“I broke into your flat but I wasn’t the only one there,” Potter explained, taking a cigarette and lighting it. “Sophie had got there before me.”
“What was she doing in my flat?” I demanded, unable to bear the thought of the both of them together, especially there. That was my private place – that was my home.
“She was looking for you, Kiera,” he said, thin jets of blue smoke pouring from his nostrils.
“Looking for me?” I frowned. “Why?”
“Because you sat bolt upright on her mortuary slab and fled the hospital,” he said, looking straight at me.
“What?” I gasped, my brain feeling as if it had been wrung dry like a dirty dishcloth.
“Like I’ve tried to explain,” Potter said.
“Things in this world aren’t the same and I’m not just talking about a few rock bands and story books. Sophie wasn’t a musician in this when, she was a pathologist and you found your way onto her mortuary slab. Now what are the chances of that happening, I wonder?”
“But why?” I gasped, unable to think of anything else to say.
“I know it’s a bit of a mind-fuck,” Potter breathed out smoke. “But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
I was quiet for a moment, as I tried to comprehend everything I had been told. Then looking straight at Potter, I said, “Did she remember you? Did she remember what you had once shared together?”
“Eventually,” Potter said, flicking the butt of his cigarette away.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“When we were chained together in the caves beneath the Fountain of Souls, do you remember me telling you that I once wrote letters to Sophie? He asked me.
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head. “You told me they were love letters.”
“Even though my letters were written before the world had been pushed,” Potter started, “they found their way into this when.
Someone managed to get hold of those letters and deliver them to her – as if trying to evoke old memories in her. Eventually they did, and she remembered me.”
“Where is she now?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” Potter said. “I took her to this farmhouse where she had been hiding from the Skin-walkers who were searching for her. But they tracked us there. She ran out into the road in fear and was run down by a car.” Then looking away in shame, he whispered, “I left her there on the road.”
“So why were the Skin-walkers hunting her?” I asked.
“Because of you,” Murphy said.
I looked at him. “Because of me?”
“She snuck a vial of your blood from the mortuary,” Murphy explained. “Sophie knew you were different – I mean, what sort of human wakes up on the slab and heads straight for the door? But word got back to the Skin-walkers about what had happened to you.”
“Why was I so important to them?”
“For hundreds of years the Skin-walkers have been waiting for an angel to come,” Murphy said, staring at me. “They knew that she would be dead. She would have wings like a dead angel and be made of dead flesh. They believe that she would come and destroy the treaty between man and wolf. They fear that her coming will bring the end to the wolves.”
“And they believe that I am this messiah – this dead angel who will destroy the wolves?” I asked him.
“You are the dead angel the wolves fear,”
Murphy said.
“But who knew that I would come?” I quizzed him. “Who told the wolves of this prophecy?”
“The one who calls himself the wolfman,”
Murphy said.
“Who is this wolfman?” I pushed, wondering once again if he were keeping more secrets from me.
“I don’t know,” Murphy said. “I’ve been trying to find out. That’s why I asked Potter not to mention my return. The fewer people who knew, the better chance I had of working undetected by the wolves.”
“So you don’t trust me then?” I asked.
“Do you really think I would betray you?”
“Not willingly,” Murphy grunted. “But who knows what a wolf might seduce from you.
A wolf like Jack Seth.”
“Do you think he is this wolfman?” I asked him.
“No,” Murphy said with a shake of his head.
“How can you be so sure?” Now it was Potter’s turn to question his friend.
“Seth is being punished by the Elders just like the rest of us,” Murphy said. “He hasn’t the brains to put something like this in place. No, there is someone more powerful than Seth with all the strands in their hands.”
“He tucked us up good and proper over the death of McCain,” Potter said. “He deceived us all because Kiera failed to choose between the humans and the Vampyrus in The Hollows. He’s been working with this wolf called Elizabeth Clarke and an Oompa Loompa named Dorsey.”
“Never heard of no wolf by that name,”
Murphy said thoughtfully. Then looking at Potter again, he said, “What the fuck is an Oompa Loompa?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I cut in with a shake of my head. I wasn’t in the mood to stand and listen to Potter talk about the cast of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
“Let’s just say Seth has a pretty big grudge against Kiera and let’s be honest, he isn’t too tightly wrapped. It’s because of him and the trap he set back at Ravenwood School that the Treaty of Wasp Water has collapsed, and the Skin-walkers are taking over.”
“Seth is just a fly in the ointment,” Murphy tried to assure us. “There is someone far more dangerous than him.”
“This wolfman?” I asked him.
“Yes – whoever that might be,” Murphy said. “I’ve tried to get close to him, but every line of investigation leads to just a small link in a far longer chain. A chain which will lead us to him – but a chain that seems to have no end. Someone is playing a very dark game with us. It’s like we’re on a chess board. Just like statues which are being moved around in some sick game.”
I was quiet for a moment as the wind grew steadily stronger around us. Kayla and Sam sat in the back of the van, watching us.
“What about Isidor?” I asked Potter.
“What about him?”
“That photograph found its way to him, just like the letters you sent found their way back to Sophie,” I reminded him. “Isidor is dead now and so is Sophie. Whoever sent that picture and those letters did it because they knew that Isidor and Melody had once loved each other, just like you and Sophie had.”
“So?” Potter said.
“You just don’t see it, do you?” I said, slapping my forehead with the heel of my hand.
“See what?”
“Whoever is behind all of this is targeting people we loved,” I told him. “They are slowly killing them off one by one. The picture of my father, with the word push on the back was a warning.”
“What picture?” Murphy cut in.
“Potter brought a picture of me and my father back from my flat, and just like on the back of Isidor’s picture, someone had written the word push. It’s a warning,” I said, my stomach starting to knot in dread.
“What kind of warning?” Potter snapped.
“That my father is going to be killed next,”
I breathed.
“How many ways have I got to explain this – that man isn’t your father,” Potter said, his voice brimming with despair.
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said thoughtfully.
“But he still doesn’t deserve to die because I failed to make a choice. I can’t just sit back quietly knowing that someone is about to die because of me.”
Taking me by the shoulders, Potter stared at me and said, “Who says that it’s your father who is going to die? It could be you, Kiera. The trap could’ve been set for you.”
“That may be so, but none of us can be sure of that,” I said. I couldn’t go on knowing that my father was going to die another hideous death – but this time because of me. How would I be able to live with that? Then, looking at Murphy, I said, “Where does my father live in this world?”
“Kiera, forget it,” Murphy barked at me.
“I can’t,” I whispered with tears welling in the corners of my eyes. “I’ve got to go and save him. I couldn’t last time, but this time around I have a chance of putting something right. If that’s all I do in this world which has been pushed – then my coming back has some meaning.”
“But you can’t save him any more than I could save Sophie, or save Isidor,” Potter tried to warn me. “If that car hadn’t had hit Sophie, then the wolves would have got her in the end and...”
“...And just like we couldn’t persuade Isidor to leave the station with us,” I cut in, “you can’t convince me not to go and try and save my father.” Then looking at Murphy, I added, “Now give me my father’s address.”
“He’s
not
your
father,”
Murphy
whispered, his eyes looking wet.
“He’s the nearest thing that I’ve got to one,” I said, guessing I would hurt Murphy by those words. I still felt hurt by him and Potter.
Angry.
“Don’t tell her,” Potter snapped at Murphy.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll find him myself. I’m sure I can read a phonebook.”
Then as I turned my back on the both of them, I heard Murphy reluctantly whisper the address. I looked back at him.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I don’t believe you?” Potter hissed at Murphy. “What did you go and tell her for?”
“We can’t stop her from going,” Murphy snapped back.
“But I thought you said it was a stupid fucking idea to go and look for him,” Potter said.