Falling Apart (20 page)

A few days passed with nothing more terrible than the occasional picture and snidey side-bar remark in the paper. I went on a shopping trip with Rachel that netted me three pairs of cut-price slingbacks and some sturdy underwear; visited the hospital, where my Dad was being threatened with discharge, but was fighting a rearguard action to stay in, since, apparently, the food was far better than my mother's cooking. I even managed some risqué e-mail exchanges with Sil. Things were, if not looking up, then managing to keep a steady horizon-gaze.

After another long day sitting in front of the Tracker program while Liam made unwise eBay purchases and terrible coffee, I headed back to the place I still couldn't think of as home. The house was its normal dimly lit and hushed self, but there was a marked absence of dimly lit and hushed vampire about the place, even when I checked in all his usual haunts – hallway, under-stairs cupboard, cellar …

‘Zan?'

I went into the kitchen. As with all the rooms in Vamp Central it was well, if a little sparsely, furnished with ornate pieces that Zan seemed to have bought from a French medieval house-clearance. Some of the chairs were so elaborately carved that it was like sitting on very hard crochet work. But it was difficult for any room that contained a kettle and fruitcake to ever be really unwelcoming, so this was the place I was most comfortable. The sensation of not having to pretend to understand what was happening, or have a plan, or have to keep my life partitioned, came with me, and stayed for as long as it took to make a mug of tea and collapse in the only chair that wasn't more fretwork than substance. Once I sat though, with my hands around the warm, if rather floral, china, the cold terror came creeping back, filling my mind with ‘what ifs' and a scenario that seemed to have been pulled from a horror film, if any horror films had Liam padding around in the background saying ‘I told you so'.

What am I doing? Hiding a Treaty-breaker?
The confusion and the stress and my longing for Sil crashed over my head again, accompanied by that drag in my lower abdomen, as though my soul was trying to escape and get to him. My head hunched forward until my chin nearly rested on my mug, and tears sprang into my eyes.
My beautiful Sil. Risking
 …
no, not even risking, he had no reason to suspect any of this would ever happen, just undertaking something that he thought would make me happy. Wanting to give me that little gift of knowledge, a glimpse into the person who had been my mother – to know where she'd been born, her own mother's name, anything.

I sniffed, and realised that guilt was rising up inside me and pushing the tears out of my eyes.
Why
had I made such a big thing of never having known my mother? Why hadn't I just shut up, accepted that I'd been brought up by two loving, if occasionally overly grammatically correct, parents? Did it really, truly matter who my mother had been? A girl, adrift in a time when nothing was safe, with humans and Otherworlders at war and the future seeming to hold nothing but darkness? Or something else, something darker, something that the government of the day had wanted to keep hidden, to the extent of wiping out her birth records? Whoever she'd been, she'd made one stupid mistake, got tangled up with a demon and … here I was. End of story. Did it really matter so much that I didn't know which part of me came from her and which from my ghyst father – my chest which strived for an independent life of its own; my dark hair that, come to think of it, was also a life-form in its own right; my complete lack of adherence to the normal rules of filing? Why did it matter?

I sniffed again and tried to mop my eyes on my wrist, feeling Sil's absence stinging on my skin.
I wish you were here. To hold me. To let me cry, to tell me stories of your childhood to distract me, tales of your absent parents and the string of nannies and tutors passing through your life, until I feel better about only being lectured on my English grammar and not having to worry about Latin and Greek. To hold me
 … I stifled the sob that hovered like a demon inside my chest.
And this is why it matters. Because I want to know who I am. What I might become, or whether I have already become it – I want to know why my mother was so afraid of the child she carried that she handed her over to people she barely knew and then never visited, never tried to make contact.

‘Jessica?' Zan's voice came from the doorway. ‘Has something happened?'

I tried to rein in the tears, to perform some kind of misery-suckage that would recall all these feelings into the neat little box I'd kept them in so far. I couldn't
afford
emotion, not when I had so much to hide. I relaxed the white-knuckled grip on my mug. ‘No. I was just …' I sniffed hard, blinked and tried to pretend that the tears rapidly stiffening my cheeks were nothing. ‘Just thinking.'

‘Hmm. I suggest you stop: it appears to distress you.' He strode into the kitchen, as unconcerned and poised as a cat, and sat elegantly in one of the more semi-transparent of the chairs, the sleeves of his impeccable jacket along the arms and trouser-leg creases lined up with the spindly white-painted wooden ones.

I stood up so as not to have to face him, not while my skin was still salty and my eyes were still red. I felt awkward, caught out, as though crying had been declared illegal and Zan was some kind of Tear Police. ‘It's nothing. Just … life, I suppose.'

When I looked at him over my shoulder he had one eyebrow raised. ‘How very
human
of you. To be distressed by a life which, to all intents and purposes, will last a mere blink of an eye.'

I stared at him. He seemed relaxed, or as relaxed as Zan ever was, like a cat that's just seen a strange dog walk into the room. ‘I don't think you can even spell “sympathy”, can you?' I refilled the kettle and carefully counted the tiles behind the sink to give my eyes a chance to dry up and my mouth to not come out with anything more sarcastic.

‘I am afraid that sympathy would be misplaced. The Otherworld does not give space for such emotions; they are a waste of personal resources that are better spent in action.'

‘I am not going to start this argument again, Zan. I'm human. I was brought up human and I have human values, whatever my bloodline might indicate, and I choose to stay this side of the line, so you can keep all your Otherworld observations to yourself.' The kettle pinged and I poured water onto another teabag. I didn't really want any more tea – I was on the verge of tannin poisoning – but it was useful to have something to do.

‘I don't wish to argue with you.'

‘But you are going to, aren't you? I know that tone of voice, my mother used to use it all the time when I was growing up.'

‘But what were you growing
into
?' Zan dropped the words so heavily that the surface of my tea rippled under them. ‘Your behaviour is not that of a human, Jessica, surely you can see that? You keep yourself aloof from contact, you refuse to allow memories in that may distress you – I am using your current state as an exception that proves the rule, incidentally, before you try to cite it in evidence.'

My tea slopped as I spun around to face him. He looked perfectly at ease, hair so precisely parted that it looked as though he'd done it with a set-square, skin smooth as a pebble and his classical profile was so impassive it could have been carved. Yet his words had been incendiary, and he knew it. ‘What do you think Liam and Rachel are, imaginary friends?'

A gracious inclination of his head dragged his hair down to his collar. ‘You have an Otherworld attitude to friendship; you encourage those who can be of assistance, and any others you dismiss.' He leaned forward a little, and his demon was rising behind his eyes. ‘Can you truly say that you are there for them in their times of trouble? Or do you forget them when they are no longer in your line of sight?'

‘I …' I put the mug down on the table. ‘That's bollocks, Zan, and you know it!' But deep inside me a little prickle of doubt was needling my gut.
Did I?
‘Besides, being stuck here with you hovering around like the Dark Angel is not exactly conducive to having dinner parties, and my job … I can't go out on the piss in case I'm needed.'

‘Needed by whom? By your council, of which you purport to be entirely dismissive? By your filing and your paperwork, which you maintain comprises your job?' Zan's voice was stronger now; he was assuming the personality of the York City Vamp, the one he rarely needed to slip into. Was he trying to impress me? And if so, why? I knew Zan too well; he was like an ironing board – there, but I wasn't entirely sure what his purpose was. And now … he was doing the whole alpha thing again, powerful and commanding. And really,
really
annoying.

‘Well, I suppose by your reasoning I don't come under either heading. Half-human, half-demon, you can't just claim me for your side when it suits you, Zan. I'm choosing for myself, and I choose to be human and to regard myself as bound by human laws and the human council. If that means I'm condemned to a lifetime of getting excited about new stationery products and the shoe sales, then so be it.' I whirled around and prepared for a showy exit.

‘Your mother agrees with me.'

And I stopped, dead, with my hand on the door. Every millilitre of my blood had solidified; my heart had slowed under the weight of it. ‘
What?
'

Zan stood up – I heard the chair squeal across the tiled floor but stayed where I was, unable to coax my muscles into action. ‘Your mother. We spoke at the hospital. She agrees that you are becoming more Otherworlder with each passing year.' I only knew he was moving because his voice was coming closer, otherwise he made no sound. ‘We conversed at some length, in fact.' And now he was right behind my shoulder, a cold presence. Standing so close, in fact, that when I spun round I nearly headbutted him.

‘Did you glamour her?' Her vagueness, not knowing what they'd talked about … The bastard had got inside her head … poked about in her psyche to find out about me; it was the only explanation. ‘Because, if you did, I have to warn you that I shall go straight round to your office with one of Liam's “special” programs, and every time you switch on your computer you will be faced with more weird-shit porn coming at you than even the average teenage boy could handle. Right?'

A pause, as though he was thinking this through. ‘So,' he said slowly, ‘why should you expect me to confess that I had
glamoured your mother?'

‘Oh, I don't know. Basic human decency and the desire for truth? Oh, wait a minute …'

‘I did not. We merely conversed, and I … put some options before her. Options that do not concern you at present.'

‘And why wouldn't they?' I turned slowly and must have had my ‘vampire hunter' face on, because Zan raised his head and took a steady step back.

‘Because they are between your mother and me. Or are you assuming that any decision made without your permission is to be disallowed? That is a very Otherworld mindset, Jessica.'

Well, at least I'd stopped crying and wondering about Sil. My teeth were so tightly gritted that expressing anything other than a snarl was not an option right now. ‘You …'—I groped for words—‘you …
vampire
!'

But every word he said was heading, with the screaming noise of a pin-point accurate bullet, straight into my heart.
He's right. Oh God, he's right
 …
I'm one of Them.

A tilted eyebrow. ‘You say “vampire” as though it is a bad thing.' Zan smiled, or rather he twitched his lips in an expression that never even made it as far as his cheeks. ‘You may want to think about that.'

It was leave the room or burst into tears again. I chose the ‘leaving' option.

I looked in through the door. Mum was sprawled untidily on the pull-out chair, covered with a fleecy blanket and emitting occasional lady-like snores. She'd unpinned her hair from its usual careful coiffure, and it coiled in a greying, careless mass around her head and neck, as though an unhealthy wind had passed through the room. Dad lay surrounded by machines that beeped and ticked, and his eyes were open.

‘It's late, love.'

‘I know.' Careful not to wake my mother, I crept around to the other side of his bed and perched on the plastic chair, my eyes tracing the rise and fall of his heartbeat, measured in green waves on a small screen. ‘I couldn't sleep.'

‘You should try having these things fitted.' He raised an arm to indicate the various drip attachments and wires that issued forth. ‘If I turn over, it sounds like an Xbox game.' The lifted hand found mine. ‘What's the matter, Jessie?'

‘Nothing, I …'

‘Come on now.' My father patted my hand. ‘You didn't come all the way over here just to steal my grapes.'

What could I say? That I'd come to the hospital in the middle of the night to reassure myself of my humanity? That I needed to know that, out in the real world, people were going about their usual business without vampires and zombies and demons being part of it? ‘Mum's been talking to Zan. Or, more likely, he's been lecturing her and she's been too polite to knee him in the— Well, to tell him to go away.'

‘I haven't seen him. They must have chatted down at the coffee shop.'

I opened my mouth to say that Zan didn't ‘chat', the vampire didn't have a casual bone in his body, but realised it was pointless. My father didn't know anything, and my mother hadn't seen fit to confide in him. ‘Tell me about my birth mother,' I said, leaning forward so that I could see the expression in those autumnal eyes. ‘Rune. What was she like?'

A twitch of the fingers over my hand. ‘Why do you want to know?'

‘I found the letter. From the government.'

The fingers curled for a second, as though in pain, and then flattened. There was a tone from the machine, and then the reassuring ‘bip bip' noise resumed, and my father sighed. ‘It was a bad moment when that arrived. I wanted to keep it from … from you all.'

‘Dad …'

‘I just want to keep you safe … to keep you away from them.' A breath that sounded difficult. ‘We didn't know, Jess, love. You have to believe that. She was a nice girl, nervy, but that was to be expected under the circumstances … Pretty little thing though.' A sideways smile. ‘You look very much like her.'

‘Nice try, Dad. But … what was she
like
?'

He sighed. ‘I'm sorry, love. Yes. We should have told you all this before. She was …' He seemed to search for the words. ‘Rune was afraid. Of everything. She never talked about her background, about her upbringing, parents or anything, just … fear. Always looking over her shoulder, always … like that old collie we had, the one that we got from the dogs' home, you remember?'

‘Ziggy? The one that used to bite anyone who came to the door?'

‘He'd been ill treated as a pup, y'see, love. Never forgot it, poor lad, but he was a good worker, great with the sheep. It was just people he hated. And Rune – she had something of the same about her, like she was just waiting for it all to happen again, but then, I suppose, with your father being … what he was, she was right. But I always thought there was more to it than that, almost as though … sounds a bit silly really, but I remember, when I was teaching, some of the students … almost as though she'd been
born
afraid.'

‘Like paranoid, you mean?'

He made a face, drawing his mouth down at the corners. ‘Like she wasn't quite right. That's the best I can describe it, as though she'd never been right. That's why … that's what I put it down to, her not wanting to keep you. Not because of who your father was, but because of
herself
, because she was afraid of who she was.' Another pat of my hand. ‘She never spoke about it, but we suspected there was something in her past, some kind of abuse … but we never thought … not the
government.
Well, you wouldn't, would you?'

‘So what do you think happened to her? Before, I mean?'

Beside the bed my mother stirred under her blanket. ‘Brian?'

‘I'm fine, Jen. Go back to sleep.' Then, dropping his voice to a faint whisper, he said, ‘She gets upset when you ask. About Rune. Takes it badly. Doesn't want you to know but … she thinks we did something wrong, taking you in, pretending you were ours. Something bad.'

I couldn't answer. Couldn't reassure him. My throat strained and ached with words I couldn't say and tears I dared not release. ‘No.' The words echoed off the hollowness. ‘You did what you thought was right.'

A quick glance at my mother, who'd half-turned over, one crumpled hand clutching the blanket to her shoulders. ‘That's all anyone ever does, love. What they think is right. And now I think'—he lowered his voice even more—‘maybe they took Rune when she was very young or something. Can't even guess why, but it won't have been good.' He moistened his lips with a dry-looking tongue. ‘I wish I was out of here, wish I could
do
something.'

I tried to smile, but my mouth wouldn't co-operate, and only went as far as a straight-lipped grimace. ‘With the best will in the world, Dad, I don't think filling in farm subsidy forms is going to be any kind of preparation for this sort of thing.'

‘No, but I could …' He stopped speaking so suddenly that I glanced over to the monitor. The trace was irregular, though at least it was there. But he'd closed his eyes as if he wanted to avoid looking at my face. ‘I should protect you.' A whisper so faint that it barely registered over the beeps and clicks and whirrs, and a tear slid from the corner of one closed eye. ‘I should be
there
.'

The machines steadied, the peaks and troughs ironed by approaching sleep into a smoother line. ‘It'll be okay.' I willed the words to sound strong, and raised his bruised-looking hand to my lips. ‘I've pretty much got a team on my side, after all. I mean, I know it's Team Obsessive-Compulsive, but it's still a team.'

‘Be careful, Jessie.'

I kissed his cheek as he started to slide towards sleep, and watched the machines settle into another, slower rhythm. ‘Thanks, Dad. I will.'

A mumble and he was asleep, his hand slack in mine and his face oddly younger. I tiptoed from the room and went back to the only place I could think that I might be welcome right now.

The computer beeped at me in a parody of Dad's monitors. The mugs sat on my desk positively begging for me to call Liam, even the pencil sharpener glared at me with its bladed eye of disdain and I wavered over the phone for a few seconds. My fingers did a little dance, miming the digits of Liam's number, but I balled them into fists and refused to give in. It was barely seven a.m. and Sarah was, if I was not reading completely the wrong script between Liam's fairly widely spaced lines, getting a little bit annoyed with him being called in at all hours – I didn't want to spark any relationship discord. Liam was so level-headed you could practically use him as a cup-holder and he had to stay that way. With me slowly turning into a walking psychological disorder –
Like my mother,
whispered that treacherous bit of my brain that refused me sleep, had forced me to sit in the office almost overnight and was currently warning me away from the barely-hidden HobNobs – one of us had to stay sane.

I flicked the Tracker program up. Nothing flashed, no warnings. When I hovered over the little dots that represented our Otherworlders all I got was the little ‘Permitted' icon. It would have been nice, right now, to get a call out, to go and take some of my frustration and confusion out on a wandering vampire or out-of-area were-creature, but there weren't any. In the end I decided to go and see Rachel and raise the subject I'd been putting off for a while.

‘You want to know about
what
?' Rachel carried on folding laundry. Apparently Jasper was unwell and had been sick all over her duvet, although from his smug expression I suspected he'd coughed up hairballs in a bizarre revenge attack. ‘Sounds like you're starting to take life seriously, Jessie, and it's about time too!'

‘Well, no, actually I'm not, or I am, but not like this. And it's not me who needs to know, Rach. It's … some … err … friends of mine.'

She slowly brought two edges of a sheet together and thoughtfully smoothed out the creases. ‘I suppose I could. Is it vampires?'

Rachel has a really weird penchant for vamps, despite losing her entire family to them during the Troubles. She just has this whole image of them as deeply troubled, emotional creatures who only need the love of a good woman to get over the whole blood, sex and death thing. I do keep pointing out that what she's thinking of is a goth band front man, but she still keeps mooning around whenever I mention Sil or Zan.

‘Not exactly.'

‘I wish I had your job, Jessie. Honestly, I'm sick of boxing up perm lotion! Do you know, the most dangerous thing I get to do is sometimes turn a blind eye to someone buying more than one box of Nurofen at a time! Can I apply for a place in your office? Would you put in a word for me?'

I wondered what she'd say if she knew,
really
knew, about my job. About the ulcer-invoking anxiety, the perpetual armpit-drenching terror of
getting it wrong
. I tugged again at my collar, thanking any of the Powers That Be that I'd got Sil to bite me low down on my neck. ‘The pay is terrible,' I said. ‘Really bad. I get through tights like nobody's business, and the hours are shocking.'

‘Maybe not, then. I mean, I have to be there for Jasper; I couldn't do difficult hours.'

I sat down and took another sip of my herbal tea. There I'd been, assuming that I missed the flat, the secret chocolate supply, the freedom to come and go as I'd pleased, when I'd really missed the chats, the vegan-orientated magazine-reading evenings, the gossip. And Rachel herself, with her biased acceptance of my job and my affiliations. The
normality.
It just highlighted how weird my life had become now that I was thinking of a fridge full of bean curd and a vet on speed dial as normal.

A sudden grin broke out above the duvet-folding. ‘I've missed you, Jessie. Honestly, if you ever want to come back to the flat, I'd love to have you.' A small pause. ‘I might have to put the rent up a bit, though, what with the demons burning holes in the carpet thing.'

I carefully didn't remark on this. I had a feeling, just a small, needling kind of worry, that Zan was keeping me at Vampire Central simply so that he could watch my comings and goings, and wouldn't take kindly to me decamping back to my old stomping grounds. He wouldn't be able to criticise my laundry proceedings or my predilection for
Top Gear
repeats if I moved out, and I was beginning to suspect that passing judgement on my pastimes was the nearest he got to a hobby. It said something about life
chez
Vegan that this was
still
preferable to coming back to the flat.

‘Thanks, Rach. That's nice to know. That I can come back, I mean, not the bit about the putting up the rent.'

‘That's okay. Now, when would you like me to come and talk to your friends? Only I ought to be off to work now, it's my day for opening up. I don't want to hurry your tea though.'

I looked down into the cup. The liquid was the colour of healthy wee. ‘I think everything that can happen to this tea has already happened. Which pretty much sums up my friends too. How about tomorrow?'