It appeared that Paul had been lying to me the entire time that I’d known him. He obviously had some connections in Hell. I wouldn’t have been surprised if all his previous stories were fabricated. Did he know about the deal I made with Morpheus? Had he been supplying me with magical tequila this entire time, just so he could keep an eye on me?
I was exhausted, drained, and emotionally pissed off with everything that happened. In any other circumstance, I would have stayed and asked Paul a million questions, but that evening, I was done.
“We still need to talk, Maxine. Expect me tomorrow,” Morpheus said when I was leaving. I simply nodded and then I was out the door, walking through my familiar neighbourhood. The streets were quiet, and I thought about Zach. Earlier on I chickened out and ran away. I should have told him the truth, and he would have backed away.
I took the tube to Chelsea. It was too risky to go back to my own flat. Rodriguez most likely left his people outside in case I went back there tonight. Morpheus’s interference in the pub only made my situation worse.
Once I walked through the door, I felt like I had been up twenty-four hours straight. Suddenly bed was the only place I wanted to end up. Alexis had Summer; Matilda had bought me a bit of time to figure out my next step. Tomorrow was a new day, and I had to gather my energy to get my daughter back. Even though I was doomed, and Paul wasn’t the person I thought he was, I fell asleep remaining positive—and sober for the longest time that I could remember.
I woke up late, and when I glanced outside the world seemed greyer and more depressing than usual. I rubbed my face, thinking about Summer and Ricky again. My world collapsed last night, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. My little girl was struck with a sleeping charm. She was still alive, so there was hope.
Sitting tight on my arse and waiting for Morpheus to show up wasn’t an option. I had to find a way to track Alexis down on my own, without getting him involved. Five minutes later, I rolled myself out of bed and went to look for my phone. I located it on the floor in the living room. The screen was slightly cracked. I must have smashed it somewhere in the Forgotten Street. Zach and Emma had tried to call me a few times.
Vivid memories from last night assaulted my mind. Paul and his angel wings, Rodriguez and his discussion with Morpheus. The retired Watcher had been hiding so many secrets from me in the past decade. He was supposed to be my friend. Now I couldn’t even trust him.
I had to admit that I missed Arthur. The roles had turned. Two months ago, he was the one chasing after me, promising the world. Now he couldn’t even stand to look at me.
There was no alcohol in the apartment apart from whiskey in Ricky’s fancy minibar. I wanted to give myself a high five. Magical tequila hadn’t passed through my mouth since my disastrous night in Gjöll. Maybe I had finally conquered my addiction or at least changed for the better.
I puttered around the apartment, constantly thinking about the small chubby face and those eyes that were the spitting image of Arthur. I kept telling myself that Summer was the most beautiful little girl I’d ever seen, and I would fight for her until the end.
Around midday, my stomach and fridge were both empty, so I decided to go out and grab something to eat. I was planning to press Morpheus tonight about Alexis. He did save my arse last night, but so far, his instructions were worth a lot of nothing. On top of that, Emma and Zachary were ready to follow me all the way to Hell if that was necessary.
The food in the local coffee shop was tasteless, but I kept telling myself that I needed to recoup my energy for later. All my potions were left in storage in my old flat. Ricky didn’t have enough ingredients to brew more, and I needed to get my hands on magical potions. Things like that were very useful when I was battling dark forces.
A customer had left a gossip magazine on the table, so I picked it up and started turning the pages. There was an article about Prince Arthur. I automatically pushed it away. I didn’t want to read it at first, but soon curiosity won, and I found out that the prince appeared to be depressed. According to the reporter, Arthur stopped going out and had been locking himself in his residence, away from his family. Everyone was worried about him.
I knew that most of the tabloids were full of crap, but this one was actually telling the truth. Arthur was down because of Summer. I’d betrayed him, and I had to make this right. Soaring guilt reminded me that I wasn’t the only parent out there who was suffering. It was time to face reality and see him. At the end of the day, Summer was his child, too. I paid for the food and then headed to the tube station.
The food fuelled my demonic energy, although I was still tired when I walked through the wet streets of London. In the tube, people seemed more depressed than usual, or I wasn’t able to block their doomed thoughts as well as I wanted. The weather was to blame; it was a grey and rainy day.
I didn’t head to Buckingham Palace. Rodriguez wouldn’t hesitate to arrest me if I showed up there, especially after what happened last night. I needed to catch Arthur in one of his private residences. From the past, I knew that Kensington Palace was one of the places where he had a bit of freedom, so I was pretty sure he would’ve gone there today.
The rain was pouring down from the sky heavily, and I got soaked by the time I arrived at my destination. I didn’t want to try my chances with the guards, and I had a feeling that after everything that happened, Arthur would refuse to see me.
So far, I had burned my bridges with all the men who’d ever showed me any affection. Last night I ran away from Zach. It was pathetic but necessary. Zach needed to understand that we didn’t have any sort of future together. I was broken, and he deserved to experience real love.
Arthur’s private residence was riddled with security, so I went around the building and used my demonic abilities to get inside. I knew the ins and out of its surroundings; the protocol hadn’t changed much since the last time I had been here. My clothes were soaked by the time I got into the gardens. One of the guards spotted me, and I tampered with his head. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t afford to get caught.
It took me a while to find the way inside. I used the staff entrance at the back. Once I started walking through the rooms, I nearly walked into one full of maids. They were having a meeting in a room that led to the other side of the prince’s residence. I was forced to hide in an old massive wardrobe until they were done. I retraced my steps when I heard one of the maids still standing outside. She was talking to one of the guards.
“And that mistress? He had been talking about this other woman in the papers? Maybe she broke his heart and that’s why he is so depressed,” she contemplated, leaning over the pillar on the second floor.
“There has never been a mistress. I once heard a rumour that he was having an affair with his head of security. I don’t remember her name now. Anyway … she was too tough for him,” the guard pointed out. I wanted to roll my eyes, expecting that some staff knew about what went on in the palace.
I waited until they disappeared in one of the rooms. When the stairs were clear I ran to the second floor, thinking about our intense moments together. That was almost two years ago.
The prince had the whole second floor at his disposal. I figured that some things changed when he got engaged to Natalie. I stood outside his room for a few seconds. Strong nostalgic emotions began sailing through me. We had so many plans, things that we wanted to do together. Nowadays we were like two strangers that passed each other on the streets. Both wounded and lost.
I took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Arthur? Are you there?” I asked, peering inside his open-plan living room. Everything looked the same, all the furniture, pictures on the wall, and his clothes that lay around the sofa. I inhaled his cologne, closing my eyes for a brief moment, and picturing myself in his arms. I remembered standing in the exact same room two years ago when he revealed his true feelings for the first time since I started working for him.
The prince wasn’t home, so I star
ted checking all the rooms just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. When I opened the door to his office and glanced at the wall by his desk, the blood rushed to my ears.
Arthur had created a board with pieces of paper, letters pinned with various colours, shape and sizes. There were several pictures of me pinned down in the centre of the board with Summer’s name attached in the middle.
It was obvious that Arthur hadn’t given up and he was still looking for her. The board represented his pain. Something about this whole thing was very unsettling. I felt like I had destroyed whatever was left between us.
Arthur had listed a number of possible locations all around the board. He wasn’t stupid; we both knew that he couldn’t go public with this. At least not straight away. He had a list of adoption agencies, and some other unknown names and addresses. I stared at it for at least ten minutes before the guilt pricked under my skin. Raw emotions circulated, and I wished that I had done more than just lie to him.
My eyes filled with tears against the violent tide of pain that I was experiencing in that moment. Okay, I had sacrificed myself, but I’d never considered his feelings.
Seconds passed, maybe minutes. I had no idea how long I stood there, crying over something that I would never be able to fix, when I heard footsteps. Panicking, I glanced around, looking for a place to hide. I came here to tell Arthur that I was sorry, but now after seeing what was going on in his head, I couldn’t go through with it.
There was a small library that Arthur had rarely used, so I hid in there, trying to understand what the hell was wrong with me. I sensed him even before he walked into the room. The door was not completely closed, leaving a small slit which allowed me to see what was going on in the office. My chest cracked open. Even Zachary couldn’t shut down these emotions that I experienced when Arthur was near me.
“Arthur, you know that what you’re asking me to do is almost impossible.”
Natalie was there with him and she had her palm on his arm. Of course, he was heartbroken, and she had always been there for him.
“I don’t know what else to do. I’m the father. Do you realise how much it hurts knowing that she never even considered telling me?”
He told her—Arthur had told Natalie that I gave birth to our child. Suddenly I felt lightheaded and sick. Through that small opening I could clearly see her face. She wasn’t smiling; she felt genuinely sorry for him. Well, I couldn’t be angry. After all, she was in love with him.
“She still has feelings for you, but I think she is only trying to protect you. Imagine what would happen if your grandmother found out,” Natalie said.
“Fuck her, this is my life and it’s now ruined!” Arthur shouted, then stormed out of the room. Natalie sighed and looked after him. The emotions on her face were staggering. That girl loved him so much, unconditionally, even when it turned out that he had a child with some other random woman.
This wasn’t something that she was supposed to just accept. I didn’t have to worry about her spilling my dirty secret. Natalie had a pure soul. Arthur must have gone out, wanting to be away from her. She stared at the board for a bit longer, with the saddest expression on her face that I’d ever seen. Her emotions were hitting me hard, stabbing me in the gut. I hated myself, hated that I caused so much pain to other people.
When she finally left, I was drained. It took me a while to crawl out of the hiding spot. By the time I snuck back downstairs, I knew that I had to share the whole truth with Arthur.
I owed him at least that much. He needed to understand what I was, even if that was against faction order or rules. Either way, I wasn’t going to stay on this Earth for long, and Arthur deserved to know the truth.
Chapter 14
“Then, broadening out, we found an empty road. A thousand paces bore us on (and more), each of us silent, each contemplative.”
―Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
My phone was buzzing in my pocket as I walked back to Ricky’s apartment in the middle of the afternoon. I wanted to tell Arthur everything, but I had no idea where to start.
“Gee, Arthur, I meant to tell you that I was half demon, but you know, this never came up. Oh, and our daughter has been taken by a psychopathic bitch who wants to slice her body in order to heal herself.”
Yeah right, he would most likely throw me straight into a mental hospital if I came up with lines like that. I needed to find some kind of balance between the truth and the lies that I had been filling him with in the past few months. Arthur was a good man, and he cared about people, like his tragically dead mother. Our relationship had never gotten off to a good start, but that was not the point. What mattered the most was the life of our daughter.
I put my hoodie up and carried on walking through the gloomy streets, pushing myself to stay positive.
Somewhere outside the underground station, I stopped and looked up at the sky, watching the dark clouds gathering over the city. I let the rain slap down on my face. Guilt returned, building inside my chest again, thumping in my ears like a loud orchestra.
The moment I got to the tube station I felt worse. Somewhere in Chelsea, I walked inside a convenience store and bought a bottle of vodka. Paul had more liquid magic in his basement, but after what happened in the pub yesterday, I couldn’t bring myself to go to him again.
There was a reason he kept giving me this stuff. That way he knew I would always come back for more. I didn’t want to believe that Paul could take advantage of my addiction, but in some ways, he controlled me. After so many years he was still just Paul, the owner of my local pub. The fact that he’d been a messenger sent by God from Heaven blew me away.
Getting high on liquid magic was out of the question; besides, I was so broken, magic couldn’t numb my pain this time. I squeezed the bottle of vodka right down near my chest when I entered the lift, getting back to Ricky’s place.
My partner in crime would have known what to do. He would have given me great advice, but the truth was that he wasn’t here. He and my daughter both needed me, and I felt like I was going backwards, not making any progress.
I didn’t get to his apartment; instead I rode on to the top floor. There, I snuck through the maintenance door to the rooftop that overlooked the city. As soon as my lungs inhaled the fresh air, I felt slightly better.
It was still raining heavily, but I was hurting so it didn’t matter. That guilt wouldn’t go away, couldn’t be washed away by the cold rain. I hadn’t gotten drunk for a very long time, and now I just had to numb myself for at least few hours. Morpheus would show up later, and we would be talking about the task, but now I couldn’t stand the burning guilt that was spreading through me like a virus.
I unscrewed the top and poured the fiery liquid down my throat. It tasted disgusting, but I kept going. Any other person would probably think that I had lost it, sitting on the rooftop and getting drunk in the pouring rain, but it was what I needed.
Minutes went by, maybe even hours—I didn’t care about the time. I was so shattered that I finally hit rock bottom of my misery, and nothing else mattered. Summer, my daughter; she was somewhere out there, and I didn’t know how to help her.
Numbness didn’t come like I expected. I was drunk, completely zoned off but still felt everything I had been feeling before. I smashed the bottle and picked up a piece of glass from the floor. I stared at it for ages, not able figure out it if I needed one or two pieces to end it all.
I’d thought I would never love this child, but I was wrong. She was perfect, and I loved her more than I could imagine.
“How long are you planning to do this to yourself?” a voice nearby asked. I lifted my eyes, seeing Morpheus. He was standing close, watching as the sun was slowly disappearing behind the horizon. I hadn’t even realised that it stopped raining sometime ago. Morpheus looked good, wearing an elegant black suit. His dark eyes were shimmering with red sparks, or my mind let me see things that weren’t there.
“Go away, you can’t help me. Ev
erything is falling apart,” I mumbled, sounding and feeling pathetic. Even when I finished with Arthur, I was functioning. Right now, the numbness was taking my oxygen, my last hope of being me.
“You’re the daughter of a demon, and you want to give up so easily?”
“Arthur hates me, and that bitch has my daughter. I have failed,” I said, trying to get up, but I was going to be sick at any second. His statement about my father wasn’t going to lift me up. He abandoned me, left me alone, so why would I care?
Morpheus shook his head, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw warmth and understanding in his always concealed expression, but then it was gone. A second later he took a few steps backward, and I hoped that he would leave. Even he thought that I didn’t deserve any sympathy.
The sunset was beautiful: red and orange flames appeared in the sky, masking the grey landscape. I didn’t want to get up and deal with being an adult. A second later Morpheus created a large bucket of water right in front of me. He grabbed my neck and pushed my face right into it. My voice died when my head dived deep into ice-cold water. I tried to pull away, but he was holding me tightly, slowly drowning me. I had no energy to fight back, to stop this nightmare. My mind shut down, and I waited for darkness to summon me forever. Seconds rolled in, and I felt that my heartbeat was slowing down.
When moments later I inhaled oxygen, I realised that he pulled me away. Taking long pulls of air reminded me that I had reasons to be alive. Giving up wasn’t an option, but I nearly had tossed it all away.
“Are you feeling sober now?” Morpheus asked, standing next to me. The water was dripping down my face, and my teeth were chattering. I noticed a bucket right in front of me, filled with yellow water. It took me a long moment to realise that I wasn’t intoxicated anymore. There was probably a zero trace of alcohol in my body.
Doomed Cases Box Set: The Complete Collection Books 1- 4 & Prequel Page 59