Stealing Phoenix (8 page)

Yves wouldn’t let me even open my mouth to answer before he swooped in. ‘No need, just let the conference organizers know where we’ve gone if they ask. See you later.’ Yves took my arm and marched me away. He was really annoying me now: it was as if my protests were nothing more than snowflakes melting in his ocean of certainty. I was hurt—he knew the cure. I was his soulfinder—he demanded I obey him. Were all his family arrogant jerks or had I just pulled the short straw?

We reached the reception. I only went with him because he was finally taking me nearer the exit. Already I was plotting my escape.

‘Excuse me.’ Yves turned his devastating, earnest smile on the lady with the folders. ‘My friend here burned herself yesterday and I really think she needs to get it looked at by a doctor. Is there a hospital nearby?’

The lady—way too old for him so really should have known better—fluttered and preened until she found her emergency list. ‘The Royal London, Whitechapel Road. A stop on the tube—that’s the subway to you.’ She giggled—she actually giggled. ‘Or you can walk if she is well enough to do so.’ She drew a big circle on the handout map; I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had scribbled her phone number on the reverse.

He blushed, disturbed by her overeager response to him. ‘Thanks. We’ll jump in a cab.’ He continued to frogmarch me off the premises.

Waiting until we were outside, I shoved him away from me. ‘That’s enough. What part of “I’m not going to hospital” don’t you understand?’

‘The “not” part.’ He bit down on a smile that I had no intention of joining in. ‘Look, Wendy, what harm can a little trip to the ER do you? You guys don’t even have to pay, so it can’t be the money or insurance problems.’

I gazed longingly at the traffic streaming east, out of town, away from him. So close. ‘It’s not that I’m stupid. I just can’t.’

He shoved a hand through his hair in frustration. ‘Wendy, why do I get the impression that you are about to sprinkle your fairy dust and fly away from me?’

I shook my head, folding my arms around my waist. He was wrong; he was the one offering fairy dust, Peter Pan volunteering to carry me off to the Neverland of soulfinders and happily ever after. But he was too late. Last night, I had had to grow up and I now knew that such dreams did not exist; real life was more like living with Captain Hook’s mercenary pirates than playing happy families in a treehouse.

A finger under my chin tipped my head up. ‘Wendy, talk to me. Let me help you. I’m sorry I said that stuff inside, but I was angry. I act like an idiot when my gift gets loose—just ask my brothers. It annoys the hell out of me that even after all these years of discipline and practice, I’m not in full control of my emotions.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Don’t suppose you’ll give me a pass for it being the day I met my soulfinder, hey?’

I nodded, not wanting to respond to his coaxing tone but unable to help myself. Everything inside me was yearning to reach out to this guy despite the warning from my common sense.

‘Wendy, I can’t bear to see you in pain when we can do something about it.’

And I couldn’t bear to have him calling me by that fake name any longer. ‘Phee. My name’s Phee.’

He smiled, brown eyes warming for the first time since we quit the classroom. ‘Just Phee?’

‘Short for Phoenix.’

‘Any other names?’

I never used it, but I supposed I should take my mother’s surname. I didn’t want to sound so shabby as not even to have a proper name. ‘Corrigan.’

‘So, Phoenix Corrigan, you have an allergy to hospitals?’ He shifted his weight on to his other leg, waiting for an answer.

It was a good enough explanation. I nodded.

‘Doctor’s clinic?’

‘Same deal.’ Was he really backing down? All it had taken was one little concession from me and he suddenly became more reasonable?

He took out his phone. ‘I’ve an idea. Don’t move.’ Selecting a contact from the home screen, he lifted it to his ear. I tensed, ready to bolt if necessary. ‘Hey, Xav, got a minute? Where are you? I’ve got a bit of a situation here. Can you meet me back at the apartment in half an hour? OK. Yeah, I know, I’m a pain in the butt. Tell her you’ll call her later. Uh-huh. But trust me, you’ll want to be part of this.’ He ended the call and grinned. ‘Problem solved.’

‘Who were you just talking to?’ I rubbed my forearms, feeling the prickle of suspicion that I was being watched. Glancing around, I couldn’t see anyone but there were lots of places to hide, doorways, bus shelters … Tony? He’d be worried I wouldn’t come through with my part of the deal. Unicorn or Dragon, checking up on me? I hadn’t earned the Seer’s trust with my failure yesterday so I wouldn’t put it past him to have me under guard today.

‘My brother, Xav, he’s in London with me.’

‘Xav?’ I made myself concentrate on what Yves was telling me.

‘Yeah, my mom and dad had this alphabetical thing going with us, starting with Trace and ending with Zed. Xavier, he’s the next one up from me. We told them they should’ve started with “A” and then we could all have been things like Alan, David, and Ben, but they thought that was too boring. Mom and Dad can be like that—you know, different to make a point.’ He paused, realizing he was drifting off message. ‘Xav’s a healer, not that you’d guess that, terrible bedside manner. I’m taking you to see him. You won’t have to put a foot in a medical practice.’ Stopping at the kerb, he hailed a taxi. One cruised up to us immediately—such was this boy’s luck. ‘Take us to the Barbican, please.’

Reassured, I got into the taxi without a fuss. I knew the Barbican well: a concrete maze of arts centre, walkways, tunnels and posh flats, good for picking the pockets of late-night theatre and concert-goers. If I could have some attention paid to my burn, I still stood a good chance of getting away from him there.

Yves stretched his legs into the wide space in front of the rear seat. I’d never been in a taxi before; it felt really decadent, the kind of thing only rich people did. A cyclist flashed by in lemon sherbet shorts, zipping through the traffic like a stone skipping on the sea.

‘He’s really annoyed with me,’ Yves continued, making conversation when I clearly wouldn’t. ‘He’s spent all morning chatting up a guide at the Globe Theatre and now he’s having to dump her just when things were looking promising.’

‘He shouldn’t—not for me.’

‘Course he should. You’re mine, so that makes you family. Our need is greater than his.’ Yves put his arm around my shoulders. Something inside me broke a little and craving for his warmth seeped out. I tried to ignore it, holding myself stiff against the seat back. ‘Don’t you have brothers or sisters?’

Everything was so easy for him. You took a complete stranger and called her one of your inner circle, all because, by a quirk of nature, we were matched at some genetic level. The only things he knew about me were bad, but still I deserved to be helped. I folded a little deeper into myself, a rock pool sea anemone refusing to be poked into emerging by his prodding questions.

‘I wish Sky was here,’ he murmured to himself, looking out of the window at the traffic slowly forcing its way into the City. ‘She’d be able to help.’

I’d vowed not to speak but my curiosity (or was it jealousy?) got the better of me. ‘Who’s Sky?’

He pulled me closer to his side, hoping I’d relax against him but I kept the steel in my spine. ‘My youngest brother’s soulfinder. She’s British.’

‘Oh.’ Probably one of those pretty English rose types that I saw at Liverpool Street station going to music festivals in their wellies, rucksacks, and denim shorts, looking so unbearably pleased to be young and alive. With one glance, she’d know what a skank I was.

‘She sees people’s emotions. Makes her really intuitive. And she’s come from a rough place. I think she’d understand you better than any of us.’

Yeah right. ‘But she’s not here?’

‘No, she’s on vacation with Zed and her parents.’

There you go: Sky had parents. That made her housetrained; I was feral.

The cab pulled up in one of the underpasses below the Barbican Centre.

The driver held out a hand. ‘We’re here, mate. That’s six pounds forty.’

Yves pulled a tenner out of his wallet and handed it over, barely paying attention to the exchange. ‘Will you tell me something about yourself, Phee? I want to know where you’re coming from.’

I couldn’t believe it: he was getting out of the cab without waiting for his change. I pulled him back and shoved my hand in the little gap to collect the coins. The driver gave a snort of disgust as I pressed the lot in Yves’s palm. ‘You can’t give him three-sixty as a tip.’

Yves tipped the coins back into the plastic tray. ‘Yeah I can. Leave it, Phee—it’s not a big deal.’

Still spluttering at the careless waste of money, I stumbled out on to the pavement. Cars whizzed by, the noise reverberating in the tunnel so that any further protests would be lost. Our disagreement about the tip only served to highlight just how different we were. What was I doing with him?

Follow me.
Yves held out a hand, expecting me to take it.

I had had enough of being pushed about, towed here, shoved there.
Lead the way, O master.

He raised an eyebrow at my sarcasm.
Glad to see you have seen the light. I only want what’s best for you.

Mr Arrogant or what?

I don’t mean it like that.
He shook his head, telling himself off.
I just want to make this right but I seem to be doing it all wrong.

Then let me go.

That would be a tragedy. Give me a chance here. Please.
His uncertainty around girls had returned; he was no longer taking my agreement for granted, and that, more than anything, made me relent.

OK. Until my hand is seen to. Then we’ll go from there.

Digging a key out of his jacket pocket, he guided me up a short flight of steps to the bottom of the Shakespeare tower, a great, brutal razorblade of a skyscraper. Looking up made me feel sick, as if the whole thing was going to fall on us. He called the lift then fitted the key in the residents’ slot to allow us to go up to the twentieth floor.

‘I thought you lived in America?’ I asked.

‘Borrowed the apartment off a friend of one of my brothers.’ He tapped the wall restlessly as the numbers flashed past.

‘Which one? Wilbur? Walt?’

He smiled. ‘Not a bad guess. Victor. I don’t have a brother called Wilbur or Walt—just Will. You’ll like him.’

‘If I ever have kids,’ which I wouldn’t,‘I’m going to call them really simple things like that. Names that are so normal no one will blink when they answer the register at school or … or get a library card.’

He laughed a little awkwardly. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. I got teased for having a girl’s name—you know, Eve— by morons in my first grade. My mom and dad plucked names from their ancestors all over the world for their sons—most Savant families are really international—and I had to suffer for it. Phoenix must have been a burden at school until, I suppose, it became cool to be different.’

I shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Never went to school that I can remember.’

The doors ‘ting’-ed open, a bright sound like the bell at the end of a round in a boxing match.

‘How … but surely you have to go to school in England? Everyone does.’ He led the way into the carpeted corridor.

‘Hmm.’ That’s how much he knew about those of us off the map.

‘But you know things—you’ve read
Peter Pan
.’

‘
And Wendy
. I didn’t say I didn’t have lessons. You can learn a lot if you want to.’ If you were starved of knowledge, desperate to join the normal world. Mum had taught me all the basics before she died. After she’d gone, if I finished my job for the day, I would sneak into the children’s section of the city library, using my gift to freeze my way past the women on the desk, and read my way through from beginning to the end of the shelves. These days I could go into the adult section without anyone questioning my right to be there. I got a fair bit of random stuff into my skull that way.

‘I suppose you can.’ He put the key in the lock of the last door in the corridor and entered. The flat was one of those all-white places that look good in magazines but must be horrible for real people to live in: white carpet, white furniture, black highlights of African carvings and an expensive sound system. ‘Hey, Xav, we’re back!’

The fact that he knew his brother was already there suggested he had been talking telepathically to him since we came in range. Xav came out of the room on our right, drying his hands on a black towel. His resemblance to his brother was immediately apparent, though his hair was longer, more surfer-casual as it hung past his collar, than Yves’s neater crop. He was also thinner, rangy, a long-legged thoroughbred to the leopard. Nothing of the geek about him, but I didn’t make the mistake of underestimating his intelligence. I sensed I was sandwiched between two very bright and formidable Savants. ‘Hi, Phee. I’ve set up in here. Bring the patient in, Nurse.’

‘You told him about me?’ I hissed, refusing to enter the bathroom until I knew exactly what I was walking into.

‘Only your name and that you got burned by one of my fires.’ Yves gently prodded me between my shoulder blades. ‘Didn’t want to distract him with the rest until he’s seen to your hand. Let’s not keep the doctor waiting.’