Talia
We breathe for a moment in the silence, then Kitty goes heavy in my arms. I look down in horror, cry out wordlessly as I see her eyes roll back in her head. “Kitty!”
“M’okay,” she slurs, her hand lifting to pat my arm, then flopping back down.
“What’s wrong with her?” I demand, looking up to Madeline and Matt, begging them mentally to make it all better.
“She’s exhausted,” Madeline says, kneeling in front of Kitty as I lower her to the floor, my arms still tight around her. “Kitty, love, can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” she says, but she doesn’t open her eyes, presses her face against my neck instead. I can’t help smiling around my relief, tucking my chin over her head.
Madeline strokes her hand, and I wonder if she can touch her here, if she sometimes wishes Kitty could be here more often. The thought tightens my arms around Kitty’s shoulders.
“You need to get back,” Madeline says softly, looking at me like she’s heard my thoughts. She might be able to, fucking magic and all. “Look after her, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I say.
Madeline stands and holds Matt’s shoulders. “You should go back too.”
Matt crooks a smile. “Yeah, I’ve got used to haunting her.”
Madeline smiles mischievously. “No, darling. I mean, you should go back.”
“What, you mean…”
“There has to be balance, after all,” she says. “After they took Anderson. You’d only be putting it right.”
Matt’s jaw drops. “Are you serious?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at Madeline because magic ghost mother of my girlfriend or not, I will kick her arse for teasing Matt like this. “He can have his life back?”
In answer, Madeline draws sigils in the air. I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I think they’re the same ones I’ve seen Kitty draw so long and just a couple of months ago. Kitty blinks in my arms, rubbing her face, and stares up at them in wonder. Madeline pauses at the last one, her finger still in the air, the glow frozen at her fingertip. “Stay safe, my lovelies,” she says and pushes.
There’s a white light in front of my eyes, and I gasp loudly, like I’ve been pulled out of the water. “Kitty,” I say. “Kitty, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Did she really…is Matt really back?”
“Pinch me,” says Matt from the floor. “Someone pinch me right the fuck now.”
I kick him instead, and he yelps. “Holy fucking shit I’m alive, I’m alive!”
He bursts into tears, loud, childish, gulping sobs, and Kitty falls to her knees to wrap her arms around him. I pause for a second before I’m there too, rubbing circles on his back and laughing through my own tears.
“Talia! Talia, are you there?”
I blink up in amazement at Daniel’s voice echoing in the dark. “Daniel?”
A beam of light blinds me, and I squint and hold up my hand. I realise I haven’t a clue where we are.
“There you are! Thank God.” To my shock, he grabs me around the shoulders and squeezes me tight, murmuring, “Thank you, thank you,” under his breath. I squeeze his shoulder back.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m fine. Where are we?”
“The warehouse you told me about,” he says, pulling back and shining the torchlight from his phone around. The hollow echo and empty chill of the air suddenly becomes apparent.
“It wasn’t like this before,” Kitty says with a frown. “Even after I went back. There were still a few rooms and corridors, and now it’s just derelict.” She stares around at the empty cavern. “Another illusion.”
Daniel shrugs. “I don’t know about that, but I think we should stop pushing our luck by being here, don’t you?” He glances down at Matt and holds out a hand to help him up. “Hi, I’m Daniel.”
“Yeah,” Matt says, a thread of hysteria in his voice. “I know who you are. I’m Matt.”
“The ghost?” Daniel’s eyebrows rise so high, I think they might fall off.
“Not anymore, apparently,” he says, and bursts into tears again.
It’s a slow shuffle getting all of us to Daniel’s car, Matt blinded by tears, Kitty exhausted and hanging off me. I don’t think any of us would have made it out if Daniel hadn’t shown up, and I can imagine the three of us curling up together like abandoned kittens in a corner of the dusty warehouse otherwise.
Kitty and Matt fall asleep tangled in each other’s arms as soon as their arses touch the back seat of Daniel’s car, and I slump into the front passenger seat, my eyes and mind unfocused. Daniel squeezes my forearm and smiles at me. “Where shall I take you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Panic rises in me, and tears come too easily. I know to take Matt and Kitty back to Peter and Sam, but what will they remember? Will it be like my return to life, when I seemed to have been alive the whole time? Will Peter and Sam remember being kidnapped and held like flies in spider silk in the grey place? How much damage could I cause by making a simple decision?
“Oh, you poor thing,” Daniel says. “Can I give you a hug? You look like you could use one.”
I fall into him and sob on his shoulder, my mind whiting out with relief and shame and the alien, terrifying comfort of a safe place.
“I tell you what,” Daniel says as my tears run dry. “I’ll take you all to get some food until we decide together. It’s dinnertime anyway.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you scared the life out of me disappearing like that for hours. At least it gave me time to find my way here, though.”
“Thank you, Daniel. I’m sorry to be such a bother.”
He laughs. “You’re really not, Talia. You know, you’re allowed to be helped.”
He starts the car and lets me sit in silence, small and drained, until we get to a chip shop. Matt and Kitty stir as soon as he gets back in the car with packets of greasy fried food. “Holy shit, I’m hungry,” Matt groans. He hesitates, glancing up at Daniel. “Uh, sorry, blasphemy.”
“As long as you’re not cursing the name of God, I’m sure we’ll be fine,” he says, sending an amused glance my way. “We weren’t sure where you wanted to go. I assume to your homes, but anywhere between here and Oxford is still on the table if necessary.”
“I wasn’t sure what Peter would know, if he’d think Matt’s been alive this whole time or if he and Sam would remember being kidnapped,” I say, twisting around in my seat.
“Shit,” sighs Kitty. “I don’t know, I’m flying blind.” She twists her lips wryly. “Again. But either way, that’s where we’re going first.”
Matt takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. “How am I going to cope if he doesn’t know?” he asks, his voice quiet and young the way he tries to avoid. “I can’t…” He trails off and turns his face away, wiping at damp cheeks.
I don’t tell him I know how it feels. There’s nothing I can say that’ll make it better. I leave Kitty to the soft whispers of comfort, turn back to stare out into the darkness behind my reflection in the window. I eat my chips mechanically.
Matt is almost in tears when we knock on Peter’s door. Twitching and shuffling from foot to foot, he’s barely able to keep his breath steady.
When the door opens, he falls forward away from our grasp and wraps his arms tight around his dad, burying his face in Peter’s neck. Peter blinks, then hugs him back just as tight, murmuring something comforting in Polish as he raises his eyebrows at Kitty.
He’s oblivious, then. Kitty has picked that up too. She makes up some story about a date gone wrong, and I notice she carefully leaves the pronouns out.
“You had a fight with Connor? Oh, kochanie, I’m sorry,” Peter says, and Kitty can’t hide the little gasp, the oh as she puts her hands up to her mouth. Peter’s engrossed in his son, though, and I look away. I’m not jealous, really. It just seems fake to me. Like an American sitcom.
“Come on, Maciek, we’ll have some tea, and you can tell me how bad of a person he is,” Peter says, tugging Matt inside. “Thank you so much for bringing him home. I’m sorry,” he says to Daniel. “I don’t know your name.”
“Daniel Asiimwe,” he says with his blinding smile, shaking Peter’s hand.
“Talia’s rabbi,” Kitty explains, and Peter smiles back.
“Peter Wiśniewski,” he says. “I would invite you in, but…” He shrugs.
“No, not at all,” says Daniel. “Talia and I are about to head back to Oxford.”
Sam squeezes past Peter, who pats him on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow, okay?”
“Thanks, Peter,” Sam and Kitty say in concert, and we step back until the door closes. Kitty, Daniel, and I slump.
“You all okay?” says Sam, giving us the side-eye.
“Yes,” Kitty says, and I see what an effort it is to straighten her spine and put on a genuine smile. She squeezes Sam’s shoulder, and we walk with them up the road to their block of flats.
Daniel and I stop at the pavement. I watch Kitty’s back, her shoulders starting to hunch once more as she walks away from me once again. Is this the end? I’d thought it was only a few days ago.
Am I going to let it be?
“Kitty,” I say, and my feet are moving me to her. She turns, and I’ve enough time to spot the deep well of sadness in her eyes and know I don’t want to let it stay there. I catch her around the waist, tilt her chin up, and kiss her. “I’ll come over tomorrow,” I say, and I work hard to keep it a statement, not a question. It doesn’t quite work. “If that’s okay with you?”
She smiles like the sun coming out, and I feel both her hands tangling in the jumper at my hips. “Yeah,” she says, a breath. “To stay?”
“You want me to?”
She nods. “I, uh…I got a menorah.” She blushes, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t help kiss the pink on her cheek. “On the internet. I didn’t know if you had one or if you wanted to spend it with us, but I looked it up, and it starts on the twenty-second, right, and I thought I’d…well, I wanted to.”
I smile so hard it hurts. “Thank you.”
“Awesome,” says Sam, clapping his hands once, and I blink up at him. He looks like he’s on the verge of laughing or running away. “Cool, so you’re staying, that’s settled. Kitty will stop moping, and we can try out those latke thingies. Now, can we please go in or something? I’m freezing my butt off here.”
Kitty laughs and presses her forehead against my collarbone. I feel something like tears or laughter or fear or joy bubbling up in my throat and hug her tight to me before we pull apart. I think I might run. Not away, just for the joy of movement. “Tomorrow, then,” I say as I walk backward to Daniel.
“Tomorrow,” Kitty says, walking backward to Sam. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head and drags her into the block of flats. She waves. It’s so fucking cute.
Daniel pats me on the shoulder and gives me an amused sideways look. “Sure you don’t want me to leave you here?”
I cover my face with both hands, feeling the heat radiating off me. I’m still smiling. Daniel laughs, but it’s with me, and it’s in support of me.
“I’m not that daft yet,” I promise, rolling my eyes at him. “I need my car and my toothbrush, for a start.”
He nods. “I would expect nothing else from you, Talia.”
“What’s that meant to mean?” I say, torn between laughing and frowning.
“Nothing at all.” He grins and turns, trailing me after him like a puppet.
I bug him, and he laughs and pretends he’ll never tell, and the bubble in my throat seems to burst, the venom of happiness flooding me. I may never stop smiling.