The House (16 page)

“Well, I’m not sure this is the right time for this lesson.”
I wasn’t sure there’d ever be a right time for this conversation.
“The witches are different to us because they have more abilities
... more, sort of,
access
to their power than we do.” I would have
continued - maybe I would have even found a way to condense the
entire history of the supernatural community into one evening - but
I was interrupted by shouting from downstairs. “What the
fuck?”

It might sound
odd when you consider how messed up we all were but actually we
hardly ever argued. We’d been taken in and given a home so most of
us did our best to keep the drama to a minimum. Nobody wanted to
mess up their chance to stay. I hurtled down the stairs to see what
the commotion was about, partly to try to diffuse it and partly
because it’s all good gossip. There was also the little voice in my
mind that said I was running away from tough conversations with
Eddie but I shoved it down.

“She’s gone!”
came a deep, rumbling voice. It sounded wrong to be so loud, a
shout that should never be heard. There was also a touch of a growl
to it and that put my teeth on edge.

“How can you
know that? We can’t just start a huge fuss if she’s staying with
some guy somewhere.” James’ voice came over calm and logical. It
was Marlow who was making all the noise.

“She wouldn’t
do it! Someone took her!” came the reply, more and more hysterical.
It was strange to my ears; Marlow just wasn’t the hysterical
type.

“HEY!” I
shouted as I reached the bottom of the stairs. Nobody even jumped
at my sudden appearance. “What is going on?”

“Someone took
Shayana!” Marlow shouted, his voice ringing through the kitchen
like it was an amphitheatre.

“Calm down ...
we will discuss this calmly and rationally,” I said. I tried, I
really did, but apparently the boys had other ideas and just
continued their argument.

“Is Shayana
the tall woman who was here yesterday?” Eddie asked. He made me
jump as he came up behind me. My nerves just weren’t so good at
that moment. I was seriously coming down from my happy place and it
was fast being replaced by a quiet fear. I flashed back to the
vampyre attack for a moment and missed some of the
conversation.

“Yeah, but
apparently she didn’t make it home today. Of course, she’s only a
couple hours late. Marlow is rather overprotective,” James replied
to somebody. I heard Marlow arguing that she would have called if
she was going to be late. Then, of course, he’d got here in half an
hour...

“Marlow!”
Everyone jumped.

“What!”

“How’d you get
here so quickly?” I asked, my voice surprisingly calm. I was
forcibly repressing my memory of my own close call.

“I didn’t, it
takes four hours to get here.” He looked puzzled, as did everyone
else. “She was supposed to get home last night and never did. I
left at three this afternoon after speaking to her work.”

“She only left
this morning.”

“She left
yesterday morning.”

“No.” Damn it,
we’d lost more than that hour sleeping. “We did not just lose a
whole day...”

“Shit,” James
said; I guess he hadn’t realised either. “So she actually could be
missing.” He ran his hand through his hair and slumped onto the
nearest dining chair.

“That’s what
I’ve been telling you,” Marlow said. He sat at the table as well
and I sensed that if we were lucky the shouting had ended. It was
good; we did not want the neighbours to hear us. The rest of us
joined them at the table feeling deflated. Shayana was so not the
kind of person you’d expect to get kidnapped. Also, we’d slept a
whole day passed out. That wasn’t something that suggested what had
happened was nothing to worry about. If it happened again we could
lose a lot more time. It scared me.

“I’m worried.
She’s never missed work. Never,” Marlow said. His voice had lost
the anger. It was just deadpan. Somehow that was even scarier than
the shouting. He sounded like he was already planning his to-do
list for whoever had hurt Shayana. I did not want to be that
person.

“But who could
take her, Marlow?” I asked, “Either she went with someone willingly
or someone took her by force, and it’s not easy to take someone
like Shayana by force.”

“She didn’t go
with someone on her own.” Marlow was angry again - not that I could
blame him. He was scared and worried and that transitions to anger
for a lot of people. Still, it beat the hell out the glimpse I’d
just gotten into his deadpan voice. “She wouldn’t.” But he didn’t
sound entirely convinced anymore.

It’s a lot
easier to believe that someone has been stupid than they were taken
against their will. Someone being stupid is likely to walk through
the door a few days later only a little worse for wear and with
some regrets. If they were taken? The chances are you wouldn’t get
them back.

“Marlow, we
have to accept that maybe she chose to go with someone...” James
said, and then at the look on Marlow’s face added, “...even if she
isn’t (with them? happy about it?) now.” It felt unreal, like this
couldn’t really be happening. It was too much information for me to
process. I had just seen Shayana. I knew that really it had been
two days ago but it felt like yesterday. And even two days was
nothing; I saw her so rarely recently but she was always there at
the other end of the phone line. She was constant, not flighty or
prone to vanish at any moment.

“She knew she
needed to get home because she had work this morning. I doubt that
she voluntarily went with someone,” I said. “Even if it was someone
she knew.” It wasn’t like Shayana. She had the occasional bad bed
partner but she never left with someone we didn’t know. I’d never
known her to miss work, not for anything. And I suspected she
wouldn’t be looking for more action straight after sleeping with
Hercules. She had more class than that. I lent my head against my
hands with my elbows leaning on the table, trying to find sense in
the madness.

“Exactly,”
Marlow exclaimed.

“But how could
someone take her? She’s stronger and faster than all of us by a
long margin and she’s not stupid either,” James reasoned. I knew
there was something I was missing, something on the edges of my
mind that I just needed to put together. “What if someone needed
her help? She could have gone to help someone and run out of
battery or signal.” I looked up. It was a good idea but Shayana had
the latest in technology, she could recharge it with the heat from
her body. I couldn’t think of anywhere she could have gone to be
out of signal or any situation in which she wouldn’t call Marlow
first.

“They could
have been armed. Maybe they took her because she’s a woman,” Eddie
suggested.

“If she was
being threatened, even with a weapon, she wouldn’t have gone with
them,” Stripes added. I looked at her and shared a sad smile. This
was a part of both our lives; we were small women who stayed on the
outside of society. It made us vulnerable. “That’s the rule. Never
go with anyone who’s threatening you.” I nodded in agreement before
I saw that Eddie was confused.

“The worst
they can do in public is kill you and they’d have to do it quickly
so that you couldn’t call for help. If you let them take you
somewhere else they could do whatever they want to you,” I
explained. His face changed and I saw the realisation that actually
Stripes and I were well aware of the danger we put ourselves in
when we go out.

“They can’t
have killed her.” I mentally slapped myself. For a moment I’d
forgotten what we were discussing, lost in old memories and older
fears. There was a reason countries used to have rules about women
going out alone. They were too vulnerable.

“It’s alright,
I doubt anyone could have killed her without a big to-do and that
would have made the news. Or at least they would have identified
her and told you.” I meant it to sound comforting but even to me it
was cold. “I mean, she heals well. If they didn’t know what she was
there’s no way they’d be able to take her. Not even shifters would
be able to win in a fight against her.” I actually did slap myself
then. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I know who
could hope to fight her and win.” I glanced at James and saw
understanding dawn on him as well. “Vampyre.” I had flashed back to
my own attack on hearing that Shayana was missing and not even made
the connection. I blamed the very last vestiges of the high.

“Why would
they take Shayana?” Marlow asked.

“Why would they attack Stripes and me the other day? And for
that matter why were there so many of them?” I shot back. I
really
did not want this
to be another vampyre attack. We had been lucky. Shayana might not
be.

“You were attacked?” Marlow asked. More intrigued than
worried. He tended to take the attitude that if you were fine now
it wasn’t a big deal. Except, of course, when it came to his
sister; they were as close as two siblings can be and he was
fiercely protective of her. She was all grace and movement and he
was too but when
he
moved you could see the potential in his body. Somehow you
knew that he could hurt you. The threat had always been enough to
keep both of them safe. Until now.

“There were
five of them, all more powerful than average, and all from
different witches,” I explained, flat, emotionless. I wasn’t ready
to fully face the fear of that night in detail. I was going to do
my level best to forget everything that had happened that night.
Suppressing my memories was going to take a long time, it would
take work. I should know. I’ve done it enough times.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, that
about sums it up.” We just sat there, staring. If the vampyre had
her then we were all screwed because we’d have to get her back and
we’d all be destroyed in the process. Minutes passed and still
nobody said anything.

“I have to see
him, don’t I?” I asked - not of anyone in the room, more of the
world in general, or maybe myself.

“I’m sorry,”
Hercules said and he sounded like he meant it. It didn’t help.

I picked up
the phone with trembling hands, praying that he wouldn’t be there,
that we’d find a different lead. Anything to not have to make that
call. I dialled the number very carefully, very slowly. I’d thought
that nothing would drive me to even talk to my grandfather ever
again, and this was our second phone call in less than a week.

Not only that,
but I was planning to actually see him. He’d made it perfectly
clear that I’d get no help otherwise. There weren’t a lot of things
that could drive me back to the Covenant, but for Shayana I would
walk to hell and back. She was family to me.

“SinClara.” I
jumped at the sound of his familiar voice; it sent me back to my
childhood in ways I didn’t want to contemplate.

“Hello,
grandfather,” I replied stiffly.

“Do you want
to talk about it now?” he asked, his voice carefully controlled so
that anyone who didn’t know him as well wouldn’t have heard the
thread of annoyance in it.

“There’s been
a ... development.” I sighed. No point in putting it off any longer
really. That’s what I had to tell myself to get the next words out.
“Shayana is missing.”

The silence on
the other end of the phone was deafening. For a moment I wished
that I’d used my coms pad so that I could see him, see his face,
his expression. I hadn’t thought I could handle that. Or rather, I
hadn’t thought that I could school my face enough for that.

“How soon can
you get here?” he asked, short and to the point. It made me suspect
more strongly than before that he knew something. And that what he
knew was bad.

“Half an
hour,” I replied, then added, “And I’m bringing guests.” He didn’t
even protest or ask who I was bringing, bastard probably already
knew.

“See you
soon.” The buzzing down the phone told me that he’d hung up.

“See you
soon,” I whispered into the empty line.

I jumped a
mile when Stripes put her hand on my shoulder. She wrapped her arms
around me and hugged me tightly for a moment. Hercules patted me on
the back and James gave me a nod, but Marlow just stood there
looking worried. Eddie sat on the floor around us with what was
becoming a perpetually confused look on his face.

I didn’t have
the energy right then to explain my life to him, nor did he deserve
the explanation. One day, maybe, when he was as much family to me
as Shayana and Hercules; when he had sat through as many nights
with me as Stripes, then I would owe him my tale. Not before.

“Come on, we
should get ready to go,” I said. I shrugged off Stripes and James,
heading to my room. Looking towards James, then Marlow, I added,
“You two should change as well. Remember that the people we’re
going to see come from a time and place where men wore suits all
the time.”

“Why don’t we
have to wears suits?” Hercules asked.

“Because you
are not coming,” Marlow growled. I was out of there. I did not need
to deal with an angry Marlow.

“You want to
leave me behind?” Stripes asked, smiling delicately at me and
showing all her pearly white teeth. She’d kept pace with me all the
way to my room.

“I don’t want
to drag anyone into this world who doesn’t need to be there,” I
replied, not sure how I could explain without revealing more about
my own past than I wanted to. Even Stripes, who had helped me
through plenty of tough times, didn’t know all of me and I was
planning to keep it that way.

“Well, that’s alright.” I sighed. Result. She wasn’t going to
fight me on this. “Because we
all
need to go.” That smile was still plastered to
her face like she knew she’d already won. Sometimes, I really hated
that smile.