The Master Of Misrule Part 21

"Yes."

"He came after us. My mum and dad. He-"

"Yes."

"He came after the card."

Bel hung her head low. "Yes," she said. "G.o.d forgive me, he did."

"I turned up on your parents' doorstep with no warning, no luggage, nothing. I said I'd split with my boyfriend and lost my job, and didn't know where else to go. Straight off, Caro made a bed up for me on the sofa and told me not to worry, everything would work out for the best. Adam said their home was mine, for as long as I wanted.

"I told myself I'd put all the other c.r.a.p behind me. I looked into taking some courses-maybe even going back to college-and helped Caro out with you, and around the house. I wanted to prove myself like I never had before.

"I kept finding different hiding places for Alec's card. I couldn't imagine why the invitation was valuable, and yet something kept drawing me to it. It was so beautiful, you know? It was in my pocket for a while, then tucked in my bedclothes, behind the fridge, under your parents' bed.... I wanted to forget about it, but I couldn't let it go. Finally, I tore it up.

"A couple of weeks went by. I had my birthday and we celebrated together, the four of us. A family. And the next Sat.u.r.day, I offered to take you on a visit across town, to stay overnight with an old friend of our mum's. I thought it'd be nice for Caro and Adam to have the place to themselves for once. I thought it would be nice to give them a night off.

"And that was the night ... that was the night ... the night ..."

Cat watched stonily as her aunt fought to compose herself. After a while, Bel was able to speak again.

"As soon as I came back the next morning and saw the police car in the street, I knew what must've happened. I knew that Alec had caught up with me, I knew what he'd done. What I had done.

"The house was trashed. Some druggie, the police thought, looking for a fix. A burglary gone wrong. I knew better, of course.

"I was the only person who could connect Alec Crawley to the crime. Maybe his revenge on me had only just started. So as soon as I could, I got some bits and pieces together, took you and began the first of our disappearing acts.

"From then on, it was just the two of us. I changed my name. I changed my hair. I changed as much about me as I could manage. Those first years, I moved us every couple of months, and never stopped looking over my shoulder.

"Then I started to put some feelers out. On the sly, and in secret, I took the risk of getting in touch with people who knew people who knew Alec. And I heard that only a couple of days after your parents died, the police came looking for Alec on account of something else entirely. He'd had to leave the country in a hurry. Rumor had it he'd gone to ground somewhere in the Far East.

"As time went by, I felt safer. We stayed put in places for longer. I didn't start and quit quite so many jobs. I went back to being a redhead and a loudmouth. I started to relax.

"Then last year, I heard a whisper that Alec Crawley was dead. He'd got on the wrong side of some powerful people, and his crimes had caught up with him. We were safe, both of us. So I came back to London to start again."

Bel's voice had been steady enough, but now her face crumpled and she began to gasp and gulp dryly, like someone starved of air.

"You have to believe me, Cat. I knew Alec was dodgy, a bit of a crook perhaps, but I never dreamed ... It's not like I'd talked to him about my family, or where I came from, but if I'd known what he was, what he was capable of ... G.o.d's truth, I swear I'd never've-I swear-I-"

Cat swallowed. Her fists were clenched so hard that the whites of her knuckles poked through the skin. "OK. Your part in my parents' deaths was an accident. You weren't that much older than me and you'd stumbled into something you didn't understand, not until it was too late. And I know ... that is, I can see how one wrong turn can change your life." She drew a wavering breath. "So, yeah, maybe I can understand how it happened. But not how you could lie to me about it. About everything."

"I-I lied to protect you."

"And yourself."

"How could I face you with the truth? I couldn't even face it myself."

"But I found the truth out anyway. Or half of it: how there was no car crash, only murder. I confronted you, and you apologized and you cried. We both did. And then you kept on lying. And lying. It was Alec you were thinking of, not Mum, when you found my Tarot card book, wasn't it?"

Bel looked away.

"Don't you see what you've done?" Hot tears sparked from Cat's eyes. "It was supposed to be me and you against the world, together, always. And now-"

"You once said that nothing could change what we have," Bel whispered. "You told me you wouldn't let us be changed, not by anything."

At that, Cat felt the violence of her grief take hold. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare throw that back at me. Christ! I've spent most of my life on the run without even knowing it."

All those years! A long, colorless blur of new places, new faces, new starts. She wasn't just an orphan, but a fugitive. Self-sufficient and solitary, the Cat who walked by herself. Until, that is, she found the Game. Or it found her.

"My whole life ...," she echoed.

"Yes. And my whole life is about trying to give back just a little of what you lost. G.o.d knows, Cat, I haven't been much good at it. But I have tried. Not just because I had to, but because trying to keep you safe, to make you happy, is the best thing in my world. And I will keep on trying as long as there's breath in my body."

Bel put out her hand, and Cat saw instead her mother, opening her arms. She closed her eyes and saw her father, swinging her up onto his shoulders. Where's my kitty-cat? The memories returned to her by the Arcanum had always had an otherworldly brightness, but now she could trust them again. Neither her mum nor her dad had known about the Arcanum or the Game or the card that killed them. Their stolen happiness had been real. The enormity of her loss flooded over her as if for the first time: she was drowning in it.

Bel's voice seemed to come from very far away.

"Don't you see? I lied partly to protect you, and partly because I was ashamed, but most of all because I couldn't bear it, Cat. I couldn't bear to think of you looking at me like you are now."

Cat met Bel's wide gray eyes, the eyes that were also her own, and her mother's. "Because," Bel finished quietly, "you are my everything."

A long silence fell. Cat walked back and forth, arms wrapped tightly around her chest. The perfume of lilies was nauseatingly strong, wound through with the trickle of water. She shook her head furiously to clear away the scent and sound.

"That book you found in my room," she said at last. "The Wondrous World of Tarot. Did you look inside?"

"I ... Yes, a little."

"There's an ill.u.s.tration of Justice, you see, holding her sword and scales. I used to look at it and think about my parents, how it was the only thing I could ever hope to give them.

"And then there's this other picture: Temperance. There's a note saying she's the spirit who guides the dead down into the underworld. But first she weighs their souls in her cups. First she makes her judgment.

"I don't want to judge. I want justice to be done. But how can it?" Cat looked at Bel with hard, cold eyes. "I don't know what justice means anymore. I don't know what any of this means. I have no certainties, nothing, because you've taken all of them away from me."

"Once a thief, always a thief," said a voice in the doorway. "H-h.e.l.lo, Red."

THERE WAS SOMETHING FAMILIAR about the art gallery and coffee shop across the road, but it was only when Flora looked to the right of the bus stop, toward the tree-lined green and tennis courts, that she realized the Arcanum had taken her to the neighborhood of Grace's clinic.

She frowned at the card in her hands. Surely this represented the angel she'd summoned and must now set free. The Triumph of Love had a gentle face, but it still put her on edge. Love was the prize Grace had played for. But it was Flora who must win it, so the cherubim would come swooping in in a blaze of glory and save the day. That way she would save her sister along with everyone else.

And now somebody was hurrying toward her, calling her name.

"Thank G.o.d!" Charlie exclaimed. "I wasn't sure if you'd got my voice mails. I'm sorry they were so garbled. Your parents are already with Grace-"

Flora clutched his arm. Unthinkingly, she shoved the card away into her pocket. "My parents are here? What's happened?"

Charlie put a hand over hers. "Flora ... I'm so sorry. Your sister has had some kind of seizure, they think. No one's sure what's going on. She's stable now, and the doctors are doing all they can, but they don't think she should be moved. We've all been leaving messages for you. People were looking ..."

He glanced at her stricken face. "Never mind that. Doesn't matter. Between the three of us-me and Tilly; Mina, too-we got you covered."

As they walked together, Charlie talked on, quickly and nervously. He told her how the doctor had phoned the Seatons' house yesterday evening, when only Mina was there, and then got hold of her parents in France. How her mother and father had caught the first flight back and gone straight to the clinic. How he'd helped concoct a story to explain Flora's absence (a mislaid note, a sleepover, a dead phone), and how-well, like he said, that stuff didn't matter now.

"Because I think you should know ... at least ... I think you should be prepared. They ... the doctors ... they think this could be ... the end."

"The end," Flora echoed softly. "The end of everything."

In his distress, Charlie was flushed and wide-eyed. She noticed the mark of a bruise on his cheek. There was something odd about this, something she felt vaguely responsible for, but it was hard to stay focused with the Arcanum so near. She was feverish, distrustful of the ground beneath her feet, as if it might suddenly shrug and once more send her crashing through darkness.

When they finally turned into the clinic's stone entrance gates, the wheel-scar on her palm glowed so noticeably she had to thrust her hand under her jacket. She realized the last time she had seen these walls and windows, she had been stumbling across snow, a woolen doll in her hands.

Flora was only dimly aware of reaching the reception; of being surrounded by the grave, hushed faces of the staff; of being hurriedly escorted along familiar corridors. At some point Charlie had tactfully withdrawn. And then, suddenly, she was in Grace's room, in her parents' arms, all three of them pressed tight together, holding and rocking, holding and rocking.... She closed her eyes.

"Flora," said Grace's voice.

Her sister was standing outside the window, but no one else seemed able to see her presence. She was holding a line of red silk. A warm summer breeze blew into the sterile hospital room.

Flora looked at the bed, where Grace's body was stretched out, more waxen and empty-looking than ever before. Machines pulsed, lights blinked.

"Join me," said the other Grace.

"Flora-where are you going?" asked her mother through her tears.

"Into the garden," Flora replied, dazzled by her sister's smile, her beckoning hand. "I need ... I need to go alone...."

Outside, the clinic's gardens overflowed with the abundance of summer. It was different from the summers here that Flora remembered from before, for even in the height of the season, there was always something clipped and functional about the neat flowerbeds and trim lawns. Today, everything was luxuriantly overgrown. The gra.s.s was high and meadowsweet; blossoms unraveled from briars and arbors; fruit swelled on the trees.

Grace, however, was the Grace from the hospital bed, no longer in the scarlet ball gown but dressed in the plain, clean clothes Flora knew from her visits. Her skin looked thin and sickly, and when Flora-tentative, distrustful, hardly daring to hope-moved to embrace her, she could feel the frailty of her bones, the slackness of the muscle. A faint medicinal smell clung to her.

For a long while the two sisters didn't say anything, just held each other's hands, drinking in each other's faces.

Finally, Grace reached to touch a strand of Flora's hair. "You've grown up," she said wonderingly. "You're so pretty. I knew you would be."

Flora smiled through her tears, and touched the curve of Grace's cheek in return.

"You've been looking for me, haven't you? All this while."

"For-for five years."

"So long ..." Grace linked her arm with her sister's, and began to walk along one of the mossy paths, following the thread she still held in one hand. Her movements were slow and uncertain, her voice weak. "I could hear you calling me, sometimes. I knew you were coming."

They went deeper into the garden, among the bees and b.u.t.terflies and birdsong, through tangled gra.s.ses and under flickering leaves. As they did so, the unhealthy pallor began to disappear from Grace's skin, the bloom returned to her face and the gold burnish to her hair. She grew sleek and sure-footed.

At last they came to a grove of apple trees where honeysuckle tumbled over an ancient wall. They sat down together, their backs against the sun-warmed stone. The clinic's rooftops and chimneys, which had been dimly visible through the trees, had disappeared from view.

Flora took the card from her pocket. The Triumph of Love. Two figures in a garden, apples and roses and rainbows, an angel with burning wings.

"This is what you were playing for, wasn't it?"

Grace took the card, tracing the image lightly with her fingertip. "It was how I began, yes."

"I know it was because of Will. You were in love with him."

"I thought I was in love with him. I badly wanted to be in love, you see." She gave a rueful laugh. "Of course, poor Will was hopelessly unsuitable."

Flora stared. "Poor Will? If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't ever have got mixed up with the Game, you wouldn't have been dealt that awful Eight of Swords, or taken those risks. It was because of Will that we lost you to the Arcanum."

"If it hadn't been Will, it would have been someone else. Or something else."

"But ... But, Grace, you were-you had-everything...."

Grace sighed, narrowing her eyes as she looked up through the shivers of light on apple leaves.

"So people kept telling me. The perfect girl in her perfect world ... All my life, Flo, things have come easily. Too easily, perhaps. I don't think I ever had to work for anything, not properly. Sometimes I'd look around at all the pleasant people I knew, the nice things I had and the plans I'd made, and all I could think was: Is this it?

"When I realized that I liked Will and he didn't like me, it was ... excruciating ... humiliating ... but invigorating, too. I convinced myself that I was in love. I had never felt so desperately, thrillingly alive.

"Then I found the Game, and realized I could win Will's heart, just like the knights of old. The heroes who charged off to slay demons and hunt treasure, all for the love of a fair lady. Or gentleman, in my case.

"I was a good knight, too. I played my round successfully. And I won the right to claim the Triumph of Love."

Flora frowned. "If you won, then why ...? I don't understand."

"Don't you?" Grace was twirling a daisy in her fingers, and had begun to pluck its petals. " 'She loves him, she loves him not....' " The singsong was playful, but there was nothing lighthearted in her expression as she watched the little white flecks float away. "As soon as I knew Will could be mine, I realized it-he-didn't matter anymore. Of course Will wasn't worth the trials I'd undergone for his sake. No one was. I entered the Game to find love, but the Game itself had seduced me.

"So although I never claimed my prize, I decided to play on anyway. Gambling on the cards and capturing triumphs."

Flora felt a chill breeze blow through the sunshine. "Grace, do you mean you wanted to be ... to be a queen? A Game Master?"

"No, not really. I didn't think that far ahead. For the first time in my life, I was living in the moment. As long as I was in the Arcanum, I didn't have to be this perfect person. This mannequin. Instead, I could be someone else entirely: reckless and fierce, untamed. It's ironic, I know, but until that maze in the Eight of Swords, I felt I had never been so free."

Flora had to turn away, into the shade, so that Grace would not see her face. But her sister took her hand again, and pulled her gently round.

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking how stupid I've been, and how selfish. You're wondering how I could be so careless, not just with my own life but with the lives of the people who loved me. And you are right."

Flora swallowed hard. "I understand about the freedom," she whispered. "I know the Arcanum has temptations."

"So do many things. I have no defense except this: I never imagined that I would fail. The risks I took only made me feel more invincible. Isn't that absurd? Yet in my vanity, I had decided I was the heroine of my own epic, and that my story would always come right in the end." She smiled sadly. "You have reason to be angry with me, Flo. But there are some things you only learn through loss."

They were quiet together after that. Grace sighed. "You will help them, won't you, Flora?"

"Who?"

"Our parents. You're stronger than me and now you'll have to be stronger than all of us."

"They don't need me." The chill breeze blowing through the sunshine breathed on Flora's heart. "They need you," she said with a stubbornness that failed to stifle her unease. "And now that you're back, we'll be a family again and everything will be all right."

"There is no going back."

"Of course there is." Flora scrambled to her feet, looking for the clinic's rooftops through the trees. "Because you're coming with me."