He pulled the wrapper from a sterile syringe and I stepped backwards.
“Taylor,” he sighed. “Will it help if I overlook the conversation I had with Mr Barnes this morning?”
I pressed my lips together. “I want to keep Mum’s book and see her notes.”
The creases in Dad’s face deepened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I put your Mum’s things away because I don’t want your hallucinations being fed with yet more stories.”
“But–”
“I’m not ready to give up on you yet. Let me have this sample and I won’t ask for any more for a while, you can have that break.”
“Fine.” I sighed.
“And you'll go back to school?”
I nodded, then paused with my hand over my belt.
“Taylor, I’m your father, just take them off.”
Justin backed into the hall. When I was sure he couldn’t see me I slid out of my jeans. Dad pointed at a stool and I brushed away a thin layer of dust before I lowered myself onto the seat. Then I looked away as Dad approached with the needle.
I held my breath as the point broke my skin and tried hard not to wince at the insistent tug of blood being taken from the vein.
“All done.” Dad pressed a pad of cotton wool over the needle and pulled it free. An ampoule sat on top of his desk, ruby in the light that shone through it.
I took over the pressure on the pad. “You really think you’re close?”
Dad considered the brimming vial. “If I can duplicate the effect I’ll be nearer to the cure. Now I’ve seen a difference between your blood samples I’m going and try infect a sample of ordinary blood – my blood. If I can do that, then we know it’s an illness and reversible.”
“It isn’t an infection, Dad. If it was you’d have caught it already.”
“Not if it’s passed directly from blood to blood.”
“Like AIDS you mean?” A shudder went through me and I grabbed my jeans from the floor. Quickly I pulled them on, feeling exposed and grubby.
“Taylor.” Dad reached for my ungloved hand and I dodged him.
“I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”
On the landing Justin moved into my peripheral vision. He followed me silently and I closed the door behind him.
“Don’t say anything,” I warned. I hurled myself onto my bed and pressed my face into the pillow until the heat in my cheeks was cooled by the smell of laundered cotton.
17
A weapon in his arsenal
“Your Dad must really love you.”
I rolled over. Justin was standing by my picture board of Mum and staring into her serious eyes.
“What makes you say that?” I growled.
His fingers hovered over Mum’s face. “He’s working so hard to make you better.”
“He’s not trying to make me better,” I snapped. “Well, he is, but that’s not the real point.”
“That’s not what it looked like.” Justin cocked his head at the baby Mum cradled in her arms.
I swallowed. “That’s because you don’t know everything.” I rose and stood next to him, soothed by the image of Mum’s knowing expression.
Justin shrugged. “Tell me.”
“There isn’t that much to tell. Mum died in a car crash.” I looked at her picture, then at Justin.
“I remember it happening.” His face twisted into sympathetic lines and my stomach soured.
“Yeah, well, they’d gone to a party and Dad had drunk a bit much, so Mum was driving. Apparently she suddenly jerked the wheel left, like she swerved to avoid something.”
“A dog?”
“He says there was nothing there.”
Justin was quiet for a moment, then understanding dawned. His eyes widened. “She saw a ghost, and she didn’t realise.”
I nodded. “I’ve thought about it a lot. Maybe it was a kid in pyjamas or something. She’d have had a split second to ask herself: is it a ghost, or has the kid just managed to wander out of her flat and into the road?”
“She had to assume it was a real person.”
“I know. I’d have made the same call.”
“But your Dad…”
“The curse is his enemy. It’s taken Mum and his legs. He’s trying to defeat it. I’m a means to an end, a weapon in his arsenal. As long as I’m around he has a way of getting to it.”
“He’s your Dad, I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah.” My fingers trailed over Mum’s face and I gave my shoulders a shake. “We would have lost her at some point anyway.” My smile was a fragile papier-mache construction. “My family doesn’t have a long life expectancy. As if tracking down killers isn’t dangerous enough, we pretty much always go mad.” I tried to sound matter of fact, but I knew my voice was drum tight. “When I was a baby my grandmother hanged herself. My uncle was shot by a man he was Marking. Those of us who don’t die go to live in the middle of nowhere, or in institutions where we can be basically drugged off the planet.”
Justin pressed his lips together. “You think that’ll happen to you.”
“One day.”
“But you know what you see is real. You’re not mad.”
I turned to the mirror. “I have to be on the alert all the time. I have to pay attention to every single person anywhere near me, just in case they’re a ghost. Can you imagine what that’s like?” I didn’t wait for his answer. “You get sort of frozen at the moment just before death, so some of you are easy to spot. If you’d died in the bath, you’d be naked and wet, so if I see a fat man streaking towards me down Oxford Street I can avoid him pretty easily.”
Justin snorted and I gave a half smile. “But what about the guy in the business suit? Is he a ghost?” I went to straighten my duvet. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
Justin grinned, a bit too smoothly for my liking. “I’m easy to talk to.”
“No, you aren’t.” I retied my ponytail to busy my fingers. “I don’t like you and you don’t like me.” Blood was seeping through my jeans; my vein wasn’t closing fast enough. I moved to my wardrobe and selected a skirt. I pulled it on over the denim then pulled my jeans down underneath. Justin watched, fascinated.
I was shoving my jeans into the laundry basket in the corner when I stopped. “I’d checked that old guy out before I sat down, I’m used to spotting the out-of-place, but I didn’t notice that he wasn’t right, you did.” I spun to face Justin. “You said there was something off about him.” I pointed at him accusingly. “How did you know?”
Justin took a step back as if I held a knife on him. “I’m not sure,” he muttered. “It was like… you know when you meet someone you sometimes have a feeling about them. You know if you’ll be friends.”
For some reason my memories flashed to the day I’d first met Justin.
“It was like that,” he scuffed his feet in my carpet. “I just felt as if he was similar to me.”
“Not right.” I gave a small genuine smile.
“Yeah.” It was Justin’s turn to paste on a fake. “That’s right.”
My limbs felt like lead; tiredness had crept up on me. I glanced at the clock. It was later than I’d thought. I’d forgotten Justin didn’t need to sleep; I couldn’t keep up with the dead.
“I’ve got to get some sleep.” I covered my mouth as I yawned and Justin nodded.
“Should I leave?”
For the first time I wondered where one of the bothersome dead would go while I slept. “What will you do?”
Justin inhaled and his full lips twitched downwards before he got them back under control. “I’ll find a cinema or something.”
I nodded and he stepped backwards.
“Wait.” I pushed my hair off my forehead. “You could watch telly downstairs. Dad won’t hear – he’ll work late into the night then take some painkillers; they knock him out. You should be able to work the remote as long as you don't turn it up too loud. The sofa’s comfy.”