CHAPTER TEN

Autumn

It was the sound of grunts that first reached my ears: rhythmic, unbroken, and oblivious to the whimpers that began to emerge as an echo.

It’s just a dream, I told myself as the scene gradually came into a blurry focus, pillars disappearing into the darkness as I moved toward the source of sound, though really I wished to get as far away as possible.

Two trees stood close together, like prison bars, and between them I could see the outline of a figure, grotesque and hunchbacked, with the hair and skirts of a woman; it was from this creature, thrusting itself against the tree, attacking it, that the sounds came.

Shards of bark floated to the ground like sawdust as its pale skin met with the trunk, drops of blood joining them from a set of fingertips drooping toward the forest floor.

But as I slipped between the two trees, I realized the horrible truth that the gloom had concealed.

It was not one figure, but two: a man with his back to me, hunched over the collapsing form of a woman, her torn skirts bunched up around her thighs; it was onto her, and not the tree, that he forced himself.

I circled them, trying to move closer but never managing to close the distance. Instead, she came into sharper focus, and I could see how her hair was so dark it neared black, and how her eyes shone a disturbingly familiar color: violet, glossy because she sobbed.

The rest of her face was in shadow. But I could hear her pain. I closed my own eyes, wishing to blot away their forms with darkness, but their outlines were burned onto the back of my eyelids. Only then did it occur to me to scream. And I did. A horrific, dreadful, spine-chilling scream that was not my own as it chased around empty hallways, echoing.

I woke to the sound of the whistling kettle downstairs. Though my clock read seven, I did not move. Another one. Worse this time. I closed my eyes, trying to merge the dark and tangled curling hair of the woman I had just seen with the straight, sleek hair of the girl whose image I knew to be Violet Lee’s. I hoped it was a struggle because they were not one and the same.

I knew there was no way I could face school. Sliding out of bed and pulling a dressing gown on, I approached my mirror to see what damage needed to be done. Not much. I look awful. My eyes were already puffy—I must have been crying in the night—and my nose and cheeks were red-raw from the cold the evening before. My hair, too, was a mess.

Shuffling into the kitchen, I saw my parents unpacking papers from files. I continued shuffling toward the fridge, allowing my slippers to screech against the tiled flooring. I contemplated adding a cough for effect, but my father was already blocking my way; hand on my forehead, feeling my temperature.

“You’re freezing, Autumn.” He took another look at me. “I think you should stay home from school. You must have caught a chill from being out in that rain yesterday.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mother narrowing her own eyes.

I knew I should put up some sort of protest myself, for authenticity. “But Father—”

“No disagreeing. Just blame the mean prince for it all,” he joked, but his eyes, also puffy, told the real story. He bent down to kiss the top of my head and turned me by my shoulders so I faced the hallway again. “Now back to bed with you.”

They were going out for the day, and as soon as I heard the front door shut, I changed into fresh clothes and cleaned away the smudged leftover makeup from under my eyes. Then I curled up on my window seat and watched the people who lived on my road beginning their days, shifting dustbins around, starting cars, and herding schoolchildren along the pavement. Opposite, the fisherman’s son threw lobster pots into the back of his truck, stamping his cigarette out with his boot.

“You were right, Fallon Athenea,” I whispered. “I do want to live as a human.”

It took a lot of willpower to go in to work the next day. But I knew that having to cancel for my detention had put me on very thin ice with my employer, and it was the only café on the harbor willing to take on a Sagean teenager.

The air was still damp and speckled with rain, but I walked into town anyway. The bus wasn’t an option, as I was running low on money—I had no access to my wealth without my parents’ permission; they certainly weren’t going to give me an allowance—and I needed what I had left for the bus to and from school if the weather turned bad again.

As I walked, I passed the newsstand and paused, scanning the headlines of the tabloids and local newspapers. There wasn’t even as much as a hint about the Athenea, and royals would have made the front page. I had already checked the broadsheets at breakfast. Again, there had been nothing. The injunctions are working so far then.

The Closed signwas still up on the door when I got to the café. Inside, my boss glowered at me from where she sat working out pay slips, and all was quiet behind the counter. I lowered my eyes and hoped she was angry because I had missed work for my detention and not because of what had happened last time I had a shift.

Sophie was working again, and when I entered the kitchen she backed behind Nathan.

There were no pleasantries this morning.

“You didn’t answer my texts again,” Nathan accused.

I halted and stood my ground in the doorway. “You gave those humans hope when you knew I couldn’t save that man!”

“I was just trying to help,” he countered.

“You made me look awful. School has been hell!”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, but didn’t really sound it.

I shrugged and went out to prepare the café for opening. Even though seeing the man’s dead body had been an all-too-horrible reminder of the death of my grandmother, it wasn’t the death that bothered me, or even the appearance of the Extermino. It was Nathan’s reaction . . . it hadn’t been him that day, and it hadn’t been him in the kitchen just now. He was too callous, and not the lighthearted person he usually was.

But when I went back to the kitchen, he had recovered.

“C’mon, enlighten me then,” he said, leaning on the edge of the sink. “What was so important on Thursday that you ditched us all?”

“There is a new guy at school—”

“Oh, there’s a new guy, is there?” He brushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes, and I saw they were full of mischief.

“A new Sagean guy, whom I had to tutor.”

The sheen on his eyes faded and he faltered. I wasn’t surprised. One Sagean teenager around here was more than enough for the human population to cope with. “Anyone we’ve heard of?” He glanced toward Sophie, who had stopped shifting plates around to listen.

I didn’t answer, feeling my teeth close around the tip of my tongue.

Nathan noticed. “You Sage and your privacy. Seriously, who am I going to tell? I’m a computer geek who dropped out of uni. I have no friends. And you won’t tell, will you, Soph?”

Sophie blushed and shook her head, but when I caught her eye, she returned to the crockery.

I sighed. “He is of a higher status than me.”

His mouth fell open, comprehension dawning, and then he promptly swore. I didn’t need to give further explanation. Nathan was the only human outside of my family who had known about my title—he had “accidentally” found my supposedly deleted Wikipedia page—and more importantly, he knew where it put me in the ranks. He waited until Sophie had left the kitchen before he spoke again. “What the hell? Here? Which one?”

“No. I’ve said too much already.”

He fell back against the counter, gripping its edge very tightly. “Aren’t you pleased? They’re supposed to be heartthrobs, aren’t they?”

I laughed drily, gathering up the baskets of salt and vinegar to put on the tables. “I think every other girl at school is pleased. I’m not.” He smiled in confusion. I continued, lowering my voice, “If the press find out about this, and they will eventually, then I will be dragged in, too. Can you imagine what a field day Arn Etas would have if they found out that I work in a café?” It was only part of the truth, but I certainly wasn’t telling him what I knew the Athenea were hiding about my grandmother.

His smile faded. “What’s so wrong with that?”

He followed me out as I organized the tables and flipped the sign over to Open. He continued to trail after me as I scooted past Sophie back into the kitchen, waiting for an answer.

“I’m a duchess, Nathan, not a maid,” I muttered, then stopped. “I don’t particularly like this life; it’s near impossible for a Sage to live around here, but I am content with it as long as I am out of the spotlight.”

He shook his head, making his muddy bangs bounce as he screwed up his nose. “I swear you should’ve been born human. But anyway, what are you so down about? Just don’t have anything to do with him. And if he gives you any trouble, just tell him you’ve got a friend who is a purple belt in karate who will beat him up.”

I looked his wiry build up and down and raised an eyebrow. “Or I could just hex him.”

“Or you could do that. And anyway, cheer up, Valerie just came in,” he said, peering out of the kitchen.

I groaned. What a way to round off the week.