Nothing.
I take a few steps back and survey the house. The only car in the driveway is Finn’s, parked the same way we left it, so straight you could use it to do trigonometry, P-plates attached at perfect right-angles. Unless his parents and little brother returned and whisked Tam away on some kind of Blacklin family Christmas adventure, they’re still gone. Everything looks just the same as it did when Finn and I left last night (how can it only have been yesterday?) to go face down the Riders at the Summer Door.
But Tam has to be here. Whoever’s brainwashing people into forgetting his existence made sure he has nowhere else to go.
Unless … he’s out with that fairy, helping with the brainwashing.
Or searching for Emily.
Or the fairy that’s doing the brainwashing is Emily, and he’s out carrying her skirt for her or something while she screws with the minds of everyone in the whole town.
And maybe they’re almost finished. It’s not a big town. How long could it take? Maybe they’re on their way back here right now, so Emily can roll up her sleeves and put on her best murder outfit. Maybe she’s behind me right now, and her fingers are reaching for my neck, and –
I wheel around. There’s no one there.
Chill, Linford. Breathe. Think.
Okay. Even if Tam’s not here right now – and maybe he’s off doing something as innocent as, I don’t know, buying milk, not everything has to be a disaster, Pearl – surely he has to return. And I can wait for him.
I head for the lattice around the side. I dry my sweaty hands on my shirt as best as I can, wedge my wallet and phone in the back pocket of my jeans and my keys in my bra, and climb up to Finn’s window.
If Tam was smart, he would have locked it, or jammed it, or covered the window-ledge in spikes and broken glass or something, but he hasn’t. He hasn’t even put the flyscreen back in. The window’s closed, but it slides open easily when I shove at it.
And I know immediately, even though the window-ledge wasn’t covered in spikes and broken glass, and even though I didn’t set off a million Tomb Raider–style booby-traps, and even though a giant net didn’t swallow me up and suspend me from the ceiling the second I put my feet on Finn’s bedroom floor, that Tam’s been living here, because he didn’t make the bed.
Finn Blacklin is the neatest person in the entire world. He always, always makes the bed.
I recognise the sheets. They’re the same ones Finn and I slept on that one night we had together, navy blue with little white pinstripes. I laughed at him as he stripped the bed and shoved the sheets in a ball into the washing machine. We’re going to go and fight some unholy hell monsters tonight and you’re doing laundry, I said.
I’m not going to be the kind of guy that brings his girlfriend home after a long night of hell monster fighting and asks her to sleep with him on dirty sheets, he said, closing the washing machine with his foot and leaning over to kiss the corner of my mouth before pouring the detergent into the little compartment.
It was such a small thing. Such a simple little thing. But for a second, I wanted to cry, because this boy – this boy …
I hope you’re prepared to be doing a lot of laundry then, I said lightly, and he turned around and smiled, and I reached up to kiss him, and he kissed me back, and then his hands were on my waist and he lifted me and set me on top of the washing machine, and I wrapped my legs around his hips and tangled my fingers in his hair, that impossibly beautiful long dark hair of his, and somehow he got a hand free and turned the machine on, and I laughed into his neck as it vibrated beneath me, and said I can’t believe I’m so bad at this that you can still think about laundry, and he said Trust me, Linford, you’re not bad at this, and …
Tam must have come back here, after he was done threatening me and stitching up my shoulder. Or maybe even before that. Maybe when Finn commanded him to walk away he walked all the way here, and while I was in fairyland choosing Phil and calling the prince a liar and abandoning the best boy in the world, he was here, taking the sheets out of the washing machine.
He must have put them in the dryer. He wouldn’t have had time to hang them on the line. Then he must have brought them upstairs. Made the bed. Taken a nap.
Taken a nap on the sheets that belonged to Finn and me and no one else.
And then he didn’t make the bed.
I’ve torn the sheets off before I’ve even realised what I’m doing. I fall to the floor and I press them to my nose, desperately hoping that somehow they still smell like Finn, but they don’t, they smell mostly like detergent, and why does Finn have to be so neat? Why does he have to be so good at things like laundry when I just want to be able to smell him and feel like he’s here with me?
Is sobbing on the floor of Finn’s bedroom while clutching his sheets to your nose getting you anywhere, Pearl? Is it going to help you get Finn back?
No. Pull yourself together.
I peer into rooms as I walk down the corridor. Finn’s parents’ room and Matty’s room look untouched. The bathroom isn’t – Tam’s hung his towel to dry over the top of the shower screen, but left the bathmat crumpled on the floor, just like he used to do when he was living with us, which drove Shad absolutely up the wall – and there’s a couple of muddy footprints on the hall carpet and the stairs.
I’m trying to decide where the best place to wait for him is when I hear it.
I wait a few seconds, and I’ve almost entirely written it off on my imagination when the sound comes again, a loud thump, coming from outside.
Not sure whether I’m being completely ridiculous or not, I slide the biggest knife out of the block in the kitchen and clutch it in my fist. I crane my neck to see if I can see anything out the kitchen window, but either I’m too short or the design of Finn’s house has too many walls, or –
‘Don’t move,’ Tam says from behind me.
He’s so close I can feel his breath on my neck. Finn’s breath, really, because it’s Finn’s body he’s wearing now, but I have never, ever, in the entire time I’ve known Finn, even when I hated him, felt frightened to be around him.
I’m scared now, though. My heart is pounding so loud it sounds like a drumbeat in my ears.
‘I just want to talk,’ I say.
‘Put down the knife.’
‘How about if you back up a few paces, and let me turn around, and then I’ll put it down?’
Tam grabs my wrist and bends it back so sharply that I’m not sure if the crack I hear is the knife hitting the floor or the bone breaking. ‘You will do what I tell you to do,’ he says. ‘Is that clear?’
His hands travel briskly down my body, patting me down for weapons. ‘Scared I’ll hurt you?’ I say. ‘A big dude like you scared that I’ll come at you and I’ll win?’
‘I have not survived by being proud. I know what you are capable of. Turn around.’
I obey, my hips bumping against his. I’m not tall enough to stand nose to nose with him, and he looms over me, his arms steel brackets around my body as he rests his hands on the countertop on either side, trapping me.
‘Why are you here?’ he asks.
‘I came to talk.’
‘There is nothing you can say that I am interested in hearing.’