Chapter 36 THE TROUBLE WITH AVA
Rubbing distractedly at the crease of his arm now he’d had bloods taken by Simon, Drift stood in the reception hall, over by the Japanese sword homed in a glass case. The offer troubled him. He’d only really seen the hall upstairs on his last “visit,” and hadn’t paid attention to much when Light had taken them over to the summerhouse, but now? He was lost on the Japanese samurai sword, the fine carvings to the red case and the startling offer of only colour in the otherwise white granite perfection of the hall.
The contrasts seemed almost like a drop of blood on pale skin, a drip held in place behind a glass wall, safe enough inside, but too easy to break and let drip and… drop.
Drift wiped a hand over his face.
Ill. Everything about this place played so subtly with… illness.
Ava’s kind of illness.
“You comin’?”
Stood next to Jan, West paused and looked down at him where the stairs split in two. The fired redness to her hair offered the same startling contrast to the otherwise white setting, but a different feel came with it, especially with the gentle smile she shared down.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m coming.”
“Actually, he’s with me for a moment.”
Drift glanced back over his shoulder. Martin stood leaning against a door that headed back towards the kitchen Jan had brought them through, and it threw him how he hadn’t heard him come into the reception hall.
“Am I now.” Drift didn’t like how that sounded like an order, not offer.
Martin glanced his way, then headed on up to Jan and whispered something in his ear. As Jan frowned at him and nodded, Martin whispered something West’s way and held out his hand.
After a moment, not looking happy, West shifted and tugged out her phone. She thumbed through it for something, then handed the phone to Martin before looking briefly down at Drift.
A touch of fingertips to West’s lips, a touch to her heart also came his way, an apology, and Drift frowned as she turned and followed Jan upstairs.
“C’mon.” As he headed back down, Martin nodded back the way he’d come. “Jan’s showing West the cinema, so, us, we’ll get… snacks. Kitchen seems a good place for that, right? These… snacks?”
Drift eyed how Martin still held West’s phone.
“Yeah,” he said stiffly. “Kitchen… snacks. Usually a good place to start.”
Martin headed back the way he’d come, and jaw tightening, Drift followed.
With a smile behind him, Jan pushed on through to the cinema suite, then held the door for West to come on through. “So.” He waited for her to head over to the Vivendi cinema reclining chairs and start to run a distracted touch over the black leather before he spoke. “This is the, well, cinema.”
West half-smiled back at him, her look too distracted, lost, and none of it centred on what ran under her touch. “I know we’ve been split up for a reason,” she said softly. “This your double-tap? You and Martin, you want to talk Drift because you’ve already seen Drift’s too used to passing through crews and giving out nothing when it comes to… Ava?”
Yeah, she was sharp, maybe a little angered with the double-tap and how Martin had taken her phone from her, leaving her no way out. Jan knew about the penned-in feeling that could come with the manor, but from what Martin had whispered in his ear, although he’d caught his and Gray’s conversation over the CCTV at the end there—it was really needed now.
Taking out his phone, he went over and offered it to her. “Biometric,” he said gently. “If you need to make a call, I’ll unlock it for you. But yeah, I’d like to talk to you, if that’s okay?” He dipped his head, searching her eyes. “Because this virus on the streets, you’ve got to know by now that whoever’s behind the Night-crawlers and Ava only targets people with disorders. So the question is… why give it to Drift?”
West didn’t say anything for a moment, then—“This… talk. Does it go both ways? Me with Drift, you with… Martin. His dad.”
Oh… Jan knew that look: it had stared back at him often enough in the mirror.
Care plans.
The need to know all family history in order to keep safe….
To keep sane.
Why did West need to keep sane around… Drift?
Giving a sniff, Drift took time to glance around the kitchen this time as he lingered back by the doorway.
The setup itself was far beyond Jackson’s normal, yet not at the same time. Despite the classy look to the rest of the manor, this place was definitely the most lived in. The large oak dining table looked like it had been carefully extracted from somewhere else and came with wear and tear that had taken decades. A photo sat out of place by the microwave, suit jacket on the back of a chair, a newspaper on the table… a deck of cards that had seen many a hand played close to it, and someone in here liked cooking. One side was dedicated to almost every appliance going: dual air fryer, both a stand and hand mixer, ice cream maker, pancake machine, and this round thing amongst others that looked like an indoor pizza oven. He hadn’t seen staff beyond the security at the gate, and with how this felt like a personal space for Jan and Gray, it seemed that cooking wasn’t ever delegated to staff.
But whoever liked to cook, it wasn’t Martin. He stood sorting through a cupboard above the sink, then switched to the one next to it and came out with some… oven cleaner.
Drift rested against the doorframe. “You usually offer chemicals as a snack?”
Martin glanced back his way. “Not usually my style,” he said softly. “Watch out for Light, though. Could make napalm out of bone dust, that kid.” A wink. It looked like he pissed around, yet didn’t at the same time, and that only made Drift shift more uneasily.
Seeing him, Martin put the cleaner down as Drift eased away from the doorframe. The look in silver-grey eyes was too serious, too long his way.
“Crossover points, where talking might be a little less… offensive. Let’s find one,” Martin said eventually, and he went over and opened the door that led out onto the patio, leaving Drift frowning.
“Some only see two choices when it comes to doors,” added Martin. “In… out.” He toed at the bottom of the doorframe. “But most miss it, how just before you step inside, before you venture out, there’s this single crossover point, just a thin wooden frame, neither here nor there.” He looked at Drift. “The void, where the best vantage point to both can be found.”
A breath raced Drift’s neck, but he buried his shiver.
Martin glanced around the kitchen. “Stood in the crossover point, we get the same offer of visual imagery as those inside the pen: what lies outside… who lies together supposedly in the heart of many a home: the kitchen. Only we don’t feel it all with being in the void.” He snorted a small smile. “So when we step away from the void, we observe, we pick at the pieces to understand, where even here, with Gray who bends detail to mask just what he is, the devil in the detail to his home still shows a binary vascular system: where Gray’s past physically meets his present.”
Did he mean the table? How out of place it looked to the rest of the manor? He must have. Had it come from somewhere else Gray had called home? The binary vascular comment, how two hearts beat at the same time, seemed to suggest that.
Martin looked his way. “Personal anachronisms like Gray’s table. Until you, I haven’t met many who apparently come with none.”
“That bothers you. That I don’t come with any table or chairs… no pieces to those puzzles for you to work out my story, hmm?” Drift shrugged. “It’s not done to deceive. I move around a lot, amongst people who only want to know if I’m there to thieve off them or for them. Nothing else is needed or asked for.”
“But for safety reasons, nothing is offered from you either, right?” Martin came over to the table and took a seat. After a moment, he indicated the empty chair opposite. “Come take time out with me,” he said eventually. “Because everyone, no matter how good, leaves footprints through the doorway for someone to trace and track. Even you. Case in point….”
He tugged out West’s phone and placed it on the table. “Why’s Grace not your job anymore ?”
Drift stared long and hard at the phone, then glancing briefly at Martin—he headed for the door and… out.
Martin’s sharp whistle cut across the kitchen, and for a moment Drift thought the dog call to heel was aimed at him, and he did jerk to a stop. But a mass of fur came in, claw scratching tile and looking like it was disgruntled over losing something as a huge body almost knocked him over.
“Fuck… shit.” Drift instantly regretted that as the huge Maine Coon lowered her look at him, calling out Lady here . “Sorry.” He crouched and scruffed at her ear, only to have the cat flop over and almost grin up at him, all floosy style. “Well, hello there, beautiful. You forgiven me yet for bleeding your ears out the other night?” The thing was huge, besting any labrador in size, but with long black fur coat and lionlike silver mane… “My God, you’re gorgeous,” he mumbled as the cat closed her eyes, tipping her head almost upside down into his fuss. “Right. You’re coming home with me. We won’t need a bloody guard dog with you around, mis….” He searched for a name tag and found none. “What? They not even bothered to name you, princess? Fuck it. You’re Neffi from now on.”
“Nefertiti…. Symbol of feminine power in particular. The kind that always manages to piss Jack off but he won’t swear her way because she is, well, a lady.” Martin seemed to try and bury a smile as Drift looked his way. “Could work.” He clicked his fingers once, and Neffi shifted almost instantly, brushing against Martin’s hand, then turning into it with this loud motorbike purr. Then she curled at his feet, sending a secret smile up at him before blinking innocence Drift’s way. All best buddies with… Martin.
“Oh, double-tap.” Martin had done his homework. Drift recognised an anachronistic setup to pets when he saw one, and he got to his feet. Yeah, he had a soft heart for any animal. But Martin was right. Everyone left footprints, and Martin himself had just given out a tie to his past, unconsciously or consciously—Drift couldn’t really tell—so he tugged out a chair and sat down. He had a sneaky feeling it had been done deliberately to get him to take a seat anyway.
“Who’s Jack?” Something brushed against Drift’s leg, and he reached down, distractedly stroking through Neffi’s fur as she sat by him. “You keep mentioning him, but I’ve not met him yet.”
Martin eased back in his chair, arms folding. “What do you need to know about him? Although note: you’re playing distraction from talk on Grace.”
Drift switched to stroking at the back of Neffi’s ear. Yeah, he was playing distraction, but what did he expect? He didn’t know Martin. He didn’t know if he wanted to yet. “His name was on the playlist upstairs. I get the impression Gray and Jan are lovers, that Jack’s related to one of them in some way because the playlist is reserved for family. Light too. So who is he and why isn’t your name on the list?”
“My name is on that list,” Martin said eventually. “And Jack’s also Gray and Jan’s lover. They’re a triad. Me?” He shrugged. “Not Jack Here.”
Drift frowned over at him and stopped his stroke of Neffi. “But you’re on the playlist as family. And that’s a piss-take over you not being this Jack. So the family connection for you has got to be with Jack somehow, right? A brother?” He tried to work it out, clenching his fist to stop the shaking. “One you play up? Where you see this place he lives and loves in has a twisted Hotel California vibe with laying down in a bed with Gray. Gray’s a psychopath.”
Martin tilted his head slightly. “Oh… the potential you have there, kid. You—”
Drift lost track of Martin for a moment. An uncle. He had a potential uncle here as well…? The possibility of a grandfather with the earlier mention of Greg Harrison? Everything crashed in a little too fast, sending the table spinning, and he gripped into Neffi’s fur. That… that was just on his father’s side. What about his mother’s?
Drift rubbed at his head, and Martin stopped what he’d been saying for a moment, then narrowed his eyes.
“Tell me. Do you get headaches often?”
Jan carefully tapped his head. “Does this play him up? Does it get him into trouble? Maybe hurt him?”
“Does it Martin?” West didn’t quite meet Jan’s gaze as she wiped hair from her lips. “Get headaches, I mean?”
Ah… headaches. Jan got a very sick feeling “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah it does.” Talk had started slow, painful, but Jan understood the wariness. “And Drift does too, huh? Does he get nosebleeds as well?”
West frowned, then stroked distractedly at a bruise touching her cheek. “Not nose bleeds, no.” That troubled look in her eyes, that touch to her cheek….
Shit. “He’s hit you.” Jan saw the bruise on her jaw for the first time. Really saw it, and his heart sank with it. “He did that, and it’s not been the first time he’s hit you?”
West snorted and dropped her touch. “It’s worse for Ava and her paid day-walkers.” She shrugged. “But with me…. He didn’t know. He never does.”
Yeah. There it was.
Disorderly conduct.
Jan briefly closed his eyes. “Because sometimes he’s there with you, then sometimes he’s… not, huh? He has absences and doesn’t remember what happens during the fall?”
“When did they start? The headaches?” Martin said from across the table, and Drift looked at him. “Can you remember?”
Drift leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. He wasn’t here to talk headaches and shit.
“Okay… let’s come at this another way.” Martin tapped West’s mobile phone. “Talk to me about this. Talk to me about Grace. About Ava.”
Drift stared down at the phone.
Playlists. How many times had he used West’s phone to store his own? Now Thomas Day’s “Not My Job Anymore” scrawled across the screen.
Martin eased back in his chair. “Look, you owe no one an explanation or an apology for keeping your silence. You don’t have to say anything.” He pushed the phone over until it sat close enough for Drift to take back. “I don’t know the song. I don’t know this Grace or what she’s done as Ava. So it stays that way if you call it. Because nobody belongs sorting around in your head but you, right? The whole point around here lately.”
Drift levelled a look on him. “Yet you bargain talk over any potential family with asking about the song and Ava.”
Martin shook his head. “I’m asking about your time before you ran to the street. And I’ll offer my frankness over personal medical details in exchange for yours in order to help you understand where the headaches may come from. Yours starts with a song and a sister. Mine with a name: Jack. Both sound simplistic, but the application into the wider context of living, loving, or lack thereof of either is… complex.” He offered a small smile. “But you have my word I will always be frank with you no matter how much it hurts, because it’s playing with half-truths and missing detail that makes us blind and feeds headaches, right?” He searched Drift’s look. “I don’t dance blindfolded. And with the look I’m seeing about you here, I won’t let you play with half details either, not with the headache I see building.”
The vibes he got off Martin were dark in tone, like a resonation fork set to tune, working out the mood of the listener in the quiet. He worked on watching people, Drift saw that, so he damn well knew it wasn’t only his choice of words under the microscope here, how he refused to touch the phone, mostly because he felt so… dirty.
“And if I say no to any talk,” he said flatly, “you’d be able to keep to any word you give and talk headaches to me?” It dug under his skin with how Martim seemed to know about them, about him and them. “Because I’m getting the feeling you’re only content when you’re reading people and playing head games.”
Martin nodded. “Like I said: you stay sharp with that ability to read people like me. But no,” he said quietly. “No games here, not with you. So tell me about this.” He tapped the phone. “The headaches surrounding touching it. Who got you running from home to find safety, because I think that’s it with you: you don’t run away from trouble—you run to find safety and shelter. You run to find West. Only something that’s gone on with you and Grace is stopping you from holding on to West, so you run harder… faster each time to try and catch up to a safety that only causes more… headaches.”
Drift sniffed, shrugged. “No huge secret.” He picked the phone up. “I fucked up,” he said flatly. “I didn’t read the signs when a foster father took a liking to one of his kids.”