Unfinished Business (The Shades of Northwood 3) Read online

  “Did I interrupt something?”

  Katie brushed her hair back from her face, sat back at her desk and handed Jack her new green and white striped scrunchie. “Please?” He obliged and started tying her long hair up. Boys should never be let loose on other people’s hair but Jack had gotten quite good at this over the weeks Katie had been unable to do it for herself.

  “I interrupted. Oh well.” He didn’t care. As if she had expected Leo to be human and leave them alone. “Anyways, bitch… hey, what freaked you out?”

  “Bit late to the compassion party, Pointer.”

  “’Scuse me for giving a crap.”

  “What do you want?” The older boy always wanted something. Leo wasn’t the type to enter into any kind of social interaction without a damn good reason. “Oh yeah, don’t cross that line.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Leo glanced over at Jack with something just under out and out hate, and just above distrust. It was hard to believe that these two had fought side by side just a couple of weeks ago and had had each other’s backs. Unless Leo was trying to stab Jack in his. Which was more likely the case. It made her giggle and Katie had to cover it with a very fake-sounding cough.

  “We’re teenagers with crazy bad hormones. Hmm? Whatever could we have been doing?”

  “Whatever. You’ll be the one gets hurt.”

  Katie sat back in her chair, tipping it as far back as it would go without being in danger of tipping all the way over, and took a longer look at Leo. Blue eyes, dark hair starting to grow back on his DIY skinhead, maybe an inch or two taller than her. He was a few years older too but the fact he didn’t appear to have shaved in days made him look even older. In addition to that, his plain white shirt and black jeans looked as though they could walk to the washing machine by themselves. The jump from a steady eight or nine hours a day of college work at home to working so hard at the academy that you only slept between deadlines didn’t look good on him. “Boy, you need to sleep or someth- oh, wait,” she said and tugged a can of Red Bull out of the case by her desk and held it out. “Works.” She waited for him to take it.

  “You’re a freak. You hang out with dead guys, you work with dudes who could batter you, you always find trouble… fact, I reckon you go looking for it. You’re a freak, bitch.”

  “And yet you’re the one still in my room.” She shrugged the best she could. Letting Leo know his presence was getting on her nerves would just encourage him to lurk some more so she turned back to her computer. The essay was going nowhere fast so checking email was a good substitute. Not that she was expecting anything important. “Spam, spam, you’ve won the Nigerian lottery. Buy our crap. More spam. Yeah, I should clear my inbox out.” There was about a month’s worth of junkmail – she hadn’t even deleted anything since she had the computer. The most interesting things in today’s box were a quick HI HOW R U? message from her sister and a red flagged one from EVENTS at the academy. A lot of them came through but most of them went to her college email address. When had she ever given them her real address? Still, insurance companies and ambulance chasers seemed to get her mobile number from somewhere…”You still here?”

  “Well, I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

  “You got a problem with me?”

  “Man, you’re a walking corpse.” He let that sink in for a moment but he wasn’t telling them anything new. “You’re an abomination. You break all the rules of man and God. And you walk in our world like you’re one of us. It’s wrong, man, and you know it. All of you – none of you should still be here.”

  “Maybe I have a job to do before I get too Heaven.”

  “If you’re still on this planet after you die, you ain’t getting to Heaven.”

  “And you reckon Saint Peter lets prejudiced pieces of shit through the pearly gates?”

  “I might not like you and I certainly don’t trust you but at least my heart still beats.”

  “I’m an abomination, right? Unnatural? Why the hell should I even look human?!”

  “You tell me.”

  “I’m not some monster, Leo. I used to be human and, okay, I’m a shadow of it now but I’m here and I’m not leaving so get used to it!”

  Katie rolled her chair back and threw her good arm out to keep a safe few feet between the boys. “Guys! This is not getting us anywhere. You don’t like each other – we got it. No-one’s asking you to be the best of friends. But Leo, you need to trust him with me ‘cos seriously, big girl now.”

  “You’re alive and he’s not. He’s taking a little bit of your soul away every time you see him. You shouldn’t be with a dead man.”

  “Jack’s never tried to hurt me and, anyway, who I give my soul to is none of your business.”

  “He’ll kill you,” he said simply and walked off.

  Jack got on his knees and shuffled over to Katie, his face nuzzling in her ear. His breath tickled her, warm and light. “I think somebody’s jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of us?”

  “Mm-hm. I got the prettiest girl in town and he only has the Bible and an old copy of Playboy.”

  “Ewww, bad thoughts!”

  “Extremely bad. I should be ashamed of myself.” He dropped his head to her shoulder, dotting kiss all the way down the side of her neck. Katie put a hand to his cheek and smiled. Being with Jack was so hard most of the time. Moments like these, the rare times when they could just be a regular couple and do some of the things any other pair of teens would do, these were the moments she lived for. No rules. No ‘we shouldn’t’. Just lust and a great big dollop of fun. “I’ll be good.”

  “No, good means stop.” And that wasn’t an idea she loved.

  “I’m a bad, bad influence.”

  Jack kept nipping at her neck. “Hey!” Katie made a half-hearted attempt to push him away but didn’t really put much effort into it. She had work to do.

  “It’ll still be there in the morning.”

  “Exactly. It still won’t be finished in the morning either.”

  “Okay.” Jack reluctantly rose to his knees and went over to the bed. He sat down, back pressed to the headboard, and draped one of her blankets over himself. “I’ll be here when you’re done but I want you to know I’m feeling unloved.”

  “Good to know.” She watched him for a second – waiting for him to make a move and coax her back into his arms. Hoping, not waiting, because he really wouldn’t have to coax very hard. But when it became apparent he meant to stay where he was, Katie turned backed to her screen and clicked on her EVENTS email. Miss Cartwright. Regarding the prize draw held on the first of October, we are pleased to tell you that you have won a prize. Huh. Must be something she did at the open day or something. You have been awarded a psychic reading with Mademoiselle Romani, a travelling fortune teller guest lecturing with us. It was just signed Levenson Academy of Sports and Action – no name or reply address. It was probably just an automated thing but still… Katie was way more excited than she probably ought to be. She never won things. The odd cuddly toy or tub of talc on raffles but never anything when there were other people to compete with. “Very cool,” she murmured, low enough that only she could hear it. There was a time, date and place written underneath which she scribbled down.

  Afterwards, she founds that she deeply didn’t want to do her homework.. it went on her TO-DO list for the next day – along with college, training, ironing (her turn already?) and a four hour shift at the club. Anyway, the sky was properly dark now. Sleep time.

  Shut the world out, sweetheart. There’s bad people out there.

  Jack, I thought you were asleep.

  I don’t sleep.

  Katie stuffed her slippers back on and padded over to draw the curtains. She’d had these cloudburst ones since she hit her teens but they were one of the few things of her childhood she hadn’t quite outgrown. Drawing the curtains… such an easy sounding task. Surely she could do that without screwing up somehow. She knew it was only paranoia – irrational a
nd fleeting – but she had a vision of something going horribly wrong. And, maybe because she was thinking of it, it did.

  Mostly.

  On her way back to bed and Jack, her fluffy slippers caught on something and she fell forward. The lethally spiked silver badge was lying slightly to he left. She twisted as she fell. And the badge came hurtling towards her face.

  “Katie!”

  But Jack couldn’t move fast enough to stop her fall. Katie squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the impact of the floor and the agony of the badge slicing into her face. Leaving it lying around had been a dumb thing to do and, really, it was just waiting for a face to disfigure. Half a heartbeat later, the bruising shock of eight stone of Katie getting a short, sharp introduction to Mr Floor crashed into her. Another heartbeat in which she realised holding her breath wasn’t going to make any difference, and the needle sharp point of the badge didn’t slice into her. The really bad pain sometimes took a while to seep through the blanket of shock. Another few seconds and still nothing. Tentatively, Katie cracked her eyes open and glanced around. There was rather an interesting view of the junk under her bed. So… definitely on the floor. And there was the badge… one point poking through the thickest part of the foam loop around her neck. If that hadn’t been there then the silver star would have been stuck in her neck and her carotid artery would be pumping.

  Relief flowed like laughter. Even the roaring in her bones couldn’t stop it.

  “Sorry,” she hiccupped. “Must be my lucky day.”

  Chapter two

  “This is wrong. So so wrong.”

  It was halfway through Katie’s shift at the club and she was more bored than anything. The last couple of weeks at Shimma had seen a steady drop in numbers as people started to get back into the swing of their studies and partying took a backseat. There were still a good few dozen hanging around the bar and sitting in seats and a clump of bodies writhing together on the dancefloor, but she was nowhere near rushed off her feet. Less shouting voices to drown out meant the music could be a little quieter. So that was a bonus.

  A couple of the other staff were covering the floor and the other end of the bar. It was running like a well-oiled machine for once. Everyone was getting their order orders quickly and they hadn’t messed up once; no-one had fallen over or started a fight; there was not even any graffiti in the toilets (it was her job to check). She shoved a glass under the rum optic and added a splash of coke. Then repeated the action with vodka and cola. “It feels weird, serving you.”

  “It’s weird being served by you.”

  Katie slid the two glasses across the bar to Adam and glanced behind him to where Lainy was ripping it up on the dancefloor. “She’s… energetic.”

  “We both needed a night out. It’s been a long couple of months.”

  “Yeah. I guess I haven’t exactly been the poster child for house guests.”

  “No, it’s not just you but you know… with Dina and everything. She feels really responsible for not noticing.”

  “There’s nothing either of you could have done. I mean, who knows what was going on inside her head.”

  “Dina’s got this idea she’s going to die soon.”

  “We all die sometime, I guess.” She decided to leave out the par where Dina had been literally standing on the very edge of death not so long ago. It was for the best. “Hey. I’m going to see a psychic at the weekend. Maybe she’ll tell me everything’s going to be fine for the rest of the year.”

  “You think so?”

  No. Not even slightly. But she just gave a crooked smile and shrugged. “We’ve been through the mill, huh? I’ve lived here – what? – six or seven weeks and where-ever I go, there’s trouble or danger.”

  Adam leaned over the bar and touched her arm. There was a neon yellow line painted down the middle to show clubbers how far they could go without getting bounced but she would waive the policy just this once. “It hasn’t gone unnoticed.” She frowned at him but no further explanations were forthcoming as Lainy started to make her way over to the bank of worn out leather loveseats and flopped down into one, breathing hard and sweating. Adam turned and went to walk away but Katie called him back. “Hey. You going to pay for those?”

  He did. After sorting out his change and serving lager and peanuts to some lads watching football on a tablet computer, Katie shot a look at the couple on the loveseat, cuddling and giggling, playing with each other’s hair like loved up kids and sighed. When Lainy had decided to go back to nursing, the pair had been on rocky ground. It had been touch and go whether they would make it for a couple of days. The whole thing had seemed to revolve around Lainy going back to work too quickly but Katie had picked up on the slightly too long pauses before they answered he questions, the flash of shadows and secrets when Lainy tried to spin a story, the flash of panic in Adams when he thought he shouldn’t answer a question truthfully.

  “Hiya!” A new, cheerful voice broke into her thoughts. “Margherita time!” it was Marcie.

  “Night out?”

  “Mrs Daeburn’s sitting Freddie and probably sending him hyper on that blue pop. Which means I’m out for a night on the razz.”

  “So you came here?”

  “It’s not so bad. Good music… usually, good company and good prices.” She thought about it for a second. “Plus, there aren’t a whole lot of other choices around here.”

  “And I thought you were here for the scintillating atmosphere.”

  Katie stirred her friends’ drink to create bubbles and watched them dissipate. It was a little trick she had developed to keep the aggressive ones calm while they waited, and it ha just become habit to do it every time now. Marcie slid over some coins, downed her margherita in one with a shudder and pointed towards the cooler and a bottle of her own blue pop.

  “I’m due a break.” Katie uncapped a bottle of alcopop and one of orange juice. She followed Marcie over to a cluster of tables and hopped up on one of the tall barstools. “Anything interesting happening in your world?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Getting a bit tipsy tonight might liven things up for a while. The cast. It’s gone.”

  She had clean forgotten that the weight on her wrist had gone. A hospital appointment earlier in the day had shown Dr de Rossa that her broken bones were beginning to knit back together, so he had decided to replace the heavy, clunky cast with a tight and stiff brace. It was still looped close to her chest but it was much more wieldy. “They want to see how I get on with this for a while.”

  “Did they let you keep it? I kept Freddie’s when he broke his leg learning to climb stairs. All the babies did hand prints on it. I’ll have to show it to you one day – it’s really cute.”

  “Uh-huh,” she agreed. “I didn’t keep mine. I don’t want a reminder of how I got it.”

  “You never told me.”

  “There was a fight when I was trying to help my friend. She just grabbed my wrist and squeezed until I screamed. She didn’t mean it though – I know she didn’t.”

  “Sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself more than me.”

  “I know she didn’t mean to. She just wasn’t in her right mind.”

  “And this sparked the whole ‘I need to learn to fight back’ thing?”

  Had it? Was the real reason she had been pestering Adam to teach he self-defence because she was worried one of her friends might turn on her once again? It didn’t seem right. Then again, plenty of things didn’t seem right in Northwood. “Recently, a lot of people have hurt me and working here makes me a lot more vulnerable. I don’t want to be an easy target.”

  “I still can’t believe you got a job here. I mean, you wouldn’t even get in if you were legal age.”

  Thanks, Marcie. I want to lose my job for being underage. “Seems you have to be 18 to do a lot of stuff around here. All the fun stuff anyway.”

  “Trust me, things are not all they’re cracked up to be.”

  “Mikey!” Katie yelled out, and sign
alled to their fast emptying bottles. He brought more over and frowned at her. “Five minutes more.”

  “We’re hardly snowed under.”

  “Still. I’m not going over my break”

  “Suit yourself.” And then he wandered away.

  “So, any exciting plans for the weekend?”

  They had fallen into a tradition recently of spending the afternoon and evening together every Saturday – a film and dinner with Freddie and then wine and a film after he was in bed. Marcie hadn’t been at all happy about letting her drink or watch 18 certificate films, but Katie had assured her it was all fine. After all that had happened, she doubted there was much left to scare her. “That new animation with the talking food comes out tomorrow. We should take him to see that.” Taking the kid to the cinema was also a good excuse for Katie to see all the films she was excited about but to embarrassed to go and see alone. “And then I’ve won this free reading with a psychic. Mademoiselle Romani. You ever heard of her?”

  “Mademoiselle Romani!” The name alone seemed to get Marcie bouncing around. “Oh, Katie, she’s meant to be really good. I’d kill for one of her readings.”

  “You should come with me. Maybe she can do you at the same time. It should be a laugh at any rate.”

  “Don’t you believe in that stuff then? It’s pretty good if you remember it’s open to interpretation.”

  Katie drained her juice and glanced at her watch, tilting it this way and that until it caught the light just right. “I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

  When she got home at half past eleven that night, she walked into a silent house. And it wasn’t the comfortable kind of silence which meant everyone was asleep. No, this was the strained silence of a house that had just seen another row. Not the kind of atmosphere she would go to sleep happy in. But finding out what the row had been about this time seemed like it might take a while. Conflict resolution was so not her job. The adults could deal with it but the kitchen, their usual stomping ground, was empty. Lainy and Adam must both still be at the club, even though she couldn’t remember passing them on the way out. A bowl of fruit salad lurked in the back of the fridge. Quieting her roaring stomach sounded like a very good idea. Taking her fruit through to the living room and knowing she was walking straight into the eye of the storm, Katie noted that Dina was curled up on the sofa with Jaye sitting protectively at her side. Leo was on the edge of the chair opposite them and staring the girl down. No-one noticed her in the doorway.