The smell of petrol and stale cigarette smoke are the first things I notice when I come to. I open my eyes but see nothing. I’m shrouded in complete darkness. There’s music playing somewhere and the sound of a car engine vibrates through my body.
I’m in the boot of a car, my hands tied together in front of me and tape across my mouth. I scream and kick, but the music drowns me out. The driver swerves and slams on the brakes time and time again, all the while I keep trying to find freedom.
There is none to find.
Hours pass. The fumes below make me nauseous. When the car finally stops and the engine is turned off, I await anxiously for the boot to be opened and some fresh air to finally reach my lungs.
The slam of the door closing rocks the car. The gravel below their feet crunch with every step. My mind races with suspicions of who has me, and prayers that everyone else is okay. Then, he talks. Not to me, but to someone else.
‘She’s in here,’ he says, banging the boot. I don’t recognise the voice. ‘No one saw me take her. I knocked out the other one, Amara, and snatched this one up before anyone could see.’
He puts a key in the lock and turns it. When the lid opens, my kidnapper peers down at me. He’s in his mid-twenties with black spikey hair and a little stubble on his jaw. He has a cigarette between his yellow teeth. I have no idea who he is.
Then another man steps closer and looks down at me. My blood runs cold as he grins.
‘Miss Hooper,’ Grayson sighs smugly, looking me up and down before laughing at me. ‘Don’t you look pretty. I have been searching absolutely everywhere for you.’
Grayson reaches out and grabs hold of my bound wrists. I yell and try to get him off, kicking and thrashing as violently as I can. But I’m hauled out of the boot and held tightly in his arms.
He turns me so we both face my kidnapper and Grayson keeps me pinned to his chest as I continue to try and get free. ‘My orders were to inform me of their location and to follow them,’ he says to the stranger. ‘Not to take her yourself. Where are the others? My brother? Collins? Connor Quinn and the annoying brunette?’
The driver shrugs and takes a long puff on his cigarette. ‘Dunno. I was on my own, saw an opportunity and took it. I saw them by complete luck, helping a young girl in an alley. I followed them, just like you ordered us to do if they were seen, and when I could, I snatched her and drove her here.’
‘How do you know they didn’t follow you?’
‘They didn’t. I was careful.’
That makes my heart sink. Am I alone out here with them then?
‘And why here?’ Grayson looks around this empty carpark, lit only by a single lamp that flickers intermittently.
‘They were talking about this place. Said that something was hidden here.’
I look over my shoulder and sure enough, we’re at the Starlight hotel. Panic grips me.
‘What’s hidden here?’ Hendrix asks. I spin my head and see him standing just behind Grayson. He doesn’t even look at me.
‘Something about a necklace.’
‘Really? They said that?’ Grayson asks excitedly. ‘They said the necklace was here? At this hotel?’
My kidnapper nods and tosses the butt of his cigarette on the floor.
‘That’s what they said.’
Grayson spins me so our fronts are crushed together. He looks down at me with a victorious grin. ‘Isn’t that handy.’
I start hurling threats at him, but the tape over my mouth makes it nothing more than muffled nonsense. Grayson lifts his head and returns his attention to the kidnapper.
‘I appreciate your efforts.’
‘Surely I have earnt more than your appreciation?’ he scoffs. ‘I’ve proven myself, sir. Please, let me help you more! I could be your right-hand man. I could be-’
Grayson laughs hard and shakes his head. ‘Because of you, my brother and his friends are still free. They’re going to come for her which means I will be looking over my shoulder every second of every day. Your orders were to notify me of their location and follow them until I could get there. Now, I have no way of forcing this lovely creature in my arms to do whatever I want her to do, because I have no one she loves enough to maim in front of her if she disobeys me.’ Grayson glances at Hendrix. ‘Kill him. The way a vampire should kill a worthless piece of scum.’
‘What?’ My kidnapper gasps. ‘No!’
I see Hendrix bare his teeth and lunge for the man. Grayson won’t let me turn. He keeps me close to his chest. But I hear the scream. The tearing of flesh. The blood gurgling in the man’s throat. The desperate pleas for mercy. It’s not a slow death. It’s not a painless one either. When the shrieking ends, he’s dumped in the boot.
I look up at Grayson with wide and frightened eyes.
He leans into my face, his smile reaching ear to ear. ‘Let’s go get your mother’s necklace, shall we?’
We head towards the hotel.
The same neon light flickers overhead, just as it did the night Gabriel and I took refuge here after we chased down Toby in the snow on Christmas day. The closer we get, the more I start to sense the necklace. Exactly as I did when I went to get Rebecca’s ring.
It’s in there.
I’m shoved forwards, towards the entrance. As soon as we’re inside, we see a desk. Sat at that desk is the same elderly man that I met last time. He lifts his gaze and pales at the sight of me being dragged in, bound, with duct tape over my mouth. I try to scream for him to run. As he lifts the receiver of his telephone, Grayson points a gun at him and orders him to put it down. He drops it from his fingers and raises his hands by his head.
Hendrix pulls out a photograph from his pocket and slams it down on his desk.
‘Do you know this man?’ he demands, pointing at Gabriel’s image. The old man nods. ‘How?’
‘H-he has a room here,’ he stutters.
‘Number?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Key.’ Hendrix holds out his hand. The old man hands over the key, and Grayson shoots him in the face as a thank you.
I scream and lash out at Grayson, furious and horrified at killing such an elderly and defenseless person. But he just drags me down the hall without a word and without much difficulty.
We turn the corner and at the end of the hall is Gabriel’s permanent room. My heart races. My mouth dries. My lungs and throat burn with my ferocious yelling.
Hendrix puts the key in the lock and turns it. The door opens with a creak and the light from the hall sneaks into the room. Grayson maneuvers me inside and flicks on the light. It all looks exactly the same as it did when I was here last. The books and bottles remain on the table. The bed sheets are still creased from the night I spent here with Gabriel, and call me crazy, but I can smell him. His scent is in the walls.
As Hendrix searches the room, Grayson kicks the door closed and tosses me onto the bed. As soon as I land, I sit up and lunge for the door. Grayson catches me by the ends of my hair and I’m thrown back onto the mattress.
‘Move again,’ he warns, pointing the gun at me. ‘I’ll shoot your knee caps off. You hear me, Miss Hooper?’ He cocks the gun and waits with a raised brow.
I stay put.
Hendrix confirms the room is secure so Grayson lowers his weapon.
‘So, this is where my brother used to sneak off to. And according to our dead friend in the boot, it’s where he hid the necklace too.’ Grayson watches me with a smug grin. ‘How is it Gabriel has your mothers necklace, hmm?’
I can’t speak through the tape but I get the impression it was a mocking, rhetorical question. Yes, Gabriel lied to me about the necklace and Grayson knows that. He turns to the room.
‘Now,’ he sighs. ‘Where oh where could it be?’
I feel the magic the necklace is producing. I know exactly where it is. Even if I couldn’t sense it with my Sensativa, knowing Gabriel and knowing how he taught Toby to hide things of importance, I’m pretty sure I know where he’s hidden it.
Sure enough, Grayson heads to the windowsill where a dead plant withers in a small black pot. He shifts the dirt aside and recovers a key. After a few certain strides across the room, he pulls the chest of drawers away from the wall and finds that a square of carpet has been cut loose. He lifts it and prizes up a loose floor board.
‘So predictable,’ he mutters, pulling out a chest. He looks at me triumphantly. ‘Shall we take a look inside?’
Using the key, he opens it up and examines its contents silently for a moment. Then, he scoffs and shakes his head.
The first thing he pulls out is a pregnancy test. He places it on the bed and gestures for me to take it. I lift it up, my hands still bound together in front of me, and look at it. The window of the test is blank.
The next thing he hands over is a red jumper. The same red jumper that was hanging on the wardrobe door last time I was here. Gabriel said it belonged to a friend. A friend he may have loved and that was now gone. Holding it in my hands and feeling it on my skin seems familiar.
‘What do we have here?’ Grayson ponders aloud. He has hold of a passport. Opening it up makes his eyes widen in surprise. Those surprised eyes then focus on me. ‘Sophie Roberts? Really? And what’s this?’ Inside are some other documents. He examines them all before handing them all to me. He watches me for my reaction so I’m careful not to show any. I reach over, open up the passport and see my picture. The name on it is Sophie Roberts. Tucked inside is a fake birth certificate and two plane tickets. Both are one way to Japan. And both dated more than two years previously.
‘What is this?’ Grayson asks, pointing to the items surrounding me. He glances back into the box. ‘Oh, now, this is interesting.’ He reaches in and pulls out a book. Not just any book. It’s a copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. He opens it up. Tucked inside the pages, tied together with string, is a small bundle of papers. After a few moments of him looking through them all, he gets to his feet and sits beside me. Then he hands the whole lot over.
The book isn’t just any old copy. It’s the copy I lost all those years ago. It’s my mother’s book, or rather, my father’s book. The doodles I drew as a child are on its pages. My eyes brim with tears. Those tears spill over when I see what the pile of papers actually are. They’re photographs of Gabriel and me. More tears tumble down my cheeks as I look at the pictures.
Me sat on the bed, stuffing my face with food. Me, sitting by the window, reading. Gabriel and me beaming into the camera. He and Toby truly are brothers. They both hid me away like a secret. The more I look, the fog starts to lift. The black-hole that stole the events of the missing six-weeks explode into colour and my memories start flooding back. All thoughts of the necklace disappear. Grayson and Hendrix may as well be a million miles away.
Gabriel was telling the truth. I did know him before I met him at The Orchard.
I knew him very well.
