‘Anyway, what we’re assuming your mother did not know – because it was not part of the Telling,’ Sera continued, ‘is that this terribly romantic liaison would result in her conceiving not one, but two babies. Twins. You, and Luke, your brother.’
‘My father was a daemon?’ said Samantha.
‘Probably just a minor one,’ said Sera.
Oh, much better.
And then Birthday Jones had found his voice. It sounded anxious, and that had made Sam feel vicious. What did he have to be anxious about?
‘Are you sure you want to know all this right now, Samantha?’ he’d said. ‘A lot has happened tonight, and you’ve got a massive trip ahead of you. Aren’t you tired?’
‘Oh, thanks for that advice, Birthday,’ she’d said. ‘And the next time I want advice from a deceiving, lying thief masquerading as a friend, I’ll be sure to call you.’
Now her cheeks coloured, remembering the dripping sarcasm and the pain she’d felt it cause Birthday. She pulled her feet up onto the seat and buried her face in the rug.
‘Anyway, Sam,’ Sera had said gently, ‘the most important point is that you seem to have been born with exceptionally strong empathy skills. Your brother was not. You understand what people want and why and you care about those things. And your brother – well, he doesn’t.’
Sera’s last sentence was spoken so quickly that Samantha had had to mentally rewind it and play it back.
‘So I have empathy,’ she’d said, finally.
‘Oodles,’ said Sera. ‘You’re an empath.’
‘And my brother, Luke, doesn’t have empathy.’
‘Not a skerrick,’ said Sera.
‘What does that mean? Is there a name for that? What’s wrong with him?’
‘Well, there is a nasty name for people like that,’ said Sera. ‘But you need to understand that there are extremely complex forces and factors going on here, and then there’s the fact that you and he were born simultaneously. We don’t know what that adds to the mix – he could be… fine. The Telling reveals that -’
‘The name,’ Samantha repeated. ‘You said that I’m an empath. What’s the name for my brother?’
Sera coughed.
‘Well, he’s a psychopath.’
Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia
When Luke rolled over and spotted the time on the alarm clock by his bedside, he couldn’t believe it.
Afternoon already! He never slept late and he never slept well. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever having made it through a whole night without waking numerous times to check out what was happening around him in the dark. He’d lived in too many places with drunken ‘uncles’, brawling foster parents, or other kids in refuges and lockups who wanted to steal his stuff. He always slept lightly, and he rarely changed out of his day clothes, sometimes even sleeping with his shoes on, ready to run.
But there was something about this bed, this house, this view over Elizabeth Bay that relaxed him. Relaxation was a feeling entirely new to him. He’d always considered the idea of it overrated: who wanted to let their guard down? What a stupid idea. But here in Georgia’s house, it seemed to come easily. He reminded himself to become filthy rich sometime in the near future.
Luke sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched. Today, I really should do something about finding my family, he thought. He tried to ignore the other voice in his mind asking, Why? Why do you need to find them? You’ve only got information on Liza and Daniel anyway, and they’re hardly gonna be thrilled to find their jailbird bastard brother on their doorstep. And what are they going to know about an empath and a genius?
The whole Telling mumbo-jumbo was starting to sound decidedly lame. Probably Zac actually was nuts.
He shook his head, still feeling sleep-addled.
His door burst open.
‘I’ve made brunch,’ said Georgia.
‘Get dressed,’ said Zac, right behind her. ‘I need you to come with me.’
‘Don’t you knock?’ said Luke.
‘You don’t need him, Zac,’ said Georgia, smiling sweetly. ‘You’re a big boy; you can go out on your own.’
She was obviously in a good mood today. She’d given in to a splash of colour: under a black mini-dress, a blood-red tulle skirt frothed and foamed over black-and-white-striped tights.
‘There’s a shop on the corner,’ she said to Zac. ‘There’s fifty dollars in the jar by the front door. Buy whatever you like.’
‘Luke,’ said Zac.
‘Zac,’ said Luke.
‘Could you come to the shop with me, please?’
Luke wavered. It would be good to get some fresh air…
Georgia stalked across the room and grabbed Luke by the elbow, dragging him out of bed.
‘No, he won’t,’ she said. ‘Just because you want to buy soy sausages and hay, it doesn’t mean you have to spoil our pancake breakfast. Now, shoo.’
Luke grinned over his shoulder at Zac as he was dragged down the hallway by Georgia.
‘Pancakes!’ he mouthed silently, his eyebrows almost meeting his hairline and his dimples out for a rare showing.
‘Breakfast time was over hours ago,’ said Zac loudly. ‘It’s past lunchtime now.’
‘Oh, um-ah!’ said Georgia, even louder. ‘Someone should do something about that. Maybe you should find a vegetarian policeman while you’re out, Zac, and make a full report. They can come and arrest us for sleeping late and murdering butter.’
Luke laughed as Georgia led him, barefoot, down the stairs to the kitchen.
Luke absolutely massacred the Halo aliens on Level Four.
‘I’ve never made it that far,’ said Georgia, sprawled out on the red lounge beside him, striped-stockinged feet in his lap. She alternately flicked through a magazine and watched his progress on Halo. The black cat lay upside down beside her, spread like an oil slick across the couch. Every now and then the cat made a noise like an old man with a back problem lowering himself into a chair.
‘More nachos?’ said Georgia.
‘I’m good,’ said Luke, and belched, hovering his thumb over the control to enter Level Five.
He tried to ignore Zac, perched on a corner of the lounge opposite, almost humming with tension. The rain splashed and smashed at the full-length windows on the other side of the room. Green-black clouds, pregnant with more foul weather, scudded across grey skies over the bay. He still felt strangely super-tired.
‘Are we going to do anything today, Luke?’ said Zac.
‘Like what?’ said Luke, grabbing a handful of nachos from the big bowl in front of him, even though he was already uncomfortably full.
‘Like finding the empath?’ said Zac.
‘What’s the empath?’ said Georgia. ‘Some kind of animal activist? Maybe you should search for it online, Zac? There are computers upstairs.’
‘Luke?’ said Zac.
‘Busy,’ said Luke, pressing the button to enter Level Five.
In the sky
Samantha woke to find that she’d just slept for ten hours straight.
She freaked.
She had meant to use her time in the sky to plan her Sydney airport escape. She quickly calculated her remaining hours in the sky. When she realised that she had almost another whole day just sitting there, she figured that if she couldn’t come up with some kind of plan in that time, she was never going to.
She knew that these people – whoever they were – would try again. They’d been there in London, and she assumed they could arrange for someone to grab her in Australia. Seraphina had assured her that the gypsy king was nowhere near her greatest threat, and that his reach did not extend beyond Romania. But because of this Telling thing, the other people trying to capture her would use any means necessary to do so, and they wanted her alive. But Sera hadn’t been able to tell her if the gypsy king was part of the whole prophecy drama or not. But he had to be: why else had he suddenly turned up and wanted to own her, whatever the cost?