‘So why do you hide them?’
‘There’s something else in here. If Mercury succeeds in helping me she’ll want payment. That is what I’ll pay her with.’
I don’t ask what it is. The words of a spell, perhaps, or maybe instructions for a potion.
He puts the letters back into the tin and gently presses the lid down, using the weight of his shoulders and chest but so gently.
‘I didn’t read them … I can’t read.’
He waits for me to say more.
‘I can’t sleep inside … or if I do I’m ill … sick. I’m not very good at staying inside at all any more. Electric things give me noises in my head. But I can heal fast. And I can tell if a person is a witch from their eyes.’
‘How?’
I shrug. ‘They look different.’
He strokes his hand across the tin but then pushes it away. ‘So … my eyes? Are they witch or fain?’
‘Fain.’
He doesn’t respond straight away but eventually shrugs and says, ‘My body is fain now.’
Slowly he reaches over to my hand and touches my tattoo with his fingertips. ‘What are these?’
And I tell him about the tattoos. He hardly moves, doesn’t speak, just listens. He’s good at listening. But I tell him the tattoos are a brand, nothing more. I want to tell him more. I want to trust him but I remember Mary’s warning: ‘Trust no one.’
Gabriel says, ‘Mercury said that you wouldn’t be able to sleep inside. And she told me to wear the sunglasses.’
So she knows Marcus and assumed I’d have the same abilities.
the roof
Gabriel says we will go to Mercury in the morning. He says that he spotted two Hunters in Geneva and wants to see if they are still in town. I tell him that they are and they saw me and I think they recognized me. He doesn’t say much about that but he wants to have a look around for himself and insists I wait in the apartment.
When he’s gone the apartment feels like a prison and the terrace isn’t much better.
I wake up in the night. It’s raining but not heavily, just spitting. I expect to see Gabriel in his usual spot where he watches me from. He’s not there. I fall back to sleep again and have my usual alley dream. I wake drenched in sweat. It’s well after dawn. The sunlight is trapped on the terrace. Steam rises off the damp roof. There’s a smell of coffee and bread.
Gabriel is sitting at the table surveying me as I survey breakfast. He has laid out the usual array.
I want to go to Mercury and I don’t want breakfast. He puts butter on bread, chews, swirls his coffee. I pace around.
He says, ‘I saw a few Hunters.’
I stop pacing. ‘A few?’
‘Nine.’
‘Nine!’
‘I watched one and followed her for a few minutes. Then I saw another. And another. They didn’t pay any attention to me. I’m just another fain to them. But you, I think, they must have recognized. Nine Hunters can only be for someone important.
‘I skirted around town, went to see a contact of Mercury’s. Pilot. She didn’t know anything. I came back this morning and saw another Hunter on my way here. I thought I’d test something out and bumped into her shoulder. I apologized. She apologized back in poor French.’
He laughs.
‘They don’t recognize witches by their eyes, like you do. Mercury says that Hunters are trained to detect Blacks. They notice the little differences, the way we walk, the way we stand, how we move in relation to other people. But I must have lost that.’
‘I guess if you saw nine there are probably more you didn’t see.’
‘Definitely.’
And yet Gabriel seems relaxed: he saunters around, bumps into a Hunter and then wanders off for a leisurely breakfast.
He glances up at me, saying, ‘Don’t worry. If they knew about this place we’d have been bloody messes on the floor of some cell hours ago.’ He drains the last of his coffee and says, ‘However, I think we should go to Mercury’s now.’
I try to sound coolly ironic, saying, ‘No. Take your time. Have another croissant.’
He gets up, smiles at me. ‘I don’t want to be late. Mercury’s expecting us. She’s looking forward to meeting you.’
He beckons me on to the terrace then takes my hand, interlocking our fingers, and leads me to the spot where he always hunkers down.
‘Keep hold of my hand. Tight.’
He slides his other hand, his left hand, through the air, as if he’s feeling for something.
‘There’s a passageway here. You have to find the entrance – it’s like a slit in the air. We go through it and down the drain. It’s hard to breathe in there so it’s best if you hold your breath until you’re out the other end.’
At the base of the roof tiles is a narrow, metal gutter running round all four sides and in the corner is a drainpipe. Gabriel seems to find the cut and lowers his hand down into the drainpipe.