TWELVE #2
Calum climbed the forestair of his house, the wet stone slippery beneath his boots. He was fitting his key in the lock when he heard a dull thud from within. A creeping sensation whispered down the back of his neck. There was someone in his house.
His first instinct was to flee. He was halfway down the forestair before he forced himself to stop. To think.
All his weapons were in the house. If the fae had found out where he lived, they would be able to find him if he fled.
He couldn’t go in on the ground floor; there was no access to the rest of the house.
His neighbourhood was near the harbour, and the houses on his street were old fishing houses, where the ground floor had been used for storing nets and other gear and the upper floors for living.
Some of the neighbours had converted their homes with an internal staircase, but Calum still used the bottom level for storage and the old forestair to reach the main house.
He hauled himself back up the stairs, his shoulders tense as he slowly turned the key, trying not to make a sound.
He slid the door open, his fingertips patting at the rough plastered wall until they found the hilt of the shortsword he kept by the door.
He gritted his teeth against the rising panic.
If it was Caoimhe, he was done for. She had taught him all he knew about swordplay, after all.
He’d be better off dropping the sword and pretending it had all been a misunderstanding and that he was delighted to see her again.
The thought was nearly enough for him to turn around and race down the forestair again.
He tightened his grip around the leather hilt. If it was Caoimhe, he’d go down fighting. He wouldn’t let her take him again.
Slipping inside, he eased the door shut behind him. The heavy iron latch scraped against wood as the door closed. Calum barely heard it—but then, Calum didn’t have fae hearing.
Throwing caution to the wind, he sent out an effort of will and the beeswax candles on his walls sprang to life.
At the same time, he drew his sword, pointing it at the now-illuminated figure sitting in front of his fireplace.
She had Calum’s dark hair—hers plaited in a crown—and grey eyes, the same wide, full mouth, the same height and muscle, but her breadth was softened with curves, her cheeks and chin holding none of the angles of his own.
“Méabh’s lugs, Calum, it’s only me.”
Calum glowered at his sister, his heart still thumping in his chest as he shoved the sword back in its scabbard and laid it against the wall next to the door.
“What are you doing sitting here in the dark?” Calum snarled, stalking over to her.
“I didn’t want to turn the lights on and give you a fright.” Sorcha’s eyes were wide, searching Calum’s face. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay,” Calum snapped. “I thought you were a fucking fae.” He threw himself into the chair across from Sorcha, running a shaking hand through his hair. “I thought—I thought—” He couldn’t give voice to his fears, not even to Sorcha, the one person who would believe him without judgement.
“You thought I was Caoimhe,” Sorcha said. It wasn’t a question. She knew him better than that. There was only one person who scared him this much. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
Calum reached for the whisky bottle that Sorcha had left on the tea table, then let his trembling hand fall. It would only drive him deeper into the memories he usually kept locked away. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“What, I can’t visit my brother?” She was trying for levity, but Calum had known her since before she could speak, before she had ever learnt to lie—and she’d never been very good at it.
“Oh, aye, you thought you’d just show up in your paranoid brother’s house without warning.
What a lark!” Fear sharpened his tone more than he’d intended.
There were few topics that would make Sorcha evasive.
“Is this about Douglas?” Their eldest brother had never believed Calum had returned, insisting that he was a changeling.
Sorcha shook her head. “No, he’s fine. Still a prick, but fine.”
“He’s not a prick,” Calum said.
“He tried to set you on fire,” Sorcha replied, enunciating each word.
“He thought I was a changeling.” He didn’t know why he was defending the brother who had tried to kill him, only that his return had destroyed Sorcha and Douglas’s previously close relationship, and it had broken something inside him.
“If it’s not Douglas, then why are you here?”
Sorcha smoothed her hands over her trousers, her face turned to the empty fireplace next to them. “Lewis wrote to me.”
“And you’re here rather than at his flat because .
. . ?” Sorcha and Lewis were close; on more than one occasion she’d expressed hope that Calum would marry Lewis, saying he made a better brother than either of her actual brothers, and it wouldn’t have surprised Calum to learn the two of them kept up a correspondence.
“He wrote to me about you. He’s worried.”
“Well, he doesn’t need to be.” Calum’s voice came out harsher than he’d intended, cracking through the air between them like a tree splintering in a storm. He moderated his tone as he said, “I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not fine, if even Lewis is worried.”
Calum’s skin prickled against his sweat-damp shirt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You never told him about Caoimhe, did you?” Sorcha took a sip of her whisky, eyeing him over the top of the glass.
“Of course not. He’d have laughed at me, had me locked up in a hospital, or he’d have been unable to look at me without pity. You know no one in Mossburgh believes in them, not like they do back home.”
Sorcha had that look on her face that she always had when she beat Calum at a game. “And even he knows something isn’t right, with the way you’re pursuing these missing people. He’s not stupid, Calum. He might not know exactly what’s going on, but he knows it’s not healthy.”
“Nothing’s ‘going on’.”
“Look at you,” Sorcha said, sweeping a hand to encompass the front door and the sword perched next to it, the gem in its hilt sparkling in the candlelight.
“You’ve got a sword next to the door. You thought I was a fae when you found me in your house.
And now you’ve apparently decided to single-handedly hunt down every missing person in Mossburgh. ”
“So, what now?” Calum spread his arms. “You’ve made a two-day journey to argue with me?”
“I’ve made a two-day journey to stay in your spare room until you screw your head back on straight.”
“I don’t need you to look after me,” Calum snapped, his cheeks heating.
“Do you still sleep with your bandolier hanging off your headboard?”
The answer to that was yes, of course he did, but all he said was, “I’m a detective inspector, Sorcha. It is my job to investigate crimes.”
“It’s not your job when your boss tells you to drop it,” Sorcha snarled. “Aye, Lewis told me that part. You’re not going to fix what that monster did to you by solving another person’s disappearance.”
Calum recoiled as though she’d hit him in the gut. “Do you think that’s what this is about?”
“Are you telling me it isn’t?” Sorcha crossed her arms.
Calum couldn’t answer that. “So, what, I should just drop it because no one else in the police cares?” he snarled. “Someone has to investigate this.”
Sorcha’s lips curved into a sad smile. “But does it have to be you?”
“It does if no one else will,” Calum said, his voice clipped.
Sorcha let out a long-suffering sigh, sweeping an errant strand of hair out of her face.
There were a handful of white hairs scattered about, only visible when they caught the light.
Calum’s own hair was still dark, aside from the single streak he’d had since he was sixteen.
Seven years had passed in Eskalan for the four years he’d spent in Faerie, and every sign of his wee sister ageing was another jolt, another reminder that he wasn’t normal, that he would never be normal again.
So, too, was the way she’d so readily taken on the mantle of elder sibling when he’d returned home, a scared and broken nineteen to her grown and self-assured twenty-one.
“You think that solving these disappearances is going to heal you somehow, help you deal with what happened to you.” Her voice was quiet, her words slow and measured. “But it won’t. Whatever you find, it’s not going to help you. It’s going to destroy you.”