I think about it a lot, that kiss, and how it was good. And I think a lot too about how I fucked it up.
I’m not sorry I kissed him. I wanted to, and it felt good, and mostly when I think about it I wish I’d done it better and not stopped so soon and not, definitely not, walked out and left him. But then there was Annalise and I’d just killed Mercury and I was freaking out and . . . and mainly there was Annalise.
But I wanted to kiss him then and I did and it was good and I’d like to do it again.
But he doesn’t take a step into the room and I think he’s staying away from me because I fucked up last time. But the kiss wasn’t fucked up. And I’m not sure he’d let me do it again, but I’d like to try. I’d like to do it better.
But, oh shit, it seems a long way from the basin to the doorway. And I really don’t want to mess this up.
But I want to touch him, kiss him.
I turn to the mirror and stare at myself. I look a mess so I close my eyes and I’m not sure what I’m thinking except that I want to kiss him. So I turn round and take a step toward him and then another and another, and with each step I’m feeling less clumsy, less unsure, until I reach him and stand in front of him.
I raise my left hand and with my fingertip touch the scar that runs through his eyebrow. “I always meant to say sorry about that. About your eye, I mean. About beating you up.”
He doesn’t move. I don’t think he’s even breathing.
“I could have blinded you,” I say, and stroke the scar. It’s pale and wide despite being only a couple of centimeters long.
And, oh shit this is difficult, and I think I might be shaking but I move my left hand down, touching his cheek with my fingertips, then his jaw, his neck, and feel his hair on his shoulder. I move my lips to his and then, with my lips brushing his, I say, “Sorry.” And I caress his lips with mine. And now I feel him breathing onto my mouth, and his breath mixes with mine, our mouths slightly open. And I say, “Sorry about the scar.” And his lips feel good on mine and I have to kiss him, but very gently. He doesn’t kiss me back and I open my eyes to see his but his eyes are closed. I say, “Sorry I beat you up.” And as I speak my lips brush his again and I kiss him again. And I check his eyes, and they’re still closed and he still hasn’t kissed me back. He hasn’t moved away, but not into me either.
My hand is on his neck and his hair and I want to kiss him again but I daren’t now.
All I can do is say, “Sorry. Sorry I hurt you.” My lips still brush his as I say it, and I do that on purpose, because I like doing it and I’m desperate for him to do something.
But he still does nothing.
“Gabriel, I’m sorry. This is me being as nice as I can.”
And still nothing.
“I’ll wait here forever, if that’s what you want. I’ll say sorry again and again.”
And then I feel his hand on my waist, first one side gently, barely touching, and then the other. And he pulls me to him, our hips together, and he says, “You should be nice more often,” and he says it so slowly and his lips brush mine as he speaks, and he says some stuff in French and all the time his lips are brushing against my lips and then finally he kisses me.
* * *
We kiss a lot. And Gabriel takes me to one of the bedrooms and we kiss more, undress each other and do stuff, nice stuff, making-love stuff. And it’s good. Very good. Very sweaty. And then we sleep together. Naked, sweaty-type sleeping. We wake in the night and start kissing again and more making love. Then he kisses my scars, kisses me everywhere, and I fall asleep.
Later I wake and he’s asleep and I move over him gently to kiss across his chest and listen to his slow heartbeat, and I want to stay there, listening to his heart. I feel strange. I can’t remember ever feeling like this. I think I’m sort of happy. I close my eyes but even so I know it’s not sleep that’s coming but a cool darkness. A vision.
There’s a river and trees and gentle hills and the sound of birds and sun on my skin. It’s a beautiful place. A place I’ve always dreamed of being. And I’m with Gabriel and he’s with me.
Maps
Nesbitt is standing in the kitchen, his back to us. He’s swaying slightly. I think he’s still drunk. He’s knocked back two large glasses of water and groaned quite a bit but not done much else since we woke him and dragged him out of bed.
Now he straightens himself and says, “Let this be a lesson to you, boys. The evils of alcohol.”
I say, “I don’t think it’s us that need the lesson.”
“I admit I’m feeling a bit rough.”
“You look like shit too.” And then I add, “And you don’t smell that great either.”
“Thanks, mate.” Nesbitt turns to face us. He really is looking bad: sort of pale gray, with pinprick red eyes and stubble. He looks ten years older. He says, “Can’t even remember that much.”
“You cooked, we talked and you drank, and then you talked more and drank more, all the way through three bottles of wine and some of this.” Gabriel smiles and lifts an empty bottle of whisky.
Nesbitt shudders again and says, “I’m going back to bed.”
“You can do that after we’ve gone,” I tell him.
“Hurry up and piss off then.” He fishes in his trouser pockets and pulls out a wad of US dollars. “Found these in Mercury’s room yesterday. Have you decided on the token you’re going to give Ledger?”
Gabriel pats my backpack, saying, “I’ve put in a few of Mercury’s diaries, the ones with comments about Ledger and the maps that show where the map room is. I think she’d like to know we’re keeping her location as private as possible.”
Me and Gabriel discussed this and agreed that the token should not have a monetary value and we couldn’t think of anything magical that was appropriate so this was the best we could come up with.
Nesbitt takes us to the cut that links to New York. And then we have to say good-bye and I’m not sure if we’ll ever see Nesbitt again. I have a feeling we won’t but maybe that’s just the somber mood we’re all in. Nesbitt says, “If I do get married you’ll have to come to the wedding. It’ll be a big do. I know how you love a good party, kid.”
“I’ve never been to a party.”
Nesbitt shakes his head. “Why does that not surprise me?” And he hugs me and says, “I’ll miss you.”
Then he releases me and hugs Gabriel as well. “I’ll miss you too, Gab. Look after yourself and look after him.”
Then he stands back and says, “Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to go and throw up.”
Gabriel takes my right hand in his left and interlocks his fingers in mine, then reaches for the cut. I look back to Nesbitt standing alone and pale in the room and my body slides into the cut and then darkness.
It’s completely black and yet I know I’m moving because I’m feeling dizzy. I know I should breathe out to stop that, so I do and I concentrate on what I feel, which is cold—cold to my bones on all parts of my body except my hand where Gabriel holds me. I look ahead, or at least where I think ahead is, but there is no light. I’m running out of air. It must be over a minute now.
Then we’re slammed onto a hard floor. I can breathe again. We’re in a dark corner of an alley, squeezed behind a massive dumpster. It’s dirty but not like the dirt in the woods. That is good dirt; this is grime.
We head off to a main street to get our bearings and Gabriel says we need to go to the railway station. I’ve not been to many cities and this is different from London and very different from Basle and Barcelona. But the hiss of the electricity is the same, a constant noise in my head. It doesn’t bother me, or stop me concentrating on what we’re doing, but it does make me think that I’ll never notice a Hunter here.
We walk, as we can’t go by underground or even by taxi while it’s dark, and we keep a lookout for witches—Gabriel reminds me this
is White Witch territory—but we don’t see many people. At one point a police car blares past and Gabriel pulls me into a side street, pushes me up against the wall and holds me there. I let him. I know we’re in no danger; they’re just fains, but Gabriel’s being Gabriel. And it’s nice to feel his body warm against me in the cold air, the wall cold on my back. He kisses me, pressing his body against me. And then he moves to set off but I pull him back and kiss him, pushing him against the wall now. I kiss his lips, his cheek, his neck, his ear.
“Do you kiss all your friends like that?” he asks. It’s the question he asked after I kissed him the first time, all those months ago, and I kiss down his chest and then work my way back to his mouth and with my lips close to his I say, “Only you.” I’m trying not to be too serious but he looks at me serious now. I tell him, “And I’ll always be your friend.”
“I know.”
I kiss him gently and then we set off again, walking fast. There are more people and more cars on the streets now. It’s beginning to get light by the time we get to the railway station. Inside we find out when there’s a train and then go to a café to wait.
We have our coffee, hot chocolate, croissants, and fruit. I end up messing with the packets of sugar, ripping them open and tipping the contents into my mug, ripping the paper up into bits and adding that to the mug too. Gabriel reaches over and touches the back of my hand with his fingertips, so I stop messing and we stay like that, me holding a packet of sugar and him caressing the back of my hand. He talks to me, tells me about his family and how they came to live in America, in Florida, and how he shot the girl who betrayed his sister, Michèle, and I look at my hands and think of all the people they’ve killed and wonder how many more there are to come.
We catch the train and sit next to each other, close, and stare out of the window as the world goes by and changes from pale gray skies to blue skies. The buildings gradually fall away to fields and snow and then turn back to houses and then Gabriel says, “We need to get off.”
A cab driver says he knows the address and ten minutes later we’re going through the suburbs, snow piled up along the roadside. And then we’re in the country and the roads are icy. The driver complains that it hasn’t snowed for days and the roads are still not cleared properly. And then he stops the car and says, “This is it.”
There’s a house set back from the road that looks unoccupied—the snow around it is pristine. Gabriel pays the driver and we stand in the road while he takes forever to turn round and drive back the way he came.
We walk up to the front of the house, the snow squeaking beneath our feet. It really is cold and we have to shield our eyes and squint in the low, bright sun.
The front door is locked, as is the back. Gabriel has one of Mercury’s magic hairpins, though, and it opens the back door without a problem. Before he goes in, I hold his arm and ask, “What about protection spells?”
He shrugs. “Nesbitt didn’t say there were any.”
“He never came here.”
“But Van did. She would have been caught by them.” And before I can stop him he steps in. I wait and look around me. But it’s all quiet and I follow Gabriel in.
The house is old and run-down and smells of damp. There are carpets in some rooms and the curtains are still hanging and drawn shut but the only furniture is a broken chair in one bedroom. We check upstairs and on the ground floor to make sure that no one and nothing else is here before going down the wooden steps to the cellar. The light doesn’t work so we have to use our torches.
The cellar is exactly that: one room with a lowish ceiling and a cement floor. There’s nothing in it.
I tell Gabriel, “I admit I wasn’t sure what a map room was but I sort of expected a room with maps.”
“Yeah.”
Gabriel shines his torch over all the walls.
I ask, “Do you think someone’s taken them?”
“I don’t know. If Ledger’s so powerful I think there’ll be some magic involved.”
“Maybe there’s another cut in here that leads to the map room.”
“This is where it’s meant to be. It was on Mercury’s map. It’s this address. The cellar.”
I walk around the room but there really isn’t anything to see. I check the ceiling and the floor and the walls, but there is nothing here. The room is empty.
Gabriel says, “They must be here. We’re just not seeing them.”
“Maybe we have to say a magic word and the maps appear,” I suggest.
“Mercury doesn’t mention that in her diary.” Gabriel starts feeling the walls, saying, “Maybe there’s a hidden room.”
“She doesn’t mention that either.”
I lean against the wall and watch Gabriel wander around the room, pressing at the walls, tapping them and coming up with nothing. “This can’t be right,” he says. “We’re missing something.”
“Obviously.”
“Maybe they were here and Van saw them and Ledger decided to move them after that.”
I have a bad feeling he’s right and we’ve wasted a trip. I growl in frustration and scrape my forehead against the wall. Then something catches my eye. My face is against the wall and the wall of cement or plaster, or whatever it is, is lit from below by my torch. From this angle I can see that the walls aren’t perfectly flat; they are covered in tiny humps and dips, like hills and valleys.
“Gabriel, bring your torch here and shine the light sideways.”
I stand against the wall, my cheek on the cement. “What do you think? Does it look like . . . a landscape?”
And as I stare more detail appears: I can see mountains and then I spot darker veins in the plaster that could be rivers, patches of dark that could be forests, or towns perhaps. I take my face off the wall and the picture fades but when I touch it with my skin it comes back.
I move along the wall a little to see more. “This looks like a mountain with a river running down it.”
I peer closer and it’s as if I’m looking down from high up, the view I have when I’m in the body of an eagle. The detail is amazing. The closer I look, the more I see: plains, trees, and lakes. I even think I can see birds flying, circling below me.
This is a map and it’s powerful magic.
I look over to Gabriel and he’s touching a different wall and I go to check it out. This too is a map but seems to be a different place: a desert, with sand, boulders, and scrubby vegetation. He says, “This is beautiful.”
I remember it from old cowboy movies that I watched with Arran. I say, “Yeah. It’s the badlands.”
Badlands
I reach out to touch the map but Gabriel snatches my hand back.
“It’s just a wall,” I say. I’ve been touching it for the last ten minutes and nothing bad has happened.
“It’s a map. And magical. And we don’t know how it works or what’s in there. Except that Mercury said that if you went to the wrong map you’d get stuck.”
I back off a little from the wall. “So? How do you think it works?” I ask. “Is there an on switch or a spell you have to do?”
Gabriel gets Mercury’s diaries out of my backpack and reads: “Finally found the map room in the cellar of the house in P and it was simple from there. She loves that: mixing the extremely complex spells of the maps with a simple request to gain access to them.”
“So ‘a simple request to gain access’ is what we need.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Any ideas? I mean, it couldn’t be as easy as asking, ‘Can we come in?’ Could it?”
“I have a feeling it really is as simple as that.” Gabriel looks at the wall and says, “I would guess that you touch where you want to go on the map and ask to gain access and . . . maybe it sucks you in, like a cut or something.”
“OK, but which map?” And I move round the room, studying all four wal
ls, all four maps, but I’ve no idea which is the right one. There’s the badlands, a snowy mountainous place, a desert, and a city by a lake.
Gabriel looks at them all too and then goes back to Mercury’s diary. He says, “There’s nothing more. What we need to do is give ‘a simple request to gain access.’”
“Right. So we ask the map something like, ‘If you can take me to Ledger, then please let me in.’” I look at Gabriel to see what he thinks.
He nods.
“So which one do we try first?”
“Badlands,” he says.
“Why?”
He smiles. “I like the sound of it.”
“All right.” And I move to the wall and flex my fingers. “But where do we touch?”
We inspect the map but there’s no obvious sign to help us. “I think we pick a spot in the middle and ask to go in.”
Gabriel doesn’t look too impressed but says, “OK. But we go together.”
“No.”
“Yes. If you go alone, I’ll come straight after you anyway so we might as well go together.” I know he’d do it too, so I take his hand and then put my finger to the midpoint of the map and touch it gently.
Gabriel jerks my hand off the map, saying, “You have to mention Ledger’s name. You have to say to give us access to Ledger. I think if you just ask for access then we will go in but it might be the wrong map.”
“OK.” I smile at him. “Is English the right language? Or do you want to try French?”
“If she’s that powerful, I imagine it works whatever language you use.”
“You ready?”
Gabriel nods and I say, “Map, please take us to Ledger.”
And, of course, nothing happens and so I say, “Map, if Ledger is . . .” but then something does start to happen. I feel warmth. Heat reaching up my arm, which seems to be disintegrating and dissolving into the map.
There’s heat and a yellow glow all around me and I’m floating in it like a warm bath. It’s not like traveling through a cut but like sinking into warm mud.