Shattered: A Shade novella (13 page)

‘I’ll
get myself back,’ I tell her. ‘I promise.’

Chapter
Ten

I was
right: all I needed was to get out of Glasgow.

On
the train to Edinburgh, Niall and I caught up on four years apart and have settled
into our old familiar patterns of patter. Now our separation feels more like
four days.

‘So
this American
burd
of
yers
,
what’s her name again?’ he asks me as we follow the Saturday night crowd across
Waverley Bridge. Above us, on the long high spine of Castle Rock, a
spotlit
Edinburgh Castle gleams before a dusky sky.

‘Aura.
Aura Salvatore,’ I add with a flourish.

‘Italian?’

‘Aye,
one hundred percent. Her dad was Sicilian, no less.’ I of course don’t mention
he was also a ghost.

‘Hot.
So she’s a temper, then?’

‘A
wee bit. No more than me.’

‘You
think you’ve a “wee bit” of a temper? My ribs beg to differ.’ He hugs his side
where I punched him.

‘I
was holding back. Otherwise you’d be in hospital and I’d be in prison.’

‘
Naw
,
I’d’ve
had my foot down your
throat in another five seconds if the lads hadn’t pulled you off.’

‘Then
why’d it take three of them to do it?’

And
so on.

As
Niall
blethers
about his new job at an estate agency,
I keep glancing up at the castle, remembering how my mother took me there when
I was eight. Perhaps I should buy her something while I’m here, especially
since my gesture with the ‘repaired’ teapot didn’t work out.

Maybe
not. I’d probably fuck that up as well and give her something to make her cry
even more.

‘Stop
it! Stop!’

My
heart suddenly freezes, then starts to pound.

I
turn on my heel to see what’s wrong with the girl walking behind us. She’s
laughing, hands in front of her face as her friend tries to take her picture.

‘Speaking
of American lasses,’ Niall says. He studies them for a moment, then keeps
walking, towards a long staircase leading up to the Royal Mile. ‘Oh! Here’s an
interesting fact.’

I
follow him, but my legs feel like they belong to another body. ‘What?’

‘All
this, in medieval times?’ He gestures to the Princes Street Garden on either
side of us. ‘Was literally a giant river of shit.’

I
scan the neat rows of trees and flowers, hoping the
colours
will keep me here. But they’re fading at the edges of my eyes. There’s
something about that girl behind us ….

‘Niall?’
I croak, but he can’t hear me over the chatter of people. I try to think of a
song to sing, like Martin taught me that day in the gym.

‘See,
cos
the yins up there on the Royal Mile would dump
their buckets outside their houses once a day and let it all run downhill.
Obviously the richer you were, the higher up you lived.’

I
drag my hands down my face.
Stay here.
Listen to Niall.

He
chuckles. ‘Can’t imagine being an estate agent back then. “Here, madam, we’ve a
lovely wee flat in a delightful part of town.”’

‘Help
me,’ I whisper.

‘“It’s
hip, trendy, and the crap on
yer
doorstep is
guaranteed to be only from Edinburgh’s finest
arseholes
.
Sorry, no pets, but cable TV is included.”’

We’re
almost at the staircase. I reach for the wrought-iron railing. It’ll be solid,
cold,
here
. It’ll save me.

‘Stop
it!’ the girl behind us shrieks again. ‘Stop!’

And
then I’m gone.

I sit alone in this ordinary,
wood-paneled room, but I can see them through the glass. A woman in a white DMP
uniform is seated near a microphone. A man stands behind her, arms crossed.
Beside him is a girl my age, perhaps younger. The man and woman stare at me,
but the girl’s looking at something on the floor to my right:

A simple disc made of clear quartz. A
ghost
summoner
, a device that calls ghosts to places
they never went during their lives. Aura dealt with these contraptions when she
worked as a translator in courtrooms, speaking the words of the dead to judges
and juries.

I know what they’re doing. The girl there
is
younger than me, a post-Shifter like Aura.
She can see and hear ghosts.

‘No,’
 
I tell them in a half command, half
whimper.

The disc starts to glow with a pure white
light.

I try to rise, but I’m strapped down like
a condemned man in an electric chair. ‘Don’t bring a ghost here. It
won’t—’

The girl beyond the glass screams. She
clamps her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it! Stop! Let it go. Please, stop!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, though she can’t
hear me over her own shrieks and that of the ghost that must be trapped in here
with me. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The female DMP agent tries to comfort the
girl. The man reaches out and hits a switch. Everything goes silent in here,
but I can still see the girl wail as she pulls her hair and drags her
fingernails over her tear-streaked face. When she vomits all over the female
agent’s white uniform, I finally shut my eyes.

My life is over. Now they know. They know
my mere presence causes a ghost unimaginable torment, worse than the
BlackBox
technology or the red items that keep them at bay.

They know I’m made of red.

I
find myself sitting on a bottom stair, face pressed to my knees, staring at
pavement. A steady stream of pedestrians squeezes past.

‘Is
he okay?’ asks Aura. I try to look up at her, but I can’t lift my head.
Please don’t go, now I’ve found you at last
.
But how can she be here? Where is here, again?

‘Aye,
he’s fine,’ says a familiar voice. Niall. My friend. Right. ‘Just an allergic
reaction to some food.’

‘Oh
my God, does he have an
epi
pen or something?’

‘It’s
no
sae
bad, really. Just made him dizzy.’

‘I
have Benadryl in my bag.’

I
shake my head, my neck tight and my heart heavy. It’s not Aura after all, only
the same accent and kindness.

‘That’s
sweet of you,’ Niall says. ‘What’s
yer
name?’

‘Karen.
This is my sister Jessica.’

‘
Hiya
.’ Niall’s smile comes through in his voice. ‘Do
youse
have dinner plans tonight?’

He’s
trying to chat up Kind Karen and her silent sister, two hours before we’re to
meet up with his girlfriend (or whatever she is). Same old Niall. At least his
audacity has brought me fully back to this world.

‘I
thought you already ate,’ Karen says. ‘Didn’t he have a reaction to the food?’

‘Come
on,’ says a bored-sounding Jessica. ‘They’re, like, ten years too young for
us.’ I
realise
that Jessica was the lass behind me who
shrieked about having her picture taken. She’s the one who sent me
spiralling
into another flashback.

‘Better
now?’ Niall asks me once the girls have moved on. ‘You weren’t with us for a
few seconds.’

Only
a few seconds? ‘Fine.’ I lift my head and grip the banister, trying to ground
myself. ‘Were they cute?’

‘Both
pure gorgeous. And older. I like an experienced woman.’

‘How
do you know?’

‘Ach,
Zachary, you’ve been gone a long time. You’ve missed a lot.’

I missed you.
I missed all our
mates. To be here, doing something normal, means everything. And I’ve already
gone and brought 3A with me.

Get tae fuck, brain. You’ll not ruin my
evening.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*

‘Follow
my lead.’ I stride into one of the many cheesy ‘— of Scotland’ souvenir
shops on the Royal Mile and head straight for the register.

Niall’s
right behind me, murmuring, ‘This should be good.’

Interrupting
the clerk mid-transaction, I ask in an east-coast American dialect, ‘Hey, you
guys got any, like, miniature Buckingham Palaces?’

The
young woman’s transition from shocked frown to patient smile is nearly
seamless. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says with a genteel Edinburgh brogue. ‘We don’t
sell those. That’s more of an English thing.’

‘Well,
what about shamrocks? I promised my mom I’d get her something with shamrocks on
it.’ I look at Niall, who’s pretending he has a fierce itch on his upper lip to
cover his smirk. ‘Dude, what was the other Scottish thing she wanted?’

‘Sheep.’
Niall nods at his own answer, then adds thoughtfully, ‘Yeah, sheep.’

The clerk
brightens. ‘Ah, sheep! Those we do sell, at the other end of this
centre
aisle. We’ve all sizes and configurations.’

‘Configurations?’
It turns out, this is a difficult word to say with an American accent.

‘That
is, different sheep-themed products.’

‘Sweet.’
I offer a thumbs-up as we hurry down the aisle. She beams at me before
continuing to ring up her customer.

Good
God, it’s true: they’ve got stuffed sheep in all
colours
,
sheep salt-and-pepper shakers, sheep in a can (?!?), fuzzy sheep slippers, some
substance called ‘sheep dip’, even licorice sweets meant to look like sheep
shit.

From
a nearby shelf, Niall picks up a foot-tall doll wearing a kilt and bushy ginger
whiskers. ‘Ye know, I’ve never even seen a real live sheep.’

‘
Talkin
’
aboot
? We saw flocks of
them on the way here.’

‘That
doesnae
count. A train window might as well be a TV
screen.’ He positions the doll on the shelf next to the sheep, then reaches for
another.

I see
what he’s on to and decide to contribute. As we construct our project, I tell
him, ‘My gran’s got sheep, up in Skye. Ever been there?’

‘
Naw
. Is it cool?’

‘It’s
like another world. I suppose I should go and see her, but she’s gone a bit off
in her old age.’

He
adjusts a doll. ‘Off? Like Alzheimer’s?’

‘No,
just daft, maybe from talking to
naebody
but her
sheep most days.’ I pick up another kilted man, one with a Scottish flag
instead of a sporran dangling across his crotch. ‘Not that I can judge, right?’

Niall
shrugs. ‘Zach, ye were always a wee bit daft.
Dunno
why ye think us
lads’d
suddenly judge
you
fur it.’ He shifts one of the larger
sheep. ‘Put that yin here. It matches.’

So it
does. ‘Are ye saying I provided entertainment for you lot?’

‘Top-notch.
Speaking of entertainment, we’ve an extra ticket for We Were Promised Jetpacks
at
Barrowlands
next Wednesday. You should come.’

‘That’s
a big venue.’ Perhaps bigger than I can handle. ‘Whose ticket?’

‘Roland’s.
He’s aye got his
heid
stuck in his
uni
books, says he can’t take
aff
one night. I worry about him, studying aw the time. Reminds me of you.’

And
that reminds
me
I need to apply for
university soon. It’s hard to plan next year when I’m just trying to survive
the week. But right this moment, I feel ready to start.

‘There.’
Niall tilts his head as he steps back to examine our handiwork. ‘You hungry?’

‘Starving.’
I take a postcard that reads
Rush Hour in
Scotland
under a flock of sheep crossing the road. This way the clerk won’t
come over here straightaway and see our own ‘configurations’ of all the kilted
dolls fucking the stuffed sheep.

I
hold up the postcard, flip her a pound coin and tell her to ‘Keep the change,
babe.’ She beams at me again.

The
moment we’re out the door, Niall and I run across the street, stumbling from
laughter.

‘God,
Zach, I thought I was
gonnae
piss myself when you
asked for
fuckin
’ shamrocks.’

‘Me?
You
wi
the sheep. Christ.’ I can’t stop laughing.

‘It
was one word I knew I could say with
nae
accent.
Yer
American’s spot on, by the way. Ye should be a spy or
something.’