Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (41 page)

Luna was not there.

Unease gripped me, but Luna had given
her word she would not kill again. Despite her faults, she had
never broken a promise in all the time I had known her. Instead of
going to the bedroom, I went down to the cellar, where I fell
asleep.

When I awoke that evening, Luna had
still not returned. I ventured upstairs to our bedroom and a
startling scene met my horrified gaze. The wardrobes and chest of
drawers hung open and were emptied of all clothing. My clothes were
strewn across the bed and floor. I believe every single one had
been cut or torn, most beyond recognition. Anger swiftly bubbled to
the surface at such a juvenile display.

But then I noticed that not a single
item of clothing belonging to her remained in the room.

I was still for a very long moment.
Then I entered the room fully and searched it. Perhaps she had
simply moved her clothes to another room. I exited the room, trying
not to let panic overtake me. I searched the entire house. Nothing
of hers remained.

I went into town and searched the
minds of everyone I came across to find out if they had seen
her.

No one had seen her.

I returned to the mansion and waited
downstairs.

I was angry at her childish behaviour
and determined I would not spend the entire night chasing after
her, begging her to return home, which was what she obviously
expected. When she came to her senses, she would return. So I
stayed alone in the dark drawing room waiting for her. But it was
hard to ignore the apprehension crawling around my
stomach.

At dawn she had still not returned. I
went to bed alone for the second time in decades, already aching
for Luna.

***

Two months later, Luna had still not
returned. I found myself at Lina’s home. She was sitting in a
rocking chair on the porch waiting for me.

Her children and grandchildren were in
the living room and the sound of laughter reached me, pulling me
deeper into the grip of anxiety. I was reminded of decades alone in
the wilderness, a ghoul on the outside of life, and the living,
forever looking in at what I would never have.

“
I know,” Lina said when I
approached.

“
But where is she? She has
been gone for two months now.”

“
If I knew I wouldn’t tell
you. She’s angry but she ain’t killing no more. It’s best you stay
away from her for however many years it takes for her to quit being
angry at you.”

“
Years?”

She opened her mouth and closed it
again. Then she sighed heavily and looked guiltily away.

“
You think she will be
gone for years?” I continued. “But...but...I do not understand why
she would just leave. She knows how much I love her. She knows I
would die for her a thousand times over. How could she just
leave?”

Lina’s face had become sadder the more
I spoke.

“
She’s angry,” was all she
said.

I closed the space between us and
knelt before her chair. If she looked unhappy before, she looked
positively miserable now.

“
Lina,” I said struggling
to maintain my composure. “You must find out where she is so I can
go to her.”

She sighed again. “She might still be
in Louisiana, but you have to leave her be. When I said she could
hurt you, I wasn’t lying. I’ve seen it.”

“
If Luna wishes me dead,
then so be it, because I cannot live without her. Please, tell me
where she is.”

“
She might be in New
Orleans. I can’t be sure.”

Hope sprung into my heart again. It
was a start.

“
Thank you,” I said and
rose.

Lina seemed incredibly troubled when I
left her, but I had hope again. Luna was in New Orleans. I packed a
bag and left that night.

I didn’t find Luna in New Orleans, so
I decided to go up North, finally making my way back to Louisiana.
I eventually searched the whole of North America before I branched
out of the United States to travel the world searching for Luna.
But I found nothing, not even a trace of her.

Years passed, as Lina had predicted,
and Luna had still not returned. I drifted through those years,
each one a page turned to ash by the black hole of my anguish. And
there were still many more of these pages ahead. The only time I
was not searching for her was whenever I saw to the wellbeing of
either my family back in England or Luna’s descendants. Lina died a
few months after I left Louisiana for New Orleans, so once more, I
was completely alone, and as we left one century and entered a new
one, I began to believe Luna was dead. She was incredibly weak the
night she left the mansion, and perhaps she did not recover her
strength.

1922 found me in France.
It was the second time I had been to France in search of Luna, and,
as before, I found no trace of her whatever. The nights found me
wandering the city streets, or drinking alone either in my room or
the hotel bar. I had lost hope, but I could not give up on Luna. I
would continue to search until I knew without a doubt she was no
longer on this Earth. But the nights were cold and empty, and the
days, alone in whatever hotel room I was sequestered
in, sheer agony.

Where was she? How could she leave me
like this and for so long?

I was asking myself that question, one
which I asked myself repeatedly over those years, when I returned
to my hotel room one bleak winter morning. Dressed in a dark grey
three-piece suit, I moved down the corridor under the jaundiced
glare of the electric lights that had recently replaced the warm
radiance of lamps and candles. This hotel was one of the best, its
dark, opulent furnishings of the highest quality, the service
impeccable, but it still had the anonymity inherent in every hotel
I stayed in and my loneliness bloomed like a fungus that thrived in
places devoid of light.

I knew there was someone in my room
even before I reached the door. There was a flurry of movement when
they heard the sound of the key in the lock and I entered to find
one of the maids replenishing the mini bar. It was the smallest
one, the one I most often found lingering in my suite whenever I
returned in the mornings. She was tiny, like a little mouse, and
the only thing that distinguished her from the rest, was the surge
of hot emotion that poured from her whenever she was in my
presence.

“
Good evening,
monsieur
.” Her English
was halting and heavily accented. “I come to change
towels...”

I nodded, reached into my pocket and
placed some notes in her hand as I moved past her and to the mini
bar before I realised she was still standing there, her thoughts
awhirl. I saw in her mind snatches of the careful sentences she had
learned in English, hoping to draw me into conversation.

I let her thoughts pass over me,
remembering briefly a time of such hot crushes as the one she
clearly had on me, and how the entire world seemed to revolve
around the object of such affection.

Then I remembered the time. The
evening chambermaids finished at eleven p.m. and the day maids did
not start for at least two more hours. She had come here hours
before her shift began so she could catch a glimpse of me before
the “Do not disturb” sign appeared on my door for the
day.

I put down the decanter of whisky I
had picked up and faced her. She froze. What little English she had
learned completely left her. Suddenly she was very aware of how she
must look to my eyes—a drab, dreary little maid.

I saw more than that. I also saw that
she was nothing like a mouse, more like a bird. She was a pretty,
fragile little thing with large forlorn brown eyes and long dark
hair that was pulled away from her pale face. In that moment,
something about her struck me, and I remembered the first time I
saw Luna kneeling by the stream, how fragile she appeared to be,
and worn down by so much suffering. This one was the same. Her
suffering was nowhere near what Luna had endured, but it was
wearing her down nonetheless.

I was so weary. So worn down by my
loneliness and my fruitless search for Luna. I was also too old to
really remember what it was like to be so young, and far too
unhappy and jaded to even bother pandering to her little crush.
Even then, my tone was a lot harsher than I intended it to be when
I spoke, in French.

“
Is there anything
else?”

She blanched visibly.
“N-no,
monsieur
.
Good night.”

She scurried out, closing the door
quietly behind her. She stood with her back to the door for a few
moments, her heart racing, her emotions an equal measure of
excitement and mortification.

I listened to her berate herself
mentally for her stupidity as she moved away from the door and down
the corridor. She was soon gone and I was alone with my anguish. I
sank to my knees. Today was exactly seventy-five years to the day
from when I came back to the mansion to find Luna waiting for me in
the snow. I wept on my knees before the drinks cabinet, my head in
my hands.

***

A few nights later I was alone in the
hotel bar, the bar staff long gone, when I became aware of the
maid. She was standing by the door observing me as I sat by a small
table with a drink in my hand, staring into the fire.

I caught the drift of her thoughts.
Her shift ended hours ago and she had gone home, spent a few hours
with her mother, and then returned to the hotel when her mother
fell asleep. I saw her preparations in her mind. She was wearing
her best dress, a blue calf-length dress in the shapeless shift
style that was common in the twenties. But she had been frustrated
by her appearance in the mirror because the dress was two years old
and already slightly faded. But it was the best she had.

I looked away from the fire and glared
at her as she moved into the room toward where I sat. My gaze was
deliberately intrusive as I looked over her tiny frame.

“
Pretty dress,” I said
when she was before me.

She beamed, but then the smile
wavered, and she couldn’t be sure whether the compliment was
genuine, or sarcasm. She seemed to shrink under that
uncertainty.

“
It
is
a pretty dress,” I
said.

A half-smile lifted her lips, but her
hands shook as she placed a bottle of wine and a glass on the table
before me.

“
Chef says this is a good
vintage. I thought you might like it.” She opened it and poured me
a glass.

“
Thank you,” I said,
watching her carefully as she tried to affect the air of a worldly,
sophisticated woman.

It was almost comical because she was
such a child from the perspective of my one hundred and ninety-two
years on this Earth. At the same time, knowing this tugged at my
heartstrings, which made me angrier as I stared at her.

“
But of course, you have
to share it with me,” I added.

She glanced up sharply, no doubt
taking in my derisive smile and the hint of meanness in my
gaze.

“
Ah, no,
monsieur
, I—”

“
Oh, but I
insist.”

I reached out and grasped
her wrist, pulling her into the seat opposite. She started at the
unexpected touch, but remained seated. I got up and retrieved a
glass from the bar. I placed it before her, leaning over her and
registered the quick intake of breath. I was making her
uneasy.
Good
.

“
Are maids supposed to be
so familiar with the hotel’s guests?” I asked as I seated myself
opposite her and brought the glass to my lips. She picked up her
glass but did not drink.

“
No. But sometimes you
have to take a risk because there are some people who are so
special you could spend your whole life searching and never find
another like them.”

I was silent for a few moments, caught
off guard by her frankness, but also the truth of the words. I
could spend a millennium searching, but I could never hope to find
another like Luna. I was so absorbed with my misery that I almost
missed the surface thoughts beneath her words. The combination of
the two brought a mean streak to the fore, and when my gaze met
hers again, I felt her consternation at how hard it was.

“
Really?” I said. “And
what is it about me that is so special you would risk losing your
job in order to spend a few moments talking to me?”

“
You are not like other
people,” she said in the same frank tone. “I have seen you drink
and drink, yet you do not suffer the effects. A normal man would be
dead, or at least very sick, if they drank like you. But you are
untouched by it. And you do not seem to eat or sleep.”

I was silent.

“
You do not have to worry.
I am the only one who notices these things,” she continued. “The
rest do not care to as much as I do.”

“
So you risk your job to
sit here and speak with me. Tell me something, if you lost your job
and you were thrown out of your home, along with your poor sick
mother, would it be worth the risk then?”