Skulk (23 page)

Even if she wasn’t currently a pigeon.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

A tall boy walked into the room, carrying a mug. Our eyes met and I gave him a nervous, hi-there-complete-stranger, sorry-I-collapsed-on-your-sofa kind of smile.

“You’re up,” he said. “Susanne said I should bring you some tea.” He set the mug full of steaming tea down on the coffee table in front of me. If my eyes had actually sparkled, or filled up with little red hearts, I would barely have been surprised.

“I didn’t know if you wanted sugar, so there’s some in the pot,” he said, gesturing to a little brown ceramic pot with
Coffee
written on the side of it.

“Oh, my God,” I muttered, sitting up straighter and folding down the duvet. “Thank you.” I spooned about five sugars into my tea, stirred and took a sip. That first mouthful of sugary caffeine and tannins was beautiful. I felt my brain kick into gear and let out a long sigh.

The boy went out of the room and came back with a mug of his own, and another one that must be for Susanne.

It was clearly his clothes I was wearing. He was in jeans and a baggy pre-distressed Rainbow Dash T-shirt. I guessed he was about my age, maybe a couple of years older or younger, I couldn’t quite tell. He had a dusting of stubble on his cheeks, short black hair in loose curls, brown skin, South Asian features. There was a single wide earring in his left ear.

“So,” he said, perching on the arm of the other sofa, “you’re a fox? I mean you’re from the Skulk?”

I nodded. “I’m Meg.”

“Mo. Mohammed, but call me Mo,” said the boy. He held out his hand and I shook it, awkwardly.

“So, er. You know about the Skulk and... stuff?”

“Oh, yeah, Susanne didn’t tell you? I’m a shifter too. With the Rabble, like Susanne.”

“Oh.” I tried not to look confused. A mother and son who were both shifters? It wasn’t way out of the realms of possibility or anything, but it threw me a little.

Plus there was the fact that they really didn’t look anything like each other. But maybe Mo had got all his looks from his dad...

I caught Mo’s eye, and we both looked away again. I suppose I couldn’t begrudge him a good stare. I was the one who’d turned up on his sofa in the middle of the night covered in scratches. I looked up, a half-smile readied on my lips, but he was looking away.

“Ah, you’re awake,” said Susanne, appearing at the doorway in the same dressing gown she’d had on last night. “Would you like some breakfast – I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Oh, Meg. Meg Banks. Um, if you’re sure...”

“I’ll put on some toast,” said Susanne. “Jam, Marmite, or butter?”

“Jam, please,” I said.

Susanne vanished again and I sipped my tea, concentrating hard on the sugary taste as it flowed over my tongue and the feel of the smooth handle between my fingers. I had to reassure myself I was awake. I’d never been in a situation so surreally
ordinary
. From the jam toast right down to the awkward pauses.

I tried to run my fingers through my hair and spent a pleasingly busy few minutes getting out the very worst of the tangles and not trying to think of something to say. It occurred to me that if I’d been sitting here last week looking like this in front of a boy like Mo, covered in wounds and bruises, with bird’s nest hair and probably smelling pretty weird into the bargain, I would’ve been burning up with embarrassment. It wasn’t as if I was exactly happy about it now. I just didn’t have the space in my head for it.

“So...” Mo began, and faltered. “We should wait for Susanne, like, before you tell us what’s going on with you,” he said.

“Yeah, I think so,” I nodded into my tea.

“So...”

There was the clatter of toast popping out of a toaster and a rattle of cutlery.

“So, are you at school?” he asked.

I swallowed another gulp of tea. He probably had no idea how complicated that question was. “I’m in lower sixth. Year Twelve,” I said. It wasn’t quite the real answer, but it was as close as I wanted to get. “You?”

“Thirteen,” he said. “What’re you taking?”

“History, Classics and English,” I said, without much enthusiasm. “Boring, but… I kind of miss the boring right now.”

“I’m doing Art and Design Tech.”

“Oh?” If I’d been in fox form my ears would’ve literally pricked up. I sat up a little straighter and met his eyes. “You want to go into design?”

“Fine art,” said Mo, with a sheepish smile. “I’m applying for the Central St Martin’s foundation course,” he said, but he didn’t look particularly enthusiastic. He shrugged as I raised my eyebrows at him. “Even if I get in, I’m going to have a billion pounds of debt and I’ll end up working in McDonalds either way.”

“Don’t say that,” Susanne shouted from the kitchen. “Nandos, at least. You’ve got to aim high.”

Mo rolled his eyes, and I giggled. It felt surreal. When was the last time I giggled? Before all this? No, longer. I hadn’t giggled since I was about ten.

“I love art,” I said. “I wish I could’ve taken it, but my mum wasn’t a fan.”

Mo smiled, looked away, and then looked back and regarded me with a slight frown.

“What?” I asked.

Mo scratched the back of his neck. “Well, this is going to sound kind of weird, but do you mind if I sketch you?”

There’s leftfield, and then there’s “can I sketch you?” I blinked, while my brain went over its response options:

Yes.

No.

Me?

Why?

Like one of your French girls? Oh, my God, Meg don’t you dare say that. This is as awkward as it needs to be already without weird
Titanic
jokes.

“You want to draw
me
?”

“If you don’t mind. I need to practise my faces, for my portfolio, you know. And you’ve... got a face. And kind of amazing hair.”

“You want to practise drawing cuts and tangles?”

Mo hesitated, but then his face split into a sheepish grin. “Well, yeah. What’s the point of drawing faces if they’re never, you know, lived-in.”

Some distant part of my brain suggested I ought to feel insulted, but I didn’t. I mean, I’d seen my face last night and I could objectively state that “lived-in” didn’t really cover it.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Now?”

“Er... I suppose,” I said.

Mo dived for the coffee table and produced a thick ring-bound sketchbook and a 2B pencil. He leafed through the book to an empty page.

Susanne walked into the room and grabbed her mug of tea. She gave Mo’s sketchbook an affectionate side-eye. “Always working,” she said, her voice overflowing with fondness. “But I’m not sure this is completely appropriate, Mo. Poor Meg’s only had about four hours’ kip.”

“No, it’s all right,” I said. “I get it. Actually I draw things too.”

“All right,” said Susanne, heading back to the kitchen. “But tell him to sod off if you get tired of it, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“What kind of thing do you draw?” Mo asked, his pencil moving across the paper at lightning speed.

“Well, I’m not going to art college or anything, I just...”

I hesitated. And then I remembered the
Arabian Dragons
photo on the wall, and I also remembered that I was probably going to die soon. Cuddled up on Susanne’s sofa, with the warm sunlight and the tea and Mo looking at me over his sketchbook, it seemed inevitable and impossible all at once. Either way I should
live in the moment.

“Actually, I do a bit of graffiti. Here and there.”

Mo’s gaze shot up and his eyes met mine. His fingers were sketching, but his eyes didn’t leave my face for a few seconds. He looked down before he spoke again. “Oh, really? D’you live round here? Would I have seen any of your stuff?”

“Well, I live in Kensington.”
Lived.
“But I’ve been trying to spread things out. So, I dunno, maybe.” Ah, OK, here came the blushing – it was a little late to the party but it seemed determined to make up for lost time. I hoped Mo wasn’t trying to sketch my skin tone because it was probably shifting and changing like a blotchy lava lamp. “I – I go by Thatch.”

Mo sat up straight, a broad grin spreading over his face. “I have seen your stuff! I’ve seen it on graffitilondon. You’re good. I loved the Thorn Queen one, that was
scary
.”

“Oh, my God,” I laughed. “Erm, thank you! It, yeah, it was...”
A fairly accurate depiction of my mother
. “Supposed to be pretty freaky. But I’m not E3 or anything.”

Mo dropped his pencil. He bent down to pick it up, grinning sheepishly. “Oh, you know E3? That’s nice. That’s, um… me.”

I felt like a computer overloading. Too much information. Does not compute.
What do I do with this insane mess that is my life? How can I even begin to fit this in with everything else that’s happening to me? It doesn’t fit. It’s the wrong shape. It’s too brilliant.

I can’t even tell you what I did in that moment. All I can tell you for certain is that the next coherent thought I had was:

I’m wearing E3’s boxer shorts.

I’m wearing them on my arse.

Oh, my God.

“I love your work,” I whispered, because if I didn’t keep my voice down I thought I might scream it out at the top of my lungs. “So much. I love it...
a lot
.”

“Wow, thank you!” Mo said, and his cheeks darkened, and he went on sketching my face.

Because that’s what was happening to me, right then. My absolute art hero was sketching my grubby, beaten-up face. I froze, trying so hard not to pull a stupid expression I was probably pulling the
mother
of all stupid expressions.

Susanne came back in and handed me a plate with two slices of toast with jam. I gave her a weak smile. “So you’re an artist too, Meg?”

“Oh,
no
, I mean not like Mo,” I protested.

“Pretty much exactly like me, I thought,” Mo said, frowning down at his sketch. “She’s a graffiti artist, too.”

I glanced warily at Susanne. “You... know about...” I stopped myself. Of course she did. The
Arabian Dragons
was hanging on the wall in her hallway! I’d seen it, the night before, and not known what I was really looking at.

“As long as he doesn’t get in trouble, and he’s making the community a nicer place to live, not a worse one, I don’t have a problem,” said Susanne.

Apparently, there was still a little part of my mind that hadn’t yet been blown, because it was now.

She didn’t just know. She was
proud
.

“Now, Meg,” said Susanne. “I think it’s time you told us what happened to you, if you’re ready. You said you needed my help.”

I sighed and shifted my legs under me on the sofa. I suppose the illusion of comfort couldn’t last forever. I couldn’t stay here on Susanne’s couch, exchanging art tips with E3 and drinking her tea for the rest of my life.

Victoria would find me. And then they would both die.

I steeled myself, cradled my toast in my lap, and began to tell my story in the most concise, logical form I could manage.

“So, I need to know – the Rabble stone. Is it safe? Or is it the one Victoria already has – or the blue one I left with my friend?”

Susanne glanced at Mo, and sighed. “Our stone is yellow. But I don’t know where it is. One of the Rabble took it, a couple of months ago.”

Mo looked pained and started to flip through his sketchbook. “Helen,” he said. “Helen Crossman. She sold it for crack.” He held up the page. It was dotted with sketches – facial studies, movement studies. The woman was gaunt and her face was dirty, but there was life in the way she pulled on her jacket or the way she ran her fingers through her dark hair.

“We don’t know exactly what she did with it,” Susanne corrected him. “But she was an addict, that much is certainly true. She’d been clean a whole month – then suddenly Helen disappeared, and so did the stone. We haven’t seen it since.”

I sighed. I suppose I didn’t expect anything else.

“So...” I ticked off on my fingers. “The Skulk stone is red, the Rabble stone is yellow, the Horde stone is black. I don’t know about the Conspiracy stone, but that’s locked up in the White Tower. It has to be the Cluster stone I’ve got. But that leaves me... exactly nowhere. The Cluster are dead, and I don’t have the faintest clue how to find their replacements.” I pressed my knuckles into the corners of my eyes. “And I don’t suppose either of you know where I can find the metashifter? Blackwell called the first one the leodweard. Someone who can be any one of our shapes.”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Susanne. “I met one once. He enjoyed being a butterfly the most, I think; he spent some time with the Rabble back in the day. But that was decades ago.”

So there was still a metashifter, in theory. I sighed. That was good news, I supposed… but it didn’t seem like it was going to be worth my while to chase after them.

“Thank you,” I said. “For the bed. And the tea. I should probably get going.”

“Going?” Susanne shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. This Victoria,” she said, her lips twisting with distaste. “We need to call a meeting. The others need to hear about this.” She stood up and reached for the landline phone on the coffee table.

“Are you sure?” I blurted. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, maybe it’d be better if–”

“Will not knowing protect them, if this woman comes looking for our stone?”

I flushed and looked away.

“It’s all right,” Susanne said. “But we need to talk it through. I think we might be able to help you.” She left the room, dialling.

“I’m really sorry about your parents,” said Mo. “I hope you can get them back. My, uh, my parents died. In a car accident. When I was eleven.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

Mo waved a hand, swatting away my sympathy. “I’m fine, I’ve got Susanne, I just... I know. Kind of. How much it sucks.”

“Right,” I whispered.

“D’you wanna see?” he said holding out his sketchpad. My heart thumped, and for a moment I considered saying no.

I always had this feeling, right before clicking or scrolling to see E3’s latest work – I don’t know where it came from, this almost crippling sense of anticipation, of fear that the streak would be broken and he’d finally produce something that wasn’t good, that I didn’t love. And now there was a whole other level of investment in it: what if the drawing was good, but I just looked completely awful?