Kitty
I stomp all the way to the bus stop, angry and hurt. It takes about five seconds once I’m sitting to realise that I went too far. I could have said the same things, explained my reasoning just as well without being mean to someone who only wanted to help me.
I groan and cover my face, scrunching down in my jacket. It’s like one of those times when I get cross with Sam and tell him to bugger off because I can’t parent properly. There’s no relief in it, only shame.
My phone’s not in my pocket. It must be back on the kitchen counter, and I could throttle myself for leaving it there. I bite my lip as I consider running back to the flat for it and apologising to Talia, explaining why I’ve got to do this. I’ve lost Mum and Nan and Matt, and I can’t risk losing my dad too, when I’ve only just found him. I’ve got to give him a chance.
The bus arrives, and it feels like a sign from the universe. I jump on before I can think about it anymore, but the ride down to the warehouse is a constant roundabout of have I made the right choice? Have I fucked everything up?
I’m grateful for the walk down from the bus stop to the warehouse, concentrating on the rhythm of my feet against the pavement as I argue with myself. “Kitty,” Matt hisses, and I just about crap my pants.
“Jesus Christ, Matt! What the hell?”
“What the hell?” he squeaks. “You what the hell? Where were you? What happened to that place? It was like it was falling down. And that’s after I wandered around in the atrium trying to find people, and there’s nobody there, Kit, nobody. And then there was this smashing noise, and the whole place fucking disappeared. It just went, and there I was standing in a fucking wall.”
I scrunch my face up and shake my head, which hurts again. “What?”
“The Society. Fucking. Disappeared. Gone.”
I look over to the warehouse. Matt rolls his eyes. “Oh, you know what I mean. The building’s still there, but everything inside is gone.” He drags shaking fingers through his hair. “It was creepy as hell, finding myself in a wall. I sort of stumbled out the side of the building, spent the next hour or whatever looking for you. I thought you’d disappeared too.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I catch him up on the whole deal from my end. “I swear, though, it was all still there when I ran out.”
“What, the atrium and everything?”
“Well,” I say, frowning. “I guess. I didn’t exactly check. I was concentrating on the bleeding.”
He seems to deflate a bit. “You’re really going back in there?”
I take a deep breath. “I’ve got to try.”
“Anderson, though? Really?”
“Oi, that’s my dad you’re talking about. Apparently.”
He crinkles his nose up. “Fine. Let’s do this.”
I have to swallow the tears hard as he turns and marches toward the warehouse. I’d never have asked him to come with me on this, but having him with me means the world. I wish Talia had come too. I wish I hadn’t pushed her away. I wish she could’ve trusted me to try this.
“Come on, slowpoke,” Matt yells. I put aside my selfishness and run after him.
It feels surreal to be coming back here after I ran away in such a terror just a few hours ago. I half expect Shivam to open the door for me, barely looking up from his phone as he leads me to our office. Has this all been a weird dream?
But when the door swings open with a pained screech, there’s a man standing there who looks familiar and strange all at once. “Miss Wilson,” he says. “Kitty.”
“Anderson?” I frown. Maybe if I squint…
He gives a flicker of a smile. “I thought I would dispense with all illusions. If we’re to attempt honesty now.”
He’s younger than he was, and it’s a weird relief that my mum’s taste in men isn’t quite as horrible as I’d been thinking. He’s in his fifties, his hair thick and brown, and rather than the Monopoly Man aesthetic he was going for before, he looks a lot more casual now. Not normal. I mean, he’s wearing a big brown duster coat, like he’s some sort of Jedi, but it’s softer. More dad-like. I like it.
I try out a smile. Imagine calling him Dad. Cross my arms because I can’t quite make that mental leap yet.
“Come on in,” he says. His coat flares as he turns, beckoning with a finger over his shoulder. I follow like a little duckling, and I can’t deny the hope swelling in my chest.
Like Matt said, though, the warehouse is no longer the Society building. It’s just an old, bare warehouse. All the doors along the main corridor are gone, the atrium is gone—there’s a wall where it used to be—and a set of steps are off to one side. I wrap my jacket tighter around me as a cold wind whistles through the boarded-up windows.
“I suppose I owe you an explanation,” Anderson says.
“Ya think?” Matt mutters, poking at a mouldering shelf as we pass.
Anderson turns as he reaches the end of the corridor, so suddenly that I think he heard Matt somehow. Instead, he lifts his arms and speaks words I don’t recognise, and illusion sweeps from his fingertips. Before my gaze, the Society appears in all its pristine austerity. A woman walks past us, her arms full of files, and simply nods at Anderson. He drops his hands, and it fades.
I stare at him with my mouth open. “It was all an illusion?”
He nods. I feel like he’s kicked me right in the chest.
“Why?” I beg.
“For you,” he says, and for the first time in my life, my father steps forward and takes my hands. It’s sudden, and I startle, almost pulling away. He holds me tight, though. “Kitty, have you any idea how powerful you are? The daughter of two incredibly powerful magic users, I always knew you would be exceptional. If only your mother hadn’t stolen you away. I’ve been looking for you all these years.”
“But you never—”
“I could never find you. I had Shivam working on it for so long. I never gave up. I knew I had to keep trying. And then last month, there was a crack in the shield she’d put around you, and I had no time to waste.”
“She?”
“Madeline, your mother.” He says her name with a curl of his lip. “What did she tell you about me? I imagine all sorts of lies.”
“She didn’t tell me anything, really.” Guilt twists in my stomach when I think of how I never asked.
“What, nothing at all?” He laughs. “Come now, Kitty, we’re family. No need for lies between us.”
I shrug. “I’m sorry.”
His fingers tighten on mine for a moment, then he shakes his head. “No matter. You’re mine now. I’ve found you at last.”
I laugh. “That sounds ominous.”
He waves a hand. “Well, you have always been mine. My daughter.”
His eyes bore into mine. I can barely hold his gaze. I’ve got an overwhelming urge to giggle hysterically. “Well, I guess we’ll get to know each other soon enough,” I say. I know I’m babbling, trying to fill a soundless space.
“We are going to achieve so much together,” he says. He’s still gripping my hands, and I’m shamefully aware of how sweaty my palms are. “Over the past few weeks, I’ve learned about your power, and I have so many ideas for how we can harness it, take it further. You are going to be incredible, my dear.”
“Take it further? What do you mean?”
He releases my hands at last and leads me into a room similar to the one Shivam and I used to use, complete with mirror and computer. “Shivam’s told me how flexible your magic is,” he says, rummaging through the papers on the desk until he finds a notebook. “How you can make tweaks of your own to the sigils.”
I nod. “Mum taught me.”
His lips twist slightly. “Well, I suppose she was good for something,” he says under his breath.
“Hey,” I snap. “That’s still my mum you’re talking about. I get your relationship was strained at the end—”
“Strained?” he says, his voice pitching high. “Strained would be a divorce or a fit of jealousy. Madeline ran away in the middle of the night with my daughter, hid her from me for most of her life, and then shacked up with some regular magic-less idiot.”
“And she also raised me and loved me,” I say. “She’s my mum, and I don’t give a shit if you’re the king of England, you don’t get to talk badly about her to me. I ain’t playing favourites.”
His eyes twitch slightly, narrowing, and I swallow hard, very aware of how physically and magically strong he is and how I’m stuck out in a derelict warehouse with him. Matt stands shoulder to shoulder with me, and it’s comforting, even though I know he can’t do anything.
Anderson turns back to the notebook, dropping the tension like it never existed. “Your flexibility in terms of magic could be the key to almost limitless power,” he says.
My head spins at the change in tone. I turn to the mirror, biting my lip. I don’t know what I expected. It wasn’t this. “What do you want to try?” I ask.
He laughs. It’s manic, and now that I’m not looking at him, it’s exactly like the old Anderson. “How about teleportation?” he says. “How about flight? Breathing under water? We could have superpowers, Kitty.”
I chuckle. “I always did like the X-Men.”
“Imagine,” he says, walking up to join me at the mirror. “We could go anywhere we wanted. Do anything we wanted. Hell, we could walk into the deepest bank vault and take anything.”
I laugh. “I mean, why stop there? We could nick the crown jewels.”
He catches my eye in the mirror and smiles, and holy shit, he’s serious. “Now you’re getting it,” he says.
“That’s illegal,” I say. It sounds pathetic even to me.
He rolls his eyes. “For normal people, of course. Imagine how they’d scurry if we took the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Like ants without their queen.”
I force another laugh. “What would we do with the Koh-i-Noor diamond?” Please, please let him show me this is a joke.
“I’m sure I’d think of something,” he says. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “With your power, your flexibility, and my creative mind, there would be no limits.”
I swallow. The mirror seems to waver like a pool, and I wish it was a door. I wish I could sink into it the way I do when I have a case. Every nerve that would have been twanging before is now going nuts. “What does Shivam think about this?”
He hesitates. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
I hope my relief doesn’t show too clearly. Shivam may be a coward, but he’s got a moral compass. I need to know this is all a joke. I need to hear that my father isn’t a wannabe criminal. “Where is he?”
Anderson checks his watch. “I’ll go see if he’s arrived yet. He was terribly worried about you after you ran off. I sent him to get some coffee.”
He wanders out the door, and Matt rushes to my side, glancing back. “Kitty, what the fuck is going on? Is he being serious?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I need to ask Shivam. I mean, I’ve barely seen Anderson while I was working here.”
“Kit, I know he’s your dad, but…”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. Shit. I know.” I wish he wasn’t. I wish he was just my pompous, creepy boss. I could straight up hate him and run far, far away. I wish I’d never come here.
I place my hand on the mirror, wishing again that it would turn to a doorway. I want my mum. I want Talia. She tried to warn me. She tried to save me. My fingers move by themselves over the glass, making the sigils I know so well. I wish they could take me to her.
The door opens, and Matt and I jump violently. “Fuck,” Matt says with a little laugh. “You scared the crap out of me, Shivam.”
“Hey, Kitty,” Shivam says. “I’m sorry about earlier. You were never supposed to hear it like that.”
“That’s okay,” I say, and I can’t help smiling at him, at someone familiar.
“You can tell us what’s going on with Anderson,” Matt says, taking a step toward Shivam. “Is he really planning on using Kitty’s magic to rob a bank or whatever? It’s a joke, right? He’s just got a really fucked-up sense of humour, right?”
Shivam walks right through Matt. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t make any sign that he’s done it to troll him. He holds the notebook that Anderson had. I turn back to the mirror, and my heart hammers so hard, my ears are full of hurricane winds of terror. That’s not Shivam. That’s not Shivam. The man talking about numbers and sigils and ideas, that’s not him.
My hand lands on the mirror again. Tears get shaken loose as I tremble in fear and confusion. My fingers mark the sigils, and I want to be away from here, I want to escape.
So I do.
Arms wrap around my waist. I freak out, screaming and struggling, but I can feel myself being transported, not pulled, just picked up and moved. For a split second, I think of Talia, how she held me tight, how she warned me, and how I didn’t kiss her every time I had the chance. But mostly, I think of nothing but blinding panic and escape.
“Kitty, Kitty, calm down, you’re making shockwaves.”
I’m on the floor, a breathless mess, but that’s Shivam’s voice. That’s Shivam, standing over me when he should be in the white room back there, with Matt, with my body, if this has gone the way it usually does. And next to him…shit, next to him is my mum.
“Are you all right?” she asks, crouching, and that’s it. I burst into tears.
I can hug her here. I can wrap my arms around her waist and cry into her shirt. I’ve turned back into a little girl, lost without her mum and passed around between the social workers, clinging to Sam’s hand.
I must cry for hours, but she doesn’t make any sort of fuss or try to stop me. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor with me clutching her and smearing snot into her clothes. I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to go back to the real world. Why would I when I can smell her here and feel her warmth and her fingers stroking my hair?
“Mum,” I say. “Mum, I’m scared.”
“I know, love,” she says. “Me too.”
I cry out all my fear and grief, and still, more comes up. When there are no more tears, there’s an empty void inside me and still, still, the traces of fear swirling there.
I stay curled on her lap. Mum doesn’t make any move to hurry me up or push me, and I luxuriate in it. I wonder if I could fall asleep. When I sit up, I don’t feel like I’m being forced by anyone else, which makes me wonder why the hell I bother.
“You’re dead,” I say to Shivam, wiping my face.
He shrugs. “Anderson. You know he makes illusions, right?”
I nod.
Shivam sighs. “He found me at the train station. Made it look like the platform was a foot longer.” He swallows. “He, uh…he took the illusion away a moment before the train hit.”
“Fuck.” I cover my mouth, feeling sick at the thought. My father did that. My blood. It seems there are more tears to come. “Shivam, fuck, I’m so sorry.”
“Bastard,” Shivam says viciously. “Not you,” he throws at me, though I feel like I’d take it if it was aimed at me. “He’s always been such a fucking bastard. It’s not enough to kill someone, I guess. Got to make them realise just as it’s too late.”
Mum’s nodding. “He’s always been that way. I wish I’d realised earlier, before…”
Shivam hums. “He’s clever. He comes across as a good guy when you first meet him, and then…”
“By the time you realise, it’s too late,” says Mum. “It’s why I wanted to keep him away from you, I’m so sorry, Kitty. I thought I could do it.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say.
She shakes her head. “It is,” she says, and she’s crying now too. “I was the adult. I should have seen the red flags. I should have left him way before. I let him get away with so much, and I’m sorry for putting you in this situation. And then the shield broke, and he got there before I could fix it.”
“What do you mean?”
She sniffs and wipes her eyes. “I got cocky, started taking risks. When I tried to tie Matt to Talia, to bring him out to you, that was my magic out in the world again. My death was supposed to shield you, put all my magic into hiding you.”
“You what?” I say, almost in a whisper. “You did what?”
“I had to,” she says, begging me with her eyes. “He was getting closer. And he got Shivam here on his side.”
“Blackmailed me,” Shivam mutters.
“I couldn’t do it by myself,” she says. “Not while using my magic for anything else.”
I curl up into a ball and break, my heart shattering. I’m the reason my mum died. I might as well have killed her myself. I can barely breathe. Nothing’s supposed to hurt here, but living is a fire in every cell of my body. I am the reason my mum died.
She’s wrapped around me again, we’re sharing tears and this pain, this pain is too much. “I’m sorry,” she whispers again and again.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper back.
“You’re going to have to go back,” says Shivam, and I can’t imagine anything worse. “Your body’s out there still.” With a murderer, he doesn’t say. He looks at me, meeting my gaze without the shame and anxiety that’s been so much a part of him since I’ve known him. “You didn’t kill her,” he says, jerking his thumb toward Mum. “He did. He killed us both. You’ve got to kill him before he does it again.”
“I’ve got to what?” I say, my jaw dropping. “I can’t kill him!”
“You have to.” He shrugs.
Mum wipes her eyes and nods. “I’m sorry, love. It’s self-defence.”
“What am I gonna do?” I ask, despair pulling at my heart, tugging me toward the ground and giving up.
“You’ve got to get out of that warehouse for a start,” Mum says, grabbing my hand and holding it tight. She feels warm, the two of us here like this. “Go and keep driving, get as far away from him as you can. Leave.” She swallows hard. “Leave Sam. He’ll be safer not knowing any of this. Peter will look after him.”
I don’t have the heart to remind her I don’t have a car. The way she looks right now, she’ll probably tell me to steal one. I think of Talia, picking me up from the Society buildings in her old farmer car, and I wish…I wish…
Mum and Shivam are helping me to my feet. “When you get back out there, use this sigil,” Mum says, drawing something in the palm of my hand.
“How?” I ask. “Do it again, I didn’t see.”
“No,” she says. “It’s already there. You just need to throw it at him. He’s not the only one who can tell stories about what’s in front of your eyes.”
I look at my hand, almost expecting to see something. Maybe the sigil itself glowing, but there’s nothing. There’s so much about magic that I don’t know, so much I’m assuming and guessing, and I feel bereft all over again.
I close my fingers around the invisible sigil and breathe slowly, feeling the knowledge of all I have to do weighing on me again. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to fight, not when I feel like I can’t possibly win. I put my family in danger by being me, and I’m panicking at the thought of leaving them. Even worse, at not leaving them on time. At still being in the flat when Anderson comes to kill all of us. Or to kill Sam and Peter and, I don’t know, steal my powers or whatever.
I close my eyes. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it, I never have. I wish I was with Talia. I wish I was a normal girl who’d met another normal girl a normal way and could have normal worries, like whether or not she likes me back.
My mum and Shivam are telling me what to do, and I can’t focus on any of it. I’m so scared. Mum wraps her arms around me, and I cling to her with my left hand, my right still wrapped tight around the sigil. “Mum,” I say, but the rest of the words stick in my throat. Let me stay. Don’t make me face my demons, I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough, I never have been.
She presses her hand against my chest, and I remember the red light that bound me and Talia together. Mum kisses my forehead and steps back. My breathing speeds up, and I squeeze my eyes shut tight. I’m going to return to my body on the other side of the mirror, and Anderson will be there, looking just like Shivam, the guy he murdered.
I want Talia. I want to run away with her. I want her to get mad on my behalf and put her arm around me again, strong and fierce like she did when I first found out about my father. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to lose.
I step out of the grey place.