Chapter 16
The morning is a hazy blur, with the only moments of clarity being Riley’s newfound commanding attitude. “Come on, we need to leave now!” he moaned through my bedroom door while I tried to get dressed. “She’ll think we’re not coming.” He groaned as I tried to finish my breakfast. He even complained when the bus stopped at the red lights, huffing and peering down at his watch – which I am sure isn’t even set correctly, and mainly used for show. Luckily for me, Aimee wanted us early rather than later. “We have a lot to do today.” So she said.
“This is where she lives?” says Riley. His jaw dropping in awe at the large house standing in front of us.
Although she’s never bragged about it, Aimee lives in the nicer area of town, overlooking the beach on the cliff tops. The house is a large new build, stylish, with modern fixtures and big windows that allow you to see inside. Just as we are about to knock the tall double doors, they swing open and Aimee greets us with a giant grin. “Finally!” She cheers, grabbing us by the wrists and pulling us inside.
I didn’t think it were possible, but Riley’s jaw drops even lower at the sight of her. She’s wearing a dark green, near black pair of high waist shorts, a white t-shirt and a black jacket over the top. To say I’m uncomfortable is an understatement, can she not see him staring, is she really that oblivious to it or does she pretend not to notice? So I clear my throat, anything to get Riley’s attention to stop him from gawking at her, but he’s just as oblivious as she is. “Nice place.” I gush.
The hallway is wide and open, with marble stairs that circle the curved wall round. Aimee, unable to contain her excitement, ushers us up to the second floor, past many doors until we reach a dark oak one with a golden doorknob. Inside is a large study that looks as if it should be on the cover of a magazine, with two desks and two computers sitting either side of each other. And behind those are dark wooden bookcases, like the ones found in an old library, complete with an antique globe in the corner. Everything matches like it was designed purposely to look this way, unlike any room in my house.
“This is my sister Keely.” Says Aimee, pulling a young girl out from behind the computer screen and shoving her into our path.
Giving us a nervous wave, Keely hurries back to the computer chair she was pulled from and taps away at the keyboard. She’s younger than Aimee, but not by much, maybe the year below us at school, and they share the same eyes, a deep brown, yet her hair is much longer. “So, which one of you is Mitchell?” she asks, eyeing up Riley and me.
I raise my hand, like being back at school. “That would be me,” I confirm.
She smirked. “So you’re the one with the power and the… what was it you called yourself?”
“Half-Breed!” Aimee calls out.
Keely laughs as she returns to the computer screen, pulling the sleeves up on her oversized sweatshirt, as Aimee pulls out two chairs and places them opposite Keely, like a scene from a principal’s office. “Sit! Sit! Sit!” she orders.
Keely sighs. “I had a look online last night, using your term Half-Breed to no avail.”
“I know,” I say to the back of the computer screen. “I’ve searched that as well, but got nothing.”
The tapping stops and her face appears from the side. “So it would be safe to assume this word, Half-Breeds, as you’ve called yourself, isn’t known throughout your community and is more of a slang term, a self-label as such.”
I remain silent, made speechless by this girl that sits opposite me. The sister to Aimee Day, but the complete opposite in every way. Very much like Matthew and I.
She continues. “But I have been able to gather some information, mostly due to the marking Aimee possesses. A mark you don’t have, is that correct?”
“No.” I confirm.
“So what does this mean?” Riley asks, edging himself forward on the seat – probably feeling left out. And if I’m honest, I kind of did forget he was here.
Keely narrows her eyes and stares deeply at me. “I don’t know.” She explains. “Aimee’s mark appeared shortly after her power manifested. So I searched old time rune markings and came across this.” She turns the screen in our direction, showing many different images. “These markings have appeared throughout many different generations, all across the world. This one seems to represent light, or thing associated with light such as the sun and has been linked to an old tribe of people who called themselves the Celestials.”
With her collarbone exposed, Aimee hovers next to the screen showing off her marking which matches the one on screen perfectly.
“I’m not a Celestial,” I confirm. “My power is more in line with a Daemon.”
Aimee leaps back into her seat, looking me up and down, then to Keely for reassurance. “Is that a bad thing?” she asks.
“I was hoping you’d know,” I propose.
“I don’t, I’m afraid,” says Keely flipping to a new screen. “But I came across this site a few months ago.” She hastily scrolls through the web page displaying the details of a one Ms Blooms, a daemonologist. “Until now, Aimee has refused to go and see her.”
“Stranger danger!” Aimee cheers, nearly bouncing off her chair. “But now I have you and we can go together!”
“And his coach,” Riley adds, hiding behind me, but making sure we all know he’s still here.
Aimee nods. “Like a road trip!”
Clearing her throat, Keely tries to regain control of the conversation. “I emailed her yesterday, telling her of your situation, and she’d like to meet with you both… and your coach.”
“She lives in Ampsbury! I love it there!” beams Aimee. “I know! I’ll make us some snacks for the train ride. Riley, you can help me!”
His face drops at the mention of his name, but before he can make an excuse or try and include me, she’s latched onto him and drags him through the doorway. Sniggering to ourselves, Keely and I give him a cheeky little wave as his worried face disappears down the hallway and out of sight. “Poor Riley,” Keely laughs.
“You see it too?” I ask.
“No one can be that stiff.” She stresses as she types, staring intensely at the computer screen.
A few minutes pass as I check out the Day’s book collection, mostly romance novels with the odd detective thriller thrown into the mix. “They’re mostly my mum’s,” Keely informs me.
Unable to put it off any longer, I turn to her. “So, I have to ask,” I confess, then hesitate for a moment, trying to think up the best way to put such a question.
And without breaking her gaze from the computer screen, Keely beats me to it. “Do I have any powers?”
I return to my seat and lean into the desk. “Well, yeah. Do you?” I ask.
She shakes head. “No, I’m powerless. Aimee’s my half-sister you see, our dad is not her biological one, but he’s raised her since she was born. So it would seem her power come from her paternal side, her father. Whoever that is.”
“Did it frighten you?” I ask leaning deeper into the desk. “You know! When Aimee told you about her power?”
“Told me?” she questions with a forced laugh. “Aimee never told me. I saw it, I was there! We were home alone when her power manifested,” she explains. “I heard a crash so went to investigate it and that’s when I found her floating in mid-air with lights swirling around her body. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, I was captivated, unable to look away.”
She mustn’t have seen what I saw. There was nothing beautiful about what happen to my brother that day, nothing at all. “I saw my brother come into his power too, only it was so forceful and destructive, much like when I came into my own.”
Keely stops typing abruptly, giving me her full attention. “You have a brother?” she asks. “Who also has a power?!”
“Twin brother,” I confirm.
She comes out from behind the desk, her sweatshirt nearly down to her knees, causing her to lift it up as she hops into Aimee’s old chair. “I have
so many questions,” she eagerly proclaims. “Your powers, did they come in at the same time? And are they the same, or do they differ? And the marking, does he have it?”
“Whoa,” I interrupt, allowing her to catch her breath.
“I’m sorry,” she nervously laughs, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “It’s just I find all this so fascinating and Aimee was pretty sparse with the information. Although, I probably heard she was a Half-Breed about twenty times last night.”
I raise an eyebrow. “She’s a quirky one.”
“Quirky? Try living with her.” She sniggers.
It’s surprising how easily I can talk to Keely. She’s a mature girl for her age and at points, I forget I’m talking to someone younger and find myself being lured into some in-depth conversations, the likes I would never have with someone I’d just met. But she seems genuine in her offer to help, so I explain everything to her, all about my power and lack of control, to which she assures me it’ll take some time. “I can’t begin to tell you how many times I had to pull Aimee out of the air after she’d spontaneously levitate.”
To hear it fills me with the hope that one day I’ll be able to control this. Then we branch out onto the subject of my brother and his power being so different to mine. “That is strange,” she says. “Hopefully, Ms Blooms should have some answers for you.”
“You ready!?” Aimee hollers from downstairs, echoing her voice throughout the house.
“I guess I shouldn’t really keep them waiting, Riley would never forgive me.” I tease.
It takes no longer than twenty minutes to get to Ampsbury, which is the city next door to Shellbourne. Luckily for us, it’s only a short walk from the main train station to Ms Blooms’ office and we arrive earlier than planned. It’s a small building that looks like it used to be a shop, with windows either side of the front door, which would have been used for some kind of display.
Riley peers through the dusty windows. “It looks deserted, you sure this is the right place?”
“Yes! This is the address Keely gave me.” Replies Aimee as she begins excessively knocking on the door.
Could this have been the first fully formed sentence Riley has ever made in the presence of Aimee? Maybe some time alone with her has done him some good?
She knocks again, this time, louder and longer than before. “Hello?!”
The door suddenly begins to rattle and Aimee jumps backs. It rattles again like someone is banging it from the inside. “One moment,” a feminine voice calls out. “I’m ‘aving trouble with the locks.” She says in a cockney, yet somewhat child-like accent.
A minute passes as the women moans and groans to the sound of bolts crunching and locks snapping. “There!” she cheers, and suddenly the door swings open to reveal the women behind it.
Her bright ginger hair catches my eyes first, it’s nearly as orange as the setting sun, but with a thick blonde streak at the front. “I’m Ms Blooms,” she confirms. “Well, don’t just stand there, come in, come in,” she adds, exposing the top set of her large white teeth, which look too big for her mouth.
I scurry past first, keeping my head down as I find it difficult to look directly at her – a total stranger. We are then all hurried into her office, which is small and pokey, and with books spread across the desk, piled on the floor and stacked on the windowsill, blocking some of the daylight. “Excuse the mess,” she says. “After I heard about you two, I just had to look back through all my old research notes.” She grabs a pile of books and drops them in the corner of the room, freeing up some spaces to sit on. “Please, take a seat.”
The chairs are positions in a half semi-circle, much like the meetings of a self-help group, and on the far end sits Ms Blooms, complete with pen and paper in hand, mimicking that of a meeting coordinator.
“Hi, I’m Aimee, this is Mitchell and this is Riley, but he doesn’t have any powers.”
Riley’s face melts like she’s just said she hates him or something. I agree it must be hard to be the odd one out, but I’d gladly swap with him if I could.
“It’s a pleasure.” She nods while scribbling on her pad. “As you might already know, I’m Ms Darcy Blooms, but please call me Darcy. I’m a daemonologist, have been for many years, travelling the world and studying with a variety of shamans, witch doctors and my fellow daemonologists.” She explains, handing us each a file binder filled with wads of research notes and photos. One of mine being that of a tribesman stood with a younger Darcy; at first, I didn’t recognise it was her, as the lady in these photos is wearing a pair of plain jeans and a vest top. A far cry from the lady stood before me today, she wears a bright blue polka dot dress, a red pair of heels which she has no problem walking in, topped off with a large pair of gold hooped earrings. Her style is eccentric, to say the least.
She continues. “I decided to study daemonology shortly after I left school, against my family’s wishes, but we all need to find our own path.” She laughs. “And I’m glad I did, I’ve travelled to so many beautiful places and met some extraordinary people.” Fumbling through her files, she mumbles to herself until she pulls out some more photos, fanning them across the already cluttered desk. “Here it is!” She says flashing a picture before my eyes, before showing the others. “Mundarium!”
“You know about Mundarium?” I gasp.
She hands me the photo so I can have a proper look. It’s old, the quality is terrible and faded, but sure enough the word Mundarium is visible, etched into a brick wall. “And that’s just the one I can find, there’s much more. It’s everywhere darling.” She beams. “Each country I’ve travelled to has had that word engraved somewhere, and that’s not it; it’s mentioned in a lot of old texts, a word translated throughout time. Of course, you’d need to know where to look, otherwise, like most people, you’d never knew it existed.”
Is this human nature? To ignore anything that isn’t directly involved with one’s life. It’s what happened to Matthew and me, neither of us knew of Mundarium until our power manifested, and still our knowledge is basic at that.
She continues. “So, this is what I know. It’s a world, just like ours, only no humans. Instead, it has two dominant species, the Celestials and the Daemons.” She thumbs through one of her notebooks. “Ah, here it is. The beings of Mundarium came to our world somehow and it’s even said they shaped our history at points, which you’ve probably heard of in old fairy tales and stuff, so I won’t bore you with that. And of course, some even had offspring… you guys, but then it all stopped. There’s a large gap in our history where they went quiet, nothing, zilch, zip, zippo–”
“We get it,” I interrupt. “They disappeared.”
“Yes.” She concludes. “Until recently, though, as there have been signs that they’ve returned, you guys being one of them.”
Having heard most of this before, I feel a slight frustration begin to take over. “Yes, we’re children of Mundarium and Earth,” I fume. “But is there anything else you can tell us? Like why my brother’s power differs from my own, or the marking?”
“You have the mark?” she asks.
Aimee, delighted to be included, sits up in her seat. “Yes! It’s the mark of the Celestial.”
Darcy’s mouth drops. “I haven’t seen this mark in such a time, may I take a closer look darling?”
Already to her feet, Aimee nearly pounces on Darcy. “That’s beautiful,” she says. “It’s to symbolise your heritage, to show where you belong, and all children of Mundarium bear a marking, whether that be Daemon or Celestial.”
Aimee worryingly looks to me. “But Mitchell doesn’t have one?”
“That can’t be!” gasps Darcy. “It’s written that all Pure-Bloods and their children, such as yourselves, should have a marking depending on which tribe you belong to.”
Deflated, I fall back into my seat. Once again I have no answer, only that I don’t belong. Not in my human life, and now not even in my Mundarium life.
Noticing my distre
ss, Riley steps in. “But this text you talk of, it could be wrong, right?”
“Of course… The thing you need to remember is all this old text has been translated a number of times, by many philosophers and sages.” She points out. “So something could’ve been missed or mistaken.”
I wish I could believe what she’s saying, as it does make sense, but the way she looks at me tells me something else. It’s like she’s trying to work out an unsolvable puzzle in her head, mulling over numbers and equations. She knows I should have a mark, as do I.
“I think I’m going to go get some air,” I sigh. “Feeling a bit hot.”
“Oh darling, you don’t need to stand outside on the pavement, we have a balcony. Go up the stairs, to the right and through the living room.”
“Thanks,” I nod.
Upstairs is the complete opposite of her office, everything is tidy and minimalistic. Her living room is basic, a sofa and an old TV set, but bright due to the large glass doors that lead out onto the balcony.
Outside, my eyes begin to wander, rolling over the backs of other people’s houses. Each garden is empty, everyone choosing to stay indoors and rightly so; although the weather has picked up and the sun is shining, there’s still a slight chill in the air. But it feels good against my flushed skin and I fade in and out of a daydream, only to be interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from behind. It’s probably Riley, I suspect, come to check up on me and make sure I haven’t exploded and wrecked the top level of Darcy’s house. “I’m fine.” I fume.
“Oh, sorry.” A smoky feminine voice says. “I didn’t know someone was already out here.”
Panicked, I spin round to face her, only for my body to freeze and throat to tighten as our eyes meet.
“Hey, I’m Miah.”