… vengeance … vengeance …
Without hesitating, Meredith pressed the point of the knife into her palm, dragging the blade slowly downwards to split the skin, allowing blood to drip from her outstretched hand on to the ground.
‘I swear, not by the gods, nor by men, but by the bones and ancient soul of this land, to bind myself and my descendants to this fate.’
… fate … fate …
With one finger dipped in the blood, Meredith traced a shape on the ground: a binding rune. For a moment it glowed white against the dark earth, before burning away into smoke.
Merry was dreaming about blood.
Blood, running in scarlet rivulets across the black tarmac at her feet, pooling around her toes. So much blood that she could smell the coppery-tinny scent of it, like a palmful of coins warm from being clutched in her fist. She put her hand up to cover her nose and mouth, tried not to breathe too deeply. In the distance, someone was screaming.
She looked up. A boy was walking towards her across the flat, grey-lit landscape. Memory stirred in her mind. She knew this boy, and not just from her recent nightmares. She recognised his clothes: a cloak, pinned with a gold-coloured brooch, some sort of tunic and – trousers, she guessed they were, but not like anything she’d ever seen boys actually wearing. She recognised the evil-looking knife he carried. The boy was tall, with long, blond hair tied back – the same colour as her brother’s, but straight, not curly – and a handsome, angular face. As he came closer she saw for the first time, or maybe she just remembered, that his eyes were brown; brown, with little flecks of gold. And she gasped, not because his eyes were beautiful, but because they were hard and cold and full of cruelty.
Another memory floated to the surface of her mind. Somehow, she knew the boy’s name.
Jack?
The boy smiled at her, and it was like looking into the maw of a shark.
Meredith …
Merry woke with a gasp, swore, rubbed her eyes and tried to remember where she was.
In her bedroom, of course – she must have just dropped off. In the lamplight, she could see nothing had changed. There was no one else there: no strange boy with dead eyes staring down at her, threatening her with a knife.
Just another bad dream, that was all.
It was after midnight now. A quick peek into Leo’s room on the opposite side of the landing confirmed that her pain-in-the-neck older brother still hadn’t come home; it was just her and their mother’s two Burmese cats, and they were probably asleep on top of the boiler in the kitchen. Mum herself was working in France for the rest of the week. A self-employed graphic designer, one of her major clients was in Paris, and she spent a lot of time there. But that didn’t bother Merry any more. Not really. As she turned back into her own room, Merry’s glance took in the half-completed homework on the desk, the half-read magazines piled next to the wicker chair in the corner, the half-reorganised wardrobe. She picked up a couple of pairs of ankle boots and half-heartedly arranged them on the shoe rack, but it was no good. She hadn’t been able to settle, to actually finish anything, for days. The restlessness was like … ants, crawling over her skin. But there was definitely more to it than that. A person who was merely restless didn’t check under her bed every night before she turned out the light, or sleep with a tennis racket handily positioned against the bedside table.
Unwilling to risk another nightmare, Merry texted and played games on her phone for another hour or so, until her eyelids grew too heavy for her to focus on the screen any longer. She got up to close the curtains and peered through the window for a moment, hoping to see some sign of her brother. But there was nothing. Just the darkness and her own reflection – auburn hair half-falling out of a ponytail, shadows underneath hazel eyes – thrown back in fragments from the uneven panes of leaded glass.
Behind her, something began to rattle. Among the photos of her and her friends, which she kept on the dressing table, the one of her and Leo was shuddering. The motion grew, the frame rocking more and more violently until it hurled itself off the dressing table and smashed into the wall opposite. Merry yelped and flinched.
Oh no, not again –
She inspected the damage: the frame had taken a big chunk of plaster off the wall. That didn’t matter – Mum never came into her room. But she felt stupid. It had been four years since her power first began to emerge; eight months since she’d decided it was too dangerous for her to practise any more. Her capabilities were hardly a surprise.
It’s these attacks, and the nightmares, that’s all. Making me tense.
Ha. That was a lie and she knew it. Sure, the situation in Tillingham was making everything worse – that was obviously why she was dreaming about scary, imaginary blond boys. But the power she had … Recently, in the last few weeks especially, her magic seemed to be developing a life of its own. It didn’t shock her any more.
It frightened her.
In bed, Merry pulled the duvet up close around her neck and shoulders, breathing deeply, trying to force herself to relax. The familiar outlines of her room gave contours to the shadows: the bedroom furniture, the laptop open on her desk, the pile of clothes and shoes on the floor. She could hear the usual night-time noises of the house: doors banging slightly in the draft, floorboards and ceiling beams creaking as they cooled and contracted, the wind sighing in the chimneys. But tonight it all felt – alien. Like the recognisable shapes and sounds around her were fakes, put there to conceal something utterly strange, something that was crouching in the darkness just waiting for her to fall asleep …
She shivered, and pulled the duvet tighter.
Yellow light lanced through the curtains. There was the chug of a diesel engine pulling up outside, followed by the sound of a car door slamming – a taxi. Her brother was finally home. Merry’s shoulders relaxed and she glanced at her alarm clock.
I can’t believe Leo. There’s a bloodthirsty maniac running around town, and he decides to stay out until two in the morning? I could be lying up here bleeding to death, for all he knows.
She slipped out of bed. It was time to make Leo pay.
Thirty seconds later she was downstairs in the dark, quietly sliding home the bolts on the front door. She pressed her ear to the cold wood. Leo was stumbling up the path, swearing as he tripped on one of the uneven paving stones. He reached the door and she heard him drop his keys, pick them up, drop them again. More swearing. Then the tapping sound of Leo trying to fit the key into the keyhole, turning the lock. The door shifted in the frame.
‘What the—?’ Leo turned the key again, pushing against the door, trying to force it open. Merry grinned and ran back up the stairs. She’d let him in eventually, but –
Knock, knock, knock.
Merry froze. That wasn’t coming from the front door. That was coming from up above her, from the attic. She reached for the light switch. Nothing happened. She flipped the switch: on, off, on, off – still no light. A fuse