‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi.’ I keep on walking, and she falls in next to me.
‘I’m sorry about the other day,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realize.’
‘Realize what?’
‘About your parents, that it was true. Mum said you were living with the Frazers because . . . well. You know.’
I carry on walking. It’s cold, and I didn’t bring that much winter stuff with me. Mary made me borrow a scarf, and it’s itchy, and it smells of her, which I’m not quite sure I’m one hundred per cent enjoying.
‘So what happened to them?’ Grace asks.
I stop, turn to her. ‘What?’
‘Your parents. I just wondered,’ she says quickly, catching the look on my face. ‘That’s all.’
‘Burglary,’ I say, turning and marching on towards school. The pavements sparkle with frost, and my boots crunch against them. Big black boots, to keep my feet on the ground. Mum always laughed at my boots. She said they made my legs look like golf clubs.
‘And you were there? Mum said . . .’
‘Your mum says a lot.’
‘Yeah.’
I look sideways at her. I can’t tell whether she’s trying to be friendly or collecting gossip.
‘So were you, there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. That must have been . . .’ She looks up as we reach the school gates. A tall blonde girl is waiting and looks at us with a puzzled expression, raising an eyebrow at her. ‘Well,’ says Grace. ‘I just thought I’d say hi. See you in there.’ She runs off to join the other girl, and I follow them at a distance, my eyes out for Bavar. I had this whole speech ready, about not roaring at friends, and how we can fight those creatures together. But he doesn’t come in to school at all, and that’s far worse than anything Grace could ever say or do.
I’ve never skipped a day of school before, not since Sal suggested I start there last year. Aoife was a bit sceptical, and Grandfather was horrified, but they always avoid Grandfather anyway, so they just ignored his shouting, and I covered him with the tablecloth to keep him quiet. Aoife went ahead and enrolled me, and after a while it didn’t seem so strange. After a while it seemed like about the only thing that really made sense. It was a good place to be, away from the monsters and the madness of this house.
Now it’s different. Angel saw me, and now she’s seen the raksasa too. She stood there and shouted my name, and the creature smelt her blood, and I panicked and hit out, to stop it hurling itself at the barrier, to stop it getting to her. My fist against its warm skin, and magic leapt between us, and it wheeled away instantly. I won. But now there will be more. Now they have smelt human blood, now they have felt my power, sensed my fear.
Aoife made what she calls my favourite supper when I got in last night, because she was proud of me. She doesn’t understand why I don’t want to fight.
‘It’s what generations of our family have done,’ she said, flitting around the kitchen as I sat at the table and thought of those amber eyes, the red of its skin, the sail-like wings that make a sound I can’t describe. ‘They have fought, to protect this town – to protect the world! Your parents would be proud, Bavar. And I mean that in a good way. They weren’t all bad.’ She set a platter before me, its ivy pattern completely obliterated by the huge, bloody steak she had barely cooked, a sprig of green on top. My stomach rolled.
‘I know you have doubts,’ she said, pouring boiling water into a huge brown teapot as Uncle Sal came in. ‘But you can do this, Bavar. You can do whatever you set your mind to, and you can do it all in your own way. That’s what going to school is all about. Remember? So that you would know humanity, as well as all of this. It will all be OK.’
Sal sat across from me. His pale eyes were steady behind his glasses. ‘One step at a time, Bavar, that’s all you can do.’ He frowned at my plate. ‘Goodness. There’s half a cow there!’
‘It’s good for him,’ Aoife said. ‘Nourishing.’
I pushed it away. ‘No, thank you.’
She tutted and sat next to me, pouring the tea. ‘We’re with you, Bavar. Maybe not out there – but in here, we are all with you.’
There was a deafening roar as the portraits through the house responded to her. Cheers of ‘Bavar!’ and ‘Our boy!’ And Aoife smiled, and Uncle Sal buttered a piece of toast with his usual precision, and they meant well. They always mean well. But I sent the creature back with a strike of my hand, and so there will be more.
Aoife doesn’t know quite what to say to me now. She can tell something’s wrong, and she knows I’ll only talk when I’m ready, so she’s been baking all day, and not a bit of it looks like it’d be actually edible.
‘Why did you say she was a catalyst?’ I ask her, sitting at the kitchen table and picking crumbs off a blackened piece of something or other.
She gives me a long look. ‘Because she shifted something in you. You’re connected, somehow.’
‘I don’t see how we can be. Neither does Grandfather.’
She bristles at the mention of him. ‘Well, perhaps he doesn’t. But I’m fairly sure you know what I’m talking about, Bavar. Nothing has been the same since the day she started at your school, has it? That day you came back all hassled because she saw you just as you really are, you’d grown an inch! She did that. And she made you strike out last night, didn’t she? Made you go out there in the first place, probably . . .’
‘She was nothing to do with it!’ I burst.
Aoife raises her eyebrows and turns back to her baking. I take a deep breath and try to wind myself back in. It’s harder than usual. Everything is, since Angel came. And I know that makes Aoife right, but I don’t really feel like saying that.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say eventually. ‘About missing school. I’ll go back, after the weekend.’
‘It’s all right,’ she says after a while, sifting flour into an enormous bowl. The low winter sun shines through the kitchen window and catches all the copper pots hanging up above the counters. ‘You have enough to deal with. I know the nights are getting harder. One day off school,’ she raises her shoulders. ‘I called them, told them you had a bug.’ She looks up then with a funny little smile. ‘You do have a bug, don’t you?’
I don’t know whether she means the raksasa or Angel. Or both. I shrug, and watch as she cracks eggs into the bowl, flinging the empty shells into the sink.
Angel saw me, up on the roof. She saw the raksasa, saw me strike out against it. And I don’t know how to face her after that, catalyst or not.