He laughs, still mystified by Blue.
“A dragon,” another one of the Fae gasps. “It can’t be. A real dragon. But they—I thought they were all gone.”
Curious. Blue is perhaps not the creature that they have been searching for, then.
We don’t tarry. Blue uses the street to take flight and we’re soaring high into the fog, leaving a wicked Siren, her decidedly not-wicked son and the Fae behind. I am only half relieved, though. As we fly, I look back down and think of Murrey. Murrey and all the other Hidden Folk and humans stuck under her tyranny.
And I feel ashamed.
Chapter FIFTEEN
Dead Man’s Party
It’s Marley’s birthday and Aunt Leanna is in her element.
How we made it back to the house without the aunts knowing that we fled to Edinburgh for the night, I don’t fully know. Alona was not there to help us sneak back in, so I had to fly us. It was awkward and painful, and we barely made it through the window without waking up the rest of the family.
The four of us are having lunch in the sunny part of the house. Leanna casts some kind of warming spell. It is still December, after all. We are eating coronation chicken sandwiches with fizzy drinks and chocolate. Aunt Leanna has spurned the green vegetables for once, and it’s wonderful.
Until I remember. Until everything that I saw in Edinburgh comes flooding back into my memory. The huddled, frightened faces of the Hidden Folk. Freddy’s exhaustion and worry. Portia’s calculating words.
Murrey.
It feels wrong for us to be sitting here, safe and having a lovely time while all of that is happening elsewhere. I have to formulate a plan, but Freddy sent an adamant email this morning, begging me to stay away.
Not that I have ever been good at doing what
I’m told.
Everyone is talking and eating while I sit here
feeling fuzzy. Dyspraxia doesn’t just affect my physical body, it also affects speech, and right now I am finding it difficult to communicate. Words seem faded and hard for my tongue to grip. It’s a groggy, disorientating feeling. I used to always get it during the afternoon
at school, I would sometimes stare at the wall above
the clock and feel as though my brain was filling up with water.
“Ramya?” Opal says my name.
“Mm?”
“We’re getting the cake out. Don’t you want any?”
I realise that their laughter and conversation has actually been absent for some time. My brain was just not processing it. I feel as if I’m a signal that has delayed, making me about thirty seconds behind everybody else. It’s maddening and it makes me want to pull at my own hair. I don’t often slip out of control like this; I imagine it’s because I used a lot of magic with Portia.
I’m overstimulated, overwhelmed, and I don’t like having to pretend that everything is just fine when it is not. When Freddy is basically trapped, Murrey is missing, and the Hidden Folk are being hounded.
“When are we going back to Edinburgh?”
My voice is a little scratchy, but I manage to get the words out and in the correct order, with just enough steel in my tone – enough to let them know that I’m really serious about this.
Opal watches me, before pointedly cutting a sliver of chocolate birthday cake and placing it in front of me. “Eat something.”
“When,” I ignore her command, “are we going back to Edinburgh, Aunt Opal? We’ve been hidden out here long enough. It’s time to go back.”
“Ramya,” Aunt Leanna speaks, and it is in a tone of voice I have never heard from her. It’s stern and terse and without her usual warmth. “Your mum and dad are not in London on a jolly. Your grandmother is not away for a relaxing spa holiday. They are working, with your Aunt Opal and I, on a carefully laid plan. Part of that carefully laid plan involves the two of you staying here, where you’re safe.”
“Safe for how long?” I snap. “Until they’ve completely taken over the lowlands and they start making their way up here? There’s Fae already about. Plus, Marley saw something strange.”
“Ramya,” Marley cries, making a gesture which begs me to be quiet.
“What did you see?” Opal asks my cousin.
“Nothing,” Marley insists, getting flustered. “I thought I saw… something, but I couldn’t have.”
“He saw Grandpa.”
Leanna buries her face in her hands and Opal stares at me. The words are not even fully out of my mouth before she begins shaking her head.
“That’s not possible.”
“That’s what I said,” I reply. “But Marley says—”
“I was probably imagining it,” Marley interjects, while glaring at me. “Of course it wasn’t really him.”
I narrow my eyes. “Then why did you—”
“There is no such thing as ghosts.”
