Back again. Where are we up to? I’ve only got a few minutes…
Oh! Samantha White has had her first real kiss in the Ghost Train at one of her favourite places on earth. The Carnivale. And it’s with Tamas – the boy she’s loved her whole life. He loves her too – she feels it.
Well, I saw that coming a mile away.
And at that moment everything was perfect. Smiley, smiley, happy, lovely…
But hang on. Not everything is perfect. Didn’t you notice that the moon was not quite right? That a sliver of silver was missing? Enough maybe for a dagger? Or a sword?
You are going to need to stay on top of these anomalies. Pay attention for me. I wish I could help you more but I’m not exactly a free agent.
Not yet.
Speaking of which, someone’s coming. Must run. Work hard. We need you.
Later…
Luke had never seen a home so huge. Well, maybe on TV, but he’d never even dreamed he’d actually spend a night in a house like this. Even so, he couldn’t find any enthusiasm for the thought: so much had happened that he was just counting down the minutes until midnight so that this freaky night would be over.
‘You seriously live here?’ he said again.
Georgia laughed. ‘It’s really not that big a deal,’ she said.
Luke stared at the Goth girl who’d come to their aid on the train. She just did not match that house. Long black hair in pigtails, black biker jacket, tartan mini skirt with black tights, and those frightening boots riding up over her knees. The platform soles on the boots gave her a good couple of inches on Luke and she towered over Zac, who’d been very quiet since they’d left the train at Kings Cross station.
Walking the twenty minutes from the station, from city craziness here to perfect Elizabeth Bay, he’d found himself wondering more than once how she’d managed to put on her black lipstick over the two thick rings piercing her bottom lip. As he studied her while she supposedly rummaged through her backpack for the keys, he realised that the stud in her nose was actually a tiny silver dragon, its tail curled about itself as it slept.
But he wasn’t holding his breath for the keys. Because behind her, spotlit by lamps embedded in an emerald, carpet-like lawn, rose a three-storey sandstone mansion. Two storeys high, the wrought-iron front gate was entwined and twisted with spirals, curlicues and vines. He wondered what a set of keys would even look like for a gate like that.
Surrounding the home was a park-like garden, impossibly lush in the middle of winter. Hundreds of fairylights climbed palm trees, danced and twinkled in bushes, sparkled through hedges.
Luke closed his eyes against the overwhelming brightness of it all. He was exhausted. He just wanted to sleep, and try as he might, he could not convince himself that it would be inside this house. The quiet clanking of boats in the dark harbour behind the house sedated him further. Even to just drop onto that carpet of grass and sleep until the frozen dawn would be enough for him.
‘Oh, here they are,’ said Georgia. Incredibly, she dangled a set of two keys from her fingers. A filigreed silver cat kept them company on the key ring.
Zac gave a soft growl.
Luke ignored him. ‘So you actually live here?’ he said.
‘I think you’re faulty,’ she said. ‘There’s a scratch on your disc somewhere. You keep saying the same thing.’
She turned away and inserted one of the keys into the lock. It creaked. She pushed it inward, holding it open with a hip.
‘Coming?’ she said.
Luke smiled. He was very rarely surprised any more.
The gate opened into a courtyard. A broad sandstone pathway led to the actual entry to the home: a shiny, red-lacquered door, twice as tall as he was. The sandstone path was flanked by stainless steel spears, each topped with a blue-orange flame. A snarl of black smoke curled skyward from the very tip of each as they walked by.
Behind the fire was water. Jade-green ponds filled with luminous darting fish whorled and bubbled on each side of the path. From the corner of his eye, Luke thought he saw an enormous golden tail the width of his thigh. He shook his head. I really need to get to bed, he thought.
Georgia stood at the red door. Luke watched her, wondering what lay beyond it. She put her key in the lock and turned the big brass door handle.
‘I am so starving,’ she said. ‘Anyone else hungry?’
Zac hadn’t said a word since the station.
Luke could quite understand that; he was also having trouble putting a sentence together.
He sat propped on a barstool at a big black marble serving bar in the most amazing kitchen he’d ever seen. But that hardly did it justice, he considered. Because before this, the most amazing kitchen he’d ever seen was one in which the dishes had been washed. He’d never even lived in a house with a dishwasher.
But this…
Well, this kitchen looked like it belonged in a restaurant and had that photo-clipped-straight-out-of-a-magazine look. Georgia, this freaky chick from the train, was making them bacon and eggs. If everything hadn’t smelled so good, he’d have been sure he was dreaming.
‘Do you really live here?’ he said.
She sighed. ‘You are becoming boring,’ she said. ‘I really live here.’
‘Who with?’ he said. ‘Where are your parents?’
‘Well, I think my mother may be with her lover,’ said Georgia, spooning mounds of buttery scrambled eggs onto a large green platter. ‘But please don’t ask me who that is at the present time, as their names change with tedious rapidity. I’m pretty sure that she just refers to each of them as “darling” because she has difficulty remembering them all. And my father – well, my father is in a place I’m sure you’re both very familiar with.’
She used tongs to drop sizzling bacon rashers onto the plate of eggs.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Luke.
Georgia slid a tray of thickly sliced toast out of the enormous oven.
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she said, using a knife to scrape wads of butter over the toast. ‘He’s in gaol, just like you were.’
Luke stared. Zac said nothing.
‘What do you want to drink?’ she said.
‘What makes you think we were locked up?’ Luke said.
‘Well, mostly your shoes.’ She carried the platter over to the oversized dining table. ‘I had a boyfriend who was locked up in Dwight. I used to visit most weekends. He wore those shoes. What are we drinking?’
‘Lots of people wear these shoes,’ said Luke.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But you were in Windsor and so were the transit cops who were looking for you. Also – um, I don’t mean to be rude, but have you seen the state of your face? You look more like someone stomped on it than that you spent the past couple of days reading poetry at your private school. I knew straight away you’d run away from Dwight.’
She walked back towards the fridge. ‘I’ve got juice, Coke, coffee, milk or wine,’ she said. ‘And pretty much everything else, actually.’
‘What were you doing in Windsor?’ said Luke. ‘When you live in a place like this?’
‘I have friends there,’ she said. ‘Drink?’
‘Coke,’ Luke said.
‘Zac?’ she said.
‘Water,’ said Zac. ‘And I don’t eat eggs.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Georgia. ‘You haven’t tried mine, though. Maybe I can change your mind. Still, there’s heaps of bacon here.’
‘I’m a vegan,’ said Zac.
Georgia threw back her head and laughed. ‘Well, of course you are!’ she said. ‘How gorgeous. A vegetarian escapee from a juvenile detention centre.’
‘I’m vegan, not vegetarian,’ said Zac.
‘And we didn’t say we escaped,’ said Luke.
Georgia sighed and pulled two cans of Coke and a bottle of water from the massive stainless steel fridge.
‘You know, champagne would have been great with these eggs,’ she said.
As they approached the exit doors of the Ghost Train, Samantha felt like crying. Tamas would have to let her go.
‘Sam, what’s the matter?’ said Tamas. ‘Are you mad at me? You look sad all of a sudden.’
A flash of fake fire, the ride’s last hurrah, lit up his face as she met his eyes, the flame reflected in their inky blackness.
‘You’re going to let me go when those doors open.’
He laughed. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry. Boyfriends tend to hold their girlfriends more than once.’
Boyfriend! Her heart leapt. But the red doors loomed ahead like a waiting mouth and the feeling of doom redoubled. She couldn’t help it – for some reason, cheesy and lame as it was, she felt compelled to say it.
‘I’ve loved you my whole life, Tamas,’ she blurted. And then cringed in embarrassment. But she hadn’t been able to keep the anxiety from her voice as disquiet buffeted the cable car, blown in with the wind beyond those red doors.
He smiled and pulled her close, but she caught the worried look in his eyes. Then their cart crashed through the doors.
And the world really went to hell.
The first person she saw was Mirela. And Mirela was screaming.
Tamas pushed Sam down into the cart.
The next person was Boldo, the gypsy king’s bodyguard. He stood by the gates to the ride, his pistol held loosely by his side. He seemed relaxed. In the other arm he gripped Shofranka by the shoulder, her pigtails swinging, mouth trembling, her spectacles reflecting the carnival lights.
Tamas reared up beside Samantha. She could feel the anger fizzing inside him. He reached into his jeans and pulled something from his pocket. She heard a snick, and then the attendant coughed.
‘Um, you need to get out,’ the pimply boy said.
Tamas now stood over her, a switchblade knife in his hand. He completely ignored the attendant.
In the queue waiting to board the ride, somebody screeched, adding to Mirela’s screams for help.
A knife versus a gun. This was not going to work. From the hard plastic seat underneath Tamas’s straddled legs, Samantha frantically tried to summon the honeyed light to send it out towards Boldo. She didn’t know how the stuff worked, but maybe if she could send some his way he’d decide that the world would be a nicer place if he just packed up his gun and bought a kebab on the way home.
But nothing happened. Instead, Boldo told Tamas, ‘Send your witch over here. You’re making a scene.’
Tamas politely declined the request. ‘She’s not going anywhere with you, you pig,’ he called.
Boldo moved Shofranka a little further in front of him, tightening his grip. She whimpered in pain.
At the sound, Samantha felt fear and love jet into her bloodstream. She began gathering the energy into a ball, just like she had in the back of the van.
‘This will not go well for your family, Tamas, son of Besnik,’ said Boldo. His cowboy hat hid his eyes, his voice was gravel. ‘That little Gaje witch is not even your blood, our blood. She’s filth.’
There was silence for two seconds. Samantha used the time to gather energy.
But then Tamas spoke again.
‘Boldo, you need to listen to me very carefully,’ he said evenly. ‘I promise you, right here and now, that you will have to kill me to get her out of this park.’
The anger emanating from Tamas was white hot – Sam felt as though she stood in the centre of a bonfire. Her stomach recoiled at the strength of his emotions, and her focus shifted. The golden sphere in her mind dispersed into dust motes. Panicked, she tried rapidly to re-form it while she waited for Boldo’s reaction.
‘Be careful what you ask for, little boy,’ he said.
The ride attendant was on his radio now, his face milk-white. People had been drawn by the screams. Some held phones to their ears, but most used them to record the show.
‘Looks like you’ll have to shoot a lot of people then, Boldo,’ said Tamas, using his knife to indicate the growing crowd. ‘And the cops will be here soon.’
Boldo was silent for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ he said, finally. ‘I think I’m gonna split.’
He began to walk backwards, gripping Shofranka’s arm. Shofranka began to cry.
‘When you’re ready to swap your sister for the witch, you know where to find us,’ Boldo yelled over his shoulder.
‘No!’ Tamas leapt from the carriage and bolted after him. Mirela followed, still hollering for help.
Samantha scrambled to her feet, shoving past the ride attendant. She had to stay close enough to Boldo to use the energy. That’s if it was going to work this time. But the crowd had other ideas. They would not get out of the way. Samantha pushed and wriggled through the wall of people, but the Rom among them had recognised the gypsy king’s bodyguard and were not willing to give up their viewing position of the action. And the tourists had their lasting holiday memories to capture – a man dressed like a cowboy with a gun, dragging a little girl, being chased by a gypsy! Half of them would have their video footage uploaded to YouTube before they hit the pillow tonight. And the Gaje? Well, they were not about to step aside for a dirty gypsy girl any time soon.
Samantha almost screamed in frustration. She couldn’t even hear Mirela, Tamas and Shofranka, let alone see them. She shoved at a woman with a back as wide as a bed, but got nothing more than a hate-filled stare for her trouble. This was never going to work. These people would never move.
Except suddenly they did. They began to scatter. She rushed forward, spotting Tamas and Mirela ahead. Somehow, Hanzi and Luca had found them, and they’d surrounded Boldo and Shofranka.
And then Sam registered that the energy around her had changed completely. She felt puzzlement, shock, fear, and now people were yelling and running. She managed to turn around, almost doubled over as the feelings threatened to overwhelm her.
Behind her stood Scarface, with his sword, his two friends with Uzis and the tattooed cat-woman chick. Kirra.
They moved towards her.
Fast.
Samantha couldn’t help it. She screamed. More than the weapons carried by the men in black, the look of focus in Kirra’s eyes left her feeling completely helpless. Those eyes told her there was no way she was going to get away this time. Sam swivelled her head, desperately scanning for somewhere to run. To try to hide in the Ghost Train would mean running back towards them. She’d be lucky to make her rubbery legs run the other way, let alone in their direction. And there was only a food tent to her right – no shelter in there. She could run back towards her friends, but that would put them in more danger.
Too late, Tamas had heard her cry.
She felt him coming before she saw him, sprinting across the gravel towards her.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘They’ve got guns!’
But it wasn’t a bullet that shattered her heart into a million pieces.
Trapped in a slow-motion nightmare, she turned her head towards the sound of a bloodcurdling battle cry. Without breaking stride, Kirra raised her hand and threw something. A whir of metal flashed past Samantha, straight into Tamas’s throat.
His eyes widened, confused; they locked with hers as blood spouted in a red arc from his neck. And then Tamas fell, his big body crashing into the dirt.
She could feel nothing. And everything went silent, even peaceful.
She didn’t see the police cars screeching around the corner, lights flashing. She didn’t see the people running, nor hear Mirela on her knees, hysterical.
She could see only Tamas, stretched out, waiting for her. She was by his side in an instant. She flopped to the ground next to him, bundled his head into her lap. She smoothed his hair carefully, while his warm blood – his life – pulsed from him.
Shhh, she told him in her mind. His eyelids flickered.
She saw the metal object in his throat. A star.
Tamas had been killed by a star.
She plucked the piece of metal from his neck and blood gushed even faster from the jagged wound.
And her emotions returned, ripping through her body as though she’d swallowed a hurricane. Because it was right then that she felt him leaving her.
She fought the hysteria struggling to claim her. She lowered his head to the ground and stood. Oblivious to everyone and everything around her, Samantha White focused inward. She gathered the internal hurricane into a fluorescent globe. And then, with every cell of her being on fire, she hurled the energy from her body into his.
And the world went white.
Luke squeezed his eyes tighter to block out the light and threw a pillow over his ears to mute the sound of wind and rain buffeting against the windows. He tried everything to remain in dreamland a little longer. But it was the cat that finally woke him.
At first he felt a soft push, a gentle smudge against the side of his nose. He moved to roll over, and a needlepoint of pain snapped his eyes open.
‘Hey!’ he yelled.
Still within paw distance, the sapphire eyes of a Siamese cat regarded him disdainfully. He sat up.
Oh, wow.
It had been too dark last night to see much beyond the windows of Georgia’s house. When he’d climbed between these lush sheets he’d been so exhausted that it hadn’t registered that he was about to fall asleep in a room with one of the most expensive views in Australia.
Carefully negotiating the cat, who was cleaning itself haughtily, watching every move he made, he dropped onto the lush carpet and moved over towards the windows.
Despite, or maybe because of, the rain, he had never seen a more beautiful sight. There was nothing between his bedroom and Elizabeth Bay but a rolling green lawn and a turquoise swimming pool. Perched right on the edge of the harbour, the pool seemed the epitome of excess, as though to prove to the world that the owners of this mansion could have absolutely anything they wanted – a whole ocean to swim in, and a swimming pool, just because.
Super-yachts, moored in the bay, rocked and rolled in the wind, while rain speared into the sea around them. And although last night he’d been aware that this home was on a well-populated street, he could see no other house nearby. The tropical gardens hid the mansion from view, as though this was the only house in the world.
He stretched and wondered where Zac had slept. Wherever it was, it was infinitely better than Dorm Four. This room alone could have held the beds of the whole of Section Six. He walked around, opening drawers, peeking into cupboards. One of the doors opened onto an opulent private bathroom, and when he noticed some super-huge towels he’d at first mistaken for blankets, he decided to take a shower.
Under the double-headed steaming shower jets, he wondered whether Georgia’s father really was in prison. He’s probably just on a business trip somewhere and she figured the gaol story matched better with her piercings and attitude. Either way, Daddy wouldn’t be terribly thrilled that little Georgia had brought home two escapees, one of them a psychopath to boot.
Luke wanted to not care about that label. He’d never cared about the psychiatric pigeonholes they’d tried to shove him in before. But he still felt weird about what he’d read in his file. Also, being ripped apart from his twin sister and thrown away by his mother pretty much sucked. But why did she have to call him Lucifer on top of that?
The devil. Who would name their baby after the devil? She must have really hated me, he thought. Or else she was insane. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.
He dried himself off and stepped back into his jeans. Having only one set of clothes was going to get old pretty soon. He’d have to do something about that first up. Although he wasn’t particularly worried – money was never too hard to come by.
He wondered whether his sister had grown up in homes similar to his own. Or had she been raised in a place like this? Did she get lucky and have one set of adoptive parents? Or had she been passed around from one whack-job to the next, just like him? Maybe she’d grown up just down the road from him in Campbelltown. They could have gone to school together and not even known it. Not that he ever really went to school very often, but still…
Did she know he existed? Did she know and not care?
Suddenly, he really wanted to know the answer to the second question.
What if he was the way he was because there was a part of him missing? What if she was that missing part?
He knew, suddenly, that he had to find her.
Luke found Zac squatting in the hallway outside his bedroom. He’d been wondering whether Zac had actually even bothered to stay here last night. Now that they were out of Dwight, there were probably plenty of places Zac could go. He’d mentioned brothers. He must have had friends or family he could hide out with.
But Zac was there, waiting patiently at his bedroom door.
‘Don’t you ever sit like normal people?’ said Luke.
‘I’m comfortable like this,’ said Zac.
‘What is a vegan, anyway?’ said Luke.
‘What’s that got to do with how I sit?’
Luke shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You are weird, though. What are you doing in the hallway?’
‘I don’t like it here,’ said Zac.
‘Yeah, I can really understand why you feel that way, Zac,’ said Luke. ‘I mean, it really is rundown and dirty, and there’s hardly any space for us. I suppose it would have been much better to sleep under a bridge or out in the freezing rain last night.’
‘Have you seen the cats?’ said Zac.
‘I’ve seen a cat.’
Zac gave him a meaningful stare.
Luke laughed. Cats? Now he doesn’t like cats?
‘You’re freaking me out, Spiderman,’ he said, reaching down a hand and dragging Zac to his feet. ‘Where’s our host?’
Zac shrugged. ‘When are we leaving?’
‘Where do you want to go?’ Luke began walking down the hall, towards the kitchen.
‘Where do you want to go?’ said Zac.
‘I want to find my sister,’ said Luke.
‘Agreed,’ said Zac. ‘I think we need to do that, fast.’
Luke stopped walking. Suddenly, thoroughly, he’d had too much of the riddles. He turned and prodded Zac in the chest with his forefinger. Hard.
‘We’re not going anywhere, Nguyen,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m going to take off right now and have nothing to do with you, unless you tell me who you are and who you think I am. And why you’re so interested in helping me find my sister.’
‘Deal,’ said Zac, moving back a step. ‘I think I now have something I can tell you. I really didn’t know before why I was sent to help you, but if you are who I now believe you are, you’re gonna need all the help you can get.’
Zac turned and began walking.
‘But if you ever poke me in the chest like that again,’ he said, throwing the words back over his shoulder, ‘you’d better be prepared to live with only nine fingers.’
They found Georgia upstairs in a decked-out lounge room ranging across half of the middle level of the home. The entire back wall of the room was glass, looking out over the harbour. Georgia curled cat-like on a sprawling red leather lounge, her eyes on a massive flat-screen, killing aliens with the gaming control in her hands.
Another haughty Siamese cat sat on an armrest next to her, staring down its long nose at them. A black-and-white cat sat like a miniature panda beside her, cleaning its belly. It raised its lime-green eyes to judge them, and then resumed its duties with particular gusto.
‘Well, don’t you ladies sleep forever,’ Georgia said, without taking her eyes from the screen. ‘Help yourselves to whatever you want in the kitchen.’
Luke figured they may as well eat before they left, so he and Zac headed back downstairs. He cracked the door of the fridge and leaned in. A giant chocolate cake beckoned at face height. There were strawberries, a cling-wrapped bowl of fried chicken, a two-litre bottle of chocolate milk and half a leg of ham.
‘This place,’ Luke said. ‘I love this place.’
He pulled out the ham, a jug of orange juice and a block of Swiss cheese.
‘What can you eat?’ he said.
Zac peered over his shoulder into the fridge. ‘Just pass me the strawberries,’ he said. ‘And I’ll have some toast.’
‘How do you live like that?’ said Luke. ‘Not eating meat?’
‘Well, I don’t know how you live like you do,’ Zac said. ‘You see, when you realise that all animals are sentient, and they just want to live like we do, it seems rather, um, disgusting to murder them and eat their flesh.’
Luke grinned, slicing ham. ‘You don’t seem particularly fond of the cats, though,’ he said.
An orange cat sat on the granite benchtop watching them. His fat hindquarters spread out across the surface like a giant puddle of marmalade.
‘I’m not happy with these cats,’ agreed Zac.
‘Well, I like them,’ said Luke. ‘And I like their house a lot. You reckon you can figure out how to use the griller on that oven?’
Luke sliced more ham and some cheese while Zac grilled four slabs of bread. He decided that now was as good a time as any to find out more about himself.
‘Tell me what you know,’ he said.
‘I don’t think this is the right place to talk,’ said Zac.
Luke stabbed his knife into the wood. ‘Well, I’m not waiting any more, Zac. I thought we agreed.’
Zac met Luke’s eyes and then dropped his gaze to the floor. He raised his left foot and rested it against his right leg. He lowered it, and balanced on the other foot. Finally, he blew a huge sigh.
‘Well, firstly, I’m an elf. So there’s that,’ he said.
Luke left the knife where it was. He didn’t think he could trust himself with it right now.
‘Come on, Luke,’ continued Zac. ‘You know I’m not like you. You people are sooo slow. You’ve seen me run.’
‘So you can run fast.’
‘And fight.’
‘You’re a good fighter.’
‘And what I did with the mushrooms.’
Luke snorted. ‘So, you’re not a gardener or a cook. That doesn’t makes you an elf or a pixie or whatever. Oh my God, Zac, why would you even choose to be an elf if you were going to go all fairytale on me? Couldn’t you at least have been a vampire or something? They’re all the rage at the moment.’
‘You’re hilarious,’ said Zac. ‘Well, how did I open the gates at Dwight when we were about to crash the swamp rat right into them?’
‘You said the guards did it,’ said Luke, faltering. ‘To let the ambulance through.’
‘How did we leave the running track without Singh or anyone else seeing us? Why did the transit cops walk right past us on the train, and not see us at all?’ Zac pulled the bread out from under the grill.
‘Lucky?’ said Luke.
‘Magic,’ said Zac. ‘I have a little. Some elves have a lot. We can draw upon the forces of nature to change the way people see things. And we’re very fast.’
The orange cat stretched out along the benchtop, head on its paws, listening carefully.
‘There’s no such thing as elves,’ said Luke. ‘There are such things as psychiatrists, though. And we need to hook you up with one.’
Zac cocked his head to one side. ‘Black,’ he said.
Luke raised his head.
Zac leapt up onto the bench in one lithe bound, grabbed the knife from the chopping block, flung it across the room and then disappeared. Luke blinked and Zac stood on the opposite side of the large kitchen, holding the quivering knife.
The marmalade cat hissed, scrabbled fat feet on the granite, and took off.
Luke climbed onto a barstool. He needed to sit down.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that changes things.’
Samantha tried to sit up, decided that was probably not going to work, and lay back down. Her head hurt so much that it felt like her brain was a lump of metal and a magnet beneath the floor was doing its very best to suck it out of her skull.
She opened her eyes.
‘You look like crap,’ said Birthday Jones.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘And, um, where is here?’
The ceiling above her was pitched to a point and painted in thick pink and lime stripes. The colours were a tad bright right now, and she closed her eyes again.
‘We just saved your arse,’ said Birthday Jones.
‘What was wrong with my arse?’ she asked, eyes still closed. ‘And who is we?’
She had a feeling that something bad had just happened to her, but exactly what, she was not sure. And right now she was thinking that maybe that was a good thing, because of her metal brain and the magnet and all.
‘Sam, this is Seraphina Woods,’ said Birthday.
Sam opened her eyes. A beautiful woman’s face appeared.
‘Call me Sera,’ said the woman, smiling down at her. ‘Hi.’
‘What’s going on?’ said Samantha.
She raised her head and managed to lean up on her elbow. Her stomach lurched with the movement. And suddenly everything flooded back – Boldo and Shofranka, the ninjas…
‘Tamas!’ she screamed, struggling to her feet.
The room spun, faded to white and she would have fallen had the woman not grabbed her.
‘Samantha, honey. You’re weak right now. Don’t panic,’ the woman said.
‘Where is Tamas?’ she managed, panting.
‘He’s out there,’ said Seraphina. ‘The paramedics are with him.’
‘Is he -’ Samantha couldn’t think it, let alone say it.
‘He’s going to be okay, thanks to you,’ said Seraphina.
‘I need to see him.’
‘You can’t go out there, Sam,’ said Birthday. ‘The Yakuza took off when we snatched you and the police arrived -’
‘But they’re still out there,’ said Seraphina. ‘And they’re Japanese mafia, Sam. They will take on the police if they believe they can capture you.’
What do the Japanese mafia want with me? thought Samantha, followed by, I have to sit down. Right at that moment her knees gave way.
‘Birthday, bring me that chair, would you,’ said Seraphina.
Eyes closed, Sam heard a chair being scraped towards her and she dropped into it, guided by the woman holding her. She put her head between her knees and tried not to vomit. The musky smell of Tamas’s blood saturating her T-shirt and jeans didn’t help with those efforts. But it was much more than that – she had never felt so incredibly weak and exhausted.
What is wrong with me? she wanted to know.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ she groaned.
‘You performed a very powerful healing spell, Samantha White,’ said Seraphina. ‘And given that you’ve absolutely no training, you’re lucky to be alive.’
Oh great, thought Samantha, eyes on her sneakers. This must be some Roma witch who’s spun so much bull to the Gaje that she’s convinced herself it’s true. I need to get out of here. Is Tamas really going to be okay?
The image of blood pulsing from his throat caused a sob to rise to her mouth. She bit down on it. Did Boldo still have Shofranka? What if Lala had woken up and was frantic for them? Was Mirela okay? She needed to find them now, and Birthday Jones and this woman were not going to stop her.
The woman knelt in front of her, dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Her skin was fresh cream, flawless. Underneath a khaki trucker’s cap, her eyes glowed amber, multifaceted, golden. They emitted so much warmth and kindness that Samantha had to blink. Why did this stranger seem to give a damn about her?
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘I work for Save the Children. We help street kids all over the world. Birthday Jones is my friend.’
‘Are you Gaje?’ asked Samantha, not because that mattered, only because she was trying to figure things out.
‘I’m not from Romania,’ said Sera.
‘Samantha, you’re being rude,’ said Birthday, folding his arms across his black T-shirt.
A khaki trucker’s cap hid his curls and Samantha suddenly did a double take. Sera was wearing the same outfit, right down to the cargos.
‘What are you, my private army?’ she said.
‘Um, kinda,’ said Sera.
‘You don’t look like a social worker,’ said Samantha.
‘Well, thank you,’ said Seraphina, with a wink.
Did she just wink? thought Samantha. I have to get out of here. She doesn’t have a clue how bad all this is. ‘I have to go back out there to them,’ she said.
‘Not going to happen,’ said Sera. She smiled sadly. ‘Best I can do is allow you to peek outside at what’s happening, but then we’ll have to go.’
‘Go?’ said Samantha.
‘Yes, honey. We have to get you out of Romania. Tonight.’
Okay, so she’s crazy, thought Samantha. At least we’ve established that.
‘Riiight,’ she said. ‘Okay, then.’
She gave Birthday a look which clearly said: what-the-hell-are-you-thinking-hanging-around-with-this-fruitcake?
She put on her most reasoning tone of voice. ‘Well, maybe I could just have a look at what’s going on out there. I am really worried about my friends, my family.’ And as soon as I get near the door I’m getting the hell out of here. Ninjas with killing stars, kidnapping cowboys and now some psycho social worker. Why the hell didn’t I stay in camp tonight, like Lala told me to?
‘Of course, honey,’ said Sera. ‘Just make sure you keep all parts of your body inside the Funhouse.’
The Funhouse?
Samantha took a better look around the room. The candy stripes from the ceiling continued jauntily down the walls, giving the effect of a striped circus tent, although, as far as she could tell, the walls looked solid. The floor was a giant checkerboard; its glossy black-and-white tiles looked as though they’d never been walked upon. Opposite them, against the wall, leaned a giant mirror in an elaborate gilded frame. The chair she was sitting on was heavily padded in deep red velvet. It was the only chair in the room. And other than a royal blue door with a glass doorknob, that was it. She had definitely never seen a place like this at any other carni.
Her heart began hammering at her breastbone. She turned to Birthday.
‘Are we still at the Carnivale?’
He stared at his shoes. Not good.
‘It’s just out there, Samantha,’ said Sera, nodding towards the blue door. ‘Take a look.’
She raced across the tiles and grabbed the door handle, pausing for just a moment. What if the ninjas were still there and they spotted her? There was nowhere to hide in here. She’d be cornered. But the need to know was too strong.
She hid her body behind the door and cracked it carefully, peering out into the night. She knew that with the bright lighting behind her inside this freaky room she’d be lit up as though on stage, but she had to see what was going on.
She could glimpse just a little from this angle. The gravel road of the carni met the front door of the Funhouse, and she spotted the food tent opposite; it looked like the same one she’d seen when the ninjas were chasing her. But now it seemed to be closed for the night. A couple of carnis walked by, smoking and talking; she could hear them grumbling about losing money.
It appeared as though this room was just a few metres down from the Ghost Train, right where she’d been standing when Tamas had been hit by the star.
But that can’t be right, she thought. I would definitely have noticed this place.
She could see strobing police lights against the night sky, but not the spot where Tamas had fallen. She needed to move further out the door to see what was going on.
‘Can we turn the lights off in here?’ she hissed, frustrated that she hadn’t thought of doing so earlier.
‘They can’t see you, Samantha,’ said Sera. ‘You can open the door as much as you like. Just don’t try to go out there.’
Samantha gave Sera a tight smile and turned back to the door, rolling her eyes. Yeah, like I’m gonna listen to the crazy woman. Still, she could see no light switch by the door, so she risked showing a little more of herself in order to see further down the street.
And there he was. Tamas! Her hand flew to her throat. He was on a stretcher, medics bending over him, and in a huddle behind him were Mirela and Luca, Hanzi and Shofranka. They looked exhausted and upset. A police car waited behind them, its lights flashing.
That was enough for her. The police had scared the ninjas off last time – well, with a little help from Gudada and his pistola – so she decided she’d take her chances. I’m not going to hide in here all night, she thought. She stepped out the door.
And found herself back in the red velvet chair.
‘What the hell just happened?’
‘Imperceptible spell,’ said Sera, now sitting cross-legged on the tiles.
Birthday Jones leaned against the candied wall, near the mirror. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and still would not meet Sam’s eyes.
‘Say what?’ Sam said, moving forward and standing over the woman, her fists clenched.
‘An imperceptible spell,’ said Sera.
While Samantha stared, incredulous, the woman pulled an emery board from her pocket. ‘It means that no one can see the Funhouse,’ she continued, filing her nails. ‘It also means that no one can go in or out of that door.’
Samantha grappled to stay patient with the lunatic. She tried for logic. ‘Well, how did we get in here then?’
Seraphina used her nailfile to point to the mirror.
Samantha closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She spoke quietly. ‘Listen, lady,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what kind of drugs you’re taking or what kind you should be taking, and I don’t know what you’ve done to my so-called friend over there…’ The volume pumped up with the last few words. ‘But I am getting the hell out of here.’
‘Sam -’ Birthday walked towards her, arm outstretched, his face miserable.
‘Don’t,’ she said, hands held out towards him like a stop sign.
Her heart ached at the realisation that he was not the person she thought he was. What was he doing not even trying to help her?
‘Birthday, it’s okay, let her go,’ said Sera.
‘Like he could stop me,’ said Samantha, marching back to the door, yanking on the crystal doorknob and heading out into the night.
Back on the velvet chair, she screamed and then burst into tears.
‘So, what else do you know?’ said Luke.
The toasted sandwich and orange juice had gone a long way towards making him feel normal again. Well, towards what he thought normal was supposed to feel like.
Georgia was still upstairs. He pulled the chocolate cake from the fridge. As confused as he was about everything – Zac, himself… hell, the whole world – his greatest wish at the moment was that Toad could see him right now.
‘Wait,’ he said, before Zac could speak. ‘You say you’re magic. Is there any way you could make Toad watch me eat this cake while he’s still sitting in Dwight?’
Zac studied his nails. ‘You’re not taking this very seriously, Luke,’ he said.
‘But I would seriously like Toad to watch me eat this cake in this house.’
‘You’re the psychopath, Luke. A lot of people will be looking for you right now.’
Luke left the cake on the bench and shut the door to the fridge. He leaned his back against it to have contact with something solid, real.
‘The psychopath,’ said Luke. ‘Not a psychopath. You said the psychopath.’
Zac said nothing, just met his eyes.
A grey cat, mean-faced and battle-scarred, limped – as though with arthritic knees – in an ungainly swagger into the kitchen. The small cat tried to leap onto a benchtop; failed. Instead, it propped against a cupboard, cleaning its face, as though nothing at all had happened.
‘So I’m the psychopath,’ Luke continued. ‘What does that mean, Zac? Am I gonna become, like, the new Hannibal Lecter?’
‘Not all psychopaths are serial killers, Luke.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. Because otherwise I’m a long way behind all the other psychopaths in my career so far.’
‘You’re still not taking this seriously,’ said Zac.
‘Well, you’re still speaking in tongues,’ said Luke.
Zac moved silently across the marble floor tiles and stopped in front of the little grey cat. He squatted. There was silence for a beat and suddenly the cat reared up on its hind legs, mouth open, teeth bared, hissing. Doubled now in size, the fur on its back and tail standing bolt upright, it made a lightning-fast vicious swipe for Zac’s face. Zac rocked backwards in a move that would have put anyone else on their arse. The cat missed. Zac hissed. And the little grey warrior limped painfully out of the kitchen.
‘I think these cats are spies,’ said Zac.
‘Spies,’ said Luke.
They stared at each other.
Zac looked away first.
Luke sighed deeply. ‘Are we gonna talk properly, Nguyen, or do you wanna tell me more about the 007 cats?’
Zac looked away from Luke for a moment, and then stood. ‘More than five thousand years ago,’ he said, ‘there was a very brief time in history when peace reigned between animals, mortals and immortals.’
Luke picked up an apple and began tossing it. ‘Were you there?’ he said.
Zac gave him a sour look.
‘What?’ said Luke. ‘Why is that so stupid? I mean, you’re the one who’s supposed to be a magic elf, and I’m supposed to just know that you’re not thousands of years old? Aren’t elves supposed to be immortal?’
‘Well, we’re not mortal,’ said Zac. ‘And we can live for thousands of years. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t die and that we can’t be killed.’
Luke’s scalp itched, as it always did when something didn’t make sense. He’d always figured it was his brain’s bullcrap detector, and right now it was in overdrive. But Zac really believed what he was saying, and he had thrown a knife and caught it before it hit the wall. Maybe Zac wasn’t actually an elf – Luke definitely wasn’t living life in the Disney channel – but he wasn’t the slightest bit ordinary, either.
‘Okay,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘So you weren’t there five thousand years ago in that peaceful hippy time, but how old are you?’ He braced himself. He didn’t know how he was going to speak to Zac again if he learned that he was ninety, or three hundred and eight.
‘I’m fifteen,’ said Zac.
‘For real?’ said Luke.
‘For real. I guess that’s why they assigned me to you. One, they thought we could relate; two, they wouldn’t have to tell me anything because I’m pretty much considered an infant.’
‘But why wouldn’t they want you to know what’s going on?’ said Luke.
‘They probably figured I’d freak out,’ said Zac.
Luke sighed. ‘Well, that’s very helpful. So, five thousand years ago there was this big love fest, and everything was happy families. Next.’
‘And then there was this terrible disturbance,’ said Zac. ‘This awful disruption that spread across the whole world.’
‘Like an earthquake?’ said Luke.
‘More a poisonous gas leak,’ said Zac. ‘But the poison was like a toxic emotion, a volcano of hate. All this rage and fear suddenly erupted into the atmosphere. The elves who were alive back then reckon they could see and smell it – rotten, grey-yellow filth oozing out from the soil, bubbling up from the oceans, bursting into the air as a putrid gas. Trees died. Climates changed. Wars began. People fought and killed so that they could own more than they could ever use. Some would watch their neighbours – even their family members – starve, just so that they could have more and more. Hoarding it, keeping it for themselves.
‘Some of the worst of these people rose to the highest ranks in governments around the world. Or to huge positions of power. Millions starved. Animals were slaughtered for the hell of it. For fun. And the most evil of all things happened. For the first time ever in history, people began to torture other creatures – making others suffer just to give themselves some kind of sick pleasure.’
Luke’s mind was filled with images of people who fitted that bill. Officer Holt, Zecko Sevic and Foster Daddy Dick led the parade. He gave a bitter smile.
Zac walked over to the window facing the ocean. White rain slashed down from the sky, hurling itself at the glass, each sliver sacrificing itself in its efforts to break through, to reclaim nature.
‘It was called Disharmony,’ Zac said. ‘But it wasn’t just a division between mortals and animals. The immortals were also affected. Many witches and warlocks became black overnight. Orcs – ordinarily dumb as rocks – chose the dark, as did goblins, the succubi…’
‘But not the elves,’ said Luke.
‘No, not the elves,’ agreed Zac. ‘Nor the vast majority of mortals. But the tiny number of the worst of the worst grew. This small group of mortals and immortals seemed to have no feelings at all for others, no empathy, no remorse; they made their way through life with one aim only: to please themselves, regardless of what it cost anyone else.’
‘Psychopaths,’ said Luke.
Zac nodded.
‘So, basically, I’m the bad guy,’ said Luke.
He wanted to feel something right now, but mostly he wanted to feel nothing, like usual. Unfortunately, he was somewhere in between. And what that felt like was uncomfortable, kind of itchy.
‘Well, sort of,’ said Zac. ‘But you see, you’re not just a psychopath.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Luke. ‘I’m the psychopath. Like the big daddy of all psychopaths.’
‘No, idiot,’ said Zac. ‘But you are part of the Telling.’
‘The Telling?’
‘It’s a prophecy. All immortals are taught the basics of it before they can even fly.’
‘You can fly?’ said Luke.
‘The Telling,’ Zac continued, ‘decrees that one day three siblings will be born who can rid the world of Disharmony forever.’
‘Make everything all happy-happy again?’
‘Yep. Well, there’s a little bit more to it than that, of course,’ said Zac.
‘Well, what else do I need to know?’
‘I don’t know the whole prophecy. There’s a saying that if you don’t know something about the Telling, then you’re not yet meant to know that part of it.’
‘That makes no sense at all,’ said Luke. ‘I’m finding this is a theme with you, Nguyen. Anyway, you said that one of the siblings is a psychopath?’
‘Yep.’
‘And my sister?’ Luke really wanted to know more about his sister, and…
‘Wait – did you say three siblings?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Zac. ‘You’re the psychopath. I’m betting that your twin sister is the empath. It’s a symmetry thing. It makes sense. Nature loves symmetry.’
‘What’s an empath?’ said Luke.
‘Um, someone, like, not you,’ said Zac.
Okaaay. ‘And what’s the third?’ said Luke, his mouth dry.
‘The third would be your brother,’ said Zac. ‘We know he’s a boy. He’s a year younger than you. And he’s a genius.’
Zac moved closer to Luke, reached a hand out towards him, then dropped it again.
‘And your mother died giving birth to him.’
‘And I thought girls were supposed to talk a lot.’
Luke raised an eyebrow and turned. Zac hissed quietly. Rich-punk-bad-girl Georgia stood in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the jamb, arms folded. This morning she was even more Goth than yesterday. A long-sleeved black fitted T-shirt, black micro-mini skirt, black leggings, bare feet, black toenails. It seemed she hadn’t gotten around to the black lipstick yet, but she’d definitely found the eyeliner.
For some reason Luke felt mildly guilty. As though he’d been caught talking about her. He wished his conversation with Zac had been about something so simple.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Great house.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ She dropped her arms and sighed. ‘And do I really live here? We’ve done this before.’
‘You want us to go now?’ he said.
‘Ah, no,’ she said. ‘You just got here. You’ve done nothing remotely entertaining, and I’m terribly bored. It’s raining, I’m alone, and I thought you two might be something I could play with.’
‘Play with?’ said Luke.
This chick was an accident waiting to happen. The kind you read about on the web, after she’d been missing for twenty-four hours. She’d just invited two strangers into her home, and she wanted to play. They could have been anyone. Well, actually, they were a psychopath and an immortal, he reminded himself, so she hadn’t exactly made good choices. She was your typical spoiled teenager, looking to shock the oldies, to find an experience that money couldn’t buy. Maybe she’d found it.
‘Yeah,’ Georgia said. ‘Aren’t you two supposed to be villains? Don’t you want to go and do something illegal?’
‘Actually,’ said Luke. ‘I just want to go shopping for some new clothes.’
‘Yeah,’ said Zac. ‘So we’ll be leaving now.’
‘Thanks for everything, Georgia,’ said Luke.
Georgia walked over and opened a kitchen drawer, then she turned and began digging with a fork into the cake.
‘This is great,’ she said, chocolate on her lips. ‘You guys haven’t had any.’
‘We’re good,’ said Zac.
‘Well, you don’t need to leave right now, anyway,’ she said, grabbing another forkful of cake. ‘There are heaps of clothes upstairs – they’re my brothers’. They’ll never know they’re missing. They won’t want them by the time they get back anyway.’
‘Where are they?’ said Luke.
‘Boarding school.’
‘Why aren’t you at school?’ he said.
‘Well, I am,’ said Georgia. ‘I’m tucked away nicely at boarding school. Out of harm’s way. That’s what my parents think.’
‘Why didn’t the school tell your parents you’re missing?’ said Zac, arms folded.
‘Because my parents wrote them a lovely letter explaining that I’ll be away with them for the winter.’
‘But you wrote it?’ said Luke.
Georgia smiled widely.
‘Now what’ll it be?’ she said. ‘Cake first or clothes? You don’t want to go outside today. It’s pouring. Plus, I’ve got the latest Halo game.’
Georgia led them up the stairs to the third floor.
‘Those are my brothers’ rooms,’ she said, pointing to two closed doors. ‘Help yourselves.’ She kept walking, pushing open a door that was part of a double set. Luke glimpsed Elizabeth Bay through the opening. That had to be one hell of a bedroom, he thought.
‘This is mine,’ she said. ‘Stay out.’ She stepped in and closed the door. But before they could even look at one another, the door reopened.
‘Oh,’ she said, black pigtails swinging with her sudden reappearance. ‘That door -’ she pointed a black fingernail at the far end of the corridor, ‘- is off-limits. That’s my older brother’s room. He’s away at school too, but he’s kinda – ah, funny about people touching his stuff. So stay out of there. Otherwise, have fun. I’m going to have a nap. I find sleeping when it’s dark such a waste of the night. Later.’
She pulled her door closed again.
‘She’s crazy,’ said Luke. ‘She just said she wanted to play. We could take off with anything.’
‘I think we should go,’ said Zac. ‘I don’t trust her. Who lets strangers walk around their house while they sleep?’
‘Well, I think she’s right,’ said Luke. ‘It’s freezing out there. And I’m in no hurry to take off. I mean, it’s best that we lay low a while. I know we’re not going to be broadcast on Australia’s Most Wanted, but it can’t hurt to stay off the streets for a couple of days.’
‘A couple of days!’ said Zac. ‘I thought you wanted to find your sister?’
‘Well, I’m sure Georgia’s got a great online set-up. I was going to head to the library to do some searching, but I bet I can get everything I need right here.’
‘I think we should go back to my house,’ said Zac. ‘They could know more about where your sister is. What can you find online?’
‘You’d be surprised what I can find online, Zacster,’ said Luke. ‘You take that room, I’ll take this one. See if you can find some clothes to fit your skinny arse.’
Luke emerged from the bedroom wearing the coolest jeans he’d ever seen, brand new Adidas sneakers and a badass hoodie. Zac was waiting impatiently for him outside the door, dressed in similar gear.
‘Not bad,’ said Luke.
‘Can we get on with it?’ said Zac.
‘I wonder where the computers are.’ Luke moved across the carpeted hallway and tried the door next to the off-limits room. He pushed it open.
‘So cool,’ he said. ‘You have to check this out.’
They stepped into a study wrapped floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Hundreds of books filled three walls of shelves, with a ladder waiting nearby to take the happy reader right to the top of the stack if there wasn’t enough available within reach.
But it was the fourth wall that made Luke hold his breath. Five computers: the latest Apples, all widescreen, two touchscreen, and all of them in sleep-mode, blinking quietly, waiting for him to wake them. Who needed books? So far, there was nothing he had ever wanted that he hadn’t been able to access online.
‘Let’s get to work,’ he said to Zac, cracking his fingers.
‘What about Georgia?’ said Zac.
‘What about her? If she has a problem with us using this stuff, she’ll tell us.’
Luke took a seat and randomly stabbed his fingers into the two keyboards closest to him. The machines whirred efficiently, flashing into life.
Zac plonked down next to him, scowling at the two Siamese cats who’d just sashayed through the door.
‘I don’t like it here,’ he said.
‘Yeah? Well, that’s getting old,’ said Luke, typing rapidly.
Within seconds he was negotiating the Births, Deaths and Marriages website. Using one of the hundreds of false IP addresses he’d created before being locked up, he registered as a random civilian.
He clicked Next, Next, Next, as screens popped up, informing him about privacy policies, security information and blah, blah, blah. Finally, he arrived at a screen he was happy with.
Enter a name and date range, the website invited, cursor blinking.
M-o-r-g-a-n M-o-r-e-a-u, he typed. 1947-1997. That should do it, he thought. That made his mother any age up to fifty when she died. If his brother was born in 1997 he would be fourteen now. The thought of having a younger brother sent a teensy thrill flashing through his stomach, surprising him. He hit Enter.
The website shot up a warning screen.
You cannot search for any person born after 1909 due to privacy considerations.
Luke snorted in frustration and read on to learn that accompanied by three forms of identification, he could personally attend the registry office, and then they would assist him with yada yada yada.
I don’t think so.
He began typing furiously, navigating out of the program and into the one-zero world he loved so much. The world of logic, of cold, clever code, where emotion was irrelevant, irrational, completely useless. Perfect.
This was his favourite place. And it loved him right back.
‘Where did you learn how to do that?’ said Zac, watching reams of digits scroll the screen before them.
Luke had forgotten Zac was even there.
‘Foster parents three,’ he said, tabbing, scrolling, typing. ‘They liked the welfare cheques, but not me so much. She worked for Telstra, though, and she had unlimited download access. So they left me alone with the laptop. They liked it when I was quiet.’
‘But how did you learn to do that?’ said Zac.
Luke pulled himself from the moment to consider his flying fingers. Sometimes he wondered how he could do what he did online. Most often, though, he just did what he did and thought about that.
‘Um, I just kind of understand it,’ he said.
He couldn’t explain that the numbers made beautiful patterns for him, artwork that he loved to explore and manipulate. And that the security that people set up to try to encrypt their data, lock down their sites, restrict access, were irresistible puzzles to him – challenges that he became obsessed with until he had broken through.
‘And I met some people online,’ he added, aware of Zac gaping at the screen. ‘They kinda showed me stuff too.’
Those faceless hackers had been his only real friends, but they stayed that way only when they stuck to speaking about code. Once they began posting about birthdays and ballgames and current affairs, he blocked their mail. If they were smart enough to break back through his lockout, he resumed the friendship, but only on the proviso that they kept their gossip for their girlfriends.
He’d moved in with foster family number three at age ten. By eleven, he was mentoring the hackers who’d taught him the basics.
‘Ah, here we are,’ he said. ‘Their admin area. That’s much more helpful.’
He again typed his mother’s name, linking it with the name she so kindly gave him at birth – Lucifer Black Moreau. A hyperlink to his birth certificate popped up immediately. He had that already. He wanted to know the names of his siblings. He set up a search for all children registered to his mother. The results were almost instantaneous.
‘Oh my God,’ said Zac, watching closely.
Eight hyperlinks had popped up.
Luke flopped back in his chair. He had eight siblings? He’d always been alone. Eight?
‘There,’ said Zac, pointing. ‘That would be her: born 1996. The same year as us.’
Slightly dazed, Luke clicked on the link.
‘Samantha White Moreau,’ read Zac, now peering over his shoulder. ‘The Empath.’ He spoke the words with awe.
Luke quickly scanned the dates within the other links.
‘Are you sure you got your fairytale right, Nguyen?’ he said. ‘There isn’t a link for 1997, the year the so-called Genius was supposed to have been born.’
‘It’s not a fairytale,’ said Zac, frowning. ‘I don’t know what it means that he’s not listed there. Maybe he wasn’t born in Australia. Your mother could travel anywhere she wanted, you know. I have no idea why she used a mortal hospital to give birth to any of you in the first place. I mean, she was a witch.’
Luke spun his desk chair around, aiming to smack straight into Zac and send him flying. Instead, with one backwards bound, Zac was already on the other side of the room. Where he stood, palms out.
‘What?’ Zac said.
‘My mother is a WITCH?!’ Luke shouted.
Zac coloured. ‘Oh, didn’t I mention that before? I just thought you knew. I mean, everyone knows that Morgan Moreau was a very powerful witch.’
Luke buried his face in his hands and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.
‘Zac?’ he said, through his fingers.
‘Yes, Luke?’ Zac was sounding extra polite.
Luke raised his head.
‘Would you mind, in future, not presuming that I know anything about anything that you couldn’t find in an encyclopaedia?’
‘Witches and elves are in the encyclopaedia.’
‘Okay then. How about this?’ said Luke, speaking super-slowly. ‘Any pieces of information that you think an ordinary mortal might not be familiar with, would you mind letting me know about it? Especially if it has to do with my family!’
‘’kay,’ said Zac. He cleared his throat. ‘Um, but Luke…’
‘Yes, Zac?’
‘You’re not an ordinary mortal.’
‘Thank you, Zac. I think I’m beginning to get that.’
Luke turned back to the screen. The world in there made a lot more sense to him. Well, it used to. He stared at the hyperlinks.
‘Hello, brothers and sisters,’ he said, and began clicking the links.
Samantha hunched in a booth in the British Airways business club lounge with her knees up on the seat, a resting place for her chin. She half sat on her Ride it like you stole it bag, her only luggage, worried someone would take it if she fell asleep. She was bone tired. Beyond exhausted. She felt she’d aged ten years in the past ten hours. But she knew there was no way she could fall asleep with so much going on inside her head.
Besides, she had to board her flight at 0830 hours.
Samantha had never told the time by the 24-hour clock before. She’d never been in a club lounge. She’d never been to an airport. And she’d definitely never been on a plane.
A cheery attendant bustled past her table, removed her empty apple juice glass, and gave the table a quick wipe. The woman was Gaje – cleaning up after her! The attendant had been past five times already in the few hours Samantha had been here, and still she could not comprehend it. She dropped her feet to the floor, worried she’d be in trouble for having them up there.
‘Thank you,’ she said to the woman.
The woman smiled and moved her trolley to the next table.
Samantha tried for a return smile, but didn’t make it. Right now, she doubted she’d ever smile again.
She did another sweep of her surroundings. She’d never seen a place so plush, so expensive, so airless. So completely alien to her life at home. She had to keep forcing herself to unwrinkle her nose. Everything smelled terrible! A disinfected, chemical fog that set her already tear-swollen eyes to watering again. She had an awful headache. Right now she felt that one gulp of camp air – the mountain breeze, Nuri’s black coffee, horse – would blow the pain right away. She sighed and drew her knees closer. When would she get to smell those things again?
Over the past few hours, especially since sunrise, she’d noticed a change in the type of passengers strolling past the wall of glossy magazines she’d parked herself behind. At first she’d seen tired couples with silver hair and sensible shoes, and young families bundling along with impeccably dressed, heavy-eyed children. But since six a.m., men and women marched in as singles, wearing suits and towing behind them black bags.
She wondered whether they could be some kind of army. They all smelled the same, dressed the same and constantly watched their watches. She focused on them – a little paranoid after everything Sera had told her – and wondered if perhaps they were some sort of secret service, here to monitor her. At first she figured that some of them were quite mad as they murmured quietly into thin air, until she noticed little earpieces. Her anxiety increased. She’d seen movies with spies wearing those.
She found only one difference between them – attached to most of their identical, expensive-looking wheelie bags was a little charm: a yellow ribbon wrapped around a handle, a glittering star clipped to another, a plastic green frog lolling about on a zipper. She figured these must be amulets that had been blessed for luck.
Her stomach grumbled; whether it was with grief or hunger, she was beyond caring. Although Seraphina had told her repeatedly that she could eat anything she wanted in the lounge – for free! – she’d had nothing but juice. Mostly because the juice bar was just to the right of the magazine wall and she’d watched several people pour glasses for themselves. She figured she could do that without breaking something, bursting into tears, or setting off an alarm.
She had passed the food bar on her beeline to the corner booth. Her senses already completely dazzled by the lights of the airport shops, she’d stolen just a quick glance at the food laid out in cabinets of stainless steel and glass. Other than fruit and bread rolls, she hadn’t recognised anything there, and nothing smelled real. Not even the apples.
Once she’d sat down, she’d moved again only three times. Twice for juice and once for the toilet.
The toilet experience had threatened to bring the tears back.
Everything was so clean it almost stung. She’d tiptoed into the shiny, empty room, shocked by all the reflections of herself. She turned away from the wall of vanities but met herself again, sneakers to curls, in a full-length mirror.
And for a second – in the most opulent toilet she could imagine – she saw herself as the Gaje must. She wore her favourite sneakers – pink faux-Converse. She noticed holes that she’d never before cared about, and one of the laces had freed itself from the plastic tip on the end that had held it together. It was fuzzed up like a stringy afro, and had apparently gone about gathering up burrs and grass seeds for extra adornment.
The waistband of her black faded jeans didn’t quite meet the hem of her aqua T-shirt, and she tugged it downwards to try to cover her flat, brown stomach. It snapped back, settling just above her hips, and for a moment she saw the now-clean T-shirt as it had been before Sera had hovered her hands over it in the Funhouse: covered in Tamas’s blood.
She pressed her fingers into her eyes to try to blur the sudden vision. It wasn’t until she’d been in the rental car that she’d realised her shirt was spotless and the stiffness of Tamas’s dried blood on her jeans had vanished.
Hating the sight of the shirt, she zipped up the black jacket Sera had given her. It smelled like leather, so she assumed it was, and right then she was glad she had it. The air in the airport seemed to be skin-temperature, but she felt she’d break out in shivers at any moment.
She studied her face in the mirror. There was no sign of the bruising from the skirmishes in Pantelimon – another apparent ‘gift’ from Sera – but her green eyes accused her from behind tear-swollen, red lids. Why are you doing this to me? they asked. She shrugged. She had no answers. She’d untied the golden cord from around her forehead. Her curls flopped into her eyes, but she thought she now looked maybe a smidge more like some of the other travellers she’d seen so far.
On the toilet, she’d pulled her tarot deck from her bag and wrapped the cord back around it, shoving the shiny box back inside before the deck made her cry again. It was the cards that had caused her all this trouble.
Back in her booth, Samantha chewed her thumbnail. What if it doesn’t work? she asked herself for the millionth time.
On a plastic seat just inside the glass doors of the airport, Seraphina had given her a few more items. The first was a wallet containing two boarding passes.
Sam now studied the pass. Surely they would have called her flight by now? What if she’d missed it? She couldn’t imagine how that could be the case – she’d memorised the flight number so many times it was on constant replay in her head. BA887. British Airways, Business Class, to Heathrow airport, London. A ninety-minute trip that would take her countries away from all her friends and family. And Tamas.
But it was the next part of the journey that really made her heart flutter. She’d been trying not to think about it. After a three-hour wait in London, she’d board a Qantas flight for Sydney, Australia. And she’d be in the sky for twenty-seven hours.
That wasn’t just countries. That was a universe away.
The only other thing in the wallet was a ticket of another type. Hours ago, she’d sat staring at it, her backside numb on the plastic seat just inside the airport doors.
‘Um, what’s this?’ she’d asked Sera, her voice thick. She hiccuped. She’d stopped crying half an hour or so before, but her body hadn’t seemed to have caught up with the fact.
‘That’s your passport,’ said Sera, matter-of-factly. ‘It’s also your visa, and any other travel document you’re asked to produce.’
‘Um, no, it’s not,’ said Samantha.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Sera.
Samantha looked at her, and then back at the small piece of paper in her hand. She blinked. Hiccuped again.
‘It’s a ticket,’ she said finally, ‘to ride the dodgem cars at the Carnivale.’
‘Is it?’ said Sera.
‘It is,’ said Samantha.
‘Well, maybe you think so, pretty one,’ said Sera. ‘But to everyone else it will look exactly like your passport documents or your visa or anything else it needs to look like when asked.’
Samantha had stared at the floor. She could not possibly be any more miserable and confused. Every brain cell screamed, ‘Not possible!’ But she’d been shown things tonight that made her believe that the ticket probably would do just as Sera said. It didn’t make her feel any better, though.
‘What if I lose it?’ she’d said.
‘I shouldn’t do that if I were you, honey,’ said Sera.
Sera had then given her a story to tell in case anyone asked why she was travelling alone to Australia.
‘But you won’t need the story,’ Sera had said. ‘Whoever inspects your travel documents will merely feel that they’re having a particularly great day, and that you are a most bewitching fifteen-year-old – as indeed you are – and they will wave you on through. You just have to be cool and follow the signs.’
‘The signs at the airport?’ Samantha had said.
‘Yeah,’ said Sera. ‘Those too.’
What Seraphina had told her about the Admit One ticket was true. A woman in a uniform in the queue for Departures had asked to check her paperwork, beamed at her, and ushered her through to another lane, cordoned off by red rope, with virtually no one in it. And it had been like that all the way through to the lounge. So she knew that some of what Sera had said was true. But she actually didn’t want to believe any of the other stuff Sera had told her.
From the back seat of the car on the way to the airport, she hadn’t been able to see Birthday’s face as they both listened to what Sera told her. Sam would have loved to have seen whether his had registered the same shock and surprise as hers, but in some ways she was glad she hadn’t had the chance. Her heart couldn’t take any more shrapnel at the moment, and she feared that learning that Birthday had known all this stuff about her for years, without telling her, would be a betrayal too hard to bear.
Her thoughts were startled back to the lounge when the PA piped up.
‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We would like to advise that Flight BA887 is now ready for boarding at Gate number eight. Would all passengers departing for London on BA887 please make your way to Gate Eight for immediate departure.’
The apple juice soured in Samantha’s stomach and she wished she had time for another trip to the toilet. She grabbed her bag and hurried towards Gate Eight. Towards London. Towards Sydney. Towards the twin brother she never knew she had but could now feel, just as she always had felt him without knowing what it was.
Inside her chest, something clawed mercilessly at her heart, shredding it even further. She thought maybe she could taste blood at the back of her throat.
‘Now what are you doing?’ said Zac. He pulled his desk chair close to Luke’s computer and watched, mesmerised, as Luke’s fingers blurred over the keyboard.
‘Hunting,’ said Luke.
‘For the empath or the genius?’ said Zac.
‘Yep and yep,’ said Luke. ‘But also anything else I can get on Morgan Moreau or any of these other names we just pulled. Now move over.’
Zac slid his chair backwards and Luke rolled over to the next computer.
‘How are you going to find them?’
‘I’m hacking into a few databases,’ said Luke. ‘The Department of Community Services, the AFP and Interpol.’
‘This is how you got locked up, isn’t it?’ said Zac.
‘Well, it helped,’ said Luke. ‘But I figured out what I did wrong last time.’
He skated his chair back to the other computer, typing furiously again. ‘It’s all about timing. I’ll dip in and out too fast for them to catch me.’
‘So I don’t need to prepare to get you out of here when the Feds come and bust in the door?’
‘Nope,’ said Luke, eyes glued to the screen. ‘I’ve never needed anyone to get me out of anything. Besides, this time I’m using two cloaking sites before launching simultaneous dictionary, brute force and pre-computation attacks on their networks.’
‘Have you ever heard anyone speaking Elvish?’ said Zac.
Luke kept typing.
‘You’d probably understand about as much of it as I understood what you just said,’ Zac continued.
‘It’s simple,’ said Luke, sliding back to the other screen. ‘I’m hiding within a web of thousands of people across the world to prevent anyone learning of my physical location, and I’ve launched multiple-platform software weaponry that sniffs out and cracks the encrypted passwords I need.’
‘Yep, that sounds simple,’ said Zac.
Luke grinned. ‘But I might not be able to chat for a while now,’ he said. ‘I’m going in.’
‘Going in?’ said Zac.
‘I’m just going to be concentrating for a while. I might not answer when you speak to me – I sort of zone out a bit.’
Luke tuned out to the sounds around him and unfocused his eyes. Instinctively, his fingers continued to seek and find the keys he needed. The numbers on the screen became maps and pathways. The pathways transformed into three-dimensional streets and laneways. A pulsing light scudded down an alleyway ahead of him. He dived in and followed it.
Although he was starving, fully dressed – shoes and all – and not remotely tired, Luke couldn’t make himself leave the bed.
Zac’s knocking and calling from outside the locked door made no difference.
It wasn’t the plush pillows and the super-soft bedding that kept him there, even though he’d never experienced anything nearly so comfortable. And it wasn’t the mesmerising view of the boats through the rain-smudged windows.
It was what buzzed about his head that kept him from getting up – information about who he was, why he was, and who had planned for him to turn out like this.
Morgan Moreau. Mother.
Welfare had a lot to say about her. Nothing nice. They had a record of eight children she’d given birth to over a fifteen-year span. She’d raised none of them. And two hadn’t even made it out of nappies. The Feds had a detailed file – they’d begun it after baby number three had died under suspicious circumstances. They’d questioned her, even detained her following the drowning death of baby number four, but there was never any hard evidence that she’d actually physically harmed her children.
Welfare didn’t care about the evidence. After finding her next two children malnourished and neglected, they’d made them state wards until the age of eighteen, finding her unfit to parent ever again.
Luke noticed that the data trail on his mother had then been dormant for a couple of years until a pre-set alarm had been activated on a computer in a Sydney hospital, prompting the nurse on duty to call authorities. Morgan Moreau had been admitted to the maternity unit. And she’d just given birth to twins.
Welfare sent the district supervisor and two case workers, accompanied by a police officer from the local area command.
The Feds sent an agent, Fairlie Merryweather.
There’d apparently been a complication during the birth and the obstetrician on-call had insisted that no one have access to the patients until he gave the all-clear. But by the time he’d done that, Morgan Moreau and her babies, a boy and a girl, were nowhere to be found.
Luke had read Merryweather’s report. It had been particularly scathing of the hospital’s lack of cooperation with authorities. The obstetrician, and the nurse who’d called in the alarm, had both been transferred from the hospital. Given her reports to the AFP, Fairlie Merryweather had apparently searched the country for the trio, but the trail in Australia went cold.
But Luke’s tracking software found it. Interpol had picked up the case. He learned that Interpol had logged the last known sighting of Morgan Moreau in Geneva, Switzerland. It was one year later, June 1997, and she’d been in the state’s largest hospital, giving birth.
He found the birth certificate – Jake Grey Moreau.
Next, he found the death certificate for his mother, Morgan Moreau, signed off by her midwife, Jamala Creole.
He read Fairlie Merryweather’s Interpol report about his mother’s death. Merryweather had actually travelled from Australia to Switzerland and had interviewed nursing staff, the on-call doctors and Jamala Creole. Morgan Moreau is deceased, the agent had coldly concluded in her report. There was no mention of Jake, or the whereabouts of his twin.
But Luke had the names of his three other siblings. They were in Australia. There were no fathers listed for any of them. Samantha White Moreau, his twin sister – the empath; Jake Grey Moreau, his younger brother – the supposed genius; and three older siblings, all born in Australia: Kyle Green Moreau, Daniel Brown Moreau and Liza Blue Moreau.
What was with the ridiculous colour thing?
He’d found the Welfare files on Daniel Brown and Liza Blue. After being removed as babies from his mother they’d both apparently been adopted into happy families. Their case files were minuscule, with brief yearly notations about their progress until they turned eighteen, and then their files had been closed. His own Welfare file, well, that was not so thin. He’d sent everything to his online storage files – maybe he’d go back to it one day, but the parts he’d seen were not exactly happy reading. Besides, he’d lived it, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go over his memories so soon.
Luke pulled the quilt up to his chin, freezing on the inside. He supposed he could track down Liza and Daniel, but they probably wouldn’t want anything to do with their old life, especially if they knew anything about their mother: the witch and child killer.
And she dumped me like trash, he thought.
He pulled the quilt up over his head, shivering.
‘Get up, already! It’s night-time!’
Luke peeled the covers back from his face. Although his eyes had been closed, he was wide awake and he was still freezing.
Georgia stood in the doorway.
‘Why, do you want us out of here?’ said Luke.
‘No, dummy,’ said Georgia. ‘I want you to eat. I’ve been cooking since seven.’
‘What time is it?’ said Luke.
‘Nine,’ said Georgia. ‘At night.’
‘I’m starving,’ said Luke.
‘Well, of course you are,’ she said.
‘What have you been making that takes two hours to cook?’
‘Why don’t you come and find out, instead of just lying there interrogating me?’
Georgia left the room and Luke climbed out of bed. The rain had really kicked in again, battering at the windows and causing the boats to bob and bounce about on the bay. He realised how lucky they’d been to find Georgia; it would have absolutely sucked to be sleeping outdoors tonight. He wondered where Zac was, but, more importantly, he wondered about the food. He really was ravenously hungry.
After visiting the bathroom, he stepped into the hallway, and… yep, he should have known.
‘Why do you do that?’ he said to Zac, who was squatting by his door.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Zac. ‘Why don’t we get out of here now? We can go to my house. My brother, Anthony, wrote a thesis on the Telling for his post-doctoral degree. He could give us a lot more information.’
Luke shook his head. He wanted to say: One, why didn’t you tell me this before? And two, are you for real: elves study prophecies that human beings have never heard about?
Instead, he said, ‘I am so hungry.’
‘Me too,’ said Zac.
They made their way downstairs, Luke’s face brightening with every step. He didn’t notice that Zac’s became more morose. All his senses were acutely focused on the kitchen. The smell was absolutely amazing.
‘Roast lamb,’ said Georgia as they rounded the entrance to the kitchen.
Glowing flames spattered and sparkled merrily in a modern gas fireplace set into the wall closest to the ocean. The whole kitchen radiated warmth and comfort.
‘I didn’t see a fireplace there last night,’ said Luke, rushing over to it and warming his hands.
‘I forgot to turn it on,’ said Georgia.
Zac frowned.
‘Roasted potatoes and pumpkin and buttered corn on the cob,’ said Georgia, pointing to the dishes that sprawled across the table. ‘I’ve made heaps too much gravy, that’s cheese bread and it’s freshly made, and I found a jar of a secret-family-recipe mint jelly. Oh, and I’ve made butterscotch pudding with banana custard for dessert.’
Luke grinned. ‘You don’t really look domestic.’
‘Boarding school,’ she said. ‘Zac, could you bring the lamb over? It’s just resting there by the oven.’
‘No,’ said Zac.
‘Whoops,’ said Georgia, smiling, with a hand on her hip. ‘I forgot. You’re vegan. Oh well, you can still eat the vegetables.’
‘Not when they’re covered in butter,’ said Zac.
‘Well at least you can eat the bread. It’s still warm.’
‘Pass,’ said Zac. ‘It’s cheese bread. Vegans don’t eat any animal products.’
Georgia laughed. ‘No wonder you’re so skinny,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in the whole world you can eat.’
‘I’ll have a banana,’ said Zac.
‘Except that I used them all for the custard,’ said Georgia, grinning. ‘But it’s great custard.’
‘Made with milk,’ said Zac.
‘Of course! How else do you make custard?’
Zac sighed. ‘Enjoy your murdered baby sheep,’ he said, stalking from the kitchen.
‘He’s a weird one,’ shrugged Georgia, scraping a chair out from the table.
‘You know, he really is,’ said Luke, carrying the roasting tray over, dodging the cats twirling and twisting about Georgia’s chair legs.
He grabbed a plate and piled it super-high.
Outside, the wind howled.
In Terminal Five of Heathrow Airport, Samantha White cleared the covered walkway for the British Airways flight, and froze, wild-eyed and panicked. A sea of people frothed and boiled around her. She stood stock-still in the middle of it, drowning. She had never seen so many people, so many signs, so many moving walkways in all directions. The worst thing was she had never felt so many emotions, all undercover in some hideously huge building. They darted, seeped, echoed and flung themselves at her from every direction. She thought she might vomit.
A motorised cart driven by a man in a grey uniform whizzed past her and she spun, tracking it with her eyes. But now she’d turned herself around, and she didn’t even recognise where she’d come from.
She read English well and spoke it clearly, as did all the gypsies in her camp. English-speaking tourists always had money to spend or to steal and it paid to be able to communicate well with them. And she’d rote-learned that she was supposed to make her way to Terminal Three and find the Qantas Club so that she could wait out the hours until her next flight. In Romania, that waiting time had seemed like it would take forever. But right now, she had palpitations – would she get to where she needed to be on time?
There were supposed to be a few options to make her way there – a free shuttle bus, an underground train, or else a terribly long walk for the very bored. Problem was, she couldn’t see a sign for any of these selections; everything had blurred together into one horrible, colourful, nauseous mess. She knew she had three hours before she had to fly again, but she figured it was going to take her at least that long to move from this spot.
I am so lost, she told herself.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, miss, you look very lost.’
She spun around. A man wearing a grey uniform stood behind her. He had an Indian accent, dark eyes and a warm, comforting smile.
She shrugged, then nodded and gave her best shot at a smile. She didn’t have a lot of faith in her attempt.
‘Very lost, indeed,’ he said.
‘Um, thank you?’ she said.
The Indian man gave a laugh.
‘My name is Amit,’ he said. ‘And I am especially interested in the lost.’
Samantha eyed him cautiously.
The man laughed again. ‘I am very sorry,’ he said. ‘My wife tells me to not all the time tell jokes. My name is Amit and I can help you to get to where you need to go. That’s my job here at the airport. Would you please show me your travel documents?’
Samantha pulled the plastic wallet from her satchel and handed it over.
He studied her flight ticket and the Carnivale Admit One ride pass and beamed.
‘Oooh, you need to get to the Business Class Qantas Club,’ Amit said. ‘Aren’t you a lucky young lady?’
Yeah right, that’s exactly what I am, Amit, very, very lucky. Sam tried her best not to scowl.
‘Do you know where it is?’ she said.
‘I know where everything is, Miss White. Follow me.’
Amit set off at a rapid pace. Samantha trudged along behind him, her mind numb. She thought she now knew how the horses must feel when Milosh and Besnik ordered that they pack up camp to move on. Mustered. Herded. She’d been herded and mustered a couple of dozen times already today and it was only a little past ten a.m. She kept her eyes on the back of Amit’s shoes.
A woman carrying a red-faced, screaming baby girl stepped into Amit’s path.
‘Excuse me,’ the woman said. Samantha could feel the woman’s fear and fatigue emanating in waves. It was so strong she could almost see it. ‘Could you please tell me where -’
Amit stepped around her as though she and her distraught baby were completely invisible.
A tiny tingle buzzed at the back of Samantha’s neck and her footsteps slowed.
Why would Amit ignore the woman if it was his job to help people who were lost?
Suddenly, the tingle became an electric jolt. Why couldn’t she feel him?
She stopped walking.
She could clearly sense the emotions of this woman and her little girl. She widened her awareness – and felt the sadness of an old lady just over to her right, taking a breather on a bench. And why could she feel that a man talking on a phone nearby was ashamed, and that the woman walking beside him seethed with quiet rage, and yet from Amit: nothing?
He noticed that she wasn’t following him and he turned, a small wrinkle appearing between his brows.
‘It’s this way, Miss White,’ he said, smiling widely. ‘I know you have a while until your flight, but you’d be surprised how quickly the time passes, and I’m sure you’ll want to spend some time enjoying the amenities of the Qantas Club lounge.’
‘Um,’ she said, heart pounding. ‘Actually, Amit, I think I’d prefer to do some shopping first, look around for a bit.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’ he said. The tiny wrinkle had become a deep scowl. ‘We’ve got to get you to where you’re going next. I have a car waiting.’
He took three large strides towards her.
Samantha took three backwards.
A car waiting. I don’t think so. Maybe Amit really was just the kind of guy who focused on one job at a time, but she’d had enough of being encouraged into waiting cars. She decided to try sending him some positive energy.
She focused on the centre of her body and pushed. Her skin tingled and she thought this time she actually saw the buttery light drifting from her skin. She wondered whether anyone watching could see it.
‘Miss White,’ said Amit, baring his teeth.
She couldn’t feel any change in him at all. In fact, now he just looked scary.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me,’ he continued. ‘We can’t have people just wandering aimlessly around Heathrow. It’s a security risk.’
He reached out a hand and Samantha took another step backwards, right into someone else. She spun around. Another man in a grey uniform locked his big hands around her arms.
‘Come with us quietly, Samantha,’ he said, his head bent close to her ear. His grip was vice-like, his breath smelled like death, and again she could feel nothing from him.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
She lifted her foot in front of her as though she was going to try to walk away, but then, as fast and hard as she possibly could, she swung it backwards and smacked the heel of her sneaker full-force right on target: exactly where the trousers of the grey uniform met in the middle.
The man with death breath let her go. In fact, he dropped to his knees, his screams drawing a crowd.
Sam bolted through the people, losing Amit in moments.
Mr Grey Pants will need to see a doctor to get some ice on that, she thought. Huh. No Roma boy would’ve fallen for that move.
Weaving through the crowd, putting more and more people between her and the men, Samantha mentally reviewed at least ten other ways she could have got out of that hold.
The thought cheered her. She set out to find the bus to transfer to Terminal Three.
Reclining in the huge business-class seat of the Qantas jet on her way to Australia, Samantha finally felt sleep catching up with her. She’d been up until dawn with Lala just two days ago, performing rituals for the moonlight festival. She blinked tiredly and sighed. Already that night felt like months ago. And then she’d snuck out with Mirela to the Carnivale. She’d been wide awake ever since.
But she had to admit, it was not difficult to relax on this plane. On the flight from Bucharest to London, she’d been too overwhelmed and intimidated to try to figure out how to use the instruments around her, but by watching the man in the seat next to her, she’d figured out on this flight how to make her seat recline and the footrest extend so she could lie back almost completely.
When the heavy-set, bald man in the suit next to her kicked his shoes off, she felt like doing the same, but she was pretty sure that her socks had holes in the toes and she thought that maybe – she bent down to check – yep, they didn’t even match. She left her sneakers on.
Surreptitiously checking out the cabinet to the left of her seat, she found a soft pillow and a rug. She felt guilty for touching these things, worried that she would be reprimanded at any moment. But the bald man was now breathing deeply, wearing earphones, so she ripped the rug and cushion from their plastic packaging and settled down into the seat. The moment she threw the light, warm rug over her clothing she felt safe. As though it was a shield. Right now, she belonged; she was part of the plane, protected by a piece of it.
She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again. Everything was just as it had been. Two impossibly regal women moved quietly about the cabin, filling a glass here, offering a hot towel or sweet there, leaning intimately over people’s seats to ensure that absolutely everything one could possibly desire was made immediately available.
At least, that’s how it felt to Samantha.
On the earlier flight to London from Bucharest she’d sat frozen in her seat, shaking her head when the stewards tried to encourage her to have some breakfast. The plump Gaje woman next to her had had no such reservations. She’d devoured a veritable feast as Samantha had watched from the corner of her eye. It began with a glass of wine before the plane had even taxied from the runway. At eight-thirty in the morning. Champagne, the woman told Samantha, raising her glass in the air. Samantha stared. This was the only word that passed between them during the flight.
But on this trip, Sam hadn’t been able to resist the food offered for lunch. The moment the flight attendant had smilingly passed her the menu, her mouth had begun watering. Nothing on the menu looked familiar. She recognised ‘salmon’, ‘lamb’ and ‘salad’, but the meaning of the words between them eluded her.
‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ she’d said quietly, when the flight attendant asked.
What he had came with a glass of red wine. Samantha had had red wine before – during festivals, occasionally with dinner, but never anything that tasted like this. The wine in camp had been a transparent, rosy colour, and sour. She didn’t especially enjoy it. But this wine was thick and syrupy and almost black. It looked like blood. It tasted of spice and soil and flowers and magic. She shook her head when the hostess offered a refill. Her neighbour did not.
No wonder he had fallen asleep.
Her head spun a little, but mostly she felt calm for the first time since the red doors had crashed open on the Ghost Ride. She knew she shouldn’t feel calm – she had no idea of what was coming next and how she was going to find her brother, but right now she could do nothing about that. She’d have to figure it out then – she’d done her best for now.
After she’d escaped Amit and his friend in grey at London airport, she’d decided she’d best stick close to people she could feel. That, and her newfound confidence at having outsmarted her enemies all on her own, helped her to make her way unobstructed to the Qantas Club. There, she’d gone straight to the computers and had learned as much as she could in ninety minutes about Sydney airport, especially about possible escape routes.
That she was going to need to know them, she was reasonably certain. Why would these people stop now when they knew exactly where she was going? But of pretty much everything else she had no idea. Like, who were these people after her? And if she did get away from them in Sydney, where exactly was she going to escape to?
Follow the signs, Sera had said. Huh. Great help there. I’m so sure there’ll be signposts in Australia to tell me exactly where to find Luke Black, my brother. Right. And if Sam really admitted it, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to meet her twin. The very little Seraphina had told her was not exactly promising.
‘What’s he like?’ she’d asked.
‘Well, he’s a lot like you, really,’ said Sera. ‘Except pretty much the opposite.’
When Samantha had spat a stream of words that would have made Lala cry and Esmeralda shove a piece of soap down her throat, Sera had made herself a little clearer.
‘All right, all right,’ she’d said. ‘Well, what the Grand Council has been able to learn is that your mother – endeavouring to conceive your brother – teleported herself into the cell of Harlan Craven. He must have been pretty surprised. Your mother was a very beautiful woman, Samantha.’
‘Did you say into his cell?’ she’d asked.
‘Well, yes. Unfortunately, Harlan Craven was a serial killer serving life in permanent solitary confinement at the SuperMax correctional facility in Australia. We think he may have been a daemon.’
The droning sound in Samantha’s ears had increased. This isn’t really happening, she’d told herself. Ever since she’d entered the Funhouse, she’d been repeating the line like a mantra every few minutes.
‘Anyway, what we’re assuming your mother did not know – because it was not part of the Telling,’ Sera continued, ‘is that this terribly romantic liaison would result in her conceiving not one, but two babies. Twins. You, and Luke, your brother.’
‘My father was a daemon?’ said Samantha.
‘Probably just a minor one,’ said Sera.
Oh, much better.
And then Birthday Jones had found his voice. It sounded anxious, and that had made Sam feel vicious. What did he have to be anxious about?
‘Are you sure you want to know all this right now, Samantha?’ he’d said. ‘A lot has happened tonight, and you’ve got a massive trip ahead of you. Aren’t you tired?’
‘Oh, thanks for that advice, Birthday,’ she’d said. ‘And the next time I want advice from a deceiving, lying thief masquerading as a friend, I’ll be sure to call you.’
Now her cheeks coloured, remembering the dripping sarcasm and the pain she’d felt it cause Birthday. She pulled her feet up onto the seat and buried her face in the rug.
‘Anyway, Sam,’ Sera had said gently, ‘the most important point is that you seem to have been born with exceptionally strong empathy skills. Your brother was not. You understand what people want and why and you care about those things. And your brother – well, he doesn’t.’
Sera’s last sentence was spoken so quickly that Samantha had had to mentally rewind it and play it back.
‘So I have empathy,’ she’d said, finally.
‘Oodles,’ said Sera. ‘You’re an empath.’
‘And my brother, Luke, doesn’t have empathy.’
‘Not a skerrick,’ said Sera.
‘What does that mean? Is there a name for that? What’s wrong with him?’
‘Well, there is a nasty name for people like that,’ said Sera. ‘But you need to understand that there are extremely complex forces and factors going on here, and then there’s the fact that you and he were born simultaneously. We don’t know what that adds to the mix – he could be… fine. The Telling reveals that -’
‘The name,’ Samantha repeated. ‘You said that I’m an empath. What’s the name for my brother?’
Sera coughed.
‘Well, he’s a psychopath.’
When Luke rolled over and spotted the time on the alarm clock by his bedside, he couldn’t believe it.
Afternoon already! He never slept late and he never slept well. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever having made it through a whole night without waking numerous times to check out what was happening around him in the dark. He’d lived in too many places with drunken ‘uncles’, brawling foster parents, or other kids in refuges and lockups who wanted to steal his stuff. He always slept lightly, and he rarely changed out of his day clothes, sometimes even sleeping with his shoes on, ready to run.
But there was something about this bed, this house, this view over Elizabeth Bay that relaxed him. Relaxation was a feeling entirely new to him. He’d always considered the idea of it overrated: who wanted to let their guard down? What a stupid idea. But here in Georgia’s house, it seemed to come easily. He reminded himself to become filthy rich sometime in the near future.
Luke sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched. Today, I really should do something about finding my family, he thought. He tried to ignore the other voice in his mind asking, Why? Why do you need to find them? You’ve only got information on Liza and Daniel anyway, and they’re hardly gonna be thrilled to find their jailbird bastard brother on their doorstep. And what are they going to know about an empath and a genius?
The whole Telling mumbo-jumbo was starting to sound decidedly lame. Probably Zac actually was nuts.
He shook his head, still feeling sleep-addled.
His door burst open.
‘I’ve made brunch,’ said Georgia.
‘Get dressed,’ said Zac, right behind her. ‘I need you to come with me.’
‘Don’t you knock?’ said Luke.
‘You don’t need him, Zac,’ said Georgia, smiling sweetly. ‘You’re a big boy; you can go out on your own.’
She was obviously in a good mood today. She’d given in to a splash of colour: under a black mini-dress, a blood-red tulle skirt frothed and foamed over black-and-white-striped tights.
‘There’s a shop on the corner,’ she said to Zac. ‘There’s fifty dollars in the jar by the front door. Buy whatever you like.’
‘Luke,’ said Zac.
‘Zac,’ said Luke.
‘Could you come to the shop with me, please?’
Luke wavered. It would be good to get some fresh air…
Georgia stalked across the room and grabbed Luke by the elbow, dragging him out of bed.
‘No, he won’t,’ she said. ‘Just because you want to buy soy sausages and hay, it doesn’t mean you have to spoil our pancake breakfast. Now, shoo.’
Luke grinned over his shoulder at Zac as he was dragged down the hallway by Georgia.
‘Pancakes!’ he mouthed silently, his eyebrows almost meeting his hairline and his dimples out for a rare showing.
‘Breakfast time was over hours ago,’ said Zac loudly. ‘It’s past lunchtime now.’
‘Oh, um-ah!’ said Georgia, even louder. ‘Someone should do something about that. Maybe you should find a vegetarian policeman while you’re out, Zac, and make a full report. They can come and arrest us for sleeping late and murdering butter.’
Luke laughed as Georgia led him, barefoot, down the stairs to the kitchen.
Luke absolutely massacred the Halo aliens on Level Four.
‘I’ve never made it that far,’ said Georgia, sprawled out on the red lounge beside him, striped-stockinged feet in his lap. She alternately flicked through a magazine and watched his progress on Halo. The black cat lay upside down beside her, spread like an oil slick across the couch. Every now and then the cat made a noise like an old man with a back problem lowering himself into a chair.
‘More nachos?’ said Georgia.
‘I’m good,’ said Luke, and belched, hovering his thumb over the control to enter Level Five.
He tried to ignore Zac, perched on a corner of the lounge opposite, almost humming with tension. The rain splashed and smashed at the full-length windows on the other side of the room. Green-black clouds, pregnant with more foul weather, scudded across grey skies over the bay. He still felt strangely super-tired.
‘Are we going to do anything today, Luke?’ said Zac.
‘Like what?’ said Luke, grabbing a handful of nachos from the big bowl in front of him, even though he was already uncomfortably full.
‘Like finding the empath?’ said Zac.
‘What’s the empath?’ said Georgia. ‘Some kind of animal activist? Maybe you should search for it online, Zac? There are computers upstairs.’
‘Luke?’ said Zac.
‘Busy,’ said Luke, pressing the button to enter Level Five.
Samantha woke to find that she’d just slept for ten hours straight.
She freaked.
She had meant to use her time in the sky to plan her Sydney airport escape. She quickly calculated her remaining hours in the sky. When she realised that she had almost another whole day just sitting there, she figured that if she couldn’t come up with some kind of plan in that time, she was never going to.
She knew that these people – whoever they were – would try again. They’d been there in London, and she assumed they could arrange for someone to grab her in Australia. Seraphina had assured her that the gypsy king was nowhere near her greatest threat, and that his reach did not extend beyond Romania. But because of this Telling thing, the other people trying to capture her would use any means necessary to do so, and they wanted her alive. But Sera hadn’t been able to tell her if the gypsy king was part of the whole prophecy drama or not. But he had to be: why else had he suddenly turned up and wanted to own her, whatever the cost?
The Telling made absolutely no sense to Samantha and she’d told Sera exactly that.
‘Well, that’s because I’ve only told you bits and pieces about it,’ Sera had said.
‘Well, isn’t it about me? I need to know everything,’ she’d responded.
‘It’s not only about you, Samantha,’ said Sera. ‘It’s about everyone, and I’m not authorised to tell you more than you need to know.’
‘Who says so?’
‘The Grand Council.’
‘Well, who are they?’
‘That’s another thing you don’t need to know.’
This was one of many times during those frustrating conversations that Samantha wanted to just walk away and ignore everything this woman had told her. Only one thing stopped her – Seraphina had warned her that her family and friends would never be safe while she remained in Romania.
‘Their next strategy,’ said Sera, ‘will be to hurt one of your family, to weaken you. They’ll then abduct someone else you love and force you to come to them.’
‘How do you know that?’ said Samantha.
‘Because they know that everyone has a weak spot, and it’s usually their family,’ said Sera. ‘The only way that Lala and the rest of the camp will be safe is if you’re as far away from them as possible, if they have no idea where you are, and if you stay on the move until you find your brother. These people won’t stop.’
So on the plane, Samantha leaned her forehead against the window, peering out into the night, and tried to come up with as many strategies as she could to make it out of Sydney airport. She began by thinking through every chase she could remember – running with the other kids from Gaje farmers, shopkeepers, police – recalling just how high she could climb and how small she could make herself when she needed to jump over, under or through something.
Then she reviewed the scams. The long cons – requiring days or weeks to set up – obviously wouldn’t work here, but a short con might, playing a hustle to recruit an ally to defend her. She thought through every trick she could remember to make money, to evade detection, and to escape when the latter failed. She filed them away as possible strategies.
She sighed. The biggest problem was that she didn’t know how they’d come for her. If somebody approached her, it could be someone genuine who Sera had asked to help her; or it could be a trap.
Oh God, I need to walk, she thought. She had never sat still for so long in her life. She grabbed her bag, slipped past the man asleep beside her and through the heavy curtain that screened Business Class from the rest of the passengers. She began padding down the aisle of the aircraft, mentally perusing all the good luck, bad luck and curse spells she’d been taught by the gypsies. She discarded each of them fairly quickly. The only good she’d ever seen them do was to open the purses of the Gaje, and they did that because of what she told them, not because the spells actually did anything.
She met other sleepless souls walking the aisle and nodded when they smiled at her. Her appearance was unremarkable in the Economy section. Plenty of people were dressed like her. In that way, she would have felt a lot more comfortable back here than up the front with the posh people, but halfway down the aisle she turned back. There were so many more people in the main cabin and thousands more emitted emotions – they wafted up from each seat with nowhere to disperse. Frustration, lust, envy and grief blasted endlessly back into the cabin with the recycled air.
She hurried back to her seat, breathless, shoving her bag back beneath it. She pulled her knees up to her chest and chewed a thumbnail. How am I going to be able to get away from them, she worried. Why would Sera just send me out here on my own? Couldn’t this mighty Council have sent someone to guard me if I’m so important to the Telling? And how the hell am I supposed to pay for anything when I get there? I mean, Sera didn’t even give me any money!
For what felt like the hundredth time, Samantha mentally face-palmed over this fact. What kind of nutjob plan was this anyway? In the car and at the airport, she’d been so bewildered by everything that she hadn’t even thought to ask about money. Sera had told her that all she needed was in the wallet.
There had to be something else in there. She decided to go through everything she had to look for anything that could possibly help her. She bent forward and dragged her bag out from under the seat. From the only pocket of the bag, sewn into the fabric, she removed the plastic wallet and emptied it out onto her tray. Her boarding passes. And only one other thing: the Carnivale ride pass.
She picked it up and turned it over, studying it from every angle; she even held it to her nose and sniffed. It was just cardboard. Her lips turned up in a small smile. How did it work? All she could see was a crumpled ticket lined with faded green stripes. In large green capitals right through the middle were the words ‘ADMIT ONE Dodgem Cars’. And yet it had got her through every gate and checkpoint so far, and faster than anyone else had cleared them.
In spite of her anxiety, a thrill of excitement fluted through her stomach. What on earth did all the airport people see when they looked at the ticket? She had supposedly been around magic her whole life, but no one had ever showed her anything like this. She wondered what else Sera could do. Sera didn’t feel like most people. In fact, she didn’t feel like anyone Samantha had ever met before.
Suddenly she dropped the smile. Sera wasn’t here right now and she’d just sent her across the world alone. She gathered the tickets up and put them back into the wallet, then shoved it into the bag. Her fingers hit something hard. And this? What was she thinking, giving me this? She pulled the phone out of the bag and turned it over in her hand. It was pretty old-school. She flicked the cover open with a finger. The screen stayed blank. And it would be staying that way for a while, given that it had no battery! So, no money, a dead phone and unknown enemies waiting at Sydney airport for her. Great.
She sighed and threw the phone back into the bag. Her hands found her tarot deck, or maybe her tarot deck found her hands. Through the lacquered box she could feel the cards inside jostling. They whispered to her. She closed her eyes, fingering the gold cord around the box.
‘Is there anything I can get you, Ms White?’
Samantha snapped open her eyes.
One of the serene, supreme, scented stewardesses stood there. Smiling, of course.
‘Um, no,’ said Sam. ‘I’m good.’
‘Okay, then.’ The smile stayed stuck, but Samantha felt the woman’s annoyance as she bent towards her. ‘You’ve clicked on your attendant’s light,’ she said.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Samantha. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘That’s no problem,’ said the stewardess. ‘Everyone does it. It’s very sensitive.’
And then something weird happened. As the woman leaned over Samantha to depress the Call button, their hands touched briefly. And this time Samantha saw an image. It was the woman in her uniform, standing by a doorway, a black wheelie luggage bag by her side. A young child, a girl, maybe five, was crying piteously, her arms outreached. An older woman held the child back, terribly upset for the woman by the door – her daughter – and for her granddaughter who couldn’t understand what could be so important outside that door that would make her mummy leave her. Again.
The stewardess clicked off the button on Samantha’s console and straightened in the aisle. The image vanished.
Samantha squinted through the gloom at the woman’s name badge.
‘Thank you, Rebecca,’ she said.
‘You’re very welcome, Ms White,’ said the stewardess.
‘My name’s Samantha,’ she said, mentally gathering up some of the love she’d felt by the doorway in the image. She gently pushed the energy particles outwards. ‘What’s your daughter’s name?’ she said.
‘Daisy,’ said Rebecca, blinking slowly.
‘Daisy loves you very much,’ said Samantha. ‘Are you on your way home?’
‘Seventeen hours, thirty-nine minutes,’ said Rebecca, glancing at her watch.
‘She’s a lucky girl,’ said Samantha.
‘I’m a lucky mum.’
Samantha eased up on the emotion-emission.
A register of surprise flashed through Rebecca’s eyes. She straightened her shoulders and smiled, genuinely this time.
‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ she said. ‘I make the absolute best hot chocolate, and I have to be awake now, anyway. You’d be doing me a favour.’
‘I’d love a hot chocolate,’ said Samantha. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had one before.’
The stewardess turned, still smiling, but Samantha saw her shake her head, as though to clear it, as she walked away.
Samantha grabbed her tarot deck. This time, the cards whispered urgently. She figured she had time for a single-card reading before Rebecca returned. The thought gave her comfort. She had other skills she could draw upon besides running from people.
Hungrily, now, she scrabbled to undo the cord, wrapping it around and around her wrist to keep it safe. She opened the black lacquered box and withdrew the cards, immediately raising them to her face and breathing them in. She wasn’t aware that she smiled widely. She lost herself as she shuffled the deck, no longer airborne but in a lake where the cards swam about her, darting playfully. She joyfully tumbled with them, but a nagging worry tugged at her, finally pulling her back into herself. The single-card draw.
She never drew a single card. Why would you? If you posed a question of the cards and drew only one answer there was nowhere to hide. What ambiguity could there possibly be? What hope for better things if one drew an ill-fated card? She always felt it better to draw a suite – to paint a picture of possibility – than to draw a single card. A destiny card.
And yet the cards flew through her hands, butting against them insistently, urgently.
And one card forced its way into her palm.
Wait, I haven’t asked the question, she thought. This was not how to draw the single-card reading. The most important thing was to have the question uppermost in the mind when shuffling the cards. Nevertheless, she clutched the card in her hand.
The others were now silent, still, waiting.
Am I doing the right thing? That will be my question, she thought.
The cards jostled. Nope, wrong question, scratch that. She knew she was doing the right thing – she had no choice but to leave Romania. Tamas had almost died because of her.
What will happen at the airport?
Um, wrong again. The cards would warn her of danger if that was coming, and she already knew that was coming. Would there be any use in frightening herself even more?
What do I need to get through this?
The card grew warm in her hand. She opened her eyes. She straightened the rest of the cards and put all of them but one back into the box, pushing forcefully to close the lid. The deck knew a member was missing. She heard them hex and spit as she dropped them back into her satchel. She kept the golden cord wrapped around her wrist and the answer card face down under her tray table. The cord itched and the answer card hummed with heat.
‘Samantha?’ Rebecca appeared, beaming, and carefully transferred the contents of her white-linen-draped tray to Samantha’s tray table: a lovely silver teapot, a jug full of milk, and a tiny saucer heaped with pink marshmallows.
‘You’re gonna love it. It’s melted chocolate. From Belgium. We never give it to the passengers.’
Samantha smiled back, tightly. The card called, almost burning now, from beneath the tray table.
What do I need to get through this? Her single-card question. As soon as Rebecca turned away, she pulled the card from under the tray table and flipped it over.
Huh. She stared at the picture on the card and breathed deeply. A monk, small of stature, robed in deep green and gold, stood calmly, head bowed in thought. Behind him, filling the rest of the card, the monk’s spirit towered over him. His spirit was a giant, his robe thrown backwards, baring a broad chest and huge, powerful arms. The arms were raised high, holding up a cracking, crumbling ceiling.
Samantha gave a small smile and reached for her bag. She found the lacquered box and slipped the card back inside. Then she poured herself a hot chocolate. Rebecca was right. It was absolutely delicious.
She leaned back into the seat and thought about her answer. A spirit card, representing spiritual strength. The cards were telling her that even though she may be frightened and weary, this was no time to rest. A great danger was poised above her, but ultimately she was strong and had everything she needed within her to survive.
But it still seemed that everyone had more faith in her than she did. Because she still had no idea how she was going to get out of Sydney airport without being captured.
And then there was the small matter of searching a country she’d never set foot in, to find a boy she’d never met and wasn’t sure she wanted to – her twin brother, the psychopath.
Samantha followed the other Qantas passengers shuffling towards the immigration gates at Sydney International Airport. With her only luggage slung across her shoulder, she was not in any particular hurry to clear customs and race to the luggage carousel.
She still didn’t have a plan. She felt like she was walking towards her doom.
Let them wait, she thought.
Standing in the custom’s queue, she spotted Rebecca, the stewardess, moving with the other airline personnel through the staff exit. Rebecca caught her eye and waved. I’m an idiot, Samantha told herself. I should have asked her if there was a staff exit I could take. No one would think to look for me there. Too late now. She watched Rebecca’s back clear the doorway. At least Daisy will be happy to have her mum home, she thought. It was sad that she had to be without her mum for days at a time, but at least she had a mother who loved her.
For the first time, Samantha felt anger towards her real mother for leaving her with Lala. She’d always assumed her mother just couldn’t cope, and she was grateful she’d been left with someone who had cared so much for her. But now she knew that her mother had left her in a gypsy camp as a science experiment – or maybe that should be a magic experiment – as though she was part of a recipe that required more ingredients before it could be used.
She wasn’t sure what made her more angry – that her mother had separated her from her twin brother and then abandoned them both, or that she’d had the hide to go and die before she could meet her and tell her off. Sera had clammed up when she’d asked whether the baby her mother had died giving birth to – the genius – had survived, and Samantha had felt too sad and sore to push it.
She realised she was next in the queue to have her documents checked to clear customs. Clutching her plastic wallet, she stepped forward, certain as she had been going through every other checkpoint, that she was about to be detained and arrested.
Maybe that would be a good thing, she thought. It would be one way out of here. But then she’d still be trapped.
But when she held out her travel documents, she watched the instant change in the dour expression of the middle-aged woman behind the custom’s counter. Holding the Carnivale ticket, she stared at it as though she were checking the paperwork of her favourite movie star.
‘Welcome to Australia, Samantha White!’ she said, loudly and so proudly.
Samantha thought that maybe the woman had a tear in her eye. ‘Um, thanks,’ she muttered.
And then a sort-of idea popped into her head. A not-quite-there-yet idea that needed some more thought, but she had no more time.
All senses alert, she followed the other passengers down the Arrivals ramp, feeling emotions buffeting her as she drew closer to the throng of people waiting for their relatives and friends to disembark. She peered anxiously into the crowd. Everybody smiled and waved, some cried in joy, holding balloons, signs, flowers. She didn’t sense anything sinister, but there were so many people. As she drew closer to the end of the ramp she scanned further out beyond the edge of the crowd.
And a block of ice the size of a brick dropped into her stomach, freezing her instantly.
Maybe ten metres away, a bank of windows and glass doors led out to twilight in Sydney, Australia. And in front of them stood four people dressed completely in black. Samantha had seen them too many times already in her life, but she only knew one of their names.
Kirra.
And Kirra saw her. She smiled, as though in greeting. And then she lifted an arm above her head, and Samantha could see that she held something between her fingers. It glinted slightly under the artificial lights and Samantha almost cried out, remembering the last time she’d seen Kirra, the whistle of metal flashing past her, and then Tamas, his life bleeding out of his throat. She blinked rapidly, trying to rid her mind of the agonising image. A sob formed. Was this how they were going to take her out?
But as she blinked, she began to feel that she hadn’t got it quite right. She stared across the expanse between them, still standing rigid, oblivious to others jostling around her. She squinted her eyes to try to see clearer, and now she was certain – whatever Kirra held aloft in her black-sheathed arm, it wasn’t a throwing star. And suddenly Samantha realised what she was looking at. Kirra waved her destiny at her – a syringe. So. Scarface and the other two goons were going to grab her and Kirra would inject her with something that would knock her out.
And they were on the move now. Coming closer, fast.
She stumbled sideways, pushing a big guy with a guitar case strapped to his back into the path of a giant luggage bag. He tripped, sprawling, crash-tackling another man who had two young boys in tow. The children shouted in surprise and people began to stare.
And even though her brain felt as frozen as the rest of her innards, Samantha knew she had to make her move. She couldn’t outrun them. Even if she did manage to make it through this crowd and bolt screaming for help, Kirra was so super-fast she’d be on top of her, have her sedated and have a convincing story for the authorities before they had any idea what was going on.
It’s now or never, Sam thought. She squeezed her eyes shut and conjured up memories of Lala, Esmeralda, Bo and Mirela. And then of Tamas and their legs tangled together in the ghost train. A searing wave of homesickness and love instantly blasted the ice from her stomach. She amplified the feelings, whipping them faster and faster into a burning sphere that roiled within her, a mushrooming, molten mass of emotion that she knew she could not hold inside much longer. With no idea whether it would work, and feeling as if surely people around her could see she was irradiated, she bent forward, as though to help the men she’d knocked over.
Instead, she said, ‘My name is Mirela. And I’m the most famous movie star in the world.’
She spoke as loudly as she could manage, and she was sure that only a few people could have heard her. But it would have to do. The energy inside her demanded urgent release. She stood up straight, focused on the heat, and pushed.
The sphere of light exploded and for a mind-blowing second she felt as though she’d splintered into a billion points of energy. She stood there, trembling. Unable to breathe, let alone think clearly, she wondered whether it had worked.
And then the screaming began.
Sam cried out as the mob swarmed her. She couldn’t hear her own voice, and the sound made absolutely no difference to the noise level – the decibels were already through the roof. All of them had their mouths wide open, screaming and sobbing her name – well, not her name. Mirela’s. Mirela had always wanted to be famous, so she’d used hers at the last minute. But not even Mirela would want this much adoration.
The only thing keeping the pack of hysterical people from tearing her apart was the big bloke with the guitar case and the man she’d pushed over, both of them using their luggage as battering rams to keep people back.
What have I done?
Sam could feel that the men saw themselves as her personal bodyguards and would die fighting before they’d let anyone touch her. Unfortunately, that was beginning to look like a possibility. The crowd was in an absolute frenzy. They surged forward, and hands from everywhere reached for her. She screamed again when, from behind her, someone grabbed a fistful of her hair. She stumbled backwards, and, panicked, struggled to stand upright before she was dragged into the crowd. Too late. Whoever it was had a full handful of her hair, and terrified, face streaming with tears, she was yanked into the riot.
Blurred body parts. People kissing her, groping her, trying to shred her jacket, rip her bag away from her – its strap digging into the skin of her neck. They fought each other, scratching and punching, scrabbling and climbing to reach her. And their emotions – lust, greed, envy and an insane desire to possess her, to be her – choked her airways, until she lost all sense of direction, of who she was. Her senses reached maximum capacity and tripped out. She no longer knew whether she was standing or being carried along, upside down. And she felt nothing. Nothing more than a faint sense of regret that she was about to be torn apart and she would never again get to kiss Tamas.
Dimly, she heard air sirens. The hands around her stopped grasping as people covered their ears, trying to block out the noise, moaning and wailing. Samantha was sure she was doing the same thing, but it just didn’t seem to matter any more.
And then she saw the commandos. Heading straight for her, two blue-uniformed men with buzz-cut scalps and necks the size of her waist cut through the crowd like butter. They had batons in their hands and ear-mikes to their mouths, and they seemed oblivious to the deafening roar of the sirens. The darker-skinned of the two reached her first, and with a single arm, scooped her up from the tangle of writhing people around her and slung her over his shoulder.
Bumping along upside down, peeking under a boulder-like bicep, Samantha saw three things.
She saw that they were marching straight for the exit to the airport – outside, into Sydney.
She saw that standing in a cordoned-off section by the doors, Kirra, Scarface and company did not look happy.
And she also saw that waiting outside the doors were three vehicles resembling army tanks, with the letters AFP stencilled across the front. She recognised the acronym from the airport website – Australian Federal Police. She’d read that they were trained to handle just about any terrorist situation, and she figured that even the ninjas were a little under-equipped right now.
A wave of relief washed over her. Looks like I’m going to make it out of here today, after all.
When she and the man-mountain were parallel to the barricade, Samantha raised her head, exhausted.
With the very last of her energy, she gave Kirra a smile and a special single-digit salute.
Samantha pressed her chipped, orange-painted fingernails into the flesh of her palms. She tried to smile at Mason and Ruben, the two AFP officers who’d just dragged her out of the deliriously murderous crowd.
Mason and Ruben. They smiled back at her, eyes glazed, goofy-looking.
I really must learn to control whatever it is I did back there, she thought. I wonder when it wears off?
The relief she’d felt at escaping the mob and the ninjas had dissipated, and now she was beginning to wonder how on earth she was going to get out of the back of this truck. She took another look around the insides of the AFP urban military vehicle. With bench seating for maybe twelve normal people and six Mason-Ruben-sized people, the rest of the space was occupied by computer screens, blinking lights, riot shields, facemasks and racks of weapons. She could hear the muffled sound of rain beating down on the armoured truck.
She stopped forcing her fingernails into her palm when she felt them break the skin.
‘Um, this is a great… place you have here,’ she said.
Mason grinned wider. His blond hair was cut so close to his skull he seemed bald. She imagined that would look pretty scary to a bad guy, especially when the body underneath the bald head was the size of a fridge-freezer combo.
‘But I think you can send the other cars away now,’ she said to Ruben, the other giant, who’d slung her over his shoulder and carried her through the airport.
Ruben looked as though he could bench press the truck. And like he ate a whole cow for breakfast. He pressed a finger to his ear.
‘Yeah, we got her,’ he said quietly into his mike. ‘Make sure the crowd’s dispersed and then report back to base. Roger that.’
He swung his face back towards her, awaiting further command.
Cool, she thought, in spite of herself. My own private tank. The thought gave her another idea.
‘Um, Ruben,’ she said. She felt Mason sulking because she hadn’t talked to him. ‘And Mason,’ she continued.
He snapped his eyes to hers, gave her full attention.
‘There are these four fans in there who kinda follow me everywhere,’ she said. ‘And they’ve been a little, um, threatening. I wonder whether your guys could ask them to…’
‘Describe them,’ they said, in unison.
So she did. It wasn’t too difficult. Two minutes later, Ruben had issued instructions for Kirra and Co to have a bad day at the hands of the AFP.
‘Now, where can we take you?’ said Mason.
‘And where are your handlers?’ said Ruben. ‘Why don’t you have bodyguards here to protect you?’
All very good questions, she thought.
‘Well, there was a mix-up,’ she said, thinking fast. ‘And my entourage ended up booked on the wrong flight, but I absolutely had to get here for an engagement, so I came alone.’
As she spoke, Mason nodded and Ruben shook his head.
‘And they’re all waiting for me at the, um, hotel.’
‘Which hotel?’ said Ruben. ‘We’ll escort you there.’
Samantha just wanted to get out of the truck before the magic spell thing wore off. Problem was, she didn’t know the names of any hotels and she didn’t think these guys would just drop her in the street.
‘Oh, you know, it’s the…’
‘Ritz-Carlton?’ said Ruben.
‘Park Hyatt?’ said Mason.
‘That’s the one,’ said Samantha.
‘I got it riiight,’ said Mason, poking his tongue out at Ruben.
Ruben flexed a bicep and his jaw twitched.
Sheesh. Get me out of here, thought Sam. I do not want to be in here when these gods hurl lightning at each other.
‘Um, I’m really tired,’ she said. I’m reeeally tired, she thought. And I need to have a shower and change my clothes. Except that I have no other clothes, no money, and nowhere to shower. Still, she did think it best to be away from the police when they figured out that she wasn’t actually a movie star but a fifteen-year-old runaway gypsy from Romania.
‘If you wouldn’t mind dropping me at that Park hotel whatsie, that would be lovely,’ she said.
Mason and Ruben hadn’t been too happy about leaving her unaccompanied at the front of the Park Hyatt hotel in Circular Quay, but she’d assured them that she had staff and friends waiting for her, and that she didn’t want to cause another scene.
‘Please,’ she’d smiled, extra wide, and they’d relented.
She stared morosely after them as they pulled away from the curved driveway of the elegant hotel. Now she really was on her own. And the love-spell or whatever she’d performed at the airport had obviously not reached the hotel. A beautifully dressed woman took a step away from her and huddled a little closer to her escort. A dark-suited attendant stepped to her side.
‘May I assist you with anything this evening, madam?’ he said, smiling.
‘No, I’m okay, thanks,’ she said, turning away.
I didn’t think so, she knew he was thinking.
She huddled into her jacket, trudging along beside the curved walls of the building. The rain was just a miserable drizzle now, enough to further wound her aching heart as she thought about the golden sunshine that would be drenching Romania. Cars slid like dark eels in the gloom along the road beside her. Everything felt wet, worrying and winter-like.
Even though she’d read on the website that it was winter here in Australia, she’d still somehow expected it to be warm. That’s how she’d always pictured Australia: kangaroos, beautiful beaches, sunshine and…
The Opera House!
She rounded the final corner of the hotel and stepped into a postcard. Ahead of her spread a wide, sandstone forecourt dotted with fairylights; beyond lay an inky harbour; and glowing incandescently directly ahead of her was an image she’d only ever seen in photographs: the Sydney Opera House. It seemed to float on the dark water like a full moon fallen from the night sky.
She made her way across a boardwalk that ran along the other side of the Park Hyatt hotel. The guestrooms, glowing warm gold, were just above her, wrapped around the harbour, around this view. She was sure it must be the most beautiful hotel in the world. She reached the edge of the walkway, the edge of Australia, and stared at the Opera House. From the first time she’d seen its image, she’d dreamed of coming here. She could never have imagined that it would be under these circumstances.
A solitary tear escaped her lashes. She stopped the others immediately, certain that if she began to cry now she would never stop. With all of the panic and despair at the Carnivale, the shocking news about her past, and the terrible knowledge that she’d brought mortal danger to everyone she loved, Sera’s plan to spirit her out of Romania had seemed her only option. She saw now that it was the most ludicrous action she could ever have taken. How could she have been so completely stupid to have trusted that woman so blindly? And how could Birthday Jones have gone along with everything?
Her bottom lip trembled and she bit down on it, hard. They’d promised to explain everything to Lala. Would they do that, or would they just let everyone think she’d been abducted, or worse? How could she trust either of them? How could they send her here with nothing, no one?
Although the rain was little more than a frigid mist now, the chill had saturated the leather jacket; she tugged the collar up around her ears and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. There were very few pedestrians, and those who passed her wore coats and scarves. She began to walk again, left this time. She imagined herself up there in one of the hotel rooms with Mirela, Tamas and Shofranka. And a hot shower and food and a bed.
Well, that’s not going to happen, Samantha, she told herself. And it’s not like you haven’t slept outdoors before. And they call this winter? Winter in Romania would give these people a lesson about winter, she thought, trying to rally her spirits, fearing that if she didn’t, she would sit down in a puddle right there and give up.
Find somewhere drier, away from the wind and rain and bunk down for the night, she told herself. Tomorrow’s another day. You can look for Luke tomorrow. She ignored the other voice telling her that tomorrow that would be just as impossible as tonight.
She rounded another corner. And gasped. Right above her, rearing like a massive grey dragon, was the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Even from underneath its enormous belly, there was no mistaking it. She hugged her arms about her chest, staring upward, open-mouthed, and was so captivated by the bridge that she missed the feeling of threat until she heard voices. Drunk males. Three of them, twenty metres ahead and closing.
Sam knew they’d seen her. A thread of adrenalin wired its way into her bloodstream. She quickly scanned the ground for something she could use as a weapon: a bottle, a rock. Nothing. She reached into her bag, eyes on them, sizing them up. She knew she could easily outrun the two fat ones; they looked to be having a hard time of it just walking, let alone chasing her. The shorter skinny one, wearing a knitted beanie pulled down almost to his eyes, looked as though he could run, and like he knew what he wanted. Her.
Sam pulled the phone from her bag. If they thought she was talking to someone, or that she could call the police, they might leave her alone. And besides, it was the hardest object she had. If she did have to run and Skinny could keep up with her, she’d make sure she took all his teeth out with it if he tried to touch her.
She flipped open the scarlet case of the phone and almost dropped it. Impossible! The screen glowed green. A cursor flashed patiently, waiting for input. Oh my God! But there’s no battery? She stared at the phone, stunned. Her heart began to race with excitement.
‘Hello, gorgeous.’
The drunks had reached her. Skinny, who’d greeted her, already stood too close.
Oh, I so do not have time for this, she thought. Not now.
‘GET LOST!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs, pushing out a wave of anger-emotion.
To her surprise it worked. They backed away and shuffled off with curses she was glad she couldn’t understand.
She turned back to the phone. How was it working? What else could it do? Suddenly, she realised that Seraphina had given her this phone for a reason. Maybe she’d be able to talk to her? What if it could somehow connect her to her brother, to Luke?
The cold air transformed her rapid breaths into steam, and her fingers trembled as she hovered them over the keypad. There was no number she knew to dial – she only hoped the phone knew what to do.
Holding her breath, feeling more optimism than she’d experienced in more than two days, she pressed the Send button. And waited.
Nothing.
The cursor flashed just as before. She frowned at it, struggling to think of something else to try, when she heard a footstep immediately behind her.
She spun, ready to attack or bolt. Or both.
A boy stood there. She jumped back quickly, her hand over her mouth. He felt familiar. He felt confused. He felt strangely broken.
‘Luke?’ she said.
The boy just looked at her, blinking. She stared back.
Taller than her, and older, she guessed, by maybe a couple of years, the boy wore jeans and a black-and-white-striped T-shirt. She glanced down at his feet – no shoes. He had to be freezing. He had brown-black hair, blue eyes and full lips. He wore a slightly worried half-frown. She had a sudden, ridiculous urge to reach up and stroke his beautiful face. He seemed so puzzled, so childlike.
‘Who are you?’ she said. He wasn’t Luke, she instinctively knew that.
The boy said nothing.
Okay, she thought. I must just be tired. This boy doesn’t have anything to do with me. The thought made her desperately sad. She had so wanted something to happen. Maybe he’s lost, she thought. Well, I’m definitely the wrong person to look to for help. She began to walk away.
She heard him following and turned again, preparing to scream at him too. But she couldn’t do it; he stared down at her so innocently.
‘What do you want?’ she said.
He reached a hand around behind his back and she tensed, ready to run. But he pulled a folded notepad from his back pocket, holding it out towards her.
She frowned. Maybe he couldn’t speak and he had something written on there, to help him if he got lost. He certainly didn’t look as though he should be out here alone tonight. Knowing she couldn’t help him, she took the notepad anyway.
‘What have you got here?’ she said, opening it. ‘Are you lost?’
It took her a couple of seconds to register what she was looking at. When she did, she threw the notepad as though it had burned her. She stood there, wild eyed, trying to process what she had seen. The boy ran after his pad, retrieved it and held it to his chest. He faced her, head slightly askance. She felt suddenly weak at the knees.
He’d shown her an ink drawing of a person that was unmistakeably her, standing right here in the shadow of the bridge, holding a phone. And beside her was the boy, wearing a striped T-shirt and no shoes and clutching a notepad.
What the hell?
‘Were you watching me?’ she said. ‘Why did you draw that?’
The boy stood there morosely. The drawing astounded her – there was such incredible detail. She couldn’t have been here for more than five minutes – how had he captured everything so perfectly? Actually, not perfectly, she suddenly realised; there had been other people in his depiction, and a bus pulled over to watch fireworks over the harbour.
Sam shook her head tiredly. She turned to walk away, unable to deal with this strange stalker-artist after everything else that had happened tonight.
And right then a bus rounded the street corner ahead and the harbour exploded in coloured pinwheels and shooting stars of light.
Sam sat down hard on the footpath and stared at the cascading fireworks, at the bus, and at the tourists piling out to snap photos. Beyond the railing a frigid mist rippled over the harbour.
She could not find a word to say.
Luke bumped into the wall on the way to the bathroom and giggled. He frowned. He’d never giggled before.
Suddenly all thoughts were ejected from his mind as he was shoulder-charged from his feet, into the air, through the doorway to his bedroom. He scudded chin-first across the carpet. The door to the room closed.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Zac, standing over him.
‘What are you doing, nutjob?’ said Luke, pulling himself into a sitting position. ‘What the hell did you push me like that for?’
He touched his fingertips to his chin and they came away red.
‘Ouch,’ he said.
‘Ouch?’ said Zac, throwing his hands in the air. ‘That’s all you can say? We’ve just broken out of lockup and escaped an assassin; I’ve told you that you are a part of destiny and that you’re being hunted; and I’ve told you that we need to find your twin sister and younger brother as fast as possible. And you’ve just spent the entire day playing computer games and eating!’
‘Well, no wonder I’m tired after all that,’ said Luke, standing. ‘Can’t we relax for a bit?’
He had to admit he couldn’t remember ever feeling this tired, especially when he’d had so much sleep.
‘Um, no,’ said Zac. ‘This is my whole point. We can’t relax. We need to find out more about the Telling. And we need to get out of this house.’
‘You really don’t like Georgia, do you?’ said Luke.
‘I don’t trust her. I don’t trust the cats. And I don’t trust this house.’
‘The cats again.’ Luke rolled his eyes. ‘That’s pretty harsh coming from such an animal lover.’ He moved towards the bathroom. ‘Are you going to follow me in there, too?’ he said.
Zac stood there, fists clenched.
Luke splashed his face with cold water. He poked at the green-yellow puffiness around his left eye, surprised to see it there; he’d become accustomed to a narrow view of the world and had forgotten about the black eye. He sighed. He understood that he should be feeling pretty wrecked, given what they’d just been through, but still, he couldn’t believe how tired he was. He’d planned on catching a nap, as Georgia was doing, but Zac’s sense of urgency was beginning to worry him. Why didn’t he feel that way too? He remembered feeling a pressure to discover who he was, but the drive had left him. He felt as though he was drunk.
He left the bathroom. ‘We’ll leave first thing tomorrow,’ he said to Zac. ‘But I really need to get some rest tonight.’
‘It’s only seven o’clock,’ said Zac.
Luke yawned.
‘I think she could be drugging the food,’ said Zac.
‘You’re paranoid.’ But the suggestion set off a tick in Luke’s mind. ‘Why would she do that?’ he said.
‘Maybe she knows who you are.’
‘How?’
‘How do I know?’
Luke shook his head. ‘It’s impossible,’ he said. ‘Even if she somehow knew who I’m supposed to be, how could she possibly be on the exact train we were on when we broke out of Dwight? I didn’t even know we were going to be on that train.’
‘Well, she’s up to something. Listen, you know how she told us that all her brothers are away at school? Well, I’ve heard something in that room she told us to stay out of.’
‘When?’
‘A couple of times,’ said Zac. ‘I reckon there’s someone in there.’
‘I doubt it. Why haven’t we seen them? They’d have to eat sometime, right?’
‘Well, Georgia’s in her room, asleep, or doing whatever she does in there,’ said Zac. ‘Come and listen for yourself.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
He followed Zac quietly up the stairs to the third level of the house. The doors to the two rooms they’d raided for clothes were slightly ajar. Georgia’s bedroom doors were shut, as were those of the off-limits room. They tiptoed towards it.
Zac put his ear to the door, motioning to Luke to do the same. Luke tilted his head close, feeling sort of stupid. What if Georgia walked out here right now? She’d told them to keep away from here.
He wrinkled his brow when he thought he heard a sound from inside, like maybe a door being gently closed.
See? Zac’s eyebrows asked him.
Maybe the sound came from outside, he thought. This room must face the street. He reached out and ultra-carefully tried the door handle. Locked. Hmm. Shouldn’t be a problem.
He turned back towards the stairs, motioning Zac to follow.
Back in his room, he went straight to the middle pillow and reached a hand into the pillowslip. He turned to face Zac.
‘You really wanna know what’s in there?’ he said, holding out the torque wrench and rake.
‘Are you crazy?’ hissed Zac. ‘No. I just wanted you to know that this chick isn’t telling us everything, that’s all. Let’s just get out of here.’
‘But aren’t you a teensy bit interested now?’
Suddenly, Luke felt much more alert. The locked door was a puzzle, just like the riddles online. He wanted to know what was behind the door.
He raised his eyebrows, asking without speaking, Coming?
Zac sighed.
They made their way quietly back up the stairs.
Samantha felt unnerved by the tall boy standing silently above her. He’d been holding that notepad out in front of him for several minutes. She didn’t want to touch it. How could there possibly be such a picture? Who had drawn it?
The boy had arrived right after she’d used the phone – had Sera sent him? Maybe he was the next part of her destiny. Maybe she was just crazy with fatigue. In any event, her bum was cold. She reached out her hand and the boy took it, pulling her up from the wet pavement.
‘Who are you?’ she tried again.
He twisted his full lips into a worried grimace and held the pad out to her. She took it.
He’d turned the page to a new picture. She felt a thrill jangle painfully through her stomach – excitement threaded with fear.
She recognised the railings bordering the harbour – she was standing right next to them. But there was no Opera House in this picture. What there was, though, was an image of herself standing next to the boy in the striped T-shirt, this time viewed only from behind. They stood facing a small structure, maybe the size of a phone-box, situated right on the edge of the water.
She looked up at the boy, frowning with confusion. ‘What is this?’ she said.
He pointed.
Her gaze followed his arm and she gasped. Maybe eighty metres from where they stood was the white structure from the picture. It resembled a miniature lighthouse. She hadn’t noticed it before, but given her extraordinary surroundings and the even more bizarre things that had taken place in them, this did not surprise her.
So – what did this mean? Was she supposed to go over there with him? She took another look at the picture.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
They reached the small building within a couple of minutes. She realised that it was not quite as tiny as it had seemed. She guessed that it was some sort of historical structure with a maritime purpose. It didn’t seem to be of much use – it was windowless and would fit maybe four people standing upright, and given that it was right on the edge of one of the most beautiful harbours in the world, it seemed to be pretty much wasted space. And whatever was in there was closed off to the world by a blue door.
‘What now?’ she said, looking up at the boy by her side.
She realised that someone viewing them from behind right now would be looking at the precise image captured on his notepad.
He reached into a pocket in his jeans and pulled out an old-fashioned key. He held it between thumb and forefinger, a question in his eyes.
‘You want me to go in there with you?’ she said.
I don’t think so, she thought. I don’t know you. Once we’re in there anything could happen. Maybe you think I’m some lost, naive little girl, but I’ve been running with Birthday Jones for five years…
At the thought of Birthday, the indignation melted away, leaving a residue of grief. Still, she wasn’t stupid. She opened her mouth to tell him to come up with another suggestion, and he gave her a lopsided, apprehensive smile. She supposed he was trying for reassuring. What he looked like was a kid trying to convince his mum not to take him to the dentist.
A train rumbled over the bridge behind them and she glanced up at it, startled from the moment by the sound. Rain began to fall again, spitting down onto her upturned face.
What the hell. She couldn’t sense any danger from him. She didn’t feel that he wanted to hurt her. And at least it would be dry in there.
‘Open it up,’ she said.
She watched him push open the door, and peered around his broad shoulders. It was nothing but a dark, empty room. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Maybe this could be a safe place to stay until morning; although it looked as though she’d be sleeping sitting up, given its size.
At least it didn’t look as though her night was going to get any weirder.
‘Harder,’ said Kirra Kiyota, draped in a towel, lying face down on a massage table in the penthouse suite of the Shangri-La Hotel. ‘I’m not going to tell you again.’
The Yakuza assassin massaging his boss cringed at the tone in her voice.
‘I’m sorry, Kirra,’ he said, applying more pressure to her petite shoulders and neck. He was stripped down to his waist, full-torso warrior tattoos the only thing covering his martial-arts-honed chest and arms.
Kirra wanted the rest of her crew to see Golden Tiger, one of the most feared fighters in their Yakuza family, humiliated this way. He and the rest of the crew had failed her.
She turned her head towards the spectacular view of Sydney spread out three hundred and sixty degrees around the room. But she did not see the glamorous jewellery box that was Sydney at night from thirty-five floors in the sky. She saw only the image of the gypsy witch and her gesture of contempt at the airport. If anyone else had dared disrespect Kirra that way, she would not have rested until she found them and personally cut out their heart.
Kirra sent her thoughts out into the night, hunting her. Where are you, little witch?
Despite the expert massage – Golden Tiger had trained under Takashi Shadow, studying many forms of healing as well as killing – her muscles were taut. She hated the cold, and had the room-heating pumping. She was definitely not happy that they’d missed the female in Romania – twice. She’d been looking forward to summer in Europe once they’d completed their mission. But then losing her at the airport had been inexcusable. She knew that she had lost face with the Chairman. She could not afford to fail again.
The girl had help. Kirra knew that now, but she also knew that she was facing something more than their usual enemies like the law, rival Yakuza, other gangsters. No, this gypsy seemed to be protected by spirits of some kind. Kirra did not know what had happened at the airport, but she had never seen a crowd whipped into a frenzy like that. Their eyes had been blank – as though they’d been possessed.
At least they’d been able to outrun the police who had come after them. Did the gypsy have them on her side too?
Kirra hoped that the Chairman had obtained a fortune for this contract. There was definitely something supernatural going on here. And now there was another mark. A boy. Same age, same instructions: bring them both in alive. She’d issued multiple photographs of their new target to her crew. They’d all studied them thoroughly.
Her ringtone sounded. She gathered the thick towel about her slender body, pushed Golden Tiger away and sat up.
Her number one soldier, Dagger’s Breath, held the phone out towards her, his eyes hooded with hate. Since he’d let the gypsy girl go when he was shoulder-shot in Romania, the beautiful scar through his lip had glowed vivid white, as it did only when he was enraged. She knew that the scar would not return to normal until he had the girl in his hands again.
‘Thank you,’ she said, reaching for the phone. She held it to her ear for a moment and then disconnected, tossing it onto the bed.
‘Saddle up,’ she said to her team, who watched her soundlessly. ‘We know where they are.’
If they were caught this time, they couldn’t just pretend to be curious.
Luke had his tools in under the handle of the only door Georgia had told them to stay away from. If she walked out of her room right now, there’d be nothing they could say but see ya, thanks for the memories.
Georgia’s home was much older than any Luke had been in before and he wasn’t used to this type of lock. Like most internal doors, it had no keyhole, but this one also had a lever-lock mechanism. And while he would have been inside the locked door of a regular bedroom in sixty seconds – even if he only had a matchstick, bobby pin, credit card or paperclip – he’d been working on this one for a good three minutes.
One step away, Zac shifted from foot to foot. Luke ignored him and breathed out. He allowed his thoughts to slide one more time into the lock, and yep – there it was – he popped the lever. He looked up over his shoulder at Zac. Grinned. It’s now or never, his smile said.
He opened the door.
Other than some furniture, the semi-lit room was empty. Luke walked in, squatted beside the big four-poster bed to peer underneath – just to make sure – and then checked out the rest of the room. Waste of time, really. Nothing to see in here. He turned around and shrugged.
‘Pretty boring,’ he said.
‘Someone left the lamp on,’ said Zac, pointing with his chin to the desk.
‘People with houses like this don’t worry about electricity.’
‘Yeah, well, I still think I heard someone in here,’ said Zac. ‘And I still have a really bad feeling. I just think now’s the time to get out of this house.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Luke.
He walked up to the window and cracked the blind a fraction. The lamp-lit street beyond the tropical garden was slick with rain. Out there waited the real world, the wealthy and the wannabes of Elizabeth Bay. And around the corner was Kings Cross, where the dark and damaged of Sydney did business.
Suddenly, he wondered what he’d been doing in this house for so long. It was time to move. Something big was definitely going on, and playing PSII was not going to help him learn what that was.
Zac froze on his way to the door and Luke heard it a split-second later. He dropped and rolled, but even though Zac had been further away, he was still first under the bed.
They both locked eyes on the source of the sound. The wardrobe? They waited. Nothing.
Luke had half made up his mind to crawl out from under the bed when one of the cupboard doors squeaked open. He scuttled backwards silently, grateful that the desk lamp wasn’t powerful enough to banish the shadows hiding them.
The door opened further. Who hides in their own cupboard? he wondered. This oughta be interesting.
Although he was completely focused on the wardrobe, he barely noticed the barefoot kid in the striped T-shirt who stepped out of it.
Because there was someone else in there behind him. He could sense her. And he was already halfway out from under the bed when she spoke.
‘Luke?’ she said, stepping out of the wardrobe.
‘Samantha?’ he said.
He stood up, ready to meet his sister.
Luke wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he met his twin sister. He hadn’t really had time to think a lot about it. Two days ago, he didn’t even know that this girl – with her arms locked around his neck in a death grip – existed.
But now that she was here, he realised that somehow, somewhere, he’d always known.
And everything felt wrong. Not wrong, exactly – more like right. Everything felt right. But not right, exactly. More like something he had never felt before. As Samantha clung to him, sobbing, Luke felt his heart pulsing in synch with hers, he felt each beat becoming more noticeable, more painful, more loud. He hugged her back. This stranger. The only family he’d ever known.
A sob rose in his throat. That hadn’t happened since he was four and foster mummy two had drunkenly pushed him into a kerosene heater and his pyjamas bottoms had melted into his thighs. The memory flared a moment of panic and he dropped his arms and pulled away.
When they broke connection, the drumming in his chest stopped mid-beat; his heart instantly became cold and quiet again. The tears in his throat evaporated and his brain clicked in, razor-sharp, as the rest of his body became comfortably numb.
What the hell was that? he wondered.
Samantha teetered there without him, her eyes bereft.
‘What happened to you?’ she said, tears streaming.
How do I answer that? he thought. He didn’t try.
For the first time, Luke noticed that Zac wasn’t behind him, crawling out from under the bed. He was standing at the open doorway of the wardrobe. Luke wasn’t surprised. It was difficult to be shocked by anything Zac did any more. Besides, there was also the fact that his twin sister had just stepped out of a cupboard. He’d never done surprise very well, anyway.
And who was the other kid?
He turned to face the taller boy who was staring back at him. The kid was completely panicked. Fear crouched in his dark eyes and he ducked his head, cowering, as a newbie might in his first week at Dwight when he was about to be ‘counselled’ by Mr Holt and his henchmen.
‘Who -’ he began.
And then the wardrobe door creaked again.
Oh, for God’s sake.
‘Seraphina!’ yelled Zac and Samantha simultaneously.
That was a little too loud, Luke thought. He didn’t know whether Georgia knew that she had all these people chilling out in her hanging space, but she was gonna be aware of it pretty soon if everyone kept up with that volume.
‘Quiet!’ hissed the woman, stepping down from the wardrobe and quickly scanning the room.
Her eyes stopped at Luke, and he stared right back. Well, she was beautiful. Definitely hot, even in her Rambo outfit. But who on earth was she?
‘Um,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’
Seraphina spoke first. ‘We haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘Samantha, I trust you’ve met Luke, your brother?’
Samantha nodded.
‘It was a terrible risk of me to give you that phone, and I hope one day you’ll forgive me,’ said the woman.
‘What phone?’ said Luke.
‘How does it work?’ said Samantha.
‘It’s an ancient object embedded within a communication device. It calls me to you when you desperately need me. But it also attracts others. We had to risk it when we lost track of you in Windsor, Luke.’
‘But I’ve never seen you before in my life,’ said Luke. ‘And what the hell are you doing hanging around in a closet?’
Seraphina’s golden eyes glinted. ‘Obviously, Luke, you realise that it is not an ordinary wardrobe.’
‘There are extraordinary wardrobes?’ said Luke.
‘There are many things you need to learn, but now is not the time. You and your sister are in immediate danger. I’ve no doubt the creatures hunting you are on their way. Whoever created this portal -’ she pointed at the wardrobe, ‘- is a very powerful being. Using it requires much skill.’
Her eyes locked hard on Luke’s, and then she turned quickly. ‘Zac Nguyen, your mother would be very proud of you.’
Zac blushed and bowed. Luke stared at him. He’d never seen anyone bow before.
‘And who is this?’ said Seraphina, turning towards the boy wearing no shoes and a terrified expression. The boy looked wildly around the room and then at the door.
He’s either gonna bolt or cry, thought Luke.
‘I don’t know his name,’ said Samantha quietly. ‘And I don’t think he can talk, Sera. But he can draw. And he’s really, really frightened.’
Luke’s eyes turned to his sister. Every word she spoke made him want to hear more.
Seraphina moved very slowly towards the boy, her palm outstretched as though approaching a trapped animal. Her lips moved, but Luke couldn’t pick up what she was saying. The boy’s head stopped thrashing about, but his eyes still looked freaked.
‘Please, would you tell us who you are?’ said Seraphina.
The kid reached around behind his back and pulled a notepad out of his backpack. He flipped back the cover and Luke could see some writing at the top of the page.
‘Kyle Greene,’ read Seraphina. ‘Is that your name?’
The boy chewed his bottom lip and then inclined his head, once.
‘Kyle Greene?’ said Luke. ‘Samantha, I think he’s one of our brothers!’
‘One of our brothers?’ Samantha stared at Luke.
‘What?’ hissed Seraphina. She grabbed the boy by the arm. ‘Kyle, why did you bring Samantha here? Who sent you to find her?’
Kyle wrenched his arm away and barrelled out of the room. Samantha hesitated, but the trail of fear and despair he left behind was too strong and she bolted after him.
And as she left the room, the world changed forever.
‘Are you certain that this was all that was at the front desk?’ asked Kirra, standing before the door of Room 323 of the Shangri-La Hotel.
Dagger’s Breath stood beside her, his scar glowing, sword sheathed across his shoulders. She could feel the heat of his need for revenge.
‘There were no other messages?’ she repeated.
‘Nothing, boss,’ said Golden Tiger, eyes averted.
Kirra turned the electronic pass-card over in her hands, her stomach muscles cramped.
The Chairman himself had called her. That was the first bad sign. When he ordered an important execution he liked to be personally involved on some level – but never directly, never like this.
Had she angered her boss so much that what lay beyond Room 323 was the afterlife? He’d want to have sent a pretty good crew if that was the case. She mentally reviewed the weapons she carried. Nine, all lethal, none visible.
She ran through everything again. The Chairman had told her that he knew where the two targets were hiding. Send someone to reception, he’d ordered – your instructions will be waiting.
And this was what Golden Tiger had brought her. The key to a room on the third floor of their own hotel.
She knew that the Chairman could have organised to have anything on the other side of this door. But could he possibly have captured the gypsy witch and had her brought here? Was that what he had summoned her to see – that others had succeeded where she’d failed? She would rather he had set up a trap for her crew – she would have preferred to meet her ancestors than face that humiliation.
If the gypsy witch was behind these doors, the Chairman would expect her to bring her to him, alive, as instructed. But he would always remember that she had failed the most important part of the mission and forever more she would have to watch and wait for his retribution.
And she knew that he was a very patient man.
But if the witch wasn’t in here, well…
She smoothed a single errant hair back from her flawless face and flicked her glossy ponytail off her shoulders. She knew – without vanity, and without make-up, for that matter – that she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. But she was more than that. She was a Yakuza assassin, feared in all dark corners throughout Japan and everywhere else she should happen to be.
And if she died tonight – on the night of her twenty-first birthday – well, she would ensure that people would still be speaking about it on the hundredth anniversary of her death.
Kirra Kiyota inserted the passkey into the electronic lock of Room 323 and pushed the door open.
The moment she pushed through the heavy hotel door, Kirra knew they were walking into a trap. The room was dark, but it wasn’t that: it felt far too small, as though it had been boxed up to cage them.
For a microsecond her instincts told her to back out, to run. But she squashed them immediately, ashamed. If it was her destiny to die today, punished by the Chairman for failing in her assignment, then she would die with honour. Not in a year from now, hunted down in some alley by a fellow Yakuza.
She led her crew into the room with her. They were Yakuza, all, and she knew they would react the same way.
But once crowded into the cramped, airless space, she became confused. The barricade restraining them was wooden, flimsy, as though they were ordinary doors. She could see light and hear voices beyond them.
She put her eye to the crack in the doors and hissed quietly.
The gypsy and others. And there is the boy!
A massive sense of relief overrode all instincts telling her there was something bewitched about the situation. The Chairman still trusts me, she thought. The job is still there to do properly. I will be redeemed.
Kirra silently thanked her ancestors and turned to face her crew. Suddenly she was again proud of them all; their names would live forever.
She manoeuvred a little so that her beloved, Dagger’s Breath, could see through the crack in the doorway.
‘Keep the targets alive,’ she whispered. ‘All others are disposable.’ She waited for each of their murmured assents.
‘Dagger’s Breath,’ she breathed behind him, ‘on your go.’
The cupboard door smacked back and a nightmare stepped through. A screaming, sword-wielding, tattooed freak. Luke threw himself sideways as another shrieking black-clad daemon leapt into the room. But this one was definitely female – even in his shock, Luke registered her icy beauty. And behind her were more.
Before his mind could process what was happening, the female ninja launched herself right at him. He sprang up onto the bed just as Seraphina crash-tackled her and Zac hollered his name.
He whipped his head up to see Zac straining with everything he had to push the cupboard doors closed. He had no idea how Zac was keeping at bay whatever roared and smashed against the inside of the doors, but he knew he needed help fast.
Luke flew from the bed and shoulder-charged into the doors. He heard the door lock-snap into place, felt the wardrobe immediately become still, and then, much too late, registered the swipe of silver from the corner of his eye.
Samantha froze in the hallway, hearing the shrieks from the room she had just left, and flattened herself against the wall. Every sense told her to get the hell out, start running and never come back. But her brother was in there. She couldn’t leave him.
Her heart firing like a machine gun, she peered around the door frame.
The scarred monster from the Carnivale seemed to fill all the space in the room and she plastered both hands over her mouth to smother her scream.
Samantha watched, horrified, as Luke dived a split second before Scarface landed in the spot he’d been standing. Scarface hit the ground hard, and rolled.
Samantha made herself small behind the door frame, terrified that he would see her when he stood up again.
And then Kirra leapt through.
Kirra screamed the same bloodcurdling battle cry Samantha had heard at the Carnivale – the sound that accompanied the whistle of the throwing star that had buried itself in Tamas’s neck. The sound Samantha heard replaying in her mind every time she closed her eyes.
Sam pushed her fingertips into her ears, praying to just curl up on the floor and disappear, and watched, horrified, as Kirra flew towards Luke. But before she could even take a breath to warn him, Seraphina sprang from a standing start to head-height in a blur of frenzied movement, and brought the black-clad ninja to the ground.
For a single heartbeat they each lay on their backs as though stunned, and then, in a near identical move, both women propelled themselves from flat out to kickboxing without making a single sound. Samantha would have cheered, but while the two women fought viciously hand to hand, Zac threw himself at the wardrobe.
She rushed forward to help.
Right into the chest of Scarface.
This close to him Sam suddenly felt the past deaths he’d been responsible for. Their ghosts wailed and moaned, and her legs jellied as the stored-up emotions of people he’d crushed and killed seeped through his pores and into her own. He grabbed her arms as she almost collapsed, and she was swamped by his hatred for her; it scalded her skin at every point of contact between them.
He threw his head back and howled.
Whimpering, incoherent with terror, Samantha tried, but failed, to close her eyes as he bent down to her head height to make her face him. His teeth were bared in a broken-lipped snarl and she saw in his black eyes that he was beyond human reach, beyond compassion. Her legs gave out completely and she bowed her head, waiting for his sword to fall.
But, as though from somewhere far away, deep inside, she heard a voice trying to tell her something. You’ve done it before, it whispered. In the street in Pantelimon – you reached him then.
Samantha White, you’ve done it before.
Although she wanted nothing more than to just allow her mind to go blank – to do what it wanted to do: overload its circuitry and shut down – she forced herself instead to search for the yellow light inside her.
But this close to Scarface, it felt impossible. The only energy streaming through her right now was wound-red and burned-black.
She tried to shut him out, she managed to close her eyes, but she could taste blood, and the charred stench of his rage filled her nostrils.
She needed an image, a place, a time to help her channel the light.
And suddenly, it came to her.
The burning stench Scarface emitted transformed in her mind to wood smoke, to the campfire crackling in preparation for Esmeralda’s evening meal. She found herself sitting cross-legged in the long grass, her lime-green skirt fanned out around her, the purple twilight warm upon her skin. She smiled, because behind the fence, within an arm’s-reach, Tamas whispered patiently to a broken horse, his brown face just visible, nuzzling its muzzle, swapping scents.
Tears streaming, Samantha gathered his whispers, his tender promises to the horse, and sent them out as quiet energy through her skin and into Scarface.
She felt it immediately.
Scarface hissed. As though a bucket of water had been thrown over white-hot coals, the fire of his rage evaporated. His eyes, locked with hers, became panicked, confused. He swung his head around wildly, as though for the first time properly taking in his surroundings.
What have I done? she thought, as she felt fear flood through him, replacing the hatred. She sensed him slowly losing his grip on reality.
He let go of her arm and swivelled completely, swaying on his feet, gazing back at the wardrobe from which he’d come. The wardrobe Zac and Luke stood pressed against, holding back the rest of the hell-people.
And, with a deafening, demented shriek, Scarface suddenly bolted towards the wardrobe, sword raised.
‘No!’ Samantha screamed, as Scarface struck.
Luke did not hear Samantha scream.
In fact, he heard nothing at all. The world became completely silent and everything slowed to a syrupy crawl as he watched the tattooed arm swinging its sword down towards Zac. Only these two players were in pinpoint-focus on the board as the rest of the room faded to sepia. His brain computed the microseconds it would take him to pull Zac from the path of the sword, even as it continued its lethal trajectory directly into his friend’s chest.
Zac crumpled to the floor and Luke knew that there was nothing he could do. He jumped anyway, leaping up onto the madman standing over Zac, roping his arms around his neck, heaving with everything he had to pull him down.
The swordsman teetered, Luke wrenched desperately, and they fell.
Luke felt the sword piercing his heart, just as Samantha’s agonised face appeared above him. Her hand grasped his. A dark, wrenching pain ripped through him and he gasped. An aching anguish (could this be sorrow?) filled him at the thought that he was about to die and he’d never get to know her. But in that moment he was also inexpressibly grateful. Grateful that even though this would be the last time he would experience it, somehow his sister had again helped him to feel.
And finally he got it – finally he understood what everyone meant when they kept asking him, What do you think it would feel like if someone did that to you? He finally knew how someone else felt, and he was glad that the other person was Zac, his first real friend.
As his life pumped from the wound in his chest, Luke managed to drag himself a few centimetres closer to Zac.
He reached a hand out to touch his dying friend’s shoe, smiled up at Samantha, and then closed his eyes.
From the age of seven, Kirra Kiyota had been able to out-fight any grown woman.
And at that age, no male under the age of sixteen could beat her in hand-to-hand combat.
She’d begun her martial arts training while still in nappies, chosen and schooled by Heaven’s Thief himself. She’d been told, even then, that when he’d had his dream about her destiny, her family had had no choice but to hand her over to the Yakuza.
She had no memory of her parents and wanted none. Heaven’s Thief had been her father, the Chairman her benevolent uncle.
When, at twelve, she’d knocked senseless their best adult male fighter, the Chairman had offered her the right to take the defeated man’s life. Still shamefully soft, she’d declined, so the Chairman had bought her a Lamborghini as a prize for her win, and forced her to sleep for a mid-winter’s month on the stones in the courtyard for refusing the kill.
All of this knowledge flashed through Kirra’s mind when she was high-kicked onto her arse by a woman. She could have sat there for another twenty-four hours trying to figure out how that could be possible, but her body was already kicking, blocking and striking, even as she hit the ground and bounced back to her feet.
Her opponent kept up, then ramped it up, and Kirra suddenly wanted to laugh, to rejoice in what she realised was going to be a rare – and maybe never again experienced – battle.
‘Who trained you?’ she managed through gritted teeth.
‘Kimi,’ said the woman, escaping Kirra’s hold and striking her to the kidneys. ‘She who is without equal.’
‘Liar!’ hissed Kirra, ignoring the pain. ‘Kimi Kana has been buried for a thousand years.’ And I am her equal.
She twisted out of a hold and into a back-arch, smacking into her enemy’s jaw with each foot as she flipped back up onto her feet.
As they battled, she tried to ascertain the whereabouts of the rest of her crew. She knew that Dagger’s Breath would appropriate the targets, but she could not see Golden Tiger or Tanabe Yukio.
Suddenly she sensed that something was very wrong. From the corner of her eye, she saw her number one – her beloved – Dagger’s Breath – staggering in through the doorway of this cursed room past her towards the wardrobe. Dagger’s Breath would not stagger, would not stumble, she thought, still blocking blows instinctively, unless he was mortally wounded, or maybe bewitched.
Then Dagger’s Breath raised his sword.
Her opponent froze at the precise moment Kirra did.
They both spun on the spot and screamed, ‘No!’
Too close! The thought flashed through Kirra’s mind. You are too close to the target, Dagger’s Breath! We have orders to bring him in alive! She readied herself to spring over to the wardrobe. But a heartbeat after the first child fell, the male target launched himself at Dragon’s Breath, and they both crashed to the floor.
Two seconds later, Kirra Kiyota was fairly certain she would not live to see another day. But if she managed to, she was prepared, right then and there, to bet her ancestors’ souls that she would never forget this one. Because when the male target fell, reality fractured.
As Kirra stared, some Thing ripped a hole right through the middle of realness and bludgeoned its way into the bedroom. Kirra fell to her knees as the shrieking she-daemon raised itself up to ceiling height. But even as it towered terrifyingly over them all, red eyes blazing behind whipping Medusa locks, Kirra found herself thinking: Why would a powerful devil wear a frilly red skirt and black-and-white tights? She would never be seen like that.
And then, four things happened.
One, the woman she had been battling gaped in horror at the terrifying creature and shouted at the top of her lungs, ‘Morgan Moreau!’
Next, the seven-foot nightmare flicked a massive hand towards the two boys sprawled in front of the wardrobe, bleeding-out on the carpet (beyond help, in Kirra’s considerable experience), and an iridescent blue light shot from her fingers, cloaking them entirely.
Thirdly, and most disturbingly to Kirra, the Thing reached up to her giant face and ripped a piece of silver jewellery from her nose, hurtling it down onto the carpet where it immediately began to double, quadruple, mushroom monstrously, clanking and grinding from the size of a coin to that of a toy truck, then a dog, and finally to a horrible, terrible, snarling metal dragon-thing that couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be described.
The fourth thing that happened would require many years for Kirra to mentally and emotionally process.
It involved the metal-dog-dragon thing.
It involved her only-love, Dagger’s Breath.
And it involved a lot of blood.
Kirra had seen some things in her twenty-one years. She’d heard many other things over breakfast that had made grown men cry or vomit. But she had never seen anything like this.
She knew that this seven-foot chick and her mutant dragon were not of this world.
She also knew that when a battle was done, it was done, and that leaving right now was not shameful, merely prudent.
But her heart bled for what her beloved had just suffered. So she took a moment, just a fraction of a moment, to weld forever the pain of his death to the karate-liar in khaki, to the cursed gypsy and her brother, and to the bitch-daemon with no dress sense. She vowed that she would see them all again, if not in hell, then before. And she ran to the window.
Ripping the white wooden blinds from the frame as though pulling a tissue from a box, Kirra Kiyota took one last look around that damned supernatural room and at what remained of her beloved, and then, using an elbow sheathed in Kevlar catsuit, she smashed the glass and cartwheeled out, dropping silently down into the wet Sydney night.
As she ran for the shadows, Kirra wondered if there was anywhere in the world she was safe to go.
She had no crew.
She’d failed another mission.
Would the Chairman comfort or kill her?
As she dodged vehicles to find the darkest corners of the city, an image flashed up before her: Dagger’s Breath with his throat in the jaws of that metal thing.
She banished the image and replaced it with another: a twenty-first birthday cake, candles blazing. She heard the rumble of a train and headed for it, keeping the imaginary candles burning bright.
When she’d tucked herself into a corner seat in the bottom carriage of a train heading to Sydney’s Central Station, two dark-haired youths looking for trouble spotted her and made their way over.
She raised her eyebrows, doing her best to tone down her rage. They hesitated and she lifted her lip in a snarl. They moved away quickly.
‘Yeah, get!’ she yelled after them, almost disappointed.
She closed her eyes, watched the pretty candles, and blew them out.
Then Kirra Kiyota made her twenty-first birthday wish.
She’d never tell a soul what she wished for.
Because then it wouldn’t come true.
‘Luke! Get everyone into the cupboard. Now!’ screamed Seraphina.
Luke wasn’t sure how he was supposed to do that when he was dead.
Except he wasn’t.
Even though his shirt was saturated in blood, he felt pretty great, actually. He sat up.
Zac didn’t look so good, but he was breathing. And Seraphina looked to be pretty busy.
‘The Witch healed you,’ yelled Seraphina.
Georgia – a witch?
Now that was definitely not Georgia.
Luke gazed in awe at the Goth girl he’d eaten dinner with the last two nights. Except then she hadn’t been seven foot tall, and she hadn’t been jetting red lasers from her fingers.
‘Georgia is Morgan Moreau,’ coughed Zac, pale and panting, pushing himself up on one elbow. ‘We have to get out of here. Sera won’t be able to hold her off forever.’
‘My mother?’ said Luke, his senses threatening to pack up and leave again.
He watched Seraphina face the monster, green light streaming from her fingers and rippling through the air like flame before meeting Georgia’s blood-red lasers in a deluge of sparks and lightning-like flares.
Samantha seemed to be frozen to the spot, staring with fixed concentration at the fireworks.
‘Samantha, I’m fine,’ Seraphina yelled. Luke didn’t think fine was quite the right word. ‘Please, Sam, you don’t have to help me. Save your energy. Help the boys. Luke – get into that cupboard now!’
Samantha was helping Seraphina? How? Luke stood, swaying a little on his feet. He knew that he had died – he’d felt the sword puncture his lungs, pierce his heart. And the pain. He had never felt anything like it. He had no idea how these things could be happening, but right now he was thankful for the total numbness that overtook him whenever things were out of control. He squinted in the glare of the flame-battle. Yep, this would definitely meet that category.
The giant-Georgia countered a laser of light hurled by Seraphina; the energies met in an explosion of brilliance.
The mutant metal dragon thing sat on its hideous haunches, watching the lightshow. From its malformed mouth hung a clump of blood-matted hair left over from the mess of the swordsman on the ground. After one glance downwards, Luke kept his eyes above floor-level. That dude didn’t have a scar any more. He didn’t have a face, either. He wondered why Georgia-Morgan didn’t sick her freak mutt onto Seraphina to end the battle once and for all.
Right then Zac tugged desperately at his arm and Luke turned towards the wardrobe. He’d rather be in there than out here if the doggie-dragon did decide it was up for seconds.
‘Locked,’ said Zac weakly, trying to stay upright. ‘You have to use your tools. You’re the only one who can do it. It all makes sense now.’
‘Oh yeah. It all makes perfect sense, Nguyen,’ Luke said. ‘This is all completely understandable.’
Luke picked the lock in three seconds flat, grabbed Samantha’s hand, and stepped through the door.