Guardian of the Dead (30 page)

Mark took this opportune moment to walk in. He hesitated, closed the door firmly behind him, and said, ‘We don't have time.'

‘You,' Kevin said dangerously. ‘You keep turning up, don't you?'

Mark said nothing, and I quailed at the thought of explanations.
Kevin, this is your cousin. Remember your
great-uncle who ran away? Actually, he was kidnapped by
Mark's mother, who also tried to kidnap you. Mark stopped
her, so he really doesn't deserve that death glare you're giving
him. Oh, and his father was murdered last night by inhuman
magical beings determined to sink the North Island.

No. It was impossible. I picked up the mask without really thinking about it, and it vibrated in my hand, eager to help me smooth over the situation. I could make Kevin forget everything, it suggested. I could keep him happy and calm and safe and still trusting me.

Just like Reka.

‘Ellie,' Kevin said, eerily calm. ‘What happened last night?'

I took a deep breath, and chose the other way. ‘I can't tell you yet,' I said, and quailed as his face shut down in rage and betrayal.

Mark shot me an ironic look, probably remembering now he'd told me the same thing before I tried to beat the truth out of him. There was no magical binding to stop me telling all. Except . . . Kevin's power was still latent, still only potential. The patupaiarehe wouldn't hunt him. We could open his eyes, as mine had opened, but Mark was right. We didn't have time. And it was incredibly selfish, but I could risk myself so much more easily than I could drag Kevin with me.

‘Give me a week,' I said, over Mark's half-formed protest. Assuming we won, assuming I was still alive. ‘I swear, I'll tell you everything in one week.'

Kevin's breath sucked through his teeth. ‘Are you
kidding
me?'

‘Kevin, please,' I said. ‘Please, please, trust me. I have
never
let you down, not once. I have never lied to you, or told your secrets—' That one hit home, and he flinched away. It hurt my heart, but I continued. ‘—and I need just a little more trust. Just a week's worth.' The mask turned in my hands. ‘
Please
,' I said. I could feel tears prickling at my eyes, and desperately blinked them back.

It might have been the tears that did it, or my tone; I could see him beginning to waver. I resisted the urge to beg, to go to my knees, to break and tell him everything. But I knew I couldn't. I would trade even this friendship to keep him safe.

‘It's not drugs or anything?'

‘Of course not!'

‘But you're in some kind of trouble?'

I shook my head, and then nodded. ‘But it's nothing you can help with. I just have to go home for a while. Mark's coming with me.'

‘You barely know him!' He shot Mark a dubious look.

My grip tightened on the mask. ‘They're not all my secrets to tell, Kevin. And I have to catch the 11.00 am. flight to Napier.'

‘Okay,' he said, after far too long, and gripped my shoulder, a little too tight. ‘Okay, one week.'

My knees weakened with relief, and I felt tears stinging again. ‘Thank you,' I said.

‘Are you
sure
I can't do anything?' He was still angry, and fighting down hurt besides, that I was going to Mark, and not him, for help.

I cast around, looking for something to make him feel useful: ‘You could give us a lift to the airport?'

He rolled his eyes. ‘Sure. What's a little playing hooky from school just before exams?'

‘Thank you. Really.'

Mark nodded, earning another suspicious look. Kevin shook his head. ‘One week, Ellie. I've parked Theodore by the garden fence. I'll meet you there in twenty.'

Despite his words, Kevin looked as if he was regretting the decision, hesitating by the open window. I went to brush my teeth, hoping that treating the deal as made would confirm it for him.

When I came back, Kevin had left, and Mark was standing by the window, looking bemused.

‘He threatened me,' he said.

‘Threatened you how?'

‘Well, if I do unspecified things to you, he plans to do specified things to me, none of which sound like much fun. Are all your friends this violent?'

‘I'm sure that if he knew what you've done—' I began, not-quite apologetic.

‘Don't worry about it. Uh. Did you know you were still holding the mask?'

I started and dropped it on my bed. It whined, hurt.

‘Mark? Is this thing alive?'

He peered at it, hands behind his back. ‘Not exactly.' He scratched his chin, where reddish stubble glinted. ‘It likes you.'

‘It loves me,' I corrected.

‘Well, I don't think it loves me.'

It didn't. When he spoke, a discordant buzzing throbbed through the bones behind my ears. It increased as he poked a cautious finger at the mask. My sister had given me a hideous black handbag for my birthday. I found it at the back of the wardrobe, wrapped the mask in a scarf and shoved it into the bag's depths. Unease was stirring in my stomach. ‘What I did to Chappell – was that bad?'

He shrugged. ‘I would have had to try it if you hadn't.'

‘That's not exactly reassuring.'

He nodded distractedly and sat heavily on the bed. ‘I can't believe he's dead,' he said. ‘I know everyone says that, but I really can't.'

My heart squeezed for him. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘You know the worst thing?' he asked. I sat beside him, legs pressed primly together, and made an encouraging noise, feeling worse than useless, and watched him push his hair back from his face. His knees were too bony. He should eat more.

‘He couldn't be like other dads. He loved me, he was the best parent he could be, but he had no . . . On the worst days, he'd go down to the Square, and preach about what had happened to him. Reka did the same thing to stop him talking that she did to me, before she let him go. So he could only talk around it, and it hurts the more you try, but he'd do it for hours. Because he thought warning people was the right thing to do. And then he'd come home, and then he'd go catatonic. He'd sit at the table and shit himself. Or puke, or suddenly black out and fall. Or both. I was terrified that one day he'd do both and I wouldn't be home in time to drag my father's head out of his own vomit.'

‘It wasn't your fault.'

‘I know. I know that. It was her fault. I hate her.' He plucked at the knees of his tracksuit.

‘I don't blame you.'

‘Yeah? Would you blame me if I said I hated him too?

Because sometimes I did – this sick man, out of his time, who had nineteen good years before he met my sociopathic mother. So, yeah, sometimes I hated him, because he made my life just that bit harder.'

Pity swelled in my throat. I couldn't speak, only sit and listen.

‘A couple of years ago, before Gribaldi came, I went up north, to talk to this guy. See if I could cure Dad, fix myself, find a better way to stop Reka from getting Kevin.'

He fell silent. I wanted to ask what he meant by fixing himself, but his face was still mobile with some inner dialogue, and I was loath to interrupt. ‘That didn't go so well,' he said finally. ‘Anyway, I came back early. I'd arranged for Dad to go into care for a week. I could have left him there for another two days. But, I don't know, I missed him. So I took a taxi from the airport and picked him up again.' He turned teary eyes to me. ‘He just kept talking, Ellie. He was preaching, and he didn't really see me. I was exhausted. I cooked dinner, and he ate it, and he went to bed. But he just talked through the wall, on and on, and all I could think was, he's been doing this all day and he's going to be sick. And I'm going to have to deal with it. Again.'

‘I was so tired. And then I thought, I just sort of
realised
that if he wasn't there in the morning, then I wouldn't have to deal with any of it. So I walked into his room with my pillow, and I put it over his face, and I pressed down.'

I stifled my shock before he looked at me, but the blank expression I produced was just as telling. He smiled, taut with bitterness, and went on.

‘He didn't fight me. He'd been thrashing around, but when I leaned against the pillow he went completely still.' He plucked at his tracksuit again, long fingers restless. ‘And then I took the pillow off his face and went back to bed and he talked until four in the morning. Then he had a fit and pissed himself, and I got up and changed him and put him in my bed and I went to sleep on the bedroom floor.'

‘You're a good person,' I said. It seemed so inadequate. ‘You're not even half right. Even when Reka told me, it didn't hurt right away. The first thing I felt – the very first thing – was relief. I thought I could find a way to stop being a monster. But it's in me, indelibly. Body and soul.'

He dropped his head, hair falling limply over his face. I stared at him.

‘Well,' I said, hearing the word crack the air, and knowing that I was going to say the rest of it now, that I couldn't stop. ‘That's pretty arrogant.'

For a moment his expression was so full of affronted shock that the sadness was pressed out. I pushed harder. ‘Oh, right, sleep-deprived and worn-out you tried to kill your dad. For what, about five seconds? Yeah, you're Hitler. You're Pol Pot. Oh, wait! You can't be! Because they were human, and you're a
monster
.'

‘You don't—'

‘What? Understand? You keep saying I don't know enough, I don't speak the right languages, I don't know the right stories, I don't look in the right places. And it's true. I've spent a day stunned by all the things I didn't even know I didn't know. But you can't tell me I don't know what it's like to be human. I
live
human.'

‘But I'm not,' he said.

‘I don't care. People kill people every day, for much stupider reasons than yours. If you'd actually gone through with it, then yeah, you could make a case. As it is, no, sorry. You don't measure up.' I clutched his shoulders, feeling the bones solid under my hands. ‘The ones who did kill your dad, who want to drown three million people,
they're
monsters. It's what people do that matters. Okay? You're an arrogant, secretive, manipulative son of a bitch, but you're not a monster.'

He seemed honestly confused. ‘What am I, then?'

I snorted. ‘Mixed up. A chimera. Like the rest of us.' I shrugged. ‘You put the pillow down. You took it off. You're a good
enough
person. Okay?' I released his shoulders and wriggled back across the mattress.

Too late, I realised that he wouldn't see that backwards motion as giving him space, but as a retreat. It was there, raw, in the way his fingers spread against his thighs.

‘Oh,
hell
,' I said, and kissed him.

Objectively, it wasn't a great kiss. I'd grabbed his chin at an awkward angle, so first our teeth bumped, and then my nose squashed into his. I could still taste the toothpaste in my mouth, but he hadn't brushed his teeth. And my back flared every time I did anything as complicated as raising my arms or turning to the side.

Subjectively, I was aware of all these things, and didn't give a damn.

Mark's lips were warm and smooth against mine, his fingers twisting under the tangled weight of my hair to stroke the back of my neck, careful not to touch my wounds. He made a sound that was part whimper, part sigh, and I pressed against him, his cotton jacket rough against my hands. His body was warm underneath it. I had my hands up under his shirt before I realised I was moving, had lowered him flat against my bed before I'd made any decision to hold him.

A thrill unrelated to any magic hummed between us.

‘Whoa,' I said, and pulled back to hover above him. Mark was looking up at me, lips parted. I reminded myself that his father had just been murdered. ‘Uh. Sorry if I—'

He got a better grip on the back of my head and tugged me down again. I decided less talking and more kissing was the order of the day, and lost myself in the taste of him and the feel of smooth skin flexing under my questing fingers.

Eventually, he tilted his head away and gave me a smile that expanded across his face like a fern unfurling.

‘Um,' I said, witty as ever.

‘You're amazing,' he replied, which was clearly another lie, but still something more coherent than I was managing. The window rattled as someone pounded on it.

‘Get a move on, Ellie!' Kevin yelled, clearly unimpressed on several levels.

‘Shit,' I hissed, and rolled off both Mark and the bed, waving Kevin away again. He rolled his eyes, but obeyed.

Mark was sitting up, looking at me carefully.

‘Close your eyes,' I said.

He obeyed, and I skinned out of the costume and into my cleanest pair of jeans. Half-clothed, I sucked in a breath when I saw the purple bruises neatly spaced up my right forearm. The patupaiarehe's taiaha had not been gentle. I tried to fasten a bra over the scratches on my back, but it just wasn't going to happen. I gave up and spared one moment for the fear that Mark would peek just when I was at my most unattractive – struggling painfully into my jersey with my face concealed and my stomach rolls wobbling hypnotically – but when I tugged the material down to cover my belly, his eyes were still closed and he hadn't bolted from the room.