Chapter 26 #3
At that moment, I realised how right he was.
This thing between us had never been logical, it was always about emotion.
We had seen each other, really seen each other, from the very first glance.
There had been no masks, no front, no attempt to seem better or even merely different from what we truly were.
What we had shown each other that first night was the core of our real selves.
And despite the walls of lies we’d built up later, we both knew it was true.
We both knew each other. Which must have been why – without reason, with only my heart and every feeling in my body – I decided to believe him.
Even though it was far-fetched, even though it went against all the convictions of my rational mind: I believed him.
I drank down the last of the honey milk, trying to wash away the shouts of crazy, crazy, crazy echoing in my head. ‘Did you choose this? Did you know what was in store for you?’
‘No.’ Blake was eyeing me warily. Probably he was unsure if I believed him or was just trying to stall.
Or he was still expecting me to make a run for it.
Which was fair enough, really: after all, he’d just confessed that he was essentially a supernatural being, and also a murderer.
One or both of those things should have terrified me, yet somehow I felt safe.
I wasn’t afraid of the truth. And I certainly wasn’t afraid of … Cliff.
‘My parents were the ones who initiated the ceremony. They sacrificed themselves to create the artefact.’ He rubbed his eyes, as if trying to erase the pictures behind them.
I wondered if memories were altered when you took them from one body to another.
When you left the body that had seen a moment – heard it, smelt it, tasted it, felt it – did you also leave behind gauze-thin layers of its perception?
Or was it true what they said, that memories were stored …
inside you? In what we called the heart, which was really something else entirely: the soul, perhaps?
I would have liked to ask, but I didn’t want to interrupt.
I could see it cost him something to keep going.
‘I just did as I was told. At the time I had no idea what the point of it all was. To be honest, I knew next to nothing about my parents.’ A bitter grimace played across his lips.
‘But it would be too easy to say I’m innocent.
I went along with it, even enjoyed it, for a while.
There’s a special magic to realising you’re no longer bound to the mortality of the body.
That you can live forever. It felt like a blessing.
Until I realised what it really is: a curse. ’
‘How so?’ I asked carefully. Immortality was a popular motif, and not just in myths and fairy tales. In the real world, too, we were obsessed with growing as old as possible and being able to live a long, fulfilling life. I was sure many people would do anything to achieve a thing like immortality.
He fell silent for a moment, then got up and took my mug.
Reaching the sink, he put it in, along with the saucepan, before turning on the tap.
His voice was nearly lost in the running water.
‘I can live forever, but not properly. None of the lives I live are … real. I slip into them, run them day-to-day, take on the person’s family and friends, but none of it is my decision.
I’m a puppet. I do what I’m told.’ He switched off the tap, but kept his back to me still.
‘Our council chooses the bodies we inhabit: it’s always about power, money and contacts.
About making life as comfortable as possible for ourselves. ’
That explained why the members of the League were in such high-level positions, even though at first glance they were not connected. How could anybody on the outside ever guess what linked them together?
‘And none of it lasts,’ Cliff went on, his voice low. ‘Just as I’m getting used to a life, I have to leave it again. Every time I … meet someone, I know that soon I’ll have to … stop seeing them.’
I went rigid as it dawned on me what he was saying. That he was talking in part about us. How whatever this thing was between us, it had never stood a chance. ‘That sounds like a lonely life.’
Slowly, he turned to me. ‘I told you Ashton and the others are my family. And in my case, I really can’t choose them. We only have each other.’
‘But you can decide to stop jumping,’ I said. ‘Live a life to its end, and … go.’ Whoever this council were, they couldn’t force him to live out an eternity he didn’t want. Could they?
Cliff shook his head, wiping his hands on a tea towel. ‘No, that’s not possible.’
I frowned. ‘Why not?’
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Tossed the rag onto the countertop and returned to the island.
‘They’d never let me. I tried to run away once before.
To dodge the ceremony. It took Ashton less than two weeks to find me, even though I’d left the continent.
We know each other in a way so deep I can’t really describe it.
We’re … bound together.’ He didn’t sound reverent or ecstatic.
More resigned, as if he’d come to terms with it as fact.
‘Soulmates. That’s what he called it.’
‘Whatever it is … I can’t stand him sometimes, but I’ll always love him.’
I felt like listing everything that was deeply unlovable about Ashton, in my opinion – everything from abusing my best friend to trying to kill me – but stopped myself.
I knew that wasn’t how feelings worked, and anyway, I knew only a fraction of Cliff’s and Ashton’s past. Whatever they’d been through together, it ran deeper than it seemed today.
To truly love means to forgive. I thought of Mum’s words.
Probably they were more important the more time you spent with someone.
‘Are you afraid yet?’
I studied his face. The defined jawline and sharp cheekbones, the straight nose, the thick eyelashes, as dark as his brows and hair.
I found it hard to get my head round the idea that none of it was really him – but then again, perhaps that wasn’t true.
A face was like a photograph: no matter how beautiful it was, it was lifeless without the personality that shone through the features.
I had never been interested in the face itself, only the person whose brow furrowed in that pensive way, who wore a muted grin at the corners of his mouth, who looked at me as if he took for granted I would always be the centre of attention, even in a crowded room.
I had never been less afraid of him than in that moment.
I couldn’t help smiling. ‘No. I’m not even as overwhelmed as I probably should be. Somehow, it all makes sense.’ I shrugged and sat up straighter, only to promptly lose my balance.
In a flash, Cliff’s hands were on my shoulders. ‘Come on, let’s find you somewhere with a backrest.’
Instead of taking me to the bedroom, Cliff led me to the sofa. He moved as if to sit in the armchair, but I grabbed his hand and pulled him down next to me. A little reluctantly, he sat, leaving a foot or so between us.
‘There’s one more thing I need you to explain,’ I began, pulling the woollen blanket draped over the backrest onto my lap.
‘What Aspen told me. About Piper and the others. That was him, wasn’t it?
Blake?’ My heart began to beat faster: I couldn’t help it.
Logically, it had to be true. Aspen had said her brother changed completely after he met Ashton, which must mean all those terrible things happened when he was still …
him. Still, I needed to hear it from his own mouth.
Cliff gripped the backrest, his knuckles whitening.
‘Yes. A few decades ago, I started speaking up about what body I wanted.
There are so many people with such … dark personalities, especially in the so-called upper classes.
People who have done ugly things. Blake spent his whole life taking what he wanted, because he knew no one would stop him.
‘You stopped him.’ Even I could hear that my voice had softened – with relief, with affection.
‘That doesn’t make it any better what I did to him, Mabel. Nothing justifies murder. I was just trying to make the guilt easier to bear. I suppose it was selfish, really.’
I grabbed his hand and held it firmly as he made to take it off the backrest. I ran my fingers gingerly over his knuckles, over the tiny freckles on the back of his hand, the delicate grooves of his skin.
I understood now why he’d said I wouldn’t want to be touched by them if I knew what they had done, but …
he was wrong. These hands were not the acts that had been committed with them.
This body bore no guilt. It wasn’t dangerous.
Cliff wasn’t dangerous. And he wasn’t a monster just because he’d done a few bad things.
Not that I could ignore what he’d done, of course.
If all this was true, he was responsible for taking lives.
That wasn’t right, but it didn’t mean everything about him was wrong.
Or that he could never do anything right ever again.
Someone who reflected on his guilt and despised himself for what he’d done wasn’t a fundamentally evil person.
Maybe it was na?ve to think that way, but even if it was, it didn’t matter.
It was what I believed. And I knew how stubborn I was when it came to my beliefs.
‘I don’t think so,’ I whispered. ‘Doing bad things doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person.’
‘That’s just what you want to think.’