The House (24 page)

I just kept
walking. I mean, what else can you do in a situation like that? I
walked down the garden path hand in hand with Stripes. We were
halfway to the front door when Alex shouted from behind us. Marlow
had already gone inside to rouse the troops. I waved Stripes inside
and turned around to talk.

“Do you need
help searching?” he asked. He was bent over and out of breath. It
was worrying that none of us had noticed him running up behind us.
If we weren’t careful we were going to make ourselves easy targets
for whatever was happening.

“We’re just
about to discuss that, come inside.” He hurried past me and
vanished inside. I shook my head. People disappearing tends to make
everyone a bit crazy, put them on edge. We were going to have to
move very slowly and that in itself was going to make us want to
move as fast as possible. We were going to go half mad all crowded
up together with nothing to do. But it was better than the insanity
that awaited us if we tried to face this alone. There were no good
solutions; there was only us.

Before I’d
even reached the door I heard more people behind me. Glad that I
wasn’t in enough shock that I hadn’t heard them, I turned around. I
recognised them vaguely as two of the slightly older local
shifters. They were Marie’s friends and I didn’t have to ask why
they were there. I stood back respectfully to let them pass. Some
people still respect their elders. I shuddered to think what would
happen at the Covenant if they didn’t.

Following the
pair inside, I found my thoughts drifting backwards over my past.
It was a dangerous line of thought; there was a reason I blocked
out most of my adolescence. I remembered when a group of vampyre
had gone missing when I was about twelve. The Covenant had launched
several experienced search parties and used the seers.

We wouldn’t
have anything like that; volunteers only with almost no tech and
definitely no seers. I just hoped we had a better outcome than the
vampyre; it took them a month to find the bodies. Those were some
memories I could do without.

Everyone had
gathered in the TV room as it had the comfiest seats. I snagged a
seat next to Marlow and Eddie sat down next to me on the two-seater
sofa. He seemed to think better of it once he’d actually sat down
and realised that it’s almost impossible to have two people sit on
it without touching. By the time he tried to change seats however,
the room was full and he didn’t seem to want to ask someone to
switch.

“Could we have
some quiet please?” Stripes stood beside Marlow on a chair but her
voice was just too quiet to be heard over the noise of the room.
“Quiet please.”

“Hey! Quiet!”
Marlow boomed and everyone froze. We all have heightened hearing by
varying degrees but being sat next to Marlow shouting at the top of
his voice hurt my ears.

“Thank you,”
Stripes said. “Now, we all know why we are here and we would like
to thank everyone for taking the time to help. There are a few
things we need to go over before we do anything. First of all, we
don’t think that anyone should be alone, whether or not they take
part in the search. Also, to help us keep this organised, we’re
going to divide up the map and each team will take an area.
Remember we are not here to search places; if you see something
call us and we will decide what to do.

James has
printed posters – one for Shayana and one for Marie. Put them up
together wherever you can please.” I was impressed that James had
had the foresight. There were two piles of A3 posters; one with a
picture of Marie smiling serenely and one of Shayana grinning at
the camera. She looked very young in the picture. There was also a
brief description of height, build etc., printed below the
pictures.

“There will be
someone here at all times and of course anyone is welcome to stay,
although we need volunteers for a quick food run because our
deliveries won’t cover this many people.” James stood up as he
spoke. For a second he reminded me of my grandfather. Quiet,
unassumingly powerful and in charge.

“I’ll go,” I
said. Eddie gave me a strange look. “I don’t know what you’re
looking at me like that for, you’re coming too,” I whispered as
people started to talk amongst themselves. His eyes narrowed but he
refrained from commenting, which was good because I wasn’t in the
mood for a fight.

“Come on
then.” James waved his arms around wildly to indicate everyone to
get up. I met Stripes’ eye and in spite of myself felt a knowing
smile spread across my face before she turned her gaze back to him.
I wondered why she’d been in my bed and not his that morning. Not
the time to contemplate it though.

I waited with
Eddie while everyone else trooped out. Several people stopped to
offer further considerations for my situation. It was unnerving,
more like a funeral than a search party, and I had to consistently
remind myself that Marie was, at least so far, only missing.
Hopefully nobody was going to die. That would be a first.

When the house
had all but emptied – with an older couple staying behind to ‘man
the decks’ as they put it – I picked myself out of the chair. Eddie
sighed and followed me with a look that said he didn’t have a
choice. It seemed like a big personality change. Even two days ago
his attitude had boarded on hostile and now he was following orders
like a good little soldier. Or as close as any person normally
gets. Crisis will do that; it wipes all the fight right out of you
if you’re not careful.

I found myself
in the garden without really deciding to go there. I was losing
time...not good. I also found that Eddie had followed me. Right.
The reason I’d stayed behind was to try to fix whatever had gone
wrong the last time I tried to fix him. I wanted to give it a go
before we went shopping. I’d be too tired afterwards. Or maybe I
just didn’t want to face the world again, didn’t want to look
around wondering if the person responsible for Marie and Shayana
was there with me.

“I’m not
really sure how to do this,” I admitted. His face fell by a
fraction of an inch, but if he hadn’t already figured out that I
didn’t have a clue what I was doing then he was beyond stupid. “But
I guess since the rush-in-head-on approach didn’t work, we’ll try
something a little more gentle this time.” He didn’t laugh and my
encouraging smile only served to make his frown deeper. “Sit,” I
said as I fell to the floor myself, landing cross-legged for once
with all the grace and dexterity of a cat. He followed suit more
slowly and stiffly; you would never have known that he was a
shifter. Then I thought of it. The most obvious question to ask.
The most obvious of reasons for how he was.

“Have you ever
had shifter friends?” He looked at me like I’d sprouted a second
head. “It’s a relevant question, please just answer.”

“No.” Simple,
succinct and marginally helpful.

“So, ever
since you became a shifter you’ve had to hide?”

“Yes,” he
said. Very slowly, like he wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t just lost
my mind. I was entirely sure either but my sanity had never been
totally normal so I had learnt to stop worrying about it. Life is
easier if you don’t sweat the little insanities. It was the big
ones I was worried about.

“I think that
maybe you spent so much time hiding that you never learnt what it
really means to be a shifter. We established last time that you’d
blocked off your magic, your power, and tried to separate yourself
into two parts. I thought you did it out of some anger at something
you’d done or hatred for your baser nature, but this is a better
explanation.” I looked at him for conformation and got only a blank
face. Not quite what I was hoping for but I ploughed on anyway. I
had to get something right. I had to do something. I wasn’t out
searching because I was the most obvious choice to man the House. I
was de facto in charge of it until Marie returned. It killed me to
feel so useless.

“You know
nothing about my life, nothing about me, and yet you feel you can
sit there and make assumptions. That you can tell me how to live my
life.” He was shouting and it was raising my own anger. How much
was due to my reacting to the anger being shoved down the link I’d
forged with him when I tried to “unlock” his power, and how much
was my own, I didn’t know. I could feel power welling up with the
anger and that wasn’t supposed to happen. Strong emotion should
have flooded my system and made magic more difficult, not less.

Being inside
someone else’s head involuntarily is an indescribable experience.
It’s like all of a sudden the world is in the wrong colours and you
can’t quite make sense of anything. It was certainly proof that my
power was changing – another impossibility. I had never been so far
inside someone else’s head. I could feel every thought and emotion;
I could feel the sensations coursing through his body.

I was standing
in the garden: I was staring into the face of a pretty woman with
the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen; I was starving; I was
running; I was standing in the garden; I was terrified, angry,
exhilarated and confused. Then, with one gargantuan effort, I was
back in my own mind. So many memories. When people think of
memories they think of pictures, like photographs or film, but it’s
so much more. I have found that scent memories are often very
strong and someone else’s memory of a touch is so alien that it
sends shivers down my spine.

Eddie was
silent, standing just as I had left him, presumably still scrolling
through his list of memories that made me not qualified to give him
advice. Seeing further inside his head for those brief moments had
far from softened me towards him. I not achieved great insight into
his life; it was just as so many other lives are. He had put his
suffering so far above everyone else’s that he failed to see that
there were those far worse off than him. He failed to see that
anyone could understand him. Especially someone he saw as a spoilt
brat like me.

“Fine,” I
growled, only vaguely surprised to find that my voice box and
throat had shifted enough to put a lot of growl into it. “Keep your
high ideals and self- righteousness. What would I know of
suffering, right? What would I know of pain and loss? You are
nothing more than a stubborn, selfish bastard and I refuse to help
you until you realise that you are not the centre of the universe.”
And I stormed off, power flooding out from me in a way that made my
head spin. I couldn’t control myself around him. I had to get away
or I would do something I’d probably regret later. Probably.

I ran all the
way to my room, moving fast enough to appear blurred to anyone
watching. I needed to get some control but what little control I
had left was slipping fast. With nobody around my power turned
inwards and I was thrown into a play-by- play of what seemed like
everything that had ever happened to me.

I remembered
my mum smiling at me and I remembered shifting with her, running
through the Covenant gardens. I remembered my father hugging me. I
remembered flames and heat so intense I thought that I would melt.
I remembered his face staring at me through the curtains we’d had
on the cupboard since I’d broken the doors. I could see my room at
the Covenant and my grandfather dressed in black. The penetrating
sadness of the crowd; everyone in black.

I could smell
the Covenant dungeons. My mind flicked through all of the minds I
had touched there. I remembered Jalas smiling at me; he looked
young and free. I remembered the feel of him inside me. I
remembered the look on his face as he slit open a prisoner from
their belly button to their neck. I saw blood everywhere. I saw
Marie. I could feel her holding me as I cried over my parents’
deaths. I could see her showing me around my new room at the House
when I was sixteen. I could see dank walls and smell the dregs of
human society.

I tried to
pull back the memories of my parents alive, of Marie and my life at
the House. Of a family. I couldn’t, I just kept getting terrible
flashes of prisons I had never seen. Sometimes I picked up stray
feelings from people and, if I’d been further inside their heads, I
picked up more detailed impressions so it seemed I’d also gained a
few extra memories. It made me wish more than ever that I had never
‘helped’ my grandfather with his work.

I felt a hand
on my shoulder before I heard them. I turned, expecting it to be
Eddie, only to come face to face with Catherine. She was one of
Marie’s oldest friends; they’d been at school together and it had
been Marie that had introduced her to a husband who had changed
Catherine. She had never regretted her decision. I wished Eddie
could see it the same way. She looked equal parts of worried and
comforting.

“Are you
alright, darling?” Her voice was soft, peaceful, but not Marie’s.
Not the voice I wanted, the one I needed. I had long ago lost the
precise memory of my own mother’s voice; when I thought of my
mother she spoke with Marie’s gentle tones.

“I’ll be
fine,” I lied and tried to smile up at her.

“Oh, honey.
It’s going to be alright. We’re going to find them and you’re going
to be fine and that boy will come to his senses and realise that
he’s got to start listening to you.” Her accent became stronger as
she spoke, like she had tried to hide it. It was nice to hear since
hardly anyone had accents anymore. Catherine had kept her old Devon
accent and it comforted me. It reminded me of Marie in a small
way.

She smelled of
soap and talcum powder; she smelled like an old lady should.
Catherine was, like Marie, eighty-two years old but her appearance
was deceiving. Catherine looked about thirty; she had kept up
maintenance on her image long after Marie ceased to care. I wanted
to take more comfort from her arms around me, but I kept flashing
back to my mother’s arms and my mother’s face as she burnt with the
rest of our home.