“What we hold here by faith, shall there be seen,
not demonstrated but directly known,
even as the first truth that man believes.”
―Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
As soon as Alexis was gone, my power exploded. Emotional pain radiated through my body, injecting my heart with venom. The stranger had me pinned down to the wooden door of a caravan, but that didn’t matter. Seeing my daughter gone shattered my energy. I was broken, screaming at the top of my lungs, and kicking the demon that prevented me from rescuing her as hard as I could. His charm was broken and his body went flying upwards. A moment later he slammed through the wooden walls of another caravan, landing on his back. Somewhere at the back of my head, I realised that Alexis had won. She got to Summer before me.
“You son of a bitch, I’m going to kill you right now!” I roared and with every strength I had I launched myself on him. I started throwing punches when he tried to get up, losing complete control of my energy. His magic stung me a couple of times, but I turned into a grieving monster. If it weren’t for him I probably would have killed that bitch.
His attempts at blocking me were pathetic. Soon my fists were bloody and he stopped fighting me. I couldn’t stop hitting him, the anger was riddling through me like a wildfire. All I wanted was to kill him.
I had no idea how long I kept punching him, but eventually someone must have pulled me away. Then the same person slapped me hard, shaking my arms until I could pull myself together.
“Max, you have to calm down!” Zach shouted. I looked at his dark eyes and felt drained, exhausted all of a sudden. My knees couldn’t hold my body any longer and I went down on the ground. There was blood everywhere. I could smell it on me, feel its metallic taste on my tongue. I glanced at Emma. She was staring at me in shock, standing behind Zach.
“Alexis took Summer. She was here when that arsehole locked my abilities. I couldn’t do anything. I was paralysed. I have no idea how she found her. We arrived here too late,” I said, not able to hold my tears any longer.
A few of the artists came back. They were staring at me and the beaten-up demon that lay motionless in the broken caravan’s doors. Emma exhaled sharply and I started screaming hard, louder than I ever had. Minutes or maybe hours passed, and then it poured down with rain. I kept screaming in agony, feeling like Mother Nature was crying over me. She knew too that Summer was gone, and I didn’t save her.
At some point Zach told me to get up and get myself together. The circus artists dragged the injured demon out. He was still alive, barely, but they told me that he was going to make it. Zachary dragged me back on my feet and told me that we needed to go. He seemed scared, and the performance inside the circus was coming to the end.
I was numb when we started walking back. No one was saying anything. I kept telling myself that Matilda was with Summer and she wouldn’t allow anything to happen to her. It was time to find the way out from the Forgotten Street. I also had to speak to Morpheus again. He lied to me.
“Matilda was hiding in here, amongst her kind. She realised very early on that Summer was in danger.” I kept saying the same sentence over and over. Somehow Zachary had managed to lead us back to the street where we’d fallen through the magical portal on the London Bridge. Emma was anxious; we didn’t want to bump into the same bunch of Warlocks again. We needed to get back to our world. I had to figure out a new plan.
No one wanted to believe me when I said that it’s easier to find the way out than in. Drained and exhausted I led my friends through the narrow back streets of this mysterious world. I still had a bit of jinx powder left on me. Zachary yet again questioned my sanity when I took out the small bag and spread the shiny powder all over the brick wall.
I’d thought that I had time, I’d thought that I could protect her.
I whispered the formula and told everyone that they needed to get themselves ready. Emma looked uncertain and Zach wasn’t sure if this was safe. The earth underneath our feet began to shake and Emma’s fear radiated through my pores. In any other circumstance I would have tried to comfort her, but that old Maxine was gone. The new one was lost and was grieving.
Moments later a door appeared in the wall. It was time to go back. My friends had so many questions, and I couldn’t give them answers. Ricky was dying, Zara was lost in her own world. They wanted to know what was going to happen to them.
The door led us through a narrow tunnel that spread for at least a mile. As we walked back into the real world, I realised that some part of my journey was over. I did give up on Summer when she was born, stupidly thinking that I could keep her away from the ordinary world, from Arthur.
In the end we found ourselves in one of the underground tube stations, underneath the Oxford Circus. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t reassure my friends that everything was going to be all right, because my head was messed up. Dead or not, I had to have a drink. It took us another hour to get back to Brixton and walk through familiar streets around my own neighbourhood.
“Maxine, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?” Emma asked, taking my hands and thinking about her own daughter. I didn’t want to break apart in front of them, but the pain was slowly tearing me apart. Alexis would use my daughter in order to heal her soul, and she would need her blood for it, a lot of it. I hoped that Matilda was willing to fight to keep Summer alive.
“There is nothing that you can do. Go home to Suzi. You shouldn’t have gotten involved in this mess. I have made my choice, but that doesn’t mean that you have to make yours too,” I said, knowing that this wasn’t fair. Emma wanted to help me all along.
She hugged me and reminded me that she was a friend, after all, not just my co-worker. I couldn’t ask her for more. She was already taking care of the clients in the agency. She had her own problems too.
When I was left alone with Zachary I was ready to head straight to the pub, knowing that magical tequila wouldn’t solve anything anyway. I promised myself that I would be responsible for my daughter’s sake.
“We will get that bitch, even if I have to enter hell,” Zach said, obviously trying to lift my doomed spirit. I couldn’t deal with the emotional baggage that hung on my shoulders. I had to track Alexis, help Ricky, and my only other hope was Morpheus. He had to do more than give me empty instructions.
“Save your speech. I screwed up my life to the full and there is nothing anyone can do to fix it,” I said, wiping the rainwater from my forehead. Zach grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles and I glanced at him, astonished. Last time I checked he was ready to toss me into the cell and forget about me. I’d never suspected that he would team up with Arthur.
“There is something about you, Maxine Brodeur, a spark that doesn’t want to leave your side,” he said. I wanted to laugh, knowing that he was trying to make me feel better.
“I’m useless. I don’t regret giving birth to her, but I regret everything else.”
“We regret many things. I wish my mother had been less strict with Zara. Maybe she never would have run away,” he sighed.
Our past several hours were intense and my energy was almost nonexistent. Part of me wished that I had planned ahead. I took a few potions with me, thinking that this would be enough.
“I’m sorry about Zara. I should have killed Alexis when I had a chance,” I said, bitterly disappointed with myself. I blamed royals for my misfortune. I should have never accepted that job in the palace, but deep down my own voice of reason reminded me that my life had always centred around work.
In the dim night light Zach looked tired, possibly exhausted by everything that happened today. I looked at my damp clothes, dreaming about Ricky’s luxurious bath. In moments like this I wished I were human. A woman that finished a hard day of work and was going to home to her man.
“Come on, let me buy you a drink,” he suggested, then glanced at his watch looking slightly shocked. “It’s still only nine o’clock here. Is it possible that the time works a different way out there, well, whatever place we travelled to?”
I had to double-check that myself, and yes, indeed, it seemed like I was just meeting them in the Broken Shoe.
“It seems that’s quite a theory,” I muttered. “Drink, yeah, I need one.”
“My car is parked close by, come on,” Zach encouraged me.
The awkward silence descended between us when we got to the car. We were both lost in our thoughts. I kept telling myself that Alexis’s plan to use Summer in a healing ritual wasn’t going to be easy. That bitch would have to keep my daughter alive for as long as physically possible.
Arthur hated me and for a split second I wanted to lose myself in Zach’s ripped body. I closed my eyes for a second, resting my head on the window, and then dozed off. Later on the engine of the car woke me up. I rubbed my eyes and rolled my hair in a ponytail, not recognising the streets around me. Then I remembered that Zach was driving and I’d agreed to go for a drink with him.
“Where are we?” I asked, staring at the round of nicely finished old Victorian houses. The streets were clean, gardens well maintained.
“It’s the street where I grew up. My mother called when you were sleeping and asked me to come over,” he said, smiling.
“All right, I’ll walk from here. Ricky’s apartment isn’t far,” I said, unsure why he didn’t wake me earlier. I needed to head home.
“No, you’re coming with me. My mother insisted I bring you. Besides, I have to check on Cornelia,” Zachary said switching off the car engine. Gambling and drinking were my forte, not socialising with the mother of my potential boyfriend.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. We are both tired and I won’t be good company this evening,” I said.
“Nonsense, Flower, you need a warm meal and some encouraging words of wisdom from my ma. We both know that your demonic brain will soon figure out how to capture Alexis, but for now you need to relax a little. It’s been a hell of a day, trust me.”
There was no point arguing, besides, I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything since this morning. Maybe Zach was right, I needed some time out.
He jumped out of the car and opened the door for me like a gentleman. His mother lived at the end of the Victorian terrace. It was a large house, undoubtedly with a lot of character. When we walked towards the door I saw a little girl waving at us. I waved back, seeing that it was Zach’s little niece, Cornelia. He obviously brought me here for a reason, maybe believing that his niece could lift my spirit somehow. I had no idea how I felt about this family gathering so far. Zachary smiled and blew a kiss to her, which she caught. Cornelia was a spitting image of her mother.
Zach walked in without knocking and I followed. Inside, as I suspected, the decor was set in the colours from Zach’s heritage. Obviously his mother had truly embraced her culture.
“Oh my dear boy, you finally decided to visit. Work, work, always work these days,” said the woman that greeted us in the large open plan kitchen. Seconds later a mass of black hair was climbing into Zachary’s arms, giggling loudly.
“Uncle, Uncle, look what I made for you!”
“All right, I would love to see it, but I have to put you down first. You weigh a tonne now. What have you been eating lately?” Zachary chuckled winking at me.
Cornelia laughed, dancing around him.
“Oh, Uncle, I only eat a little. You know that,” she admitted.
“We will see at dinner,” Zach responded. “Darling, I want you to meet someone. Mum, Cornelia, this is Maxine, my partner.”
Only Ricky had called me a partner before; for Zach I was just someone that helped him solve cases. His words warmed my heart, and I smiled maybe for the first time since we left the Forgotten Street.
It took me a moment to realise that I wasn’t the only one suffering. Zachary’s world had turned upside down: his sister wasn’t even human anymore and everything that he ever believed in was gone.
“Oh so nice to meet you. Come, come, I made some lamb koftas with special dip. You have to try it,” his mother told me, grabbing my elbow and rushing me to the table.
“Maxine, that’s a strange name. So are you on the street, killing bad guys like Uncle Zach?” Cornelia asked, situating herself next to me when I sat down and staring at me with her large dark eyes.
“You could say so, but I do have my own detective agency,” I explained, smiling. Cornelia got excited and started telling me about the time when she visited Zach at the station. Her words stopped reaching me after some time. I felt myself drifting away, experiencing the most bizarre daydream in my life. My demonic abilities had taken me back to my daughter. I blinked a few times, finding myself standing in a large open plan room. Alexis was standing in the other corner staring straight at me. It was the new reality, maybe another dream, but this time I couldn’t say how it would end.