— it was love for you in them. He knows you and loves you for yourself, and that is something we may use to our advantage. I have found a way to free you at last, for us to be together again.’
I stare at Luc, confusion on my face. Someone else loves . . . me?
‘Remember this,’ Luc urges. ‘Just this thought. When you wake, I want you to find Ryan Daley and return to Paradise, the place where he lives, and wait for me there. Do you think you can do that?’
‘Ryan Daley?’ I repeat, relieved when the universe does not burn at the mention of the name.
Luc nods. ‘I may be prevented from finding you, but you’re strong, you’re resourceful — you’ve survived this long without losing your mind. Find the boy, escape the Eight and return to the godforsaken place he calls home. There we shall be reunited at last. When you are under my protection once more, the Eight shall never touch you again.’
I stare up at Luc’s incomparable profile, wondering why he is asking me to find some human boy that I can’t even remember.
‘Who is he?’ I ask. ‘How will I know him?’
Something flares in Luc’s pale eyes for a split second as he gazes at me, his fingers tightening on my waist like talons. For a moment, I’m almost afraid. When he looks like that, he’s capable of . . . anything.
Then he laughs and this time there’s genuine amusement there. ‘As to who he is? I will leave it up to you to find out. You’re a smart girl, you’ll manage it. As to what he looks like . . .’
Luc propels himself away from me, up into the airless void, turning and turning with his arms outstretched until he is a shining blur, then a pinpoint of light that suddenly vanishes from view. And before me stands his human double, wearing a beat-up leather jacket, faded navy tee, blue jeans and scuffed boots. Physically he’s everything Luc is: tall, lean, beautiful, strong. But dark-haired, dark-eyed, fair- skinned, as night is to day. And mortal.
There’s something vulnerable in his expression, something Luc has never been and never will be. And then I see it, too. There’s love in the boy’s eyes. For me.
I shift closer to the tall, achingly familiar young man, incredulous that I could have forgotten someone so beautiful; someone who so obviously adores me even though he can’t ever have actually seen me, the real me.
Ryan moves closer, too, our fingertips meeting between us.
Something feels as if it is giving way inside me. As if buried memories are struggling to the surface; as if the ground is shifting beneath my feet.
Except there is no ground, no up, no down. No light, save for the illumination that’s burning off my skin, that’s bleeding from me in little drifts, in errant curls of pure energy.
And suddenly I’m alone again, except for Luc’s voice, which seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
‘Find him.’ The words reverberate in the impenetrable dark. ‘Find him and wait for my return.’
‘Lela? Lela, darling? You’ve fallen asleep in the chair again, honey. If you don’t hurry, you’re going to be late for work.’
I frown, and the last remnants of my dream — vivid, hyper-real — flee and do not return, although I try to hold on to them.
Even before I open my eyes, I can smell eucalyptus oil and sandalwood incense, but the intense aroma is unable to mask the smell of sickness in the overheated room: the odour of charred flesh; a chemical residue that is offensive to my senses. There’s the whirr of a machine, also; some kind of medicated inhalant in the air.
Even before I open my eyes, it’s obvious to me that some kind of alchemy has taken place again. I’ve been pulled out of wherever I was before, the life I was living before, the body I was in before, and dumped into . . . Lela’s. Finnegan, begin again, chants that little voice inside my head. Though even it has begun to sound kind of weary.
Because my real name’s not Lela.
It’s not even Mercy, which is the name I’ve given myself in the absence of the real thing. I have no name and no memory, you see. Or rather, there are holes in my memory you could sail a cruise ship through. But if I think hard about myself, really hard, I get that one word. Mercy. So it’s what I call myself these days, for want of something better. Because if you have a name, you must exist, right? It’s something I tell myself a lot. And it sure beats, Hey, you.
I open my eyes and see a woman lying in the double bed in front of my armchair. She has sallow, shiny skin, deep lines running between her mouth and nose, dark circles beneath her dark blue eyes, the whites of which are the palest yellow in colour, and a cheerful scarf tied tightly around her bald head.
Cancer, whispers my inner voice immediately. Chemotherapy. Radiotherapy.
I look across the room at the tri-fold mirror on top of the battered dressing table and see three reflections staring back, though there are only two people physically in the room. I’m unable to suppress the chill flash that races across my skin as I take stock of the third face I see there — which has no connection to Lela, or to the woman in the bed.
It’s my face. Oval in shape, with brown eyes, pale skin, a mouth with lips that are neither too thin nor too wide, a long, straight nose. It’s a ghost’s face, a palimpsest of a face, framed by shoulder-length brown hair, each strand straight, even and perfectly the same, without flaws, without highlights.
I’m taller than she is, than Lela. Broad through the shoulders. Long-limbed. Stern-faced.
Lela is almost the physical opposite of me: petite, but with a womanly figure, curves where there should be curves. Her baggy red plaid pyjamas can’t hide that. Her thick, red-brown hair is clean and unruly and cut in a choppy bob. She has navy blue eyes and fine, Irish skin, snaggly teeth, elegant ankles, trim wrists, tiny hands and feet. A friendly face, I decide. A friendly-looking person. Pleasant; no great beauty.
‘I’m sorry I woke you,’ the woman says, and sighs against her pillows. ‘But you said you can’t afford to upset Mr Dymovsky again, and if you don’t get the 7.08 bus you’re not going to make it. That’s what you told me.’
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I say without hesitation. If the woman beneath the bed covers were not so thin and ill, prematurely aged and drawn, she and Lela would be the image of each other, save thirty years apart.
I stand and bend over her, give her the briefest of kisses on her paper-dry cheek, wrinkling my nose at the burnt-flesh-chemical smell of her. I twitch straight her garishly bright headscarf, pull the bedclothes back up over her brittle collarbones. All these actions are Lela’s impulses, done before I realise I’m doing them. Lela loves her mother, and some things, I’ve found, the body simply remembers.
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ the woman whispers. ‘Now go. Remember to eat. I’ll be fine. Georgia will be here for her usual shift and the council carer is coming in the afternoon to do some cleaning and help bathe me. I’ve got the pump, and I’m as comfortable as can be expected. Father Davey rang to say he’ll pop in, though goodness knows why. I’m not at death’s door.’ She gives me the ghost of a smile.
She is, though. Both she and I know it.
She closes her pain-shadowed eyes. ‘I’ll see you after five, darling bud. Love my girl.’
I pause, sorry to draw her back to me, but I have no idea where to start living Lela’s life, how to walk purposefully out into Lela’s day.
‘If I wanted to call him, Mum,’ I say, shaking her gently by the shoulder, ‘where would I find his card?’
She frowns weakly, no energy left even to open her eyes. ‘Card?’ she murmurs. ‘What card?’
‘Mr Dymovsky’s card,’ I reply, the syllables awkward