Changeling (14 page)

Trey looked down in stunned disbelief as he realized that he was naked. He covered himself as best he could with his hands and looked around for his clothes. He saw them ruined and strewn across the floor.

‘
Perhaps you’d like me to send you some clothes down?
’ Alexa’s voice cut in through his thoughts. ‘
I’ll send down that pink-and-grey sweater that you liked so much.
’ Trey looked round to see her disappearing out of the door.

Trey gratefully accepted the towel that Tom offered him, wrapping it around his waist. The Irishman clapped his arm around Trey’s shoulders. ‘We’ll have to work something out about this whole “clothing thing”. I think there might be a solution in Lycra. Not very fashionable, but by God, it’s stretchy as hell!’

‘Where’s Hopper?’ Lucien asked.

They looked round to see that the demon had completely disappeared.

Trey slept for sixteen hours straight. When he woke up, it was a new day outside and he tensed as he rolled out of bed to open the curtains, expecting to ache and hurt all over. To his surprise, his body felt fine – he had none of the sore throat and aching head that he had had when he woke up that morning in his bedroom at Apple Grove. Looking at the bed, he realized that he’d slept on top of the covers, fully clothed. He’d changed into the clothes that Alexa had sent down for him and he still had on that awful pink-and-grey pullover. He sat down on the edge of the bed again and tried to piece together what had happened.

He didn’t remember getting into bed. Hell, he didn’t remember coming upstairs or coming into his room. In his mind, a thousand overlapping thoughts and emotions started to jostle and elbow for position again. He flopped back on to the bed and tried to take stock of everything that had happened to him in the last few days.

It was impossible for him to fix on any one point to start from – too much had happened too quickly, and every time he tried to piece things together in a sensible way, everything just tumbled in on him, turning his thoughts into a jumbled entropic mess. The inside of his head was like a DVD movie randomly skipping between scenes.

He shook his head as if to shake some sense into himself. He glanced down at his hands and pictured how they had looked only a day before. There was no indication that these very same fingers were capable of transforming into the terrible barbed weapons that he had tried to use on Lucien. He shuddered slightly at the idea of using those claws to harm anyone or anything, but when he had looked down at them through his wolf eyes he’d revelled in the power in those hands, the power that had flooded every cell of him, and he knew that he was quite capable of using that power to destroy.

He stood up and crossed the room, noticing the small control panel set into the wall opposite his bed. He touched the screen and studied the opening menu of what appeared to be a multi-control system for the apartment. Each room had its own lighting and temperature controls, as well as audio, video and telecom functions. He pressed an icon and turned around to watch as the LCD screen slid down from a point in the ceiling opposite his bed. The screen disappeared again as he jabbed the button marked audio, the control panel now showing a daunting selection of hi-fi options. By trial and error he managed to navigate through to the huge MP3 list that was no doubt stored on a central server somewhere else in the apartment. Someone clearly had great taste in music and had downloaded a number of his favourite bands’ albums. He selected a track and pressed Play, noticing for the first time the concealed speakers that were set at various points around the room. He took a deep breath and walked into his bathroom, noting how the music followed him.

I could get used to this kind of luxury, he thought as he turned the shower on and stepped inside. His thoughts returned to the image of the flames licking the roof of the care home, and he chastized himself for his selfishness.

After showering, he put on a huge fluffy dressing gown and decided to go and see if he could grab something to eat and drink.

There was an elderly lady in the kitchen busily wiping down the surfaces with a blue cloth, a kitchen spray held in her other hand. She turned slightly from her work to look at him, a warm smile replacing the look of concentration that she had worn as he entered.

‘Hello, love,’ she said, without pausing in her work. ‘You must be Trey. Tom’s told me all about you. I’m Mrs Magilton, the housekeeper.’ She pumped the little handle on the bottle, sending a fine mist of pink liquid on to the marble worktop. ‘Now that you’re up I’ll be able to get in to clean your room, if that’s OK with you?’

‘Sure,’ Trey replied, moving over to the fridge. He grabbed a carton of juice and a glass. He opened the door to the balcony and stepped out into the late-morning sunshine, squinting against the glare of the sun reflected off the water’s surface. The river looked so different in the daylight – the water had lost the mystery that it had held when he had last stood here. Now it was merely a dull and murky body of water that carried along the silt it had churned up off to sea. He’d preferred the dark and cold look it had had when he and Lucien had stood looking at it before the sun came up.

He sensed someone behind him, but didn’t turn. Instead he took a sip of the orange juice and continued to stare out at the river.

Alexa stood next to him and joined him in his silence.

‘I feel like I’ve been asleep forever,’ Trey said eventually.

‘You must have needed it. I imagine that it takes quite a bit out of you – especially the first time. How do you feel?’

‘Amazingly good. I woke up expecting to feel like I’d been in a car crash, but I’m actually feeling pretty damn fine,’ Trey replied, shaking his head.

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ Alexa asked, detecting the unhappiness in his voice.

‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

There was another silence while they both contemplated the river again.

‘What did it feel like?’ Alexa asked.

Trey turned to look at her for the first time. She was wearing a white blouse and jeans and she had very little make-up on now. He thought how much nicer she looked without the ‘rock chick’ face that she had worn when he first met her.

‘Scary, painful, exhilarating, terrifying, astonishing. It felt like nothing that anyone should feel. But you know, when I’d transformed and I stood there in front of your father for the first time as a werewolf, I felt
alive.
More alive than I’ve ever felt before. And that’s the part that scares me, Alexa.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have to control this thing inside me. And if it feels that good to be a werewolf, what’s to stop me wanting that all the time?’

She looked at him and smiled sadly, not knowing how to respond.

‘Do you want to go shopping?’ she asked suddenly.

‘What? Have you just listened to what I said?’ Trey shook his head and looked out at the view again. Everyone in this house was utterly screwed up. He’d just opened himself up to Alexa about things that were scaring the hell out of him, and she’d asked him if he wanted to
go shopping.

‘I think you need to get away from here for a while,’ Alexa said quietly. ‘I think you need some normality for a few hours. And when I want to forget stuff, I go shopping. Trust me, you’ll feel a bit better having spent a few hundred quid of my dad’s money – I always do. Besides, if you’re going to get a taste for turning into a werewolf every two minutes, you’re going to need loads of clothes.’

Trey laughed. ‘OK, it sounds like a good plan. I
could
do with getting out into the real world again for a while. Who’s going to ask him for the cash?’

‘You. If I ask him, he’ll send me off with a lecture about mature spending ringing in my ears. He thinks I have a problem curbing my enthusiasm for clothes.
You’ll
be able to get a huge wedge of cash out of him simply by telling him that you feel a bit down in the mouth and fancied getting out for some fresh air. Trust me: you need to ask for the dough.’

‘Where is he?’ Trey asked.

‘He’ll be in his office. He was up all night and most of the morning trying to work out what happened to Hopper. He’s worried – it’s not normal for any of the nether-creatures to just up and disappear from Dad’s organization. He’ll also need to have had his daily top-up, if you know what I mean. He has the blood delivered here overnight, and he self-administers in his office.’

She noticed the look on his face. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll have had it by now. You won’t be walking in on him drinking blood or anything gross like that. He’ll be all relaxed and . . . generous.’

‘OK, I’ll go and ask. You sure it’ll be all right?’ Trey asked.

‘He’s loaded, Trey. Of course it’ll be all right.’

They walked through into the living area and over to the door leading to the reading room where on Trey’s first night at the apartment Lucien had revealed the secrets about his past. Alexa pushed him gently towards the door. ‘The studded leather door in the rear wall,’ she said. ‘Best to knock first,’ she added, and went to sit in one of the recliner chairs.

Trey knocked lightly against the wood surrounding the worn leather central panel of the door and was answered almost immediately by Lucien’s voice inviting him to come in.

The door opened into a large, spacious office. To Trey’s left was a bank of monitor screens, most of which were tuned into various news and business channels and Teletext pages. A huge wooden desk dominated the far wall, and it was behind this that Lucien sat, looking up at the boy as he entered the room. He stood up, the leather chair sliding back slightly on well-oiled casters.

‘Trey, how are you today?’ he asked. ‘I hope that you are rested?’

‘Yes, thanks, Lucien. I still feel a bit odd about everything, you know; it’s an awful lot to take in.’

‘Of course. But if you ever need a chat or if you have any questions at all, you only have to ask and I will do whatever I can to help.’

Trey nodded. ‘Um, I was wondering if it would be OK to go shopping for some clothes, and Alexa said that I should—’

‘Stop right there, Trey, please,’ Lucien said, holding up a finger to emphasize his request. He reached down to his side and opened what Trey assumed was a small cupboard door set into one of the desk’s supporting columns. When he stood up again, Trey saw that he was holding the biggest bundle of banknotes that he had ever seen. Lucien held it out to him without even counting it.

‘Lucien, that is a huge amount of money. I’m not sure I need all of—’

Lucien held up his finger again to stop him and dropped the money on to the desk. ‘Please sit down for a moment,’ he said, indicating a chair on the opposite side of the desk from him. He sat and smiled kindly at the teenager from behind a steeple that he had made from his hands.

‘In the last few years I have had to watch you face grief and cruelty from afar, and I have admired the way that you faced these things with courage and stoicism. I feel responsible for some of the suffering you have endured. If I now choose to buy you gifts and help you out in ways that I would have liked to have done before, you must indulge me.’ He paused and opened a drawer on his left, removing a large folder, which he placed on the desk. Opening this, he reviewed the front sheet and closed it again, sliding it across the desktop towards Trey.

‘After your parents’ deaths I set up a trust fund for you. You have a fairly extensive portfolio consisting of gilt-edged bonds, shares and properties in various countries. As of this morning, you are worth a little over one point two million pounds. Most of that amount is tied up at the moment, but I will happily sit down with you over the course of the next few weeks and we can decide what you want to do with your money.’

Trey’s mouth hung open as he looked from the man sitting behind the desk to the folder in front of him and back again.

‘Besides,’ continued Lucien, ‘Alexa is a gold-medal Olympian when it comes to spending money, and I have very little doubt that she will help you to create quite a huge hole in this bankroll today.’ He nudged the wad of notes towards Trey and stood up.

Trey’s mouth felt terribly dry. He stood up and moved towards the door. ‘Er … thank you. I mean …’ His head was spinning again.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ Lucien called from behind.

He was holding out the stack of notes again. Trey took them, nodding his thanks before leaving. Outside, he sagged back against the closed door, trying to get his head around what Lucien had just told him.
One point two million pounds!
He closed his eyes and replayed the conversation in his head, trying to make sure that he had heard Lucien correctly.
One point two million pounds.

As if he was not mentally in tatters already, Trey had the feeling that Lucien had just told him that he was a millionaire.

‘Where next?’ Alexa asked as they turned away from the till. ‘Harvey Nics is not far from here. We could hop in a cab and be there in, like, no time.’

Trey watched her fidgeting around on the spot with excitement like some demented dervish. They had been shopping for three hours now and she showed no signs of losing interest in the prospect of trawling through yet more rows of tagged and labelled clothing stretched out endlessly on silvered rails.

‘I’m not really sure that I can take any more, Alexa.’

‘Nonsense,’ she replied. ‘You’ll love Harvey Nics, and it really is not that far.’

Nonsense,
Trey was learning, was Alexa’s favourite response to any comment that she didn’t agree with. He had already heard it countless times that morning when he had protested about various items of clothing that she thought he should buy.

‘I know what it is,’ she said. ‘You’re still not sure about those linen trousers that I had you buy in Selfridges, are you?’

The escalator delivered them back to the ground floor of whichever department store this was – Trey had lost track, and they were all blurring into one huge mishmash of chrome rails, overeager shop assistants and curtained changing cubicles. The cloying, overlapping smells wafting over from the perfume and cosmetics counters suddenly made Trey desperate to find the doors and the reward of fresh air – if London’s air could ever truly be described as fresh.