We climb the stairs to the upper level.
Rafa walks with his hands in his pockets, sizing up the house. He might have joked in Pan Beach about being able to handle Sophie, but now that he’s here, I can see the tightness across his shoulders. Jason’s too, though there was no tension in his voice. The space on the upper level is bigger again, like a studio apartment. Sophie leads us to the wall of glass overlooking the dark cornfield, not that we can see it. The lights inside have turned the glass to mirrors. There’s no hint of the rows of dry husks that surround the house. All I can see is us. Rafa watching Sophie. Of all the places I can imagine him in—bars, pubs, even a mediaeval monastery—this isn’t one of them. He doesn’t fit. He’s like something wild, trapped in this sterile space, wary of the silence and emptiness.
We pass a pot-bellied stove radiating heat. I stop for a second to warm my fingers. Sophie gestures to facing couches in front of the window. Jason and I take one; Rafa stays standing.
‘Please, sit down.’ Sophie doesn’t take her eyes from him.
‘I’m good.’ Rafa gives her one of his slow, sexy smiles. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but her cheeks still turn a delicate shade of pink. I glance at the window, forgetting that I can’t see out. My reflection stares at me. My spine is too straight. Breathe.
‘What is this place?’ I ask.
Sophie sits opposite us, bracelets jangling. ‘My aunt Debra is an architect. This is a prototype for a design she’s experimenting with.’
‘A prototype for what? Are you—’
‘You’re really Gabriella,’ she says. It’s not a question. She looks at me the way the Rephaim do when they first see me. As if they’re trying to match up the person they knew before I disappeared with the person in front of them. As if they’re startled that I look exactly the same. As if they’d be more comfortable if there was a physical difference they could point to. They’ve all done it: Malachi and Taya, Daniel, even Ez and Zak. Especially Ez and Zak. And now Sophie. But her gaze doesn’t shift and after a few seconds I realise I was wrong: she doesn’t look at me like them at all. Her eyes travel over my face and body as if she’s examining a specimen
.
She’s not seeing
me
. It’s not the clothes that are slightly too old for her that make her seem a little off. Or the way she keeps fussing with her bracelets. It’s her eyes. There’s no light in them. No warmth.
‘Have we met before?’ I ask.
‘No.’ Her fingertips press into the leather of the couch.
‘Jason says you can protect our friend,’ I say.
Sophie nods. ‘For a price.’
‘And what price is that?’
‘Information.’ She pulls one of the bracelets tight against her skin. ‘I need to know where Nathaniel is searching for the Fallen.’
‘How would I know? I’m not part of the Sanctuary. I don’t remember that life.’
She lets the bracelet go, then puts her hand over the red indent it left behind. ‘Then tell me what you and your brother did last year.’
‘I can’t. I don’t remember.’
Her pale eyes consider me. ‘Then I can’t help you.’
I stand up, partly to call her bluff, and partly because I don’t like sitting with all this glass at my back. ‘This was a waste of time,’ I say to Jason. ‘Let’s go.’
‘No, no, wait.’ Sophie springs off the couch. Her tone is conciliatory, coercing. She’s a girl who usually gets her way. ‘I could get in serious trouble for letting you in here, right, Jason?’ She turns to him. ‘I need a little piece of information, something to prove a point to my grandmother. This rule we have of not interacting with’—she catches herself, pauses, takes hold of a bracelet again—‘with
them
is crazy. It’s the only way we can know what’s going on in that monastery.’
‘What happened to your revelations about the Rephaim?’ Rafa asks.
Sophie moves the bracelet down to her knuckles, folds her hand as if she’s trying to take it off, but it’s too small. ‘Some things are still—’ She stops, forgets herself. ‘How do you know about the half-breeds? They usually don’t tell humans their true nature.’
‘It’s called pillow talk. What were you about to say?’ Rafa pushes off his hoodie. He’s actually more threatening without it.
Sophie looks at him and falters. She glances towards the stairs. ‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, come on, Sophie, you seem like a clever girl. If you want information, you’ll have to give Gaby something in return.’
I’m silent, still startled at how easily she said ‘half-breeds’, as if the words carry no weight.
‘I’m offering a blessed amulet. There is nothing else here for her.’ Her voice is tighter now.
Jason clears his throat. ‘Maybe we should—’
‘How did your family find out about the Fallen and the Rephaim?’ Rafa asks, ignoring Jason.
‘Our ancestors received a sign from God.’
‘What sort of sign?’
She presses her lips together and shakes her head.
‘How about
when
they found out.’
She glances at the back of the room. ‘When the bastards were born.’ Her tone is careful now, guarded.
‘How did they know about that?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘I thought they found out through a revelation of God?’
‘They did.’
Rafa pauses, changes tack. ‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen.’
A smile. ‘You don’t really care about this stuff, do you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Why?’
‘God has chosen us to protect the world from the Fallen and their bastards.’ She says it without irony. She believes it.
‘Protect the world how?’
She looks at Rafa, her eyes travelling over his face as though she’s memorising him. She swallows.
‘I can’t say.’
Rafa gestures to the almost empty room around us. ‘So, what’s this place—the Church of the Righteous Corn Farmers?’
Sophie’s eyes flit past him again and I notice a door slightly ajar beyond the stairwell, a sliver of light. Rafa follows her gaze. ‘What else is up here?’ He moves away from the couch, towards the door.
‘Nothing.
Jason
…He can’t…’ She presses her palm against her breastbone, her fingers clutching at something beneath the silk.
‘I’ll get him.’ I pass the pot-bellied stove. Rafa is almost at the door.
‘Hey,
Matt
, wait up.’
He doesn’t break stride as he enters the room.
‘What the hell…’ he says.
I stop short of running into him. It takes me a second to register what he’s staring at. The windowless room has an architect’s drawing board against one wall, a stool, a filing cabinet and a lamp. All four walls are plastered with photographs of people. It’s odd, but I don’t understand Rafa’s reaction until he walks over and stabs his finger at one of the images. My breath catches. I’ve seen it before, on his phone. It’s of him and Jude at a football match.
‘I don’t understand.’ I peer at the photos around it, all held up by thumbtacks. There’s one of a broad-shouldered man with curly black hair, jogging along a road. It can only be Zak. I run my finger over image after image, faces of people I’ve met this week: Daisy, Ez, Micah, Uriel, Daniel, even Nathaniel. Most of them have been taken from a distance.
Rafa is still staring at the picture of him and Jude.
‘Do you think she recognised you?’
Before he can answer, there are three rapid beeps behind us and a door shuts. Not the door that was open—a sliding door, hidden in the wall cavity. Made of metal. Without a handle. ‘Hey!’ My fist thuds on the cold surface. It sounds like we’re inside a bank vault. I press my ear against the door. ‘Jason!’
‘If she recognised me, she’d know there’s no point shutting us in,’ Rafa says. ‘Come here.’ He signals for me to join him in the middle of the room. ‘Enough of this bullshit.’
I put my arm around him and the floor drops away almost immediately. And then my right shoulder explodes with pain, just before we smash into the hard floor.
‘Ugh,’ I grunt and open my eyes. We’re still in the photo room. ‘What happened?’
Rafa disentangles himself from me and climbs to his feet. Without speaking, he shifts again, disappearing like a light going out. And just as quickly, he materialises across the room, slamming into the wall and landing heavily.
We can’t get out.
THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE…
‘Rafa, what the hell?’
His eyes are blazing. ‘It’s a trap.’
‘What? How?’
Rafa paces the room. ‘I don’t know, but that prick out there does.’ He shifts, and slams into the wall again.
I rub my shoulder. ‘Oh, come on, Rafa, he—’
‘Wake up,’ Rafa snaps. ‘He brought us here.’
Shift, crash. At least now he braces for the impact, although it doesn’t stop the wind being driven out of him each time.
‘I’m going to kill him. I mean it. I’m going to rip his head’—shift, crash—‘off his fucking shoulders.’ He doesn’t bother standing up before trying again.
Shift—I wait for him to hit the floor, and then I pin him down, gripping his arms, my knees around his hips. ‘Stop it. This isn’t helping.’
His chest rises and falls beneath me in short, sharp breaths. My own pulse races. Rafa can’t shift out of here.
We
can’t shift out of here.
‘Just stop. We need to work out what’s going on.’
He pushes back against me, trying to move me. I tighten my legs around him so he can’t. My hair is loose, a curtain that touches his face.
‘I know exactly what’s going on. That little shit out there betrayed us—’
‘You weren’t even supposed to be here, Rafa.’
‘Which only means he was willing to sell you out.’
‘Jason didn’t sell anyone out.’ I can’t accept that. Not after everything we’ve been through. Not after the risks he’s taken for Maggie. For me. Rafa stares at the ceiling, his jaw working. He’s barely noticed I’m straddling him.
Oh. I’m straddling Rafa.
I lose focus for a split-second and then I land on the hard floor at his side.
‘Not everyone is your friend.’ He gets to his feet.
‘Nobody forced you to come in here,’ I say, and sit up. The smooth board of the ceiling feels way too low. The room smells like stale coffee.
‘Oh, so this is my fault? Fucking typical.’ Rafa is pacing again. ‘It’s always me. Never anyone else. Never you.’
His entire being seems to expand and contract with his rage. This space is way too small for him.
‘You know,’ I say, ‘I’m not convinced this is the best time for that argument.’
He prowls the room twice more before finally stopping. I can see he’s not coping with being trapped—it’s probably the first time in his long life he’s experienced the sensation—but taking it out on me isn’t helping. And Jason’s outside, so we’ll be out soon.
‘Truce?’ I say to Rafa.
He cracks three knuckles and then holds out a hand to me. I let him help me off the floor.
‘Thank you.’
I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. I go to the drawing board. It’s covered in floorplans and sketches. I pick up the top sheet; there are more underneath but I can’t make out the faint lines in the lamplight. I go back to the door and run my hands over the photos either side of it. There. A switch, hidden under a picture of a woman I don’t recognise.
A fluorescent light sputters and comes on. Rafa leafs through the drawings, flipping back and forth. His eyes are constantly straying to the door. ‘That’s the Sanctuary,’ he says without looking at me. I move closer. It’s the first time I’ve seen the Italian monastery from the outside. If these drawings are even remotely to scale, the Rephaite headquarters are seriously impressive. I glance over half a dozen pages, each showing a different angle of the mediaeval compound. Some are technical floorplans, others rough pencil sketches. Piazzas surrounded by cloisters and three-storey wings, dome-roofed chapels, an imposing façade with Corinthian columns. Hand-drawn arrows with scribbled notes beside them:
Nathaniel’s private chambers, infirmary, library.
‘And these photos…’ Rafa moves to the nearest wall. ‘Some are surveillance shots of missions. Others are from personal collections.’ He taps the photo of him and Jude.
‘How’s that possible?’
Rafa points to an image not far above his. ‘Look.’
The blood drains from my face. It’s a photo of me.
I’m somewhere outdoors. I’m wearing leggings and a black singlet. My feet are planted apart and I’m holding a katana over my head as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. My hair is pulled back in a plait that hangs halfway down my back.
I’m grinning at my training partner. He’s blurry, but it looks like Micah—Maggie’s guard on the mountain—and his pose matches mine. I’m never going to get used to seeing these photos of me.
‘When was this taken?’
Rafa steps closer. I can feel the heat in his skin. ‘It’s hard to tell. No landmarks. Could be two years old, could be thirty. It’s not like we age.’ He goes to the door again, presses his ear against it.
I pull a few prints down and turn them over. They’re all on the same kind of paper, home-printed, without date or brand. None are originals.
‘How do you think they got them?’
Rafa looks through the photos I hand him. ‘Someone inside the Sanctuary.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Someone had to access computers, phones and albums to get some of these.’ He points to a picture of Ez and Zak sunbaking on a beach. Ez’s skin is flawless: the shot was taken before a hellion clawed her face. ‘I took that. It’s at least a decade old. So are these surveillance shots. All they had to know is where we’d be.’ He moves on to a grainy photo of a restaurant, taken from a distance. ‘This was about a year before the big split.’
There’s a crowd around the table. Rafa, relaxed, beer halfway to his lips. Jude beside him, head thrown back, laughing. Next to him is…me. That other me. Watching Jude, grinning. Something stirs in my chest.
The back of someone’s head blocks the person next to me, but they’ve got straight red hair so it’s probably Daisy. And then…Malachi. He’s smiling—and not even in a smartarse way. I’m drawn to a blonde woman at the end of the table with dark kohl-rimmed eyes. At a table filled with beautiful people, she stands out. I tap her face with my finger, not sure if I want to ask the question or not.