11.4

 She looked at the table, a smile spreading across her face. “No.”

“Okay, so far so good. Let’s try it without the cloth.” He unwrapped the object slowly, revealing more of the carved wood.

“Still nothing.” Roisin stepped forward, back across the threshold. She could sense it immediately and, now that she had taken a minute’s break, she could sense the other pieces he’d brought in; two on the floor and one more on the table. She closed the fire door and crossed to the table where Steve was still holding the unwrapped relic. It was part of something larger — a fragment of a statue, perhaps. The carving was intricate but worn down with age or decay. A wing, maybe. Or a rib. Or something between the two.

Roisin’s breath hitched.

It looked like the paintings. Not physically; it was painted, but it did contain facets that stretched out from its physical form until the faded out several centimetres from the object itself. It reminded her of the staircase in the orphanage she spent the first few years of her life in. It had the same feel as the old newel posts did when she ran up and down the stairs.

Steve noticed her reaction. “You recognise it.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“You do,” he said softly.

She stepped back. “No. I have the memory of it, or something similar.”

Steve wrapped the object again, carefully, and moved past her to put it back on the table. “You don’t have to understand them,” he said. “Just… don’t be afraid of them. They’re just relics left behind when time has steamrolled forward without them.”

“I’m not afraid.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re shaking.”

She looked down. Her hands were trembling. She clenched them into fists. “I’m not afraid of them, anyway.”

Steve stepped back, giving her space. “I’m not here to scare you,” he said. “This is just the safest place to store them.”

Roisin swallowed. “Them? How many of these things do you have?”

Steve hesitated. “A few.”

“Where?”

He nodded upward toward the attic. “My room.”

Roisin raised her gaze. It was as the ceiling had suddenly become transparent and she could see the objects stored there as there were washed by a yellow light. Four. Five. Six. She felt a cold ripple move through her. “Your room is full of them.”

“Not full,” he said. “Just… occupied.”

She didn’t know what that meant. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Steve picked up the wrapped relic. “I need to get some sleep. Long night. Long day an’ all, and a long night before that.”

Roisin stepped to one side to avoid touching the relic as he moved past her. “You’ve been up that long?”

He paused at the doorway. “Sometimes you can’t afford to let your guard down. You never know what turns up to claim relics. This is the one of the only places I can get some proper shut-eye. I’ll be back down in a sec to get the rest.”

“Okay.” She looked at the remaining boxes. Of the five, she could sense four of them. It was like they were fragments of old vinyl records, only instead of playing whole songs they played one segmented line over an over again. Not that she could hear them, other than a faint hum like electricity pylons in a field, but that she could feel the tiny facets of what was once a living being. Human, animal or something else entirely, she couldn’t tell; only that it had once been self-aware. “Steve?”

He turned at the door to the attic, a bunch of keys in his hand. “Yeah?”

She pointed to the inert box. “This one doesn’t have anything… alive… inside it.”

His eyebrows went up. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.” She picked up the box, which had apparently once held a selection of Christmas-themed biscuits. She’d expected it to be heavy, but it weighed less than a history book and held to her ear like a seashell “There’s nothing in this one.”

“Good to know.” He turned back to the door, hesitated and turned again. “If anything feels wrong,” he said, “tell me. I’ll take care of it.”

She didn’t answer.

He nodded once, then disappeared up the stairs.

Roisin stood alone in the kitchen, the boxed objects still humming faintly in the air, making her feel like she had on the ferry across to Calais during a school outing.

She put the biscuit box on the table, where the wrapped one had been, and headed back to her room. Once there, she sat on the floor again, her back to the wall, listening to the house breathe around her, and wondered what else Steve was keeping in the attic— and whether the house was really as safe as he believed.