Half Bad

Geneva

Geneva Airport. The journey here was stressful: working out how to get a flight, flying, and worst of all standing at Passport Control. Though my passport worked fine.

The instructions on the piece of paper Trev gave me say to be at the revolving glass doors at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. There are people walking in and out of the glass doors. People of all ages: business people with mini wheeled suitcases, air hostesses with micro wheeled suitcases, pilots with black-leather wheeled cases, holidaymakers with huge wheeled cases. Everybody is moving quickly, not really rushing, not in bad moods, just getting to where they are going.

And then there’s me, wearing sunglasses, a cap, an Arab scarf, fingerless gloves, a thick green army jacket, jeans, and boots, carrying my battered rucksack.

I don’t know what time it is but I’ve been here ages: it’s way past eleven o’clock.

A movement in the cafe to my right catches my eye. A young man in sunglasses waves me over.

I pick my way through the narrow gaps between the tables and stand opposite him. He doesn’t look up but swirls his half-full coffee cup around and drains it. He puts the cup in the saucer as he stands, grabs hold of my arm, and, moving fast, guides me through the revolving doors and into the next building, the train station.

We go down an escalator to Platform 4 and straight onto a train. It’s gloomy in here. The train’s a double-decker and we go upstairs, where he lets go of my arm. We sit on a sofa-style seat with a little round table in front of us.

My contact looks a year or two older than me, Arran’s age, I guess. His skin is olive, and he has shoulder-length wavy hair, dark brown with lighter streaks in it. He’s smiling, lips together, like he’s just heard a really good joke. He’s wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses with silver frames, almost identical to mine.

The train starts, and a few minutes into the journey a ticket inspector appears at the far end of the carriage. My contact goes downstairs and I follow. We stand by the doors. He’s slim, a tad taller than me and he doesn’t have the hiss of a mobile phone to him.

I think he might be a Black Witch. I want to see his eyes.

The train stops a minute later. It’s Geneva Central Station. My contact sets off fast, and I walk a step behind him.

We walk for an hour or so, always fast, but going back on ourselves quite a bit; I come to recognize a few shop windows and glimpses of the lake. We finally enter a residential area of tall apartment blocks and stop at a door in an old building much like all the others we’ve passed. The road here is quiet, a few parked cars, no traffic, and no other pedestrians. My contact pushes a number code into the entry system, saying to me, “9-9-6-6-1 . . . okay?”

And I say, “9-9-6-6-1, okay.”

He lets the door swing back hard in my face so that I have to stop it with a slam of my palm. I stride after him up the stairs, up and up, and up, and up, and up . . .

We continue to the sixth floor, the top floor, where the stairs come to an end at a small landing. There is one wooden door.

Once again there isn’t a key but a number code. “5-7-6-3-2 . . . okay?”

And he goes in and lets the door slam behind him.

I stand looking around. The varnish on the door is peeling, the landing is bare, the plaster is cracked, an old blackened cobweb hangs loosely in the corner. An empty silence hangs around too. There is no hissing.

He opens the door. “5-7-6—”

“I know.”

His smile has gone, but he still has his sunglasses on.

“Come in.”

I don’t move.

“It’s safe.”

He holds the door wide open with his back and repeats, “It’s safe.” He speaks quietly. His accent is strange. I think it must be Swiss.

I walk over the threshold and the door clicks shut behind me. I feel him watching me. I don’t want him there, behind me.

I wander around the room. It’s large, with a kitchenette in the right-hand corner: a few cupboards, a sink, an oven. Moving around I pass between the fireplace and a small, old sofa. There’s no carpet, but wooden floorboards stained dark brown, almost black, and three rugs of different sizes, all a sort of Persian design. The walls are painted a creamy color but there are no pictures or anything else, apart from a long smoke stain on the chimney-breast over the fireplace. It looks like a fire might be the only source of heat, and the slate fireplace contains a metal grate and some blackened logs. Next to it is a large pile of wood, a newspaper, and a box of matches. Moving left, I come to a small window that looks toward the lake and the mountains beyond. I can see blue water and a section of green-gray mountains. In front of the window is a wooden table and two old-style French cafe chairs.

“I left the window open when I went out. The fire keeps filling the room with smoke.”

He goes to the fireplace and starts to build a fire.

I watch.

He lights the pile of newspaper and it goes out.

“I want to see Mercury.”

“Yes. Of course.”

But he doesn’t stop messing with the fire.

“I don’t get the feeling that she’s here.”

“No.”

I go to one of the other two doors and open it. I can tell he’s stopped with the fire and is watching me. Inside the small adjoining room is a bed, a chair, and an old-fashioned wooden wardrobe.

“That’s my room,” he says, and walks past me to close the wardrobe door. There isn’t much to see. He hasn’t made his bed. There’s a book on the chair.

I lean against the doorway and say, “Good book?”

He gives me one of his smiles as he passes out of the room and goes to the other door.

“This is the bathroom.” He says it precisely, as if he has been practicing it. It’s bigger than his bedroom, with a central freestanding bath, a large white basin, and a toilet with a cistern above and a chain. Black and white tiles cover the walls and floor.

I look back at the apartment and say, “Am I supposed to stay here or something?”

“Until Mercury is ready to see you.”

“Which will be when?”

“When she thinks it’s safe.” He never sounds confident, but I think it might be because of his accent. Everything sounds like a question.

“I need to see her soon. There’s a deadline.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Do you work for her?”

He shrugs. “She asked me to meet you and stay with you until she’s ready to see you.”

I rub my face with my hands and look around the room, “I can’t sleep here, inside.”

“I’ll show you the terrace.”

He walks around the bath to a sash window and slides it up. I stick my head out and then climb through it. There is a small terraced area surrounded by four steep gray-tiled roofs of the building. It’s a private haven. The flat area is about the size of my cage, and I find I’m saying, “I’d like sheepskins.”

He nods and smiles, like he knows just what I mean, and says he thinks that he can get some.

I’m alone in the apartment. My smiling friend has gone out. I poke around all the cupboards and in his room, but there’s nothing much to see.

I check out the roof, scrambling up the steep slope to one side of the terrace. The roof descends precipitously on the far side and nothing would check a fall to the street six floors below. I walk along the ridge of the roof. To the side the gap to the next building is narrow, but it would be impossible to leap across to the roofs of the neighboring buildings, as they are taller. The back of the building is like the front. There is no fire escape. The terrace is a trap.

But I don’t have many options. It’s less than a month until my birthday, and I’ve nowhere else to go. I have to get three gifts or I’ll die, I’m sure of that now. I need Mercury.

The terrace turns out to be a good place to sleep, cut off from the wind and the road noise. I’ve pulled out two of the rugs to sleep on, and with my sleeping bag as well I’m warm. The sky is clear and the moon is full, so there’s no way I’m going back inside until morning.

The moon is high when my contact wakes me. He’s brought sheepskins. Six of them. They’re thick and clean and just about perfect when they’re laid out.

My contact sits on his haunches on the opposite side of the terrace from me. His legs are long, but I can see his thigh muscles are thick. His arms are folded and his head slightly on one side. He still has his sunglasses on, and his hair is tucked behind his ears.

I close my eyes. When I open them a few minutes later he has gone. He moves silently. I like that about him.

Morning. I lie here and get to know the place, see how the sky lightens with the dawn and deepens with the day. The sounds of the city are an inconsistent, muffled grumble. There’s a faint hiss from the building. My stomach starts making noises, and I can smell bread.

In the kitchenette my contact is leaning with his back against the unit, sunglasses still on.

“Breakfast?”

This is not what I expect from a Black Witch.

“I have croissants, brioche, rolls . . . jam. Orange juice. I’m making coffee, but I have hot chocolate too.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

He smiles a huge smile, lots of regular white teeth. “What’s yours?”

I wander over to the chair and look out of the window. He lays the food on the table. The coffee is strong and milky, and he serves it in a bowl. He sits opposite me and dips his croissant in his coffee, and I copy. I’ve never had a croissant before. It’s okay. Celia wouldn’t approve.

He’s watching me the whole time, though all I see is myself in his mirrored glasses. His fingers are long and bony, pale really, considering his skin is olive. When he’s finished his croissant he rips a roll in half and from that rips a smaller piece. He cuts a section of hard, cold butter and puts it on the piece of bread. A perfect oblong of butter on a ragged piece of bread. He puts it in his mouth and chews, lips together, and all the time it’s as if he’s trying not to smile.

“You look pleased with yourself,” I say.

“I’m pleased to meet you.” He puts his hand up to his glasses and takes hold of them as if he’s going to take them off, but he doesn’t. “That sounds very English, doesn’t it? I’m very pleased to meet you, Nathan.”

And instantly I’m pissed off.

He laughs. “You’re funny, though. Very funny. I like you. You scowl like . . . it’s a proper scowl.” He laughs again.

I cut an oblong of butter. Then another. Then another.

“Why do you keep your gloves on?”

“Why don’t you take your sunglasses off?”

He laughs. Then he takes one of my pieces of butter and puts it on his bread. When he has finished eating he says, “I’m Gabriel.” He pronounces it funny.

“Gabrielle?”

He laughs again. “Yes, Gabriel.”

I put a section of butter on some bread and try it. It’s good, creamy.

“How come you know my name?”

He smiles. “Everyone knows your name.”

“No, they don’t.”

He sips his coffee and swirls it around and sips it again. “Okay. You’re right, not everyone. But all Black Witches in Europe, some Black Witches in the States, most White Witches in Europe . . . most White Witches everywhere. Few fains, though, very few fains.” He shrugs. “So . . . no, not everyone.”

And I see this famous person in his mirrored glasses looking back at me, not scowling but looking pretty miserable. I look away, out of the window to the distant section of mountains.

“Is it that bad, being Nathan?”

Every White Witch I have ever met has known who I was. One look at me and . . . it’s like I’ve got a big sign on my head. It seems it’s going to be the same in the world of Black Witches.

I turn back to him. “I’d prefer to be anonymous.”

“It won’t happen.” He’s pushing his hair back off his face but at least he’s stopped smiling. “Not with your father being who he is.”

And his father and his father and his father and his father . . .

“Who’s your father?” I ask. “Anyone I’d have heard of?”

“No, definitely not. And my mother . . . no again. Two very fine Black Witches, but not famous. When I say fine I mean . . . respectable . . . for Blacks. My father is living in America now. He had to leave after he killed my grandmother—my mother’s mother.” He shrugs. “I should explain that it was self-defense; my grandmother was attacking my father. It’s complicated . . . She blamed him for my mother’s death.” He swirls his empty coffee cup. “Anyway, they are not famous.”

“Violent, though.”

“In both violence and fame, your bloodline outdoes mine.”

Gabriel

I am not supposed to leave the apartment except to sleep on the terrace. I’m sleeping okay. The usual nightmares.

I sleep inside on the sofa some afternoons. Most of the time I’m alone. In a way this is worse than the cage. At least there I could run. Here I just lie around.

Every day I ask, “When can I see Mercury?”

And every day Gabriel replies, “Maybe tomorrow.”

I’ve told him that I need three gifts and that it’s less than a month until my birthday. He keeps asking me other stuff, though, stuff about me: where I’ve been the last few years, if I’ve had contact with the Council, with Hunters. I don’t tell him anything, all that is private.

I see Gabriel in the mornings. He brings shopping, eats breakfast with me and then we wash up. Sometimes he reminds me of Celia with her chores. He always washes and I dry. Every day he says, “I will wash today. You mustn’t get your gloves wet.” He says it with a look of deep concern. When I give him the finger he just laughs.

I haven’t taken my gloves or scarf off. I sleep in them . . . live in them. If Gabriel saw my tattoos or the scars on my wrist I’d get a load of questions and I don’t want that.

After washing up he hangs around for a bit then leaves the apartment and I only see him the next morning at breakfast. I don’t think he’s slept in the bedroom since I’ve been here, but I can’t be sure. He never makes the bed; sometimes he lies on it reading.

Gabriel starts after breakfast on the first day with his questions, but I just concentrate on drying the crockery. When it dawns on him that I’m not going to tell him my life story, he tries different subjects: first off it’s books. He’s reading a really good book, Kerouac, whatever that is.

“Do you have a favorite?”

I’m busy drying a plate, slowly, round and round, getting it really dry, and I don’t reply. So Gabriel lists his top books. He can’t pin down one favorite. He lists a few French ones I’ve never heard of, and then some English ones I’ve never heard of—though I have heard of Wuthering Heights—and then he’s on to American authors. I’m not sure if he’s showing off or if he’s always like this.

When he finally shuts up I put the very dry plate on to the top of the pile of very dry plates and say, “I’ve never read a book.”

His left hand is in the washing-up bowl, suds around his wrist. It has stopped washing.

“I do have a favorite though. Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. You read that one?”

He shakes his head.

I shrug.

“How can it be your favorite . . . if you’ve never read it?”

And I want to yell at him, “’Cause the woman who kept me chained up in a cage was a Russian-loving lunatic, you stupid, spoiled Swiss idiot.” I want to scream and shout. And next thing the plates are all smashed on the floor and I don’t know how I got so angry so quickly. I’m breathing hard and Gabriel’s standing there, with suds dripping off his fingers.

Next day at breakfast, on new plates, Gabriel isn’t talking; he’s reading Solzhenitsyn.

I eat the bread, drink the coffee, look out of the window.

I say, “Can you read all right with your sunglasses on?”

He just gives me the finger.

When we’re washing up, and he’s put the book down, he has another go at me, about art this time. He goes on and on about Monet and Manet and stuff like that. I don’t know what he’s talking about. All Black Witches can’t be like this, can they?

I tell him, “I don’t need a lecture about art. I need to get out of this stupid apartment and see Mercury. There’s a deadline.” I throw a few swear words in there too.

When he’s gone I remember a book Arran gave me once. It had sketches in it by da Vinci. I’d almost forgotten about that book. They were good sketches. I find a pencil in a drawer but there’s no paper, so I rip a blank page out of Gabriel’s book.

After I’ve finished the drawing I burn it. But the fire smokes badly.

At breakfast on day three he says he’s finished One Day in the Life of . . . and he likes it. Then he asks me why I like it.

And of course there are a million reasons. Does he expect some fancy reply or something?

“So,” he asks, “why do you like it?”

I say, “Because he survives.”

Gabriel nods. “Yes, I’m glad about that too.”

While we wash up he talks about climbing. He really likes climbing. He stops washing and starts to climb up the kitchen cupboards. He’s good . . . precise and fast. He says his favorite place for climbing is Gorges du Verdon, which is in France.

He asks me where my favorite place is.

I say, “Wales.”

When he goes I rip another blank page out of his book and draw him climbing up the kitchen cupboards.

Day four and Gabriel’s on to poetry. I’ve got to give him ten out of ten for trying, but if he’s attempting to piece together the story of my life, poetry isn’t going to add much. I mean—poetry! Then I start laughing. Really laughing. We’re Black Witches, hiding out from Hunters, White Witches fear us . . . and we’re washing up and talking about poetry. I bend over at the waist I’m laughing so much. My stomach aches.

Gabriel watches. He doesn’t laugh with me. I don’t think he knows what I find so funny, but he smiles. I manage to calm down, but I keep sniggering like a kid every now and then while Gabriel is talking about some great poet. He even recites a poem. It’s in French, so it’s rather lost on me, but I don’t laugh at that.

I ask about his accent. His mother was English and his father is Swiss. Gabriel was born in France and lived in America with his father and younger sister for a year. His English is excellent, but his American is better, and he speaks English with a weird French-American accent. He says that he came back to Switzerland after he got his Gift. He hasn’t said what his Gift is, and I don’t ask.

That afternoon I’ve had enough. I sneak out, go down to the lake, and then head out of town toward the hills. When I get back I can’t find the right road and have to go down to the lake to get my bearings. People are hurrying home or into bars and cafes. They each have a phone hiss to them and the city is a low engine rumble in my head. I walk along the road that skirts the lake. The mountains are now hidden in low cloud, and although I know they are there I can’t see them; even the huge lake is diminished to a pond edge by a bank of mist over it. The boats on the quayside are vague shapes in the fog. I can hear two voices, men speaking French. They go quiet.

I turn and see a figure in black watching me, and as slow as I can make myself do it, while a gallon of adrenaline is urging me to flee, I saunter away. A whistle sounds: a Hunter’s call to her partner. Now I run.

I keep to the backstreets and find an entrance to a bar and hang around in the corner where I can see into the street through the window. The street is busy with fains. Eventually I step out and make my way cautiously back to the apartment, but I don’t see the Hunter again.

I’m back just before dark and go straight on to the terrace.

I know they saw me. I’m sure I lost them, but they know I’m here now. Somehow they knew it was me.

I dream. I’m still running in that blasted alley, but now it’s different; for the first time in the dream I remember to look at the end of the road. I look and look and there are the ordinary buildings and ordinary fains and a bus and some cars, but I still can’t reach them. I hear Hunters behind me, shouting, “Get him! Rip his arms out!” And I panic and run faster and they’re shouting so close behind me and I can’t run any faster . . . and then I wake up.

Gabriel is on his haunches watching me.

I tell him, not in a nice way, to leave me alone and then lie back down and close my eyes. I’m not sure I should tell him what happened today. I’m not supposed to leave the apartment, but maybe if I tell him about the Hunters he’ll take me to Mercury. I decide to tell him. But when I open my eyes Gabriel has gone.

Day five. I’m building up to tell Gabriel about the Hunters while we’re washing up. He passes me a cup to dry and as I take it he holds onto it for a moment before releasing, so I have to pull it a little from him, and he says, “Switzerland is a great country. There are few White Witches, none in Geneva, and the Black Witches here can be trusted. But there are Half Bloods who will sell you out if they see you. Hunters use them.”

That’s Gabriel’s way of saying that he knows I left the apartment.

I dry the cup.

He says, “Geneva is a wonderful city. Don’t you think?”

That’s another way of him saying he knows I left the apartment.

I swear at him.

“You’re not supposed to leave the apartment.” And that’s the final way he has of saying he knows I left the apartment.

“Then take me to Mercury.”

“How do I know you’re not a spy? How do I know you didn’t go to meet some Hunter?”

I just stare at him. In his sunglasses I see this lone figure staring back.

“How do I know, if you won’t talk to me?”

I swear at him again and go out onto the terrace.

When I come back into the apartment Gabriel has gone.

I don’t know what to do about Gabriel, but I’m not about to share my life story with him, that’s for sure. I decide to mark time with five-bar gates like they do in prison movies. I cut short vertical lines into the wall near the window and scar in a deep gouge diagonally across them.

I stare out of the window for a while and do some push-ups. Then I stare out of the window. Then I do sit-ups and a few more push-ups. More staring out of the window and after that it’s time for a bit of shadow-boxing. Then back to check out the view.

I don’t think me telling Gabriel anything will make any difference anyway. It could all be lies. He must know that.

I flop on to the sofa. Then get up. Then throw myself back down.

There’s no way I’m going to tell Gabriel anything real about me.

I get up. I need something to do.

I decide to sort the fire out, which means standing in the fireplace with my head up the chimney. There needs to be more draw, but I don’t know how to create it, so I just tidy up in there, cleaning the soot out as much as I can, finding a slate that is sticking out of the bricks and jiggling it around a little, and then finding a loose brick and a large, flat tin hidden high in a narrow gap above it.

With the chimney cleared and the slate back in place the fire blazes, but I am black with soot. I need to wash everything. I get in the bath with my clothes on. The bath is an old-fashioned tub on ball-and-claw feet; it’s deep but not very wide. As soon as I get in the water turns gray. I peel my clothes off and throw them onto the terrace to sort out later. I have a change of clothes. I even have two pairs of socks.

I run another bath. There’s a little nailbrush and I scrub at my feet and hands, but the dirt is in the skin and won’t budge.

I submerge myself and hold my breath. I can do it for over two minutes, nearly three if I get the breathing right beforehand. But I’m not as fit as I was under Celia’s regime.

I dry myself and put clean jeans on, and check out my tattoos. They are the same. The scars on my back seem worse but they’re not. How thick they are always surprises me. The line of scars on my right arm is faint, white on the paler skin there, but my wrist can only be described as an ugly mess. My hand works fine, though, and my fist is solid.

When I lean over the basin and look in the mirror, my face looks the same, only more miserable somehow, grayer. It looks old. I don’t look sixteen. There are gray circles under my eyes. The black, empty pieces that move around in my eyes seem to be bigger. The blackness of my eyes is not like the darkness up the chimney; it’s a blacker black than that. I move my head to the side, wondering if I can catch any glints, but instead I see Gabriel standing in the doorway staring at me, mirrored glasses reflecting back.

“How long have you been there?” I ask.

“You’ve done a good job with the fire.” He takes a step farther into the bathroom.

“Get out.” I’m surprised by how angry I am.

“Did you find anything?”

“I told you to get out.”

“And I asked if you found anything.” For the first time he sounds like a Black Witch.

I turn and stride to him; my left hand is around his throat, and I’m pushing him by the shoulder against the wall. He doesn’t resist. I hold him there and say, “Yes, I found something.” And all I see is myself looking back at me. My eyes are black with silver reflected in them but it’s just from the bathroom light. I don’t want to hurt him. I manage to loosen my grip on his neck and then walk back to the sink.

“Did you read them?” He is coughing a bit as he speaks.

I lean forward over the basin, grabbing its sides. I’m concentrating on looking down the plughole at the dirt and the blackness, but I can feel his eyes on my back.

“Did you read them?”

“No! Now get out!” I shout and look up in the mirror.

Gabriel says, “Nathan,” and he steps forward again and takes his sunglasses off. And his eyes are not those of a Black Witch.

He’s a fain.

A fain!

So what was all that talk about being the son of two very respectable Black Witches?

And I’m shouting, “Get out!” as I hit him and he’s on the floor, blood on his face, and I’m swearing and using all the worst words I can think of and he’s lying on his side, curled up, and I stomp on his knees and I hate it that he lied to me and I hate how I was thinking he was okay but he’s just some lying fain and I have to walk out to the kitchen before I really hurt him. Then I walk back and lean over, grab his hair and shout at him. Properly shout, ’cause I can still see him staring at my back. And I hate it that he was staring. I hate that. And I bang his head on the floor and I don’t know why I’m doing that, except I’m so angry. I’m still shaking when I walk out of the bathroom again.

I pace around the sofa, but I have to go back and get my shirt.

Gabriel’s groaning a bit. He looks a mess.

I slide down to the floor next to him.

We’re sitting at the table, by the window. Gabriel is wringing out a cloth into a bowl of water that’s pink with his blood. His left eye is swollen shut. His right is a light brown with a few flecks of golden-green in it but no sparks. Definitely a fain eye. But he has told me that he wasn’t lying: he is a Black Witch but he has a fain body.

“So you can’t heal at all?”

He shakes his head.

He says that his Gift is that he can transform to be like other people. It’s the same Gift as Jessica’s, but he is different from her, opposite to her. He explains, “I like people. They’re interesting. I can be male or female, old or young. I can find out what it’s like to be different people. The only problem is once I became fain, to see what that was like, I couldn’t transform back.”

“You’re stuck then?”

“Mercury thinks I’ll be able to become myself again. She says it’s more than physical, or at least more than just my body, that makes me able to transform. She says she’ll help me find the route back. . . . But she’s in no rush.” He puts the cloth in the water and swirls it around then wrings it out again and puts it back on his eye.

“I’ve been with her for two months.” He looks at me. “She wants to meet you.” He pats the cloth against his cut lip, which is also swollen. “But she’s suspicious. And rightly. You have spent all your life with White Witches.” He shrugs. “You are half White and the perfect bait, just the sort of thing the Council or Hunters would use.”

“But I’m not sent by them.”

“And you’re not likely to admit it if you are.”

“So how do I prove to her that I’m not?”

“That’s the problem. It’s impossible to prove.” He dabs at his mouth with his fingertips. “Someone once said that the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” He carries on dabbing his mouth. But he’s smiling a little.

“Do you trust me?” I ask.

“Now I do.”

“Then take me to Mercury.”

He swirls the cloth in the water again.

“I can’t stay in this apartment any longer. I’ll go mad . . . or kill you.”

He puts the cloth back on his eye.

“Tomorrow.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Not today?”

He shakes his head. “Tomorrow.”

I get the tin and put it on the table in front of Gabriel and sit back opposite him.

“I didn’t read them.”

He pulls the lid off and carefully takes out the top letter, which has my sooty fingerprints on it. It’s folded over once and there is one word written on the outside in large curly writing. He pulls out the next letter, which is smudged with my black sooty marks too. He shakes his head.

“What are they?” I ask.

“They’re just love letters from my father to my mother, before . . . when they were in love.”

“So why do you hide them?”

“There’s something else in here. If Mercury succeeds in helping me, she’ll want payment. That is what I’ll pay her with.”

I don’t ask what it is. The words of a spell, perhaps, or maybe instructions for a potion.

He puts the letters back into the tin and gently presses the lid down, using the weight of his shoulders and chest but so gently.

“I didn’t read them . . . I can’t read.”

He waits for me to say more.

“I can’t sleep inside . . . or if I do I’m ill . . . sick. I’m not very good at staying inside at all any more. Electric things give me noises in my head. But I can heal fast. And I can tell if a person is a witch from their eyes.”

“How?”

I shrug. “They look different.”

He strokes his hand across the tin but then pushes it away. “So . . . my eyes? Are they witch or fain?”

“Fain.”

He doesn’t respond straightaway but eventually shrugs and says, “My body is fain now.”

Slowly he reaches over to my hand and touches my tattoo with his fingertips. “What are these?”

And I tell him about the tattoos. He hardly moves, doesn’t speak, just listens. He’s good at listening. But I tell him the tattoos are a brand, nothing more. I want to tell him more. I want to trust him, but I remember Mary’s warning: “Trust no one.”

Gabriel says, “Mercury said that you wouldn’t be able to sleep inside. And she told me to wear the sunglasses.”

So she knows Marcus and assumed I’d have the same abilities.

The Roof

Gabriel says we will go to Mercury in the morning. He says that he spotted two Hunters in Geneva and wants to see if they are still in town. I tell him that they are, and they saw me and I think they recognized me. He doesn’t say much about that, but he wants to have a look around for himself and insists I wait in the apartment.

When he’s gone, the apartment feels like a prison and the terrace isn’t much better.

I wake up in the night. It’s raining but not heavily, just spitting. I expect to see Gabriel in his usual spot where he watches me from. He’s not there. I fall back to sleep again and have my usual alley dream. I wake drenched in sweat. It’s well after dawn. The sunlight is trapped on the terrace. Steam rises off the damp roof. There’s a smell of coffee and bread.

Gabriel is sitting at the table surveying me as I survey breakfast. He has laid out the usual array.

I want to go to Mercury, and I don’t want breakfast. He puts butter on bread, chews, swirls his coffee. I pace around.

He says, “I saw a few Hunters.”

I stop pacing. “A few?”

“Nine.”

“Nine!”

“I watched one and followed her for a few minutes. Then I saw another. And another. They didn’t pay any attention to me. I’m just another fain to them. But you, I think, they must have recognized. Nine Hunters can only be for someone important.

“I skirted around town, went to see a contact of Mercury’s. Pilot. She didn’t know anything. I came back this morning and saw another Hunter on my way here. I thought I’d test something out and bumped into her shoulder. I apologized. She apologized back in poor French.”

He laughs.

“They don’t recognize witches by their eyes, like you do. Mercury says that Hunters are trained to detect Blacks. They notice the little differences, the way we walk, the way we stand, how we move in relation to other people. But I must have lost that.”

“I guess if you saw nine there are probably more you didn’t see.”

“Definitely.”

And yet Gabriel seems relaxed: he saunters around, bumps into a Hunter, and then wanders off for a leisurely breakfast.

He glances up at me, saying, “Don’t worry. If they knew about this place we’d have been bloody messes on the floor of some cell hours ago.” He drains the last of his coffee and says, “However, I think we should go to Mercury’s now.”

I try to sound coolly ironic, saying, “Take your time. Have another croissant.”

He gets up, smiles at me. “No. I don’t want to be late. Mercury’s expecting us, not you. She’s looking forward to meeting you.”

He beckons me onto the terrace then takes my hand, interlocking our fingers, and leads me to the spot where he always hunkers down.

“Keep hold of my hand. Tight.”

He slides his other hand, his left hand, through the air, as if he’s feeling for something.

“There’s a passageway here. You have to find the entrance—it’s like a slit in the air. We go through it and down the drain. It’s hard to breathe in there so it’s best if you hold your breath until you’re out the other end.”

At the base of the roof tiles is a narrow metal gutter running around all four sides, and in the corner is a drainpipe. Gabriel seems to find the cut and lowers his hand down into the drainpipe.

And down.

My body already feels different, light, and I slide up through the gap, following Gabriel, and then spiral down the drainpipe with him. It’s swirling blackness. We go round and down like going down a plughole, speeding up as the spiral narrows until I’m spinning so fast that I’m afraid I’ll lose my grip on Gabriel, but his fingers are solid, bound around mine. Then we’re spiraling upward and slowing and I can see past Gabriel’s body above me to light, and I feel myself being sucked out and my body stops.

I’m heavy again and gasping for breath, sprawled on my front on a hard slope. I’m glad I didn’t have breakfast, as my stomach is not happy with that experience. I roll over to sit up. I’m sitting on a roof of unevenly cut black slate. In front of me is a small expanse of grass, and beyond that a tree-covered mountainside rises so steeply that I have to tilt my head back to see the blue sky. My head and body feel like they are moving in circles at different speeds.

“We must stay on the roof until Mercury comes.”

Gabriel has scrambled up and is sitting astride the rooftop. I join him, moving cautiously.

The cottage is high on the side of a wide U-shaped valley passing down to the right. The valley is lined with trees, forest. At the top of the valley, to my left, there is snow and a glacier. The mountaintops that teethe the valley wall are snow-covered, and across the valley another glacier hangs in them. The whole valley is a huge fortification.

There are no bird sounds, but there is a chirping of crickets and beyond that is a constant, distant roar. The sound is not in my head, and there is no hissing of electrical equipment. The roaring is relentless and I realize it’s the river in the valley bottom. I smile. I can’t help it. The river must be big, powerful.

The roof is made of thick slabs of slate. There’s a stone chimney with smoke curling out. The cottage is at the top end of a meadow area that’s surrounded by trees. The only other thing in the meadow, much farther down the slope, is a huge, splintered tree stump.

“This is Mercury’s cottage. There’s a trespass spell to protect it. You must step off the roof only when you are touching her.”

“Where are we?”

“Another part of Switzerland. I sometimes come here by train or I hike. Or I use the cut. I can go back through there.” And he indicates a space above the drainpipe. “Mercury made the cut. Her Gift is control of the weather. It’s a strong Gift. It’s her only one, but she has learned other things and been given other things from the people she helps . . . that’s how she learned how to make the cuts.”

The latch of the door rattles. We both turn and are met with an icy squall as Mercury steps into view.

She is tall and thin, and her skin is translucently pale, almost gray. Her eyes are black holes but with sheets of silver passing over them. I think she’s looking at me but can’t be sure.

“I thought I smelled something good,” she says. The breeze becomes warm now. Humid and heavy. “Nathan. At last.”

Her voice almost doesn’t belong to her but to the weather; it’s as if it’s coming out of the breeze that’s passing around her body to mine. She walks to the back of the cottage. It’s built into the hillside so that the roof is only a foot from the ground on that side. She holds her hand out to me, beckoning me with her fingers. The wind picks up and is now swirling round me, pulling me to my feet and jostling me down the roof toward Mercury.

I reach for her.

At last!

It’s like holding hands with a skeleton.