I walk a few metres from him and take a deep breath, roll my shoulders. If I can travel the way the Rephaim do, I won’t be so vulnerable. I’ll be more of an equal. I’m going to learn to shift. On my own.
‘So, how do I do this?’
Rafa rubs his jaw, thinks for a few seconds. ‘What do you do when you walk?’
‘I don’t know, I just do it.’
He nods. ‘Right. Shifting’s the same.’
‘I’m going to need slightly more specific instructions.’
‘Give me a second. I’ve never taught anyone before.’
‘How did you learn?’
‘I don’t remember—it was a long time ago.’
I shake the tension from my wrists, feel the air against my hands.
‘Okay, the key is to visualise where you want to go.’
‘But you shift to places you’ve never been.’
‘And I’ve been doing it for a hundred and twenty years. When you start out, you need to visualise.’
It makes sense; Jason can only shift somewhere on his own if he’s been there before or has specific directions. His skills are nowhere near as advanced as the rest of the Rephaim because he only knows as much as Jude and I did when we taught him at the end of the nineteenth century.
‘We’ll start with something easy. Take your shoes off.’
My bare toes sink into grass damp with dew.
‘Feel that? Now look at the trees around you, the sky. Find landmarks. What do you smell?’
I breathe in deeply. ‘Mown grass, some sort of flower, ducks…’
‘You got it all in your memory?’
‘I think so.’
‘Right. Walk down to the path by the lake.’
I do as he says. I think I know where this is going. When I face him again all I can make out is his silhouette.
‘When you’re ready, focus and shift back to me.’
‘Rafa, the landmarks are exactly the same here.’
‘No, they’re not. Pay attention. You’ve walked twenty metres. Everything is different.’
I stare at the point I have to get to.
‘Don’t focus on it from there. Focus on what it was like when you were here.’ His voice is loud under the trees. There’s nobody around to hear.
‘Wouldn’t this be easier when there’s more light?’
He laughs. ‘This is as easy as it’s going to get. It’s not your first time. My bet is it’ll be exactly like your fighting skills: once you start, muscle memory will kick in.’
‘You didn’t think that a few days ago when I asked about shifting. You said it would be like teaching a kid to fly a jet plane.’
‘That was before I saw you in action with a sword. Quit stalling.’
I rub my palms together, let out my breath. Jason said the first time the Rephaim shifted they all ended up where they were born—not that they knew it. Technically, this isn’t my first shift, so I shouldn’t find myself in Italy. Assuming this works at all.
I check my back pocket. Yep, phone’s still there, just in case.
‘Come on, Gaby. You can do this.’
I nod, close my eyes. Picture faintly lit skyscrapers above the trees, palm fronds coiling out of shapeless shadows; feel cool blades of grass between my toes, a light breeze on my skin. I sway on my feet, waiting, willing something to happen…
Nothing.
‘You’re thinking too much.’
I open my eyes. ‘Shouldn’t I, like, imagine myself
projecting
back over there?’
‘Whatever works for you.’
I move a few steps to the left. Like that’s going to help. ‘What happens when we shift? I mean, are we travelling really fast and, if so, why don’t we hit planes or mountains or—’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I think it’ll help if I understand how it works.’
He walks down the hill to me. ‘Zeb says—’
‘Who’s Zeb again?’
‘One of the Council of Five. He always said we don’t hit anything because we’re not travelling in this dimension.’
‘Say again?’
‘We leave one place, end up in another, and in between we go somewhere else. Another dimension.’
My skin prickles. ‘What happens if you get stuck there?’
‘Nobody ever has.’
‘But—’
‘Do you want to try this again or obsess about the metaphysics of it?’
I bite my lip, take my weight on both feet. ‘Try again.’
‘Then less talk and more trying.’
This time when I assemble all the sights and sounds and smells, I imagine myself being drawn towards them; moving without moving; grass replacing the concrete under my bare feet.
Again nothing happens. But I stay focused, sweep the thought fragments back into a neat line, ignore the insects and distant traffic. Try again. This time I imagine stepping through a curtain into nothing: a nothing that will take me to a place that looks and smells like the spot on the hill.
Something pulls at me—something ferocious and wild. I’m sucked forward, stretched. The air turns icy. I can’t open my eyes: the pressure’s almost unbearable. Noise like a waterfall swells and crashes around me. I can’t feel the ground.
God, I’m doing it, I’m shifting—
I slam face-down on concrete.
I groan and roll onto my back. My palms and elbows sting; my ears are blocked. I can’t tell if the stars wheeling against the inky sky are real or not. The path is hard against my spine and there’s blood in my mouth.
Warm fingers touch my face. ‘You all right?’
I nod and my neck hurts.
Rafa helps me stand. I ache like I’ve run for hours; my legs shake, my stomach churns. ‘I need to sit down.’
We find a bench and I put my head in my hands, wait for the ground to stop rolling. ‘I thought it was working.’
‘It was, you just didn’t go anywhere. You disappeared for a second, though.’
I turn my head. The moon is clear of the trees. ‘Seriously?’
‘Didn’t you feel it?’
‘Oh, I felt it all right.’ It was the single most terrifying sensation of my life.
‘Do you want to try again?’
I shake my head so vigorously it makes me dizzy. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Fair enough.’
I lean back against the bench, close my eyes. Rafa settles next to me. Our shoulders touch. We sit like that for a while, listening to the insects, the light rustle of the breeze through the trees.
I like how solid he is. How he lets me lean against him. It should be enough, but it’s not. I can’t let it go. I have to ask him again. Maybe here in the quiet is where he’ll answer.
‘Rafa.’
‘Mmm?’
‘What happened between us before you left the Sanctuary?’ Even with the weight of the words, it’s still an easier question than the one Maggie wants me to ask him.
He doesn’t answer.
I open my eyes. He’s staring up at the night sky, as if the question will go away if he can’t see me.
‘In Dubai, you said we needed time to have the conversation. We’ve got time now.’
He sits forward, stretches his arms over his head; one shoulder makes a popping noise. He doesn’t look at me.
‘We had a fight. A really bad one,’ he says finally.
‘That’s not news.’
‘It got out of hand. I hurt you.’
‘Why? What was it about?’
His arms drop. ‘You told me you weren’t leaving with us.’
‘Did I say why?’
‘Yeah.’ He’s focused on the shapeless trees on the hill. ‘You wanted to stay with Daniel.’
I stare at him. ‘I chose Daniel over Jude? Bullshit. I thought I didn’t hook up with Daniel until after you guys left?’
No response. This makes no sense.
‘Why would that piss you off so much you’d hurt me?’
‘Because Daniel’s a dick,’ he snaps.
‘Rafa—’
‘The thought of you being with him…’ He stands up, moves away from the bench and into the shadows.
‘What, you didn’t want him to have the only woman at the Sanctuary you hadn’t been with?’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’ He keeps his back to me. ‘Damn that prick…’
‘Then what?’
He takes a breath. ‘Things were…different.’
‘Different how?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘But weren’t you with Mya by that point?’
‘Fuck, see, this is too hard.’
And just like that, he’s gone. Shifted.
I stare at the place where he was standing. I blink a couple of times to make sure he’s really not there.
Unbelievable. He’ll charge at a pack of demons but he can’t face a difficult conversation. He’s deluded if he thinks I’m going to forget about it. I need to know. I need to not be stumbling around in the dark all the time. Why is that so fucking difficult for him to understand? What does he think—
Something splashes in the water behind me. I stand up and spin around. A lone swan glides across the lake, moonlight flickering in the ripples behind it. The edge of the water is crowded with dark, hulking shapes.
Shit.
I’m alone in the middle of a huge garden in the dark. Now I have to find a way out on foot, get back to the road without someone seeing me and calling the cops. How high is the fence? And where is the hotel from here?
The trees whisper to each other.
‘I’m done having this conversation.’
I flinch, as much from the hardness in Rafa’s voice as the fact he’s standing a few metres away under a willow tree.
‘What the fuck?’ I don’t mean it to come out so loud. ‘I thought we were having a conversation. You don’t shift in the middle of a conversation.’
‘You need to let this go.’ I don’t have to see his face to know how angry he is.
‘How can I, Rafa? Everywhere I turn, people are punishing me for who I used to be—you included. I’m sick of it. Why can’t you tell me what happened?’ I’m breathing faster than I need to.
‘Because we didn’t just beat each other up. We said some really shitty things, tore each other apart. I can’t undo that and I don’t see the point in giving you a blow-by-blow replay.’
‘Don’t you think I deserve to know what it was about?’
He throws his head back in exasperation. ‘It wasn’t you! If you ever get that other life back we can have it out then, all right? But I’m not ripping the scab off this thing when it’s got nothing to do with who you are now.’
‘That doesn’t help me.’ I’m aware that I’m shouting and then a wave of dizziness hits me. I reach for the bench, steady myself. The shadows spin and I have to sit down.
‘You all right?’ His voice is still tight.
‘I’m fine.’
My elbow stings. I touch it and wince; my fingers come away sticky.
Rafa walks over to me. ‘You’re bleeding.’
‘It’s just a graze.’
‘I can see that.’
We watch each other, getting our frustration under control. Rafa stays standing. An owl hoots in the trees; another answers further away. The breeze shakes the leaves in the dark trees around us. I sink back against the bench, spent.
‘What if I do get my memories back, Rafa?’ I suddenly sound as tired as I feel. ‘What if, by some miracle, I remember all the things you don’t want me to?’
He rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. ‘I don’t know, Gaby. But I can tell you one thing…’ He picks up a stone and tosses it into the dark. It splashes on the far side of the lake. ‘It won’t make your life any simpler.’
SOOTHING MENTHOL
‘How old is she?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Fit or overweight?’ Rafa asks.
I shake my head.
We’re on the street outside the hospital, a three-storey concrete wall at our backs, studying every woman in a nurse’s uniform. The chance Hannah McKenzie comes to work through the main entrance is slim. The likelihood I’m going to recognise her, slimmer.
Rafa is all business this morning, as if our argument in the park didn’t happen, as if it was perfectly natural for us to watch TV sitting on separate beds in a hotel room with the lights turned down, while Maggie and Jason were at the ballet.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ Maggie asks for the third time since we left the hotel. ‘This must be a little strange for you.’
Strange? That’s an understatement. I don’t feel like I fit my skin today.
My eyes are constantly drawn to the hospital entrance, opening and closing, swallowing people, spitting them out. I limped out of those doors nine months ago, my brother dead, my body broken, life as I knew it shattered.
My hands shake and I push them into my pockets to steady them. Jason notices and gives me a small, encouraging smile, putting aside his own raw grief. I have a rush of gratitude: that Jude and I met him all those years ago, and that he found me in Pan Beach.
‘Maybe we should go in?’ Maggie says, shivering against the breeze. It’s cooler today, the sky a blanket of grey.
I nod. But then I see her: a fine-boned middle-aged nurse, grinding out a cigarette on the footpath. She drops the butt in a bin and drains what’s left of a takeaway coffee. She looks tired. But there’s something familiar about the way that she moves, the smile lines around her mouth, and her eyes, which are dark and smudgy.
I approach her as she’s dusting off her hands.
‘Excuse me.’
She glances up, wary, then looks confused.
‘Hannah McKenzie?’
She tries to place me. Her frown deepens.
‘I’m Gaby. Gaby Winters. You looked after me about a year ago after a car accident.’
‘Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is that you, love?’
That Scottish accent. It brings a wave of chest-crushing memories. Of a sterile hospital ward, bone-deep pain that was always worse after dark, suffocating grief. Desolation. A warm hand holding mine and a no-nonsense voice telling me I’d make it through the night, no matter how much it hurt.
‘Look at you. How’s the leg?’
‘Better.’
‘And the neck?’
‘Ugly.’
She spins her index finger. ‘Show me.’
I hesitate for a second, and then turn around, covering the hellion bite so she won’t see it when she lifts my hair. Hannah studies the year-old scar for a moment before speaking.
‘Not pretty, but better than being dead. Trust me, it was a miracle you survived.’ She steps back and surveys me. ‘I can’t believe how well you look. You all right then?’
I nod. The others have moved closer so I introduce them. Hannah glances at her watch and I know we don’t have much time.
‘Um…’ I bring my hands out of my pockets, put them back again. ‘This is going to sound strange, but I need to ask you something. Do you remember who told you about’—my voice catches—‘my brother’s funeral?’