Legacies unmasked, p.21
Legacies Unmasked, page 21
“I’m trying to touch you.”
“From the other side of the room?” he asks sceptically. “Who are you, Mr Tickle now?”
From the other side of the room, I jab him in the arm: a careful punch—small and playful. He raises his eyebrows and smiles.
“Yes, from the other side of the room. I’m trying to make it smaller, so it’s more like a touch than a punch. Punching is so much easier.”
“Such a warrior. What do I need to do?”
“Just keep still and tell me if you feel anything.”
I concentrate on trying to touch him lightly, like I’m using a touch screen. He’s telling me when he can feel it, so I know I’m accurate.
Until he says, “Jesus, angel. Where were you aiming?”
“Huh? Belly button.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Too low.”
“Oh, shit, sorry.” I’m so fucking mortified, I could die. “Caleb, I’m…”
He’s laughing his head off. “Lord, your face.”
“Wanker,” I mutter, giving his forehead an air slap, which doesn’t stop his laughter at all.
I continue with my light prodding.
“I feel like a pin cushion,” he grumbles. “I’ll be covered in little bruises.”
“Sorry, it’s supposed to be light.” I edge around the bed and stroke his arm gently with my finger. “Like this.”
He shakes his head and folds his arms defensively. “It was nothing like that.”
“Sorry. Magnus says you’ve been helping out with wedding stuff.”
His smile is soft. “Yeah, I’m good with my hands.”
“We’re on that again, are we?”
“Not like that, pervert. Carpentry. I’ve been making benches for the guests to sit on. I made one shaped like an apple core. More of a gift for Magnus and Eden… to thank them for… well, for everything, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him.”
“Aww, Caleb.”
“Yeah, I know. Pathetic. He loved it though. And I made a wedding arch out of silver birches. Eden and Glenda are gonna decorate it. I know bugger all about flowers.”
“Being busy’s good?”
He nods. “It’s about time I sorted myself out. Glenda invited me to the wedding, and the last thing I want after everyone’s generosity is to make a holy show of myself.”
I smile. “You won’t. I have faith in you.”
“Maybe when I’m better, I’ll take you for that drive.”
I don’t want to upset him while he’s fragile, so I say, “Something to look forward to.”
There’s no way I’m getting into Caleb’s clown car with the horn that farts out La Cucaracha. It’s the sort of car where, in the event of an accident, you’d rather slide into the footwell and risk gouging out your brain with your own kneecaps than put on the seatbelt and have people see you. He says it’s a classic; I’m certain he doesn’t know what that word means. For someone with such a smooth reputation, it’s a miracle he ever gets laid driving that thing around.
I shake my hands and step back a few paces. “Let me try again.”
I focus on Caleb’s arm until my thoughts spiral into nothing. The room is black, Caleb’s arm a disembodied thing. The air around it ripples, and I feel the flesh of his arm like it’s beneath my fingertips.
He gasps. “Whoa, what are you doing?”
“What does it feel like?”
“Like a giant ribbon’s coiling around my arm, spiralling down to my wrist like a snake.”
“It feels like I’m actually touching you,” I admit. “Usually, I just feel the air. I mean, not at first. The first time I ever hit someone with air, I thought I’d hit them with my elbow, but I didn’t know anything about myself then. It’s always just blasting at the air until I hit something, but this… I can feel your skin.”
Caleb shudders, and his face goes waxy. “Can we be done with this? I’m not feeling too grand, to be honest.”
“Yeah, go on. Lie down.”
He curls up on his side and turns his back to me.
“Do you need anything before I go?” I ask him.
“I’ll be right as rain after a quick kip.”
I fold the gross zebra over his shaking body and leave.
When I get upstairs, Archer and Ezra are bellowing at each other outside the kitchen.
Yesterday, Ezra took his sulking to the next level. I’m pretty sure he’s getting pro tips from Amethyst. I don’t know what Eden objected to so strongly—all anybody would tell me was that it was something about Ezra’s outfit for the wedding—but she allegedly muttered five words guaranteed to set Ezra off like no other: What will the neighbours think?
Eden usually gives absolutely zero shits what the neighbours think, but ever since the Blackmore women said she’d let herself go—which she hadn’t—she’s been weird about a lot of things. She even argued with Glenda about it, and I’ve never seen them argue before. There was a lot of huffing and flapping, and Glenda’s Yorkshire accent went wild.
Ezra stormed off wearing a full face of make-up, and it turned out the real world wasn’t as accommodating as the priory. As far as the real world is concerned, wearing make-up is cute when you’re twelve, but not so much when you’re tall and have already started shaving.
He called Seth an hour later to come get him. He arrived home with a black eye and a cut on his eyebrow, which is currently held together with two thin plaster strips. According to Seth, the guys who attacked him came off worse. Apparently, mud projectiles don’t commonly detach themselves from the ground and fling themselves at bullies’ faces in Oxfordshire, so Michael had to rearrange their memories.
Eden said that was exactly what she was worried about. That nobody cared if a girl dressed in masculine clothes, but boys rarely got away with feminine clothes without facing verbal abuse or worse. Ezra said clothes are just fabric—not masculine, not feminine—and told her to stop buying into the gender binary. She feels bad about it. Glenda had to deal with the cuts because Eden’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Now Ezra’s yelling at Archer that he’s not going to the wedding at all, and Seth’s not around to calm him down, so Archer is trying and failing. His calming ripples are not doing their job today. Unseen by them both, Ben sits on the stairs with his head on his knees, and his hands over his ears. And in the end, that’s all it takes to get Ezra to calm down: knowing he’s upset his twin.
Archer follows me to my room, leaving the twins to comfort each other. He says he’s got something important to tell me, and keeps looking around like he’s being hunted. I figure the melodrama is rubbing off on him, but that’s not it at all.
As soon as I close the door behind us, he blurts, “The car’s alive.”
Archer on the edge of panic is a disaster to behold.
“What?”
He crashes into my old orange fan, knocking it into the wardrobe and leaving a dent behind. “Shit, I’m sorry, Vi.” He stands it up, gives it a pat on the head, then walks into the ceiling beam. “Oh, f-fuckety-fuck.”
I grab his arms when he staggers backwards. “Duck.”
He does as he’s told, biting his lip the whole time, and I push him onto the bed. With his eyes still closed, he asks, “How bad is it?”
I push his curls off his forehead, revealing a red line just starting to bruise blue beneath it. “Not too bad. No blood at least. You feel okay?”
He shakes his head and lies back. “Not this. I mean, this hurts, but it’ll pass. But no, I’m not alright because my car is alive. Alive.”
“Explain.”
“Right, so I’ve been testing… since last week. Promise you won’t think I’m crazy. I can’t even tell Leia. Shit, what if I am crazy?” He sits up and looks at me, eyes wild like he’s on something. “What if I’m going crazy, Vi?”
“Tell me what happened first.”
“I was in the kitchen, and the car horn was blaring. I figured it was the alarm. Because why the hell would it be honking unless that’s what the alarm sounds like? So, I rush out there, and she’s rocking backwards and forwards… literally making a rut in the gravel. And she flung the door open, and as soon as I got in, she started driving. I almost fell out, but she slammed the door in my face.” He laughs nervously. “Then we followed you to London.”
“You knew it was me you were following?”
“Yeah, I felt you echo… but it was like that time at dinner.” He looks at me for an explanation.
“I echoed Michael.”
He nods. “Once I figured out what was happening, I drove… but don’t you get it? She saw what was happening. She saw it, and alerted me. She was protecting you.”
I knew it. From the first time I sat in that car, I knew there was something special beyond her magical boot. The way she purrs and growls like she’s got a personality, like she’s nurturing and protective. And obviously, I feel like an idiot thinking those things because she’s a car, and cars aren’t sentient. But Archer’s car is; she’s special.
My smile grows. “I told you she likes me.”
Amethyst is done with college for the summer, and she’s bringing Noah home with her.
Albert texts me from the drive.
They’re here.
I meet them at the door, but everyone else is waiting in the drawing room. All of them. Noah doesn’t know what he’s in for.
Albert crosses the drive stiffly, tutting when he glances over his shoulder, where Amethyst and Noah are kissing in the back of the car.
“All the way here.” He looks at me, but nods at the car. “Like that. I had the music turned up, and I could still hear them. I felt like a chauffeur without the added benefit of a partition.”
“They can’t be worse than Archer and Leia.”
“They are noisier, I swear it.”
Albert goes into the house while I tap on the car window. “Out you get. You’ll have an audience if you don’t follow Albert in.”
Noah blushes and flusters his way through the introductions while Amethyst smiles wistfully at him. When Glenda asks him how he wants his coffee, he says, “Black, no sugar,” and he and Amethyst share this heated look. I mean, it’s embarrassing.
I elbow Kite because she keeps staring at him. She and Archer are amused by his more than passing resemblance to Amethyst’s favourite armchair. Seth is utterly and genuinely mystified by the comparison, almost taking offence on Boxer’s behalf. Leia says she can’t see it at all, which must be a lie to appease Seth because I catch her smirking.
Archer and Daniel picked her up this morning, and we’ve spent most of the day watching her fiddling with our wedding clothes. Now she’s bonding with my sister over their mutual love of gore and toddlers, and their combined lack of self preservation.
I’m banned from talking to anyone about Archer’s car, including Albert, and especially Leia. Archer doesn’t want to talk to Greg about the car again, and turned into a thundering tower of Magnus when I suggested he ask Jed. I get the impression Mr Harvey used the car before, but neither of us think he’s a good bet.
That leaves Raguel. Archer spent ages figuring out how to ask Lucifer to invite Raguel to his wedding, only to find Raguel had already declined. Then Lucifer offered a distant silver lining: Raguel will be at the Blackmore picnic. It’s a month away, but it’s something.
Now, we’re all in the garden, crammed around three tables, filled to our necks with pre-wedding day feast.
Caleb emerged from his dungeon earlier, looking better than he did yesterday. He’s sitting with Glenda and Eden, who are orbiting him like a pair of fussy satellites, making sure his back is to the steel bin filled with ice and beer bottles.
The sun is setting, the sky Turner-esque in its fieriness. The scent of sun-warmed grass and Albert surrounds me.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I whisper, tuning out Kite’s rant about the little lavender pot on the table, and how it reminds her of Asha—her awful grandmother—and her disgusting lavender hand cream.
Opposite us, Boxer chuckles, Seth raises an eyebrow, and Kite sighs, muttering under her breath as she stalks off to sit with Glenda, who’s drunk nothing all day except the calming tea Albert made especially for her pre-wedding nerves.
When Albert and I pass their table, Kite is ruffling Caleb’s hair, and he’s grinning up at her, dimples flashing while he waffles on about his hidden depths.
The air hums with laughter and grasshoppers as I drag Albert towards the woods. As soon as the shadows swallow us, I push him against a tree for some sweet kissing, but he loses his footing and falls sideways into a bush, which sets him on fire and spits him back onto the grass.
I am so good at seduction. Truly.
He lies still, a fiery haze covering him for a moment before dying out. I kneel beside him on the grass, checking his skin for burns. Nothing. His eyes are still closed, so I give him a shake. I’m about to echo Seth for help, when Albert grabs me and pulls me on top of him. I squeal in an embarrassing fashion.
“That stung like the devil,” he murmurs against my lips, feeding me one lazy kiss after another. “I forgot how much they hurt.”
“Been a long time, has it?” I smile against his mouth, wondering if he’ll admit to spying on me. I mean, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but…
“Not really. People don’t use them much anymore. It was here actually. I was watching you juggle rosskas… um… horse chestnuts?”
“I knew it was you.” I slap his chest. “Sorry you got stung though. I forgot they were there.”
“Never mind. It’s the thought that counts. So, what exactly were you thinking before my graceless fall?”
I show him what I was thinking while my brain forgets how to think completely. When we roll onto our backs, warm and breathless, the sky is ablaze, clouds lit summer gold from below.
I turn to Albert, to his bronze-tipped eyelashes, and sharp, silver eyes. His lips soften into a smile because he knows I’m watching, but he doesn’t look at me. I run a finger down his forehead, over his nose, and when I get to his lips, he tips his head back to kiss my finger. I need to paint him, so that’s what we do.
I take him to my studio, where he sits for me for the first time, and things get colourful and somewhat naked.
When we join the others, our hands scrubbed clean—or as close as mine ever get—I can’t stop smiling, knowing the handprints I left on his body are tightening his skin beneath his clothes, just like the ones on mine are.
It’s been a perfect day. Now, we just have to get through the actual wedding without incident.
18
The Wedding
Despite Glenda’s protests about not wanting anyone making a fuss—do I look like a blushing bride in first bloom to you?—Rhiannon and Eden went all out. Every table is draped in white linen and decorated with greenery, wildflowers, and candles. Strings of lights hang between posts decorated like maypoles. Caleb’s benches are arranged like a flattened amphitheatre, facing the raised platform with its flower-laden arch. Large pots filled with geraniums and clusters of helium balloons mark the boundary of the garden because we don’t have a hedge anymore. This was Rhiannon’s idea to stop little ones going too far. She’s convinced they’ll all stop for balloons, giving their parents time to catch up. So far, she’s not wrong.
War and his wife are the first to arrive, their army of kids lured immediately to the trampoline set up at the side of the house. Then the Blackmores turn up—so many Blackmores. Then the Tullys. The last time so many people invaded the priory, we were under attack.
I wasn’t wearing a dress then, or attempting to walk in heels on rain-softened grass. I also wasn’t dragging around a ten-stone barnacle. Kite is glued to me. With Seth’s help, she chose an indigo silk suit, the same colour as her newly dyed undercut. We might as well be squeezed into the same dress, she’s that close.
“I told them,” she whispers.
“What?”
“Last night, I told them I’m going to… that I want to be a guy… that I am a guy.”
“Wow, okay. Do I call you—”
“No. No changes yet. I need to… get up the nerve to tell everyone else.”
“They won’t care. I mean, they’ll care—”
“No, I just… I’m not ready. Archer knows, and Glenda and Lucifer, and now you.”
“And they were okay?”
“Yeah. Mum apologised for trying to make me wear a dress, and Dad said he knew already, which… Well, it’s what I thought he meant that day in your studio. Remember?”
Lucifer had looked Kite up and down and said the disguise was very convincing.
“Yeah, he was a proper wanker that day.”
“I’ve been reading a tonne of stuff. I feel really stupid for… never mind.”
I wait in case she has anything more to say. This is a big deal, and I don’t want to push. It’ll be weird thinking her and she now. Finally, I have what I’m convinced is an epiphany. “What about they?”
Kite shoots me a wide-eyed grimace. “Violet, no. She is fine for now.”
“Sorry.” I squeeze her arm. “Thanks for telling me.”
She goes red, then sniffs and squints into the distance. She nudges me at the arrival of three men dressed in black. I only recognise two of them.
The Blackmore women follow them with their eyes. Luckily, the nuns haven’t been invited; they would’ve swarmed them by now. One is Gabriel, who stops walking to speak to Alex Blackmore, but Uriel waves at me while he and the one I don’t recognise keep walking towards us. The other one is blonde and scraggly like Lucifer, his long hair half-pinned up at the back of his head.
