Chapter Fourteen

Next morning, things got worse.

My first indication of this was, as I went to leave the flat to walk to the office, Sil fell into step beside me. Or tried to, but the overall effect must have been that of the trial run of a push-pull device.

‘Go away.’

‘You want my protection.’

‘Ah, but “quod custodiet ipsos custodes?”’

Sil gave me a pained look.

‘“Who guards the guards”?’

‘Yes, I know what it means, Jessica. And it’s “quis”. Not “quod”. I may have a demon, but I also have a classical education.’

‘Ah, so you’ll know that saying about vampires, then.’ I accelerated and managed to put a few strides between us.

‘Which saying?’ He caught up, effortlessly.

‘That they should piss off and leave me alone.’

‘Very funny.’ He fell back a few steps, his big, black coat swirling around his ankles like an enthusiastic dog on its first walk of the day. ‘Anyway, get used to it. You have my protection for as long as Malfaire is still around.’

‘I’m surprised Zan can spare you for babysitting duties. I’d have thought he needed you closer to home in case he had any dry-cleaning to pick up.’

‘Cheap shot, Jessica.’ Sil shoved his hands into the pockets of the coat and walked along with his elbows jutting out and his shoulders hunched. ‘And that thing about Zan? I told you in the strictest confidence. We don’t want it getting out, and if it does – well, then I may have to kill you.’ He flashed me a look out of eyes that were gull-grey. ‘So. What’s on the agenda for today?’

I was instantly irritated. ‘Oh, I thought I might go out and wrestle a few werewolves into submission, then bait some Shadows.’

We’d arrived at the main door to the office building, ajar because Liam had already gone up. I went to push the door fully open, but Sil leaned across in front of me, barring my way. When he spoke, his fangs showed.

‘You are not taking any of this seriously, are you, Jessie? Getting my protection is no laughing matter. It ties us together for the foreseeable future or at least until Malfaire is dealt with. Now, neither your office nor mine have even got close to finding out what this guy is, or what he can do, so I suggest that you keep your head down and do your job, and let me do mine.’

‘Okay, Lord Machismo,’ I pushed his arm until I could get past, ‘you’ve made your position clear. But I only signed up for your protection, not for you following me around like we’re the result of some new surgical procedure. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’

I stomped up the stairs, aware of him following me, not noisily because he was wearing suede boots which made no sound, but his presence filled the narrow passageway as he whirled along at my heels.

‘Morning, Liam!’ I flung myself down into my seat and fired up my computer. ‘Anything to know?’

‘Er, we appear to have a vampire stuck to our spare chair? Honestly, Sil, isn’t a protector supposed to be looming around all mysteriously, rather than forming part of the workforce?’

‘You’re thinking of Batman. Where’s my coffee?’

‘Here. It’s a bit cool; you’re late.’

‘Yeah well, I had to do the “Me and My Shadow” dance all the way here.’

Liam and Sil raised their eyebrows at each other. ‘You don’t think, maybe, you’re over-reacting a bit?’ Liam asked. ‘After all, you know Malfaire has been trying to kill you, or at least mangle your carcass into something unrecognisable; surely it can’t hurt to have a bit of protection?’

‘That is not protection, that is an impediment! No, don’t make him drinks.’

‘Bottle of O, if you’re going to the kitchen, my dear friend.’ Sil waved a lazy hand. ‘Anyway, how come you know that Jessie finally saw sense and agreed to accept my protection?’

Liam blushed. ‘She Facebooked me.’

Sil looked at me steadily until I had to pretend a very sturdy interest in a file. ‘It was a private message,’ I muttered. ‘It’s not like I plastered it all over the ’net. Anyway,’ I rallied, ‘if you’re going to be hanging around, you can at least make yourself useful.’ I shoved a pile of envelopes at him. ‘Here’s this morning’s mail, get reading.’

Sil stood up and I thought for a moment he was going to walk out, but he just took his coat off and hung it on the back of the chair, then sat down again, legs crossed at the ankle, looking elegant and in it for the long haul. ‘What do you do with them these days?’

‘They’ll mostly be complaints; we’ve got a tray for those. Where’s the complaints tray, Liam?’

‘Box marked recycling.’ Liam’s voice drifted back from the kitchen.

‘There you go. Anything else, well, I’m sure it will all come back to you quickly enough.’

I turned to my screen and called up the Tracker sheet, but after a few moments I realised that Sil was looking at me and swivelled my chair to face him. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ He had his head tilted to one side and was looking at me, one hand combing the hair away from his face. ‘Just wondering.’

Liam came back with a bottle of blood for Sil and a new, improved coffee for me. ‘So, you two do anything nice last night?’ he asked, brightly.

‘Facebook. Bit of telly and then off to bed with a new Katie Fforde,’ I said.

‘Right. How about you, Sil? Let’s hope you had a salacious night of bouncing off the walls, because Madame Dull here is not doing much for the gossip quotient lately!’

‘Well, you know how it is. The clubs, the sex, the sex-clubs.’ Thankfully at that point the telephone rang and I lost the end of the run-down on a vampire’s night-time exploits as I answered it.

‘This is OBSU. You sent us a sample yesterday? Only, you haven’t sent us a human contrast.’

Oh damn! All I wanted was one simple blood test. It really shouldn’t be this hard. ‘I’m sure we did.’

‘There must have been a mix-up then.’

‘Must have been.’

‘Only it’s going to cost more than the estimate, you know that, don’t you? We had to provide the contrast blood ourselves, using a neutral donor.’

‘That’s fine. Give me a rundown.’ I listened to Richard at OBSU. Then I thanked him politely, put the phone down, shut off my computer and stood up. ‘I have to go out.’

‘I’ve just made you a coffee!’

‘Yeah, sorry Liam, but I have to.’

Sil looked up from Liam’s screen and something in my face made him flinch. ‘I’m coming, too.’

‘No. You stay here. This is private.’

Sil was already standing, pulling his coat from the back of the chair. ‘You can still get killed on private business. I’m coming.’

Our eyes met with an almost audible clash. Liam ducked. ‘You two are scary,’ he said. ‘Next time, I’m working with ghouls – they might be horrible but at least they’re predictable.’ His gaze ran over me. ‘Jessie? Take Sil. You look like you’re going to need backup, wherever it is that you’re going.’

‘You can’t come,’ I said to Sil, who was staring me down.

He’d wrapped both his arms around over his coat like he was hugging himself. ‘Not negotiable. You get killed, it’s all right for you but then we have the whole Malfaire thing flying around, and maybe the reason that you’re not dead yet is that he wants you alive for something.’ Sil’s pupils were huge but his eyes were cold. ‘And until we know … I won’t interfere. I’ll be there, in case.’ He was getting wound up now, his demon was flickering around in the background, feeding off the emotion, casting shadows over his face. ‘Jessica, you asked. You asked for my protection. So I must give it.’

‘And it gives you the right to order me about.’

Sil shrugged. ‘I’m trying to do what I think is best.’

I opened my mouth to argue that how could he possibly know what was best for me? Right now I hardly even knew. But the effort was beyond me. ‘Oh, come on then, I haven’t got time to play games.’ Or the inclination. Things were getting very, very bad and I couldn’t, daren’t, confide in anyone.

I drove out of town and north towards the moors. ‘Where are we going?’ Sil eventually asked, after staring out of the window for twenty miles.

‘Up on the moors,’ I answered shortly.

‘Yeah, I can see that. Anywhere specific, or do you just fancy a drive around?’

‘Don’t.’

Sil glanced at me. ‘What is it, Jessica? What happened back at the office? And don’t tell me it was nothing, because you’re acting even more fucked-up than usual right now.’

I shook my head. Tears weren’t far away and I didn’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I turned the car down a narrow lane between two high hedges acned with hawthorn berries and sloes, bumping over the grassy line that grew down the middle of the road. The track eventually led down the hill, over a cattle grid and between two paddocks filled with grazing Jacob sheep. I pulled up in front of the low, two-storied house, with the tiny windows and off-centre front door.

‘Nice,’ Sil said, getting out. ‘Very homely.’

I pushed on the front door, which was never locked. It opened on to the stone-flagged hall, where coats decorated the walls and Wellingtons covered the floor. An old Labrador padded up to greet us with a wet nose in the groin before following us down to the big kitchen at the back, heated as usual by the Aga, which bubbled like a spell. The air was full of baking and drying cotton.

‘Jessica!’ My mother, coming out of the pantry, held a hand to her heart. ‘My dear girl, you nearly gave me a stroke! Why didn’t you say you were coming? And who,’ her eyes widened at the sight of the vampire, ‘is this rather lovely specimen?’ She couldn’t help it, I knew, but I saw her eyes flicker to my left hand. She’d have a long wait to see an engagement ring on it. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me?’

‘Yes.’ My voice sounded strangled. ‘You’d better sit down. Where’s Dad?’

‘Oh, he’s up at the top paddock, fixing some fences. I keep telling him we ought to get a man in, but you know how he is.’ Her eyes were worried.

‘Sil.’ He was looking around, seeing those things that I never noticed anymore, the hairy dog-beds in front of the Aga, the big, scrubbed table in the middle of the room, scattered with baking in various stages, the three generations of cats squeezed on to a sofa, the dresser scattered with family photographs. I felt sick, wanted to smash things. ‘Will you go up to the top field and fetch my father?’

His head came up. ‘But –’

‘I’m safe enough here. Please. Go.’ I needed him gone, I needed my father here.

‘Jessie – ’

Without thinking I touched his arm. ‘Please, Sil.’ And our eyes met. His held an expression that I didn’t want to analyse, not right now. ‘Just go.’

With an inclination of his head towards us both, Sil took himself off back down the hallway and through the front door, the old dog getting up to follow in the hope of a walk, but waddling stiffly back to his bed by the Aga when Sil outdistanced him.

My mother pulled two chairs out from the pine table, and sat down carefully on one. ‘So this isn’t a social visit then?’ she asked, resting elbows on the table and rubbing at the back of her neck. ‘Not work, I hope?’

I sat down, but jumped back up again. My mouth was dry. I ran a fingernail down a crack in the wood grain, an action so familiar from childhood that it was like an echo. ‘Mum – ’ My eyes roamed the walls, up to the ceiling, where they carefully enumerated all the items of clothing drying on the rack suspended above the Aga.

‘Is it something to do with that young man? I must say, he’s very nice looking. Could do with a square meal though. I do hope it’s not frustrated mothering instinct with you, dear.’

‘He’s a vampire.’

‘Ah.’ And a world of anxious pain was contained within that single syllable.

‘But he’s not the problem.’

‘Oh?’ And how could the fact that her daughter was involved with a vampire not be a problem, I could see her thinking. ‘So then, what is the problem?’

I dug my nails into my hands. ‘You are.’

‘Ah.’ And my mother, my usually unflustered mother, began tugging at her sleeves, trying to pull them down over her hands, fussing with the cuffs of her wrap-around jumper. ‘And what makes you say that?’

‘Mum, I know. Look, before Dad gets here, you’d better tell me – how did you meet him?’

‘Your father? I’m sure I’ve told you, we were at teacher-training together.’

‘No! Not Dad! My real father! Malfaire!’

My mother’s face closed down. Fell into itself, as though fifty years of ageing had caught up with her all at once. ‘How did you – ?’ she whispered.

‘Blood tests. We sent a sample of his blood, and one of mine as the human contrast.’ I gave a snuffly giggle of irony. ‘They assumed there had been a mistake because the two samples were so similar. One was a blood sample from something they called a ghyst, the other was only partly human. When they did the full range of testing they found that it only made sense if the ghyst was the paternal relative of the other. So, what happened? Does Dad know?’

‘Oh, my God.’ My mother covered her eyes with her hands.

‘Who am I, Mum? More to the point, what am I? What on earth is a ghyst? What does it do? What has it done to me?’

She stood up and went over to the Aga, fussing with the kettle. She shook it to check for water, put it down, picked it up, filled it and put it down again. ‘You weren’t supposed to find out,’ she said, and her voice was different, strange. Like I’d never known her.

‘Well, obviously. Thirty-one years is a long time to keep a secret, especially one like this. Did he seduce you? I could see how you might –’

My mother turned around, her back to the Aga now. She looked furious. ‘How could you ever think such a thing! That I would ever do that with a monster like him!’ Her hands were fists on the Aga rail. She stood in such contrast to the cosy farmhouse kitchen that I began to wonder if this was really the woman I’d known all my life, or some impostor.

‘Um … Mum, I do know the facts of life, you know.’ I held up one hand. ‘Malfaire. Father.’ I held up the other. ‘Mother. You.’ I linked the fingers together. ‘Me.’ She stared at me. Just stared, her hair coming loose from its pony-tail, wisping down over her face. ‘Oh.’ I said, realisation trying to break through but being pushed down by hope and horror. ‘Oh. No.’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘You’re not my mother.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Shit.’

‘Mother or no, I will not have swearing in this house!’ And it was so familiar, so dear, that I couldn’t help smiling.

‘Sorry.’

A confusion of dog at the back door, and my father entered breathless from what must have been a down-hill sprint, the two farm collies circling his feet in their attempts to get into the kitchen, and Sil, looking as though mud was a foreign language, stepping over them to come inside.

‘Oh, thank heavens!’

‘What on earth is the matter? This young man wouldn’t tell me anything. I thought I was being abducted for a moment.’

‘She knows, Brian.’

‘Knows? Knows what?’ He hung his full-length waterproof on the inside of the back door and turned to warm himself at the Aga, standing next to my mother and illustrating, once again, how unlike them I was.

‘She knows about Malfaire.’

Sil twitched but he didn’t react any more than that. Instead he scooped a ginger cat off the sofa and held it to his shoulder, where it sat, stunned.

‘Oh. How much does she know?’ The kettle squealed and, without thinking, my father began making tea for all of us.

‘I wanted you here before I told her.’

‘It isn’t my decision, Jen. It’s up to you to say.’

‘Please, someone.’ My voice sounded very little, very far away. Sil’s grey glance settled on me with physical weight. ‘You can go now.’

‘I will not leave you.’

I was tired, too loaded with weariness to fight him. ‘Please. Just … go and look round the farm or something.’

My parents exchanged a glance.

‘Sil …’

He plopped the cat gently back on to the cushions and came over to me. ‘Jessica. The Protection Act. It isn’t just words you know. Not just something we say. It’s …’ A clenched fist crossed his chest in an almost ceremonial gesture. ‘It’s here. I am here. And I will not leave you.’

My stomach felt as though someone was twisting a knife in it and I looked up at these two people I no longer understood. Betrayal turned the knife again. They were so familiar, they’d been so predictable, and all the time … this. I met Sil’s eyes again. His gaze was steady and his hand cupped my shoulder briefly in a touch of support. He might be vampire, his moral high-ground might be at sub-sea level, but he’d never lied to me about who I was.

‘All right.’

And while we all sat around the pale pine table, handling mugs of tea strong enough to have run the farm on their own, my erstwhile parents told me the story of my life.