FABLE

Chapter Twenty Five

"Before I tell you what we're doing here, take this," Felix says.

He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, and takes out a small piece of paper folded in two. Alastaire rolls his eyes as Felix passes the note to me over the table, closing my hand over it.

I'm still in such a state of shock at finding them in my house that it takes a second to register that Felix Lockhart's hand just touched my hand.

"Read it after we've left," Felix says. "And don't show your friend. It's for your eyes only. Understand?"

I nod, tucking the paper away into my hoodie pocket.

"Basically, you're going to help us with a... project," Felix says.

He's ordering me. There's no 'please', no 'if you want to.'

"You want me to help you?" I ask, searching his face for some sign he's joking. His expression is as indecipherable and distant as ever.

OMG. He's serious.

He's leaning back in his chair now, staring past me into the dark garden outside the window.

"It's entirely up to you, obviously," Alastair says.

"No it's not," Felix says.

"Actually, I don't think-" I start to protest, but Felix cuts me off.

"I didn't come all this way just to get turned down Ashling," he says. "Besides, you haven't even heard what it is we need you to do."

I just nod, feeling pinned down by his eyes. I'm totally unable to speak back, to argue with him.

"We didn't randomly decide to cancel our plans and come back to Portland," Felix says. "Usually, just after a tour, we take a few months' break before we start recording our next album."

I nod. Everyone who follows Fable on Twitter (or watches TV or reads the tabloids) knows that the boys are meant to be on holiday taking a break from the limelight until October. That usually includes a break from social media - it's not easy finding internet reception when you're on a tiny tropical island or half-way up the Alps. Sometimes they'll go on holiday together, but most of the time they go their separate ways for a month or two.

Which is exactly what they're meant to be doing now.

"When we played the Rose Quarter last week, I got talking to the manager at the hotel we were staying in," Felix says.

I remember hearing somewhere that the boys were staying at the Rose Inn. So that means... "You spoke to Bea?"

"Yes," Felix says.

"More like she spoke to us," Alastaire says. "She wouldn't shut up actually. That woman can really talk. She pretty much gave us a running monologue on every single rock star who ever visited Portland in the sixties and how she got into bed with all of them."

Yes. That definitely sounds like Bea.

Bea was my grandma's best friend. Ex-groupie, artist, hotel manager, and full-time crazy hippie. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of long summer days on the riverbank with Gran and Bea, armed with easels and oil paints and a picnic basket filled with sandwiches.

"Bea had a sort of... proposition for us," Felix continues. "She told us about a place she owns that's totally off the grid... a sort of secret bunker, I guess you might call it, out in the woods. With a recording studio. A relic from her days hanging out with visiting bands. She said it was somewhere the five of us guys can be alone and have time writing songs for the next album without our manager stepping in."