She glares at me. I glare back. The fire in the hall crackles, we all hear it. The tea in Aunt Leanna’s cup vibrates and pulses, causing her to clutch the china.
Then the phone interrupts us all once again.
“He must have forgotten something,” Marley says.
I pick it up once more. “Hey, Dad. Did you—”
“Hello, sweetheart.”
My throat closes and my entire body chills. It’s not Dad’s voice. It’s a woman’s voice. A powerful voice. A voice full of ancient magic and cruelty. A voice that I last heard when I was really small and my grandfather was still alive.
“Portia.”
Chapter Three
Siren Call
I say her name and it causes everyone in the kitchen to act. Mum leaps up, Leanna grabs hold of Marley, and Gran swears. If it were not so frightening to hear the Siren’s voice again, I would laugh. Gran never uses bad language.
Opal is at my side, the only other family member who will not feel the effects of Portia’s supernatural voice.
“You’ll never find us,” I tell the Siren, trying to
stop my voice from shaking. My hands are. “What do you want?”
“Well, right now, just a lovely hot bath,” she says, and it’s so conversational, so casual, that I almost drop the phone. “I wasn’t quite ready for just how rainy your little city is. I haven’t been back in such a long time.”
I say nothing. I don’t know what she knows and I don’t want to give her a single hint.
“Ramya,” Opal speaks gently. It’s the gentlest she’s been since I arrived here. “Put the phone down.”
I can’t. I don’t know why. It’s not magic compelling me, it’s something else. I want to say something that will hurt Portia. I want her to feel as scared as I am. I want to spit out the poisonous anger in me and see it land in her eye.
“If you don’t want to come out to play with me, Ramya, that’s fine,” Portia goes on, silkily. “There are plenty of your little Hidden Folk friends here. Some of them may even be able to help me find you.”
“Why me?” I ask and Opal makes a grab for the phone this time. “You, Ren, the Fae. What’s this about?”
I want her to say that it is because I am special. I want to be important. I can see no other reason as to why she would hunt me.
If an answer was forthcoming, I would not hear it. The curly cord of the telephone snaps into two pieces, severing my connection with the Siren and rendering the phone useless.
Opal pulls her hand away, having cast the little spark which caused the wire to snap.
“We don’t converse with her,” she finally says. “We don’t negotiate. We don’t argue. We do not communicate. Understood?”
“How did she get our number?” I demand. I’m too afraid to process the fear so I mask it with anger. “You said Old Magic was protecting the house.”
“Yes,” Mum chimes in. “Old Magic that was cast before Alexander Graham Bell.”
I turn to ask Gran a question about her telephone when I spot something by the kitchen door. I can see some suitcases in the hall. My brain feels foggy as I stare at them. Luggage. Packed and ready to be loaded into the car.
“Are we going somewhere?” I finally say.
Gran and Leanna exchange a glance before Mum answers me. “Well, your grandmother and I are.”
I stare at her. “And where exactly do you need to be jetting off to while we’re all in danger?”
“No one owes you explanations while you’re in this mood,” Mum replies sternly. “We can discuss it in the morning. You need to sleep.”
“No one answer any unknown numbers on your mobiles in the meantime,” Gran says practically. “And Opal, as soon as my number is changed, you’re buying me a new landline.”
*
Marley and I are sharing the tower. It’s the highest part of the house; a large bedroom in the only turret. It can be a little dull up there by myself, so I’m secretly glad we will be sharing.
I’m glad he’s here in general. Not that I’ll tell him that.
There is only one window in the turret and it’s a deadly drop to the grass below. Clearly, despite the plentiful number of bedrooms in Gran’s massive house, I was put in here for a reason.
I wait until the aunts have gone down to their own rooms, I wait until Mum says goodnight to me and follows them, and only once Marley and I are alone do I speak.
“We need to break out of here.”
Marley is used to me by now. When we first began our quest around Edinburgh, he was a little afraid of me and my antics. I think he would sometimes wonder if I would get us both killed. Ironically, he was the one who was abducted and used as bait to lure me onto an abandoned island.
I’ve never asked him if he was worried I wouldn’t come. I just hope he knows that I always will.
“Are we sneaking out?” he asks me, his voice a whisper.
