Chapter #8The Waterworks by: imaj   “I don’t know how you do it Siobhan” says Pete Churchman, addressing you by your assumed name.
You hand him the mug of tea and he places it down on his desk. Pete Churchman is up late again, it’s well past midnight now and he’s still slaving over the papers from his work. You glance slyly at the letters and missives spread over his desk: Some are internal memos, others from clients. Right now he’s reading something with a letterhead that is a stylised letter F, somehow twisted to look like a church font.
You smile and say nothing, nudging again at the flows of his emotions. You up his trust, push down on his wariness and you kindle just the smallest flicker of lust.
“It’s so hard to get Beatrice to go to bed,” continues Churchman. “Sometimes she says she sees monsters.”
The secret, of course, is a little touch of Eldibria work. You’d slowly brought up the girls lethargy and then put them to bed. At that point a simple chaste kiss to the forehead had spent the power of your knockout sigil on the girls. They will not wake before dawn now.
“We’re just getting along great,” you say with a false modesty. You use Eldibria to enflame his lust a little again. “You look tired,” you add.
He sighs and takes off his glasses. “There’s so much going on at work,” he explains tapping at the letter you were looking at. “So much to do for the Fay…” he stops himself. “So much to do for this client’s account.”
You put your hand on his shoulders and start to gently rub. He tenses briefly so you reach at his emotions again and sooth them, easing his worries. Then you take you hands away. “I’m sorry,” you say earnestly. “You just seemed so tense…” you tail off. You let his worries flow back into place.
“I…” begins Churchman haltingly. “No, please… It felt relaxing.”
Though you don’t let your face betray it, inwardly you smile. Pushing the Churchman family’s emotions around has become almost second nature. It’s pleasing to see it work so well.
“If you’re sure,” you say, equally hesitantly. You place your hands back on Churchman’s shoulders and start massaging them again. As before, it is the Eldibria working of his emotion that makes the difference. You use it to sooth his emotions and ease his worries. At the same time you stoke his lust again.
And that is how you end up kissing in his bedroom.
*****
Beatrice splashes her spoon her cereal bowl noisily as she eats her breakfast. When Imogen, who is delicately eating a slice of dry toast, gives her a dark look, Bea merely sticks out her tongue at her.
“Girls,” you cluck, taking the bowl away from Bea. For a second she looks as if she is about to cry, but a quick tweak of her feelings fixes that.
“Sorry,” says Bea quietly.
“If I give you it back will promise not to make a mess,” you say gently. Bea nods her head vigorously and you place the bowl back in front of her. That earns you a grin and, true to her word, she continues eating more tidily.
Churchman breezes into the kitchen happily, moving with a confidence you’ve not seen in him before. You suspect that comes from last night’s encounter. He spins you round then kisses you hungrily on the lips. The action catches you by surprise for a brief few seconds till you remember yourself and return the kiss with interest.
“Good morning Siobhan,” says Churchman in a sing-song voice. “You look beautiful today.”
You feel your cheeks colour. “Morning Pete,” you reply, playing up that accent again. Imogen and Beatrice stare at you both with their mouths open.
“Are you going to be our new mummy,” asks Bea with complete and honest innocence.
Churchman freezes, ill at ease with himself again.
“Oh no one could ever replace your mummy Bea,” you say, glancing at Imogen. The answer seems to mollify her a little, but she still seems a little upset. “But I really like being part of your family and I hope I can stay,” you add.
Beatrice grins and drops her spoon in her bowl, splashing milk everywhere. She hops off her seat and skips round beside you so she can hug your legs again. Churchman relaxes a little as you ruffle the little girl’s hair.
Imogen looks at you angrily, but you reach for Eldibria again, stalling her rage. Her mouth hangs opens as she forgets why she was so upset, or what she was going to say. Churchman hugs her awkwardly and she smiles faintly.
Churchman looks at his watch. “I need to get to work,” he says anxiously. “And the girls need to get to school.”
“Don’t worry,” you smile. “I’ll take care of it.”
*****
You slip out from under the comfortable duvet, away from Churchman’s enveloping arms and climb out of the bed. You stand there naked for a few minutes, gazing on Churchman’s sleeping face. He lies there with his mouth agape, drooling slightly. He’ll lie there till morning too. The knockout sigil was on your lips when you kissed him last.
Feelings of guilt swirl in your mind at what you are about to do. You’ve won the trust, the love even, of Churchman and his family, yet now you are about to abuse that trust. If you gave him enough time, you are sure Churchman would ask you to marry him and be part of the family permanently. It’s almost tempting.
But that’s wrong. If you gave Churchman enough time he would ask Siobhan to marry him. Everything you’ve built with the family is based on lies. You’re not who they think you are. Even their feelings towards you are a lie: built on top your Eldibrian craftwork.
It all makes you feel seek to your stomach and you hold onto that feeling as you pick up your handbag and search through it. You met Hal while Beatrice and Imogen were at school and he gave you a flash memory stick. It seems so innocuous when you look at it in the near darkness of the bedroom, but the cloak and dagger nature of it belies that. The memory stick is, superficially at least, the same as the one in Churchman’s briefcase. Hal hinted that it would let him put a backdoor into the computers at Gilder & Percy.
You take the memory stick and walk through the house naked. No one will disturb you: Churchman is not the only one you knocked out with a sigil. You find the briefcase lying beside Churchman’s desk. Turning on a desktop lamp to better see, you place the briefcase on top of the desk and open it carefully.
It’s mostly empty, but one letter catches your eye. You recognise the letterhead from the previous night – that stylised letter F. Now you can take the time to read it. It means nothing to you though, the contents describe the auction of some antiquities. Even the name of the client, The Fane Foundation, is unfamiliar. You put the letter back down and continue your search.
Finally you find the memory stick. You swap it for Hal’s duplicate and return to bed, wishing you could turn Eldibria on yourself and quell your guilt.
*****
The two police officers can’t quite meet your eye as they say their goodbyes. They pull their caps back onto their heads and turn away. You watch wordlessly as they walk through the pouring rain and back to their car. Only when they have driven off into the night, the blue lights flashing, do you close the heavy wooden door to the Churchman house.
You legs weaken beneath you and you lean on the door for support. It has to be a coincidence, doesn’t it? Anything else just isn’t possible. Last night you put Hal’s false memory stick in Churchman’s briefcase. This evening he is dead, killed in a head on collision with a truck on the drive home.
As you stagger back into the living room you realise just how much this news is affecting you. It shouldn’t, of course. You had only faked feelings for Churchman and his daughters then tricked them into feeling the same. Why then is it you feel like the bottom has dropped out of your world?
Imogen and Beatrice look up from television program they are watching. Some meaningless cartoon, you notice, desperate to avoid looking directly at the girls.
“What is it Siobhan,” ask Imogen, her face grave. She can tell something is wrong.
You can’t face her and you spin round looking at the walls of the room. In your desperation, Eldibria reveals its last gift for you. You hear the sound of hundred cruel mouths laughing at you through knife sharp needle teeth. A thousand eyes stare at you mockingly.
The walls are covered in oily black things. Gelatinous creatures with writhing tentacles. You now understand with a dreadful certainty that these creatures are all over the house and have been silently watching you since you arrived. The truth is you were spotted as soon as you arrived and whoever, or whatever, the things report to, they knew of the false memory stick immediately.
You wail as the creatures crawl away, slinking into cracks and oozing into the shadows. They vanish, leaving you to try and explain to the girls what has happened to their father.
*****
“It wasn’t your fault,” says Rosalie. “You didn’t know what would happen.”
“Still…” you reply. It’s all you can manage to say.
“No wonder you didn’t chose Eldibria as your second ousiarch,” says Rosalie sympathetically.
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