A Pocket Full of Posies (Book 2)

Chapter Sixteen

Two weeks is a long time. I never thought it was before now, but it's ages. Practically forever. The flight back to England went much more smoothly than the flight to Belfast. There were no delays, my abilities were all intact, and nothing paranormal tried to kill us. A win on all counts, really. Take off and landing was still horrifically painful, but the flight itself was fun.

We've just arrived back at our uni flat, and it feels like two weeks have already passed since we found Connor online. I can't bear waiting an actual two weeks. We did manage to find an email address eventually, but I've not gotten a reply yet. In fairness, he might read it and think it's a joke. I basically wrote, hi, I think you're my brother. Hit me up on this phone number. Nice parapsychology stuff, by the way, pretty funny. Not in those words exactly, I'm not quite that stupid.

Ava's parents are pretty certain we'll be safe back here for a little while so long as we lay low, and if anything does go awry, we'll just hop back on the road. We're keeping the majority of our stuff packed to go down to London to meet Connor in a few weeks, anyway.

"Where the hell have you lot been?" Mason stares at each one of us or a good five seconds each as we step into our communal kitchen for the first time in... I don't even know. Weeks.

"Road trip." I snigger at my horrifically poor inside joke as I dump my backpack onto the kitchen island. "Kudos to you for noticing though, didn't expect that."

"Bore off, Ferris," Mason mutters as he stands up from the stool he was sitting on. "In the middle of term? Don't you have seminars and shit?" No one has the chance to answer Mason before he heads towards the door we all just entered through, and says, "whatever, I don't care."

He doesn't say it in a spiteful way, I just genuinely don't think he cares. As we all find ourselves a seat, Tom stays standing while he chews on his nails as if he's reliant on ingesting fingernails to survive. He feels uneasy about returning here, which I can't exactly blame him for, but I trust Kato and Mosi's judgement. I think.

Jamie's ecstatic at the prospect. He thinks having time away from university has irreversibly cursed all our futures, to the point where missing anymore lectures is more terrifying to him than being attacked by demons or some shit. I don't even know why he's miffed about missing uni. He caught up on every lecture, and completed all the missed seminar work while we were away. I'm pretty sure everyone did. Well, bar me. I'm way behind. My course is mainly lectures, with the odd lab here and there, so it's no biggie.

We've barely sat down when Ava announces we're going to her house. I have to stop myself from complaining. I really fancied vegging out in my room. I agree to it because it'll probably be good to talk through everything with Kato and Mosi, and truth be told, I can tell she's just dying to see her mum and dad for the first time in weeks. I don't know if it's because I'm used to seeing it by now, but as we pull up to Ava's family home, it doesn't look as grand as I remember it.

The second Ava turns the jeep engine off, Kato appears at the front door. Within seconds of stopping, Ava runs to her, and the two hug. Cute.

"How are we all holding up?" Mosi's calls as he steps outside the house.

He addresses us all, but his eyes are glued to me before, during and after he says it. I was hoping Ava's parents might have developed more faith in me while we were away, but I guess not. I can't blame them.

"Uh, well, no one died!" I shout back.

Great answer, Felix. Well done. Oozing with confidence, that. I can literally feel Annabel roll her eyes next to me.

"Oh. My. God. This house is huge," Lucy, who is yet to return to Scotland, squeals.

Once we're inside, we make ourselves comfortable in the Madaki's large living room, and go through every single thing that happened during our dysfunctional road trip. Ava was calling Kato frequently with updates, so it's not like any of this is new to them, but a few details have been missed out.