2. Who You Gonna Call? The Men In White Coats, That’s Who
2
Who You Gonna Call? The Men In White Coats, That’s Who
Aliza
T here was a second, after stepping into the room, and before anyone noticed me, that time stood still.
I don’t know what I’d expected, but nothing had changed in my absence. How was I entirely changed–both physically and emotionally–but my lifelong home remained exactly as it had always been? There was the same reclining black leather sofa and armchair, draped in throws and buried under mounds of cushions. The same oversized cream rug. Same pictures, framed on the walls. Even the fiddle leaf fig was still alive, sprouting a few large leaves at the top of its bald, nobbly stem. The only difference was the hundreds of condolence cards crammed on every surface. The mantlepiece, the shelving unit, even hung on string draped between the twin wall lights. My attention caught on them.
I was dead.
As far as anyone knew, I was dead and never coming back.
“Aliza?”
I whipped my head around .
A man much older and thinner than the dad I remembered stared up, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, from the armchair, the TV remote dangling limply from one hand. His formerly plump face was gaunt, the skin grey and sagging, but there was no mistaking his blue eyes. Eyes that I’d inherited.
“Dad.” I half smiled, half sobbed. I didn’t know what to do with my body. My newly forged limbs trembled under my own weight.
Dad staggered to his feet, staring as though he’d seen a ghost. Maybe he had.
Mum appeared in the archway that led through to the dining room and kitchen. She wore her fluffy leopard print dressing gown and clutched a mug of tea in each hand, but she jerked to a halt as her eyes found me. Both mugs clattered to the floor, spilling their contents over the rug.
“Hi, Mum.”
Before I could say anything more, she hurtled across the room, thumping into me and crushing me into a quaking hug as sobs wrenched through her body. My eyes flooded as I folded my arms around her. She smelled exactly as I remembered. Honey shampoo and her favourite, musky perfume, now faint after her evening shower.
Another pair of arms wrapped around the two of us, and I squinted through my tears to find Dad had joined the fray. Adjusting my arm, I made room for him, though he certainly took up a lot less space than I remembered.
I’d done it. From the moment I’d arrived in Neath, my driving goal had been to make it back here, to this place and these people. To this life. I’d finally made it, but not in the way I’d imagined. I couldn’t stay .
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered between sobs. “I tried to come home sooner.”
Neither seemed to be in any state to answer me. I let them cry. I let them cling to me. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for them to lose their only child in such a way. To have no answers. To lie awake imagining the very worst of things happening to me. They didn’t know the half of it. If not for Idris…
I stretched my neck, peeping over my dad’s bowed head. Idris lingered in the hall, watching from the doorway with a strange, haunted expression. He gave me a whisper of a smile.
It was thanks to him that I was here at all. Without him, I’d have died a hundred times over. I returned his smile. I had forever stretching ahead of me, and yet I knew it wouldn’t be enough time to repay him, to show him the depths of my gratitude. I might only be able to stay in the human world for a few days, but it was only one of the gifts he’d given me, each beyond imagining. I had a feeling that, even now, watching this scene unfold, he couldn’t possibly know what it meant to me. Or maybe he did.
A parent reunited with a lost child.
Idris would know exactly how precious this moment was. There was nobody who could understand better. Nobody who longed for it more. My heart splintered, and a fresh wave of tears spilt over my cheeks, but not for me, not for my parents. For Idris. He would never know the joy he had given me tonight, even if he longed for it with every shredded piece of his soul. He could never have it for himself. His child was gone.
“Mum, Dad.” My voice was hoarse as I pried myself gently from their hold. “There’s somebody I want you to meet. ”
“What?” Mum blinked dazedly at me, but it was Dad who snapped his eyes to the door, a bloodthirsty father picking up the scent of a man sniffing around his precious daughter.
“Who the devil is that?” He demanded, drawing himself up to his full height. He was an inch or so taller than me, but he needed every bit of height if he wanted to square up to Idris.
The fae prince looked faintly ridiculous and far too large to be allowed in our little house. Maybe he should have glamoured himself a bit shorter, if that was even possible.
I laid a placating hand on Dad’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Dad. This is Idris. He’s been helping me find my way back.”
Idris chose that moment to duck beneath the door frame and step into the light, revealing his muted, but still breathtaking good looks. Mum gave a tiny gasp beside me, and I fought down a smirk.
“Idris, this is my dad, John, and my mum, Trish.”
“An honour to make your acquaintance, John. Trish.” Idris bowed, actually bowed, and panic fluttered to life in my chest. I should have versed him on behaving like a normal, real-life person instead of a fairytale prince, but as our own introduction had been anything but pleasant, I hadn’t expected such formality and propriety. I should have known. He was a prince , for god’s sake. He’d spent a very long lifetime practising his manners. It was just a pity that they made him even more conspicuous than his perfect face did.
Mum, bless her, was pink-cheeked and open-mouthed. I understood completely. I’d lost my head to Idris’ identical twin brother. Much to my shame, Anwir had me blushing like a teenage girl every time he‘d looked in my direction in the early days of our acquaintance. It had taken me a while to see past Idris’ initial piss-poor attitude, but I saw his beauty now. Saw it amplified by the soul within, while Anwir’s was forever tarnished.
Dad, however, seemed unimpressed. Animosity rolled off him in waves, tainting the air. “Helping you, you said?”
“Yeah, Dad. He has. Look, we’ve got a lot to talk about. Why don’t you sit down?”
“I should clean up the tea.” Mum revolved on the spot, looking as though she’d recently woken from an all-consuming dream and didn’t remember her own name, never mind where she kept the cleaning products.
“Allow me.” Idris took a step further into the room, but Dad intercepted him, prodding him firmly in the chest.
“No lad, you’ll sit in that chair where I can keep an eye on you. I’m not having strangers poking around my house, least of all ones mysteriously showing up with my missing daughter. I’ve half a mind to call the police.”
“Dad!”
Idris sat in Dad’s armchair with no further argument, unusually polite and compliant. Maybe it was for the best, if Dad was going to make things difficult.
“Are you in trouble, love? Is that it? You know you could have come to us.”
“No, Dad, I—”
“You’ve changed your hair,” Mum interjected, her flush paling. “You loved those silly colours. And your eyes… are those contacts? You’re on the run, aren’t you? Oh god, Aliza. Is it money? Drugs? ”
“Mum! No, it is not drugs! Or money. Please, just sit down and I swear, I’ll tell you everything.” This was proving harder than I’d anticipated.
“Because if it is, you know it doesn’t matter to us. Oh, Aliza. We’re just so glad to see you safe. Whatever trouble you’re in, it doesn’t matter. We can fix it.”
Dad opened his mouth as though he planned to join the continued argument, but I held up my hand. “Please, Dad. Mum.”
Finally, both my parents exchanged a doubtful look and took a seat on the sofa. Dad looked out of place there, and I knew he’d have commandeered the armchair if he hadn’t wanted to keep Idris isolated and watched.
“Right,” I said, my guts churning. This was it, the moment I admitted my apparent insanity. I tried to wrangle my words, to arrange them in a way that might seem even slightly believable, but I was fighting a battle I’d already lost. There was nothing for it. “I’ll start with the bit you’re going to have the hardest time accepting, and I know what I say is going to sound… well, batshit crazy, but please, listen , and let me prove it to you before you jump to any conclusions, okay?”
Mum and Dad exchanged another glance, the former wringing her hands in her lap, but they nodded.
“Go ahead, love,” Mum said gently.
“Right, okay. So, the thing is… Idris here isn’t a human. He’s actually what’s known as a fae, which means he’s immortal and has magical powers.”
Absolute clanging silence, as expected. At least nobody tried to call the men in white coats. Not yet, anyway .
“Now, I wouldn’t believe that either, so it’s absolutely fine that you don’t. It took me ages to stop thinking I had a concussion, but we don’t have ages, so Idris is going to show you a little bit of magic to prove that I’m not mad. Don’t panic, okay?”
Mum looked as though she’d been slapped across the face, whereas Dad narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but when Idris eased out of the armchair, both snapped their attention to him. As did I. Despite my tattered nerves, I managed a small smile. It had to be awkward for him, coming here and facing accusations, proving himself to absolute strangers. The thought loosened some of the tightness in my chest. I wasn’t alone in this, and neither was he.
Idris held a broad hand out before him, and all eyes in the room fell to it. I couldn’t help but remember that very same hand extending to me, to help me onto the back of a winged horse. My smile softened.
The air changed in a way I was beginning to recognise, tingling, like millions of tiny feet were marching over my skin. The hair on my arms rose. Could my parents feel it too? Whether or not they could, there was no way they could fail to notice the blue-white, faintly crackling light that shimmied over Idris’ skin. Lightning. Tiny threads of lightning.
“See?” I couldn’t keep hope from leaking into my voice, brightening it. “He has lightning magic. He can do a lot more than this, like full-on bolts of the stuff, but it’s obviously not safe in here.”
Mum rose to her feet, never taking her eyes off Idris’ hand, but Dad snatched a handful of her dressing gown. “Don’t go near. It’s a trick.”
My smile dropped. “Oh come on, Dad. You don’t think I’d bring him here if he was going to hurt anyone, do you? Idris, that’ll do. ”
The prince resumed his seat, and I crossed the room and perched on the arm beside him. The action was intended as a show of solidarity, proof that Idris could be trusted, but some of the tightness in my chest eased at being near him. Did my presence offer him the same comfort?
I faced my parents once more.
“I know it’s impossible. I know you can’t accept this is real. Believe me, I know . But Idris and his magic saved my life. Mum, sit down, and I’ll go back to the beginning.”
That was what I did. I talked and talked, relaying the unbelievable events that had become my life over the past few weeks. I left out details of the weird and wonderful creatures I’d encountered over the past few weeks, choosing to stick to need-to-know facts only. I didn’t even mention the curse, only that I’d been roped into rescuing Idris. There was no sense in making myself out to be crazier than I already seemed. I did talk about Idris, though. About his power, about how he had offered to help me find my way home when nobody else would. I told them about Saeth, Idris’ winged horse, and showed them the photographs on my phone to back up my outrageous claims. Thank God I’d dropped my phone when I’d been snatched from the Fairy Glen, and that Idris had found it. It had been the clue that sent him after me, and now it was one of the few pieces of evidence that proved I wasn’t clinically insane.
Mum and Dad gasped at the sight of a mythical creature captured in digital form, and I gushed about how Idris had taken me flying, but when I got to the part of my tale where I’d made it back to the Fairy Glen, I fell silent, my skin growing cold. When my hairs rose again, it had less to do with magic, and more to do with the icy grip of fear that was always half a step behind me these days. I hadn’t talked about what had happened next, not even to Idris. I’d thought about it though, every hour since I’d woken in a mountainside cave yesterday afternoon. I’d been plagued by memories of flames consuming my flesh, swallowing me whole, slow and agonising.
“I left her too soon.” Idris’ voice came out as a hoarse rasp, and my parents snapped their attention to him. “I should have brought her here, right to the door. She was ambushed. Taken. When I realised, I hunted for her. I found her, but…”
He glanced up at me, anguish straining in his yellowy-green eyes. My suffering had ended by the time he’d arrived, but it had been him to pull my charred remains from the pyre. Him who had battled to save me.
I turned back to my parents. Mum was on the edge of her seat, now clinging to the loose end of her dressing gown belt as though it was the key to keeping her grounded in reality. Dad’s face was impassive, but his eyes were lined with tears. They didn’t need to know the details. Not yet.
“Idris saved me,” I croaked. “He got me out, and he brought me back to you.”
Nobody spoke. Only the clock on the wall broke the silence with its incessant ticking. Ticking away the seconds until I would be forced to leave for the magical world of Neath once more. A world whose vindictive ruler wanted me dead, at any cost. Whether King Maelgwyn knew of Idris’ success at saving me or not, I couldn’t say, but one thing was certain; the evil old tyrant had to be removed from power, by any means necessary. Not just because of what he’d done to me, but a new, venomous part of me thirsted for revenge. I didn’t like that part, born in the fiery forge of immortality. It wasn’t who I was, or who I wanted to be, but maybe it would give me the courage to go back to a world where terrible danger would stalk my every step. To walk willingly into deadly peril and brave the coming war.
For now, though, I was home, and I didn’t want to dwell on the future, not when the present was so precious. The sooner I could begin enjoying it, the better.
“I know all of this is a lot to take in, but I swear, it’s the truth.” I sighed. It had taken me days to accept any of this, and I’d been living it. There was no way Mum and Dad would believe me. “I’ll make another cup of tea, shall I?” I made to stand, but Mum leapt to her feet.
“Don’t you dare lift a finger! I’ll boil the kettle. Do you want coffee, or is it too late?”
I glanced at the clock. Almost eleven o’clock, but it had been ages since I’d had coffee. “Have we got the caramel latte pods?”
For the first time since I’d walked through the door, Mum smiled. In fact, she beamed, her whole face lighting up. “Of course we do. I knew you’d come back. Even when the police called off the search, I never stopped believing. I’ve got all your favourites.”
Tears threatened, but I blinked them away.
“And you, Idris. Would you like tea, or coffee?”
Idris glanced at me. “Have a coffee,” I suggested. “You won’t regret it.”
A faint smirk pulled at one corner of his lips. “Coffee it is.”
And while I couldn’t fathom the palette of anyone who didn’t like coffee, I did know that, even if he hated the drink, it wouldn’t even register amongst all his other regrets. He’d sworn that saving me wasn’t one of them, and I wanted to believe him, but while coffee was relatively risk free, his choice to immortalise me would have consequences that stretched in every direction. War. The succession. His relationship with his brother. His heart. All of them were great fissures in the ice above the deep and murky lake of the unknown.
What if I wasn’t worth it?