Hidden (Marchwood Vampire Series #1) (16 page)

The cold jet
gushed with satisfying force and Maddy got right up close, for
maximum impact. The boys sprang to their feet in shock. Blood and
water dripped from their bodies, marbling like paint on the tiled
floor. They stood there open mouthed and panting. She turned off
the water.

‘
You two can get out right now.’ Maddy glared up at them. She
continued to stare, with the hose trained on them like a weapon.
Next, she turned to the blubbering girl. ‘And you can leave
too.’

The girl
stopped crying, pouted and looked down her nose at Maddy. ‘Oh
really. And who are you?’

Maddy gave her
a withering stare. ‘This is my party. This is my house. Now get
out.’

The girl
tossed her long hair and spoke to one of the dripping boys.

‘
Come on, Sam. It’s a crap party anyway.’

‘
Yeah,’ Maddy said, as they walked away, crunching over broken
glass. ‘Thanks for coming. Thanks for the criminal damage.’ She
threw the hose on the floor and turned her back on the mess and
destruction, walking out the way she had come, back through the
library. No one else paid any attention to the incident and the
party atmosphere continued to ramp up.

Still annoyed, Maddy stomped into the kitchen to get some
crisps for Ben. A food fight had broken out and screams accompanied
sausage rolls as they flew across the room, while beer sloshed over
people’s heads.
Oh my
God
.
How did I
ever think a party was going to be a good idea?

She left the kitchen and went back outside to find her
brother. A large group of blokes now sprawled where she and Ben had
sat and Ben was nowhere in sight. A small finger of worry plucked
at her chest.
He’ll be
okay
, she reasoned. Maybe he’d got bored
waiting for her and had gone back to his room. She returned to the
house, barged past the people on the stairs and banged on his door,
but there was no reply.

‘
Ben! Ben! Are you there? It’s me! It’s Maddy!’

Still no
reply. She ran back down the stairs and went into every single
room, looking systematically and asking everybody if they had seen
a twelve-year-old boy. Nobody had. She hauled Lois off the sofa and
she and her bloke looked at Maddy in surprise.

‘
Have you seen Ben?’

‘
Ben?’ Lois asked stupidly. ‘No, I haven’t seen
anything
,’ she laughed.
‘I’ve been a bit busy.’

‘
Yeah, I noticed.’ She stalked off, leaving a confused-looking
Lois.

Maddy found
Keisha slouched over the dining room table, talking to some
friends. She drunkenly banged the table with her glass, trying to
make an important point about something.

‘
Maddy, there you are,’ she slurred. ‘I was jusht shaying, I
mean shaying, saying …’ Then she dissolved into a fit of giggles
and banged the table again, nearly falling off her chair, which
made her laugh even harder.

‘
Have any of you seen my brother? Have you seen Ben?’ Maddy
asked, ignoring Keisha.

‘
No.’ They all shook their heads.

Maddy hurried
out of the room and back into the kitchen, ignoring the shouts and
the mess. She pushed open the door to the games room. The
atmosphere in here seemed calmer. The room was at the back of the
house, further away from the music. A serious-looking game of pool
was in full flow. People leant against the walls, smoking, drinking
and watching the pool-table action in the murky light.

‘
Has anyone seen my brother?’ Maddy’s husky voice, rose above
the murmuring chatter. ‘He’s twelve with dark brown hair, wearing a
green t shirt and black jeans.’

One of the
pool players used his cue to point under the table and Maddy saw a
black trainer sticking out. She crouched down to look. Ben lay on
his back, passed out.

‘
Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘He’s drunk! He’s lying on his back!
He’s a kid! Didn’t any of you think there’s a problem with that?’
But she was angrier with herself than anyone else.

The two lads
playing pool knelt down and helped slide Ben out from under the
table.

‘
Sorry, man,’ one of them said to her. ‘He hustled us and
kicked our asses at pool. He’s pretty good.’

‘
Yeah,’ the other lad interjected.

‘
But then he said he was gonna have a little kip under the
table. Didn’t think he was that drunk.’

‘
You morons. He was lying on his back. He could’ve choked on
his own vomit.’ She rolled him onto his side. ‘Ben. Ben, wake up.
Can you hear me, Ben?’

‘
Mmmm?’ Ben opened his eyes, murmured something
incomprehensible and threw up over one of the pool player’s
trainers.

‘
Oh that’s just great,’ he said. ‘My new Pumas. Yeah, thanks
for that!’

Maddy ignored
the boy’s complaints and got Ben slowly to his feet. She led him
shakily out of the room.

‘
Party’s over!’ She shouted as she went. ‘Thanks for trashing
my house, but you can all eff off now. Party’s over!’ She got a few
puzzled stares and dirty looks, but most people just ignored her.
She washed out a glass in the kitchen and filled it with tap water.
Then she took Ben upstairs to his bedroom and put him to
bed.

Maddy locked
the door and lay next to him, on top of the covers. She ignored the
shouts and the yells, the booming bass line and the crashes, bangs
and smashes. She knew all hell was breaking loose down there with
nobody to stop it, but she couldn’t leave her brother on his own,
not when he was in such a state. She smoothed Ben’s hair away from
his eyes.

‘
I’m sorry, little man. I didn’t look after you properly. But
I promise you, that’s going to change. We don’t need any of those
people in our lives. They don’t care about us. We’ve got each other
and that’s enough.’ She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

*

She opened her
eyes and instantly closed them again. The curtains hung open and
the sun’s rays were shining straight onto her face. Madison turned
away from the light. She heard the birds singing ridiculously
loudly and then the sound of a car engine trying to start up. Her
mouth tasted fuzzy and stale. Her eyes felt heavy and achy, the
skin on her face dry and taut.

The previous
night’s events jumped uninvited into her brain and she sat up too
quickly, leaning over Ben to check he was okay. His breaths came
loud and even, so Maddy lay back down. She knew she had to get up,
leave the bedroom and look at the rest of the house. Assess the
damage. The thought of it made her close her eyes again and curl
into a foetal position. What on earth had possessed her to throw a
party? She knew what they were like. She’d been to enough of
them.

Maddy left Ben
sleeping and opened the bedroom door. No sign of anyone on the
landing. So far so good. She tried her bedroom door ... Still
locked. Good. She tried another bedroom door. It opened and Maddy’s
reluctant gaze rested upon a heap of sleeping bodies. At least four
people in the double bed, one person on a slim chaise and the rest,
sprawled or squashed on the floor. She stepped over them and pulled
back the curtains.

‘
Okay, people,’ she croaked. She cleared her throat. ‘Okay,
wake up.’ Slightly louder this time, but not much.

One boy rolled
over and groaned. He squinted at Maddy, who stood in front of the
window, drenched in a flood of morning sunshine. The boy looked at
his watch.

‘
It’s six o’clock in the morning,’ he whispered.

‘
Don’t care. Party’s over. Time to go home.’

‘
Have mercy.’ The boy closed his eyes again.

‘
Okay, everybody!’ Maddy shouted this time. ‘Time to
go!’

Madison
marched through the house, pulling back curtains, flinging open
windows and telling everyone to get out and take their crap with
them. She went into the kitchen, found a big roll of bin bags and
began the hideous task of cleaning up. Uppermost in her mind was
the thought that she did not, under any circumstances, want Esther
or Morris to see the house in its destroyed state. She knew it was
her house and she could do what she wanted, but the thought of
their disapproving stares was more than she could bear at the
moment.

A couple of
kindly souls took some bin bags from her and started to help with
the clearing up. Maddy smiled, but no words were exchanged. People
were too hung over and tired to speak. By 8am, a trickling exodus
had begun. Rooms were vacated and cars coughed to life, crawling
away leaving muddy tyre tracks on the previously pristine
lawns.

Travis was
asleep in the passenger seat of the yellow transit van, his mouth
and nose squashed up against the window, blonde hair, matted and
sticking out in tufts. Maddy tapped on the glass. He awoke with a
start, sat up and wound the window down.

‘
Madison.’ He gave her a sleepy grin. ‘That was a good night.
Tunes alright for you?’ he asked in his lazy Gloucestershire
drawl.

‘
Yeah, you were right, Travis, you’re a good DJ.’

‘
Actually, that’s the first live gig I’ve ever done,’ he
admitted. ‘I’ve only ever DJ’d in my bedroom up till last night.
Now I’ve got a rep. I might be able to get some more
bookings.’

‘
It was lucky you didn’t suck then. This is for you.’ She
passed him a wodge of notes through the window and enjoyed the look
of wonder on his face.

‘
I didn’t really think ...’

‘
I said if you were good, you’d be happy.’

‘
I’m happy.’

‘
Good,’ said Madison. ‘Now piss off home. I’m trying to get
everyone to leave.’

‘
Why didn’t you say? Leave it to me and the lads. We’ll get
rid of them for you.’ Travis opened his door and jumped out. ‘Don’t
worry, we’ll have everyone shifted in the next half
hour.’

Maddy smiled at Travis’ energy. She liked him and got the
feeling he was going to be a friend. Talking of friends, she
wondered what had happened to Keisha and Lois. Well
they
had certainly
enjoyed the party. It seemed like she and Ben were the only ones
who hadn’t.

Thank God it
was Sunday today, one of Esther’s days off. She’d ring her and tell
her not to bother coming up on Monday or Tuesday either. It would
take time to sort this place out and get it back to normal and she
didn’t need Esther tutting and moaning. She didn’t want any of this
getting back to Vasey-Smith either.

Madison still
couldn’t get it into her head that this was her house and she
wouldn’t get into trouble for trashing the place. That nobody was
going to have a go at her. But she almost wished somebody would,
because then she wouldn’t be the one with the hassle of sorting
things out.

By 3pm,
everyone had left the party and Maddy, Ben, Lois and Keisha were
sitting on the back terrace drinking cokes and eating cream
crackers - the only food items left in the house apart from things
like rice and vegetables which took too much effort to prepare. The
house was as clean as it was going to get today. Maddy would sort
the rest out tomorrow. Keisha clutched her head and groaned.

‘
You sure you haven’t got no paracetamol, Mads? I’m dying
here.’

‘
I’m not looking again, Keisha. I’m knackered.’

‘
I’m dying,’ she moaned. ‘And you made a dying girl clean up
puke. That’s child labour, on a Sunday. You can get put away for
that.’

‘
Not if it’s
your
puke,’ said Lois. ‘Anyway, we gotta go soon. Last coach is at
four thirty.’

‘
Oh my God,’ Keisha moaned theatrically. ‘I can’t sit on a
coach for three hours like this. I’ll die. Anyway, why are
you
so perky? You
usually have a way worse hangover than me. Could it have something
to do with a boy whose tongue was down your throat all
night?’

‘
He gave me his number. And he said he’s gonna come and see me
in London.’

‘
Lois, are you blushing? That’s a first.’ Maddy
grinned.

A car horn
sounded from the front of the house. ‘Here’s the taxi,’ Ben
said.

‘
You gonna be alright, Maddy? With the rest of the clearing up
and stuff?’ Lois asked.

‘
Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for coming.’

‘
You’re joking aren’t you? We wouldn’t have missed
that
.’

They made
their way to the front of the house, where the taxi was waiting.
The girls’ bags sat in the cool, dim entrance hall.

‘
Wicked party, girl. You better have a few more of those,’
Keisha said. ‘But wait till I’ve recovered from this one,
yeah?’

‘
Dunno about that. Last night was well stressful.’

‘
Stressful?’ Keisha mocked. ‘It was a party. You gotta chill,
girl. Parties are for enjoying, not stressing.’

Maddy didn’t
have the energy to explain, so she just smiled at her friends as
they picked up their bags and walked out through the front door.
They kissed and hugged while the taxi driver put their luggage into
the boot. Ben and Madison stood on the front steps, waving until
the car was out of sight.

She felt a
mixture of relief and loneliness. It was lovely to have the place
back to themselves, but her friends had livened the place up and
now it all felt a bit empty.