Leah Giarratano - Disharmony

At least, that’s how it felt to Samantha.

On the earlier flight to London from Bucharest she’d sat frozen in her seat, shaking her head when the stewards tried to encourage her to have some breakfast. The plump Gaje woman next to her had had no such reservations. She’d devoured a veritable feast as Samantha had watched from the corner of her eye. It began with a glass of wine before the plane had even taxied from the runway. At eight-thirty in the morning. Champagne, the woman told Samantha, raising her glass in the air. Samantha stared. This was the only word that passed between them during the flight.

But on this trip, Sam hadn’t been able to resist the food offered for lunch. The moment the flight attendant had smilingly passed her the menu, her mouth had begun watering. Nothing on the menu looked familiar. She recognised ‘salmon’, ‘lamb’ and ‘salad’, but the meaning of the words between them eluded her.

‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ she’d said quietly, when the flight attendant asked.

What he had came with a glass of red wine. Samantha had had red wine before – during festivals, occasionally with dinner, but never anything that tasted like this. The wine in camp had been a transparent, rosy colour, and sour. She didn’t especially enjoy it. But this wine was thick and syrupy and almost black. It looked like blood. It tasted of spice and soil and flowers and magic. She shook her head when the hostess offered a refill. Her neighbour did not.

No wonder he had fallen asleep.

Her head spun a little, but mostly she felt calm for the first time since the red doors had crashed open on the Ghost Ride. She knew she shouldn’t feel calm – she had no idea of what was coming next and how she was going to find her brother, but right now she could do nothing about that. She’d have to figure it out then – she’d done her best for now.

After she’d escaped Amit and his friend in grey at London airport, she’d decided she’d best stick close to people she could feel . That, and her newfound confidence at having outsmarted her enemies all on her own, helped her to make her way unobstructed to the Qantas Club. There, she’d gone straight to the computers and had learned as much as she could in ninety minutes about Sydney airport, especially about possible escape routes.

That she was going to need to know them, she was reasonably certain. Why would these people stop now when they knew exactly where she was going? But of pretty much everything else she had no idea. Like, who were these people after her? And if she did get away from them in Sydney, where exactly was she going to escape to?

Follow the signs, Sera had said. Huh. Great help there. I’m so sure there’ll be signposts in Australia to tell me exactly where to find Luke Black, my brother. Right. And if Sam really admitted it, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to meet her twin. The very little Seraphina had told her was not exactly promising.

‘What’s he like?’ she’d asked.

‘Well, he’s a lot like you, really,’ said Sera. ‘Except pretty much the opposite.’

When Samantha had spat a stream of words that would have made Lala cry and Esmeralda shove a piece of soap down her throat, Sera had made herself a little clearer.

‘All right, all right,’ she’d said. ‘Well, what the Grand Council has been able to learn is that your mother – endeavouring to conceive your brother – teleported herself into the cell of Harlan Craven. He must have been pretty surprised. Your mother was a very beautiful woman, Samantha.’

‘Did you say into his cell?’ she’d asked.

‘Well, yes. Unfortunately, Harlan Craven was a serial killer serving life in permanent solitary confinement at the SuperMax correctional facility in Australia. We think he may have been a daemon.’

The droning sound in Samantha’s ears had increased. This isn’t really happening, she’d told herself. Ever since she’d entered the Funhouse, she’d been repeating the line like a mantra every few minutes.

‘Anyway, what we’re assuming your mother did not know – because it was not part of the Telling,’ Sera continued, ‘is that this terribly romantic liaison would result in her conceiving not one, but two babies. Twins. You, and Luke, your brother.’

‘My father was a daemon?’ said Samantha.

‘Probably just a minor one,’ said Sera.

Oh, much better.

And then Birthday Jones had found his voice. It sounded anxious, and that had made Sam feel vicious. What did he have to be anxious about?

‘Are you sure you want to know all this right now, Samantha?’ he’d said. ‘A lot has happened tonight, and you’ve got a massive trip ahead of you. Aren’t you tired?’

‘Oh, thanks for that advice, Birthday,’ she’d said. ‘And the next time I want advice from a deceiving, lying thief masquerading as a friend, I’ll be sure to call you.’

Now her cheeks coloured, remembering the dripping sarcasm and the pain she’d felt it cause Birthday. She pulled her feet up onto the seat and buried her face in the rug.

‘Anyway, Sam,’ Sera had said gently, ‘the most important point is that you seem to have been born with exceptionally strong empathy skills. Your brother was not. You understand what people want and why and you care about those things. And your brother – well, he doesn’t.’

Sera’s last sentence was spoken so quickly that Samantha had had to mentally rewind it and play it back.

‘So I have empathy,’ she’d said, finally.

‘Oodles,’ said Sera. ‘You’re an empath.’

‘And my brother, Luke, doesn’t have empathy.’

‘Not a skerrick,’ said Sera.

‘What does that mean? Is there a name for that? What’s wrong with him?’

‘Well, there is a nasty name for people like that,’ said Sera. ‘But you need to understand that there are extremely complex forces and factors going on here, and then there’s the fact that you and he were born simultaneously. We don’t know what that adds to the mix – he could be… fine. The Telling reveals that -’

‘The name,’ Samantha repeated. ‘You said that I’m an empath. What’s the name for my brother?’

Sera coughed.

‘Well, he’s a psychopath.’

When Luke rolled over and spotted the time on the alarm clock by his bedside, he couldn’t believe it.

Afternoon already! He never slept late and he never slept well. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever having made it through a whole night without waking numerous times to check out what was happening around him in the dark. He’d lived in too many places with drunken ‘uncles’, brawling foster parents, or other kids in refuges and lockups who wanted to steal his stuff. He always slept lightly, and he rarely changed out of his day clothes, sometimes even sleeping with his shoes on, ready to run.

But there was something about this bed, this house, this view over Elizabeth Bay that relaxed him. Relaxation was a feeling entirely new to him. He’d always considered the idea of it overrated: who wanted to let their guard down? What a stupid idea. But here in Georgia’s house, it seemed to come easily. He reminded himself to become filthy rich sometime in the near future.

Luke sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched. Today, I really should do something about finding my family, he thought. He tried to ignore the other voice in his mind asking, Why? Why do you need to find them? You’ve only got information on Liza and Daniel anyway, and they’re hardly gonna be thrilled to find their jailbird bastard brother on their doorstep. And what are they going to know about an empath and a genius?

The whole Telling mumbo-jumbo was starting to sound decidedly lame. Probably Zac actually was nuts.