‘You’ve done a good job with the fire.’ He takes a step further into the bathroom.
‘Get out.’ I’m surprised by how angry I am.
‘Did you find anything?’
‘I told you to get out.’
‘And I asked if you found anything.’ For the first time he sounds like a Black Witch.
I turn and stride to him, my left hand is round his throat and I’m pushing him by the shoulder against the wall. He doesn’t resist. I hold him there and say, ‘Yes, I found something.’ And all I see is myself looking back at me. My eyes are black with silver reflected in them but it’s just from the bathroom light. I don’t want to hurt him. I manage to loosen my grip on his neck and then walk back to the sink.
‘Did you read them?’ He is coughing a bit as he speaks.
I lean forward over the basin, grabbing its sides. I’m concentrating on looking down the plughole at the dirt and the blackness but I can feel his eyes on my back.
‘Did you read them?’
‘No! Now get out!’ I shout and look up in the mirror.
Gabriel says, ‘Nathan,’ and he steps forward again and takes his sunglasses off. And his eyes are not those of a Black Witch.
He’s a fain.
A fain!
So what was all that talk about being the son of two very respectable Black Witches?
And I’m shouting, ‘Get out!’ as I hit him and he’s on the floor, blood on his face, and I’m swearing and using all the worst words I can think of and he’s lying on his side, curled up, and I stomp on his knees and I hate it that he lied to me and I hate how I was thinking he was OK but he’s just some lying fain and I have to walk out to the kitchen before I really hurt him. Then I walk back and lean over, grab his hair and shout at him. Properly shout. Cos I can still see him staring at my back. And I hate it that he was staring. I hate that. And I bang his head on the floor and I don’t know why I’m doing that, except I’m so angry. I’m still shaking when I walk out of the bathroom again.
I pace round the sofa but I have to go back and get my shirt.
Gabriel’s groaning a bit. He looks a mess.
I slide down to the floor next to him.
We’re sitting at the table, by the window. Gabriel is wringing out a cloth into a bowl of water that’s pink with his blood. His left eye is swollen shut. His right is a light brown with a few flecks of golden-green in it but no sparks. Definitely a fain eye. But he has told me that he wasn’t lying: he is a Black Witch but he has a fain body.
‘So you can’t heal at all?’
He shakes his head.
He says that his Gift is that he can transform to be like other people. It’s the same Gift as Jessica’s but he is different from her, opposite to her. He explains, ‘I like people. They’re interesting. I can be male or female, old or young. I can find out what it’s like to be different people. The only problem is once I became fain, to see what that was like, I couldn’t transform back.’
‘You’re stuck then?’
‘Mercury thinks I’ll be able to become myself again. She says it’s more than physical, or at least more than just my body, that makes me able to transform. She says she’ll help me find the route back … But she’s in no rush.’ He puts the cloth in the water and swirls it around then wrings it out again and puts it back on his eye.
‘I’ve been with her for two months.’ He looks at me. ‘She wants to meet you.’ He pats the cloth against his cut lip, which is also swollen. ‘But she’s suspicious. And rightly. You have spent all your life with White Witches.’ He shrugs. ‘You are half White and the perfect bait, just the sort of thing the Council or Hunters would use.’
‘But I’m not sent by them.’
‘And you’re not likely to admit it if you are.’
‘So how do I prove to her that I’m not?’
‘That’s the problem. It’s impossible to prove.’ He dabs at his mouth with his fingertips. ‘Someone once said that the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.’ He carries on dabbing his mouth. But he’s smiling a little.
‘Do you trust me?’ I ask.
‘Now I do.’
‘Then take me to Mercury.’
He swirls the cloth in the water again.
‘I can’t stay in this apartment any longer. I’ll go mad … or kill you.’
He puts the cloth back on his eye.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not today?’
He shakes his head. ‘Tomorrow.’
I get the tin and put it on the table in front of Gabriel and sit back opposite him.
‘I didn’t read them.’
He pulls the lid off and carefully takes out the top letter, which has my sooty fingerprints on it. It’s folded over once and there is one word written on the outside in large curly writing. He pulls out the next letter, which is smudged with my black sooty marks too. He shakes his head.
‘What are they?’ I ask.
‘They’re just love letters from my father to my mother, before … when they were in love.’