31
Chrysalis
Seasons have tempered us
Like water to a burning sword
Nicholas was finally asleep, but Sarah was wide awake.
She couldn’t lie in bed any longer. The house was calling her. Since they’d arrived she’d barely had time to walk from room to room, to hear Midnight Hall’s whispered welcome to its rightful owner.
She got up and slipped her white jumper around her shoulders. Quietly, she opened a drawer of her mother’s dressing table; of course, they were still there. Every room was equipped with an emergency kit of candles, matches and a torch, as there were often power cuts on Islay. The torch would have been more practical, but Sarah preferred the golden, soft light of candles. She took hold of one of the two silver candlesticks sitting on either side of the mantelpiece and stood in front of the dressing table. The match sizzled feebly as she lit it, and she turned towards Nicholas to make sure he was still asleep. He didn’t stir.
The candle’s small, warm light flickered and danced, revealing the draughts in the room. It lit up Sarah’s face with a honeyed glow, and she was surprised as she caught her reflection in the dressing table mirror to see how much her face had changed. There was a strength in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Her eyes widened as she realized how much she looked like her mother.
Sarah’s footsteps were too light to make a sound as she walked out of the room, protecting the flickering flame with her cupped hand. To walk with a candle in her hand made her think of her ancestors, her grandmother, before electricity came, and their nightly walks through the house, guided only by the light of this tiny fire between their fingers. The whole house was asleep and there was no noise to be heard.
She wasn’t sure where to go, but her feet took her down the corridor, past the stained-glass window and down the stairs. She was shivering in spite of her jumper, and her feet felt cold on the steps. Still, in a strange way, she enjoyed feeling the stone against her bare skin, as if she were feeling the house itself, settling and creaking and breathing like a living thing. She put her right arm out, her fingers brushing the wall lightly. Step after step, the light of the candle illuminating her naked feet, and then the vast, high-ceilinged vestibule. She stopped for a second and breathed in. The house smelled of peat, of damp and of something else, something she recognized but couldn’t quite place.
Lilies?
She closed her eyes and inhaled again. Yes, lilies.
Sarah smiled to herself. She knew now where she wanted to go. Past the small living room where Niall had been taken when unconscious, past the library whose walls were covered floor to ceiling with bookshelves, past her grandmother’s study. The grand hall opened dark and cavernous to her left, but she turned right instead.
She entered the music room, where she’d spent so many peaceful hours listening to her grandmother and her parents playing, and practising the cello herself. She stepped into the darkened room, illuminating in turn a piano, a harpsichord and the shape of a covered harp, taller than her, resembling a bulky hunchbacked figure. Her fingers lingered on the piano. Carefully she opened its lid and played a few notes, balancing the candle with her other hand. The sound echoed in the silence of the night. Her mother Anne had been an extraordinary pianist, she remembered sadly.
Sarah closed the piano lid as the notes reverberated. She didn’t want to wake anybody, and she didn’t want to be disturbed in her journey through memory and time.
She walked on, towards the wall opposite, and fingered the soft, aqua and gold wallpaper. Under her touch, an invisible door hidden by the wallpaper opened. Sarah smiled, her secret hideout, the cosy, protected place where she went to read and daydream, was still there. It hadn’t been secret at all, of course – everyone knew of its existence – but it felt like that to her, as a child.
It was a tiny room – more of a cupboard – whose purpose had been unknown even to Morag and Hamish. They had no idea why whoever built the house many generations before had decided to carve that small chamber just off the music room. There was no rhyme or reason to it.
Sarah stepped in, the light of the candle illuminating the small space. It was covered in the same aqua and gold wallpaper as the music room, and along the back wall ran a small wooden ottoman. Knowing that Sarah loved sitting in there with a book, Morag had had the ottoman covered in blue velvet cushions. Sarah smiled to herself again, remembering her grandmother’s act of kindness. She placed the candlestick on the wooden floor carefully and kneeled in front of the ottoman, opening its velvet-covered lid.
It was full of treasures, intact from the last time she’d been in the room. As a teenager she hadn’t used the hideaway as much; the prized possessions she had placed in the ottoman must have been there for at least five years. Inside, there was a pink fabric bag, embroidered with little pink sequins. Sarah opened it, and gasped in delight to uncover the treasure it hid. It was a tiny wooden box painted with blue and green flowers – she had forgotten all about it. She lifted the lid, and smiled upon seeing a pair of blue butterfly-shaped earrings that her father had given her on his return from a trip to London when she was ten years old. Those earrings had been her very first piece of jewellery. She slipped the box in the pocket of her jumper.
Next, she took out an address book, with a white kitten on the cover. It was full of phone numbers of former classmates.
Mary Elizabeth McGregor
Sophie Singh
Patrick Thomson
Patrick Thomson! Her first crush. How she’d sighed because of him. And still, when he’d finally noticed her and asked her to go for chips, she’d chickened out of it. The poor guy had waited for an hour and a half in front of the chip shop. She felt a pang of guilt at the memory. Poor Patrick. One of the many boys who’d fallen for her shy, prickly charm and her lovely dark looks, only to be bitterly disappointed. Nobody had ever come close to her, not even remotely.
Nobody, that is, until Sean arrived.
Her eye fell on a book with a green cover and the image of a red-haired girl in a dress and straw hat sitting on a rope swing staring up at her. She took the book in her hand: Anne of Green Gables. How much she’d loved that book. She’d read it endless times. She opened the first page.
Happy Birthday, Sarah! From Aunt Juliet to Sarah, October 2005.
She’d been eleven years old.
The feelings of joy and tenderness gave way to a wave of sorrow. Aunt Juliet was gone and would never come back. She recalled their last day together, when she’d been so hard on her, so impatient. Like she’d always been, really. Only now Sarah was beginning to realize how present Aunt Juliet had been throughout her life, and how often she had rebuffed her for it, instead of being thankful. Now Aunt Juliet was gone – and her Uncle Trevor, and surely her cousins, didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. She’d been severed from the last of her family.
Maybe that’s what happens to all Midnights, sooner or later. One by one the people we love are picked apart and destroyed.
Something cold and steely blossomed in her heart. She would not let all this loss annihilate her. It would be easy to give in to the pain, but she wouldn’t – she’d turn the grief into strength. She would be tempered, like metal in water. From the day she’d been told about her parents’ death, to her first hunt, to Sean’s appearance in her life and throughout the destruction of Cathy’s Valaya, during those terrible times a new Sarah had emerged. The little girl lying alone in an empty house had grown into a resilient young woman who had learnt to face her destiny. Even the way she walked had changed, the way she held her body straight and proud.
Like Morag.
A small, soft nugget of the old Sarah was still nesting in her heart – the girl who longed to be loved – but it was hidden from sight. The new Sarah stood by herself.
Except when Nicholas was around. That’s when her strength ebbed away somehow, albeit temporarily. Why did he have that effect on her?
And most of all, where were her dreams? Were they lost forever?
She shook her head at those uncomfortable thoughts and opened the wooden box again. She slipped the butterfly earrings into her ears. That’s what she was, a chrysalis that had turned into a butterfly. And she wouldn’t let anyone steal her newfound strength.
Sarah took hold of the candlestick again and closed the door on her former hideaway. She’d leave the little memories where they were. She felt they belonged there.
She wasn’t ready to go back to bed, to share her space with Nicholas. He was fast asleep anyway, with no sign of nightmares anymore.
Who is Martyna? she asked herself as she closed the heavy wooden door of the music room.
She hesitated for a moment, then crossed the corridor and pushed the heavy, two-panelled door of the grand hall open. The light of the candle, flickering with the omnipresent draughts, seemed very small in the vast room. The ceiling was crisscrossed with black wooden beams, and the polished floor was covered in precious, exotic-looking rugs. Beams of golden light glimmered against the ceiling, the candlelight reflected in the crystal chandelier.
Sarah walked on slowly, turning around to illuminate the whole room – a stag head hanging on the far wall, together with tapestries and paintings. Suddenly, Sarah remembered her grandfather, Hamish, saying how much he would have loved to have demon spoils hanging on the walls – but he’d never been able to have them, because the Surari ended up dissolved in the Blackwater. Sarah shuddered, thinking of severed demon heads hanging on the walls of this place, watching them as they ate around the huge oak table.
She contemplated the velvet curtains drawn over the windows, a colour somewhere between crimson and burgundy, and then she moved the fabric aside slightly, to get a view of the beach. The sea and the sky were fused in blackness, pale clouds moving slowly like frayed, ghostly sails. Something stirred in Sarah’s mind, the hint of a memory, something important, something she had forgotten, dancing at the edge of her consciousness.
In her mind’s eye, Sarah saw herself as a small girl standing on the watermark, wrapped in her red coat and scarf, holding her grandmother’s hand. It had been the day before Morag died, when they’d walked on the beach together.
Sarah shook her head slightly, trying to clear her thoughts, but the feeble memory was gone, too insubstantial to be held long enough to know what it meant. Sarah frowned.
The candle swayed violently from the draught that seeped through the window and threatened to engulf the curtain. Sarah jerked the flame away from the fabric as quickly as she could. When her eyes moved from the candle to the room again, she gasped. The hall had somehow turned into a blackened shell, covered in debris and ashes. Her feet felt wet, and she looked down to see that she was standing ankle-deep in Blackwater. The curtains beside her were now threadbare and frayed, crumbling to ash. Sarah panted, breathless and dizzy from the sudden vision. She blinked hard several times, and the vision was gone.
She stood under the impossibly high ceiling, the stag head looking on with its glassy, indifferent eyes, trying to steady her heart – she’d seen the whole place burnt down and destroyed. Was that a vision of what would have happened had she not moved the candle as quickly as she had? Or was it of something still to happen? It wouldn’t be the first time a vision came to her when she was awake, and with her dreams having disappeared, maybe her gift had found a way to tell her what she needed to know.
What she needed now, for sure, was some tea to steady her nerves. She looked at her watch, twenty past three in the morning. She turned her back to the stag head and its staring eyes, and stepped out of the grand hall, pulling the thick door closed behind her. She stopped for a moment, trying to catch her still ragged breath.
She turned left on her way to the kitchen, considering how frozen her feet were, but something made her stop in front of her grandmother’s study. She hesitated for a second, and lifted her free hand to feel her butterfly earring dreamily – then, on impulse, she opened the door and stepped in.
She inhaled the scent of old books and damp that had always been the signature of that room. The candlelight illuminated the enormous bookshelves and the dark wooden desk at the farthest corner, where Sarah had found the letters. A painting of wild horses hung over the desk. Sarah’s eyes lingered on it. She walked on slowly, holding the candle so that its light would fall on the painting. The elusive memory that had visited her in the grand hall came back, shimmering faintly and disappearing, then reappearing for a second and fading again.
It’s important. Remember.
Sarah jumped out of her skin. The words had resounded in her mind as clearly as if they’d been spoken aloud. The hand holding the candle was trembling now.
“Can’t sleep?”
Sarah jumped again, turning around with a gasp. Nicholas’s tall, muscular body was framed in the doorway.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, advancing towards her. He slipped his hands under her jumper, feeling the skin on her shoulders. Sarah fixed her eyes on his obsidian ones.
“I woke up and you were gone,” he said.
“Sorry. I just wanted to have some time alone … with the house. If that makes sense.” She smiled apologetically.
“Am I interfering? Ruining your moment with the house?” He smiled back, his voice soft and dark.
“No, of course not,” she began, but his lips were on hers and she couldn’t speak anymore.
Remember. It’s important.
But her thoughts were unravelling already.
32
Runes
Take all I have
And when there’s nothing left for me to give
I’ll give you more
Because
He isn’t you
Sean
So this is the day after the night before. After realizing that Nicholas was sleeping in Sarah’s room, I wasted the rest of last night feeling sorry for myself.
Today Elodie asked me to teach her to trace the runes, and to my surprise, Sarah joined us. We spent all afternoon practising in the living room, with Sarah and I resolutely avoided meeting each other’s gaze. And with Nicholas looking on. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere in the room. But the runes may serve Sarah and Elodie well. We can’t be distracted by our feelings.
However, it doesn’t help that Sarah’s hair is loose down her back and she’s wearing the blue top I love, the one that shows her shoulders. She might as well be carving the runes into my heart.
“Right. Try this. It’s the most basic one.” I guide Elodie’s hand, tracing a simple rune.
They’re eager learners, especially Sarah – Elodie takes a little longer. Still, it doesn’t come easily to either of the girls. It’s strange for me to see, really. I never found the runes that difficult. I’m surprised to see how slow, how weak other people can be when they trace them. Even two powerful heirs like Sarah and Elodie. Maybe it’s because they just started and they need practice. Still, even the most basic ones seem challenging.
“No. Look. That won’t work. You need to be more focused.”
Elodie is getting frustrated. “You make it seem so easy!”
“It is easy! It is to me, at least.”
“To you, yes. Harry always said your use of the runes was incredible.”
I shrug. “Maybe. But you can learn, too, like I did.”
Elodie crosses her arms. “We’re useless, let’s face it.”
“Hey, speak for yourself. Look.” Sarah repeats the basic rune. The knife flies out of her hand, making a graceful arc across the room and wedging itself into the wooden floor.
“Duck!” laughs Nicholas.
“Ha ha.” Sarah walks over to where the knife fell, her heels clacking on the floor.
“Useless, like I said. How do you do it, Sean?” says Elodie.
“I don’t know. All you need to do is learn the different signs, really. Harry taught me, I can teach you.”
“Harry wasn’t as good as you, though. Remember Takeo Ayanami? He was so in awe of you when he saw you sending people to sleep with your runes.”
“Nonsense. It’s like playing an instrument. You have to practise, that’s all,” I insist.
“I play an instrument,” Sarah says. “I know what practice can do. But I still don’t get this. It’s as if I asked you to use the Blackwater. It won’t work.”
“It’s not like the Blackwater. The Blackwater is a power, like Niall’s song or Elodie’s poison. This is a skill.” I stress the word.
“So you keep telling us!” laughs Elodie.
“Maybe if you say ‘skill’ often enough, we’ll get it!” echoes Sarah.
“And what about the red ribbons?” Elodie waves her fingers in the air. “The ones that appeared when the soil demons attacked us?”
“That’s not supposed to happen. No idea what it was, or whether it’ll happen again. Right, lesson over, pupils dismissed.”
Niall has come into the living room and is leaning against the fireplace, his arms crossed. I see him look at me in a way that unnerves me, with eyes that see all the way into my soul. I’ve watched him and he does it with everybody. It’s disquieting.
“Did your parents have any powers, Sean?” he asks me in his thick Irish accent.
“No. Well, not that I know of.” I shrug.
“Right,” he says, looking at me with that strange, watery gaze he has, as if he were looking straight into the sea.
33
Adrift
If we pretend, it’s good enough for me
The illusion we create
Instead of what it is
“I don’t know what half of this stuff is. Chestnuts?” Sean shrugged.
Sean, Mike and Niall were in the kitchen helping Sarah survey the food Mrs McArthur had provided. She needed to make sure they had everything for a proper Christmas dinner, with a turkey and all the trimmings. They had tried to argue with her that it was surreal to go to all the trouble of making a traditional Christmas meal when they could be attacked any minute, but Sarah put her foot down. This was her house. She was going to cook, and she was going to have a proper festive celebration.
There was something desperate about her determination. Sean knew how upset she was, how she was trying to cling to a semblance of normal life. Her first Christmas without her parents. Maybe this would help her think of her aunt Juliet a bit less … and of her cousins, Sally and Siobhan, left motherless. All because Anne had married a Midnight. And because Sarah couldn’t defend her.
They had been over the same ground again and again, and Sarah was adamant. They would celebrate Christmas. They were alive, and together. In some warped way, it made sense.
“You don’t know what chestnuts are?” laughed Mike, looking up at Sean from the potatoes he was stacking.
“I do know what chestnuts are. I just don’t know what you do with them!” Sean protested.
“You make stuffing. For the turkey. Oh, thank goodness – chipolatas! She hasn’t forgotten.” Sarah had her head in the freezer, little icy clouds wafting from its drawers.
“Thank goodness!” echoed Niall.
“I know! It just wouldn’t be the same without chipolatas wrapped in bacon,” Sarah continued, pulling the icy package from the open freezer.
“I meant thank goodness for this!” Niall was standing by an open cupboard door with an amber-honey bottle of whisky grasped in one hand. Laphroaig, one of the Islay whiskies. He gestured to shelves full of similar bottles. “Bless Mrs McArthur. She knows her whisky.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. Of course. We have a few of those. Just try not to drink yourself asleep. In case they attack and we can’t wake you up.”
“Me? I can hold my drink, young lady. You’ll never see me passed out.”
“True. I can vouch for that!” said Mike. “Hey.”
Elodie had walked into the kitchen, her golden hair tied in a knot, her lithe body clad in a long, white woollen top and jeans.
“Sarah. Where can I find more peat for my fire, please? I’ve run out. And it’s so cold.” She was pale and shivery.
Niall smiled at her. “Oh, it’s the deadly princess. Hello,” he said. “I’ll get your briquettes. Care to share a coffee with me? I was just making one.” He spooned some granules into a mug.
“And what’s this?” Sean, still wearing a puzzled expression, held up something he’d found in the fruit bowl. “Do you know, Elodie?” He reached out his hand to offer her the fruit.
Elodie turned to look, and all the blood drained from her face. Gingerly she took the red fruit from Sean’s hand, locking her eyes on his and brushing his fingers with hers as she did so. Then she turned and ran out of the kitchen without a word.
Mike shrugged his shoulders. “What was that all about?”
“No idea,” replied Sean, disconcerted, and ran after Elodie at once.
Sarah’s gaze followed Sean as he left the room. She bit her lip, then turned back to her list. “Right. Where was I?” she said resolutely.
“What was it? The fruit?” asked Niall.
“A pomegranate,” said Sarah. She opened the freezer door, sighed deeply, then closed it again. She untied her apron.
“You OK?” asked Mike.
“Of course. I’m just going to look for Nicholas.”
“Sarah.” Mike had a gentle smile on his lips as he put a hand on her arm.
“What?”
“Listen to your heart.”
Sarah winced and looked away. “I’m trying. But there’s always too much noise.”
Sean
I have no idea what I’ve done to upset Elodie. I’m halfway to her room when she runs past me in the opposite direction, and out the front door. I follow her outside, determined to make amends. It’s another windy, rainy day, as it’s been since we arrived. Twilight is nearly upon us, though it’s barely afternoon. Days last a heartbeat on this island.
Elodie is running towards the beach, towards the sea. I look up at the sky as I follow her; I fear another appearance of the demon-bird. I reach Elodie just as she stops in front of the watermark, the waves lapping at her feet.
“Elodie.”
She turns around, and I’m astonished – she’s crying, but she’s smiling as well.
“What’s the matter? Did you see something? Did you have a vision?”
Elodie shakes her head, and she fixes her brown eyes on mine. “I can’t explain. You would laugh.”
“Try me.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again and shakes her head softly. She’s not going to tell me. I feel a wave of tenderness for her, my old friend, Harry’s wife. Harry’s widow. She’s all eyes, having lost so much weight, and her hair shines golden in the dusky light. I stroke her cheek. She takes my hand and pulls it to her chest, over her heart. She keeps it there, and I can feel her heartbeat, so steady and regular and yet, so fragile.
“Sean.”
And then something strange happens. Something that should not have happened, and that I didn’t see coming.
She puts her lips on mine, and she kisses me, tenderly, for a moment only. And for a moment only I want to kiss her back, feel her hands on me, lose myself in her. I want to take her behind those rocks where a group of seals are dozing, out of sight, and be with her. Just once. Just long enough to feel alive again. I’m only human, and I’ve been alone for so long – and she’s so, so beautiful.
But I can’t, because my heart belongs to Sarah. It’s as simple as that.
Elodie looks into my eyes, and she reads my thoughts. She gives me a heartbreaking smile and walks away without a word, without looking back, along the water’s edge. I watch her walk slowly, her head turned towards the sea. Her hair has come undone, and it’s blowing behind her. She’s so slight against the backdrop of the ocean. I can’t leave her alone, as much as I know she needs solitude. Not with the demon-bird around the house, and who knows what else. I’m as certain as I can possibly be that we are not safe. I look up at the sky again, anxious.
But it’s empty.
They don’t come from the air this time, they come from the water. Just as my gaze returns to Elodie, I see long, thin jelly-like tentacles bursting out of the water, wrapping themselves around Elodie’s waist and dragging her under so fast that she doesn’t even have time to scream.
34
From the Water
The depths of the sea
Are home to me
I’m one of those beings
Who should not be
Sean
I can only call her name, over and over again, as Elodie is thrown into the air and then pulled underwater with splashes and sprays of liquid grey. I take out my sgian-dubh, but do runes work underwater? I’ve never tried. How far has the demon gone? Is it swimming away from the shore? For a second, I feel there is no hope. I’m sure that Elodie is going to die there and then, just after our ill-fated kiss.
“Elodie! No! Elodie!” I hear a voice calling in despair, broken, full of terror, and the voice is mine.
And then a thought makes its way through the panic. If I stand on the shore, the demon will get me too. I have to turn away. I have to run. I have to leave Elodie to her fate because there’s no way I can save her and save myself too. And I must save myself. For the fight.
I know that it’s what I should do. But I can’t. To turn my back on Elodie and run is just impossible. I can’t.
That leaves only one option. To run into the sea and take the one-in-a-million chance that one of us, or both of us, might survive. Though my head is telling me that what will really happen, of course, is that we’ll both die.
“Sean! Don’t!”
I turn around just as I’m about to dive, and see Niall running towards the water. He stops right on the shoreline, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and throws his head back. A long, powerful, chilling wail comes out of his mouth. I throw myself on the sand, my hands on my ears – but even that is not enough to block out the terrible sound. I can feel the sand lifting up in a whirlpool around us – it’s stinging my cheeks and blinding me. I barely manage to make out the surface of the sea rising, and the water starting to turn into itself over and over again, until it becomes a colossal waterspout, a sea tornado, rising high in the sky.
I’m drenched and half blind, and my ears are in agony. The sound of Niall’s song is still audible over the noise of the swirling water, and of the unnatural wind born from Niall’s power. I try to drag myself up, but I’m flogged down again – once, twice – grains of sand lashing my face like steely whips. I open my mouth to call for Elodie, but it fills with wet sand, and I choke. The pain in my ears is so unbearable I think I’m going to pass out. I don’t know how long I can bear this.
I half-open my eyes and try to peer over to where Niall is standing. He’s a few inches off the ground by now, his arms thrown open, as if he’s being crucified. His head is tilted back at an impossible angle, his features twisted in pain. A few more seconds of torture for both of us, and then out of the spinning waters soars a huge, light-pink mass, its tentacles flailing and whipping the waves. The demon is propelled out of the water and lands on the sand with a thud. Niall’s song finally stops, and he falls to the sand, empty, unmoving.
I cough and splutter, my mouth and nose and lungs full of sand. I realize that my hands are covered in blood – am I wounded? No time to worry about that. Niall is lying on the ground, senseless, and there’s no trace of Elodie. A split-second choice between the two, and I go for the one who’s in the most danger.
“Elodie!” I call, and run into the freezing waves until I’m waist-deep. I’m about to dive under when a strange call resounds from the rocks. A seal is standing upright, barking. I don’t know what forces me to look again, but something in the seal’s call makes me do a double take. And that’s how I spot something beside the seal, something golden against the grey skin of the animal.
“Elodie! Oh my God, Elodie.” I look around wildly, trying to work out the quickest way to reach her, and without any further thought I dive into the freezing sea and swim as strongly as I’m able towards the rocks. When I emerge, the seal is gone, and a girl is sitting in its place. She’s cradling Elodie’s head in her lap, brushing away Elodie’s soaking hair from her face.
“Elodie!” I call, sputtering water. The girl looks at me. I realize she’s naked, but for her long, dripping hair, a strange shade of silvery-lilac.
Is she human?
I lift myself onto the rocks and place my hands over Elodie’s chest. She’s breathing. She’s alive!
“Thank you,” I whisper to the girl.
“You’re welcome,” she replies, and her voice has a light Scottish lilt to it. She’s not embarrassed in the slightest by her nudity.
“Sean.” Elodie’s eyes open and she starts coughing up water. I help her sit up.
“I’m here. It’s OK, it’s over. Niall killed the demon.”
She looks utterly stunned. “Who … who are you?” murmurs Elodie, turning to the silver-haired girl.
“I’m Winter Shaw.”
“Of course.” Elodie looks at Winter’s face intently. “I dreamt of you once. Remember, Sean?” She shivers violently. She’s soaking, and the cold wind is cutting us to the quick. Strangely, the naked young woman is not showing any signs of being cold. I’d like to ask her a few questions, but first I need to make sure that Niall is OK.
“Can you walk?” I ask Elodie.
“I think so.”
I turn to the mysterious girl. “Will you come with us?”
“Yes. I think it’s time.”
There isn’t time to wonder what she means. Niall is doubled over some way away across the beach, and he’s holding himself as if in excruciating pain. We make our way across the rocks, hopping from stone to stone until we reach him.
“Elodie?” he murmurs. Relief shines from his grimacing face.
“I’m OK. Niall, you saved my life – you, and Winter.”
“Winter?” whispers Niall.
The silver-haired girl kneels next to him. “It’s me. I am Winter.”
Niall picks himself up with exertion and looks at the silver-haired girl. I see his eyes widen. “Elemental,” he whispers.
“Half Elemental, half human. The best of both,” smiles Winter, innocent in her nakedness.
“Er, here.” Elodie takes off her soaking jacket and hands it to Winter.
But she shrugs. “I’m not cold.”
“It’s more for us, really,” I mumble, and look away.
She laughs. “Oh, sorry. I forget the way things are for people. I haven’t often been in my human form in the last few years.”
“Lucky you,” says Niall gently.
Winter looks at Niall as if she sees him for the first time. “You’re of the sea,” she states, wrapping Elodie’s jacket around herself. “A Secret heir?”
“Yes.” Niall’s voice is very, very soft. I expect him to make a joke, or pay Winter some kind of naff compliment, but he doesn’t. He’s deadly serious, and staring at her, unable to look away.
“Ow,” he says suddenly, and folds himself in two again, holding his stomach.
“Are you hurt?” I put my arm around his shoulders.
“No. It’s just that … it was all so sudden. No time to take the song slowly. It can be overwhelming when it happens like that. The pain’ll pass soon, though. Where’s the demon?”
“Over there, on the shore.” I look over to the huge pink mass, as big as a car, quivering on the sand. Some of its tentacles are tangled under and around it, some are stretched for hundreds of yards across the sand.
“Sean!” gasps Elodie suddenly. “You’re bleeding!”
I touch my ears, then look at the blood on my fingers. “Niall, you were supposed to kill the demon, not me!”
“Sorry. I can’t help it. The song takes on its own momentum. You’ll be OK, anyway. The noise didn’t last long enough to kill you.”
“Just as well,” I growl, while Elodie touches my face lightly, checking for bruising. “Let’s go back to the house and get dried up. You can tell us all about yourself, Winter. And meet Sarah.”
“Oh, I know all about Sarah Midnight. I used to play with her aunt Mairead,” Winter says simply.
“You what? How old are you?” asks Elodie.
“I’ll tell you all once we’re back at the—Watch out!” Winter yells suddenly, pointing over our shoulders. Before I have time to turn around, a long, slippery tentacle lands with a thump between me and Elodie, missing us by a few inches. Niall is clutching an angry red mark on the side of his face, where the flailing tentacle swept him.
“It’s not dead!” screams Elodie.
“No. But this time it’s on land,” I reply. My sgian-dubh is in my hand in a second, and I start tracing the runes with all the fury I felt when I thought Elodie had drowned.
The Surari launches its tentacles towards us – once, twice, and again. Elodie, Niall and Winter duck and avoid it the first time, and the second – but the third time it takes a grip of Niall’s arm and throws him down on the sand. It’s beginning to drag him towards the water, and I see Niall opening his mouth and trying to sing but no noise is coming out, he has given all there was to give saving Elodie. He’s spent. Fear is painted all over his face as the demon tightens its grip, enveloping Niall’s arms, his chest. Flynns can’t die in water, but having their ribs crushed will kill them.
At last, my runes start working. Every trace in the air makes a cut in the creature’s skin, black demon blood spurting from the wounds. The wind is roaring in my ears, and I see red. I can’t stop cutting and stabbing and slicing the air, and with it, the demon – until its tentacles stop flailing at last and it lies still, with Niall still wrapped in its loosened grip.
A pause, a heartbeat, while everyone makes sure they’re still alive.
“That was close,” croaks Niall in the silence that follows, freeing himself from the dead weight of the tentacle and throwing it heavily on the wet sand. His face is scratched and bloodied where the tentacle hit him and where he’d been dragged across the beach. He’s sitting with his head in his hands, and I can see he’s shaking. “Now can we get out of here?” he asks.
“We better drag the demon into the sea first,” I point out as soon as I can catch my breath. “We don’t want any hill walkers spotting a prehistoric jellyfish on the beach.”
“It would boost tourism. Like the Loch Ness Monster,” says Winter with her Scottish lilt – and surprisingly, unexpectedly, we laugh.