Chapter 26
Mabel
From one darkness to the next. The thought flashed through my mind as I blinked.
Close to my face was dark green, a slant of light dancing across it, moving swiftly towards me.
It was dazzling, and I squinted. Just a few seconds, then the light had moved on.
With it went the sound of an engine, reaching me from far away.
I rolled my head towards the window with an effort.
The curtains weren’t fully closed, and the colours of the street were cast into the room.
Car headlights, lampposts, traffic-light red.
The different shades swirled unpleasantly in my brain.
I pressed my hands to my throbbing eyes, trying to remember. Where was I?
My thoughts felt soft, deformed somehow, as if still marked by someone else’s fingers. Maybe because I could still feel that alien hand so clearly in my chest.
I sat up with a jolt, but immediately regretted it as a sharp pain burst through my temples and between my ribs.
Panting, I pressed both hands to my frantically beating heart, trying to make sure I was still in one piece.
Each breath was a burning ache, but otherwise I felt unharmed, and like myself.
I was still here, even though … Ashton Griffin had just tried to kill me. The thought felt more like a nightmare than a memory, but I knew instinctively it wasn’t. If I had woken from a dream, I would have been in my own bed, and not one I’d never seen before.
Taking a deep breath, I threw back the duvet and set both feet on the floor, one after the other.
My head began to swim, my vision went fuzzy.
I blinked until it cleared, then looked down, seeing with relief that I was still fully dressed.
Only my coat and shoes had been removed, replaced with thick socks.
The only object in the room, except the bed, was an oak wardrobe with gold knobs.
I opened it and looked inside. Muted colours, shades of olive and brown, lots of black.
My fingers skimmed the expensive fabrics, increasingly reassured.
I knew who these things belonged to. Not because of the garments themselves, but the scent that lingered on them.
Warm, woody oud, spicy cinnamon, a note of bergamot and a hint of lavender.
I had smelt it many times before, but it was most intense here: in the home of the person it belonged to.
Relieved, I closed the wardrobe and went over to the door, beyond which I could hear muffled noises.
Blake was at the stove. He had his back to me, but I knew he sensed me the moment I entered the room.
I had been here often, but never in his bedroom.
Almost as if he was trying to lock away the thoughts that loomed behind it.
As soon as I reached the kitchen island, he turned to me. Studying me, stirring a saucepan on the hob. The air was rich with the warm scent of milk, and my muscles relaxed a little.
‘How did I get here?’ My voice was hoarse, and I cleared my throat.
‘I brought you here, after…’ He trailed off, shoulders hunching. The memory bore down on them with all its weight. I could almost see it, although I’d glimpsed what happened only at the edges of my perception.
‘After you stopped your best friend trying to kill me,’ I finished matter-of-factly. Oddly, I was long past the point when those words felt difficult to accept.
One corner of his mouth lifted, a sorry attempt at a smile. ‘You really are quite strong. You shouldn’t even be able to remember that.’
‘You’re not even going to deny it?’ Until now, Blake had always tried to defend Ashton.
‘I thought we’d leave all that behind us, at last. Doesn’t matter now anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
He opened a cupboard and took out a mug. ‘Like I told you, I was just trying to protect you by keeping you away from me. But after what happened tonight … that’s no longer an option.’
When he turned to me again, I smiled grimly. ‘Good.’
‘Good?’ he replied sceptically.
‘Yes. Like I told you, that isn’t what I want.’
For a moment we looked at each other in silence, then he gestured to a stool in front of me.
‘You should sit down. It’ll take your circulation a while longer to recover.
’ He went up to the island from the other side and slid a notepad and a book aside as I climbed onto the stool.
A flare of dizziness, and I grabbed the edge to support myself.
Blake reached reflexively for my hand, holding it tight.
His skin was so warm that I flinched. But it was probably just because mine was so cold.
There was a shiver caught inside me, which kept sending waves of gooseflesh over my skin.
Blake let me go at once and stepped back.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of me,’ he said tonelessly, reaching again for the spoon.
‘I’m not,’ I replied, surprised to realise I meant it. ‘You wouldn’t have saved me from Ashton if you were planning to kill me yourself.’
‘I didn’t just mean that. It’s also … what I told you about Piper and the others. I would never … touch you.’ His voice was shot through with hesitation, as if there were truths hidden in those silences he didn’t want to share.
But what he’d said already was enough to send another shiver down my spine, because I realised it hadn’t even crossed my mind when I first woke up in his bed.
I’d felt no trace of fear that he might have done something to me, although I knew he was capable of it.
I tried to tell myself I was just confused, but I knew better.
My feelings for Blake weren’t confused. Despite the chaos all around us, what I felt when I looked at him was simple. Even if it was wrong, it was real.
I narrowed my lips and said nothing. I couldn’t leave now, anyway.
Not just because Ashton might be waiting for me outside the house, but because I believed Blake when he said he was tired of secrets.
And so was I. After everything that had happened tonight, I needed answers more urgently than ever.
Blake took two pot holders off the hook and poured the milk into the mug, then added several tablespoons of honey and stirred.
‘Here, drink this,’ he said, setting it in front of me.
I could see how careful he was not to look at me or touch me.
‘It helps.’ He gave me an encouraging nod, and I tried the milk.
It was too sweet, but after the first taste I could already feel the soft honey soothing the roughness inside me.
‘I don’t understand how Ashton did it,’ I whispered after a few sips, which cleared my mind a little. ‘I didn’t let my drink out of my sight, how could he possibly have slipped something into it?’
Blake leant against the kitchen counter, arms folded across his chest. He still wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘He didn’t give you anything, he took something from you.’
‘Come on, don’t tell me he siphoned energy out of my soul to make me easier to manipulate.’ I laughed aloud, a brittle noise. When I saw that Blake didn’t respond, it turned to ash in my mouth. I swallowed heavily. ‘Again, you’re not denying it.’
‘I don’t like lying, remember?’
I stared at him in horror. Even if I could accept that someone had tried to kill me, that didn’t mean I could accept … that. It wasn’t possible.
‘Do you want to leave?’ Blake asked, as if he knew very well I was questioning his sanity.
‘Would you let me?’
At last he looked up. His eyes were dark, the expression in them at once exhausted and alert. ‘As soon as you leave this flat … as soon as you leave me, I can’t protect you anymore. So please don’t force me to choose what to hate myself for.’
‘Well, anyway. I don’t want to leave. Not until I know what’s going on.’ Now it was my turn to nod promptingly as I took another sip of milk. Each one made the shiver in me easier, more bearable.
‘If I tell you everything, you won’t want to believe me. It goes against everything your rational mind tells you about the world. And I know how much that matters to you.’
‘The truth matters to me more. So. Try me.’
Blake nodded hesitantly. ‘What Ashton told you about souls is true. It’s also true that he … that we have the ability to access the energy inside them and take some of it for ourselves.’
I felt several impulses at once: walking off without a word and bursting into laughter were the two strongest. Suppressing both, I counted to ten in my head before I trusted myself to answer. ‘Why would someone want to do that?’
Blake was watching me closely. ‘Feeding on other people’s souls energises you. It clears your mind, gives you a sense of vitality, euphoria, strength. It’s like … a kind of high. A special drug that only a handful of people are able to consume.’
‘So how come you guys figured it out, then?’ I tried my best to sound diplomatic, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t doubt Blake believed what he was saying, but surely he must realise how it came across.
‘My ancestors were very spiritual. These days we might call them witches, but that’s misleading.
What they practised wasn’t magic. They just understood how nature really works – how the universe works.
They realised that human beings are made up of two elements that don’t necessarily have to be connected.
’ He paused, as if I should be able to figure out the rest. But I hadn’t followed a word of what he was saying.
‘The body isn’t axiomatically bound to the soul,’ he continued slowly.
‘In theory, the two can exist independently of one another. And while the body is limited to a certain lifespan, the soul itself is eternal. So they began to wonder how they could free the soul from the mortality of its shell.’
The look on my face was starting to give me away. Was he really talking about … immortality? ‘How is that possible?’
‘Several of them imbued their combined life force into an object, letting all the energy in their souls flow into it.’