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  “I’m pleased to meet you, Lilly Blu. I’ve heard so much about you,” I said, offering her a friendly smile.

  “Likewise,” she said, taking my hand in hers and gently shaking it. She let her long, slender fingers slide from mine, placing her hand into the pocket of her fur coat. Taking her hand out almost at once, she said, “This is for you.”

  I looked down at the white envelope she was holding. Taking it from her, I said, “What is it?”

  “It’s a letter from Jack Seth,” Lilly said. “Before he went back through the cracks, he asked me to give it you.”

  I turned the sealed envelope over in my hands. My first instinct was to rip it open so I could read what was written inside. But not here. Not now. Not in the kitchen with my friends all around me. I wanted to wait until I was alone. I slipped the letter into my jacket pocket and looked up to thank Lilly for looking after my brother’s letter for me. But Lilly was heading out of the door, the bottom of her long, white fur coat swishing about her ankles. I watched her go past Murphy and Meren, her head down so as not to catch their eye. Through the kitchen window, I saw her head for the wooded area that stretched away from the back of the farmhouse. Just as she reached the treeline, I heard Meren call out after her.

  “Mum! Wait!”

  So Murphy had told Meren the truth about who her mother really was.

  Pen stood dead still. Slowly, she turned and looked back at Meren. Not taking her eyes off Lilly once, Meren walked toward her and stopped. They stood looking at each other without speaking for what seemed like an eternity. Murphy headed over to them, his slippers splashing through the puddles left by the rain that had fallen during the night. The three of them stood looking at each other as if taking part in some kind of stand-off. Slowly, Lilly opened her arms wide and Meren fell into them. Murphy then wrapped his arms around the both of them. I looked away with a smile, praying deep within my heart that the three of them would find happiness together this time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kiera

  “What are you looking at?” Potter asked, spying over my shoulder.

  I hadn’t heard him get up from his chair and come and join me by the window. Catching sight of Murphy hugging Meren and Lilly, I thought that perhaps he was going to come out with one of his sarcastic comments, but instead he said, “Good luck to the old fart. He deserves a bit of happiness.”

  “Going soft in your old age?” I said, reaching up on tiptoe and planting a kiss on his cheek.

  “I’m never soft when you’re around,” he grinned.

  “Pervert,” I scowled, and headed back to the table. I slipped my hand into my pocket and touched the letter Jack had sent me. I would spend some time with my friends, then sneak off and read it alone.

  “I’m sorry to hear about Sam,” I said, sitting down next to Kayla and tenderly squeezing her shoulder.

  “I know I will see him again,” she said, more out of hope than a real belief I suspected. But I could remember the nightmare I’d had where Kayla and Sam had been together again and I wondered if perhaps she was right in her belief.

  I looked across the room at Potter. He was leaning back against the sink, a smoke dangling from his lips.

  “Just don’t build your hopes up,” Potter warned her.

  “You never know,” Isidor cut in. “Life can be like a rollercoaster – you’ve just got to ride it.”

  “That’s rather philosophical, Isidor,” Melody said. “Did you come up with that, or was it some great philosopher?”

  “I guess you could call him a philosopher,” Isidor said thoughtfully.

  “Who?” Potter asked.

  “Ronan Keating,” Isidor said. “It’s a line from a Boyzone song.”

  “Boyzone!” Potter spat, the cigarette nearly falling from between his lips. “How the fuck can you be comparing Sam getting kicked to death to a Boyzone song? Sam didn’t even look like Ronan-fucking-Keating!”

  “I don’t think Isidor meant to say that Sam looked like…” Melody started, coming to Isidor’s defence.

  “He’ll be quoting songs by The Back-passage Boys next,” Potter said over her.

  “I think you’ll find they were called The Back Street Boys,” Isidor said.

  “Not in this world they’re not,” Potter informed him.

  “Do you all mind? That’s Sam you’re talking about,” Kayla said, pushing her chair back and running from the room.

  “Nice one, Isidor!” Potter scowled. “You’ve upset your sister now.”

  “It wasn’t me who upset her,” Isidor said, jumping up and heading for the door.

  “Yeah, it was. You started comparing Sam’s death to having some kind of jolly on a rollercoaster,” Potter said.

  But Isidor was gone in search of Kayla. Melody glared at Potter, then left the room too.

  “What did I say?” he asked, raising both eyebrows.

  “You know what,” I said.

  “I was just trying to have a few laughs,” Potter shrugged. “There hasn’t been that many lately.”

  I got up from the table and went to the kitchen door.

  “Are you mad at me too?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, looking back at him. “I just want to be on my own for a while.”

  “What am I meant to do?” he asked.

  “How about finding Isidor and Kayla and saying sorry for being a jerk?” I smiled back at him, closing the kitchen door on my way out.

  With my hand closed around Jack’s letter that was tucked into my jacket pocket, I made my way across the yard and into the woods. As I went, I caught sight of Murphy, Meren, and Lilly sitting on a dry patch of grass beneath one of the trees. They were lost in conversation and didn’t see me pass by. I headed away in the opposite direction. Finding myself a similar dry spot beneath a large tree, I sat cross-legged in the fallen leaves. Slowly, I took Jack’s letter from my pocket. There was no writing on the front of the envelope. I turned it over in my hands, and with my heart racing, I opened it. I pulled out the folded sheets of paper tucked inside and began to read the spidery writing that had been scribbled across the pages.

  Kiera,

  If you’re reading this letter then you have met up with Lilly Blu and she kept her promise to me. Better still, if you’re reading this then you’re alive – you haven’t been pushed. The reason I’ve written this letter is because I’m too much of a coward to say the things I have to say to you in person. I wish we could be sitting somewhere – perhaps in some nice park with the heat of the sun on our faces – just like a brother and sister should. I guess things weren’t meant to have been like that for us. But you know what? I really fucking wish they had. I’m not gonna bullshit you here – I fucking hated you once. I would have ripped your throat out just as soon as look at your scrawny arse – but things changed. I changed. Maybe not fully – but enough to know that I need to. Even as I sit and write this to you, I’m already itching to make my next kill. I’m wondering where I might come across her. What will she look and taste like? Damp and sweet, I hope.

  When I discovered that you were my sister I hated you more than I’d ever hated anyone. I was so fucking jealous, as your life seemed to be so fucking good – so fucking straight. You had friends, someone to love and someone who loved you – that’s why I took you, locked you in that room, and forced you to watch your father die. That’s why I got you to watch Potter make out with that wolf. I wanted you to hurt as much as I fucking did – as much as all my victims had. But the longer I spent with you in that room, the more I realised your life wasn’t as straight and as happy as I first thought. You had your demons just like I had. But the difference – the difference was that you hadn’t given in to them. You didn’t let them turn you into some monster – a monster like me. I saw that I could be happy too – if only I wasn’t so fucking weak.

  I’ve been an evil motherfucker my whole sorry life but I realise that hasn’t anything to do with how our mother treated me, or how Father Paul, your father,
rejected me; the only person I have to blame is myself. You have been let down and rejected too, but you never let it destroy you. You chose not to let it.

  If I could go back and change the terrible things I have done, then I would – but it’s too late for that. Besides, there is another part of me that wouldn’t want to change a thing and that’s the side I just can’t silence. The wolf just keeps yackety-yacking in my ear. It’s never truly silent. But it’s not too late for you, Kiera. We all have choices to make – you know that better than anyone. For what it’s worth, and if you want to listen to your brother’s advice – and why would you – I say follow your heart. Believe it or not, there is a part of me that wishes I had followed mine. I haven’t always been the monster you know. I was once that boy who loved to sit and draw and paint – that kid who just wanted to be praised – to be loved. I had dreams of wanting to be an artist, to create instead of destroy. But my anger and resentment blinded me. The wolf blinded me. But you haven’t let your demons blind you. Kiera, you see – and to see is the only way you’re going to survive. Look into your heart and what do you see? I know what I saw in it when I had you trapped in that room.

  Nik saw it too during the time he spent with you in the zoo before the world got pushed. That’s why he wants to help you by taking Potter’s place beneath the guillotine. I know that however much we struggle, we both want to change. We both want to lead better lives and I hope we can help each other as brothers to do so.

  But all changes are small and start within, so the words I’m going to write now I have never uttered to anyone. I guess that’s why I’m writing them for you to read instead of saying them to you. I’ve always been too scared to say these words to anyone – yes, even a monster as ugly as me gets scared from time to time. But nothing scares a monster as much as showing their weaknesses and how vulnerable they really are. But is it a weakness to tell someone you love them? You taught me not. You showed me to love is a strength, not a weakness. So feeling stronger than I ever have, I want to say, I love you, sister.

  If we were together now, I would say those three words to you. But that’s not going to happen now. Not in this pushed world – but perhaps another. And that’s why I’m going to go and get myself pushed again. I want to start all over and have a shot at beating my demons so that if we should ever meet again, I will be able to look you in the eyes without feeling scared or ashamed and say, I love you, Kiera.

  But until that day – and I pray that it comes to pass – I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for helping me to see. Because when I open my eyes now, I don’t always see the world as being grotesque, but I sometimes see the beauty in it too. So for the first time since I was a boy, I created something – I drew something beautiful. I drew a picture of you.

  I’m going to leave you now and I hope that if I can beat my curse, one day we will be pushed back together.

  Jack.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kiera

  I held the letter and picture. Tears pricked my eyes and they glazed over. I felt a sudden pang of regret stab my heart as I wished that it had worked out between me and Jack. Between both of my brothers. They were my real family and I felt I had been robbed of them. Jack was right, we’d missed out on doing all the good stuff that brothers and sisters share together. Our mother had robbed all of us of that. Her acts of cruelty and selfishness had driven a void between us that became so wide we could never cross it – not even meet halfway. That was my biggest regret. Like Jack had found the courage to write that he loved me, I loved Jack too. But I would never know how telling him that might have changed him. Jack wrote he had never told anyone he loved them and I feared he had never had those words said to him. Perhaps if our mother, Kathy Seth, hadn’t succumbed to the curse then I would have been raised with my brothers and we could’ve been a real family.

  “What a waste,” I whispered, staring down at the letter and picture, those tears now rolling silently down the length of my face.

  I wished I’d had one last chance to see Jack before he’d gone and got himself pushed again. I would have wanted to look into his eyes, for I suspected that for the first time I wouldn’t have seen myself in them. I wouldn’t have seen myself suffering in them. And why? Because he said he loved me and I believed him. That was the reason he swapped places with Isidor. He knew I loved Isidor as a brother, so Jack was giving me something he thought he could never be. He was giving me a brother. I’d learnt your family didn’t have to be those who raised you – but those people who love you. And I knew that the ragtag group of Vampyrus, wolves, and half-breeds who were now gathered at the farmhouse waiting to go down into Snake Weed at nightfall were my family. We quarrelled amongst ourselves at times, we had different opinions and likes and dislikes, but the one thing that we did have in common was that none of us had family. Potter’s father had been a violent drunk and his mother had walked away when he was just a boy. Murphy had buried both his daughters and lost the woman he had loved. Isidor had been given away as a small boy by his father, Lord Hunt. Kayla had fled to London, driven away by bullies, and Melody’s mother had physically and emotionally abused her. None of us had much – but in a way we had everything – we had each other. We were a family.

  Staring down at the picture Jack had drawn of me, I hoped that wherever he was now, he was with Nik and they were happy. I prayed that they were both beating the curse that had tormented them their whole lives. I had only ever spent a very short time with Nik. He had kept me company during my captivity in that zoo on the outskirts of Wasp Water. He had helped me to escape. So I knew there was good in him too. I hoped that he would show Jack the way. Nik was the killer he was because Jack had raised him from a small boy. And maybe some of my tears stung so much because secretly, in a very small part of my heart, I was grateful Jack hadn’t raised me too, as I feared that perhaps I would have turned out just like they had. We were just different sides of the same coin.

  But the regret I felt wasn’t just for me and my brothers; it was for my friends too. In this world, we had all somehow been pushed back together again. Murphy had been reunited with Lilly Blu and his daughter Meren. Isidor had found Melody Rose. Albeit for a short time, Kayla had found love with Sam, but she believed she would someday meet him again. Potter…Potter had found…

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” I heard someone say.

  I looked back over my shoulder to see Potter standing amongst the trees.

  “What’s that?” he said, stepping forward and looking down at Jack’s letter and drawing.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, placing them back into the envelope and sliding it into my jacket pocket.

  Potter cocked one eyebrow at me, but didn’t mention the envelope again. Sitting on the grass next to me, he noticed the tears drying on my cheeks and said, “Are you okay, Kiera?”

  “I’m fine,” I smiled, wiping the tears away. “I’m just being stupid. Really.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure,” he said, eyes full of concern for me.

  “Sure,” I said. “Did you manage to track down Isidor and Kayla?”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking out a smoke and lighting it. “You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve made my peace with them.”

  “You apologised? Are you ill?” I teased.

  “Well, I told Isidor not to be such a touchy-sod, and for Kayla to get a life, and Melody not to poke her freaking nose in, and…”

  “So you didn’t say sorry?” I said.

  “They know I’m just fucking with them,” he smiled.

  I looked at Potter as we sat beneath the tree. The wind blew dead leaves all around us, and the bare branches overhead creaked like old floorboards. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Why do you think we’ve all been brought back together in this pushed world? What I mean is, we’ve all met up with people we’ve lost at some point in our lives before we got pushed. Why do you think that’s happened?”
<
br />   “So the Elders can fuck with us,” he said, blowing smoke out of his nostrils.

  “But how is that fucking with us?” I frowned at him. “I saw Murphy, Meren, and Pen. I watched as Meren finally met her mother. Isidor has found Melody again. I’ve never seen him look so happy.”

  “Yeah, but he’s always had a stupid fucking look on his face…”

  “I’m being serious,” I cut in.

  “Even Kayla, who met and then lost Sam, looks the happiest I’ve ever seen her,” I reminded him. “I thought we were meant to be unhappy here. I thought that was the whole point of being brought back. Aren’t the Elders meant to be punishing us – not rewarding us?”

  “Who knows how those twisted fuckers like to work,” Potter said, flicking the butt of his cigarette away where it lay and fizzled in the damp fallen leaves. “But maybe we should make the most of it while it lasts.” Potter glanced up through the branches at the cracks that covered the sky.

  Not realising that he had done it, Potter had confirmed what I feared inside. Had the Elders engineered all of us being reunited with the people we had once loved, just so they could tear us apart again? Potter said that the Elders feed off pain, and what could be more painful for my friends than to lose each other again? To have that family torn apart. But to watch that happen would be my pain. My pain would be greater as I secretly knew that I had the power to stop that from happening. I had the choice to send them all back where once again they would all be together – where they would all be happy. I couldn’t rid my mind of those statues the Elders had shown me in the graveyard. The statues of my friends with the people they most loved. I remembered the nightmare I’d had where they were all together and I played no part in their lives. I was a statue, unable to tell them that I was their friend and how much I loved each of them. I had to stand back, forever more unable to be a part of their lives. That was what the Elders had planned for me, or the agony of leading my friends into Snake Weed where I feared they would lose their lives and be pushed apart again. That was the choice the Elders were asking me to make.