she'd turned to marble from the heart down.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered.

Laughter came back, different this time; but before Solace could ask again, the faceless man began to sing:

‘
First is in rage and the act of sorrow,

Second is many the present keeps,

Third has an eye to a dark tomorrow,

Fourth is locked in dreaming deeps,

And fifth is sixth; but when you wake

How many hearts are yet to break
?’

His voice was soft, the cadence lilting. Deprived of vision, Solace nonetheless felt his hand extend towards her. She screamed, or tried to; the pain of it caught in her chest, bubbling and shrieking as she forced herself backwards, away from both words and touch.

Enough
!
>
said an unfamiliar voice. Something shoved roughly at Solace's body. Her paralysis vanished – as did the ground. Tumbling, she fell through a hole in the earth, the last words of the dream song spinning through her consciousness.

‘Solace!’

‘Mmph?’

Blearily, she opened her eyes. Manx was leaning over her.

‘You okay? You were having a nightmare. Kicked me right in the leg.’

‘I was?’ Sleep beckoned. Distantly, she heard a cat cry. Something prickled at the top of her spine, nagging as a loose tooth, but she shook it off. ‘Sorry. I'm all right now. He's gone.’