I sat with my feet pressed firmly together on the top step, looking down into the stairwell. It seemed to stretch downwards for miles and yet was actually barely more than twenty steps. The door to Lucius' room was open and out of that doorway emanated a clean white light that lit up the bottom of the staircase, highlighting the dark corners and banishing the shadows. Lucius' voice drifted up towards me, his high-pitched, clear tones making him sound like your archetypal choirboy, captivating any that would listen with a sweet falsetto version of Ring a Ring O' Roses. Clutching handfuls of hair in my hand, I listened for as long as I could bear and then finally, exasperated, I stood up and turned to walk away through Garrick's room.
Suddenly, the singing stopped. Slowly, I approached the staircase again and waited. No sound came from Lucius' room but somehow I knew he was down there, waiting, listening. Warily, I began to descend, holding my breath when I reached that point where I remembered stepping into inky black waters and wading through the dark. Thankfully, I only felt the staircase under my feet and soon I was at the bottom, staring into the brightly lit room.
Lucius was kneeling on one of the rugs, with a small town of little coloured wooden bricks laid out in front of him. Carefully constructed archways, houses and roads covered half of the rug and he was slowly weaving a toy car through the bricks, making the noise of a car engine as he directed it under the arches and through the streets of his toy town.
He looked up, giving me a toothy grin. "Hello Megan."
"Hello Lucius." I offered the briefest of smiles.
"Have you come to read to me?" he asked, his eyes lighting up.
He's not just a boy. He's not just a boy.
I tried to convince myself over and over again but I was struck dumb by how normal this all seemed and how normal he looked. This perfect little boy with his beautiful white-blonde hair that always seemed to fall over his eyes. His sparkling blue eyes and flawless skin.
"I would like to speak with you. If that's okay," I said, wishing that I could look at him without feeling that cold grip of terror around my throat.
"Sure," he shrugged. "But can you read to me afterwards? I like it when you read to me."
"Y-you do?" I stammered.
He nodded vigorously.
"Oh. Okay," I said, slightly stunned and also petrified at the thought of spending any longer down here than I needed to. "If you really want me to."
He turned his attention back to his car, parking it up in front of a brick house and humming a tune under his breath. I hesitated for a moment, trying to resist the urge to flee back up the stairs because no matter how terrified I was, I had to stay. I had no choice.
Slowly, I padded across the room and sat on the other side of the toy town, just far enough out of his reach. Still he did not look up and I just watched him as he played, finding myself slightly hypnotised by the normality of it and letting a small smile creep around my lips as he continued making that contented little brum-brum sound.
After a while, I blinked myself out of the daze and studied him carefully.
"Lucius?" I said finally, taking a deep breath. "Do you know what you are?"
He stopped what he was doing and looked back at me and I was shaken as to how you could look into his eyes one minute and see nothing but a child and yet in a split second, you could see something else, something more.
"What I mean is, do you know what you can do? You know that you're different?"
"Yes."
"Are you really a child? You look like one but...." I trailed off, feeling infinitely stupid for asking the question as he sat there in front of me wearing his Spider-Man hooded sweater with matching socks and blue jeans.
"I'm eight and a half," he replied simply.
"Of course you are," I said quickly, nodding my head in agreement. "Sorry."
"It's okay." He shrugged again. "I'm a bit small for my age. But Mary used to say that one day I would just shoot up." He raised his hand above his head as if to indicate how tall he would be when that day came.
I frowned. "Who's Mary?"
"Mary from St Catherine's. I liked Mary. She used to read to me."
"What is St Catherine's? Is that a church?"
"No. Children's home. I didn't like it there." He looked down at the toy car, which he turned over and rolled his thumb over one of the wheels.
"You lived in a children's home?" I stared at him, remembering a place filled with too much noise, too much chaos, too much desperation. I stared at him and heard crying, too many children crying. I stared at him and saw me.
"How long were you there?" I whispered.
"I don't know. Maybe forever. Until I came here."
"How did you come to be here? Did Garrick take you from the home?"
He nodded again. "Uh-huh."
"And the people at the home just let him take you? Did he say he was a relative or something?"
Lucius looked at me, his eyes steadily locking with mine.
I sat back against the wall, exhaling deeply. "He just took you, didn't he?" I shook my head and wondered why I was even surprised. "Did you know what he was?"
"Yes." He said it like it was nothing to have a vampire come and find you in the night and steal you away from your home, just to then lock you away in an underground basement room all by yourself.
"Weren't you frightened?"
"There are much worse things than vampires. Would you like me to show you?" He reached out a hand and I half-wondered if he were mocking me, knowing full well that I hated to touch him, that I wouldn't touch him. I shook my head vehemently and swallowed hard.
"Do you remember your parents?" I broached.
"I don't have any parents."
"Everyone has parents Lucius, even if they don't remember them."
It was his turn to shake his head now, his fine blonde locks brushing his face as he did so. "Not true. Sometimes, some people just are."
Something about the way he was looking at me made me feel as if I were wrapped in an icy shroud. I could feel it pulling tighter and tighter around my body, the cold seeping right into my bones and clogging my veins with blackest of ice. I had to drag my eyes away from his because I knew that soon I would be crushed frozen under the weight of his gaze.
"The visions that you show people, do you show them the truth? Harper thinks that you show nothing but lies."
"Harper does not want to see. It makes him feel bad."
"Feel bad about what?" I said.
"About the lady of course." He rolled his eyes.
"Because he misses her?"
"No. Because of what he did."
"I don't understand," I frowned. "What did he do?"
"Can you read to me now?" he pleaded. "Garrick brought me some new books. There's one about a giant. But he isn't a scary giant. And there's one about Sherlock Holmes. He was a detective. Garrick says he was the most brilliant detective that ever lived. But I think I want to read the one about the giant first. Please."
I smiled at the way he said please, a little fake-whine backed up with an over-exaggerated fluttering of long eyelashes.
"I will read to you, I promise. Just a few more questions, okay?"
His shoulders sagged a little. "Okaaaaaay," he sighed.
"These things you show people, do you see them all the time? When you're not touching people?"
He looked back down at the car in his hand, turning it over and over. "Sometimes it's better not to look at them."
"Why?"
He didn't reply.
"Why Lucius?" I pressed.
He didn't lift his head, but he glanced left and right as if checking to see if we were alone. "They like it," he whispered. "They want you to see them. And for some of them, that's okay. Because they just want you to help them. But the others...."
"What others?" I said.
"I can't tell you."
"They won't hurt you Lucius."
"No. They won't hurt me." His beautiful blue eyes met mine once again and I felt the blood rushing to my head and for a moment I couldn't breathe because the realisation of his words crushed all the air out of my lungs.
"But they will hurt me."
Lucius said nothing but he didn't have to. I could feel it. I had felt it ever since I had seen Jenny and felt her cold touch on my skin. That touch had never left me, not for one second. It was as if her haunting had burned me, leaving my flesh and my soul forever scarred.
"Why?" I gasped. "Why me?"
"Because you are the way."
"You keep saying that but I don't know what you mean!" I cried. "The way to what? I don't understand what I've got to do with any of this. I was this just normal person. I had a husband, a job, a life. Then Harper came along and I became this and suddenly I'm in a whole different world. A world with vampires and Varúlfur and blood and death. I'm fighting wars and hearing these bloody ghosts who won't leave me alone! I'm nothing special, Lucius. I'm just me."
"No. You are the way. And that is why they want to hurt you. They will all want to hurt you."
I clutched a hand to my throat, feeling the airways tighten and I massaged the skin there, trying to quell the rising panic. "Okay," I breathed out. "Okay. Did something happen to me when I became a vampire? Because I never heard their voices before. I was just ordinary. Very, very ordinary."
"You have always been the way."
"How can that be? It doesn't make any sense, Lucius. Please tell me." I stared at him, wide-eyed.
The ghosts were congregating in the walls again, rushing through brick and plaster, their voices growing louder by the second. I found myself shifting forward, not wanting to get too close for fear they would reach out and drag me in.
"Some people just are, Megan." Then with his head cocked to one side, he smiled sweetly. "Would you like me to show you?"
That question again. Spoken so innocently as if he wasn't offering to drown me in my nightmares, as if he wasn't offering to pull me under and leave me in darkness.
Except this time, I knew I needed to dare the dark.
I reached out a trembling hand.
"Afterwards, will you read to me? You did promise," he pouted.
"Yes," I whispered desperately. "Please."
"Awesome!" he grinned excitedly and I felt his tiny fingers creep, creep into my palm.