Chapter Three

Siren Call

I say her name and it causes everyone in the kitchen to act. Mum leaps up, Leanna grabs hold of Marley, and Gran swears. If it were not so frightening to hear the Siren’s voice again, I would laugh. Gran never uses bad language.

Opal is at my side, the only other family member who will not feel the effects of Portia’s supernatural voice.

“You’ll never find us,” I tell the Siren, trying to
stop my voice from shaking. My hands are. “What do you want?”

“Well, right now, just a lovely hot bath,” she says, and it’s so conversational, so casual, that I almost drop the phone. “I wasn’t quite ready for just how rainy your little city is. I haven’t been back in such a long time.”

I say nothing. I don’t know what she knows and I don’t want to give her a single hint.

“Ramya,” Opal speaks gently. It’s the gentlest she’s been since I arrived here. “Put the phone down.”

I can’t. I don’t know why. It’s not magic compelling me, it’s something else. I want to say something that will hurt Portia. I want her to feel as scared as I am. I want to spit out the poisonous anger in me and see it land in her eye.

“If you don’t want to come out to play with me, Ramya, that’s fine,” Portia goes on, silkily. “There are plenty of your little Hidden Folk friends here. Some of them may even be able to help me find you.”

“Why me?” I ask and Opal makes a grab for the phone this time. “You, Ren, the Fae. What’s this about?”

I want her to say that it is because I am special. I want to be important. I can see no other reason as to why she would hunt me.

If an answer was forthcoming, I would not hear it. The curly cord of the telephone snaps into two pieces, severing my connection with the Siren and rendering the phone useless.

Opal pulls her hand away, having cast the little spark which caused the wire to snap.

“We don’t converse with her,” she finally says. “We don’t negotiate. We don’t argue. We do not communicate. Understood?”

“How did she get our number?” I demand. I’m too afraid to process the fear so I mask it with anger. “You said Old Magic was protecting the house.”

“Yes,” Mum chimes in. “Old Magic that was cast before Alexander Graham Bell.”

I turn to ask Gran a question about her telephone when I spot something by the kitchen door. I can see some suitcases in the hall. My brain feels foggy as I stare at them. Luggage. Packed and ready to be loaded into the car.

“Are we going somewhere?” I finally say.

Gran and Leanna exchange a glance before Mum answers me. “Well, your grandmother and I are.”

I stare at her. “And where exactly do you need to be jetting off to while we’re all in danger?”

“No one owes you explanations while you’re in this mood,” Mum replies sternly. “We can discuss it in the morning. You need to sleep.”

“No one answer any unknown numbers on your mobiles in the meantime,” Gran says practically. “And Opal, as soon as my number is changed, you’re buying me a new landline.”

*

Marley and I are sharing the tower. It’s the highest part of the house; a large bedroom in the only turret. It can be a little dull up there by myself, so I’m secretly glad we will be sharing.

I’m glad he’s here in general. Not that I’ll tell him that.

There is only one window in the turret and it’s a deadly drop to the grass below. Clearly, despite the plentiful number of bedrooms in Gran’s massive house, I was put in here for a reason.

I wait until the aunts have gone down to their own rooms, I wait until Mum says goodnight to me and follows them, and only once Marley and I are alone do I speak.

“We need to break out of here.”

Marley is used to me by now. When we first began our quest around Edinburgh, he was a little afraid of me and my antics. I think he would sometimes wonder if I would get us both killed. Ironically, he was the one who was abducted and used as bait to lure me onto an abandoned island.

I’ve never asked him if he was worried I wouldn’t come. I just hope he knows that I always will.

“Are we sneaking out?” he asks me, his voice a whisper.

I move to the single window, lifting up the pane. “Yes.”

We both stick our heads out and look down, wincing in chorus as we register just how high up we really are.

“They know what they’re doing,” Marley murmurs and I can hear in his voice that he’s already given up.

“We can sneak out when they’re asleep,” I retort. “Down to the front door and out that way.”

He nods and flops down onto his bed, on the other end of the large room. I sit carefully on my own, letting the quiet hang between us for a moment. Quiet after a surprisingly loud and eventful evening.

“You saw her?” I finally say.

He bends down to scratch his ankle, avoiding my stare. “Yeah.”

“And?”

He sits up straight and coughs once. “And she was just like you said.”

I feel validated. Sometimes, when I think about the Sirens, I almost fool myself. Maybe they don’t have the potential to be as bad as I imagine. Freddy is one after all, and he is a good friend. Ren was terrible, but he could have been an outlier. Then I remind myself about what happened with Portia.

She didn’t actually do anything horrendous. She only triggered the rift that kept our family apart for years. That’s all.

But it’s hard to articulate how she did it. How their voices can be weapons of chaos if they choose to use them.

As far as I’m aware, Portia is too clever to get her hands dirty. Ren said she had “plans”, but I don’t know if I want to find out what they are.

I don’t want to realise that I’ve made up a monster in my mind. So, hearing Marley say that she is exactly what I said… it’s a relief. It helps.

“Portia has got Fae snooping around up here,” I repeat, more for myself than for Marley. “They’re probably looking for us.”

“She had people with her in Edinburgh,” he tells me, frowning, “but I obviously can’t tell if they were magical or not.”

Marley can’t see through Glamour like I can, and it has always been a little bit of a sore subject between us. “What actually happened?”

Marley stares into the distance for a moment. He’s far more careful with his words than I am. He is considerate. He worries over everything in life. Not just where the commas go. I can sometimes see him rehearsing every possible outcome of a situation inside his head before he’s even spoken.

It must be difficult.

“I was at the school choir performance at St. Giles,” he says slowly. “It was a bad night, rain and wind and a bit of hail. We were ready to start and then Freddy appeared and –”

“Freddy?” I interrupt. “Freddy was with you?”

He fixes me with a look that is remarkably unlike him. “That piqued your interest.”

I scowl and make a noise of derision. “Shut up, you just surprised me.”

I reach under my pillow and haul a bright pink laptop out from underneath it. I sit it on my knees and open it up, clicking on my inbox. Dad bought it for me before he relocated to London for work, but I spend most of my time on it emailing Freddy. He writes an update from Edinburgh each morning and I reply every night before bed.

“He didn’t know this was coming,” I say. When Marley says nothing back, I snap, “Marley. He didn’t.”

“Well, fine, if you say so. He did get me out of there but he knew something was about to go down. Without a doubt.”

“Well, what about our mums?”

Marley considers this and then nods. “They were waiting outside. They knew, too. At least that something was about to happen.”

“I told Freddy to get straight to the three of you at the first sign of trouble,” I tell Marley, pointedly and smugly. “And it looks like he did.”

“But who tipped him off? Plus, he stayed behind. What if he’s with them? He’s one of them, as it is.”

“There is no ‘them’,” I say. I say it, because I need to say it to myself every day. If I have to hear it, then so does he. “And Freddy’s our friend.”

“He’s your friend,” Marley corrects me. “If ‘friend’ is even the right word.”

“Oh, be quiet,” I mumble, typing furiously on the computer. “I’m checking in with him. Shall I thank him for you?”

Marley rolls his eyes but nods.

“We need to scout the area, see if any Fae are camped out nearby.”

“That drop will kill me. You, too, if you can’t…”

He stops himself, but not before I understand his meaning. “I can fly.”

“I know you can,” he says quickly. “I’ve seen it. It’s just…Mum mentioned—”

“I just don’t do it without Opal there,” I say. I’m not sure why I’m so defensive. “It’s dangerous, I’m still learning. I just—”

“It’s all right,” Marley interjects softly. “It’s fine. It’s more than I can do, obviously. I know it must be hard. It’s fine, I just meant… I just meant we shouldn’t test your abilities by jumping out of a window.”

Silence. Then we both burst into laughter. I rock back and forth, shaking and Marley does the snorting thing he does when something has truly tickled him. When the laughter subsides, I glance to the bedroom door.

“Come on,” I say, with a voice full of excitement. We’re back together. Back on a quest and back out in the world of witchery and Hidden Folk. “Let’s try the front way.”

I yank the bedroom door open, while Marley grabs his favourite torch. Both of us stumble to a grinding halt as we spot a figure sitting at the top of the stairs, with a book and a glass of water.

“Oh, yes,” Opal says, her voice dripping with mockery. “I wondered how long it would be before you tried sneaking out.”

“We’re just getting snacks,” Marley says. The lie is pretty impressive coming from him; I’m usually the one who covers our tracks. “Dinner was a bit stressful.”

Opal stands to her full height, crosses her arms,
and locks eyes with Marley. He visibly gulps but tries to maintain an innocent expression as he looks back
at her.

“Marley,” she says slowly. “I’m sorry you’re hungry. What can I bring up from the pantry for you? You and your torch?”

There is a challenge in her voice, one that neither of us can misinterpret.

“Gran says not to eat food upstairs,” I say, trying to sound casual instead of suspicious. “So, we’ll just—”

I make to go down the staircase, but she steps in front of me.

“If you seriously think,” she says matter-of-factly, “that you’re getting out of this house in the middle of the night, while Fae are in the area, and Sirens are plotting who even knows what, then you are suffering from some incredibly strong delusions.”

“Listen,” I reply, all attempts at playing sweet and delightful now gone. “If the grown-ups want to sit around and wait for something to happen, that’s on you. But I’m going to find out whatever it is the Fae are sniffing around for.”

“You!” barks Opal. “It’s probably you. Or haven’t you worked that one out yet?”

“Why me? You’re more powerful than I am. Every creature from here to Edinburgh has come skulking around, trying to get an audience with the Heartbroken Witch.”

“Yes,” Opal says. “Which is why I stay indoors. Don’t think for a moment they’re not gunning for me, either.”

“So, let’s blast them!” I say, every atom of me animated and alive. “Your magic and mine, we can
do it!”

However, despite my enthusiasm, her face remains passive and almost empty. She looks down at me. Considering me.

“I’m not really into ‘blasting’ people,” she finally says, still watching me steadily. Her eyes are tinged with just the slightest shade of judgement. “Sorry.”

I feel a cold trickle of shame, which needles into embarrassment and then rage. “You blasted Ren. You turned him to stone.”

Marley flinches. Opal does not.

“I did,” she acknowledges. “Because I had run out of options. We, as of right now, are full of options.”

“If we attack them, they won’t have a chance to attack us!”

The words stand with the three of us, like a fourth person.

“You know what’s funny, Ramya,” Opal breathes, her voice raspy and tired, “that’s exactly what they’re thinking, too.”

It’s a blow. A stinging spit in the face. “That’s not fair.”

She does not react. “Go to bed. Both of you. Stay there. I’m conserving magic at the moment. As much as possible. If I have to waste some of it getting the two of you out of trouble, I’ll be very angry.”

My pain is briefly tabled for curiosity. “Why? What spell are you working on?”

She does not answer my question. “Go to sleep. There’s lots to discuss in the morning.”

She moves a few steps down the staircase and sits once more, lifting her book and returning to her reading. It’s a clear dismissal. Marley inches back into our room in the tower, defeated. I stay.

“I just meant,” I say shakily, “I just—”

“I know what you meant,” she responds, not looking up from the book.

I cannot make myself move. “You’re making me feel like a bad person.”

At first, she says nothing, but I can see that her eyes have stopped scanning the pages.

“We can get out of a lot of guilt by telling ourselves we only hurt someone because they were the wrong sort of person,” she finally says quietly. “That we’re the main character and they’re someone who went off-script or we need them to play the villain.”

I bristle and throb, fully awake and teeming with angry energy. “She is a villain. You didn’t see her like I did.”

“When you were very small? Good judge of character, were you?”

“Yes!” I bellow. “I saw through Ren before any of you, remember? And you haven’t met Portia.”

“Yes. I have.”

The words stop me in my tracks. “You have?”

“Yes. A long time ago.”

I close my mouth and try to regain some control within the conversation, but she speaks again.

“There was a reason she was at your house that night, Ramya.”

“It was a party.”

“Yes. And who gets invited to parties?”

I shrug. “Family. Friends.”

“Yes. Quite.”

Before I can ask some much-needed follow-up questions, she flicks her wrist towards our bedroom door. It opens and the look she gives me is one not to be challenged. She is done with me for the night.

For once, I don’t push. I step back inside of my room.

“Goodnight, Ramya,” she says to my back, her voice finally devoid of that cold touch.

I don’t respond.

Marely is sitting on his bed, watching me as I close the door behind me.

“Shall we just scout during the day?” he stage-whispers.

I hardly hear him. I’m staring at the open window, its curtains fluttering in the winter wind.

“Marley,” I murmur, my voice no louder than the creak of the floorboard that I step upon, as I move further into the room, towards the moonlight. “Look.”

We both move to the window.

“How?” Marley gasps. “How has it…?”

Standing tall outside the house, in a place where nothing stood before, is the oak tree from the front garden. Taller than it was, and now next to our room.