Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre (21 page)

  "Why didn't I sense it before?"

  "Here at the edge it's easier to detect. You can feel the density of it change as it fades out towards the edges. Within the grounds of the house it's pervasive. It invades every space and seeps into every crack. There is nowhere not steeped in it. Like background noise that never ceases, after a while you don't notice it. I do though. It's like a constant niggle at the edge of my senses, a lingering doubt that things aren't as they should be."

  "You could have said something."

  "It doesn't seem to bother you, and as you pointed out it's all very convenient having everyone on call, with all the facilities to hand."

  "But I get to go out and leave for a while. I get some relief from it," I said.

  "Indeed."

  "Couldn't you set up your own warding, just in our rooms? You could exclude the Warder's magic and have a little island of peace."

  "A bubble inside a bubble? Somewhat unstable, don't you think? I'm not sure that would even be possible. Besides I can't see Garvin allowing any area over which he has no control anywhere near the courts. He is responsible for security when all's said and done."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't realise."

  "It presents us with an opportunity, though. I want you to establish your own warding, right here at the edge of the courts where it's weaker. You will need to push their warding back to establish your own."

  "How?"

  "Do you remember when we were sitting outside the Church of St Clement's Dane in London and I was showing you how to establish your glamour?"

  "I guess. I could feel the way your magic concealed us, as it spread across the area around the statue."

  "Think of extending threads of magic outward, like a spider spinning a web. Push it out a little, connect it together, then push it out a little more. Keep extending the boundary."

  "That's not how a spider builds a web," I pointed out.

  "I know that. I'm just drawing an analogy. Think instead then of how wasps build a nest. They start small and then build onto it in spirals, shoring it up as you go."

  "I don't even know what it is I'm shoring up."

  "It's like territory, like putting your stamp on it, as if you were claiming it."

  I tried to imagine myself claiming the area around the fence. Nothing happened. "It's not working."

  "OK, forget that. Come down here and lie down." She hopped off the fence and smoothed her skirts before sitting on the grass.

  I stepped down and sat down with her and then lay back onto the grass so that my head was near to where she was sitting.

  "Look up in the tree and allow your eyes to defocus – better still close them, not tightly, but so that the sunlight filters through your eyelids. Imagine the tree is still there."

  "It is still there."

  She tweaked my nose.

  "Ow!"

  "Shut up and listen. The tree is above you, extending its branches out into the air, leaning up into the sunlight. Let your magic extend around your body, let it relax into the earth, so that it seeps into the soil, down among the roots and worms. Let it follow the roots of the tree, in your mind, in your imagination, up through the trunk, out along the branches, onto the twigs."

  "It feels light and warm."

  "Follow the light out along the twigs into the leaves. Feel the sunlight in the leaves, feeding the tree, bathe in the sunlight at the tips of the leaves."

  "This is really very restful. You're not going to be offended if I fall asleep are you?"

  She ignored me. "Leave a sense of yourself, a presence there at the leaves, but now float from the leaves into the air, following the shifting breeze, drifting with the wind."

  "Is this how a seed feels when it falls? Oh, hang on, there's something here. It feels like a fungus or a fuzzy mould."

  "You've reached the edge of the warding. Send a root of your own into it. Explore it with your senses" she suggested.

  "It tastes sour, not like the tree."

  "It's very old, layer upon layer. But like all layers it has weaknesses. Explore the cracks. Push your way into it. Find the fault lines and wheedle your way into them."

  I could feel the weight of the warding ahead of me. Somehow it left the taste of decay in my mouth, along with the smell of the forest floor and something beneath that – a bitter sourness that crept onto the tongue, making my mouth flood with saliva.

  "What do you think you're doing?"

  It was Fionh's voice and I opened my eyes, squinting up against the light. She was standing next to the fence we had been sitting on. I blinked, glancing at Blackbird.

  "I asked you what you thought you were doing," she repeated.

  "Blackbird was showing me how wardings work," I explained.

  Fionh raised an eyebrow at Blackbird.

  "It seemed a good way of demonstrating how a place can be warded over time," she said.

  "You know better than to interfere with the wardings of the courts," said Fionh. "And getting Niall to do it in your place will not help you."

  "I don't think I know what you mean," said Blackbird.

  "I think you do." She looked down at me. "Don't do that again. There are things in the wardings which you do not want to encounter. They're there for a reason, and not to be meddled with."

  "Sorry, I had no idea it was so sensitive," I said.

  "No. You didn't. But she did." She looked from me to Blackbird. "You're supposed to be teaching him."

  "Oh, I think that lesson was an excellent demonstration, Fionh. Thank you for your assistance."

  Fionh's mouth hardened, but she turned and walked away with whatever was on her tongue unsaid.

 
 

Alex was beginning to think she had come to the wrong place. The estate looked abandoned – surely no one lived here? Cracked windows looked down on her, and rubble had been heaped into random piles.

  Had she remembered correctly? Some of her memories of her imprisonment were distorted by drugs and the regime she had been put through. She knew not to trust her sense of time, but there were other things. At times her dreams and reality seemed to merge and she wasn't sure she could differentiate between one and another.

  The memories that stuck, though, were ones of other inmates. Meetings like that were brief, and often at least one of them would be spaced out on something. She'd been taken by surprise the first time, lying on a trolley and doped up with muscle relaxant. A face had appeared in her vision.

  "I'm Donna," she said. "I like movies and romantic stories. Quick, tell me about yourself, something, anything!" She had shaken Alex's shoulders.

  "I'm Lexie." Slurring her words, she sounded drunk, but she didn't feel drunk. "Where are we?"

  "It doesn't matter. Tell me something about yourself, something normal, something you'd tell a friend."

  "There's the cool guy at school," she slurred. "He's called Jamie… he's got a really nice arse."

  "That's good Lexie. Now we're friends. They can't break you if you're with friends. We're all in this together. Find someone else. Do the same with them. We can beat them together."

  The door opened and a woman entered. "What are you doing?"

  "She was mumbling something. I think she was trying to talk to me," said Donna.

  "Don't worry about her, Donna. Come along. It's time for your assessment."

  Lexie watched as Donna was led away, but the memory stayed.

  She'd done the same with others, forming connections, however brief. She could remember all of them, every name, every face.

  It was funny, she couldn't remember the staff – except for Watkins.

  She shook her head, pushing the memory away, staggering momentarily at the disorienting vision. She couldn't afford to lose focus like that. She deliberately slowed her breathing, unclenching her fist with the other hand, massaging the spasmed muscles. It was over. She'd had her revenge. He was dead.

  A train gave an electric whine as it ran along the bankedup tracks behind the estate. The normality of the sound helped to steady her. She'd seen Gina in a corridor; a two-second conversation. They'd exchanged addresses. When Gina told her it was an industrial estate, Alex questioned her, but there was no time. They'd been separated and she'd not seen her again.

  And here it was, except it wasn't here any more. No one had done anything industrial here for quite a while. The buildings were derelict, some of them half demolished, others cracked and vandalised, sprayed with tags and slogans. She navigated through the piles of broken bricks and half-burned timber and came to the building she was looking for.

  She turned around slowly, looking for signs of life. A siren wailed distantly, seagulls flapped their lazy way across the overcast sky. What a dump. Had Gina come back here? Is this what she found? Except this wasn't recent, so maybe she was here after all. She looked up at the green slime running down the walls under the broken gutters, the way the rubble had sunk and settled, the big patches of nettles and bramble – all this happened ages ago.

  She worked her way around the nettles to the side door. Someone had kicked it in, probably looking to see if there was anything left to steal. Alex couldn't see what the attraction was, but she squeezed past onto the factory floor beyond. It looked like a film set, one of those abandoned warehouses where they stage shoot-outs and blast all the windows out, except that the windows were wire-reinforced and simply sagged where they cracked. No film crews here. Hey, perhaps that was what she should do – go and find a film crew and make herself useful. She could be an extra, or an actress even. She smiled and shook her head.

  She reached the end of the gallery and wandered up the stairs, wary of rats and pigeons. Nothing to scavenge here, though, so she was probably OK. The floor above was the same – cracked glass and scuffed concrete. She went up another level, and here there were signs of habitation. Someone had put up plastic sheets against the light. The gallery was striped with long slivers of sunlight which only intensified the shadows. In the dimness a mattress was laid against the wall. Surely Gina wasn't meaning this?

  She walked forward, keeping near the windows where the light was better. "Gina?" Her voice sounded hollow in the dark. "Gina, it's Lexie. You remember?"

  There was a scuffle in the shadows. Something moved. Maybe she was here after all?

  "We ain't had this good luck in a loooong time." The voice was male.

  "I'm looking for Gina," Alex called out. "Is she here? Do you know where she is?"

  "Ain't no Gina here, sweetness," another voice, also male. Alex backed towards the stairs but a shadow separated from the dark and moved between her and the exit.

  "I'm just looking for my friend," she said, glancing between them. "I don't want trouble."

  "Ain't no trouble here, we all welcome, sugar." They moved apart, spreading out to form a half-circle around her. Alex backed towards the window. She reached behind her and tugged the plastic sheet. It slid down behind her.

  They squinted against the light. "That's a shame," said the one with the gang-pattern in his buzz cut. "You seen our faces now, and we ain't happy with no witness."

  "I didn't see anything," she said. "There's nothing to tell."

  "It's not what you seen," said the one with the diamond earstud between her and the stairs, "It's what you gonna see."

  To her left, the guy with the buzz cut grabbed her handbag. She shrieked and held the strap for a moment, but had to let go or be dragged towards him. He laughed, and then turned the bag upside down and emptied it on the concrete in front of her.

  "You ain't got no money," he kicked through her make-up, the hair clip, the half-eaten bar of chocolate and the plasters she'd stolen. "She gonna have to find some other way to pay," he said to the others.

  "You leave me alone," she warned, her fists bunched.

  "Oh, come on sweetness. Give it up for us and we'll treat you nice?"

  "You better leave me alone. You don't want to…"

  A shadow moved in behind her. She glanced around and met a fist coming the other way. Her face made a sound like a pile of wet meat hitting a slab and she flew backwards. Bright flashes trailed across her vision and she felt suddenly sick. Her mouth tasted thick with blood. She opened her eyes to the glare from the windows above her. Buzz-cut was holding her hands above her head while the others pulled off her clothes. She had been thrown on the mattress which they must have pulled out towards the windows

  "Let me go! You bastards!"

  She kicked and struggled against their grip. Her shouts were mumbled where the punch had swollen her lip. She wrenched at her wrists, but Ear-stud had his weight on them and his grip was like iron. He just laughed down at her and tried to lean down for a lewd kiss. She twisted her head aside as her skirt was pulled down off her legs.

  "Get off me! Help! Help me!" she hollered.

  Her shouting and squirming only seemed to excite them more. They grabbed her ankles, tugging off her shoes. One with knife scars all down his arm took handfuls of her top and ripped it open down the front. She screamed as they pulled the sleeves off one arm and then the other, ripping it off her.