Hidden Among Us (19 page)

“I can see that,” I said. “Come with me, then.”

When we reached the main hall, the great bowl of fire was still flickering, but everywhere I looked, harps and drums lay discarded on the cold earth and the Hidden had gone, as if they’d just melted away into the darkness.

“They’ve all gone to dance somewhere. They do that now the Gateway’s open, places they can be sure they won’t be seen.” Tippy rummaged in a wooden chest with a broken lid that someone had shoved against a wall, tugging out handfuls of glittery cloth and a ragged cape of mouldy-looking feathers, which made us both shudder. I couldn’t look at feathers without thinking of the Swan King, sick with anger and terror.

My father.

Tippy tossed the cape into the fire where it exploded with a burst of foul-smelling smoke, and emerged from the box with an old-fashioned silver hairbrush. “I knew there was one somewhere.” She sounded so excited, just about having her hair brushed. I tried and failed to imagine what it was like to have bed-head for centuries.

We sat alone by the fire, Tippy now dressed in a blue gown I’d torn the bottom off. She smiled every time she ran her fingers over the silk. “It’s so beautiful. Thank you, Lissy.” It had taken me two minutes to rip away a metre of fabric, making the dress short enough to fit her. Not exactly difficult. And not one of the Hidden had bothered in hundreds of years to find her some proper clothes.

What had happened to Tippy down here? If she was stolen in a nightie that would have fitted a five-year-old, why had her body aged so slowly? She didn’t look more than eight – it was as if her physical age had slowed down to a rate of one year for every hundred. I couldn’t help shuddering, and she looked away, as if ashamed.

“I know I’m enchanted,” she whispered. “I’ll go to hell. I’ve been here such a long time, but I’m still so little. It’s the Hidden – they know such powerful songs. Rose gets cross with me. She says I’m useless.”

“You’re not going to hell. Why did they bring you here, Tippy?”

She shrugged. “They’re dwindling. They can’t have their own babies.” Tippy’s face twisted with misery. “I want my mammy so, so much. I’ve wanted her every day since I was taken. It’s a long time, Lissy.”

I didn’t know what to say. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I didn’t want her to see, so I just hugged her, a rigid little body till she relaxed in my arms.

“Do you want a bath?” Her neck was filthy. If all I had to do was ask, and be obeyed, I should be able to get some hot water. I could at least make her feel washed and clean.

Tippy pulled away to look at me, smiling. “A what?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, quickly, and concentrated on her hair instead, working through the knots.

“It’s nice.” Tippy arched her back like a stroked cat and I couldn’t help smiling. “I think they grew tired of me. I’ve been little for so long, you know. Mammy would be very surprised.” Then her shoulders started to shake, jerking up and down. She was crying. I put down the brush and hugged her again; we clung to each other, and I whispered to her all those things I’d say to Connie if she were upset:
It’s OK, it’s going to be all right
.

A lie, because I didn’t have a clue.

At last, Tippy pulled away, rubbing her eyes. “Rose is always saying I’m less use than a bent spoon. They wanted me to have Hidden babies of my own one day, but I’m taking too long to grow.”

I suppressed a shiver, not wanting Tippy to see how disgusted I was. She was being kept here like an animal reared for breeding. What had the Hidden done to her? A new fear clung to me like wet cloth, chilly and unsettling, impossible to shake off.

With the force of a blow, I remembered what Virgie Creed had said to me in the church:
They want pretty girls to breed with
.

Why was I here?

If the Hidden wanted to use human girls like cattle on a farm, why weren’t people always going missing? Even if there was something special about the Reach, I wasn’t the only girl in Hopesay Edge. What did the Hidden want from Tippy? From
me
?

“I don’t understand.” I finished brushing one section of hair and moved on to the next. “Why did they take you in the first place? Why do they want us?”

Tippy stared at me. “They’ve stolen hundreds of children, men and women too, and I’m the only one still alive. Larkspur told me they all just withered away down here; he thinks they died of grief. I don’t remember any others except the baby, so I must have been one of the last before the Gateway was closed and they were stopped.” She turned and stared at me. “
You’re
the baby, aren’t you? You came through after they opened the Gateway again. You did nothing but cry; I had to show them how to feed you milk from a rag like the village women do.”

I still couldn’t get my head round having been down here as a baby. Tippy must have saved my life, and all I could do in return was give her a stolen dress.

“What
is
the Gateway?”

“It’s in the house where I was born,” Tippy told me. “A door between God’s earth and this place. Larkspur told me my kinsmen guard the Gateway to this day, and must swear to keep it secret from other men. He said my brother Roger’s son had the Gateway shut when Roger and Pappy were both dead. Roger always refused to try, in case I ever got out of these halls only to find the way home closed. Now it’s open again, and the Hidden have been dancing in the woods again.”

I put down the hairbrush. “Where were you born?” I wasn’t sure she’d be able to remember, but Tippy turned around and looked straight at me.

“In the manor house of course,” she said. “It’s called Hopesay Reach.”

I remembered those patches of bare paint where crosses had once hung at the Reach – by the windows, above the doors – and a cold chill passed through my body. The Gateway.

Someone had opened it.

It was clear what I had to do, even though I was already dreading it. I didn’t know if I could face Larkspur after seeing his naked despair: it was like reading someone’s diary, knowing too much about them. Or snooping in your dad’s laptop bag and finding a birthday card from his girlfriend.

As if she’d read my mind, Tippy turned to look at me, her grimy face cast into shadow by the fire. “You want to find him, don’t you?”

I put down the brush. “I’ve got to, Tippy. I need to know how to get home.” I squeezed my eyes shut a second, desperately trying not to cry.

I needed to find out what had happened to Connie.

“They won’t let you go,” whispered Tippy. “I know.”

I had to go home; I had to find Larkspur. I had to get us both out of here: me
and
Tippy.

Whatever it might take.

31

So it was my fault we were both here. I’d led the Fontevrault to Miles.

“I’m sorry. I thought I’d lost them before I got to the Reach.” I stared at him. “What did the Fontevrault want
you
for, anyway?”

He just gave me a small, odd smile, looking down at my ruined ankle. “It looks like you walked straight into the trap I left the Fontevrault,” he said. “Miriam will be furious.” I felt all cold when he said that. Miles was
scared
and ruthless – a pretty lethal cocktail. I kept my mouth shut. He might’ve been responsible for crippling me, but I wasn’t about to antagonize him.

It was weird how the Fontevrault waited till the next day before making their move, though. Taking Miles first thing in the morning. Then me.Why not the night before? It was like they’d had to retreat for a few hours to consider their options.
Analytical
and ruthless: a rather scary combination.

“So I take it you’ve guessed.” Miles leaned back in his chair a little, watching, blatantly not answering my question. Despite his skeletal and dishevelled appearance, there was still something weirdly glamorous about him. His eyes were the pale grey of a rainy morning. Mum always said Miles had buckets of charisma. She was right. Had he been held in one of those airless steel cells, too? Or was that just me?

“Guessed that Lissy isn’t human?” I stared him out. “Oh, yeah, a while ago actually.”

Dad would have gone ballistic if I’d spoken to him like that. But Miles just sat there; he wasn’t even looking at me but out of the window. The branches of a huge old ash tree tapped at the glass. How long was it since I’d seen him? Well over ten years.

I had to know. “So who’s her father then?” I asked. “Who’s Lissy’s real dad?”

“The Swan King,” Miles said, and I laughed.

“Lissy’s dad is a king? That beats it all.”

Miles just sat back and watched me. He looked so old and raddled compared to Mum and Dad it was hard to believe they were the same age. “The Swan King is nothing to laugh about. He’s lord over all the Hidden, for one thing. He hates mortals, and he’s extremely dangerous. Lissy has spent her life in danger of the Fontevrault Group finding out what she is. You must understand that now she’s with the Swan King anything the Group might have had in store for her pales into insignificance. I’ve always thought he had some kind of plan regarding your mother, some sort of ulterior motive. It’s remarkable,” he continued quietly. “Very few hybrid children survive. Usually, the mother dies in labour—”

“Wait. This has happened before?”

Miles turned back to me, face deadly serious. “Well, clearly it’s not something that could ever be proven, but the Group has always suspected there were others, before we agreed there should be no more contact between humans and the Hidden. No more than a handful over the entire course of human history, of course. The human mothers had to be exceptionally strong to survive the birth, in physical terms and psychologically. It’s hardly ever successful. For a hybrid to survive in the womb and grow, the Hidden always had to choose a human girl with the right genetic characteristics, and even then, both she and the baby usually wouldn’t survive childbirth. Of course, human blood contains iron. Any hint of human blood physically contaminating the Hidden bloodstream would be fatal to the Hidden parent, too. It’s said that the hybrids are immortal, but immune to the effects of iron. Lissy can’t be killed by anyone or anything.”

I gazed down at the swirling floral pattern on the rug, trying to squeeze the vast enormous truth of all this into a shape I could understand. “It’s strange,” I said, “but my granny once said that Mum nearly died when Lissy was born, and it was all very dramatic, but that Connie and me were just kind of really easy.”

Gross. I didn’t want to think about Mum in childbirth. Lissy was never, ever going to die. I couldn’t get my head around it.

Miles nodded. “It’s true.”

“But listen,” I said. “The Group? You’re involved with these Fontevrault people? Don’t you have to be some kind of government leader or own about seven companies? What have they got to do with the Hidden?”

“That’s nothing but Internet gossip,” Miles said, looking bored. “Membership has always been inherited. The group got its name from a council held at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine at Fontevrault Abbey in 1153 – the Fontevrault Convenant. We each agreed not to harm the other, and not to make contact unless it was absolutely necessary. It’s a long story, but humans and the Hidden have lived alongside one another a long time, and it was becoming clear that too much contact was dangerous.”

“Why? Why don’t these Fontevrault people want anyone to know about the Hidden? For Christ’s sake, Miles – who would even believe it? I mean, who
are
these people?” I gazed around the palatial office. “Is it something to do with the government? And if they’ve been killing anyone who makes the mistake of becoming seriously interested in this—”

“David Creed,” Miles interrupted. “His parents worked for my family at the Reach, but he was clever, and my great-grandfather paid for him to go to school. He found out about the Hidden – about the Gateway too – and got his hands on the journal. David knew too much, and he lived dangerously close to the Reach itself. His mother was the housekeeper – it would have been easy for him to get access. The Fontevrault Group was afraid he would find out how to lift the protection and open the Gateway.” Miles smiled. “I don’t think they ever suspected that one of their own would eventually do that, and particularly not the Gateward.”

“You did it,” I hissed. “
You
opened the Gateway, didn’t you? All this is your fault. Lissy – everything.”

Miles shrugged. “Look at it this way: Lissy wouldn’t even exist if I hadn’t done it. Doesn’t she deserve to live, Rafe? Look, I’ll admit I was naïve to believe that humans and the Hidden could live alongside each other after what we did to the Swan King’s queen. She was murdered just after the Fontevrault Covenant, hunted down by a gang. The Hidden don’t age or die like mortals, but iron will kill them if the skin is broken, if it gets in their blood, and they cut her throat. The Hidden don’t
think
the same way as us, you see. They don’t even view time in the same way – a murder committed nine hundred years ago is still a recent injustice in their eyes.”

“What happened to David Creed?” I had to know.

“The Fontevrault had him falsely accused of desertion, and he was executed in 1917. Particularly nasty because it got out locally that he’d deserted. The family suffered for it. He was only eighteen years old.”

Eighteen. Just like me, but born over a hundred years ago. And if the Fontevrault Group had killed a teenage boy in 1917, what was to stop them doing the same now?

I could imagine the terror David Creed had felt, scrawling that warning on the journal.
They will kill you
. Had he done it just before they took him away to be shot?

“I always thought Miriam should have told you both the truth, you and Lissy. You would have been better able to protect yourselves. Particularly her.”

“Truth’s not exactly Mum’s speciality.” I managed – barely – to keep the bitterness out of my voice. He’d managed to not really answer any of my questions, like some kind of politician. I tried again, attacking from another angle. “Listen, Miles. If David Creed was shot just for
reading
about these – these immortal things – how come I’m still here? Mum? Lissy, even?”