Chapter Thirty-Nine
The whole school was
in mourning. If Milo Asprey hadn’t been the most popular boy in
school, he still appeared to have had a lot of friends. Certainly,
if ‘Milo’s Wall’ was anything to go by, it looked like almost every
Ravenwood student had been touched by his presence. The Wall was a
long noticeboard just outside the refectory, usually only used for
notes relating to the next meeting of the chess club or posters
advertising a concert by the school band. But somehow, without any
official assignment of the space required, by lunchtime on Friday,
the wall had become a shrine to the boy’s memory. Pictures, cards,
poems, even some elaborate and presumably time-consuming artworks
had appeared, eulogising Milo’s humour, sensitivity and all-round
brilliance. The school had caught on fast and announced that
anything pinned up on the wall would later become part of a book of
remembrance for Milo’s family. The wall also had the knock-on
effect of making Layla hugely popular by proxy. Previously seen as
Davina’s bitchy and cruel sidekick, her bedside vigil as Milo had
fallen ill, slipped into a coma and died had transformed her into a
tragic heroine with hitherto unseen depths. Even girls who had been
on the receiving end of her sniping put-downs had been offering
their condolences.
April had not been
one of them. Leaving aside her feelings regarding Layla and her
sharp nails, she was still finding Milo’s death very difficult to
deal with. She had tried, time and again, to convince herself that
it was pure coincidence, that Milo had caught some tropical disease
just after their kiss, whatever Gabriel had claimed, but in her
heart she knew it wasn’t true. She knew she was responsible. Of
course, she hadn’t planned it, hadn’t known that she was anything
special __ let alone a Fury - but she had caused Milo’s death
nevertheless. It wasn’t murder, but it was manslaughter and April
felt it deeply. She’d enjoyed their kiss and had been disappointed
to be interrupted; after all, Milo had been about the only one at
the party to be nice to her. And now she’d killed him. She walked
around in a gloom, dragging a black cloud with her wherever she
went. A casual onlooker would think that April Dunne had simply
been moved by Milo’s passing, possibly feeling the tragedy more
keenly because of her own recent loss, which was of course true.
But April was also struggling with feelings of powerlessness. She
had been moved down to London against her will, her father had been
murdered and she was failing to find out who was responsible. And
now, it seemed, she had another role thrust upon her, a role she
had no stomach for. She felt even more isolated by Caro’s seemingly
boundless enthusiasm for the ‘project’, as she insisted on calling
it, not least because she thought catching William Dunne’s killer
was a secondary goal, and because she had no one else but Fee to
talk to - and she still wasn’t sure if she could even trust her
best friend. She hadn’t heard from Gabriel since she’d thrown him
out two days ago. Par for the course,
she thought. But then April hadn’t tried to contact him either, and
it wasn’t really because of their quarrel. After all, it wasn’t
Gabriel’s fault she had the birthmark and, truthfully, Gabriel was
probably the one person who would actually understand everything
she was going through. But she still couldn’t call him.
Not that I’ve even got his number.
Maybe she was being too sensitive, maybe she was burying her head
in the sand, maybe she simply didn’t want to face it; she didn’t
want to be a Fury, whatever the hell that was. She fleetingly
wondered if she should go to her mother or her grandfather and ask
them point blank if they knew anything about it: it had crossed her
mind that their whispering and bickering about her ‘heritage’ might
have something to do with this Fury thing, but she had almost no
expectation of getting a straight answer from either of
them—they’ve kept it to themselves so far, so
why would that change now I’ve accidentally killed someone?
__ and besides, what if it wasn’t about her being a Fury? She didn’t want to
open another can of worms if she didn’t have to, and either way,
April didn’t need to bear that extra weight of responsibility on
her shoulders at a time when she just wanted to curl up in bed and
hide from everyone and everything.
April picked up her
fork and stabbed it into her muffin. ‘I hate cake,’ she
said.
Caro raised her
eyebrows. She had brought April out to Americano on their way home
from school in an effort to cheer her up.
‘Now that’s just
silly,’ she said, enthusiastically biting into her pain au
chocolat. ‘Cake is one of the greatest inventions of all
time.’
It made April smile
despite herself. She was very lucky to have such a good friend and,
she supposed, the Milo business did have its positive side. By and
large, people were leaving her alone, which was infinitely
preferable to having them gossip about her, plus she had been able
to dodge Miss Holden and her ‘little talk’ by claiming she was too
upset. April wasn’t the only one benefiting from the situation
either. Davina, predictably, had also made the most of events,
coming in to school wearing a classic black Chanel sleeveless dress
and dark glasses which she would periodically lift to dab at her
eyes with a lace handkerchief - and where Davina led, the Faces and
indeed the rest of the school were sure to follow; you would have
been forgiven for thinking that Ravenwood had a strict uniform
code, with the emphasis on black. The one flash of colour in all
this gloom was, equally predictably, provided by Caro who
maintained her status as the school rebel by wearing an ‘ironic’
purple hoody.
‘I thought we were
supposed to be allowing ourselves to be recruited,’ said April
moodily. ‘The Faces aren’t going to want anything to do with you if
you keep this up.’
April was now slowly
picking her muffin apart, leaving all the blueberries in a pile on
the plate.
‘Well, that’s where
you’re wrong,’ said Caro, pointing at her top with a fork. ‘This
purple monstrosity is my ticket to the big time.’
April shook her head
in confusion.
‘It’s basic
psychology, m’dear. If I joined in with Milo-Fest and started going
for manicures with Layla, the Suckers would smell a rat, wouldn’t
they? By keeping up my outsider persona, I come across as more
genuine and they’re more likely to want to draw me
in.’
‘Hold up,’ said
April. ‘Are we calling the vamps “Suckers” now?’
‘I thought it had a
certain something.’ Caro grinned. ‘Plus if we’re overheard, we
could be referring to anyone: teachers, boys, anyone.’
April nodded her
approval. ‘I like it.’
‘Anyway, it’s
worked,’ she said, reaching into her bag and pulling out a gold
envelope. ‘One ticket to the Osbourne Winter Ball, hand-delivered
by Head Sucker, Davina Osbourne.’
‘No way!’ April
hugged her friend excitedly. This, at least, was some good news.
She had been dreading attending another posh party alone, where she
would feel like an imposter, an outsider - and more than that, she
would be an interloper, seeing what she could find out, what clues
she could pick up, all the time putting herself in
danger.
‘Oh Caro, that’s
brilliant - how did you swing it?’
‘I casually dropped
into conversation that I had already been offered places at
Cambridge, John Hopkins and MIT. There was a slight pause while
Davina went off to check that it was true, then all of a sudden she
was eyeing up my jugular and discussing cocktail
dresses.’
‘Well, that’s
excellent work,’ said April. ‘Maybe we’re getting
somewhere.’
‘Yes, and that’s not
all,’ said Caro. ‘I spent last night trying to track down the
Disappeared.’
‘The Disappeared’
were six Ravenwood pupils who had abruptly vanished over the past
few years, some supposedly to go overseas, some to different
schools.
‘I’ve tried all the
schools you could think of and asked other people in their classes.
So far, no one has actually heard from them. Not even a Christmas
card.’
April sipped her
coffee and tried not to despair. They had to catch a break soon.
She’d got nowhere with her own research into her father’s death.
The diary had yielded very little beyond her father’s appointment
with Mr Gill and she still had no idea why he hadn’t turned up at
the bookshop. Her mother had been out with Grandpa Thomas on the
day of her dad’s death, so she was no help with information about
his movements. The trail seemed to be going colder and colder. Even
her research into the Vampire Regent and the Furies had barely got
off the ground. Despite endless websites dedicated to vampire lore,
she hadn’t come across a single mention of either an internal
hierarchy or any sort of ancient nemesis. According to received
wisdom, all vampires were rogue vampires, roaming about and killing
at random, but that couldn’t be true otherwise the countryside
would be littered with corpses. April felt like she was wading
through treacle. Her resolve and enthusiasm of only a few days
before had been sapped by Milo’s death. Every glimmer of a clue led
to another dead end, as if someone had come and wiped everything
clean.
‘Do you think we’ll
learn anything at the party?’
‘Have faith,’ said
Caro kindly. ‘You’ve got the A-team on it now.’
April wished she
could take some comfort from that.