Blackfin Sky (12 page)

‘Thanks, Cam, but to be honest I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m at a bit of a dead end, information-wise.’

And things just keep getting weirder and weirder the more I dig for answers.

Their conversation turned to more normal things until Sky’s mum popped her head around the door and made it clear the noise was to cease immediately. For once, Sky was grateful. The tiredness she’d been feeling on and off all week had returned like a twenty-pound cat sitting on her head. She tuned out Cam’s occasional whispers asking if she was still awake, Bo’s gentle snores from across the room, and the shifting grains of the woodwork which seemed to be pointing toward the French windows.

She smiled and drew the covers more tightly around her. This was Sky’s life, her home.

But had Sky noticed the Blood House’s subtle message, she might not have drifted off to sleep; might instead have seen the dark figure standing in her father’s vegetable patch beneath her window. As it was, Sky was too tired to notice anything but the faint tinkling of bells calling her back to the woods.

* * * * *

The music grew louder and louder as Sky blinked. Lights flashed, but she couldn’t imagine why they were still visible when she closed her eyes. Something cold and wet dripped onto her shoulder, and she looked up to find a trickle of orange liquid escaping through some kind of slats above her head.

Why am I dreaming about lying underneath … what are these? Stands?

Sky pushed herself up, wiping what felt like sawdust from the heels of her hands onto her pyjama bottoms.

‘
We need to kill him! It’s the only way we’ll ever be free.
’

The voice was whispering, but the urgent tone allowed it to carry over the loud music she could feel throbbing up through the ground beneath her. Sky tried to angle her neck to see who could have spoken, but the stands hid all but a faint strip of light and footwear from her.

‘
You know that’s impossible. At least until I’ve got the skull back
…’

This second voice was definitely a man’s, and somewhere nearby. Her feet were bare, so she picked her way carefully between metal posts and litter which had fallen through the slats above her head, towards where she thought the voices had come from. But when she reached the end of the grandstand, she saw a band playing on a small platform up ahead, their music loud enough to drown out the whispered conversation.

With the way the metal supports came together at the end of the row, Sky had to crawl to get out from under the pitched seating. The band member nearest to her gave Sky an odd look as he continued playing his trombone, and she retreated back against the striped tarpaulin covering the tent, where she was less visible.

Because she was definitely inside a tent. A huge, round affair with its topmost peak at least fifty feet in the air. Spying from her nook next to the grandstand, Sky watched as a colossus with rippling muscles plucked several large hatchets from a man-shaped corkboard. It looked like his act was over, and a group of bedraggled children heaved the lengths of chain the colossus had been using out of the arena. He stalked out after them, his back to the audience and massive shoulders hunched like he didn’t approve of the crowd’s applause.

The band finished their song as the next act entered the ring – two painfully thin women in sparkling leotards carrying swords of various shapes and sizes. With the band no longer playing, Sky heard voices coming from behind the tarpaulin at her back. She felt along the fabric until she found the edge and made a crack – small enough to peer through without being seen herself.

‘Listen, lady, I paid good money for you to find my daughter!’

A man was standing not far from where Sky stood spying, his arm wrapped around a sobbing woman as they huddled with a third person. Even in the flickering light cast by the carnival attractions outside the Big Top, Sky recognised the third person as her mother. Her hair was much longer and ironed straight, and she looked younger, somehow, despite the worry drawing her lips into a tight line. But it was definitely Lily Rousseau, and she appeared to be getting both barrels from the man facing her. The other woman – his wife, presumably – leaned against him, her shoulders trembling.

‘I did explain that I’d only be able to tell you what happened to her around the time she was taken. She left with a couple who looked a lot like you, and she wasn’t scared of them. That’s all I see.’

Sky wondered what her mother could possibly be talking about. She wondered, too, if she should walk out and speak to her – but was spared the decision. A hand like a mace fell on her shoulder, and it was with the lack of surprise of a dreamer that Sky looked up into her father’s face. He, too, seemed to have undergone some anti-ageing miracle, the laughter lines around his eyes and mouth looking far less pronounced than usual, his normally bald head now covered in a thick mat of red hair.

‘Excuse me, young lady, but I need to get past you.’

Not a single flicker of recognition passed through his eyes, though he did look a little perplexed by her pyjamas. Looking down at his billowing silk trousers and satin waistcoat, Sky realised this was the colossus she had just witnessed pulling hatchets from a target that he had presumably lodged there in the first place.

Gui made his way past her as she gaped, inserting himself between her mother and the other couple. But whatever had upset the husband was too powerful to be subdued by Gui’s imposing presence.

‘I will have the police down here so fast—’

Gui raised one hand, silencing him instantly. ‘I would strongly suggest you do not,
monsieur
. My friend has done as she promised, with fair warning that she might not see where your child is now. You have my sympathy, but there is nothing more to be done.’

The man spluttered at Gui’s blunt logic, delivered as it was in the rolling French accent he still kept. Eventually, the couple left, leaving Sky’s parents alone outside the tent.

‘You must not see these people alone any more, Lily. Not in your condition.’

The subtle distance in their body language made Sky instantly uncomfortable, as though they really were only friends, as Gui had told the man and his wife.

‘
Our next act will mesmerise and entrance, fascinate and perplex! Watch our amazing mind-and-body-bending double-act – Contortia and Mole Man!
’

Sky ducked back under the hanging tarpaulin just in time to catch the ringmaster staring straight at her from across the Big Top. He wore his blond hair slicked back beneath a top hat which somehow didn’t look ridiculous. His tailored red coat was fastened with brass buttons, shining like they had been freshly polished, though nowhere near as brightly as his eyes. There, contained lightning flashed as he dipped his head, the gesture halfway between confusion and acknowledgement.

And something about this man drew Sky in the same way the circus itself had called to her. Some core part of her knew this man, this place.

This is crazy. It’s a dream, that’s all. A freaky, messed-up dream.

Sky pinched herself on the arm, waiting for the scene to fade around her, but nothing happened. The ringmaster frowned as he watched her.

‘
Who are you?’
he mouthed as the contortionist flounced past him in her purple sequins and began stuffing herself into a lockbox so that her blindfolded partner could seal her inside.

The ringmaster stepped out of the spotlight and began circling the arena at the centre of the Big Top, not once taking his eyes from her. Something about those flashing eyes had Sky scrabbling for the edge of the tent flap.

I want to wake up now. I want to go home!

She darted out from under the tarpaulin, narrowly avoiding running into a young family whose children were sticky with candyfloss. Sky ducked around them, sparing a glance behind her in case the man was following. But when she turned it wasn’t the ringmaster she saw, or even the Big Top. A ghastly white face stared at her from the darkness beyond the tent, and Sky screamed as lightning flashed all around her, blinding her for a moment.

When her eyes cleared, the face had vanished, and the only light Sky saw was the flickering of the TV coming from the family room. Sky could tell she was in her own home once more. In the kitchen. In her pyjamas.

The sweetness of the relief she felt was followed by a sinking realisation:
I’m officially losing it.

A quick glance into the next room showed her father asleep on the sofa, a late-night reality TV show on mute. Careful not to wake him, Sky crept in to grab the old throw hanging over the back of the sofa and draped it over him. She leaned over to switch off the TV with the remote, and gasped. In the square of light reflected on the darkened TV screen, a dark outline appeared behind her. Sky whirled, accidentally kicking the corner of the sofa so that her father grunted in his sleep.

There was nobody there.

Only the large picture window stood behind her, the shadows of the garden absent of any sign that someone had recently disturbed them. Sky stood for a minute, watching, willing her heart to stop kicking her ribs. Still nothing moved outside the window.

Dad, wake up!

But Gui continued to sleep soundly on the sofa, and Sky refused to wake him because she’d been frightened by … what?

Finally deciding that she’d lost her mind and there was nothing more to be done about it, Sky went back upstairs to her room, tiptoed past her sleeping friends, and got back into her bed.

This is getting beyond weird now,
Sky thought as she lay staring at her ceiling in the dark, dead tired but too scared to sleep in case her dreams took her back to the circus. She knew it hadn’t really been a dream – the still-drying patch of orange Fanta sticking her cami top to her proved as much. The circus had burned to the ground, she had seen its charred shell in the woods with Sean. So there was no way she had simply sleepwalked back there, either.

None of this makes any kind of sense.

And if the itching was anything to go by, Sky would have some explaining to do when Lily discovered the sawdust in Sky’s pyjama bottoms.

10

Lack of sleep, or at least a lack of restful sleep, was taking a hard toll on Sky. She watched Miss Schwarz writing out equations on the board at the front of the class, the movement of her red fingernails almost hypnotic. The lines on the board blurred as Sky’s eyes wandered in and out of focus.

‘Now make sure you copy this down, because – hint, hint – it may just be in your mock exams.’

Sky picked up her pencil, her head spinning. Even the hard surface of the desk looked so tempting. If she could just rest her eyes for a moment, she’d feel much better…

No, no, no! I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to be lost again…

‘Where did you go, Skylar Rousseau?’

Sky jerked her head up off the table to find the whole class, including Miss Schwarz, staring at her. The teacher frowned at the sight of Sky so pale, those dark circles making her look like the ghost the rumours said she was. She leaned in across Sky’s desk and lowered her voice.

‘Tell me. I must know – where did you go? I need to know!’ Her words had become a hiss, her face twisted so that she looked much older than her forty-or-so years. Sky edged away.

‘I’m not sure what you mean, Miss Schwarz.’

‘I think you should stay after class so we can talk about—’

‘Miss Schwarz, can’t you see she’s not feeling well?’ Sky jumped at hearing Sean’s voice behind her. He had been sitting in the far corner across the room a moment ago, but now Sky craned to look at him and saw he was standing over her almost protectively.

Sky ducked her head, her cheeks flushed.

‘I really think you should…’

‘Of course, I’ll take Sky to the nurse’s office, if you insist.’

Sean deftly grabbed Sky’s books and her bag, then steered her out of class before Miss Schwarz could do anything more than gape. Outside in the corridor, Sky snatched her bag from Sean’s hands.