The House (33 page)

“Hey, it’ll be
alright.” Hercules put one arm around me in an awkward hug without
putting down the biscuit tin. “She’ll come back and now we know
where she hides the good stuff.”

I smiled
weakly and picked up the tea and coffee. Hercules grabbed a tray
and some cups and we trooped through to the lounge. Not the TV
room, the nice lounge where James had ushered the Trinbridges. It
made my heart stutter for a moment to see the chair where Marie
liked to sit when her friends came by. The rest of us avoided the
room like the plague. It had a luscious cream carpet and coffee
coloured walls as well as expensively upholstered furniture. Nobody
wanted to be responsible for spilling anything.

I walked in
like my heart wasn’t about to break from just being in there. I had
to avoid glancing too much out of the window. It was to the back of
the house, a big bay window that Marie and her friends used to
watch us play outside. It was where I normally watched Marie and my
grandfather when I came here as a child. I was glad that the rush
of my own memories seemed to stem the constant flow from others’
minds.

“We have tea,
coffee and biscuits. Help yourselves.” I realised then that I had
completely forgotten to bring in any milk or sugar. Eddie walked in
as I was about to apologise, holding up the milk jug and sugar pot.
I felt like hugging him. “Thank you,” I whispered as he laid them
beside everything else on the table.

“Have you
heard anything about Marie?” Hari asked. She was sipping her tea
like she was well practiced at it. I could never look that
poised.

“No, the
police haven’t found anything yet,” I replied, with as little
emotion as I could manage. I still couldn’t fathom why these people
would have come here. Especially since I’d never met them before in
my life. “How do you know Marie?”

“Oh, just from
the community meetings. We heard she had gone missing and thought
we should come see how you kids are doing.” She smiled but it
faltered as her gaze slid over James. He was definitely not a kid
but he didn’t really look old either.

“We are
managing,” James said. “Of course, it isn’t easy but we hope that
Marie will be found and come home.” He managed to sound so sure of
himself, but I saw him put down his tea so that the fine tremor of
grief didn’t show.

“So you think
she is still alive then?” Hari didn’t address the question to
anyone in particular but to the room in general.

“Honey...” Neil began. “I don’t think that is something they
wish to consider right now.” He put his hand on his wife’s knee as
she looked at him perplexed. I got a brief visual from him of his
mistress; he was
really
worried about missing his date. He didn’t give a
damn if his wife had insulted us unless it got him out of there
faster.

“What mum
means is that Marie seemed like a really nice lady and we hope
she’s alright,” Freddie said with his face in his coffee. His mum
smiled and nodded. He sounded like he spent a lot of time
explaining her comments. Or maybe a lot of time apologising for
them.

“Yes, I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean any offence.” She kept smiling at us for a few
seconds but let her face fall when she realised that none of us
were smiling back.

“Marie is the
most amazing woman I have ever met and we are hoping with all of
our hearts that she is alive. That is the only way we can get
through this at the moment.” I directed my gaze mostly at Hari,
managing to include her son and husband in the look as well.

“Yes of course, she
is
amazing. Always trying to help the downtrodden.
My mother always said she took in strays…” Hari looked at us as she
realised what she had said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest
that you were...I mean…”

“I think you
should leave now,” Eddie said. He was calm and collected, unlike
the rest of us. I was working very hard to keep my human form at
that moment. I wanted to hurt Hari and I wasn’t entirely sure the
feeling was just my own. Hercules sat stiffly beside me on the sofa
and I could almost feel his heart racing.

“Yes, I’m
sorry. We’ll leave.” Hari got up and practically dragged her
husband out with her, their son trailing behind. “If you need
anything, we’re just down the way.” She got herself and her husband
to the door in record time and had to wait while Freddie caught up.
He looked like he was about to apologise for his mother again but
she whisked him out the door, apparently glad to be free of the
social awkwardness.

I shut the
door carefully behind them.

The
Trinbridge’s visit had driven home Marie’s disappearance anew. It
wasn’t just us that would miss her; or rather it wasn’t just us
that would notice she was missing. Hari Trinbridge was a nosy
busybody but ultimately harmless, others wouldn’t be so. She
wouldn’t be the only one to question why we were there. I had no
idea what Marie listed us as, not to mention the numbers of people
who arrive every full moon.

I thought
about that. Full moon was now only a week and a half away. People
would come to us because they had nowhere else to go; who lived in
crowded places without outdoor space; who transformed into an
animal, large or small, that isn’t generally seen on the
streets.

I felt an arm
around my shoulder. I turned expecting it to be Hercules and
instead found Eddie. I hugged him anyway, tears again starting to
leak down my face. He held me gently, rocking me slowly and making
shushing noises. It reminded me of one of my first meetings with
Marie. I had just lost both of my parents and she sat with me and
held me until I stopped crying. I’d just been a little girl then
but it felt much the same.

“Hey,” Eddie
said, pulling my face towards him so that I was looking at him.
“Just think what they would have said if they knew the truth.”

It made me
smile. I thought about the Trinbridge’s and how they would react to
knowing that Marie changed into a jaguar at least once a month. I
thought that Freddie would take it in his stride, and Neil would
probably ignore it completely since it didn’t really affect
him.

Hari? I’d seen
inside her mind; she liked to think of herself as a do-gooder. She
donated to charity and helped out at jumble sales but she didn’t
really care about the people she was helping. Her reputation was
important to her. She would be horrified to know that she
interacted with people so unlike herself. She could barely manage
to be civil to us as it was.

I hugged Eddie
again. He’d made me smile and that made me like him just a little
bit more. I allowed myself a moment to think that he really was
integrating into our family. That maybe when Marie was back we
would have a decent chance of helping him. The thought warmed my
heart.

The washing
machine dinged then and I had to hustle my clothes upstairs. It
wouldn’t do to let anything pile up before Marie got back.

I turned
around to lean against my door, trying to open it without dropping
my clothes, to discover that Eddie was still right behind me. “Hey,
come in,” I said as I opened the door and stepped through. It
seemed rude to tell him to get lost when I’d just finished crying
into his shoulder and I could still see the marks on his top.

I went
straight to my wardrobe and started to put away my clothes. The
dress was already on a hanger and I remembered to put my unused
hangers into the wash chute. The machine always went a little crazy
when it ran out of hangers. The rest of my clothes were folded so I
put them back into the relevant drawers.

“What’s up?” I
asked as I finished and flopped into the usually clothes-filled
chair. I made a mental note to pick up the dumped clothes from the
floor and sort through what was actually still wearable. Automated
washing was great but still useless unless you actually put the
clothes in.

“Do you
normally get your neighbours around here?” His voice was deep and
the sound actually made me shiver for a second before I caught
myself. Gods, he made me laugh once and I was all ready to jump
him. I had to remind myself that I was twenty-two, no longer the
slutty teen I’d been at seventeen, and that I had self- control.
Maybe when I’m thirty, I said to myself, I’d have enough control
not to watch any of the guys after they shifted back to human.

“Nope, they
normally stay away apart from when Marie hosts her annual tea
party. All the ladies in the road come along and we get to meet
everyone and serve them tea and cakes,” I said sarcastically.
“Something about ‘not arousing suspicions by being too private’ or
whatever.” I smiled, remembering the first tea party I’d been to. I
was nine and Marie had decided that I was ready to meet her
friends. Well, her human friends at any rate, I knew most of her
shifter friends anyway.

“What?” Eddie
asked.

“Just
reminiscing,” I replied softly. I’d only just started to really
understand why we shouldn’t shift in front of people who we didn’t
know. Or rather, people who didn’t know what we were. It had been
an eventful evening. “Marie is actually a big part of the
community. She owns several businesses and flats and stuff that she
rents out. We all help with running things, or filling in when
staff are out, or something. She has to keep up good relations with
the rest of the community.”

“I’ve never been anywhere with so many shifters in one place.
Even without the House there are so many that live around here.” He
sounded awed. It
was
one of the highest concentrations of shifters in Britain.
“Why are there so many shifters here? It’s no different to the rest
of the country.”

“It was one of
the last places to still have open land so a lot of shifters moved
here for that. And it’s near the Covenant, which is useful even if
shifters claim to be completely separate. Then of course, shifters
come here because of the House. They come at the full moon to
change and hang out with other shifters, especially the ones who
live with humans. They like to be close to us even if they don’t
actually need us, they like to know we’re here I think.” Honestly,
I hadn’t done enough travelling to really establish how many other
shifters were about and I was guessing that Eddie hadn’t gone
looking for them before. We also weren’t the only Covenant, but one
of five across the UK. We were the biggest though and our spells
were some of the oldest.

“I’d never
even heard of the House until a few months ago. How does everyone
find out about it?” He sounded genuinely curious, even a little
sad. All those other shifters had a link that he hadn’t had for a
long time.

“Their parents
tell them about us mostly. They tell their children where we are
and how to reach one of us if they’re in trouble. Or just from
chatting to other shifters who’ve been here or know someone who
has.” The House wasn’t a secret but we certainly didn’t have a
website, and we weren’t in the yellow pages either. It would have
been more convenient but we couldn’t figure out how to word the ad
without either giving us away or attracting homeless people.

“I thought
shifters couldn’t have children,” Eddie said. Great. Now I’d
confused him. I kept forgetting how little he knew and I cursed his
parent.

“I said before
that the person who changes you is your parent, so you are their
child. It’s a normal word; if we start saying things like sire or
maker then people will look at us strangely. They will notice that
we’re talking differently and it will make them look closer. And
shifters can have children in very rare cases. Mostly it’s only
true-borns who can successfully carry a child to term, but it is
possible for lunar shifters.

Of course,
male shifters can have children with humans but it’s a bit of a
risk. We don’t often get pregnant though.” I was staring into space
now. In truth, discussions on pregnancy always made me think about
my own future. Everyone expected me to marry a witch and have
little true-born children. I wasn’t always so sure. It just seemed
too cut and dried for me and it always made me think of my own
parents. They had actually loved each other; it wasn’t always the
case with witch-shifter matches. Power was generally more
important. That and making sure you weren’t closely related to the
person. We’d had a little too much inbreeding before the advent of
genetics so we had to be extra careful.

I sighed.
Whatever happened it was likely a long way off and I had more
immediate problems to deal with. I looked up at Eddie who seemed to
be deep in thought. I wondered what he was thinking and spent a
moment speculating before I realised that I could find out. The
realisation that I wasn’t automatically reading everyone’s mind was
a relief and I decided to leave his thoughts to himself. I could
always find out later if need be.

“I was told I
couldn’t have children, after...” he said. “He said that I would
never father any children. It’s why…” He trailed off, clearly
talking mostly to himself. I gave him a quick hug because he seemed
to need it but nothing about him gave any indication that he’d even
noticed.

“Well, now you
know. With humans at least we have a reasonable conception rate. I
can see why you’d tell a new shifter not to though. It can be a
dangerous process and it means bringing someone else in on our
secret. Someone who is, by definition, just human.” I watched his
face to see if he’d registered what I’d said but there was a new
light in his eyes. I wondered how old Eddie was; I wondered again
who he’d left behind when he changed.

“I have to go,
I need to think,” Eddie was muttering as he left my room. Yet I
found I didn’t have the energy to go after him. I really hoped I
hadn’t given him ideas. A human woman carrying a shifter child was
a disaster waiting to happen.