CHAPTER 1
Some people out there would consider returning to live with their parents at twenty-eight a failure. Not me. I like spending time with my family.
Some might also consider that having a car which overheats when it goes over fifty miles per hour to be a sign of a loser. Personally, I think this modern world has us living too fast, and there’s a lot to be gained by living life—or driving—in the slow lane.
And yes, there are those who would consider that a twenty-eight-year-old woman arriving at her parents’ in a beat-up car with her possessions stashed in black bin bags because her landlord kicked her out for failing to pay the rent three months running, because she quit yet another job, is a deadbeat.
I just call it being a nonconformist.
And given that I’m wearing trousers that are red and black plaid along the left leg and black and white plaid along the right, several loops of chains as a makeshift belt, and a DIY-sequined cropped top in magenta—which matches my shoes—it’s clear that conforming isn’t my bag.
I indicate to turn left and then my car crawls into the council estate where my folks live, in Staines—it’s on the outskirts of London, for those not familiar with this shining beacon of urban development and cosmopolitan living. The Clash is blaring out of my car’s speaker. Singular, because only one still works.
The car still uses cassette tapes, and given that the only two functioning tapes I have are The Clash and Offspring, it’s no great surprise that I listen to The Clash exclusively when I drive. I think the Offspring tape might be a leftover from an old boyfriend when I was seventeen, and we were making out in my car. The tape lasted longer than the relationship, which lasted about as long as my average stint in traditional employment.
I reach my parent’s house, which is identical to all those around it—a two-storey house with a square of lawn lined by a hedge at the front, and a second square of lawn tucked away at the back. The only difference with our neighbours is that the seventies threw up all over our house in the form of pebble dash walls. It’s the house I grew up in, and I love it, but those walls, man… they’re grim.
“Is that the mellifluous death rattle of my favourite daughter’s car?” Dad is sitting in his deck chair on the front lawn with a beer in his left hand.
Not only am I his favourite daughter, I am also his only daughter. It’s a good thing I made favourite status or that would have been cause for serious concern.
Dad has a big bushy beard that reaches his chest, the kind hipsters have recently started to emulate. His head is shaved save for a wide strip of short brown hair along the middle. I’ll admit, sitting in his deckchair like this really isn’t the most flattering position for him. His beer belly is poking out over the belt of his shorts, his T-shirt having hiked up a little. It reads: ‘Postlewaite’s. Staines’s best dirt bike track.’ Below it is a KTM bike with stylised flames burning off from the back wheel.
“Hey Dad!” I call through the open car window as I execute the most atrocious bit of parallel parking the world has ever seen. It’s still a mystery to me as well as to everyone in my family how the hell I managed to blag my way into passing my driving test on my first try.
I get the car parked and turn off the engine. There’s only a slight smell of burnt engine oil, which is a good sign, and no smoke pouring out from under the bonnet, which is an extremely good sign. Means I managed to drive all this way without the car overheating. Go me.
“Hello Pree.” Mum’s head pokes up from behind the hedge where she must have been crouching to do her gardening.
She’s a tiny little thing, five-foot nothing, and whip lean. How she managed to give birth to three children as tall as me and my brothers is a mystery on a level with how I passed my driving test.
She’s wearing one of Nick’s WWE t-shirts from when he was a kid and a pair of Dad’s old boxers, from back from when he wasn’t so fat, obviously. An old straw hat shades her face. Standard gardening attire for her.
Her naturally blonde hair is growing increasingly pale as the years progress and more greys and whites invade. It suits her, actually. She looks real classy.
Anyway, what makes her look young isn’t her hair colour, but the way her blue eyes sparkle, and her smile.
She looks at the black bin bags in the back seat. “You come back to live at home for a little bit?”
“I did, at that.”
“Get fired again?”
“Actually, I quit. Tosser tried to grab my arse.”
“What?” Dad calls. “I hope you kicked him in the bollocks for that.”
“Broke his nose.”
Mum smiles. “Well done, darling.”
The truth, though, is that I didn’t quit because of the arse grabbing. After I broke my boss’s nose a couple of weeks ago, we reached a kind of agreement where he left me alone, and I didn’t break his nose again.
But the job was boring, and I just couldn’t stick it out. It’s only been a couple of months since I discovered the existence of a whole supernatural underbelly in London, and it has made it impossible to put up with the humdrum of normal life—not that I was particularly well-suited to it before that.
I’ve always thought that there was more to life than working to make enough money to pay the bills, and now I’ve seen unequivocal proof that there’s a whole lot more. Can you blame me for wanting a piece of it?
I grab my black studded backpack—très goth, although I’m no goth—but leave the rest of my stuff in the car for now. This might be the roughest council estate around, but my family is well known, so no one would dream of stealing our stuff. Plus, my car is worth about as much as the clothes in the back, and I buy my clothes exclusively from charity shops.
I lean down to kiss Mum on the cheek as I push open the little gate to enter the front garden. “Roses are looking good, Mum.”
“Thanks, darling. You go make yourself comfortable in your room, and I’ll make you a cup of tea once I’m done here. I must have had a premonition that you’d be coming back, because I got chocolate digestives the other day.”
“Ooh, dark chocolate?”
“What else?”
The garden really is looking good. So neat and tidy, like something from one of those posh suburban houses, or those swanky magazines. Mum is really particular about the garden looking respectable. Not really sure why she bothers, given that the inside of the house is a bit of a shit pit, but we all have our little quirks.
I lean over to kiss Dad on the cheek as I pass him.
“Want me to send some boys over to rough your boss up?” he asks. “Well, ex-boss.”
“No need. The broken nose is plenty.”
Dad takes a sip of his beer, frowning. He clearly still wants to send the boys over, but he doesn’t know my previous work’s address. There’s a reason I stopped telling my family where I work.
“Want me to see if I can put you on the roster this coming week?” he asks.
Postlewaite’s Dirt Bike Race Track, named for my family, isn’t just Staines’s best dirt bike track, it’s the only one. Everyone in the family has worked there at some point or another.
“Nah. I’ll sort myself out. Thanks, Dad.”
I hop up the two steps and open the front door. Inside, it smells of home. Which is to mean it smells of cat—we own half the cats in England. I’m only barely exaggerating. There are cats on almost every surface, and where there isn’t a cat, there’s a thin layer of cat hair. Another of Mum’s hobbies.
The cats, not the hair.
It does make it all the more weird that she insists on having a pristine front lawn, but ours is not to question why.
Luckily, the cats all do their business in the back garden, which is overrun with weeds, no doubt fertilised by all the cat poo. Managing a cat litter box would be a logistical nightmare, to say nothing of the smell.
The cats are also the reason for the coasters balanced atop the glasses of water left on the coffee table. Well, not all the cats, just Scottie. He’s got into the habit of sneakily drinking from any unattended glasses, so the coasters keep him at bay.
The wallpaper in the living room is a faded, pale pink with a psychedelic pattern of paisley and flowers. I did mention the seventies throwing up over the house before, right?
Aside from the bad seventies wallpaper, our living room is furnished with a really odd mash of things, like a white leather sofa with matching love seat, and two mismatched brown and black leather club chairs. We also have a lot of items in duplicates, like TVs, DVD players, lava lamps, and for some unknown reason, we have a lot of side tables.
Well, not so unknown. My eldest brother, Harry, gets his hands on all kinds of things. Of all the things he’s nicked—I mean acquired—the side tables are the most random. I never fully understood how he wound up with them.
We’re a family of entrepreneurs, have been all the way back to Grandad. He was a savvy man, Grandad. The first to take advantage of a government scheme allowing people to buy their council homes. Bought this very house for eleven grand—isn’t that amazing?
These days it’s worth quite a bit more than that, even with the pebble-dash walls, but of course no one in their right mind would dream of selling it. It’s the family home where we all grew up. The kitchen doorjamb still has the marks from when Harry, Nick, and I were growing up. I’m only a couple of inches shorter than Nick now, but Harry is still way up at the top of the doorjamb. He’s the tallest of the lot, taller even than Dad.
Dad’s also been an entrepreneur his whole life. He used to be in the acquisitions business, mostly acquiring other people’s cars, but when Mum fell pregnant with Harry, she told him to sort himself out or she was walking out on him. Raising a kid with your husband in prison is a rough deal.
So Dad went on the straight and narrow, mostly. And to be fair to him, he’s done real well for himself. The dirt bike track is a good money earner, and as a business, it’s just plain fun.
My two brothers also run their own businesses, following in the family footsteps, which Mum isn’t too happy about.
Harry is currently cooling his heels in prison for a year, but he’ll be out by Christmas, or maybe earlier if he manages to get his sentence reduced for good behaviour. It’s not his first time in jail, so he knows the score—keep his head down, be as helpful and cooperative as he can, and take advantage of any training or work opportunities. He’s actually got quite a few diplomas from his times in jail. He could get a proper job with those if he wanted, but he has issues with authority. Runs in the family.
I go to the sofa to grab Tabby, a fat ginger cat who’s currently dozing. Female gingers are rare—Tabby is one a million. I pick her up and stroke her chin and behind her ears, making her purr loudly. Nothing works better than snuggling in my bed with Tabby and a cup of tea when I have to make important decisions.
And figuring out what I’m going to do next with my life is a big decision. Although I already know it will have something to do with trying to find out more about the supernatural side of London. I’ve always known I was destined for a big life, and somehow I’ve gotten lost along the way, getting caught up in a vicious cycle of deadbeat jobs to pay for things I don’t care about.
Well, that’s about to end.
