“There is no greater sorrow. Than to be mindful of the happy time. In misery.”
Dante Alighieri
Emma was curious about the phone call, but I wasn’t ready to reveal details about my past, so I told her that I had to leave early to take care of another case. There was dried blood in my hair, and my skin felt sticky and dirty. At first, I went back to my flat and had a shower, the thought of the Keres’s dead corpse making my stomach quiver. I didn’t want to show up in the monastery looking indecent. It’s not like I cared about people’s opinions these days, but going back to the place where I grew up made me a little nervous.
Most of the paps had abandoned their post and left. I sneaked out upstairs using the back entrance. I’d had enough excitement for one day, and talking to whoever was left outside on the parking lot, hunting for their next breakthrough story, would only push me over the edge.
A cold shiver passed over my spine when I sat in the tube station going over what happened in the tunnels. Ricky was wrong—that memory was real. It was vivid and Morpheus existed.
My stomach was in knots, and after my visit in the monastery I was certain that I would head straight to the Broken Shoe. There was something unsettling about the phone call that Emma took earlier on. First some demon was advising me to look into the death of my mother, then the Keres used her abilities to bring back that lost memory, and now I was going to speak to the nuns. There were so many questions about the identity of my father, but I had no family, no one that I could ask about him. Deep down I knew that I was only a mongrel and there was nothing special about me.
I reached Hackney forty minutes later. The old cathedral was still there. I’d read somewhere that a couple of years ago the nuns were forced to moved to the other side of Hyde Park. The old Gothic church became unstable and the monastery didn’t have money to take on extensive renovations. Shortly after I started my own life, the nuns stopped looking after orphanage kids. The British Council set up state-run homes and took over most of the duties from the church. Well, I had no idea if that meant kids would get a better upbringing, but a lot of mothers still chose to abandon mongrel babies. Most of them were lucky if they were raised in the foster system.
Sometimes I dreamed about that large scary church and now as I was standing in front of it my knees felt like paper. I started to develop my demonic abilities from a very early age. Other children were cruel and I was often punished for speaking the truth. The nuns were strict, but fair.
Fresh energy vibrated through me when I rang the bell. I felt weakened by the earlier encounter in the tunnels. Now I had to get it together and find out what this phone call was all about. The nuns made me wait a bit longer than expected, but eventually one of them opened the door.
“God bless you, child,” said the older nun smiling at me. I wanted to roll my eyes, I really did, but my voice of reason advised me to behave. “Can I help you?”
“I need to speak to Sister Mary. She called my place of work. My name is Maxine Brodeur,” I said, feeling tense. After all, my time in the monastery was lonely and at times difficult. I grew up feeling isolated and worried that I would hurt someone, not understanding what was happening to me. That’s why I hated hell, and the whole faction system. All the demons believed that we were beneath them. I didn’t belong anywhere.
The nun widened her eyes at me, mumbled something incoherent under her breath and then told me to follow her. Once the door was shut, overwhelming anxiety rushed through my body. This place was filled with a lot of sorrowful emotions. I sensed some happiness, but most of the sisters that lived inside felt trapped and lost.
I was lucky that I didn’t have to walk through the corridors in the old building. I hated how depressed these walls used to make me feel. No one was there and yet I was seeing nuns standing on the long corridors, staring back at me. The silence rang in my ears. I never thought I could live like that, sacrifice my life for God.
We reached a large open-plan hallway with an old wooden staircase. I couldn’t sense any demons nearby, but someone with supernatural abilities had visited these walls recently. The energy was faint. I couldn’t figure out if it was a mongrel’s or a Watcher. Either way, demons wouldn’t voluntarily choose to be trapped inside a monastery. Being in hell had taught them that freedom was important.
The old nun took me to the first floor. I couldn’t relax, and unexpected heat rushed down my spine, reminding me of the time when my energy was getting out of control and other kids called me a freak.
“I just let Sister Mary know that you are here,” the nun mumbled, and disappeared behind the heavy white doors. My heart beat faster, pumping way too much blood into my veins. Part of my demonic abilities were slowly restored, but I needed a good night’s sleep to feel like myself again. I tried to stop thinking about that letter and Arthur, but I needed to spare him the pain. The truth would cost both of us a lot, more than we were prepared to pay.
Several moments later, the older nun nodded to me to go inside. She shut the door behind me, leaving me alone with another nun, most likely Sister Mary.
“Maxine? Are you Maxine Brodeur, the girl that used to be part of the old orphanage based in the monastery?” the nun asked. She was younger than the nun that let me inside, with a clear beautiful complexion and small brown eyes. She wore the same boring grey habit, but with a darker veil.
“Yes, you called the agency. My assistant mentioned that you were asking about me,” I said, trying to remember if I ever met her before. Most of the nuns that dealt with me back in the day were either in a different monastery or they passed away.
Sister Mary seemed nervous, but her thoughts were easy for me to read. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to tell me anything. One of the nuns advised her to call the police straight away and not wait around with a matter that didn’t directly involve the convent.
“Someone broke in to the attic room last night. I had searched your name online and your agency came up, so I decided to call you,” the nun explained shyly. Wow, Emma indeed knew what she was doing on that damn laptop, but it was a bit unsettling that anyone could find me on the internet these days. “You’re a grown woman now. You left that life behind and I wasn’t sure if I should get in touch.”
“What exactly happened and why did you think this burglary had anything to do with me?”
“Your files were in that attic room along with the files of other girls that were part of the orphanage years ago. Other sisters believe that I should just call the police, but I thought it was the right thing to do to call you first,” she said, and my energy stirred inside me. “Someone was specifically looking for something in these old files. It seemed like the other documents weren’t touched at all, only yours.”
I swallowed hard, thinking about Nameless Thief. He was the first person that came into my mind. The bastard must have read the letter that I’d written to Arthur, and now he was hoping to find something that could backdate my claims. I tried to keep calm, but I felt like I was ready to blow up something.
“Okay, so what do you want me to do about it?” I asked, getting straight to the point. Sister bit her lip and then folded her fingers on top of each other.
“I wanted to give you a chance to see it for yourself. Most of the files had been locked up, and these are now inaccessible. The policies from a couple of years ago are still in place. I felt like the convent owes you to at least have a peek,” Sister Mary said.
Part of me burned with curiosity, the other was reluctant. I didn’t know much about my mother, other than the bits and pieces that I managed to find myself. Even after I turned eighteen, I couldn’t access my own files. Apparently someone within the church believed that the past didn’t need to be scrapped out.
“All right, let’s get on with it. Show me the attic,” I said, knowing that I probably wouldn’t get this kind of opportunity again. I should have called Ricky. Maybe that way I wouldn’t have to feel so vulnerable. Now when I was going back to my childhood I felt like a lot of people kept stuff from me. It never bothered me that I didn’t know my father, well, not until today.
Sister Mary nodded, got up, and moments later we were out of the room, climbing the steps of the old staircase. I couldn’t figure out if Sister Mary was happy living within the convent, but at that point I stopped pretending that I should give a damn and started thinking about tequila and maybe a game of poker later on. It was a hell of a day that wasn’t even over yet. No one ever asked me if I was happy being dumped in orphanages when my mother died.
Sister Mary had a bulk of keys with her. It took her a while to find the right one. The stairs to the attic room were narrow. I bumped my head a few times and then found myself in a very long and wide space that obviously had been vandalised, most likely several hours ago.
“I’ll just leave you to it,” Sister Mary said. I really couldn’t figure out why the hell she let me inside. She was obviously breaking the rules set by the convent. There were files, papers lying on the dusty floor. The light was dim and it kept flashing. I sensed the energy of a demon, stinging with mine, scorching around the dead space. There was no doubt that a demon was here last night, searching for something specific. I didn’t want to assume that it was Nameless Thief; after all, I heard that he was quite particular about the mess.
I started picking up papers with my name on it. I found my old birth certificate, the list of vaccinations, books with homework and my old grades. This whole thing seemed so surreal. It was like I was back being a child again, lost in the big world.
My throat was tight with emotion when I picked up an old black-and-white photograph of my mother. She looked young on it, probably in her early teens. I never thought that nuns would keep this stuff so tightly hidden.
My head started spinning, probably because my body still hadn’t regenerated from the blood loss. Besides, I hadn’t eaten anything since this morning and my stomach was rumbling. Moments like this made me appreciate the little that I remembered about my mother. A lot of boxes were untouched and when I found the bits and pieces that belonged to me, I was stunned by the diabolical energy that marked the edge of the box. I couldn’t explain it, but I recognised demonic frustration, and it’s fury. Someone was desperately trying to find valuable information about me.
When I lifted old boxes and moved some rubbish lying around with my foot, I spotted another photograph. It was my mother again, with the man next to her. They were sitting in some obscure London bar. Someone had deliberately burned his face with a cigarette. He had his arms around her and he held her closely. She looked happy in that picture and when I flipped it around, I spotted the date too.
“Seventeenth of June,” I muttered to myself, counting that it was a year before my birthday. The photograph was damaged and there was no way that I could tell who that man was next to the woman that gave birth to me.
When I leaned down, hoping to find some more, I saw the knotted hair lying on the dusty floor. My pulse spiked, and sudden panic riddled through me. It was the colour that struck me—shiny crimson red.
“The bitch,” I said, as the energy of my enemy crept down my spine. Alexis was here. She was the one that had burglarised this space, and the one that was searching for information about me. I stared at the hair for minutes, fuming with anger. I was certain that the hair belonged to her, but I could check that later on in the office.
Who else would dare to rummage through the attic, tearing apart all my fucking files? Her determination was alarming. She was searching for confirmation, proof that would allow her to destroy me. God, I really needed to up my game and find her before it was too late.
Ricky was right, we had a business that was our livelihood. Now I had to spread my energy, not only in order to find Nameless, but also to protect everything I ever worked for and more.
I continued looking for more postcards or photos, Alexis in the back of my mind. I was zooming through anything else that would help me with the search for my father, but apart from that one picture I couldn’t find anything else in this mess. I also needed to be careful not to leave any fingerprints. The nuns would eventually call the police, and I needed to avoid being questioned.
I had to keep the picture, it belonged to me, the state didn’t have any right to keep it hidden here. I should have searched for the identity of my father years ago, when I turned eighteen. After all, he was a demon that seduced my mother. Morpheus. So far that was the only thing that I had, his name and possibly part of that old photograph. In the memory that the Keres had voluntarily gifted to me, he stole the body of a human. Mum knew about his nature, but I still didn’t get why Morpheus didn’t want to reveal his true identity. At this point it looked like I was never going to find that out.