Solace & Grief (11 page)

She realised she was hungry – even more so than usual, and probably, she considered, due to shock. This being in her power to remedy, she headed for the kitchen.

Somewhat ironically, the fridge proved to be empty with the exception of, for reasons probably best left unexplained, a half-empty packet of bicarbonate of soda, two hard-boiled eggs, an old blue sneaker and several giant snake lollies. After brief deliberation, Solace took a snake, chewing thoughtfully on its head. Strange things were happening. She wasn't sure that Sharpsoft was any more reliable than Lukin, but speaking her parents’ names aloud had filled her with a calming resonance, something that went bone-deep and well beyond her ability to doubt the truth of it.
Blood has a memory
. Were her parents vampires? Human? Another kind of Rare, as Lukin had called them? And where, or what, was Starveldt? Solace had the grumpy, aftershock-inspired thought that if she was heir to some kind of treacherous Romanian castle, she'd like to be told properly, thank you very much, not just given its name by an odd-eyed, overly-tall stranger. She swallowed the rest of her snake and was contemplating risking an egg when someone groaned into wakefulness on the lounge.

‘Morning, Evan,’ she called, without looking around.

‘How'd you know?’ her friend asked, rubbing the back of his head. Solace smiled, only too happy to be distracted.

‘You make a clicking noise in the back of your throat when you wake up, just before the sounds of horror. It's quite distinctive.’

‘Some psychic
I
am,’ Evan grumbled. ‘At least Jess can foresee the future. What can I do? Skim emotions off the tops of empty heads, which is nothing your average psychologist couldn't do. Dragonfly to a sea of stagnant ponds, me.’ He knuckled his eyes, looking blearily at Solace. ‘But then, I've never properly tried to do anything else. Perhaps I might really be useful and just not know it.’

‘It's possible.’ Solace frowned. ‘What do you mean, you've never tried to do anything else? Aren't you curious? Haven't you ever –’ she waved a hand, walking away from the kitchen, ‘– you know. Experimented?’

‘Not really. There was never that much of a need.’ He shrugged laconically. ‘Effort is nowhere near my middle name. Besides, what Jess can do is so much more… real, somehow. I never needed proof that I wasn't making it up – she
was
the proof. I mean, after your big sister has known to keep you out of school on the day your personal bully finally drops off the deep end and puts two other kids in hospital, doubt is pretty much non-existent.’

‘I suppose…’

‘Eh.’ Evan yawned. ‘I'll get around to it.’ Craning his head, he nodded towards the fridge. ‘Any breakfast?’

‘A couple of hard-boiled eggs. Not much else.’

‘Rats. Is Electra up?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Double rats. I should've stayed asleep.’

‘My heart bleeds.’

‘As well it should.’ He yawned again, scratching his neck. ‘You know, I should just ask Jess to do a week's forecast for me so I'll know when to bother getting up. Not that I bother much already, but – you know. A penny saved is a penny earned, and by “penny” I mean “as yet unidentified unit of physical exertion relative to my lack of breakfast”. Why go through a crap day if you don't have to? Unless there's one of those time-loop things going on, like in
Twelve Monkeys
. You ever see that film?’

‘Seers can tell the future,’ Solace said, somewhat dumbly.

Evan snorted. ‘Not exactly what I asked, but points for being quick on the uptake. So?’

‘
So,
we don't know enough about Lukin to be able to trust him. Anything could happen. We're flying blind.’ She almost added a comment about Sharpsoft and Glide, but checked herself in time.

Evan sighed. ‘And this is relevant why?’

‘
Because,
’ said Solace, patiently, ‘I think we should
wake up Jess
.’

It was some minutes before anything happened. While Evan roused his sister into consciousness via the entertaining but none-too-kind means of dripping cold water onto her face, Solace went upstairs to wake Manx and Electra. When the three of them trooped downstairs again, it was to find Jess sitting smugly on the lounge while Evan stood bare-chested at the sink, wringing out his shirt and muttering imprecations.

Solace raised an eyebrow at Jess, who grinned.

‘Old family proverb: he who waketh with water gets doused with water.’

‘Sounds fair to me,’ said Solace, not quite managing to keep a straight face. ‘Did Evan tell you my idea?’

‘About doing a reading to see what'll happen with Lukin? It was somewhere in between his laughing like a five-year-old boy and squealing like a five-year-old girl, but I got the gist.’

Manx, who'd been in the middle of a rather impressive yawn, made a strangled choking sound, the unfortunate result of trying to laugh with a momentarily locked jaw.

‘Will it work?’ Electra asked, turning to Jess.

The seer shrugged. ‘Maybe or not. I can try and focus on a specific event, but there's no guarantee I won't start talking about something else entirely, or nothing at all. It's an imprecise science.’ She paused. ‘And yet still more commonsensical than homeopathy.’

‘Nothing to lose, then,’ said Manx. He glanced with amusement towards the sole occupant of the kitchen. ‘Except, apparently, our shirts.’

‘Hah,’ grunted Evan, finally giving up and wandering over, scowling only a little. Grinning, Jess turned back to Solace.

‘Anything specific I should look for? Or would it be better to scry the day itself, bearing in mind that I may end up describing your fiftieth birthday?’

‘Look for –’ Solace considered it, ‘– something hidden. Lukin was holding something back. He seemed harmless enough, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.’

Especially given this morning,
she added silently. A part of her still felt guilty about not mentioning Sharpsoft, but Lukin was, she told herself, the more pressing concern, and besides which, she wasn't exactly sure how to bring him up. Despite their cautious vote in favour of the professor's tests, Solace was worried that the others thought Manx overcautious. It was a relief to be proven wrong.

‘Right,’ said Jess. ‘I guess that's my cue.’

Stretching, she walked over to the table and proceeded to gather up the mess of bones, stones, beads, shells and feathers that conspired to clutter the surface. When she finally sat down again, cross-legged, her hands were cupped in her lap and full to overflowing. Almost as an afterthought, she craned her head back and looked at Solace.

‘I thought you said you could see the future, too? When we did the surveys?’

‘Technically, yes, but not on command. I can't exactly make myself dream a true dream, or I would – but
you
can do this at will. Or so Evan tells me.’

Her friend sighed impishly, blue eyes sparkling. ‘As you wish, my buttercup.’

Turning back to the table, Jess cleared a space and closed her eyes, blocking out the sight of glasses, bongs, ashtrays and the ever-present skull with its ridiculous pink ribbon. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, almost imperceptibly, her lips and throat began to tremble with the low, soft cant of sound, more like a buzz or hum than actual words. The noise grew louder, broader – impossibly so, as Solace couldn't see how Jess was maintaining the cadence without pausing to breathe. As if sensing her question, Evan reached out and placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

‘Watch,’ he whispered.

With ritual slowness, Jess raised her arms, holding her cupped hands straight out in front of her body. Abruptly, the timbre of her murmur changed, a warm, soft tone now weaving its way through the dominant burr. Then three things happened at once: Jess's head snapped back sharply; a high, piercing, impossibly beautiful note was shot into the air; and her hands splayed out as she tossed the bones and oddments she'd been holding onto the table. Everyone craned to look as she swayed, coming loosely to her knees to bend over the patterns.

‘Sorrow – grief? – in a place both known and unknown. Dead who are dead but not dead die, but their grief lives on beyond knowledge and solace, beyond and before and beyond. Finding and taking, searching and hiding, blending and bleeding them dry, deep underground and far away, with a twisted sky.’

Jess's eyes were still closed, but her hands moved of their own accord over the table, touching this piece and that as her sing-song prophecy burned her tongue. Swift and deft, her fingers brushed a long, brown feather which, somewhat grotesquely, had landed in the left eye-socket of the skull. Suddenly, despite the ribbon, it didn't look so comic.

‘Blossoming life from the bones,’ she said. ‘Life that isn't, stolen lives and stolen time – grief is behind it all, grief which seeks solace.’ And then, in a different, deeper, impossibly male voice which made Evan jump and Electra swear, Jess spoke again.

‘Trust in the blood. What needs to be found and known will be known. Go to the place and time, but not before. Go!’

With a powerful shuddering spasm, Jess collapsed backwards, one hand knocking the skull to the floor. Evan and Solace leapt up almost as one person to grab her before she hit the ground, Manx and Electra following a split second after. Deadweight, Jess lolled in their arms. Her blue eyes rolled back in their sockets, fluttered and closed.

‘She's never done that before!’ Evan yelped. ‘She always snaps out of the trance!’

At Manx's quick suggestion, Jess was manhandled onto the couch, where she lay as if in a coma, her breathing slow and shallow. Evan was frantic, alternately shouting at her to wake up, slapping her cheeks when Electra couldn't grab his hands in time, or rambling his confusion. Desperate to do something, Solace grabbed Evan's wet shirt from the kitchen and sponged Jess's face, hoping the cold might wake her, but nothing happened. Ashen-faced, she turned to Manx.

‘We should get her to a hospital.’

‘And tell them what?’ Evan interrupted, angry with fright. ‘That she passed out after a prophecy? That this wasn't caused by drugs, even though there's probably still some in her system? We couldn't –’

‘What do y
ou
suggest, then?’ Electra snapped.

Evan went pale and quiet.

‘I think –’ Solace bit her lip. Her heart felt leaden with worry. ‘Maybe –’

‘Let me see her,’ said Glide.

Everyone jumped. No one had even heard him come downstairs, let alone noticed that he was standing in their midst. Solace wondered momentarily how long he'd been there. Had he been with them the whole time, seen everything unfold? Or had he only just arrived? Startled into silence, the four of them parted to let him through. For the first time, Solace noticed how he moved: slow, heavy and dreamlike, as if gravity worked more strongly on him than on everyone else. She shook her head and watched as he knelt down next to Jess's head, placing one hand on her breastbone and one on her face, his fingers pressing gently on her lips and eyes. Before she could recover her composure enough to ask what he was doing, what was happening, his eyelids shivered and closed, just as Jess's had done.

‘Oh, terrific!’ Evan shouted. ‘Now he's gone, too. Why don't we all pass out? Why not make a game of it?’

‘Shut up, Evan,’ said Electra, her voice calm and firm.

‘Have some water,’ said Manx, picking up a flask of whisky from the table and bringing it to his lips by way of show. Evan all but snatched it from him, tipping the whole thing back and drinking deeply before realising what it was, at which point he spluttered then gasped, clutching frantically at his throat.

A loud, unexpected boom rattled the warehouse, hard and sharp as a whip crack.

‘Awaken,’ said Glide, into the abrupt, shocked silence. All eyes turned to Jess. Her limp body twitched.

‘Is she –’ Solace began, but cut herself off at a look from Glide.

‘Many and many,’ Jess murmured. Slowly, her blue eyes opened. Seeing her friends, she let out a low chuckle, her eyelids slipping half-closed as she did so.

‘Has someone died?’

‘We thought
you
had!’ exclaimed Evan, somewhat indignantly, trying simultaneously to wipe alcohol off his chest and look daggers at Manx.

‘I'm not dead.’ Her voice sounded oddly soft, as if it were coming from a long way away. ‘Oh, Ev. It's like I'm made of glass. There's places where the walls are thin, and everyone on either side can see me. See
through
me. It's all so big, you'd never think that such small atoms held so much. But it's Christmas inside, all fairy lights and broken shells and the wrong side of mirrors. Everything twisted, bright. It's where she's trapped. He'll never let her out. The music stopped.’

‘Trapped? Who's trapped?’

‘Hmm?’ Jess smiled, vacant as a dropped doll. Boneless, her head lolled. Glide and Solace swapped a worried glance. ‘Nobody knows. The truth has turned to ash. It's a parlour trick. Can't tell you how it's done.’

‘She's delirious.’ Evan stared up at Glide, helpless and angry. ‘Sweet Jerusalem Clancy, Glide, what did you
do
to her?’

‘It'll wear off in a minute or two. Trust me.’ A brief pause; Glide put a hand on Evan's shoulder. ‘Please. She'll be fine. It's just the after-effects.’