Excerpt:

“Evie! Hi!”

His cousin Elissa hit him in a tackle hug like a tsunami - or, at least, she tried to. He was carrying the Ash girl, which made it quite difficult. (That was why he was carrying her to start with. He didn’t like hugging.)

Elissa poked at the Ash girl’s face curiously, and her head lolled sideways to rest against Evander’s shoulder. “She’s like a little mini person - are we going to keep her? Maybe she can live in a hutch in the back garden?”

“Where’s my hug?” Pax asked plaintively, trailing in behind him.

“Oh! Pax! I’m sorry, I totally didn’t-” Elissa enveloped Pax in a bear hug “-see you,” she finished, into Pax’s hair, and pivoted her slightly to the left so she could look quizzically at Evander. He shrugged, and the Ash girl’s head slipped off his shoulder and lolled brokenly over his arm. He propped her head up again.

“I love your hair clippies,” Pax told Elissa seriously, tapping one of the little butterfly slides. Evander rolled his eyes and scanned the lobby. It was about twenty feet by ten, with a battered, mildewy sofa shoved haphazardly against the wall to the left and a curving flight of stairs running up to a landing on the right.

Two of his relatives were flopped on the sofa - his uncle Peir, Elissa’s father, who was easy enough to get on with, and his aunt Leto, who would have been easy enough to get on with if it wasn’t for having the personality of a vicious starving pit bull. She was swinging a plastic carrier bag full of bottles that clinked together over the arm of the sofa.

His and Pax’s father was standing behind the sofa, back as straight as a sergeant-major’s.

“Evander,” Uncle Peir greeted him politely when he saw him. “Your father was just telling us all about your AS-results for the billionth time. Apparently they were ‘satisfactory’.”

Pax bounced over to hug her uncle, too, and said grumpily into his pullover, “I could get satisfactory AS results too, if I wanted. And I was old enough. And anyway I did better than him in the French GCSE.” Once she was done making sure everyone knew she could do better than her older brother given the opportunity, she scampered back to Elissa and offered her a packet of Smarties. Elissa cooed and ate the Smarties and started braiding Pax’s hair.

Jeez, Pax had sent him down to the newsagents especially to bring her Smarties and now she wasn’t even going to eat them herself?

“You brought your kids, Ted?” Leto asked, tilting her head back to glower at him. “This isn’t exactly a goddamn family occasion. You planning to take them to the park and let them play on the swings later?”

“I brought Elissa,” Uncle Peir pointed out.

“Lizzie’s eighteen, that one-” She gestured contemptuously at Pax, who looked woeful while Elissa fastened butterfly slides into her long golden-brown hair. “-is what? Ten?”

“Thirteen,” Uncle Peir corrected her. “Leto, we’ve been over this be-”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t insult special special Teddy, don’t insult special special Teddy’s special special spawn or he will special special beat you to special special death,” Leto drawled, jangling her bottles in the plastic bag. “Special special special. Special.”

“Are you drunk?” Uncle Peir asked her. “You’re drunk. How drunk?”

“ ‘m not drunk yet,” Leto informed him grumpily. “Whenever I do anything you assume I’m drunk.”

As far as Evander was concerned, that was a perfectly valid assumption to make because it was so often true.

“I talk, I’m drunk. I try to express my opinions, I’m super drunk. I breathe, I’m drunk,” Leto ranted.

“Leto-” Uncle Peir started.

“Look out! I’m breathing! I must be drunk!” Leto yelled, flailed around and almost fell off the sofa before she collapsed back and stared back up at her eldest brother. “I hope you die cut into a thousand thousand pieces and the pieces are eaten by rabid weasels,” she told him, maudlin for a moment.

“I hope that you become a brain-damaged alcoholic with a criminal record for drunken assault and that your mentally-deficit only child also gains a criminal record for persistent kleptomania,” Evander’s father replied pleasantly. “On second thoughts, it’s a little late to hope for that, isn’t it?”

Leto dropped the plastic bag and leapt to her feet - for a brain-damaged alcoholic, it was amazing how fast she could move.

“Leto!” Uncle Peir yelled, and tackled her. She made furious muffled noises into the floor. “She’s drunk, Theseus, she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” he promised Evander’s father, face twisting into fear. Elissa’s hands froze braiding Pax’s hair.

“She rarely does,” Evander’s father agreed amiably, and turned away. Leto stopped struggling, reached for her plastic bag, and dug around in it until she located a bottle of tequila. Elissa started braiding Pax’s hair again.

“Evander? Heel,” his father ordered, heading to the staircase. Evander shifted the unconscious girl in his arms and followed. “Special special special special special,” Leto sang as they left, slumped bonelessly on the floor by the old sofa, clutching her tequila. Evander would have gone to put her back on the sofa, but his father added “Evander, now,” in a sharper tone, and he followed obediently.

Upstairs, they paused outside a room, just past where a damp patch showed on the ceiling and dripped water into the carpet. Evander shifted the Ash girl’s weight in his arms, because his shoulders were starting to ache: for a moment her breath rasped warm against his throat.

“Am I …supposed to do something? Sir?” Evander hazarded.

“Yes!” His father agreed cheerfully. “It’s troublesome, but-” He pointed at the girl Evander was holding. “-I need to you to impregnate her.”

There was a brief pause while Evander almost dropped the Ash girl and made an indescribable facial expression. That couldn’t possibly have been what he thought it had been. “…I’m sorry, I think I misheard that last part?”

“Impregnate,” his father repeated. “Make pregnant, knock up, inseminate-”

“I’m familiar with the dictionary definition, sir,” Evander almost snarled before he remembered he wasn’t allowed to do that and lowered his voice. He glanced at the girl he was holding. “…You do know unconscious women can’t give consent, right?” Shit, even by his family’s standards this was unbelievable.

“Yes. What’s your point?”

Evander stared at him in blank disbelief and looked down at the girl in his arms. Twelve. She looked twelve. This couldn’t be happening.

This would have been the moment when Evander realized his father was insane, but that had already happened, a long, long time ago.

“That’s disgusting! It’s disgusting, and immoral, and totally against the principles of chivalry, and - and completely sick, and-”

“Quiet,” his father ordered. Evander bit his lip and retreated into bitter silence. His father sighed. “Honestly, Evander, I wish you were more like your sister. At least she’s loyal.”

Evander had to lick his lips before he could answer that; his mouth had gone dry. “At least I’m not-”

“I said quiet!” Evander shut up. He should have known better than to speak again in the first place. For a few seconds there was absolute silence (well, almost absolute - Aunt Leto was still rambling loudly and incoherently downstairs.)

His father sighed and leant against the wall, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I should have known this would happen.”

Evander wasn’t stupid enough to reply to that, since obviously wherever this train of thought was going, it was going to be very bad for him personally. He shifted the Ash girl further up his shoulder, because she was slipping down, and waited morosely to see what was going to happen.

“That college has been a bad influence on you,” his father said decisively. “You’ll have to be removed. I should never have allowed you to go.”

Evander almost dropped the Ash girl again. “What? No it hasn’t!”

“Don’t whine; you’re the one who allowed it to influence you in the first place,” his father spat at him. “It’s your own fault.”

Evander stopped himself thinking before he could disagree with that, like crashing into a brick wall, and drifted dead in the mental water. Thought returned slowly.

“It’s sick,” he said quietly, looking away. Just thinking about it made his skin crawl, but it would be stupid to try to fight any more.

“There’s precedent,” his father pointed out.

“From the nineteenth century,” Evander disagreed, but quietly. He could feel barely-controlled exasperation wash out from his father like ripples.

“I’m getting very tired of this cowardice, Evander. This is for the good of the family, our family. You don’t have the right to refuse.”

Evander stared at the floor. His father softened, reached up to touch his face. Evander stopped breathing and barely managed not to step back: he hated people touching him. “You know I love you,” his father told him tenderly, caressing his cheek. Evander thought, liar. “And I don’t want to have to take you out of college when you’re doing so well. Don’t force me to do this.” He dropped his hand back to his side and Evander breathed again. “Well?”

Evander stole a quick look at his father out of the corner of his eye. He’d do it, too: Evander remembered he’d only allowed him to attend college after he’d sworn not to associate with any of the other students there. Mostly he stayed in the library. He loved the library; he loved the books and the silence and the emptiness. He liked the lectures. He even liked the bloody homework. He wasn’t stupid enough to give all of it up for some girl he didn’t even know.

“Fine,” he said, and didn’t take his gaze away from the floor. He could still sense his father’s brilliant smile.

“Excellent,” his father said, as if he was pleased, and opened the door. It had been locked, but the lock clicked open when he glanced at it. He held it open politely, and shut it after them. And locked it, too.

Theseus de la Croix sauntered down the stairs, considering the situation. He loved Evander dearly, of course, but the boy had proved a disappointment before; he lacked the loyalty to their family that Theseus expected from his children. He ticked over the other possibilities. Evander was the only male in the younger generation in the direct line, and he couldn’t think of any others in the side houses with enough talent to be satisfactory.

He could do it himself if necessary, of course, but he would prefer to give the younger members of the family an opportunity to prove themselves.

He had seen what Elissa and Pax were doing on the sofa from the top of the spiralling stairs, of course.

“Avast! The white whale, off the port bow! Thar she blows!” Elissa shouted, scrambling to the nearest end - or was it the bow, now? - of the sofa as it sailed slowly, levitating four feet off the floor, across the lobby.

“Man the torpedoes!” Pax shouted, waving her arms around excitedly.

“Harpoons, Pax, we’re a whaling ship,” Elissa said.

“I thought we were a pirate ship?”

“But then we still wouldn’t have torpedoes, we’d have cannon,” Elissa told her.

“If I had a pirate ship it would have torpedoes,” Pax said. “And cannons. And napalm. And a trebuchet. And a spa.” Off Elissa’s stare, she added defensively, “What? It’s important to maintain good hygiene.”

“Your piratical henchmen might object,” Theseus’s brother Peirithous called. He was sitting against the wall, rubbing Leto’s back while she maundered at him drunkenly. Theseus didn’t know how his brother put up with her.

“If they did, I would kill them,” Pax said decisively. “I would have them keelhauled until they died from it. Or set on fire with the napalm.”

“Very good, sweetheart,” Theseus said, and ruffled her hair affectionately. “But, Elissa, I must point out that I’m currently on your starboard side, rather than your port side.” He gestured, and the sofa suddenly spun a hundred and eighty degrees. Elissa nearly fell off, squealed and clutched at the sofa arm. Pax squealed and clutched at Elissa.

“Now I’m on your port side,” Theseus said.

Pax stuck her head up over the back of the sofa. “No, you were already on the port side!” she yelled, flushed pink with anger. “We were sailing backwards, to confuse and mislead our enemies! So now you’re on the starboard!” She made illustrative hand gestures to demonstrate ‘backwards’, ‘mislead’, ‘enemies’, and ‘starboard’, just to ensure that he understood how misleading her plan was.

“I’m sorry, Pax,” Theseus said gravely and insincerely. “I should have remembered how you love to confuse and mislead your enemies. The fault is all mine.”

Pax glowered, not at all impressed by the obvious lie, and vanished behind the back of the sofa again. Theseus laughed indulgently - Pax was so obsessed with her odd play-acting - and went to sit at the foot of the stairs, and wait for the DSD’s sorceress and the Quinns to arrive.