“Fox!” she gasps. “Fox, is that you?”
“Yes, Mom, it is. It’s me.”
And before I know what’s happening, I’m embraced, her arms encasing me. She clings to me, squeezing me tight as I sob onto her shoulder.
“Oh, Fox. My lovely boy,” she says, cradling my head, kissing my crown. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She pulls me inside, shutting the door behind me, pulling me into the front room of the house. There are the old sofas, the sooty fireplace, the battered side board – nothing much has changed. Behind this is the room with the stove and the larder and the stairs that lead to the two bedrooms upstairs. There’s no bathroom inside, just an outhouse outside the back.
She leads me to the fire, standing me in front of it and taking a step back, surveying my face, my clothes, all of me.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she says. “You didn’t tell me. Where’s Mervin, he’ll want to know you’re here.”
“Wait, Mom,” I say, “for just a moment.” I wipe the tears from my cheeks, freezing as I do so, peering down at the wetness on my fingers. Vampires can’t cry. But I don’t have a chance to ponder that either, because my mother is firing questions at me. And she is ignoring my instructions, calling for my father.
“He’s okay then?” I say. “You’re okay? You’re both okay? Healthy, I mean.”
My mother turns away from the staircase and smiles at me. A smile that’s been haunting me all these years. A smile I always loved as a child. I’d do anything when I was a kid to make her smile like that.
“We’re older, Fox Box,” she says. “A few more aches and pains. Your father has trouble with his knee, but nothing much has changed here. But you, tell me about you.” She strides back toward me and takes my hands in hers, squeezing them. If she notices how cold my skin is, she doesn’t say anything. “We never heard from you,” she says.
“I know,” I say. It’s not exactly unusual. Some kids from Slate go to the academy, they do well in the trials and they’re sent to a different Quarter – Iron or Granite, never Onyx. Some take their families with them. Most don’t. Most families never hear from those kids again. I’m not so awful. And yet, I know that I am.
I open my mouth to tell her everything. Then I hear creaking on the staircase. It’s my dad. It takes him some time to negotiate the stairs. When he steps into the room, hobbling, I see my mom has downplayed the problem with his knee. Walking is difficult for him.
“What is it, Irene?” he begins, then halts when he sees me lurking by the fire. “Who’s this?”
My mother laughs. “It’s Fox, Mervin.”
“Fox?” my father says, taking a hobbled pace forward. “Fox!”
“Yes, Fox.”
“My Fox? My boy?”
“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to–”
My father dismisses my words with a swish of his hands and wraps me in a tight embrace, hugging me to his frame. I hug him back, fighting back more tears. “You’ve had things to do, Fox. We know how it is. We heard you’d been chosen to teach at the academy.” He releases me and smiles – a smile full of pride. Pride I’m going to have to smash now by telling them the truth.
“Things have been complicated and difficult,” I tell them. “I made some bad choices – some very bad choices – and I was too ashamed to come home and admit them to you.”
“Bad choices?” my dad says, frowning. “What bad choices?”
“I’m no longer human,” I tell them, because there’s no use skirting around the issue. “I’m a vampire now, with shadow-weaving abilities. It’s why they chose me to teach at the academy.”
My parents are both silent. I can see the horror and the shock in their faces. I knew it would be like this. It’s what I imagined so many times before. And I’m tempted to spin around and march straight to the door. This was a mistake. Better I had left them with an image – with the memories of that golden boy who left for the academy all those years before – rather than crush their illusions.
“Oh,” my mom says finally. “Well… okay.”
“Okay?”
My father’s still frowning. “You said this was a bad choice, Fox. It’s something you regret now?”
“Very much so,” I say. “I was stupid, greedy, foolish. I wished for my life to be different. So I traded my soul to become what I am now. And I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“Can it be reversed?” my mother asks, and I think her distress is more for me than herself.
