Chapter 15

I embraced mother. Her oak waves of hair shrouded my face as my head rested on her shoulder, and she told me just how much she'd missed me, and how each time I left I seemed further and further away. I smelled the familiar perfumes that she would use, and she giggled in my ear like she always would whenever I re-emerged. She kissed me only the cheek before ending the hug.

"Ooh, that's new, innit!" She exclaimed, running a couple fingers over my new black handbag. "How on Earth did you afford that?!"

I grinned and held it up for a better view. "I saved up for it."

"You? Saving?" She laughed. "You're a student. You're not supposed to do that!"

"Oh, you know, we all grow up eventually." I hummed.

She turned to saunter back down the pathway that led up to the red front door. She'd come skipping out as soon as she'd seen me. "I'll put the kettle on. Are you having a cup of tea?"

"Yes please, Mum." I replied, following her into the house I'd grown up in. The old grandfather clock greeted me as it always did, being the dominant feature of the conversely bright-yellow and modern walls. There was a photo frame beside it, housing nine photos that began way back in black-and-white times when my parents were kids, all the way up to my last year of A-levels. All of the family, my teenaged brother up to my great-grandparents, was represented there.

Mum wandered into the sunlit kitchen and immediately put the kettle on to boil. I peeked into the living room, where the tele was blaring with nobody to watch it. "Where is everybody?" I asked.

"Your father's at work," She called back. "Your brother is upstairs on his bloody computer games again. Could you shout for him and ask if he wants tea as well? On the condition that he actually comes downstairs for once."

I placed a hand on the banister and swung myself partway up the carpeted stairs. "Oi, scumbag! You want tea?!"

Footsteps padded, muffled from a distance, until the unseen door creaked open. "What?" He groaned.

"Tea?!"

"Uh, yeah."

I rolled my eyes. "You going to come say hi or what?!"

"…Yeah."

I chuckled to myself and dropped from the banister. I walked back to Mum in the kitchen as the kettle was beginning its steaming drone. "He's coming down. When did you last see him? September?"

"Oh, I don't know," She huffed, shaking her head. "Ever since you left he's just vanished! Bloody teenagers. You were no different. You've only just grown out of it."

"I wasn't that bad…" I sighed, pulling a pack of Walkers from the snacks cupboard and tearing it open. Cheese and Onion. My favourite.

"Please," She chuckled. "You were hell on Earth, you were! Every word was either a whisper or a sulk. You spoke an entirely different language to the rest of us."

"Sometimes I did." I grinned, before munching on two large crisps with a crunch.

She gave a sly smile as she dropped a teaspoon of sugar into my mug. "You were always good with your languages. Sometimes I wished you'd just stuck to English like the rest of us."

"That's boring."

Sluggish feet came down the stairs, and my little fifteen-year-old brother appeared under the archway to the kitchen, grumpy as I'd come to expect, and spotty, more than before. He was truly growing up the hard way.

"Hi." He grunted.

"Aww, little Danny," I cooed ironically, forcing him into a hug I knew he didn't want. "You grow up so fast!"

He almost smiled. Almost. "Yeah, okay."

Mum passed him a perfect cup of tea. "You stay away from those games for a little while. I've hardly seen you all week."

"God, Mum…" He grumbled.

"Yeah, Mum," I said. "If he wants to waste his eyes and his time, just let him."

She passed me my mug. "Don't encourage him. The whole reason we're going to the museum tomorrow is to get him out the bloody house."

"You sure it's not because Dad just wants an excuse to see the new Space exhibit?"

Mum shrugged. "That, too. No, I want Danny to finally get out and find an interest in something. It's the only thing about you that was easy," She looked to Danny. "But you haven't got an acting bone in your body, have you."

Danny shrugged and leant against the archway.

"You're good at science, aren't ya?" I asked him, putting down my empty crisps packet on the worktop and focusing my hands on my tea.

"I guess." He grunted.

Mum had taken a seat at the dining table, where loose piles of paper lay. "What have you been doing at university? Still doing that play? Oh, what's it called…?"

"Edward Stone," I said. "It's going great! Got it all in here." I tapped a finger to my forehead.

"And how's the social life? You been partying it up good and proper?" She grinned.

I didn't smile back.

A flash of blade disturbed my thoughts, and a sweat of frightful remembrance caught me off guard.

You'll get sliced in two like a fresh apple…

"Amy?"

I found Mum again. The flashes went away. "Yeah?"

She was looking at me with concern, and she laughed unsurely. "That was a bit strange… Are you okay?"

"What was strange?" I asked, clearing my throat and sipping at my tea.

"You went white as a ghost!"

I laughed it off. I glanced to Danny for reassurance, but even he was perplexed. "I just remembered some coursework," I lied with a sigh. "It's due Monday. I haven't even started it."

"Important one?" Mum asked, her concern thankfully dissipating with the lie.

"Yeah. Damn… How could I forget it? No worries, though, I'll do it Sunday before I head back."

She gave me a wise motherly look. "You need to stop leaving everything to the last minute."

"Don't worry," I chuckled. "I'm an expert at last-minute-motivation."

She hummed knowingly. "Your brother's the same. He had a Chemistry exam last week that he didn't study for until the morning of the exam."

Danny groaned and rolled his head back in exasperation. "That's not true, Mum."

"Don't lie just because your sister's here."

I lost track of their bickering. Something inside of me, a deep paranoia, took over for the moment, and flooded every part of me. I hid my face behind my mug, taking shaky gulps of tea as my sights studied them both.

Oliver said that his mother was one of them, that she'd been acting strange. Could I say the same of my family? If so, could I deal with such a blow?

But no. As I watched them, I saw them. My mother's cosiness and my brother's teenage angst were still so strong. They weren't taken.

What if, someday, they would be? Was it worse that I'd been given the power to help, yet still I was powerless? Would I ever forgive myself?

Maybe… maybe I could ask for their protection. I could ask Bert.

What could Bert possibly do?

Tell you not to draw attention to yourself.

I tightened fingers around my handbag, feeling the lush material against my skin.

"Think you can wake up before eleven?"

I awoke to Mum's question, directed at me. "It's not me that you have to worry about."

"I dunno…" She hummed. "No doubt you'll go out with your friends tonight."

"I haven't gone out with them since last year," I countered. "They're never here anymore."

"Just make sure you get plenty of sleep tonight," Mum said. "You're a different person in the mornings if you don't get enough."