Epilogue: Masters of Their Fates
Katy’s eighteenth birthday was held at Fairwood, and Charlie and Hugo both agreed to come and celebrate with her. Wes didn’t want his sister’s big day to fall flat, so he provided the champagne, the three-tier cake and the shiny blue convertible done up in ribbons, her provisional license in her birthday card and the L plates already fixed on, which won him some big brother points.
He didn’t mention that Theo had arranged most of it – although Wes was almost positive Theo was no longer in thrall to the True Face, he just couldn’t get rid of him. He’d employed him as a personal assistant while he worked out what to do.
As things wound down and Carrie was clearing up, he found Ricky outside, sitting on the ground with his back against the kitchen wall.
“So that went well.”
Ricky grunted. He had a glass of water, Wes noted, although he had been liberal with the beer earlier. Champagne had never been much to his taste.
Wes shrugged and hunkered down beside him. They were both silent for a while, the early summer night quiet and still around them. Wes dug in his pocket. “Can I interest you in a little something?”
“No.”
“Not like that, dirty bastard.” He rolled his eyes, grinning. “God. Sex is all you think about.”
Ricky cracked a smile. “What, then?”
Wes found his weed, filters and skins, and started to roll. “It’s good.”
Ricky’s chest heaved, his sigh barely audible.
Wes patted his pockets, the joint in his mouth. “Got a light, mate?”
The end ignited evenly, a flame lingering on the tip.
Wes nearly dropped it. “Shit.” He rotated it, and the flame died into a low smoulder. “Forgot you can do that.”
Ricky chuckled.
“Messing with elemental crap won’t get you in trouble with, er, him in the Otherworld, will it?” The last thing Wes wanted was another taste of that kind of magic, especially not as Theo had mentioned having his own experience. Wes didn’t like the idea of Tina’s mythical ancestor checking up on him.
Ricky snorted. “Shouldn’t think so. We’ve done our bit. Tina Harris and her ilk can leave us alone, and we’ll leave what’s theirs to them.”
Wes wasn’t sure he followed that, but he left it alone for now. He took a steady hit and was reminded why he saved this strain for special occasions.
“Fuck.”
He took one more and passed it over, brushing flecks of ash off his jeans. Ricky took it off him and Wes savoured the start of the low-key mellow sensation, smoothing out the kinks in the day.
“What did they say, then?” Ricky asked, meaning Charlie and Hugo.
They had both left before sunset, Charlie’s birthday gift being a professional photo shoot. She’d posed Katy with her new car and in various places in the house, taking shot after shot after shot, and Wes had stayed out of her way.
Wes sucked his teeth. “Oh, you know. Uh. Huey thinks we could have dinner. Just me and him. You know. See if we can work through some things.” He couldn’t quite look Ricky in the eye. “He still loves me.”
Ricky passed it back.
“Saw you talking to your girl.”
Wes sighed.
He had managed to catch her briefly, on her way to the car. She had half-turned to him, preoccupied with her camera. Her eyes were bright and vivid, skin glowing with a lustre he hadn’t seen for years, and she’d gained weight that suited her. Her face had filled out with her figure, and she looked like a new woman.
He hadn’t really said anything, other than, “I don’t suppose this is the right time, but – I really miss you. Do you miss me?”
She had shielded her eyes from the sun and pushed her hair behind her ear. “You were the whole centre of my life, Wes. And then you – weren’t. I don’t know how to answer that.”
He had let her go to the car, not sure what to say either.
Ricky pulled a face. “No? She don’t want a… a coffee, or something?”
“She said she was free Saturday,” Wes murmured, remembering how the sun caught in the flames of her hair as she’d turned, passenger door open, and shot that out like a lifeline.
Wes had blushed like a debutante. “Really?”
“I think I’m ready for that.” She’d tilted her head, the sun winking off her camera. “But I do mean just to talk. And not for long, it’s Mummy’s birthday then, so we’ll be going to dinner.”
Then she got in, and the car rolled off, and Wes was left in the driveway with a cruel shard of hope lodged in his heart.
Ricky made a gruff sound of approval.
“Saturday. Well, that’s something.”
Wes fidgeted, uncomfortable with Ricky giving a shit, actively trying in his blunt way. He didn’t deserve sympathy.
“I’m sorry about the whole – about what I, er…” Wes burst out, and trailed off. He meant the whole ointment debacle, the willingness to throw Ricky to the wolves if it meant he got his glory back, that Ricky had seen through him from the start. He also meant a whole lot of other things, none of which he could articulate.
Ricky shook his head. “Done with now.” He paused. “This prob’ly goes without sayin’, an’ I didn’t bring it up before, ‘cos I didn’t want to make a big thing of it, but I know you did it on purpose.”
Wes froze.
“The thing about fate is, it always works itself out in the end.” Ricky side-eyed him. “So, in a way, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you did would have worked out the same. But the mistress thinks I ought to…” He trailed off and waved his hand vaguely in the space between them. “Look, I, I felt something about it that I really didn’t like. I don’t know why. But I never want to feel that way again. Not because of you.”
Wes felt winded for a moment. He nodded slowly. “No. Yeah. Understood. I’m so fucking sorry—”
“Let’s forget it,” Ricky muttered, cutting him off. “I was willing to strangle her,” he cocked his head at the house, and Wes inferred he meant Carrie, “with my bare hands to get what I wanted, an’ she forgave me, so.” He shrugged. “An’ it worked out this time. But I tell you this much; you ever try to fuck me over again, and I live… you’ll really wish you hadn’t.”
Wes shivered, believing him. “Noted. And. Sorry. I really am.”
“I know.” Ricky patted him on the back, only briefly, and the atmosphere lightened.
Neither of them spoke for a while. It was one of the first genuinely comfortable silences they’d shared for years, probably since the last time they got high together. At least this time it wouldn’t be ruined by Wes doing something stupid like kissing him.
Ricky broke the silence first. “Reprobates.” He relaxed against the wall.
Wes blinked. “What?”
“Reprobates. What Gran used to call us. Intemperate reprobates.” He grinned. “I like this.”
Wes put an arm around him, and Ricky’s muscle tone derailed his chaste intentions.
“Fuck, you work out. God. That was meant to be like, you know, affectionate, but Christ on a bike, it’s fucking solid.”
“Are you high?” Ricky asked, accusing, and they both sniggered.
“Getting there.”
“Middle-class high, is it?”
“Bitch, please.” Wes rolled his eyes. “You don’t know the half of it. I’m in a Rotary Club.” He stared across the garden, shaking his head.
Ricky leaned his weight against him, and Wes braced against the wall, draping an arm around his shoulders. He looked up.
The sky was a vast expanse, and as a younger man with fewer responsibilities, he’d used to like how small and insignificant it made him feel, a reminder that nothing he did really mattered. But that was the man who carelessly shed his gift into the eyes and minds of others without knowing what it was, who had never thought much about anything other than chasing his own pleasure, and who had caused the sweetest, strongest soul he knew to plunge headlong into a lifelong addiction to his face and try to cut her own eyelids off with a utility knife.
Now, he saw the stars as portals, peppering the sky. They couldn’t fight them all, if things poured out of those twinkling points and headed for them, devouring the galaxies in their way. If they were portals, then the invasion had started billions of years ago, and the things were already here, already rushing for them through the vastness of space, and they were too late to do anything about it.
He grunted, dizzy, and Ricky nudged him.
“Oi. You alright?”
Wes blinked hard. “Yep. Yeah. Yeah.” He shuddered. “Here, you have it.”
Ricky took the joint. “What’s up?”
Wes shook his head. “I just. Ah. What happens, though? If there’s more of them out there, somewhere, like Grandad?”
“Wanting to get in here?”
Ricky savoured a longer hit and controlled a stream of smoke away from them.
“Well—” He coughed, and Wes had to wait for him to finish. “Well. If. If there’s more. I guess…” Ricky shrugged. “Guess we just fucking eat ’em.”
Wes snorted and burst out laughing, light-headed. “Shit, mate.”
Ricky giggled.
Wes couldn’t stop grinning. “Shit. We ate Grandad. You absolute legend.”
“Remember that time we all ate Granny Sylvia?” Ricky mused over the rim of his glass.
“Yeah. She was a bloody old bitch.”
Ricky sniggered, and Wes realised where he’d got that phrase from and inwardly groaned.
Oh, great, he’s rubbing off on me. Bloody perfect.
Ricky coughed, flicking ash in Wes’s direction by accident. “Bloody - bloody tough as well.”
Wes found his beer and raised it. “To family.”
“Fuck ’em.” Ricky passed the joint back.
“Way ahead of you.” Wes chortled over his own bad taste.
Ricky shook his head. “I’m going to need you to stop making that joke, mate.”
“Funny ’cos it’s true.”
“No.”
Wes perked up. “I got a story about that.”
“No.”
Wes patted his shoulder, feeling Ricky flex under his hand. The man’s muscles were iron.
“Fuck, your shoulders. Bro. Right. Here it is, ready?”
Ricky side-eyed him. “Did you just call me ‘bro’?”
“Here it is anyway.” Wes cleared his throat, determined to not answer that. “So there I am at Aunty Em’s—”
Katy loomed above them, cutting the story short.
She wasn’t impressed.
“What the fuck? I can’t leave you two alone for five minutes.”
“Birthday girl!” Wes took the joint off their cousin, a quarter of it left, and offered it to his sister. “Come on. Since it’s your birthday.”
“I’m not swapping saliva with you two, that’s gross.” Katy had her hands on her hips.
Wes snorted. “You’re not getting your own.”
Katy hesitated, then took it, hooking her hair behind one ear.
“Sit.” Wes shuffled over and patted the ground between them. “Come on.”
Ricky beckoned her over, and she joined them, taking a hit that made her cough. She handed it straight back to Ricky, who patted her on the back and handed her his water glass.
“Hey, how’s your scars?” Katy asked him, once she could talk. “Are you feeling okay?”
“They haven’t come back,” Ricky said. “I feel loads better. Bit of a cure-all, ain’t he, our old man?”
She grinned.
Wes draped an arm around Katy’s shoulders, his hand brushing against Ricky’s bicep, but Ricky didn’t seem to mind.
“Fuck, you’re right, this is good.” Ricky exhaled slowly into the night. “I hope you got more.”
“Hey.” Katy elbowed Ricky. “Greedy bastard.”
Wes burst out laughing. “Go on, one more for you, then that’s it. It’s strong.”
Katy took a deeper hit this time and breathed out slowly. She still coughed a little but relaxed.
“That’s it. That’s your lot.” Wes ruffled her hair. “Happy bloody birthday.”
Katy shook her head, but she was smiling.
“Hey, Carrie!” Wes patted the wall. “Come and join us. He told me you were fun.”
Ricky turned and looked him up and down with a cocky leer. “Course she is. This house is fit for a god.”
Wes took the glass from his sister and sipped. “I could help you out there. Furniture and stuff. D’you fancy a conservatory?”
Ricky rocked back against the wall, caressing it. “She’s perfect as she is, she don’t need work done.”
…I don’t know, I think I used to have a conservatory.
“You look lovely without,” Ricky said, “But up to you, you’re the mistress.”
Wes grinned. “It would be like a thank you, you know. Token of appreciation.”
Ricky hit Wes with a filthy smirk, honey-edged, eyes glazed and half closed. “We’ll think about it,” he said.
“You’re the master,” Wes said, and the house did not correct him.