Hidden (Marchwood Vampire Series #1) (54 page)

‘
Riley ...
’
Pa
says, running his hands through his hair. He comes over and
crouches down in front of me. He takes both my hands in his and
looks into my eyes. His intense expression is making me
uncomfortable. I want to look away.

‘
What? What is it?’ I ask,
not sure if I want to hear his reply.

‘
Something’s
happened.
’

‘
What?’

‘
Riley, it’s your sister.’

I shake my
head. ‘Where is she? Where’s Skye?’

‘
She’s … Oh I’m so sorry, baby, she’s dead.’

‘
I look at Pa and then I look up at Ma. They stare at me, a
look of horror on their faces. What are they talking
about?

I feel my face contort. The sound that comes
out of my throat is not a cry or a scream or even a sob. But a
laugh. A strangled giggle. A short staccato burst of
inappropriateness. I cover my mouth with my hands.

‘
Riley! Did you hear what
I said?’ Pa stands up, shocked and angry. ‘I just told you your
little sister is …’

‘
I heard you,’ I
whisper.

‘
So why the hell are you
laughing?’ His anger grows and his voice suddenly booms. ‘What can
possibly be funny about …’

‘…
I don’t know, I don’t
know.’ I try to absorb what he’s telling me. ‘I don’t know why I
laughed. I don’t know.’ It’s true. I have no idea where that
reaction came from. Why would I do something so awful? No wonder
Pa’s mad.

I can’t process the other thing. The thing
Pa told me.

‘
You don’t know?’ He
stands up. ‘She doesn’t know!’ he shouts to no one in
particular.

‘
Stop it!’ Ma says to him.
‘She’s in shock.’

Pa turns to look at her and then turns back
to me. His face suddenly loses its hardness, like melting ice
cream.

‘
Of course. She’s in shock,’ he
murmurs. ‘We’re all in shock.’ And then something really horrible
happens. My powerful, strong, wonderful Pa starts crying. Proper
messy crying where his face twists and his voice sounds broken. I’m
appalled. Pa
never
cries.

‘
Pa …
’

I’m not a typical
daddy
’
s girl. I love the bones of him, but I
feel easiest around Ma. We always talk make-up, fashion, gossipy
stuff and laugh a lot together. Skye belongs to Pa and Pa
definitely belongs to Skye. They’re a team. I never feel excluded
exactly, but I don
’
t have the same natural
connection they do … did.

I stare down at the patterns on
the carpet. I
’
ve never noticed just how vivid the
individual
colours
are.
The over-all effect is of a soft warmth, but I focus on a
particular strand of red that seems almost luminous, as if it’s
going to jump out of the weave and hit me in the face.

*

I wake up in my
parents
’
bed. A moment of peace and then everything
rushes towards me in a crash of disbelief and pain…

Skye.

Ma lies next to me on top of the quilt,
humming in a scary way while she strokes the hair off my face. I
must have blacked out, fainted or something after they told me Skye
was ... And I had laughed. How can that be? Is there something
wrong with me?

‘
Ma.
’
I
speak gently, as if talking to a young child, but she carries on
humming.
‘
Ma!
’
I pull away from
her and wrench her hands from my hair.
‘
What
happened to Skye? Where is she? She can’t be …
’

‘
Sh
, sh
baby,
’
she croons to me and kisses my
forehead.

‘
Ma, you
’
re
scaring me. Are you okay?
’ I can hear the
tremor in my voice.

‘
Everything will be
alright
’
, she says in a strange new childish
way.
‘Just
sleep and it will be
okay.
’

I throw myself out of bed, run out of the
bedroom and almost fall down the stairs to find my father. He’s
standing in the lounge talking to some of the guards, including
Roger Brennan, the Head of Perimeter Security.

Even though we
don
’
t really speak to any of them, we know all the
guards by name. They’ve guarded the Talbot Woods Perimeter for the
past sixteen- and-a-half years since the fences first went up, just
before I was born.

This spring a new guard started - Liam. This
thrilled us as we rarely get to see new people. On his first day,
his watch stopped and Skye and I sneaked him a new battery out of
Pa’s supplies. Since then, we’ve been friends of a sort. We’ve
never properly chatted, but he’s about nineteen or twenty and
always has a wink and a flirty comment for us which makes us blush
and think he’s wonderful.

The only other people we see are those who
live in the Perimeter and of course the delivery drivers, trades
people and the army. Occasionally we get a glimpse through the wire
fence at a rare passer by.

I wait downstairs in a blur of grief and
anxiety until the guards finally excuse themselves and leave Pa
sitting on the sofa. I desperately need to speak to him to make
sense of what he told me. I stupidly start to hope there’s some
reasonable explanation and Skye will come running in to ask us what
we’re making such a fuss about.

Pa stands up and holds his arms out to me. I
stumble into them and breathe in his comforting smell of diesel oil
and cologne. We sit next to each other on the sofa, his arm around
me. He kisses my hair and strokes my cheek with his fist.

‘
You alright?’ he asks
gruffly.

‘
No,’ I reply.

‘
No,’ he
echoes.

‘
What happened?’ I ask in
a quiet voice. ‘How can she be gone? It’s Skye. She’s my sister.
She can’t not be here anymore.’

‘
I don’t know. Luc found
her this morning.’

‘
Luc?’

My sister thinks … thought
seventeen-year-old Luc Donovan was the cat’s pyjamas. This summer
especially, he’s all she talked about.
Luc’s so good looking, Luc’s so
amazing.
She
adored him. I always pretend to be disinterested when he’s around
and I’m sure he thinks I’m a stuck up cow. Pa’s voice interrupts my
thoughts.

‘
Luc found her next door,
in their poolhouse. It was an accident. She … she fell through the
glass door …’

‘
What? That doesn’t sound
right. How can you fall through a door?’

‘
I don’t know, Riley. But
I’m bloody well going to find out. The guards are questioning Luc
right now. I’m going down there and I’m going to get some
answers.’

‘
Skye …’ I say. ‘It can’t
be true.’

Pa stands up. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. I’m
just going to check on your mother.’ He walks quickly from the room
and I know he’s crying again. He doesn’t want me to see.

What Pa told me doesn’t make
any sense. I have to speak to someone, to find out what happened.
Nothing feels real. I haven’t even cried. I open our front door and
walk down the driveway. Liam, the new guard, is standing outside
our house. I hesitate, wanting to know every terrible detail but at
the same time I can
’
t bear to find out.

‘
Liam!’ I call
out.

He looks across at me with awkward pity and
I can tell he’d rather be anywhere else than here with me, Skye’s
sister.

‘
Riley, I’m sorry about
Skye,’ he calls over, not making any move to come towards me. ‘I
can’t be talking to you about this though.’

‘
But she’s my sister. I’ve
got more right to know than you have.’ It comes out sounding
angrier than I meant.

Liam chews his lip and strides towards me.
He takes hold of my arm and leads me back up the drive and around
the side of the house. There’s a heat haze shimmering up off the
ground … or is it my vision blurring? He takes off his guard’s hat
and twirls it around nervously in his hands. A grade one buzz cut
shows off a nasty scar on his forehead where you can see the stitch
marks, but handsome features offset this bullet-proof exterior. I’m
pretty sure he’s the coolest person I know.

‘
Okay, I’ll tell you what
I know,’ he says. ‘But I don’t want to and it’s not
nice.’

* * * * *

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

*

Shalini Boland
graduated from Bournemouth University with a BA Honours degree in
Business Studies. She lives in Dorset with her husband and two sons
where she writes songs and novels (in between doing the school runs
and hanging out endless baskets of washing).

*

Her
second novel in the Marchwood Vampire Series
Thicker Than Blood
will be published
soon. For more information visit
www.shaliniboland.co.uk

*

Connect Online:

Follow on Twitter

http://twitter.com/#!/ShaliniBoland

Hidden
on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/Hidden.MarchwoodVampireSeries

Outside
on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/Outside.series

Acknowledgements

*

Lots of people
to thank and I don’t want to leave anybody out.

Firstly, it’s
got to be my gorgeous mum, who’s always been incredibly encouraging
about my writing and about my life in general.

Thanks also to
my late father who gave me the workaholic gene

and taught me
to always follow my dreams.

Endless thanks
to my husband, Pete Boland, who is my

strongest
champion. He’s also brave enough to also tell me

the bits he
didn’t
like and for that I’m so-o grateful.

Thanks to my
brother, Neil, and my best friend, Sarah Samuel,

for their
over-the-top enthusiasm. Love you both!

The writing
community on Harper Collins’ Authonomy site has really helped me
knock my story into shape. Among the most helpful and wonderful:
Amy Bates, Sessha Batto, Simon Betterton, Rachael Cox, Robert
Craven, Paul Dayton, Stella Deleuze, Becca Hamilton, Lorraine
Holloway, Gerry Johnston, Sian O’Leary, B. Lloyd, Lisa Scullard,
Brian Todd, Suzy Turner and T.L. Tyson. There are others … you know
who you are.

Thanks also to
the stupendously talented Simon Tucker

for such an
awesome book cover.