Talulla Rising (46 page)
‘Dad, for God’s sake. Yes.
Yes
. We divorce, I get a lot. Trust me, more than I’ll ever need.’
Walker, tan, lean, wolf-fit, in Bermudas, comes out of the house with the chips and salsa on a tray. ‘Nikolai, you look more than ready for a refresher there. Here, let me get that.’
My dad’s amazement at Walker’s alleged wealth regularly short-circuits his basic social functions and he ends up, as now, gawping at him, as if he expects to see fifties and hundreds sprouting from the man’s head.
‘Dad!’ I say. ‘Do you want a refill?’
‘What? Oh, sure, sure. Thanks, Robert.’
‘Miss D?’
‘Hell, yes.’
The afternoon melts away in heat and sun and alcohol and increasingly frank and freeform conversation. The sentence I wrote in my journal last night after Walker had fallen asleep keeps tugging at my brain:
Talulla Demetriou, you have been a Very
(pause)
Bad
(pause)
Girl
. My dad, drunk, cooks lamb with red and green peppers in a rich tomato sauce –
arnaki kokkinisto
– my favourite from when I was small. The sight of him in paunchy, grey-quiffed, long-eyelashed profile at the stove with one shirt tail out, cooking, calm as God, gives me profound pleasure. It’s a risk, of course, having contact with him. WOCOP (or SLOW COP, as we’ve taken to calling them) are lately wise to the existence of a new generation of werewolves (current count is fifty-plus: Fergus found out about the lovebite, and somewhere out there Devaz has been running amok) and Helios remains bent on cracking the daylight magic of the lycanthropic gene. Either organisation could get to me through the old man. But I know if I gave him the choice he’d want to see me and the kids. So I’ve made the choice for him. We just have to be careful. Very careful. Jacqueline Delon, rumour has it, survived the raid on the monastery, though with a Fifty Families price on her head she’s choosing her friends carefully. Mia hasn’t shown her face, but I know she’s been close. Sorority says she can’t quite bring herself to assassinate the woman who saved her (and her son’s) life.
Wulf
says she’s taunting me for fun. Something between sorority and
wulf
says that for the time being fascination’s sweeter than revenge. That’s what it feels like: the death of either of us would be an impoverishment to the other, the subtraction of a bitter but compelling magic.
After dinner Walker takes the kids up for a bath (they still don’t leave my sight unless he or Cloquet is with them; if it’s neurotic, fine, I’m neurotic) and my dad falls asleep in the recliner in front of the TV. I step outside with a fresh drink for a smoke. I’ve been dying for one all day, but I can’t in front of my dad. Cancer; my mother; sacrilege.
Barefoot, blissful after two drags, I wander down past the pool, across the lawn and out the gate, which opens onto a track that runs a little way uphill between the pines to meet the road above. The sun’s down and the air’s blue-golden, soft, warm. A cloud of gnats a few feet away in what looks like pointless frenzy.
I’ll see you another time
.
That was eight months ago, and I haven’t seen him since.
I can’t pretend I’m not a little disappointed.
Vor klez fanim va gargim din gammou-jhi
. When he joins the blood of the werewolf. When he joins. As in... joins. What God hath joined, let no man put asunder...
I almost didn’t tell Walker, that night. Five minutes’ surreal conversation with a vampire in the kitchen had felt like an unholy infidelity. But I did tell him. For once grace was given to me to do the right thing. Hot-faced, trembling, I blurted out the whole story. If I hadn’t, the concealment would’ve grown into contempt. That’s what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them.
So I told him, but the feeling of infidelity didn’t entirely vanish. Hasn’t entirely vanished.
I finish the cigarette and walk back to the pool. The patio smells are benign: chlorine; clean stone; sun-tan lotion; lavender. I can hear basketball commentary from indoors.
I’ll see you another time
.
Eight months. Twenty thousand years.
I can’t pretend a part of me isn’t still waiting.
In the house I discover Walker has fallen asleep on my bed in his underwear, with a twin nestled (also asleep) in each armpit. I draw the comforter over them and turn out the light. They won’t roll off. He won’t squash them. Species certainty. Species gravity.
In the lounge, my dad snores, open-mouthed, in the recliner. I cover him with a blanket, mute the TV and set a glass of water on the side table next to him for when he wakes up, parched. I should be sleepy myself, after so much booze and sun and food, but I’m not. I’m alert, restless, vaguely bereaved. It occurs to me that for the first time in a long time I’m not worried about anything.
I hadn’t thought peace would feel like this.
It won’t last, of course.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE: SUGAR AND SPICE AND ALL THINGS NICE
