Skulk (24 page)

I was sure a couple of minutes ago I’d been feeling totally Zen about how I looked. Where had my Zen gone?

I took the sketchpad and dropped it into my lap to hide my trembling hands.

“Wow.”

It was pretty amazing. There were three of me, from different angles – one without much expression, one staring morosely down at my hands, one with a broad smile I didn’t remember actually giving. He hadn’t exactly skimped on the details – the tangles were particularly well-drawn and the bruise on my neck looked livid and painful – but somehow, I didn’t come out of it too badly. Actually, I looked sort of OK. I felt my cheeks burning.

“It’s great,” I managed to say. I would’ve gone on, but something caught my eye on the bottom of the page. He’d signed it, with his usual tag, and it was...

I tried not to let my jaw drop. How had I never seen it before? It wasn’t “E3”. It was two equal curly shapes face to face – a pair of butterfly wings.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Susanne insisted on buying me some proper clothes before we met the rest of the Rabble. I couldn’t argue with her logic – I couldn’t really go walking through Kew Gardens in Mo’s old clothes. I thrust my hands in the pockets of my new hoodie as Susanne and Mo led the way down the neat raked gravel path towards the giant Palm House.

“I keep stashes of clothes all over London,” said Mo as we strolled past a line of statues of heraldic animals – a dragon, a dog, a sort of demon goat thing. “It’s a pain in the arse to organise but it’s not like I can carry anything in butterfly form. It’s worth it.”

“I should do that,” I agreed. “I haven’t had time to think any of this through, it all...” I waved my hands in the air in the universal symbol for
went absolutely batshit.

Mo dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans and kicked some gravel. “Well, maybe when things are a bit, y’know, calmer, I can show you some of my good hiding spots.”

“That’d be amazing,” I grinned. I couldn’t see that far into the future, right now – I could hardly see past my next breath – but it was kind of nice to know that the potential was out there, somewhere. Comforting.

“Here we are,” said Susanne. I looked around, wondering where we were going to change, and caught the eye of two men who were sitting on one of the benches along the path, staring at us as we approached.

Wait
...

The Rabble met in human form? It’d been strange enough to me that they’d meet in daylight, somewhere so public. I suppose the Skulk had never outright
told
me they never met as people, I’d just assumed it wasn’t done.

We drew level with the two men and they stood up.

“This her?” said one of them, a white guy with hair so thoroughly gelled-up he looked a bit like he was wearing a hedgehog on his head. He folded his arms in his Super Dry blazer and gave me an unconvinced kind of look.

“Meg, this is Aaron, and this is Marcus,” Susanne said, indicating the white guy and then the other man, who was black and about seven feet tall and wearing a T-shirt with an Eighties wrestler on it. He had veins like steel rope running all the way up his arms. He shook my hand as Susanne introduced me. “This is Meg. She came to me for help – the Skulk are in some trouble. It sounds like it could be serious.”

“Shall we?” said Marcus, and turned to lead us off the path and up into the enormous greenhouse.

The heat and dampness hit me as soon as I stepped inside. I could almost feel my hair frizzing up around me, like one of those cartoons where fright literally curls people’s hair. The forest of palm trees seemed to stretch away from me, endlessly green and dripping with moisture. Brown strings of fern fronds wrapped around the massive trunks and the odd bright flash of red and yellow peeked out between huge rubbery leaves. It smelled of green and of earth, even to my dulled human sense of smell. I almost wished I could go fox right now, just to breathe it in for a second. Another thing to put on my if-I-survive to-do list.

As we were pushing past the palm fronds my curiosity got the better of me and I leaned close to Mo. “Hey, er, looks like there’s four of you – and Helen makes five – isn’t there another one coming?”

“Peter’s eighty-nine years old. He’s not well enough to come out to meetings. We visit him in the home sometimes. Susanne keeps him up to date.”

“Oh.”

Susanne led us up an ornate white-painted spiral staircase to the balcony that ran around the top of the building, and we gathered on eye-level with the giant pinkish seeds on one of the tall, deep-green palms.

“So, Meg – what’s going on?” asked Aaron, folding his arms across his chest.

I swallowed and glanced out of the windows, over the lake and the gardens and the wide gravel paths cutting through the trees.

“It’s about the stones,” I began. Every time I’d told my story, it sort of amazed me that people believed it. Maybe I had a very honest face. I suppose right now the scratches and bruises were doing that job for me. Something had obviously gone very bad for me. Why not killer pigeons and fog that liquidises your brain?

“Victoria wants the stones, and if she hasn’t got yours already, I’m certain she’ll come for it soon,” I said, after I’d given them the quickest version I could manage. “I think we need to work together to stop her. I have what must be the Cluster stone, but the Cluster are all dead. I just don’t know what we can do. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be going up to the Shard myself.”

Marcus and Susanne shook their heads and Mo muttered, “You can’t.”

“I have to – I can’t do nothing, and I really don’t have any other options, unless you can help me.”

“We may be able to,” said Susanne. She turned to the others. “I’d like to ask permission from the Rabble to share everything we know about the stones with the Skulk. Any objections?”

Mo and Marcus both shook their heads at once. Aaron shuffled his feet and tapped his fingers on the white railing.

“I dunno. I suppose there’s no harm in it, it’s not like we even have our stone anymore.”

Susanne nodded. “All right. Here’s what I know – boys, please leap in if there’s anything you know that I don’t mention. I know that our stone is yellow, and that it governs over the element of sight.”

“So Blackwell was right about that,” I said. “But what does it actually mean?”

“It meant that anyone who possessed the stone could use it to alter other people’s perception,” Susanne said. “You could make things appear, or disappear. I think in theory you could use it to make yourself invisible, though I don’t know anyone who ever tried it.”

“Wow,” I said. “So, if Victoria’s got it, maybe she’s using it to hide the fog from ordinary people?”

“She could be,” said Susanne.

“So, did you use your stone, when you still had it?” I asked, fascinated with the idea of altering the way people saw things. You could take visual art to a whole new level…

“What would we use it for?” Marcus shrugged.

“I… well…” Mo reached up to fiddle with a palm leaf that was dangling over the balcony railing. “I thought about it.”

“Mo,” Susanne gasped. “You didn’t.”

“I never actually did it,” Mo held up his hands. “I just thought about it. Come on, it would’ve been amazing. Imagine using it to make paintings move or set up sculptures that weren’t really there…” he turned to me. “Back me up, Thatch, you have to see where I’m coming from.”

I grinned. “Yeah, I have to say, that sounds awesome. I mean, of course, you couldn’t actually
do
it. Cause we have to keep them safe.”

“See? Meg’s an artist. She gets it.” Mo held out his hand and I met it in a fist bump, trying to keep my cool and not let the dangerous levels of fangirl glee that were building up inside me spill out all over this very sensible conversation.

Marcus shook his head. “I know it seems tempting, but just think what the wrong person could do with the power to change how you saw the world.”

“Deception and trickery,” said Aaron. “You’d be walking off cliffs thinking there was a bridge there.”

“Or believing you were talking to your best friend – or your boyfriend – when it was really some stranger,” Marcus added.

I shuddered. “OK. So, not at all awesome.”

“And it’s out there right now, who knows where, being used for who knows what.” Aaron folded his arms. “And all because Helen couldn’t be bothered to stay on the Methadone.”

Susanne gave him a sad look. “Please, Aaron. Blame the disease, remember?”

Aaron shrugged. “I don’t know, Su. Why didn’t she come to us for help this time? I think she just wanted an excuse not to have to try anymore.”

“No. I give her more credit than that,” Marcus rumbled, lowering his voice about two octaves. “She must have been desperate to think this was her only choice.”

I shuffled my feet, feeling for the first time that I’d really intruded on something not meant for me – this was Rabble business. I’d never even met Helen, it didn’t feel right for me to stand and listen in while her surrogate family talked through her issues like this.

“Where did you keep your stone, when you had it?” I asked, hoping it didn’t seem too much like an obvious change of subject.

“Here,” said Mo.

“Where?” I frowned.

Mo crossed the walkway to my side and leaned over the railing, pointing down at the beds of dripping ferns. “In the dirt, down there.”

“But…” I stared down at the winding paths around the beds below. Two old ladies hobbled slowly along one, while a group of school kids in matching maroon jumpers were being herded down another. “But this is a public place!” I looked up at Mo. “They must have hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, weren’t you afraid someone would find it?”

“It was protected,” said Susanne. “Marcus, Peter and I are the only ones who saw it done who’re still in the Rabble.”

“This was back in the… what, the late Nineties?” Marcus said.

“Yes, it must be.” Susanne sighed. “We all gathered here in the middle of the night, in butterfly form. Peter brought the stone. He gathered us all around it – we all had to be touching the stone.”

“As soon as I touched it,” Marcus said, “I felt something happen. It was like the surface of the stone became soft and I could reach inside and grab one of the points of the star.”

But the points aren’t really things you could grab, they’re cracks in the gem…

I stopped myself from saying it. We obviously weren’t in the realm of physical logic any more.

“Peter and Lena talked us through it,” said Susanne. “They said we should just hold on and let the power of the stone flow through us, and we did, and the next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes and the stone looked different. Opaque.”

“Lena stayed with us, remember?” Marcus added. “To show us that it’d worked. We stayed in butterfly form until the Palm House opened the next day, and watched the gardeners and tourists pass the stone by without even looking at it.”

I tried to ignore a pang of jealousy. The Rabble seemed so…
functional
. Though I suppose that was before one of them vanished and took their stone with her.

“So, do you think the Skulk could do the same thing, but it’d have a different effect?” I wondered aloud. “Blackwell told me it was ‘the hands’ – does that mean it’s about touch? Like, you can physically change things?” I thought of Mum and Dad, and felt my heart sink. Victoria already had the Skulk stone, I was sure of it.

“I bet it’d be pretty similar, anyway. As long as you have every member of the group on board,” said Aaron. “The problem is that you can’t protect it against each other.”

Because shifters are people, and people are bastards
, I thought. My heart thudded, hit with a one-two punch of fondness and worry.
Please be all right, Addie...

“That sounds about right,” I said, thinking back to Blackwell’s lack of knowledge. If none of the Conspiracy had moved their stone for decades, there’d be no need for him to know their ritual.

So I was going to have to make Don and James work together, trust each other enough not to break the spell. But probably only
after
I’d scaled the tallest building in Europe and stolen the Skulk stone back from an evil sorceress, so that was a relief.

“Can we only protect our stone?” I wondered aloud. “If we’ve got the Cluster stone but I don’t know how to find the Cluster, is there anything we can do to keep it safe?”

The Rabble all gave me apologetic looks. They had no more idea than I did.

“Well, it’s got to be worth a try,” said Susanne, “Can you get the Skulk together?”

“I’ve called a meeting for tonight. Whether they’ll all turn up... we’ll have to see.” I glanced out through the massive steamed-up windows, out over the perfectly organised lawns and flowerbeds, and wondered what Addie was doing right now. Had she found them all? Had she found them all alive?

I shook myself. I had to act as if she had.

“All right. We could all join you,” said Susanne. “As a gesture of goodwill. Then we can talk you through it.”

“Good idea,” said Marcus.

Aaron shook his head. “I don’t trust the Skulk. No offence to you, kid. I just don’t see this doing much good. And if they don’t even
have
their stone... I’m not going into any witch’s tower for the Skulk’s sake, I’m sorry.”

“But you’ll come with us tonight,” Susanne said. She smiled at Aaron and Marcus, and her voice was like steel wrapped in sponge cake. “All you boys will, won’t you? For the Rabble?”

Mo said, “Of course,” and Marcus shrugged and nodded.

Aaron rolled his eyes. “For the Rabble,” he replied.

Mo caught my eye behind Susanne’s back and smiled.

It’d started to drizzle while we were inside the Palm House, and the shock of the chill as we stepped outside made me shudder. I pulled my hood up and balled my hands in my sleeves.

“What are you going to do now?” Mo asked. “Before we meet up with the Skulk?”

I hadn’t really thought that far. I was struck with a sudden, intense longing to go home – to run up to my room and kick off my shoes, put on some of my own clothes, log onto graffitilondon and boast that I’d met E3 and I knew what his signature meant.