Chapter 51
JAMES
Shipley was a new town to me. It didn’t feel like home, but it sounded right in a way that London still didn’t.
I’d not thought I’d miss the familiar vowels of Yorkshire, but even with my hearing not picking up every word, it was good to be back for a bit.
Edwin found us a little flat to rent on the outskirts.
Just one bed, but also a pull-out in the living room we fully intended to rumple for authenticity.
I was seated on this sofa bed, nervously chewing the skin around my thumbnail as I waited for Edwin to wake up.
We’d arrived last night. Trace and I had faceplanted soon after the drive, waking too early but unable to stay in bed a second longer.
We headed out to buy some food, leaving Edwin sleeping, and were now back indoors.
Trace seemed to have picked up on my nerves and was making yet another cup of tea neither of us needed as he simultaneously demonstrated new glamours he thought might be more appropriate than the one he’d been stuck with during his curse.
This one didn’t look much different from the previous three.
I might have been a bit tetchy when I said so.
“What’s the deal anyway? If she’s anti gay, it’s not like I’m going to give a fuck what she thinks. Why can’t you stick with the first one?” I’d fallen in love with him as his scruffy older self, so I failed to see why he needed to impress someone I’d not seen for well over a decade and a half.
Trace sighed. “Because, sweetheart, I don’t want your mother to take one look at me and be instantly prejudiced against us. Bad enough we’re a throuple. You’re twenty-three. If I look like when you first met me, I look about forty. That’s a red flag to any parent, or it should be.”
“Ugh.” I echoed his sigh. “I fucking hate societal expectations.” Trace chuckled.
“Aye, I know, big words. But it’s true.” I ran frustrated fingers through my trendy new haircut — was Edwin smug he’d found a late-night barber!
— and stared up at one of my boyfriends through my choppy fringe.
“I s’ppose you’re right. It would probably be easier if you looked younger.
” I huffed. “Like it isn’t all a con anyway.
Eddie’s twenty-seven going on a hundred and thirty, and you’re, what.
..?” I dropped my hands and blinked up at him in sudden confusion.
“I have no idea how old you actually are.”
He grimaced. “I’m not sure I know. It’s hard to work out the difference between our two worlds.
I was younger than Eddie, I think, when I made my big fuck-up, but we don’t celebrate birthdays like humans do.
Our lives are measured by the seasons and our maturity.
” Another deep sigh. “Which in my case back then was pretty much non existant.”
I swallowed, then finally said what had been on mind ever since Trace revealed his true self.
“So are the Fae really long lived?” What I’d read suggested this was so, but it wasn’t like I was going to find verified accounts on Reddit from rogue Fae.
Well, I assumed not, especially with Baxter and her gang of cyber pirates trawling the internet to shut that kind of shit down.
“We are.” Trace transformed yet again and shook a curtain of pale pink hair out of his eyes.
“In human years, you can talk in centuries. Four or five, I think is usual, before we begin to show real signs of slowing down. We age incredibly slowly on the outside. I think that’s why not many Fae stay long this side of the Glimmer.
They find human lives too ephemeral to be of much interest.”
I digested this for a moment. “We have a lot of time to be together then?” I managed finally.
“All the time you can imagine, love, and then some.” Edwin appeared in just his boxers, looking as put together as when he’d closed his eyes a few hours previously.
I’d never get used to him not having bedhead, but of course, he never moved in his sleep.
“With me nibbling on you and vice versa, you’ve got a hell of a long time to get bored with us.
” His eyes twinkled as he smacked Trace’s bum in passing.
“Afternoon, handsome. Cute hair. What face are we giving Shirley this evening? Hippy rogue or slightly more urbane older protective boyfriend?”
Half an hour after sunset, we were parked along the road from an address that had been seared into my brain ever since Baxter handed it to me.
It was a nondescript suburban street, a mixture of terraced houses and small blocks of flats, as unthreatening as it was possible to be, and yet my heart was racing.
Edwin leaned forwards and clamped one cool hand around my nape.
“Breathe, love. You do know you don’t have to do this if it’s going to upset you? We can go out to a pub or club for a bit, then head off early to the coast. Neither of us are going to think any less of you.”
I growled low in my throat without meaning to. “I want to see her. I’m pretty sure it will upset me. She’s my mum. Even if she wasn’t a great mum, I loved her.” I think I still do.
“My mother is the definition of toxic and I still love her.” Trace gave me a lopsided smile, his eyes pensive.
“She’s one of the reasons I decided to stay this side of the Glimmer.
The weight of her love for me when Micxé died became suffocating and attached to too many demands.
” He sighed. “Now I have access, I can ask through the Council for updates about her and my father. Not that I have yet, but I probably will.”
“Micxé? Your brother?” It sounded like ‘Mik-chay’ but I’d probably mangled the pronunciation.
“Yes, that’s him. Anyway, distant history now. So,” he became businesslike, “you want to do this? With or without me and Eddie?“
“With.” Edwin’s own growl suggested there was no way I’d be going alone. I twisted in my seat to glare at him.
“Fully-grown adult here, dude. You don’t get to decide.” I held his gaze, watching as his nostrils flared, then he sighed and glanced out of the window.
“Sorry, love, I can’t help being protective of you. Humans are breakable. You matter so much to me, I tend to forget other humans aren’t usually as much of a danger to each other as my instincts sometimes tell me.”
Trace also turned around. “A world war might have that effect on you,” he said softly. “But I wouldn’t mind at least getting out of the car if you don’t mind, James. We have no idea how your mother will respond to a surprise like this, and we’d like to support you.”
“All right. But let me do the talking.”
Trace locked the car, and I brushed nervous hands down my T-shirt.
I’d considered dressing up, but that wasn’t me, so in the end I simply went for clean.
Trace had finally decided on a glamour; a nondescript, long-haired man of about thirty, with jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.
At least he sounded the same no matter what he looked like.
Edwin, of course, couldn’t help looking like a model, but he’d added a pair of glasses with lenses that darkened in bright light in case we were invited in, and he’d dressed down — for him.
We crossed the street and I rang the doorbell of the ground floor flat, which was neatly labelled Wilson. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears.
The door opened. A middle-aged white man with a receding hairline, large grey eyes, and the beginnings of a paunch gave us a startled look, his gaze flickering between us all before they settled on me.
“You’re Shirley’s boy.” It wasn’t a question. “I’m right, aye?” he added when I merely gawped at him.
What? All the air rushed out of my lungs. I struggled to breathe. “Aye, I am. Is she in?” How the fuck does he know who I am? Who are you, mate?
His smile reached his eyes. “She’s in the bath, but she’ll get right out when I tell her who’s come knocking.” He eyed my boyfriends. “You’d best all come in then.”
He ushered us into a spacious living room and suddenly looked quite small and frail against Trace and Edwin. At least Trace had knocked five inches off his height with his glamour, but still. “I’ll, uh, you take a seat an’ I’ll fetch Shirley.” He shot off.
“Fuck’s sake, sit down,” I urged them. I couldn’t take my own advice and instead tried not to wear a track in the carpet as I paced. Edwin halted me. “He’s just told her.”
What? Oh yes, vampire hearing.
“What!? Chris, I’m in the bath! Bloody hell, pass me a towel, quick.
Oh my God! What will he think of me? I’ve no make up on.
” Really, it was cheating to have a translator, but from the way Edwin’s eyes were gleaming as he repeated everything in a low voice to Trace and me, my arrival wasn’t an unpleasant shock.
When Edwin told me my mum had cautioned her fella that I was hard of hearing and to speak clearly, my heart skipped a beat. Perhaps this would be okay.
Chris, although it took him another ten minutes to remember to introduce himself by name, headed down to offer us a drink.
Trace, thinking clearly, said plain tap water would be very much appreciated.
A couple of minutes later, the living room door swung open.
Edwin quickly snatched the glass from my hand.
A woman — Mum — edged into the room. She clapped a hand over her mouth when she saw me, but it didn’t disguise her gasp.
“Oh my God. It really is you.” Her eyes — wow, so like mine, how come I’d not remembered this? — filled with tears. “You came to see me. I…I can’t quite believe it.”
“Sit down, love.” Chris pushed her gently into a chair opposite the sofa where we were perched like birds on a twig.
“I’ll get you a glass of water too.” She shot him a grateful glance, then focused back on me, her eyes darting to the men who flanked me.
“Did you think you’d need to bring backup?
You weren’t scared to come here, were you?
” Her bottom lip wobbled, but it didn’t seem artificial.