It almost makes me laugh as I trudge through the crowded streets, chilled through with grimy rainwater. Magda had been so sure I was special. What would she say if she could see me now? Perhaps she’d think I’d been clever. Nothing makes a girl more anonymous than the ignominy of poverty.
The healing process always drains me, and combined with the nightmares I’ve been having, it’s left me grouchy and irritable. Not a good way to feel when your job requires you to paste a smile on your face and be pretty and cheerful and welcoming.
Nevertheless, by the time I arrive at Head Office I make sure to put on a smile. I’ll need it for my boss Mr Smithers, because I’m going to have to beg him to let me use one of the spare shirts. Both my spares were burned in Rosalie’s little accidents.
It is Smithers’ job to make sure the staff are pristine, as accidents do happen in catering. I know he has shirts available. But he keeps them, like everything else, under lock and key. I am really not looking forward to the lewd comments Smithers is bound to make about my wet shirt.
A soft whistle of sympathetic surprise stops me in my tracks. It is my colleague Ben. He looks rather impressed with the ghastly state of my shirt. Seeing the harassed and worried look on my face, his brown eyes soften. He wastes no time in saying, “I have a spare you can borrow if you like? It’ll probably be big on you.” He looks a little apologetic at this.
It is all I can do to not throw my arms around him in relief. “Thank you, Ben. You’ve saved me!”
Ben blushes a rather sweet pink. I pretend not to notice, looking away from his face to make him feel less awkward. By the time I have cleaned up and put on his shirt, which is too big but is at least crisp and clean, I’m ten minutes late. I sidle into the staff meeting, cringing as the door hinges squeal loudly on my entry.
Smithers looks right at me. “Late again, Diana?” he says. He makes a little note on his clipboard.
I try not to glower at him. I have only been late once, and that was only by three minutes and on my first day when I couldn’t find the meeting room. Two whole years ago. But to hear him, you would think I was late all the time. Rosalie is standing beside Smithers as if she is his right-hand woman. She giggled at his snide little quip, and is still smirking at me.
She didn’t like me right from the start. She liked me less when I got the Ambassador’s Ball shift this week and she didn’t. The tips will be immense. I badly need the money for my rent but I suspect Instagram-junkie Rosalie planned to use the shift to make some new celebrity pals. She is pissed to miss out, and she isn’t one to pull her punches.
She is the one who dug up a certain viral video of me off the internet and emailed it around to everyone at work my first week here.
I ignore her smirk, and pay attention to the instructions for the day. Smithers drones on and on. When he is finally finished I am not the only one who is fidgeting, impatient to get on with the work. I rush to get started on checking the inventory we need to take to the venue. I am helping Ben load crates of china onto a van when Smithers comes to find me. He does not look pleased.
“You’ve got a phone call,” he snaps.
“Me?” I ask, surprised.
“You,” he practically snarls.
As I follow him back to his office, he complains at length that I am not supposed to have phone calls at work, and demands to know how this person, who refused to divulge their name but who insisted the call was very important, had got hold of his phone number.
I know that he expects me to apologize, but I cannot recall giving his number to anybody. I have barely given my own pay-as-you-go phone number to anybody. I can’t afford to use my phone except for emergencies. My phone is currently in my locker. I wonder if this person tried calling me on that first. If they had to track down my work number, the call must be important.
My heart skips a beat. The only person who would have an important reason to call me is Storm. But I have not heard from him in two whole years. In those first few weeks after losing my Agency job I had hoped it was him every time my phone rang. I had hoped he would offer me my job back, telling me the Agency had decided to give me another chance. He never called. Not once.
I hurry anxiously into Smithers’s office, and get an unpleasant shock. Rosalie is in there and she is hanging up the phone.
“No!” I say, but it is too late.
“I thought you’d left it off the hook,” she trills at Smithers, batting her eyelashes.
She proceeds to explain how she came here because she thought Smithers might like some help with the paperwork. She raises a finely arched eyebrow at him suggestively. I clench my fists, wanting to scream at her for hanging up my call. I know that she must have known it was my call. She would never have hung it up otherwise.
Smithers is grinning at Rosalie in a way that makes me sick. “You can go,” he tells me curtly.
Suddenly the phone rings again. Smithers snatches it up before I can. He listens to the person on the other end and then wordlessly hands it over to me. He takes a seat at his desk. He does not leave to give me the courtesy of privacy. Not that I expected him to. He glowers at me as I pick up the phone and say, “Hello,” in a voice that emerges embarrassingly squeaky with nerves.
“Diana!” says a relieved voice on the other end. It is Remi Bronwyn. I am surprised and disappointed all at once. I had convinced myself it would be Storm.
“Thank goodness,” Remi continues in a rush. “I tried your number but there wasn’t the option to leave a voicemail, and I was so worried that I would miss you. Then I finally got this number, and then that girl hung up on me!”
Remi had stayed in touch, calling me intermittently. Then her calls turned to text messages. Lately her messages had dwindled to one every few months.
Her current urgency makes a little knot of anxiety twist in my stomach. “What is it?” I ask her. “Has something happened to Storm?”
Not that she would call me if it did, I realize with embarrassment.
She sounds surprised. “No, nothing like that. It’s about erm… Magda.”
She doesn’t call her my mother. Only Storm’s team at the Agency know that Magda was my mother. They hadn’t made this fact public in case it put me in danger.
Hearing my biological mother’s name on her lips is like a dash of cold water in my face. Magda’s body is still in the custody of the Agency of Otherkind Investigations. They hadn’t released her in two years. They’d said an in-depth magical autopsy involved all sorts of complicated things, and it could take months. They had been hoping to find even the smallest clue that would lead them towards her murderer, the Devil Claw Killer having been notoriously hard to catch. Then they’d said there were some unique peculiarities that made it important to keep her longer than usual, but that I need not worry because she was being magically preserved.
“What about her?” I ask stiffly, fully aware that Smithers is listening to every word.
Rosalie is perched on the edge of his desk, tapping her heels on the ground as if I am inconveniencing her, whilst not bothering to hide her interest in my private life.
“Storm had asked me to keep an eye on what was happening with her,” says Remi. “And keep you updated if anything changed.”
Hearing this makes me bite my lip. It actually hurts to know that Storm had been thinking of me but never called.
“How is he?” I can’t help but ask.
“He’s fine. He’d probably have called you himself if he wasn’t in Paris right now.”
My heart lurches. Paris, the city of love. Is Storm there for work or for a holiday? I desperately want to ask, but I would only be embarrassing myself. His personal life is none of my business. His silence made that clear.
“So, erm, you said something had changed with Magda?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Did you have a breakthrough?”
“Unfortunately not. No new leads. Look, I’m sorry to have to tell you this. My contact at the morgue just called me to say that her body had been releas
ed last week.”
“What?” I ask in shock. “What do you mean released? Where is she?”
“You weren’t down as her next of kin,” says Remi apologetically. “The morgue was not aware, and we felt it was best not to tell them in case the information leaked.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I want her. Where is she?”
I had been scrimping to save enough to pay for her funeral. I need to give her a good funeral. I need to lay her to rest with flowers and a church and everything. She’d been a woman of faith. She would want a decent burial.
The fact that she was released a week ago horrifies me. Did they give her a pauper’s funeral? Is she in some unmarked grave somewhere where I will never be able to visit her? I am shaking as I wait for Remi to confirm this.
“She was released to her employer. To the Palace. To Princess Caroline.” Remi pauses. She knows that I did not like the Princess Caroline, and that the princess practically hated me.
“What does that mean? How can I get her back?” My brain struggles to catch up with this news.
“You can’t. The funeral is today.”
“What?” I almost drop the phone. “Today? It can’t be.”
“Today at three o’ clock,” she confirms.
My heart squeezes painfully. My shift ends at five o’clock. I’ll never make it.
I am barely able to pay attention as Remi gives me the address of the church where the funeral service is being held. I mumble it several times under my breath, memorizing it. I can’t ask Smithers for any notepaper and a pen. He’ll probably make me pay for it.
When I get off the phone I stiffly tell him that I need to finish my shift early.
“No. Where am I supposed to get someone to cover you at this late hour?” he says. “Rosalie is clocking off at two o’ clock as it is. We need all the hands we can get.”
“Please,” I say, hating to beg. “It’s a family emergency.”
“I thought you didn’t have a family,” says Rosalie snidely.
Nasty piece of work, hisses the little voice, sidling into the front of my mind. We should slap her.
“I don’t,” I snap. “Because they’re all dead. It’s a funeral, if you must know.”
“It can’t be a close family member,” she says pertly. “How come you only found out about it just now?”
I grind my teeth, having no intention of telling her that my mother had been on a morgue slab for years on end while law enforcement desperately tried to find some clue that would lead them to her murderer. Rosalie is just the sort who would love to spread malicious gossip. She’d probably tell people that I had murdered my own mother.
Why are you begging these fools? says the little voice. Just walk out. You don’t need this job anyway. I can help you find a better one.
Ignoring her, I say in what I hope is a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, “Please, Mr Smithers, I have to go to this funeral.”
He shrugs, not bothering to hide that he doesn’t give a damn. “Not my problem.”
“I can help you,” says Rosalie suddenly.
I gape at her. Rosalie doesn’t have a helpful bone in her body.
“I can stay late and finish your shift,” she offers. “But…”
I wait for it. There is always a price with Rosalie.
“Only if I get double pay,” she says smugly.
I look at Smithers hopefully, even though I already know there is no way that he will agree to this. It would take me threatening to walk out on this job for him to agree to that, and he and I both know that I’m not about to do that.
He snorts as if what she has said is hilarious. “No.” He doesn’t even bother to give a reason.
Rosalie raises her eyebrows at me. I know what she wants. I can pay her the extra myself or I can miss my mother’s funeral. I can’t have both. At least I will have my share of the tips. That’s something. It should be bigger than the usual pot, given the high profile client.
With a heavy heart, and praying that the tips will be enough to cover what I need for rent, I say, “You can pay her my wages for this shift.”
Smithers doesn’t care. He nods. Rosalie beams. But she isn’t done yet. “And I want your share of the tips too.”
I glower at her. I want to say no. I want to tell her to get lost. To wipe that smirk off her face. But she and I both know that I won’t. “Fine,” I say grudgingly.
“And…” she says.
I stare at her. What the hell else can she possibly want?
“I want your shift at the Ambassador’s Ball,” she says smugly.
I gape at her. No way. No way in hell. I don’t care that the Ambassador’s Ball is the hottest shift going and everyone on the staff had been dying to get on it. I don’t care about the celebrities and royalty, or even that the most famous of otherkind in London will be there, it being the Otherworld Ambassador’s Ball. The only thing I care about is those tips. I can’t lose them. Smithers has already cut back two of my usual shifts this week as if to punish me.
People who Smithers’ dislikes always end up with the worst shifts. But this time, to stop arguments about favoritism, senior management had drawn lots to allocate the coveted positions, and I had got lucky.
Rosalie had been fuming for weeks about it. No doubt she had been hoping to catch herself a rich paramour there. She wouldn’t have missed out if Smithers had been allowed to allocate the work like he usually did. No doubt she thought it was unfair that she worked so hard to keep Smithers on her little hook and now she had lost out on the best job that would come by this year.
And now she is trying to steal my shift.
“No,” I say automatically.
She only raises her eyebrows in amusement. She waits.
I need those tips. Without them no way in hell am I gonna make my rent. But it’s my mother’s funeral. She died because of me. I vowed to bring her killer to justice, and I already messed up my best chance of that. Am I really going to miss her funeral too?
“Fine,” I say in a low voice, unable to even look at Rosalie.
Trilling in laughter she almost bounces out of the office.
Chapter 3
DIANA
The little church looks very old and out of place among all the towering modern buildings of central London. I arrive late, my shift having been so busy it had been almost impossible to get away. The old wooden door of the church creaks as I enter, making a small group of ten or so mourners turn to look at me.
I quickly look down at the flagstones, avoiding eye contact with anyone. I don’t want them to notice me. I don’t want them to wonder who I am and why I am here.
My quick glance had shown that everyone is dressed in somber black attire. I didn’t have time to change. These people are dressed more respectfully than me at my own mother’s funeral. It’s fitting I suppose. No doubt they knew her better than me.
I walk slowly down the central aisle between the pews. A small queue is shuffling down towards the open casket to pay their last respects. I join it.
My head is a mess. I am not ready for this. I had wanted a private moment with her in which to say a few words of goodbye. I don’t know what I would have said, but something to fix this hollow feeling inside of me. To ease my guilt that she’s dead. Killed by a monster who was after me. I want to tell her I’m sorry, and that I wish I had believed her when she warned me. That I wish I hadn’t run off, leaving her alone. I can’t even remember what my last words to her were, but I know they were not kind.
As the queue gets shorter and I get closer to the front, I begin trembling. Nothing I can ever say will make it right. Maybe I shouldn't even be here. I feel like a fraud, surrounded by those who are grieving for her who actually knew her in life. I will never know her now. She had been my only hope of having a real family, and she is gone.
What will she look like after two years? Will she look the same? How could they have left her casket open?
When I reach the front I almost flee. But
I make myself step right to the open casket and look in. It is a shock. Seeing her face, I am immediately transported back to the last time I saw her, face speckled with blood, eyes glazed and blankly staring at nothing.
Her eyes are closed now. She does not look like herself. They have painted her skin with heavy makeup. She never wore any in life. It makes her look less real. Death has made her dark hair and haughty features more austere. I try to see myself in her face, but I am not there. She looks nothing like me, and yet she is my mother. This is the woman who gave birth to me. What must she have thought when she saw her squalling infant with a monstrous stone fused to her navel? Yet she had done everything in her power to save her baby from harm, including giving me up. I had grown up never knowing her. And now it is too late.
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