Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre (20 page)

  She reached forward with a tentative finger to touch the mirror.

  "I know you're there. Answer me."

  She jumped back. There he went again, treating her like a two year-old, telling her what to do and how to think. No one told her what to do, not since Porton Down, not even him. She frowned at the mirror and its surface rippled under her gaze, but still his voice came through, jumpy and broken but intelligible.

  "Alex? Speak to me! Where are you?"

  She grabbed her bag and pulled out the red lipstick she had stolen the day before. She wrote 'NO' on the rippled surface of the mirror. It was a crude warding, but it sufficed. Her father's voice ceased.

  "Alex, what are you doing? Answer me this instant!" His voice was coming from the sitting room now. She dashed through, searching for the mirror. The sound was coming through the full length mirror near the door. She scribbled 'NO' on that one too and then went through the apartment, writing 'NO' on every mirror, every picture, every window, until the room echoed with the word.

  Finally there was silence. She looked around. The room looked like it had been vandalised, the word 'NO' repeated like some blood red deranged message all around the room. She dropped the lipstick like it was hot and it rolled across the carpet.

  "I'm not crazy. I'm not!" She was breathless.

  She ran into the bedroom and pulled on the discarded clothes from last night, stuffing her feet into her boots. She grabbed her bag and pulled on her cardie. As she ran back through the sitting room she stepped on the lipstick and it smeared across the carpet.

  "Shit!"

  She stared at the red smear across the cream pile, her hands bunched into tight fists. Her breathing came faster, she couldn't take her eyes off the streak of red. She screwed her eyes shut, biting her lip.

  Then she ran for the exit, wrenched back the chain and threw open the door. She almost crashed into the trolley the chamber maid was wheeling down the corridor. The door to the suite slammed behind her and she flew down the stairs and out through the fire exit, banging the door open in front of startled pedestrians and swerving to avoid the car that swept past.

  She kept running, taking random turns left and right until she was lost in the back streets with no idea which way to run next.

 

"She locked me out! How could she do that?" I stared at the silent mirror, no longer responding to my touch.

  "If you paid more attention to our sessions and actually practiced what I taught you, you'd know," said Blackbird.

  "No, I don't mean that. I'm her father. She's not supposed to… hang up on me?"

  "What, you're still going into the bathroom with her, tying her shoe laces, helping her dress?"

  "No, obviously not."

  "So she does have some privacy."

  "This isn't a matter of privacy, it's…"

  "What? I think she let you know in no uncertain terms that she wanted some space, some time to think things through," said Blackbird. "She's growing up fast, if you would let her."

  "But she's only fourteen."

  "Fifteen, Niall."

  "Fifteen, then. It's no age for a girl to be out on her own all night."

  Blackbird smiled. "On the contrary, she seems to be managing extraordinarily well. She's certainly given you the brush off."

  "This isn't funny, Blackbird."

  "No, I don't suppose it is, but you're only going to make matters worse if you pursue her. I didn't help that you came over all Pater Familias with her."

  "All what?"

  "It means Head of the Family, with connotations of ownership of the estate and everything and everyone in it. It's Latin."

  "I was just concerned, that's all. She's been gone all night. As her father…"

  "That's just what I'm talking about. As her father you want to decide where she can go, what she can do, who she sees, where she lives."

  "She's my daughter. It's my duty to look after her."

  "She'll always be your daughter, no one can change that, but she's not a child any more. She's seen too much, done too much, to be comfortable living within the constraints of childhood. She was forced to grow up, too quickly and too harshly, that much I'll grant you, but she was. You can't undo what was done, Niall."

  "So I should let her stay out all night, take drugs, get drunk, get pregnant?"

  "You make those sound as if they're equivalent." There was a warning in Blackbird's tone.

  "An unwanted pregnancy isn't what she needs, Blackbird. Even you must acknowledge that."

  "She may not be able to get pregnant. Have you thought of that?"

  "I'm not sure I want to find out just yet. I'm more worried that she'll be mugged – killed even."

  "I think she can look after herself. She's proven extraordinarily resilient up until now. You brought her up well, and she's chosen her own path. Now it's up to her."

  "She has no common sense. She'll do something rash. What if she's ill? What if she gets run over? She has no road sense at all."

  "Listen to yourself. You're treating her like a four year-old. Have some respect for her. Did she sound like she was in trouble? Was she begging for assistance?"

  "No, but…"

  "You found her last time because she needed you. You rescued her when she couldn't help herself. This time she doesn't want to be rescued, especially by you."

  "What do you mean, especially by me?"

  "You're her father. You're the last person she wants to come to her aid. She wants a white knight on a charger, who'll tell her she's worth the slings and arrows that he faced to reach her. You have to face it, Niall. She's looking for a mate."

  "A what!"

  "Calm down. Not right away, and maybe not for some time, but eventually she's going to want to choose someone for herself, someone to be with."

  I pushed my hand back through my hair. "I'm too young for this," I said.

  Blackbird laughed. "She's been through a lot and she's endured. She's earned her independence. Anyway, there's nothing you can do about it. It seems she's been paying a lot more attention to Fionh's lessons than you gave her credit for, and now that's paying off. If she doesn't want to be found, you won't find her."

  "She's not supposed to use it against me."

  "She's using it for herself. You can't blame her."

  "What am I going to tell Katherine?" I asked.

  "Tell her the truth. Tell her you've tried to find Alex and failed. What can she say?"

  "More than I want to hear."

  "She bears some of the responsibility for this Niall. I think she knows that."

  "You'd have to pull her teeth out to get her to admit it."

  "Look at it this way, it solved one problem. You don't have to tell Katherine why Alex can't go back to living at home with her. She's chosen for herself, and there's nothing Katherine can do about that, any more than you."

  "What if she gets hurt? Where will she sleep? What will she do for money?"

  "Let her figure it out, Niall. She knows how to find you. All you have to do is make it clear that if she does come back, it's on her terms, and that you'll accept that."

  "Her terms? What does that mean?"

  "It means not locking her up in your ivory tower until you can find a suitable man to palm her off on."

  "I haven't… there's no way…"

  "The West Wing, then. Have you allowed her out? Has she been able to buy clothes, meet people?"

  "She's hardly been in a state to be allowed to…"

  "Allowed. That's an interesting word, Niall. Well, she no longer needs your permission or seeks it. She's taken responsibility for herself, and actually it's time. Now you have to trust her."

  "That's harder than you think."

  She looked down at our son who had eaten his fill and then flopped asleep in her arms. "Oh, when this little one wants to fledge and fly I expect to be biting my nails at the edge of the nest just like any parent, but it doesn't change what has to happen. They can't stay in the nest forever. That's just nature."

  "Yeah, well let's just hope it isn't red in tooth and claw."

 

Alex sat on the steps outside a red-brick apartment block. The steps were stained with green algae, but she had a blister on her heel and she didn't care. She delved into her bag looking for a plaster or something to cushion her foot, but of course, there was nothing. She had make-up which she wasn't wearing, a hair clip that fell out, but nothing useful like a plaster.

  She looked up and down the street. Away from the main streets where the chain stores made easy pickings, there were little corner shops with eagle-eyed shopkeepers who kept everything behind the counter, and long walks between them. She needed to head back to the high street where she could get what she needed. What she really needed, though, was somewhere to stay.

  It was all very well being free to go where you wanted but if you had nowhere to go back to it wore thin pretty quick. Her feet were sore, the weather had broken and there was the threat of rain. Her thin cardie was no longer the comfort it had been. She needed shelter, and food, and a warm bed, and central heating, and chocolate.

  Momentarily she thought about going home, but there was nothing there for her now. She had no clothes, no stuff, no room even. And her dad would be furious with her after she warded him out this morning. It would take him days to calm down. If she went back now she would be grounded for months. She couldn't even go to Kayleigh's. She had no friends now, there just wasn't anyone she could talk to, except maybe Tate.

  Initially him calling her
Miss
all the time had annoyed her, but now she kinda liked it. He always treated her respectfully and asked her what she wanted to do. He offered advice, but didn't get all antsy if she didn't follow it. And he was huge. She caught herself wondering if he was that big all over, and found herself blushing. No, she didn't think of him like that. He was a friend, that was all.

  She pushed her hands through her unruly hair – she couldn't go to Tate anyway. He was a Warder, just like Dad, and he would have to tell Dad where she was, and then there would be hell to pay. That wasn't going to work.

  She stood and brushed at the green marks on her skirt, making them worse rather than better. She needed a change of clothes as well. She sniffed at her armpit and wished again that she'd made use of the shower in the hotel before running out like a scared cat. What was the matter with her? She'd had the situation under control, so why run? She shook her head at her own folly.

  There were people she knew, though, weren't there? There were the other people like her, the ones from Porton Down. She wasn't the only one who had escaped, and she had an idea where one or two of them might have gone. Maybe she needed to be with her own kind, people who'd understand what she was going though?

  Hoisting the bag back onto her shoulder, she headed back towards an area where there were sandwich shops and a high street chemist – somewhere she could get something for her feet. Then she would take a trip and see what she could find.

 

"Is this what Alex did when I tried to speak to her?" I was sitting on the fence overlooking the fields which rolled away from us.

  "No. What she did, I think, was to ward where she was staying against you," said Blackbird. "A warding can apply to a place, or an object, or a person. Warding a place is simple and effective. You exclude anyone's magic but your own. In its finer form it can be used to clean and protect a place, a home perhaps, so that malicious magic cannot intrude, but even then it has limitations. Anything brought into that space which is tainted with another's power will disrupt the warding and release the magic. That's how you know that someone has crossed your warding – you'll feel the release and know it's been broken."

  "So she pushed me out."

  "There's no point in brooding on it, Niall. You invaded her privacy and she reacted. Instead of expressing your concern and asking if she was safe, you started making demands. It was not, perhaps, the best way to re-establish relations with your daughter."

  "You always take her side."

  "I take no side but my own, but I know Alex is precious to you and I'm trying to help. You need to stop thinking of her as a little girl."

  "That was pretty cool, what she did, though, wasn't it?" I smiled.

  "Crude but effective. She excluded you and prevented you from re-entering. Maybe she's more capable than you think, and she's certainly better at learning and not getting distracted by side-issues when someone is trying to teach them something."

  "Sorry, where were we?"

  "You were extending your awareness outwards and telling me what you feel."

  I closed my eyes. Here beneath the trees the shade was welcome, but the rustling of the leaves and the smell of the grass was a constant distraction from what I was supposed to be looking for.

  "It's just trees and grass," I told her.

  "Is it? Or is that what you're supposed to think?"

  I let myself sink deeper into the sense of the place, hearing the buzzing of bumble bees, the far-off coo of a wood pigeon and the faint rumble of distant traffic. "It's peaceful."

  "How peaceful?"

  Now that she mentioned it, there was something. "There's a kind of dampening, a dullness spread around us. Is that what I'm looking for?"

  "What can you tell me about it?"

  "It's heavy, like a wool blanket but not warm like that, just heavy. Now that I can see it it's over everything. It's huge."

  "Every day the Warders renew these boundaries." Blackbird said quietly. "Every day they reassert their magic over this ground. What you're sensing is the repeated warding of this place, layer upon layer, until it's so thick that it can no longer be broken, simply endured. It's one of the things I don't like about being here. It's smothering."