that she could shrug the straps over her shoulders. “Better go. Nicholas will be waiting for me. He’ll want to know how the audition went. There’s no need for you to take me home, I’ll just take the train.”
“Sarah …” Juliet put a hand on Sarah’s sleeve as they got up. Her eyes were warm, but her voice was steely. “Harry must be back by Christmas or just after, or you’re moving in with us. It’d only be until you’re eighteen. But that’s the way it must be.”
The thought of being removed from her home made Sarah’s stomach churn. “You’ll report me to the solicitor?” Her voice trembled with hurt.
“I’ll protect you, Sarah. It’s for your own good.”
Sarah threw up her hands. “You’ll protect me? Like my parents did?” she spat. “This conversation is over.” She strode off, leaving Juliet to hurry after her through the shop.
*
Neither of them noticed the hunched, thin figure who’d sat at a table behind them, at such an angle that he wouldn’t be seen, but he could see them. Neither of them, therefore, was aware of the fact that the figure’s eyes had never left them throughout the conversation, that he’d heard every word Sarah and Juliet said, and that he’d followed them on their way out.
Stolen
I saw you falling slowly
For many years
Death told me
She’d come for you first
Of course, Juliet insisted on driving Sarah home. There was no chance Sarah could convince her aunt to let her go back by train.
Sarah didn’t say a word as they travelled along the motorway, her cello resting on the backseat and her thoughts all tangled up. My parents’ will. Selfish, selfish and stupid.
But it wasn’t, really, it wasn’t stupid or selfish. A girl alone in a huge house – it was a risk in any circumstance, even more so if the girl in question was a precious Secret heir, and a Dreamer. The selfish thing had been not to teach her to fight – to leave her helpless and force her to learn fast, and alone.
So much for protecting me, she said to herself. All she knew when they’d died was that she was a Dreamer, and that her parents used her dreams to know if there were demons around, and where. That was her knowledge of the Midnight mission, in a nutshell. A drop in the sea of what she should have learnt.
Each Secret Family has one Dreamer whose gift awakens at the age of thirteen – and they all pay a terrible price for it. Their nightmares are a torture they can’t escape, and one over which they have no control. They dream of the demons – or Surari, as they’re known in the ancient language – that seep into the world. Sometimes the Dreamers themselves become victims, hurt or even murdered in the course of their visions, and although they suffer no physical damage, they have to endure the pain and the panic as if it were happening for real. In her dreams, Sarah had been burnt, drowned, buried; most nights waking up screaming in a house that was often empty, with her parents out hunting. The constant terror had heightened Sarah’s obsessive nature. She’d wake up from some terrifying ordeal to clean and tidy and straighten anything she could put her hands on. Her rituals were her protection against the chaos in her life.
Every night, alone in her huge, silent house, waiting for her parents to come back from the hunt, she performed her routines of wiping and sorting and aligning. If she did everything perfectly, in the right order, the correct number of times, her parents would return. If anything was out of place, if she neglected the smallest detail, her parents would be killed, and it’d be all her fault. It was on that basis that she had lived her life.
Her pact with God hadn’t worked. In the end, her parents were dead. But if she stopped, more tragedy might befall her.
The Dreamer’s duty was to write everything they saw in their dream diary, so that the hunters of the family would know what and where to hunt. Sarah’s diary was a black, leather-bound volume that had caused her endless anguish and symbolized all the fear she’d had to endure throughout her childhood. That volume was now a mound of cold ash in the fireplace, and its leather cover had floated down the nearby river towards the sea. Sarah had torn it page by page in a fit of anger