Charcoal Tears (7 page)

“Who’s this?” She barely even glanced at Tariq, which I found strange, seeing as we were both equally as unfamiliar to her.

Cabe cleared his throat, pressing a hand to the back of his neck, like he was suddenly wondering if this was a good idea. “Seraph.”

“Seph,” I corrected lightly.

The woman hurried to me and grasped my hands. “She’s
gorgeous
!”

Noah coughed. “Enough, Tab,” he said under his breath, as I stumbled back a step, breaking her grip.

I saw the resemblance as she tried to mask her frown. She had Noah’s electric blue eyes and sleek blond hair. She was their mother.

“You don’t live with your parents?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, and I quickly grew red, turning away with embarrassment.

The woman recaptured me quickly, flashed a brilliant smile, and placed a hand against Tariq’s arm. “You must be her brother? You look just like each other. I’m Tabby, their mother.”

Tariq mustered a smile and Cabe materialised at my side, gently extracting me from his mother. She watched him slip an arm around me and draw me to Noah, and she seemed to forget about my brother again. Noah observed it all with amusement.

Cabe whispered in my ear as he herded me away. “You either can’t get it out or can’t keep it in, right Seph?”

I wrinkled my nose and Noah laughed.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“Don’t worry about it.” Cabe gave me a little push beyond Noah, toward a hallway. “We’re going to play in the garage for a while, Tab. Come on, Tariq!”

I was happy enough to escape the kitchen, but the house in general still made me uneasy. I waited for Noah once I was out of eyeshot of his mother, and he led me down to the garage with the other two trailing behind. There was a ping-pong table set up and a couch facing a gaming system. It looked like a typical teenage boy’s playroom. Tariq made a beeline for the ping-pong table and Noah stepped up to the challenge. I drifted off to the window, glancing out onto the street. Cabe eventually managed to draw me down to the couch and we started playing a video game where robots had to make their way through obstacle courses. It was pretty funny. After an hour or so, I was hanging off the side of the couch, laughing. Cabe groaned and threw his controller down, causing the other two to come over.

“What happened?” Tariq looked at the screen.

“She killed me again.” Cabe groused.

“Aren’t you on the same team?” Noah squinted at the screen.

“Yup,” I replied happily. “Wanna play?”

“You’re on, pretty girl.”

Noah fell onto the couch beside me, and I had to draw my legs up to make room for him. He picked them up and pulled them over his lap. Cabe passed him the controller and captured my feet. I tried to subtly pull my legs away, but Cabe held tight, the expression on his face casual. I didn’t dare look at Tariq; it was too awkward. I started playing mostly to distract myself from the scratchy feeling creeping along my skin, setting my teammate up for inevitable failure, but just before I pressed the button that would send Noah’s character falling to his death by collapsing the platform beneath his robot, Cabe started tickling my feet. I squealed, jerking one of my legs back. Noah pressed his torso forward, preventing the movement, and Cabe recaptured my foot.

“Nice try.” Cabe flashed a beautiful smile at me, and I laughed.

“You’re evil,” I said.

“You’re sneaky,” he countered.

A ringing sound cut through the room and Noah dug into his pocket, pulled out his phone and pressed a button, flashing it up to his ear.

“Silas?” He waited for a long time, listening. “Hmm… Alright. But if you can hack the signal, wouldn’t they simply be able to hack it back?” Pause. “Better to destroy it. Set up a new one. New cameras. Thanks.”

He hung up and I drew my legs back. This time they let me.

“You’re house was bugged,” he said apologetically. “Only in the hallway and the common areas. Whoever it was didn’t have access to the bedrooms or bathrooms. The other pictures must have been taken from outside.”

“You said to put in new cameras?” I asked.

“We’re going to keep an eye on the situation.”

“What do you mean,
keep an eye on the situation
?”

“Once we cut their signals and set up a new private network, they’ll have to get close to your house to hack it back. If they
do
come to your house, we’ll be watching.”

“You’ll be watching my house,” I repeated numbly. “Can’t you just set up cameras on the outside?”

“That wouldn’t do any good. Our guy has based the new security system on your home computer—”

“We don’t have a home computer,” Tariq interrupted.

“You do now.” Noah waved a dismissive hand. “And to regain control of the new system, your… er,
photographer
will need to get inside the house and access the computer. There are endless reasons for a person to be inside your house. They could be a friend of your father’s, a tradesman, a salesman, or even one of your own friends. There’s no way to know unless we can physically see that computer at all times.”

They played games for a little while longer as I debated what Noah had said, and then Cabe stood, stretching. “We’ve got practise.”

“You’re on the team already?” Tariq perked up at this.

“Yeah,” Cabe grinned. “Want to come watch?”

Tariq nodded enthusiastically and they drove back to the school. I drove my own car and left Tariq with them since their car was still parked there. I parked behind the council building and jogged down the street to our house. There was a new key under the mat, just as Noah had said there would be. I unlocked the door and pushed inside, looking around. I couldn’t spot the cameras anywhere, but I wondered who this Silas was, and if he was watching.

I found the rest of the keys on the kitchen bench and swapped my old ones as the door creaked open behind me. I swung around, finding my father’s eyes locked on me. He was drunk, and home early. Usually he didn’t stumble inside until around four in the morning, sometimes later. His eyes narrowed and he moved toward me. Cautiously, I put the counter between us. He didn’t even glance at the keys.

“You ran away from me today, Seraph. You’re a bad daughter, you know that?” His voice was deathly soft. “I’m going to have to punish you.”

I tensed my muscles, preparing for a fight. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“You’re drunk.” My voice was cold and strong. “Go to bed.”

“I knew you’d come back.” He laughed, and the smell of alcohol washed over me. “Come here, daughter, give your daddy a hug.”

“Back off, old man.”

He lunged, belying the sluggish act that he had been putting on. I ducked to the side and he spun quickly to follow me, trying to back me into the kitchen. I kicked out, narrowly missing his groin and catching the fleshy part of his gut instead. He fell back against the counter and grunted in pain, but pulled himself straight and came for me again. He swung out and I tried to dodge again, but he had anticipated my move by swinging wide. He caught me across the cheekbone. My head whipped to the side and I felt the familiar electricity surging into my fingertips. The air crackled with it, and my father sensed it.

“Going to use your little magic trick, eh?”

“Don’t make me, Gerald. Go to bed.”

He turned, apparently deciding that it wasn’t worth getting zapped again and made to move toward the stairs. He reached out to the railing, but then twitched his hand higher, yanking a small frame from the wall and throwing it. Caught by surprise, I didn’t block the frame that smacked into my collarbone and he laughed derisively as he retreated. I fell back, rubbing at the spot on my chest. I could feel the bruise already.

The frame was on the ground, broken now, and I glanced down at the smiling faces as I picked it up. I had stopped actually
looking
at the sparse photos that littered our house—they were remnants of a past life, of different people. The family that had lived here before ours; admittedly, a family with our names and our appearances… but a different family all the same. The
previous
Seraph Black met my stare now, a crack fissuring ominously across her throat, a web of broken glass mottling the
previous
Tariq Black’s blissfully young face. Maryanne Black stood aside in the picture, somehow managing to escape the carnage of ruptured glass, simply by setting herself apart from the other occupants of the frame. She had serious green eyes and a generous mouth, set into a generously dishonest curve. Dimly, I wondered if she smiled the same painful smile in the other pictures around the house… but I didn’t have the heart to check.

I shoved the broken frame into a draw and headed back to the kitchen. My father’s keys were on the side table next to the front door and I switched his front door key before heading outside to the garage. I unlocked it and left it open, sure that my father was going to pass out for the rest of the night. He never usually dared to show his face again after I reminded him my ‘little magic trick’. I had done it the first time when I was thirteen. Spurred on by the sudden urge to shove him, I had somehow managed to electrocute him instead. He’d been fried. He peed himself, and Tariq had helped to lock him in the room while he was knocked out. He said nothing about it the next day, but we gained a very valuable weapon.

I surrounded myself with my colours and began to work on the painting I had started the day before. The second coat was easier, but I still took my time with it. As the sky darkened, I hit the light and continued to work, losing myself in the soft pastel colours and the emerging face that stared back at me. Just like the picture that Gerald had thrown at me, this painting tried to reflect a familiar face back to me, but I had changed it too much for it to be an honest portrayal. The eyes were mismatched, one a blue-green and the other a blue-violet. It was hard for people to meet my eyes, which was why I so often stared at the ground. The nose was small and narrow, tipped up a little bit at the end. The lips were soft and bow-shaped, a light pink. The jaw was angled but delicate, giving an exotic shape to what should have been a clenched jaw. The cheekbones were high and sloping, the eyebrows softly arched instead of pulled together in a frown. The curl of the hair was fat and lazy, the colour dark as night. It was me, but it wasn’t me.
This
girl was free. I had painted the pain right out of her eyes. I had brushed the smile onto her lips, the ease into the set of her jaw. Her skin was unmarked, unbruised.

She wasn’t me.

A sound broke through my reverie and I jumped away from the painting, looking out to the entrance of the garage.

“We were dropping off Tariq,” Noah said, stepping into the garage.

Cabe followed him, his eyes taking in the space. “He said you’d be here.”

I snapped my mouth shut and moved to cover my painting, but Noah caught my hand just in time. I tried to yank it back and he looped an arm around me, pulling me clear out of the way. This caught Cabe’s interest, and he stepped up to look too.

“What…” he breathed, stepping in closer.

Noah tensed behind me, his short gasp stirring against my hair.

4

The Oddities of the Ordinary

Noah’s arms slackened around me and he stepped up closer to the painting, forcing me to go with him, as I was still standing in front of him.

“This is…” He trailed off, reaching out to touch the canvas. I snagged his hand, pulling it away from the painting.

“It’s not dry,” I said.

He tucked his arm around me again, and I tried to push down the alien feeling that accompanied it, but I was still on edge from the run-in with my father, and nervous sparks lit up in the pit of my stomach. Cabe stared at the painting for a long time, his brown hair falling over his eyes. He combed it back with his hand and slowly turned to face me. I melted in the golden-brown light of his eyes, relaxing back against the body behind me. Noah pulled me closer, his breathing changing against my hair, and Cabe’s eyes ran over my features, flicking back to the painting.

“I see what you did,” he finally said.

I’d never been so ashamed, or terrified, before in my life. These two strangers could see right through me, to the broken, weeping girl that curled inside. Had I let them do that? I didn’t even know.

I started to tremble and Noah must have felt it.

“It’s exceptional, don’t be embarrassed.” His voice rumbled through his chest, vibrating against my back.

“You weren’t meant to see it.”

“It’s what you looked like when you were playing games with us at Tabby’s house.” He laughed. “We’ve already seen it.”

An answering sound of amusement fell out of me, causing the worried look to ease from the lines set into Cabe’s forehead. He stepped forward, blocking the painting out, and I relaxed further.

“Sorry,” he offered. “Didn’t mean to pry.”

“Yes you did.”

His smile was brilliant, and for a moment I allowed myself to bask in it. Noah was a gravitational force, but Cabe was something pure and overwhelming, radiating happiness. They shouldn’t be in my garage, and I shouldn’t have let Noah put his arms around me. Did I have no regard for my own safety?