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Daniel pulled into a space marked ‘visitor’ in the Sunnyhills parking lot and sat looking at the building for a minute, letting the reality of returning as a visitor sink in. He wondered if he’d checked himself out too soon. His emotions were a roller coaster. Now that he’d seen and talked to Noah, the possibility of Ellie still being out there was so real it hurt. He thought ahead to his catch-up with Skye later this afternoon. Would she be straight with him?
He was almost certain Hunter wasn’t human, and Hunter was tied to Skye like an anchor. Was her insistence he’d been responsible for Ellie dying just to stop him going after Ellie and learning the truth about whatever Hunter was?
He wasn’t going into that conversation unarmed. He locked the car and entered the foyer, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the familiar odours: a blend of disinfectant, whatever was on the lunch menu, and the usual bouquet of lilies on the reception counter.
“Mr Sebastian, how lovely to see you,” the receptionist beamed. “Do you have an appointment?” she began to open the patient ledger for the day, but he waved ‘no’.
“Just visiting a friend this time,” he said and returned her smile, suddenly feeling great about the fact. Just visiting. He was fine. Everything he’d suspected was true. He’d never felt more rational.
Daniel checked the old bookseller’s room first, but it was empty. Next, he headed to the bench seats in the long walk by the shrubbery, where they’d talked together sometimes, usually about Bannimor legends. He spotted the old man and saw he wasn’t alone. Alan Noble was with him.
Daniel wondered if he should intrude, but as Alan was probably there for the same reason, decided it couldn’t hurt.
“Hello, hello. Encounters of the Bannimor kind, I gather?” he joked when he reached them, and shook hands with both. “Thought I might pick my old friend’s brains here about recent events. See if he can shed any light. How about you, Alan? Any news about Liam yet?”
Alan’s impassive expression didn’t change. “Not as yet, Daniel. Not as yet.”
He was a colourless little man, hard to get a handle on somehow. Daniel found him difficult to warm to, but given his own loss, his compassion for this bereft father welled. Liam was so different to Alan; charismatic, animated. What a void he would leave if he was dead. A sudden thought occurred to him, and he had to restrain himself from grabbing Alan’s arm to shout the good, somewhat unbelievable news.
“Don’t give up hope, Alan.” He was going to say more, but hesitated to risk giving false hope. He was almost sure, but... “Just keep hoping, Alan. That’s all. We might still get the answers we’re looking for.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Alan said tightly, holding up a booklet he held, then tapping it in an irritated way against his flat palm. “But it looks like our friend is off somewhere else today. Can’t get anything out of him at all.”
Daniel glanced at the old bookseller, who was watching Alan with an absent expression. He felt repulsed by Alan’s rude manner, as if the man who struggled with dementia wasn’t right there. But reminding himself of Alan’s loss, he said politely, “I’ll sit with him for a while, anyway. I’m sure you feel frustrated. You must be desperate for help. Is there something I can ask for you if I have better timing?”
“Yes.” Alan rifled through the booklet’s pages until he found what he was looking for, and held the open booklet close to the bookseller’s face before swinging his outstretched arm around to show the pages to Daniel. “I want to know who did these drawings. And why this character here,” he pointed his finger to one of the sketched figures, “is the spitting image of your daughter’s boyfriend.”
Daniel stared at the delicate penmanship of a familiar, beloved hand, and the impossibly familiar face the artist had captured, and felt the blood drain out of him. “I wouldn’t mind knowing that myself,” he said weakly. He sat down on the bench, bracing his hands on his knees, his shoulders hunched, willing the frightening static in his brain to fade. He saw Alan watching him closely, but it was too late to hide his shock.
“Daniel.” Alan’s voice sounded a long way off. “Daniel, can you hear me?”
“Yes. It’s...” He gulped, gasping for air. “I’m all right.” It was hard to speak.
“Daniel, I don’t mean to push but time could be the difference between Liam living and dying.” He paused, giving Daniel a chance to regroup, then said, “Forgive my blunt approach, but do you believe your wife is still alive?”
Alan’s direct question made it through the noise in Daniel’s head. He looked at him, searching for mockery, or medical concern. He saw the intense focus of someone caught in the same nightmare as him. Mythical forces hurting or threatening the people they loved, forces that no one else seemed to believe in. Apart from the poor old guy sitting beside him. He glanced at the bookseller, who looked at him with a sudden gleam of awareness over his half-spectacles, before looking docilely away.
“I think she might be,” Daniel whispered, hoping his therapist wasn’t in earshot.
Alan's intense eyes seemed to offer him hope. “You owe it to your wife, and your daughter,” Alan said, “to do whatever it takes to find out the truth. Whatever the personal cost, you must expose the truth.”
His words sank into Daniel’s mind, stirring his conviction. He was awed that Alan made so much sense. “Yes,” he agreed.
“All is fair in love and war, Daniel. And from where I sit, we’ve got both on our hands.”
“You’re right, Alan. Love. And maybe war.”
“Most definitely war. Make no mistake about that. We will take the war to them if we have to. To save the ones we love. Won’t we?”
“We have to.” He had never felt so certain. Alan’s face was close to his, and Daniel was amazed at how in sync their thoughts were. “But...”
“Yes?”
“But we don’t actually know what ‘they’ are.”
Alan straightened, but kept his eyes locked on him. “Or where they are. We need to find out what we’re dealing with and act quickly before we lose anyone else.”
From somewhere deep inside, Daniel felt a kind of warning. “I can’t put Skye in danger.”
“Of course not,” Alan soothed, and Daniel felt a flood of gratitude that washed away the sense of warning. At last, he had someone on his side in this battle.
“But we have to locate the enemy,” Alan said, “and find out how to bring our loved ones safely home.”
“Home.” Tears stung Daniel’s eyes, and he was barely aware of Alan’s last words before he said goodbye. Something again about ‘whatever it takes.’
“He’s a dangerous man.”
Daniel jumped, and turned to the old bookseller. “What? Who’s dangerous?”
His friend looked at the retreating figure of Alan Noble. “He is.”
When he looked back at Daniel, his eyes were bright over the half-spectacles.
“Were you...”
“Faking? A little,” the old man wheezed a chortle, then his smile dropped. “Alan Noble is a dangerous man.”
“Well... I’ve heard the odd rumour, but -”
“I don’t like him or trust him. He is tied deeply to the history of this place and these stories.”
“I thought he was relatively new to Bannimor?” Daniel said.
“He is,” the bookseller said, “but his ties are not. Some people are too dangerous to entrust with knowledge. But I don’t think I stopped anything.”
Daniel felt as if an eerie shadow passed over him, and an involuntary shudder made him twitch.
“Some people create their own fate by rushing into its arms,” the old man added quietly.
Daniel glanced after Alan, but the figure had gone. He took a deep breath and turned back to his companion. “Will you tell me about these drawings?”
The old bookseller looked at Daniel sadly. “Very well, my friend. I will.”
