Chapter Seventeen
Just for good measure, I give the front door an angry kick—hateful woman, just the worst person in the world—but I’ve not actually got enough energy for it and Bastian catches me before I sway into the wall.
“Where’s the fire?” he asks.
“This way.”
With my arm still pulled around his shoulder, we awkwardly walk through the door to the living room.
My parents haven’t updated their style since the thirties: art deco wallpaper in fern green and gold, dark wood paneling, furniture with faded William Morris patterns, and small mahogany drinks tables with carved spiral legs.
All of it has a hint of the magical, the bizarre, to it; it’s dusty and overstuffed with trinkets from the century of travel—enchanted Venetian masks and crystal charms in velvet boxes—scattered everywhere.
The TV is the only modern appliance in here and stands out like a sore thumb.
When I was growing up, all of it made me feel as if I were living in a museum designed to make me feel bad about myself.
Now, compared to Bastian’s sleek flat it looks comically cluttered, perhaps even chintzy or, worse, embarrassingly outdated and colonial. I grimace.
Bastian has already moved to feed kindling and rolled-up newspaper into the fire and it roars into red-and-gold life.
I awkwardly crumple down on the Turkish rug in front of it, happy to bathe myself in its warmth, even though my skin is so cold it actually feels like it’s burning in the heat.
Bastian slumps down beside me, reaching into the brass coal bucket to feed the fire with the brass tongs.
I feel suddenly sleepy, like I might not be able to get back up, and know I should get out of my wet clothes.
“I’m going to change,” I say. “Do you need dry clothes?”
“No, I’ll just take my jeans off.” Bastian is still shaking. He reaches for a tartan blanket that’s spread over the back of the sofa. “I’ll build the fire up.”
“Thanks.” I stumble into the hall to the cupboard under the stairs, kneeling down and dragging out one of the boxes marked ORLANDO.
I pull out a hoodie, a pair of surf shorts, and ski socks.
Standing in the hall, I wrench my boots off my cold, stiff feet and drag down my tight, frozen jeans.
I rip off my sodden T-shirt and struggle out of my cold binder, taking a second to recognize the strangeness of this male body all over again.
First, the longer, goatish legs with the fiery red hair on my thighs and in a furry trail from my belly button.
Then the narrow hips and shoulders, the extra bit of height, and the broadness of the backs of these new hands.
I pull on the dry clothes and catch sight of myself in the hall mirror.
My jaw is large and square, my nose broad, my eyebrows red; my hair is that deep ginger that’s closer to brown than blond, shorter and tufty.
My skin has a very pink, ruddy quality to it, the kind that sunburns in winter.
I can already tell I’ll have to shave my face.
I cautiously pull the sleeve of the hoodie down to cover the scars on my wrist. Wearily, I move back into the lounge.
Bastian is sitting by the fire and feeding kindling into a strong, crackling flame. He’s got a blanket spread around his shoulders and one across his lap. His wet jeans are on the back of a chair and his ankles and shins are visible, tucked underneath him, flecked with fluffy hair. I look away.
“So,” Bastian says quietly. “You’re not an orphan?”
“No, I’m not,” I say.
“What’s the story there?”
“There’s no story.” I reach for the extra blanket, a dense Tibetan thing with red stripes that’s folded under the sofa, and shake it out, wrapping it around my shoulders before standing up. “I’m going to make tea.”
I move through to the kitchen, turning on the light.
They’ve changed a few things since I was last here, finally getting rid of the hideous avocado-green fridge and the yellowed Laura Ashley wallpaper, but the ancient stove and the grimy brown filter-coffee machine that’s about forty years old are the same.
Even so, I’m disorientated; it takes me a minute to find the tea bags.
Luckily, there’s some milk left in the fridge.
I try not to feel anything when I notice familiar little things.
Father’s kukicha blend that he has every morning, the woody smell of it drifting across the kitchen flagstones.
Mother’s collection of teacups from around the world stored up on hooks, French glass and Chinese jade hanging in neat rows.
I fill two cups from the Willow-patterned set and return to the lounge, finding Bastian standing up, looking around the room, taking in the travel souvenirs, photographs, ancient books, and priceless witchlore artifacts that mark every part of my parents’ lives together.
I very deliberately do not look at his boxers, striped blue.
I hand him a tea and sit down, wishing he would cover up.
Why do I care? I ask myself fiercely, glaring into the fire. I love Elizabeth.
“This house is fascinating,” he murmurs, sipping his tea reflectively. I glance at him nervously.
“It’s less of a house, more an antiques shop with too much stock,” I say.
“A magical antiques shop.” Bastian’s eyes gleam as he gazes around. “Is that really a collection of shrouds over there?”
“Yes.” I glare at it, the ostentatious curiosity case mounted on the wall, polished wood and miniature filigree gold clasps, the eight or nine shroud necklaces twinkling innocuously behind the glass, hanging on little hooks against black satin.
If anything, it’s the item in this house I despise the most.
“The gemstones are incredible,” Bastian says reverently. “Are they all enchanted?”
“No, thank god,” I mutter into my tea. When Bastian looks at me questioningly, I feel like I have to say something and the truth might at least shut him up.
“They scoured the world, looking for shrouds of different strengths to use on me. Some of them have worse impacts than others. That one”—I point to the giant onyx stone on a leather braided necklace—“made me have seizures. It hurt more than shifting.”
Bastian says nothing. I wonder what he’s thinking as he frowns and looks around. Maybe he’s wondering how anyone can grow up around this much witchlore, this much culture, and be unhappy. But then he didn’t spend days under the onyx shroud, having so many fits his nose bled.
“There are no photos of you,” Bastian says.
“Yeah, no surprise there.” I sip the tea and wince. It tastes weird with the residue of salt and sand in my mouth.
“You can’t say there’s no story here. Everything here is a story,” Bastian says flatly. “You have a mum. You have a house. I presume you have a dad in Paris and yet you let everyone think you’re an orphan.”
“I am. Technically.”
“What?”
“I’m adopted,” I say. “My biological parents are dead, or so I’m told. Besides, I didn’t let people think anything, they made assumptions without asking. It’s not my job to correct that.”
“Yeah, but why?” Bastian presses. “She seems like she cares, so did you fall out or…?”
He lets the sentence hang. I sigh and stare into the fire. He was honest with me about his crappy parents. It only seems fair I return the favor.
“She impressed you, didn’t she?” I say quietly. “So poised, so full of magic? It’s fine if she did, she’s very impressive.”
“Yeah,” Bastian admits. “I’ve never … Your shifts are just so different. Hers are so fluid.”
“Yes, they are.” I try to keep my tone as level as possible.
“She’s impressive and she’s only impressed by people who can use their skill in the same way she can.
So imagine how she felt when the shifter baby they longed for, the shifter baby they adopted, turned out to be an utter dud.
If she seems like she cares, it’s because she cares about me getting better. ”
“Well, that’s good.”
“No, not getting healthier. Getting better at shapeshifting, whatever the cost,” I say sharply. “It’s all she has ever cared about.”
I set my tea down on the carpet and rub my ankles. They’re sore but not as sore as they were when I did my shift at Boggart Hole Clough. I wonder if changing more frequently makes it actually less painful on my joints. I’ve never shifted so quickly in my life, so I don’t know.
“You don’t understand shapeshifters,” I say, with a shake of my head. “You don’t understand how they feel about witchcraft.”
“Oh, you think I didn’t notice your mum’s barely veiled disdain for witches?” he says scornfully. “Or how you flinched from her magic? I’m not asking to be inducted into the secrets of shapeshifter society, I’m just interested in you.”
I sigh and stare at a photo of my parents in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa from the 1950s, the photograph grainy and black-and-white.
They look just as they do now, as if a child has had no impact on them.
I try to find words for the quiet, steady detachment of their lives from mine, for the years of pain and disappointment.
“We are magic. They can never have it, they can never take it away from us, and for this, they will always hate us. They will never trust us. Remember that,” I recite.
“Shifters are taught really young that our only value is our magic. Our ability to shift is what keeps us safe: safe from humans, safe from witches. As long as we’re magically powerful then we can hold on to our place in society.
Witches will tolerate us because we’re useful and humans in government will want to utilize our skills. Without our powers, we’re nothing.”
“Okay,” Bastian says with a frown. “And because you can’t do magic, your parents…?”
I stare into the fire. I don’t want to have to look at him when I explain this: my mother’s frustration, my father’s furious disappointment.