Laura snorted derisively. "You're saying something like that isn't going to screw you up forever? Yeah, right."
"Only if I let it. The shadow is still there, the fears. But not to do something because of fear is even worse."
Laura's expression suggested she didn't understand a word he was saying. She focused on her cappuccino.
"Okay, it's agreed," Church said. "But where's all this going to take place?"
"Somewhere suitable," Tom replied. "Somewhere regularly frequented by the dead."
Laura threw the guide book across the table. "It's all in there," she said with an odd note to her voice. "God help you, you poor bastard."
Early evening sunlight streamed into the hotel bedroom, catching dust motes in languid flight. Through the open window came the gritty sounds of the city, rumbling and honking with optimism and stability; the normality was powerfully soothing. Church and Laura lounged in the tangled sheets, listening to their subsiding heartbeats, daydreaming of the way the world used to be. The sweat dried slowly on their skin as they held each other silently. For a long while nothing moved.
Even then Church couldn't find complete peace. The thoughts that had been creeping up on him since that evening on the quayside at Kyleakin had gathered pace; of Niamh and the kiss that had filled his entire being, almost forgotten in the upheaval of Ruth's disappearance; of Laura and her slowly revealing deep affection for him; of his own strained ambivalence. For too long it had seemed like events were uncontrollable and now he was beginning to feel his personal life was going the same way. After so many months trapped in the sphere of his grief and guilt over Marianne's death, his emotional landscape was an uncharted territory. He knew he felt an attraction to Niamh, but whether it was physical or emotional, or even pure curiosity, he wasn't entirely sure. And the same with Laura-why couldn't he read what he felt about her? The only time he was truly in tune with her was during that moment in sex when his conscious mind switched off and the shadow person at the heart of him took over.
"What are you thinking about?"
He glanced down to see her eyes ranging over his face. "Life, death, and all things in between."
She nodded thoughtfully.
He slid down and threw one arm across his eyes; the darkness was comforting. "What did you think I was thinking about?"
"It would have been nice if you'd said, me."
"Sorry." There was a stress-induced unnecessary sharpness in his voice which he instantly regretted.
He felt Laura's muscles tense next to him and a second later she had levered herself up on her elbow to fix an incisive eye on him. "What's on your mind?"
"What isn't? The weight of the responsibility on our shoulders. All that bullshit the spy told us last night-I can't get it out of my head, even though I know I should. The fact that I'm eaten up with vengeance for whoever it was killed Marianne and your mum." He caught himself. "You've never told me how you feel about that."
"I don't feel anything. I'm not even numb. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it wasn't me who did it to the old bitch-at least I can still look at myself in the mirror-but it's not as if I'm tearing myself apart that she's dead. After all she did." She shifted self-consciously to hide the original set of scars on her back.
The tone of her words made him feel uncomfortable. "That sounds a little-"
"What? Cold? Psychotic? Don't criticise me. You don't know anything about my life."
"I'm trying-"
"Not hard enough."
He suddenly felt angry that he constantly had to pussyfoot around her; it was more strain that he didn't need. He knew she had her own problems-the rumbling trauma from the scars Callow had inflicted on her face, the doubts over why Cernunnos had marked her-but all of them had problems and no one else acted like a spoiled brat.
They sat in silence for five minutes watching the dust motes dance in a sunbeam, and when she spoke again she sounded calmer. "Anything else on your mind?"
He paused for a long time, then admitted it aloud, to himself as much as to her. "That I should be sending us all to look for Ruth instead of-"
"What? Trying to save the world and everyone in it? That makes sense." Another whiplash in her voice; he felt the irritation rise again.
"I'm on your side. Why do you always give me such a bad time?"
"I'm having a bad life."
"It's not all about you, you know," he snapped. "I sit here with my thoughts and I can't even tell who I am any more. Thanks to that stuff I drank from the Danann cauldron, sometimes I think I can hear alien voices chattering at the back of my head, saying things I can't understand but I know they're terrible. Then everything flips on its head and I feel the rumblings of whatever the Fomorii did to me with the Roisin Dubh, deep in the same place-"
"Well, boo-hoo for you."
Unable to contain the building rage any longer, he hammered his fist into the mattress. "Shit, why am I here?"
"Yes, why are you here?" She gave him a harsh shove to the other side of the bed. By the time he'd turned back, angrily, she was out and starting to get dressed. He wanted to shout at her, that she was the one destroying the relationship, but then her mask of cold aloofness dropped slightly and he saw the hurt burning away underneath. He had never seen such emotion in her face before.
The shock of it calmed him instantly. "Look, I'm sorry. We're all under a tremendous strain."
She muttered something under her breath as she marched to the door, then turned and said, "Go fuck yourself," before slamming it behind her.
Laura hated the way she had to blink away tears of anger and hurt as she marched out of the hotel. For years she'd been good at battening down any emotion so that even those closest to her had no idea what she was thinking. But now it seemed as if the stopper had come out of the bottle and wouldn't go back in again. And Church seemed to have a particular talent for painfully extracting feelings, even when he wasn't trying; and somehow that made the process hurt even more.
However much she tried to pretend to herself she didn't like him, she realised she felt something closer to a childish ideal of love than anything else she had experienced in her life. At first she had hoped it was purely sexual, like so many of her previous relationships. Then she wished it was born of circumstances; of fear; of desperation. But it wasn't. Emotionally she'd suffered enough at the hands of her parents. And now everything was happening just as she'd feared.
She headed directly towards Princes Street, hoping to lose herself in some of the trendy bars which were still doing a roaring trade. Shavi and Tom, who had been in search of psychoactive substances for their respective rituals, hailed her as they returned to the hotel. She pretended she hadn't seen them.
She opted for the noisiest, most crowded bar and forced her way to the front to buy a Red Stripe. Although her attitude never wavered, it wasn't long before the locals were trying to pick her up. She fended a few off with acid comments, but as the drink took hold a little company that was interested in her seemed increasingly attractive.
For the next two hours she found herself at the centre of a group of young men and women whose only concern in life appeared to be having a good time. The conversation was sharp and witty, the jokes raucous, the flirtation charged. There was no talk of darkness or death. Laura found herself gravitating increasingly towards two of the most powerful characters in the group: Will had short brown hair and blue eyes that were gently mocking, a supremely confident demeanour and a certain sexual charisma; Andy was more openly loud and humorous, taller and bigger-boned, with corkscrew hair and a wispy goatee.