Tide (22 page)

Maybe that’s what happens to all Midnights, sooner or later. One by one the people we love are picked apart and destroyed.

Something cold and steely blossomed in her heart. She would not let all this loss annihilate her. It would be easy to give in to the pain, but she wouldn’t – she’d turn the grief into strength. She would be tempered, like metal in water. From the day she’d been told about her parents’ death, to her first hunt, to Sean’s appearance in her life and throughout the destruction of Cathy’s Valaya, during those terrible times a new Sarah had emerged. The little girl lying alone in an empty house had grown into a resilient young woman who had learnt to face her destiny. Even the way she walked had changed, the way she held her body straight and proud.

Like Morag.

A small, soft nugget of the old Sarah was still nesting in her heart – the girl who longed to be loved – but it was hidden from sight. The new Sarah stood by herself.

Except when Nicholas was around. That’s when her strength ebbed away somehow, albeit temporarily. Why did he have that effect on her?

And most of all, where were her dreams? Were they lost forever?

She shook her head at those uncomfortable thoughts and opened the wooden box again. She slipped the butterfly earrings into her ears. That’s what she was, a chrysalis that had turned into a butterfly. And she wouldn’t let anyone steal her newfound strength.

Sarah took hold of the candlestick again and closed the door on her former hideaway. She’d leave the little memories where they were. She felt they belonged there.

She wasn’t ready to go back to bed, to share her space with Nicholas. He was fast asleep anyway, with no sign of nightmares anymore.

Who is Martyna?
she asked herself as she closed the heavy wooden door of the music room.

She hesitated for a moment, then crossed the corridor and pushed the heavy, two-panelled door of the grand hall open. The light of the candle, flickering with the omnipresent draughts, seemed very small in the vast room. The ceiling was crisscrossed with black wooden beams, and the polished floor was covered in precious, exotic-looking rugs. Beams of golden light glimmered against the ceiling, the candlelight reflected in the crystal chandelier.

Sarah walked on slowly, turning around to illuminate the whole room – a stag head hanging on the far wall, together with tapestries and paintings. Suddenly, Sarah remembered her grandfather, Hamish, saying how much he would have loved to have demon spoils hanging on the walls – but he’d never been able to have them, because the Surari ended up dissolved in the Blackwater. Sarah shuddered, thinking of severed demon heads hanging on the walls of this place, watching them as they ate around the huge oak table.

She contemplated the velvet curtains drawn over the windows, a colour somewhere between crimson and burgundy, and then she moved the fabric aside slightly, to get a view of the beach. The sea and the sky were fused in blackness, pale clouds moving slowly like frayed, ghostly sails. Something stirred in Sarah’s mind, the hint of a memory, something important, something she had forgotten, dancing at the edge of her consciousness.

In her mind’s eye, Sarah saw herself as a small girl standing on the watermark, wrapped in her red coat and scarf, holding her grandmother’s hand. It had been the day before Morag died, when they’d walked on the beach together.

Sarah shook her head slightly, trying to clear her thoughts, but the feeble memory was gone, too insubstantial to be held long enough to know what it meant. Sarah frowned.

The candle swayed violently from the draught that seeped through the window and threatened to engulf the curtain. Sarah jerked the flame away from the fabric as quickly as she could. When her eyes moved from the candle to the room again, she gasped. The hall had somehow turned into a blackened shell, covered in debris and ashes. Her feet felt wet, and she looked down to see that she was standing ankle-deep in Blackwater. The curtains beside her were now threadbare and frayed, crumbling to ash. Sarah panted, breathless and dizzy from the sudden vision. She blinked hard several times, and the vision was gone.

She stood under the impossibly high ceiling, the stag head looking on with its glassy, indifferent eyes, trying to steady her heart – she’d seen the whole place burnt down and destroyed. Was that a vision of what would have happened had she not moved the candle as quickly as she had? Or was it of something still to happen? It wouldn’t be the first time a vision came to her when she was awake, and with her dreams having disappeared, maybe her gift had found a way to tell her what she needed to know.

What she needed now, for sure, was some tea to steady her nerves. She looked at her watch, twenty past three in the morning. She turned her back to the stag head and its staring eyes, and stepped out of the grand hall, pulling the thick door closed behind her. She stopped for a moment, trying to catch her still ragged breath.

She turned left on her way to the kitchen, considering how frozen her feet were, but something made her stop in front of her grandmother’s study. She hesitated for a second, and lifted her free hand to feel her butterfly earring dreamily – then, on impulse, she opened the door and stepped in.

She inhaled the scent of old books and damp that had always been the signature of that room. The candlelight illuminated the enormous bookshelves and the dark wooden desk at the farthest corner, where Sarah had found the letters. A painting of wild horses hung over the desk. Sarah’s eyes lingered on it. She walked on slowly, holding the candle so that its light would fall on the painting. The elusive memory that had visited her in the grand hall came back, shimmering faintly and disappearing, then reappearing for a second and fading again.

It’s important. Remember.

Sarah jumped out of her skin. The words had resounded in her mind as clearly as if they’d been spoken aloud. The hand holding the candle was trembling now.

“Can’t sleep?”

Sarah jumped again, turning around with a gasp. Nicholas’s tall, muscular body was framed in the doorway.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, advancing towards her. He slipped his hands under her jumper, feeling the skin on her shoulders. Sarah fixed her eyes on his obsidian ones.

“I woke up and you were gone,” he said.

“Sorry. I just wanted to have some time alone … with the house. If that makes sense.” She smiled apologetically.

“Am I interfering? Ruining your moment with the house?” He smiled back, his voice soft and dark.

“No, of course not,” she began, but his lips were on hers and she couldn’t speak anymore.

Remember. It’s important.

But her thoughts were unravelling already.

Take all I have

And when there’s nothing left for me to give

I’ll give you more

Because

He isn’t you

Sean

So this is the day after the night before. After realizing that Nicholas was sleeping in Sarah’s room, I wasted the rest of last night feeling sorry for myself.

Today Elodie asked me to teach her to trace the runes, and to my surprise, Sarah joined us. We spent all afternoon practising in the living room, with Sarah and I resolutely avoided meeting each other’s gaze. And with Nicholas looking on. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere in the room. But the runes may serve Sarah and Elodie well. We can’t be distracted by our feelings.

However, it doesn’t help that Sarah’s hair is loose down her back and she’s wearing the blue top I love, the one that shows her shoulders. She might as well be carving the runes into my heart.

“Right. Try this. It’s the most basic one.” I guide Elodie’s hand, tracing a simple rune.

They’re eager learners, especially Sarah – Elodie takes a little longer. Still, it doesn’t come easily to either of the girls. It’s strange for me to see, really. I never found the runes that difficult. I’m surprised to see how slow, how weak other people can be when they trace them. Even two powerful heirs like Sarah and Elodie. Maybe it’s because they just started and they need practice. Still, even the most basic ones seem challenging.

“No. Look. That won’t work. You need to be more focused.”

Elodie is getting frustrated. “You make it seem so easy!”

“It
is
easy! It is to me, at least.”

“To you, yes. Harry always said your use of the runes was incredible.”

I shrug. “Maybe. But you can learn, too, like I did.”

Elodie crosses her arms. “We’re useless, let’s face it.”

“Hey, speak for yourself. Look.” Sarah repeats the basic rune. The knife flies out of her hand, making a graceful arc across the room and wedging itself into the wooden floor.

“Duck!” laughs Nicholas.

“Ha ha.” Sarah walks over to where the knife fell, her heels clacking on the floor.

“Useless, like I said. How do you do it, Sean?” says Elodie.

“I don’t know. All you need to do is learn the different signs, really. Harry taught me, I can teach you.”

“Harry wasn’t as good as you, though. Remember Takeo Ayanami? He was so in awe of you when he saw you sending people to sleep with your runes.”

“Nonsense. It’s like playing an instrument. You have to practise, that’s all,” I insist.

“I play an instrument,” Sarah says. “I know what practice can do. But I still don’t get this. It’s as if I asked you to use the Blackwater. It won’t work.”

“It’s not like the Blackwater. The Blackwater is a power, like Niall’s song or Elodie’s poison. This is a
skill
.” I stress the word.

“So you keep telling us!” laughs Elodie.

“Maybe if you say ‘skill’ often enough, we’ll get it!” echoes Sarah.

“And what about the red ribbons?” Elodie waves her fingers in the air. “The ones that appeared when the soil demons attacked us?”

“That’s not supposed to happen. No idea what it was, or whether it’ll happen again. Right, lesson over, pupils dismissed.”

Niall has come into the living room and is leaning against the fireplace, his arms crossed. I see him look at me in a way that unnerves me, with eyes that see all the way into my soul. I’ve watched him and he does it with everybody. It’s disquieting.

“Did your parents have any powers, Sean?” he asks me in his thick Irish accent.

“No. Well, not that I know of.” I shrug.

“Right,” he says, looking at me with that strange, watery gaze he has, as if he were looking straight into the sea.

If we pretend, it’s good enough for me

The illusion we create

Instead of what it is

“I don’t know what half of this stuff is. Chestnuts?” Sean shrugged.

Sean, Mike and Niall were in the kitchen helping Sarah survey the food Mrs McArthur had provided. She needed to make sure they had everything for a proper Christmas dinner, with a turkey and all the trimmings. They had tried to argue with her that it was surreal to go to all the trouble of making a traditional Christmas meal when they could be attacked any minute, but Sarah put her foot down. This was her house. She was going to cook, and she was going to have a proper festive celebration.

There was something desperate about her determination. Sean knew how upset she was, how she was trying to cling to a semblance of normal life. Her first Christmas without her parents. Maybe this would help her think of her aunt Juliet a bit less … and of her cousins, Sally and Siobhan, left motherless. All because Anne had married a Midnight. And because Sarah couldn’t defend her.

They had been over the same ground again and again, and Sarah was adamant. They would celebrate Christmas. They were alive, and together. In some warped way, it made sense.

“You don’t know what chestnuts are?” laughed Mike, looking up at Sean from the potatoes he was stacking.

“I do know what chestnuts are. I just don’t know what you do with them!” Sean protested.

“You make stuffing. For the turkey. Oh, thank goodness – chipolatas! She hasn’t forgotten.” Sarah had her head in the freezer, little icy clouds wafting from its drawers.

“Thank goodness!” echoed Niall.

“I know! It just wouldn’t be the same without chipolatas wrapped in bacon,” Sarah continued, pulling the icy package from the open freezer.

“I meant thank goodness for this!” Niall was standing by an open cupboard door with an amber-honey bottle of whisky grasped in one hand. Laphroaig, one of the Islay whiskies. He gestured to shelves full of similar bottles. “Bless Mrs McArthur. She knows her whisky.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. Of course. We have a few of those. Just try not to drink yourself asleep. In case they attack and we can’t wake you up.”

“Me? I can hold my drink, young lady. You’ll never see me passed out.”

“True. I can vouch for that!” said Mike. “Hey.”

Elodie had walked into the kitchen, her golden hair tied in a knot, her lithe body clad in a long, white woollen top and jeans.

“Sarah. Where can I find more peat for my fire, please? I’ve run out. And it’s so cold.” She was pale and shivery.

Niall smiled at her. “Oh, it’s the deadly princess. Hello,” he said. “I’ll get your briquettes. Care to share a coffee with me? I was just making one.” He spooned some granules into a mug.

“And what’s this?” Sean, still wearing a puzzled expression, held up something he’d found in the fruit bowl. “Do you know, Elodie?” He reached out his hand to offer her the fruit.

Elodie turned to look, and all the blood drained from her face. Gingerly she took the red fruit from Sean’s hand, locking her eyes on his and brushing his fingers with hers as she did so. Then she turned and ran out of the kitchen without a word.

Mike shrugged his shoulders. “What was that all about?”

“No idea,” replied Sean, disconcerted, and ran after Elodie at once.

Sarah’s gaze followed Sean as he left the room. She bit her lip, then turned back to her list. “Right. Where was I?” she said resolutely.