Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans: Book 4) (23 page)

I’d thought, perhaps, a modern art museum wasn’t the most
appealing of destinations for a twenty-year-old guy on a date. But then, I
wasn’t exactly a hardcore modern art museum visitor myself. It was
this
museum I loved, had loved since my mum first brought me here when I was a kid.
And it soon became apparent that this place gave Luke ‘the feels’ too.

He ground to a halt on the path leading to the Foundation to
take it in: the unique architecture, angular, bizarre and blazing white.

‘My parents would have loved this,’ he said.

Then, inside, as we roamed from room to room, he was full of
awe, for the experimentations of new, upcoming artists but most of all, like
me, for the works of Miró himself. I’d always felt that standing before one of
his paintings or sculptures was like seeing through the eyes of a child again –
with abandon and happiness and passion.

We stopped before ‘The Gold of the Azure’.

‘I’ve always seen two eyes, a big blue nose and a smiley
mouth when I look at this,’ said Luke. ‘But Mum always swore it was about
cosmology.’

‘My mum, when we came, said it was about the male and the
female.’

‘Maybe it can be all things at once.’

‘Maybe that’s the point.’

We stood quietly for a while, absorbing the painting. It was
the first time we’d been still and quiet all day – we’d been relentless in our
quest to see everything in the city. Now all there was to see was oil paint on
canvas, and that should have been calming. And yet, as I looked at Miró’s work,
I struggled to relax and be in the moment. I felt unsettled, pulled in another
direction.

It was the lines, I realised, and the shapes they formed.
They reminded me of paintings back home – in the cottage, at Hollythwaite, even
that sketch on the napkin that my mother had kept for all these years.

Why had she kept it? Why wasn’t Gabe firmly in her past? Why
was her room blue now? Why were those pictures on her wall? Why had she locked
them away before – what was she afraid of? Did she love him still? Would it
never be over for her?

And him, Gabe. His reaction to the napkin, his words on the
beach. He thought of her too. He cared for her. What was it he’d said? He’d
respected my mother’s wishes and kept his distance.
Until now
.

‘Is something wrong?’ said Luke, squeezing my hand.

‘Yes,’ I replied without thinking.

‘What is it?’ he said urgently. ‘Do you need to go – is it…?’

I shook my head. Tried to smile. ‘Let’s get a drink,’ I
said.

In the restaurant, we sat at a table in the corner. I toyed
with the teapot and thought of my mum, who loved teapots. When we’d been to the
Tate Modern in London she’d bought me a ridiculously expensive one by a famous
artist.

‘Scarlett,’ said Luke, ‘you need to tell me what’s up.’

‘Nothing,’ I said automatically.

‘Something,’ he said.

‘No, nothing – it’s probably nothing.’

‘If it’s bothering you then it’s something, but you don’t
want to tell me about it because we’re here and it’s great and you don’t want
the day to end.’

Reluctantly, I nodded.

He rapped a teaspoon lightly on my knuckles. ‘It has to end
sometime, Scarlett. You know that. Don’t end it by closing down on me.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re right. It’s just... I’m thinking
about my mum. With everything Gabe told me, the logical next step for me is to
talk to her, ask her for her side of the story. But I can’t do that without
opening a massive can of worms. My tongue’s tied. And Gabe knows that.’

‘So...?’

‘So what if I could talk to her? What if that was possible?
Gabe said he’d respected my mother’s wishes and kept his distance from us all
until
now
. He’s crossed the line with Sienna. He’s crossed the line with me...’

Luke was frowning. ‘You think he intends to walk back into
your mum’s life next? Why? I mean, I didn’t get that impression yesterday.’

‘Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I don’t even know why
the idea came into my head. It was this, I guess,’ I said, holding up a napkin.
‘His reaction to Mum keeping the one he’d scribbled on. He obviously thinks
it’s meaningful.’

‘Well, I suppose it is, if she’s framed it and put it on the
wall.’

‘But whatever Mum might feel – however much she may think
about the past – for her it’s just that: past. Gone. For
him
, though... “We
can only go forwards. With hope.” That’s what he said. What exactly is he
hoping for? Me in his life?
Her?
Luke, he can’t go near her. He can’t!
She’s doing so well – she’s made a life for herself. To see him again would rip
her apart. He’d break her all over again!’

Luke hushed me, and I realised belatedly that people were
gawping at the ranting girl in the corner.

Turning my back on them, I finished quietly: ‘I don’t want
him near her. I don’t want him involved in her life. He’d ruin everything.’

‘Funny,’ said Luke. ‘That’s pretty much exactly what Sienna
said to Gabe before she left the beach.’

We stared at each other.

‘It’s probably nothing, though,’ I said. ‘There was no
suggestion that Gabe wanted to see my mother. None at all. And even if he did
want to, he’d tell me first – surely. This is just silly paranoia.’

‘I don’t know, Scarlett. You’re clearly worried.’

‘But I don’t know why. Especially here. With you. On a date.
In
Spain
!’

He smiled a little, but then asked seriously, ‘Where’s your
mum now?’

‘Hollythwaite. She mentioned on the phone last night that
she had a meeting with a supplier this afternoon.’

‘Then you should go there.’

‘What – now?’

‘Yes now. You’ll feel better if you see her.’

‘But our date –’

‘Is over. You’re tired, Scarlett. You know this place is our
last stop for the day. And you know we have to go back. We can’t hide in
Spain
forever.’ He leaned in and kissed my forehead. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘Have a
coffee with your mum.’

‘I can’t just turn up there,’ I protested. ‘Pop in – without
a car – with no reason for the visit. Sit and drink coffee with her and skirt
around a million topics of conversation I’m desperate to raise but can’t.’

‘You can,’ he said. ‘If you want to.’

I eyed him thoughtfully. ‘Why are you nudging me to go? I
thought you, of all people, would apply cool logic and tell me I’m a worrywart.’

‘Usually, I suppose, I would.’

‘So why not now?’

‘Because it’s your mum, Scarlett.’

He didn’t have to say any more; I knew exactly what he meant.
He wouldn’t spell it out like Cara had, but their loss had taught him how
precious mothers are.

‘It doesn’t hurt to check in on her,’ he said. ‘See how she
is. If she’s acting strange, upset, like he’s been in touch, then you can start
talking. You never know – maybe you won’t need to skirt around the truth.
Maybe, finally, you can have an honest conversation.’

I hadn’t thought of that; I’d been too caught up in wanting
to protect my mother from the pain of her past. But that was a knee-jerk
reaction. Did she actually need my protection? She’d come a long way this past
year. She wasn’t fragile like she’d once been. And if the root of her depression
had been Gabe all along, the truth could obliterate the shadows once and for
all. If she knew, finally, what Gabe was – and what Sienna was – and what I
was...

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’

Luke leaned across the table and kissed me sweetly, gently,
and I knew he meant this to be the last kiss of our date. Only it wasn’t the
kiss I’d remember. We’d had that kiss an hour ago in front of Miró’s ‘The
Morning Star’, when England lay forgotten, hundreds of miles away.

‘Right,’ said Luke, all business now, ‘you’ll have to come
back for me, or drop me off somewhere.’

‘I’m not doing that.’

‘You can’t just leave me on some Spanish hill, Scarlett!’

‘No, I mean I want you to come with me. If… if you don’t
mind.’

The look in his eyes said it all – I’d let him in, of my own
accord; I was asking him to be there for me.

‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Let’s find a
quiet spot.’

I brought us to the lane leading to Hollythwaite. I wasn’t
sure that it would be deserted, but I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be spotted
arriving where the hedgerow butted against a broad oak tree. Judging by the
lack of shocked gasps following our arrival, I was right.

‘I will never get used to that,’ said Luke, extracting
himself from the grabbing branches of a bush. ‘One minute a Spanish art museum
rooftop, the next an English country lane. It’s really, really bizarre.’ He saw
my expression and added: ‘And brilliant. I can’t wait for our next date. New
York?’

‘Never been,’ I said, ‘so I can’t Travel there. How about
Paris?’

His eyes lit up at the thought, and as we walked along the
lane he began planning the date, from where we’d go to what we’d eat (Luke was
very passionate on the subject of French gastronomy). I was just putting my
foot down on eating snails when we reached the short drive leading to
Hollythwaite’s gates.

‘But how do you know they’re gross unless you try them?’
Luke protested as I keyed in the entry code on the security post.

Beep.
Access denied.
Mum must have changed the code.

‘Because they’re slimy slugs with shells,’ I told him as I
hit the intercom buzzer.

‘But you have to at least try new things. Maybe
escargot
will be the best food you’ve ever tasted.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing can beat that Spanish peach.’

He smiled and ducked his head to kiss me. I broke away.

‘No one’s answering. She must be out. But...’ I frowned.

‘What is it?’

‘I felt someone here. As we approached.’

‘Felt someone? I don’t understand.’

‘It’s hard to explain. People – people who aren’t Ceruleans,
I mean – they pull at me. In a crowded place, it’s overwhelming. In a quiet
place, it’s easier to feel the pull of individual people.’

Luke stared at me. ‘You feel like that all the time?
Constantly pulled at?
I
make you feel that way?’

‘I’ve got used to it,’ I said. ‘It’s okay.’ I focused on
pressing the buzzer again. ‘I was sure I felt someone...’

Luke walked up to the gates and peered through, then
beckoned me over. When I reached him he said, ‘Listen.’

Straining my ears, I made out music. It sounded like Muse.

‘She is home,’ said Luke. ‘Maybe the intercom’s broken at
her end. Try phoning her.’

Two unanswered calls later I gave up. I stood on the drive,
staring through the gates at the lodge just metres away.

‘I don’t feel anyone,’ I said.

‘Maybe she’s up at the house,’ Luke suggested. ‘If she’s
meeting a supplier, wouldn’t she do it there? Come on.’ He held out his hand. ‘Get
us in and we’ll walk up and meet her.’

Without stopping to think, I took his hand, visualised our
destination and took us there. Staggering, I ricocheted off something hard and
Luke caught me.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘easy.’ He leaned me against the something
hard – an enormous Buddha statue – peered at me and frowned. ‘You’ve
overdone it,’ he said. ‘All the people today, all the Travelling. You’re dead
on your feet. We have to go. To the cottage. You need to rest. Scarlett...
Scarlett
.
Are you listening to me?’

I wasn’t. I was looking past him, across my mother’s
deserted Zen garden, to the lodge.

‘The back door,’ I said. ‘It’s open.’

Luke turned to look, but I was already up and walking across
the lawn. He caught up with me as I passed a picnic rug on which lay a
folded-up newspaper and a sunhat.

‘Mum?’ I called over the music as I approached the door. ‘It’s
Scarlett.’

I stepped into the kitchen. Stopped. On the table was half a
fruit cake, two crumb-littered plates and two tall glasses. One of the glasses
was on its side and cranberry juice was dripping onto the floor.

Luke nudged past me. ‘Well, she’s certainly about,’ he said.
He turned off the CD player on the windowsill. The lodge fell silent.

‘This is wrong,’ I said, staring at the puddle on the floor
tiles. ‘Something’s wrong.’

Luke grabbed a roll of paper towels and began blotting up
the mess. ‘She probably just ducked out to get something,’ he said.

I walked past him, to the hallway. Empty. The living room.
Empty. The yoga studio. Empty. The stairs creaked beneath my tread – and
Luke’s. All the doors upstairs were closed. I eased open the bathroom door.
Empty. I checked the guest room. Empty.

I tried the door to my mother’s bedroom. It was locked.

‘Perhaps she’s taking a nap,’ said Luke.

I pounded on the door, hard, and yelled, ‘Mum!
Mum!
’

Silence.

‘You did say she used to take sleeping pills.’

‘Not any more.’

Luke rattled the doorknob. ‘Elizabeth?... She’s not here.’
He turned around. ‘Scarlett, you’re as white as a ghost! Come on now, take us
home. To the cottage.’

He held out his hand, but I was backing away, out of his
reach. And quickly, ignoring the concern in his eyes, I closed my own and
pictured a patchwork quilt spread neatly on a double bed.

I felt the air shift.

I opened my eyes.

I discovered why it was I’d known my mother wasn’t nearby
and yet I’d been unable to leave.

A terrible, guttural cry shattered the silence as I fell to
my knees beside my mother, here after all, here in her little blue room before
her wall of memories, here, right here beneath my grasping hands.

But gone.

If it weren’t for Luke, I may never have moved again. I may
have sat there for a lifetime, my mother’s head in my lap, and died a little
more with every breath I took that she did not take.

But when he heard my cry and I didn’t reply to his shouts,
he broke down the door to my mother’s room.

‘Oh God,’ he said as he took in the scene, and then he threw
himself onto his knees beside us and bowed his head over my mum and he was
still… still… still.

‘She’s alive!’ he said, erupting back up again. ‘Scarlett,
she’s alive. But barely. You have to do something.’

He pulled my mother off my lap and laid her on the floor.
Her head left a dark stain on my jeans.

‘She’s dead,’ I said.

‘No. There’s a pulse. It’s barely there, but I felt it. You
have to heal her – now!’ When I didn’t move, he pushed my hands onto my
mother’s chest. ‘Hurry! Scarlett,
heal her
. Or she’ll die, and you can’t
bring her back.’

His words pierced the fog. He was wrong. She was already
dead. And I could bring her back.

I could bring her back.

I closed my eyes tight, shutting out the sight of my
mother’s limp body and the blood in her hair and the blood on the floor and the
blood on my jeans, and I focused on my hands on her chest. The might of the
heavens was in those hands, and I would channel that now.

Ignoring the certain knowledge that I could do nothing here,
was meant to do nothing here, I
willed
my mother to live – to heal – to
come back to me.

Dimly, I heard Luke gasp. Even with my eyes shut the light
was dazzling.

But blocked. A wall. There was a wall. The light could not
flow into her; it was flooding out into the room.

I pushed against the wall. It was impenetrable.

I pushed against the wall. It was immovable.

The light faded and I collapsed back. Opening my eyes, I saw
my mother lying just as I’d found her: dead.

Quickly, Luke leaned me against the bed and scrabbled in his
back pocket and pulled out his phone, talking all the while: ‘Too much for you,
too much. I’ll get help. I’ll get Jude.’

Not Jude. He couldn’t break down that wall.

‘Gabe,’ I said. ‘Get Gabriel.’

He’d brought her back before.
‘
I put my hands on
her and I drowned her in my light,’
he’d said,
‘and when I hit a brick
wall I basted through it. And then she was breathing: she was alive.’

‘Stay here,’ said Luke. ‘I need your phone – your bag, in
the kitchen. Gabe’s number... Just wait here.’

He scrambled to the door and ran.

I wouldn’t wait – my mother, my
mother
. I would blast
through that wall, like Gabe had. I would be like him.

I slid across the floor to Mum. Smoothed hair from her face.
My hands were sticky with her blood. I pressed them to her chest. Brilliant
blue light lit my mother’s bedroom, dazzling, divine – and mine to command.

‘
Non Serviam,’
I intoned. ‘I. Will. Not. Serve.’

Pain slashing across my back.

White-hot light.

An eternity of fire.

Heaven and hell in battle.

Break down the wall.

Break down the wall.

Someone shouting my name.

Hands on me, yanking at me.

Darkness.

*

The wall was gone. So was the light. I thought:
I’ve done
it! I’ve saved her!
But then I opened my eyes to find my mother hadn’t
moved but I had: I was under the window, on Luke’s lap, and standing over me
were two panting, wild-eyed figures: Gabe and Sienna.

I lurched forwards but Luke tightened his arms around me and
Gabe pressed restraining hands to my shoulders and I was trapped.

‘What are you doing?!’ I yelled. ‘Let me go – let me help
her!’

Sienna slumped onto the bed and buried her head in her
hands.

‘Help Mum, Sienna! Please – you know you can!’

‘She can’t,’ said Gabriel. ‘She can’t, and you can’t, and I
can’t.’

‘But you bring people back. You do that. Bring her back!
Bring
her back!
’

‘Listen, Scarlett,’ Luke pleaded. ‘You have to listen to
him.’

I struggled against his arms around me, but they were like a
straightjacket.

‘Please!’ I begged. ‘Please! She’s my
mother
!’

And then I was sobbing, and Luke was rocking me, and Gabe
was no longer holding me back but holding me, and my sister was there, her arms
around me, and my arms were around her, and I didn’t know where one person
ended and another began in the terrible well of grief that had sprung up in
this little bedroom.

Finally, Gabe stood up and said in a tone rough enough to
snap me from my tears, ‘You nearly killed yourself, Scarlett, trying to heal
Elizabeth. Do you understand that? You went too far and nearly gave up all your
light. If Luke hadn’t called me – if we hadn’t pulled you off her –’

‘So you stopped me healing her? You saved
me
over her?’
I glared up at him. ‘So what if it would have killed me to save her? That’s my
choice to make, not yours.’

‘Stop it!’ Luke let go of me and crawled around to face me.
I was shocked by the state of him – he’d been crying, he’d been crying a lot,
and he still was a little now. ‘Scarlett, please,’ he said. ‘
Please
. I
know you’re hurting, but listen to him.’

‘We had to pull you away,’ said Gabe. ‘If you’d died,
Scarlett, if you’d given all of yourself – it would have made no difference.
She can’t be healed. I’m sorry. You tried. I tried. Sienna tried. We can’t heal
Elizabeth.’

He looked across the room. Sienna had gone over to the
memory wall and she was sitting now as I had earlier, with my mother’s head on
her lap.

My mother.

I stood up – and fell into Luke. He caught me and sat me on
the bed and held me there.

‘Scarlett,’ he said, ‘we have to look after you.’

‘Not me, her.
Her
.’ I looked past him, to Gabe. ‘You
saved her before. You brought her back before. You can do it now.’

‘It’s not always possible to heal. Surely Jude told you
that.’

‘I don’t care what he told me! You break all the rules –
break this one!’

‘I would if I could. But I’m not God, Scarlett. I’m not all-powerful.
None of us are. There’s nothing we can do but wait and pray.’

‘Pray for what?’

‘For her to wake up.’

‘Look at her! She’s not going to wake up! She’s... she’s...’
I stared at her body. I couldn’t say the word.

Suddenly, Luke was in front of me, blocking my view. ‘Scarlett,’
he said urgently, ‘she’s unconscious. You know that, right? I told you,
remember – she has a pulse. She’s breathing. She’s not dead.’

‘What?’

‘She’s
alive
,’ he said emphatically. ‘You hold on to
that, okay? Your mother’s alive. There’s still hope.’

This time, when I scrambled to get across the room, he
helped me. I fell to my knees beside Sienna and fixed my eyes on my mother’s
chest. Watched it rise and fall, rise and fall.

She was alive. We couldn’t heal her, but she was alive. I
couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t think past all the wailing – what was that
wailing?

‘Sienna – as agreed,’ said Gabe suddenly.

Sienna was gentle as she laid Mum on the floor but there was
nothing gentle in the way she reached over and grabbed my arm.

I tried to shake her off. ‘What are you doing? Get off me!’

‘Luke,’ said Sienna, ‘take my hand.’

He did, so that the three of us were interlocked over my
mother, and I realised too late what was about to happen.

‘No!’ I struggled wildly. ‘I won’t leave her!’

But with my sister gripping my arm brutally hard, I had no
choice. The last thing I heard was my father’s promise – ‘I’ll stay with her’ –
shouted over the deafening din of the sirens.