All That She Can See(58)

‘This way.’ Peter walked past Cherry, through his Meddlum’s legs and disappeared into the smoke.

‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you smoking is bad for you?’

‘You’re hilarious! I’ve been trying to quit for years.’ His voice was getting further away.

‘Where have you gone? It’s kind of hard to see around here, Peter, and this house is a bit of a deathtrap.’

‘Safest place for an escapee!’ he said, his hand appearing through the black cloud. Cherry took hold of it and he gently guided her through the house and into a back room where his Meddlum was too big to follow and he closed the door behind them, tendrils of misty smoke sucking at its edges like tentacles.

‘She’s a little monstrous but… she’s actually quite friendly,’ Peter said.

‘She?’

‘I think she’s a she, don’t you? And she was a feisty lady, from what I can remember.’

‘From what you can remember?’ Cherry asked, frowning. She didn’t understand.

‘I can’t see her any more.’ Peter pointed to his eyes. ‘I wear these lenses that —’

‘What? Why do you have a pair of those?’ Cherry cried.

‘You know what the lenses do?’ When Cherry nodded yes, Peter said, ‘Please, sit down. We’ve got a lot to talk about.’

Cherry looked around her and saw that the room they were in was mostly bare. A few dustsheets lay in the corner along with a large rucksack and there were small puddles of melted wax from where Peter had been lighting candles just as he was doing now. He struck a match, lit five candles of varying size and then carried them over to Cherry on two halves of a broken plate.

‘I try not to let the wax get on the floor.’ He shrugged, letting wax drip onto the floor. ‘Please. Sit,’ he said again. Cherry was about to ask where when Peter crouched and sat cross-legged on the floor, placing the candles in front of him, so Cherry did the same.

‘You said you were in the Guild?’ Cherry asked.

‘That’s right,’ Peter said. ‘You’ve heard of it?’

‘Yes, but only recently.’

‘Lucky you,’ Peter said. ‘My brain still buzzes from time to time.’

‘What do you mean?’

Peter regarded Cherry for a second. ‘How much do you know about the Guild?’ he asked. ‘Do you know what they do?’

‘Only a little bit. I don’t know much, to be honest. Just that it’s a kind of headquarters for people like us to keep an eye on people like us.’

Peter shook his head sadly. ‘That’s not strictly true. The Guild isn’t so much a HQ for our kind. It’s more like a laboratory. The Guild want to know why we are the way we are, so they conduct tests on us. It’s genetic, they know that much. We inherit it.’

‘We inherit it? Genetically? From a parent?’ Cherry asked.

‘Mm-hmm. Always from the mother,’ Peter said.

Cherry didn’t have a mother. Biologically she did, of course, but the woman who had given birth to Cherry had decided to give up her baby from the moment she found out she was pregnant. Cherry had never known her and had never had any need to, but with those four words, Peter had changed that.

‘Do you think that’s why your mum left, because she didn’t want to see you go through it?’

Peter shrugged. ‘Maybe. That could be why your mum put you up for adoption too.’

‘You remember that about me?’

Peter nodded. ‘And I remember your dad’s amazing cherry pie!’

‘That’s sweet of you, to remember.’ Cherry smiled at the thought of her father.

‘Your dad and his baking are hard to forget.’ Peter’s eyes glinted with the memory.

‘Can you tell me more about the Guild?’ Cherry asked. She wanted to talk about her father some more but she needed to find out as much as she could about the Guild if she was going to help Chase.

‘Why are you so curious?’ Peter cocked his head to one side. ‘What’s got you so interested?’

Cherry thought of Chase, unconscious, being dragged away from her. Did she tell Peter straightaway? As much as their reunion seemed amicable, Cherry couldn’t be sure if Peter could be trusted immediately. Not when his hate-filled Meddlum was quite literally as big as a house. She needed to tread carefully until she could be sure about Peter.

‘I’m new to this,’ she said. ‘I only found out there were more people like you and me about forty-eight hours ago. And I had no idea the Guild existed before then either. I figure the more information I have, the better.’ She shrugged, trying her best to look unconcerned and nonchalant.

‘Well, the Guild isn’t for people like us. Not really. That’s how it started, I think, but that’s not how it carried on. The Guild was founded by people like us centuries ago and its aim was to help people learn how to use their ability, so they started conducting research to understand us better. They thought finding out why we are the way we are would be the first step. Took them years to figure out it was genetic, and then over the years they stopped trying to help us. It just became about finding out as much as they could about us, and then it became about stopping us. They thought what we could do was dangerous so they decided to track down everyone who had this ability and began building a database. Then their children were tracked and their children were tracked and you can see how it evolved. You and I were never off their radar, Cherry. They’ve always known about us.’