Blackfin Sky (29 page)

The path leading down to the promenade was cut into the green, so that once a person was on the concrete path edging the seafront, they had a grass verge behind them to buffer the worst of the cold wind blowing in from the ocean. But to get to the promenade, Sky either had to run straight past the Swivellers, or jump ten feet from the verge down onto the concrete path.

Her choice wasn’t really a choice at all.

Sky glanced once more at the Swivellers before making her dash for the verge. They were all standing as still as they had been before, none of them speaking, simply staring at something down on the wooden pier. Though Sky squinted in the dim light cast by the moon and a few grimy electric lanterns along the path, she couldn’t see what had captivated them. There was no movement on the pier; either her earlier self hadn’t yet reached it, or she was already drowning in the water.

Unless something else happened to me in between,
she realised. The witnesses who had said it was only a few minutes between when she had fled the party and when Sean had set out after her could have been mistaken. Twenty minutes could easily seem like five in hindsight.

And had Sean even gone directly to the pier? How had he known she would be there?

He knew me well enough to guess where I’d go.

She paused at the verge, looking down at the concrete below, glad she was wearing jeans to protect her knees if she did go sprawling. Sky braced herself and dropped.

She hadn’t seen it in the shadows, but she was grateful for the wedge of windblown sand that cushioned her impact as she landed neatly on her feet with barely a sound.

Kicking sand from one of her boots, she looked over towards the pier.

Now
she saw what the Swivellers were looking at.

25

At the foot of the cut leading down onto the promenade was a man. He stood just where the sandy path bled onto the concrete, so would have been in the line of sight of the Swivellers standing directly behind him, but invisible from where Sky had been.

On instinct, she pressed herself back against the verge, thankful the position of the moon allowed her at least a narrow strip of shadow to hide in. Holding her breath, she watched from her hiding spot.

What the hell is he doing?

All she could see of the man’s face was a sliver of jaw and ear, and those were cast in the shadow of a bowler hat.

Fear clenched her stomach muscles into a tight ball. Almost as though he had sensed her presence, Gage turned his head to the side and cocked it, listening. It was definitely him.

He wore none of the face paint which had given him the skeletal appearance of a mime, but he was no less frightening. His skin sagged around the hollows of his cheeks, his eyes sunken in his head until all she could see of them was the fierce pinpoint of light spearing outward. Sixteen years may have passed since Sky had seen Gage at the circus, but there was nothing faded, nothing less severe about the man.

Gage held up one bony, pale hand and pointed out towards the end of the pier, where the crashing waves and wind seemed to inhale the silence.

Sky saw herself, her earlier self. She was standing at the furthest point, arms hugging her body against the cold. Sky remembered it now, remembered feeling stupid to be out sulking in the wind on her birthday.

Gage’s hand shook with effort, and his teeth showed in a grimace of rage. Shoving his hand in his pocket, he turned, seeming about to head back up onto the green. But then he noticed the Swivellers, still standing in a tidy row, their black eyes fixed on Gage’s figure like they were under a spell.

Under his spell….
Wasn’t that what Severin had said?

So why was Sky immune to his mind-control? Because that was surely what he had been trying to do, pointing a shaking finger at her as she stood oblivious at the end of the pier.

He can’t reach me without the skull.

The amber skull, which he didn’t have now because Severin had stolen it from him sixteen years earlier.

Does that chunk of amber really make so much of a difference?

The Swivellers walked toward Gage, who stood waiting for them with both arms outstretched like he was greeting long-lost friends.

Then it struck Sky: the Swivellers. If what Severin had told her of Gage’s ability was true, and he was at this very moment using it on the Swivellers, then it must have driven them mad.

That was why they dug up my grave and kept the corpse. Why they tried to bury me alive.

She wasn’t denying that the Swiveller brothers had all been a little creepy before the night of her party, but they had certainly taken a pretty sharp descent into psychopathy after that. Gage’s influence had to be the reason.

Would that be reason enough to kill them?
she wondered.
Gage could have used his mind tricks to make Felix drive over the cliff.

The idea curdled in her brain. If Gage was getting rid of the evidence of what he’d done, surely she would be next.

Except all this seems to have been about activating my pathfinding ability, not killing me. Could that have been another reason for Gage to kill the Swivellers? Because they’d tried to bury me again? But what does Gage want with
me
?

Too many questions, and they almost distracted her from seeing the Swivellers’ advance. As they reached Gage, each dropped down onto all fours next to him, looking out toward where her other self stood staring down into the water at the end of the pier.

Wait – are they…? Are they seriously
growling
?

Stranger still, Gage reached down to pat the top of Jordy’s head before pointing silently to the pier. All four boys leapt to their feet and ran for the boardwalk. Even above the sound of the wind and the waves lashing the shore, Sky heard their hollow whoops.

Sky’s other self must have heard the noise, too. She walked towards them, unconcerned. Of course, back then Sky had had no reason to fear the Swivellers, and had probably thought Randy and his brothers were simply goofing around on the promenade.

That was about to change.

A choking sound drew Sky’s attention, and she looked round to find Miss Schwarz standing almost parallel with her hiding place. But Miss Schwarz hadn’t noticed Sky. Her eyes were fixed on the ghostly appearance of Gage in his bowler hat, her eyes looking like they might burst from their sockets. Then she flew at him.

‘You bastard! You let him die!’

Gage turned just as she was about to crash into him, her hands tensed like claws to rip at his face. But Miss Schwarz just stopped, her limbs frozen.

It’s just like little Jimmy – Jared – did at the circus!

The scene before Sky was uncannily similar. But what should she do? Could she break Gage’s hold over Miss Schwarz if she distracted him somehow, as the man with the toffee apple had done?

Before Sky could decide what to do, Gage took a step toward Miss Schwarz and reached into her pocket. The smile curving his mouth at the corners was the ugliest expression Sky had ever seen on another person; it was sadistic, cold, filled with spite.

He only broke eye contact with Miss Schwarz long enough to open the purse he had pulled from her pocket. He drew out a small square of paper and stuffed the purse back into her coat.

What did he just take from her?

The question was answered as Gage held it up in front of Miss Schwarz’s staring eyes and flipped it over. Although it was too far away for Sky to see clearly, she could tell it was a photograph.

With a twitch of his eyebrows, he tore the photograph straight down the middle and tossed the two halves into the wind. Throughout all this, Miss Schwarz didn’t move a muscle. Her hands remained raised, talon-like, near Gage’s face, yet with a dismissive gesture he walked down toward the pier, where the Swivellers were slowly herding the other Sky into the corner near the guardrail.

Sky expected Miss Schwarz to follow Gage when her limbs unfroze.

She did
not
expect the woman who had been so utterly desperate a minute earlier to turn calmly and walk off in the direction of the school.

More mind tricks,
Sky realised. Was this why Miss Schwarz had denied seeing anything that night? Had Gage’s trickery dulled or even erased her memory of the encounter? It would also explain why Miss Schwarz had been acting so strangely since Sky’s return.

Something fluttered next to Sky’s shoe, and she leaned down to pick it up. It was one half of the torn photograph, clearly years old from the dog-eared state of it. Although Sky could only see half of the face of the little boy in the photograph, there was no denying that it was Jared – the little boy with the sharp, grey eyes, who could control the will of the wolves – just like Gage.

Surely the little boy wasn’t their son? It would make sense, she supposed. His ability to manipulate Sky’s thoughts, to get inside her mind, was too uncannily like what Gage could do. Except, why would Miss Schwarz be asking Gage what had happened to him? Wouldn’t Miss Schwarz know who Jared was?

She thought back to when Jared had asked her who Miss Schwarz was at the diner. She’d thought nothing of it at the time, but now she wondered: had Jared seen something familiar in Miss Schwarz? He’d mentioned being raised by his grandfather, though…

‘Randy, what are you – aah!’

Sky watched in horrified fascination as Randy body-slammed her former self to the wooden boards. She could tell the other Sky was winded from the way she lay, her mouth open and gasping for air, trying to bring her arms up to push Randy off her. But Randy wasn’t interested in letting Sky catch her breath.

He grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted her head up off the boards, then slammed it back down with a sickening thud. The other Sky yelped and tried to curl in on herself, to roll out from under the boy’s weight, but he had her pinned between his legs. His brothers edged nearer, scavengers waiting for the killing blow to land.

Gage was still some distance away at the foot of the pier, but Sky could tell even from where she hid that he was enjoying the scene before him. That horrid, twisted grin tugged at the sagging flesh of his face.

Felix had reached the prone Sky’s foot and tugged at the boot with his teeth. Sensing the interference, Randy snarled at his brother. The other Sky whimpered at the sound, but that only made Randy turn his attention back to her.

I remember that sound.

Gage strode forward, sweeping his arm to the side in a gesture which somehow carried the Swivellers away from her other self and to heel. Sky watched herself scrabble backwards, obviously disoriented from the knock to her head. She backed up right against the guardrail, then stopped.

With a mocking finger-wave, Gage called his wolf-boys on, and they leapt toward her. They snarled and snapped dementedly, surging forward until the other Sky, obviously petrified, clambered up onto the rail. One step, two.

She had reached the point of no return, and gravity did the rest. But just as Sky expected to see her plummet down into the dark water, there was a blast of light.

By the time her eyes adjusted to the darkness again, she had heard a splash which told her a body very much like her own had hit the water below.

That flash must have been the point at which I stole another Sky’s life for three months.

Even though there was no way Sky could have known that at the time, and there was nothing she could have done to alter it, the guilt of having someone else – even though that someone else was still
her
in some sense – suffer the end which should have been Sky’s… that just wasn’t something she could swallow.

Sky shrank against the grass verge behind her, hot tears turning icy as the wind blasted them from her cheeks. All had gone quiet on the pier, and she knew Gage and the Swivellers would be heading back towards her in a matter of moments. Sean hadn’t yet arrived, but she knew that it couldn’t be long before he did. Before he dragged what he thought was
her
from the icy cold water and tried to save her.