Hidden Among Us (20 page)

Not that I knew where Lissy was or what had happened to her. I’d let them take her, again. Failed to protect my sister. Was it because of what she’d done? Showing Mum that birthday card from Elena? Had I subconsciously just let it happen, to punish her for destroying our family?

“Ah,” Miles said. “Well, there is a decent explanation for that, at least. You’d better come with me.”

“What’s the deal with you and the Fontevrault Group, anyway?” I asked again, out in the corridor. Miles had opened the door with a flat grey plastic card unclipped from the waistband of his trousers, like the office ID I was always given if I visited Dad at work. Obviously not a prisoner, then – so what was Miles’s connection? “They searched the Reach—” I nearly told him about Connie, but couldn’t make myself form the words. Not without knowing. Maybe he’d still have his phone and I could try calling Mum. But if Connie hadn’t made it—

Miles moved surprisingly fast for someone who looked so skinny and weak. “I didn’t come here by choice, but it hasn’t turned out quite how I’d expected. I’m part of the Fontevrault, of course, just as my father was and his before him – there have been Gatewards at the Reach a long time.” Miles turned and smiled at me. “But unlike the rest of them I committed a serious breach of the rules. I didn’t just open the Gateway – I fell in love with one of the Hidden. Difficult times lie ahead, Rafe. For everyone.” The look in his eyes was kind of desperate, as if he was seeing something he wanted but could never have. “I’ve never had the courage to pass through. I couldn’t do it, knowing there’s no way back if you lose track of time. Never seeing the sun again. Sometimes I think it would all be worthwhile, just to be with Rose.”

God, how embarrassing. I really didn’t want to know about Miles’s love life, even if he was talking about some beautiful immortal creature who wasn’t even meant to exist.

“Elves? It’s not exactly a fairy tale.”

Miles whirled around to face me, his face thin and pale. “Why not, Rafe? Let’s call them what they are, after all. Elven, the Sidhe, the Hidden, they’ve had many names.”

“But that stuff’s just— They live for years – I’ve seen them, Miles. They never get old. They never change. They must be some kind of alien—”

“Did you ever stop to think that they might have been here first? All young people are so stupendously arrogant. Consider this, Rafe:
we’re
the invading species that got out of control, like some kind of virus.”

“But I don’t understand why the Fontevrault didn’t just close the Gateway again. It’s been open for nearly fifteen years. Why?”

Miles laughed, and I started to think he’d gone a bit crazy. “They don’t even know it’s open, Rafe, that’s why. The Fontevrault are useless – outmoded, concerned with nothing but tradition. And the Hidden are biding their time, just waiting for your sister to return. Believe me, it’s been in their interest to keep a very low profile as Lissy grew nearer her fourteenth birthday. The last thing the Hidden wanted was to risk the Fontevrault finding out about the Gateway. They needed it open for Lissy to return.”

Before I had time to even attempt an answer, Miles reached out with the grey key card just as we approached another arched wooden doorway, and touched it against a metal sensor panel. A small green light flashed, and the doors swung open. Inside, light flooded in through huge leaded windows. A polished wooden table ran down the centre of the room, seating four men and the two women who’d collected me from my cell. They were all so bland – wearing plain suits and smart shirts, like I’d interrupted some kind of board meeting. They all looked just like faceless office drones. Except one. I scanned the table again, trying to conceal my shock.

I just stared, unable to register what I was hearing or seeing.

How could
he
possibly be here?

A tanned, fair-haired man sat at the far end of the table, deep in conversation with the woman beside him. As usual, he looked as if he’d just stepped off a yacht, not quite at home in a suit.

“That’s your answer,” Miles said, a thin smile creasing his face. “Going to the British Library? You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to bring yourself to our attention, Rafe. All you had to do was wait till your twenty-first birthday, and you would have received an invitation, just like I did. Membership is yours by birthright, the Fontevrault inheritance.”

My dad looked like I’d just walked into an elegant dinner party completely naked, and then thrown up on the table. “Rafe.” He sounded very reasonable but I knew him well enough to wish I could turn and walk straight out. “Would you mind telling me what you’ve done to your leg?”

I didn’t even know where to start.

32

Water flooded my mouth and nose; I coughed, choking, sending up bubbles of wasted oxygen. Pain shrieked inside my chest. I tried to swim, arms and legs flailing and useless, but it did no good because I wasn’t sinking, I was
falling
. The pain shot to unbearable heights. Everything went black and then I felt solid rock beneath my feet. I stood up streaming water, choking again and spewing, but breathing. Actually breathing. I crouched down, getting wet all over again but not caring, gasping in as much air as I could. I stood up, staring down at my clothes.

They were already dry: my thick heavy jeans dry as a bone after a massive soaking.

And I was
somewhere else
. This wasn’t the overgrown front garden at Hopesay Reach, but a huge glittering white chamber, bright even without a window or any kind of obvious light. And trees were growing up through solid rock. Actual trees with green leaves, silvery trunks. Unsteady, slipping, I stepped out of the water, dropped to my knees, pressing my hands to the ground. Yes, rock. Solid quartz, it felt like, bone-white and glittering.

This wasn’t real. It wasn’t right. I knew straight away this couldn’t be a place that had ever been touched by human hands. It was like being in a giant ants’ nest. Somewhere imagined by inhuman minds. A place built by them, the Hidden, whatever they were really called. Hot nausea shot up my throat and I was sick right there on the shining floor. I sat back on my heels, cold with horror. No one came. No one saw. I was alone. I reached round to move whatever was jammed into the side pocket of my jeans, digging into my hip.

The knife. Rafe’s iron knife.
Kill them with iron
. The wooden handle was smooth and plain, the blade protected by a simple leather case, clumsily stitched with yellowish thread. If I had to use it, I didn’t like my chances. I tried to imagine plunging the blade into the flesh of something that looked human, a shrieking wide-open mouth—

I wouldn’t be able to do it.

I shoved the knife back into my pocket, a cold heavy weight against my leg, and pulled out the bundle of yellowed paper Virgie Creed had given me in the church. The edge that had been poking out of my pocket was slightly damp, unprotected by whatever strange forces had kept my clothes dry.

Why had the Hidden taken Lissy again? She had to be down here somewhere, too. I could find her. Together we could escape.

Yeah, right. What a hero, choking and spluttering then chundering on the floor.

And escape how? There was nowhere to run, no visible way out.

I couldn’t sit there staring at my own regurgitated crisps and coffee, so instead I rinsed out my mouth with water from the lake, tasting only the tangy edge of hard water, nothing else. I got up and staggered – I felt like the bones in my legs had just dissolved, and my head was still spinning. I sat down, leaning against one of the trees, resting my head against my knees. What was I going to do? I couldn’t walk without puking. Trying to take deep steady breaths, I opened the letter, rolling away the elastic band that held it to a thin leatherbound notebook I hadn’t noticed before.

The letter was dated August 1930, typewritten in faded black ink.

The letter was unsigned. Not a huge surprise. I sat there wondering who had written it. Someone in the Fontevrault Group, about to die themselves, wanting to offload their guilt.
They
were the killers. They must have been terrified David might go to the Reach and try opening the Gateway.

Virgie Creed knew; she had to be some relation of this David guy; he’d stumbled on the truth about the Hidden long before us and this letter to his mother had been passed on down the family.

She’d saved my life. In a weird way, David Creed had, too.

Now the Fontevrault Group had Rafe and their major fear was a reality:
someone
had opened the Gateway at Hopesay Reach. Rafe had been abducted by an organization that killed people for knowing too much: that was the truth of it. I had no idea where he was or who I could ask for help.

I stared down at the blank screen of my phone. I should have been calling the police. Doing
something
.

I folded the letter and slid the elastic band away from the leatherbound notebook. Opening it, I recognized the handwriting from the margin of the diary straight away, I knew who had owned this: David Creed. His possessions must have been handed down too, kept safe alongside the letter. I felt cold inside, holding something that had once been owned by a dead boy, wondering what it must be like to face a firing squad, tied up somewhere just waiting for the bullets, unable to do anything about it.

I turned the first page. There were doodles covering every blank space, little sketches of leaves and birds. The leaves weren’t anything special but the birds looked like they might fly off the page: chaffinches, a ragged crow and some kind of falcon, the head of a swan. David had been a good artist before the Fontevrault Group blew his brains out. I swallowed a surge of rage. They’d squashed him like a fly just because he knew about the Hidden.

So what were they going to do with Rafe? OK, Rafe could look after himself, but David Creed had picked up a live grenade and thrown it back at German troops, and the Fontevrault Group had killed him without even trying.

This wasn’t good.

It was weirdly comforting, though, holding something human down in that chamber, with those impossible trees growing out of cold rock – like me and the long-dead David Creed were in this together. The same panicky thought rolled round inside my head like a pebble in a bath:
how did I get here, how did it happen, how?

I was losing it again. I breathed out, trying to concentrate on that for a moment. I had to get a grip.

David’s handwriting started mid-sentence on the first page, as if he’d just filled up an old diary and started a new one.