For the first time since we started this wild goose chase, Ava looks like she has no idea what to do. None of us are sure what to say or do, but we're all pretty hungry, so we drive around aimlessly for a while until we find a small diner to recuperate in. Ava's been almost completely silent since she had the door slammed in her face, and I'm imagining up funeral arrangements for my inevitable death when something suddenly occurs to me.
"Would your folks have a photo of this family or anything?" I question, to which Ava raises her shoulders in an I don't know motion from across the booth we're sitting in. "I'm just thinking, you said this family is put off by other spirit talking families, right? Maybe she recognised you, and decided she couldn't be bothered to deal with it."
"I've never met them, she couldn't recognise me."
"You look a lot like your mum, she might recognise your features." I shrug. "Either that, or she might just be astronomically racist."
"Hm, yeah... yeah, whoa, you might be onto something."
The surprise in her voice throws me a little. Is it really that bizarre for me to have a good theory? I hesitate. Yeah, it is a bit.
"Even if Mum doesn't have a photo, I imagine she can find one through friends or something," Ava says as she brings out her phone.
Huh. Look at me having good ideas. I'm evolving. Even Jamie looks relatively impressed with me. More so than with his cheeseburger, the contents of which have almost all fallen out of its bun. We wait impatiently for around ten minutes until Kato replies, and the second she does, Ava's expression turns from indifference splashed with a dash of concern, to anger. She holds her phone up to show me the photo her mother sent, and slap bang in the middle of a large group of people is the old woman who opened the door. What a snake.
If a car could angrily stomp, then Ava would make it do that as we drive back towards the terraced houses. This time, I suggest I accompany her to the door, mainly because I'm slightly concerned Ava might try to square up with the woman if she answers again. This time, when we knock, the door doesn't open. Instead, a voice shouts at us from behind it.
"I told you, that family doesn't live here!"
"You lied," Ava hits back, her voice as calm as always despite her perfectly justified frustration. "You're Mary Gruffudd."
There's a brief silence, then in a deep Scottish accent, "I know perfectly well who I am, young lady, I don't need you--"
"Please, we need your help," Ava pleads.
Suddenly, the door flings open, and Mary's face is inches away from ours. "Whatever it is, I don't want to know. You bloody English spirit talkers are obsessed with what everyone else is doing, and if we want to stay out of it and live our lives in peace, it's our right to do so."
With that, she goes to slam the door, but I shoot my foot out to jam it before it closes.
"It's about the Brennan family," I say, deadpan, but it's largely an act because holy shit, my foot feels like it's been yanked from my ankle, and all I can do is wonder what the hell that woman is putting in her body to be able to pull a heavy wooden door with that degree of ferocity.
I don't regret it though because after another brief silence, the door is released, and Mary grunts what sounds like a fine. The door swishes open, but Mary has already started drifting towards a room at the end of the short hallway as it does so, so I'm momentarily confused. I quickly realise I'm the one opening it, only I'm not touching the handle either. I guess I can add excruciating pain to my list of things that trigger my telekinesis.
Ava waves at the car to signal to everyone that it's safe, and they clamber out of it as we step into the house. It's somehow even smaller on the inside than it looked, but that may be due to the fact every inch of wall is covered in some kind of homemade art piece, or clock, or bright wallpaper, or just general junk. Before we enter the room Mary stepped into, Ava tugs my shirt back to make me stop.
"Don't tell them what you can do."
Before I can question it, Ava's stepped into the small living room. Okay. Bit weird. Mary emerges from another door at the end of the living room carrying two mugs, and hands one to Ava, then me. Hey, maybe she's not as mean as I thought. I take a sip as she orders us to sit down on one of the mismatching living room sofas, and it hits me that the mug is filled with coffee. I'm too terrified of this woman to even consider mentioning the fact I don't like coffee, so flash what's likely a painfully unconvincing smile in her direction.
"Who the fuck are they?" a voice with a thick Welsh accent croaks from the corner of the room, and it startles me so much that I almost spill the contents of my mug all over the floral sofa.
Sitting on an armchair in one of the back corners of the room is an older man, whose face I can barely make out considering the bloke's lurking in the shadows like some kind of vampire.
"You know, the bloody Madaki family. Well, no idea about him and whoever else has come with them."
As the rest of the Scooby-Doo gang beign walking into the room, Mary insists they all sit down before she returns to what I assume is the kitchen to make more coffee. For someone who seems to want to murder everyone she encounters, she's very hospitable.
"It's something to do with the Brennans," Mary calls from the kitchen.
"What? Who?" the old man shouts back.
"The Brennans, you pillock!"
"Who?"
"The bloody Brennans!"
I really want to laugh, but also don't want to be murdered, so stare into my mug to hide my sniggering. Ava, Tom and I are cramped on one sofa, while Carmen and Jamie sit on the other. Annabel and Lucy are sitting on the floor.
"Dead, that lot," the old man suddenly chirps up, his face poking out of the shadows for a second. "A bloody shame, mind you, not as nosy as you English lot."
"Felix is a Brennan," Ava replies as she nods to me, so I guess we're jumping in at the deep end.
"Piss off," is all the man says in response. "Boy's got you fooled, bach." He cranes his neck towards the kitchen. "Oi, Mary, never guess who this boy's claiming to be!"
"What's that?" her voice shouts back.
"A bloody Brennan!"
"Piss off," Mary repeats as she enters the room with more mugs, and I know I should probably dislike these two, but I'm rapidly starting to love them. "What's his name?"
"Felix," I answer this time. "My dad's name was Daniel, you'd be more likely to know him I'd guess, but I don't remember--"
"Bloody Daniel. We always told Roisin not to let him marry that English woman--a right girl she was, with that god-awful Manchester--"
"Leeds," shadow-armchair man interrupts.
"It was an awful accent, whatever it was. I suppose she was fine, nice enough, but if you ask me, it's not a coincidence that she popped out a sproglet so soon after their marriage. All a bit rushed, if you know what I mean." Mary raises her eyebrows as she tuts. She shakes her head as she sits down next to Carmen, then focuses her attention back to me. "I thought their kids were older. What did you say your name was?"
"Felix," I repeat. "You're probably thinking of my sister; she's older--was older."
Mary's eyes narrow as she scans every inch of my body, then nods to who I've assumed is her husband. He leans forward in his chair, and the shadow completely lifts from his sagged face. He shuts his eyes, and within a few seconds, Annabel suddenly perks up from the carpeted floor, and starts stammering. Lucy is watching her with wild eyes.
"He just--I just," is all Annabel's able to get out.
"Huh, maybe you're not bullshitting us," the man says slowly, his eyes now opened.
"Felix, he just--he just talked to me, but--but in my head. I don't... Kato said that's not possible with guides, I don't... What?"
"What did you just do to her?" I demand, my mood instantly switching from slightly amused to straight-out aggressive.
"Relax, lad, you never met another spirit talker or something?" Mary snaps. She turns behind her to call to the man. "He has that bloody accent too, Carwyn, poor thing."
I shoot my eyes to Ava next to me, who's quick to reassure me. "Carwyn can interact with guides, it's one of his abilities." There must still be confusion slapped onto my face, so Ava expands further. "Only telepathically. He can't read minds, he has to make a connection first, but it's like, whoa, he can converse without him or the spirit having to physically speak."
"Could've sworn your lot were all dead," Carwyn says. "Is that why you're here? Was that séance story about them being murdered bullshit?"
"No, not exactly, it's just me. Who's left, I mean." I shift in my seat. "We were actually hoping you might know more about that. It's a long story, but I can't remember anything before they died, basically, so I'm completely useless with it. We just figured that with your family being one of the few mine had much contact with, you could shed some light onto anything that seemed suspicious before it all happened."
Mary and Carwyn are both silent, and this time, it's for a while. I can't decide whether they're contemplating whether or not they should tell us something, or whether they're searching their minds for something to reveal in the first place. I catch Jamie's eye for a moment from across the room, and he looks terrified. Carmen's fixated on Carwyn, while Tom's staring up at the ceiling and mouthing something to himself while smiling, so I don't dare open that can of worms. We probably should've dropped this lot off somewhere while Ava and I dealt with this.
"It was a little... strange." Mary's voice catches me out of the blue, and I focus all my attention onto her. She combs her fingers through her wiry hair. "We weren't in constant contact with one another, but I'd always call to check up on things a few times a month, as did Rachel with me." She must notice the blank expression on my face, so clarifies. "Daniel's sister, so your aunt, I suppose. Roisin, your grandmother, couldn't work a bloody microwave, let alone a phone, so I always contacted the Brennans through Rachel. She started calling less, though, and she became quite paranoid--Well, I guess she might not have been paranoid, in the end."
"About what?" It's Carmen who asks.
"She was worried about someone turning, well..." Mary's voice trails off.
"She thought someone she knew was turning dark," Carwyn announces from his chair in the corner of the room. "Bloody woman would disappear off the face of the earth for weeks, taking her whole family with her, only to call at some ridiculous hour of the night to ramble some crazy stuff about not trusting people. She'd just talk about this person becoming dangerous and powerful, and all kinds of shit."
"Who?" Ava asks, and I'm not sure I've ever heard her voice sound so hard.
Mary shakes her head. "She refused to tell me. Every time. Refused."
"Was there anything else?" Ava questions.
"Not really. I doubt this has much to do with anything, but I don't think Daniel got along very well with everyone," Mary says, focusing solely on me. "Roisin didn't like the way he was bringing up the kids. She'd always rant about it, said he was purposely trying to stifle their abilities, which of course pissed Roisin off with your lot being non-connection talkers. Always a bit of a show off, she was."
I want to question what the hell that means, but decide against it considering Mary almost kicked me out after I questioned how Carwyn's ability worked earlier. I can ask Ava later.
"She was head of the family, so everyone else agreed with her. Well, Rachel stayed close to him, as far as I could tell. Didn't half seem to cause a rift, though. Roisin didn't even reckon Daniel's youngest was a spirit talker, which she blamed on his stifling."
I glance at Ava, but she's already subtly shaking her head when my eyes land on her, so I say nothing. Mary has run out of things to say, and considering how cold our initial interaction with her was, she's been completely open with us.
Within the next five minutes, we're leaving.
"I assume you've tried the Murray family?" Mary asks as we begin to walk down the steps towards Ava's car.
Ava turns back around to face the house, a vacant look on her face. "Who?"
"That's a no, then." Mary rolls her eyes. "Another Irish family. Thick as thieves with the Brennans, they were. Not spirit talkers, just friends who knew about it all."
Ava is jotting down their address on her phone before anyone can even think about asking anymore questions. The address is an Irish one, and Mary doesn't have any other contact details, so I've got no idea how this is going to work. Lucy got bored halfway through the discussion, so she's already waiting in the car for us when we all pile in, which I can't exactly blame her for because she's probably way more interested in finding out whether or not she was violently murdered than anything to do with my personal qualms.
"So," I say before Ava's even started the car. "What's a non-connection talker, what did angry Mary mean when she was talking about turning dark, why couldn't I tell them what I can do, and most importantly, are there any changes to my odds of being kidnapped, and potentially slaughtered, by demons?"
"Whoa, you're getting better at saving questions for later, well done," Ava says with a smile as we begin to drive away from the Gruffudd's house, and I feel slightly patronised. "Okay, so non-connection talkers don't have to connect with a spirit in order to communicate with it, which is pretty groovy. Unlike how a spirit has to touch me so I can speak to it, or how Annabel would've had to allow Carwyn into her head to speak with him just then, non-connection talkers can communicate with a spirit whether they like it or not, or vice versa. Yours and two other families are--uh, were the only three non-connection talkers."
Ava pauses for a moment as she stops the car to let someone cross the road. She clicks her tongue.
"I didn't say anything about your abilities to be on the safe side. We don't necessarily know who to trust, and what you can do... Well, whoa, it's kind of a big deal. I'm pretty certain they're groovy though, the Gruffudd family."
"How'd you know?" I query.
"I don't, for sure, but they did seem genuinely clueless about your family's deaths, and certainly about you. They didn't know your name beforehand, or seem to know your mother's name, how many kids your parents had, or anything that intimate. Mary commented on how they were led to believe your parents' youngest child had no abilities, and she didn't even seem to realise that you were the youngest child. They're either safe to trust, or brilliant liars."
"Do you think there's something in that?" Annabel pipes up from the sixth chair in the boot. "Like maybe your abilities only flared up a little before the accident, or maybe even during."
I repeat what Annabel said to Ava.
"Maybe," Ava replies. "But I doubt it. I'm fairly certain at this point that your abilities are central to why all this happened in the first place."
A twang of something painful stabs me in the gut, but I brush it aside.
"Turning dark..." Ava continues. "I suppose the best way to explain it is like, whoa, good and bad people. You get good and bad spirit talkers, but when a spirit talker is bad, it's really bad. They generally start using their abilities to pursue evil goals. It's practically unheard of though, as good values are ingrained into spirit talkers from birth, and it takes a lot of power to actually achieve anything. I've only heard of one case before, and that guy ended up getting killed by a poltergeist before he could get much done."
My mind flashes back to what Clara said about the other spirit talker she'd met who could see spirits. Is that what happened there?
"So what?" Jamie joins the conversation from the backseat. "A spirit talker turned evil, then set out for Felix's family's blood when he was a child, and now has come back to finish the job?"
"Maybe," Ava replies simply. "Or Felix was that spirit talker."
#
A/N: Yikes. Curse that pesky survivor's guilt.
What do you guys make of the Gruffudd family, and their insight into what the heck happened to Felix's family?