Page 30 of The Other Side

For a moment neither of them spoke. The distance between them felt greater than it had when they’d been in different worlds.

“Ten o’clock,” Drum said finally. “Your house.”

“Ten o’clock.”

“You swear you’ll take me?”

Osian met his eyes. The question wasn’t really about Faeryland. It was about whether anything he’d said could be trusted.

“I swear.”

Drum nodded once, then turned and walked down the road without another word. Osian watched him go. He kept watching long after Drum disappeared. Only then did Osian allow himself to sag against the saddle. His heart was hurting again now, even though he’d found him. This wasn’t what he’d imagined.

Ten o’clock. And if Belem saw them… For the first time since finding Drum, he felt something close to panic. If tonight went wrong, he wouldn’t get another chance to prove Drum was a faery.

~~~

Drum put the weirdest morning of his life on hold and got ready for work. He didn’t know what to think of what Osian had said, so he wasn’t going to think about it. Well, he was going to try not to.

He drove to Taplow, a village he’d not yet been to, and parked at one end. The Varleys’ home was close. The Motsons lived at the other end of the village. Drum stopped to speak to everyone he passed, asked how they were, if there was anything that was worrying them. He couldn’t do anything about energy prices or global warming but he empathised.

When he knocked on the door of the Varleys’ cottage, a woman in her forties answered. One look at him and she said, “What have they done now?”

“They were trying to rustle a couple of Fred Breakwater’s sheep.”

She groaned.

“Are they in?”

“In their rooms. Come in. I’ll shout them down.”

She led Drum into an untidy kitchen and told him to sit down. He didn’t.

“Liam! James! Get down here now,” she yelled at the stairs.

A few moments later, two teenage boys shuffled into the kitchen. They were tall and lanky, with identical mop-top haircuts and matching expressions of sullen defiance. They wore oversized hoodies and sweatpants, their eyes fixed firmly on the floor.

“Sit down,” Drum said.

“This is Liam.” His mother put her hand on his shoulder. “The other is James.”

Both boys dropped into chairs opposite him. Drum looked at them for a long moment, letting the silence stretch.

“Mr Breakwater’s sheep,” Drum finally spoke. “You had one sheep in the van and were trying to load the second one. Care to tell me what the plan was?”

Neither boy spoke.

Their mother hit Liam around the head and Drum winced. “Talk to the officer! And did you take your dad’s van? He’s not going to be happy.”

“We thought we could make a bit of money,” Liam said and James glared at him.

Drum got the message. Liam would talk. James wouldn’t.

“We thought we could…like…ransom them. He’d pay to get them back.” Liam kept his gaze down.

“And where were you going to keep them?” his mother snapped.

“In the shed.”