Love by the Stroke of Midnight

at the time I’ve been informed is right. Until then, Miss Closed Mind, you’ll just have to wait and wonder. The choice is yours.”
Now she really was pissed off.
“Better a closed mind than a warped one, Mr ‘I think I know it all but who knows fuck all about the real me’,” she snapped. “Argh, bog off.” Childish, but probably better than sticking her tongue out.
Wrong or not, Marcail had a horrible sense of injustice done, and not to her, but by her, all the time she was reuniting with her mum and Bonnie, and it stung.
When Paden gave her a tight-lipped smile as she thanked him for bringing her across to the island, she counted to ten. That sense of being in the wrong, plus a tightness in her chest, and a niggling tingle that something momentous was about to happen, was unnerving.
Bonnie nodded to him, stony-faced. “Thank you for bringing my sister to me.”
Paden inclined his head with no visible change of expression. “Contrary to some current opinions, there is good in me.”
What was that all about? Her mum looked away as Bonnie threaded her arm with Marcail’s.
“Come on, Marcail, Mum knows we need a bit of sibling time.”
The atmosphere was tense. It was like waiting to have a tooth out with none of the sense that it would soon be over and all would then be well.
She headed up to her sister’s house with an awful sense of foreboding.
* * * *
“Messed up, did you?” Bonnie poured water onto leaves and waited for the brew to steep. “He looked mighty irritated.” She took down two mugs from the dresser.
“You didn’t seem any better,” Marcail retorted. “What’s going on?”
“I wish I knew,” Bonnie replied morosely. “I’m not sure I trust him, to be honest. Dad says he’s here for a reason and won’t say what that reason is. Dad’s being shifty.”
That was their father all over when he didn’t want to be pinned down about something.
“Skirting around the question, reason, or whatever, or just in general because he knows ‘we’d not want visitors’ shifty? Convenient bad leg shifty so I didn’t get him by himself and give him the third degree?”
Bonnie tilted her head to one side. “I can’t make my mind up, and Mum just shrugged when I asked her.”
“Can’t you sense what he’s here for, or whatever it is you do?”
Bonnie put the mugs down with a thump, took Marcail by the shoulders and stared intently at her. “Is this really my sister I’m hearing? The sister who accepts she can hear voices? Acknowledges, albeit grudgingly, that I sense when there is something wrong with people who are close to me. Is she now asking me to go the extra mile and try and find out why Paden is here, who for and for how long?”
Marcail grinned self-consciously. “I’m trying to be a bit more open-minded, but it’s hard going. You knew there was something wrong with me and Rotten Roddy, even before I told you. When I said I was going to New Zealand, you said ‘about time’.”
“New Zealand is ordained, whatever you think, and no, I can’t say why because I don’t know. So please, for all you hold dear, don’t press me,” Bonnie said. “That’s all I can sense.”
Marcail nodded. “I won’t, I’ll just try and find out when I get there.”
“I hate this feeling of uneasiness,” Bonnie went on. “The Roddy bit was easy, I’ve never liked him and his arsiness was screaming at me. The minute you let your guard down, I sensed you had done something to get shot of him. I chose not to try and sense what, but let you tell me instead. It goes against everything I believe in and hold dear to pry.” She rolled her eyes. “Damned hard it is at times I can tell you.”
“Does that mean you won’t look about the reason Paden is here?”
Bonnie sighed. “It means I tried and got nowhere. All blocked it was, like someone had put a wall up and a notice saying ‘keep out’. Bloody irritating. All of them—it.”
“Ha, he irritates me,” Marcail retorted. She paced from one side of Bonnie’s tiny sitting room to the other. “Why is he here anyway? What’s he got to be aggravated about? This is our place and it’s my birthday and… Argh, don’t I sound up myself?” She didn’t add that he intrigued her, and with very little encouragement that intrigue could turn to sexual, if not romantic interest.
Bonnie stared at her for a moment and raised her eyebrows. She didn’t need to vocalise what they both clearly knew to be true.
“Yeah.” Marcail sighed as she curled her toes in her shoes. One of Bonnie’s ‘well, I don’t need to answer that’ looks and she was immediately on the defensive. Bonnie had always managed to give her sister that reaction. To allow herself time to collect her thoughts, Marcail tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. She had tried to put her tresses into a twisted plait, but as ever her hair had a mind of its own and escaped wherever possible. She’d long accepted her fine, silky, curly red locks wouldn’t behave, and generally wore them clipped back at her nape or loose.
“Sorry, but that man brings out the worst in me, and a lot of worst I didn’t know I had. He just keeps telling me all will be revealed in due course.” Marcail flopped into a chair and decided not to mention he also made her want to jump his bones. “The head-voice isn’t a lot better.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Welcome.” “What’s in that pot?”
“Camomile,” Bonnie said, as Marcail sniffed the aroma. “Relieves stress. You appear to need it.”
“I’m not stressed,” Marcail retorted immediately, then laughed. “Not much and a lot less now I’ve given dear old Roddy the heave-ho.” She lost interest in the problem of Paden and her parents for the moment. “I’m glad you guessed something was wrong.”
Bonnie smiled. “You were sending out