Chapter

Scorpius felt pensive the next morning, unsure how he felt. There was an awkwardness that had stolen into his life the minute Claudine had walked in, as if the future he had been meant for sat more uneasily. He'd never questioned the expectations of him and the arrangement that had been made with Claudine's family. There had never been any issues with them sleeping together when the mood struck, but he wasn't an exhibitionist who'd want to show 'affection' to his intended in front of an audience, even if there was a part of him that wanted to let it serve his ghost right. She had after all decided to attach herself to his life; she should be willing to then deal with her choice. And if she wanted to pry her way into his life, she could just accept that women were part of it. But there was more to his reticence than that, but he couldn't entirely put his finger on it.

He knew she was here somewhere, could feel her, even if he could only see her faintly during the daylight hours, like a shimmer. Her presence didn't disturb him now, maybe because the unknown element was gone, and he more or less expected her to be there. The inherent creepiness had alleviated now that he knew who and why. Admittedly he didn't know fully why someone so seemingly sweet-natured would become militant enough to join the resistance, then rage so profoundly she'd haunted someone after her death. There was definitely more to Lucy than met the eye—something that shifted her between the sickly sweet girl with her tedious teenage concerns, still reflected by her tiny and girly room in that Paris walk-up, the one exploring her budding love affair, to the thing that now raged and hated. There was a trajectory that led from one to the other, and she was now a puzzle he could figure out.

Picking up her journal from the nightstand, he continued reading. It was eye-rolling nauseating. Her main concern were her hopes for her and her boyfriend living together, and his studies in alchemy. There was apparently a job he wanted and their life would just be perfect if he got it.

Scorpius wanted to put it down again, because it was just dull reading this dribble. There was even a section on the painful choice between yellow or duck blue fucking bath towels.

And then he turned the page—a page warped and brittle, the writing smudged and running, dissipating in circles across the page. He couldn't make any of it out, but it wasn't uniform enough for her to have stilt something. Then it struck him: these were tears, her tears. Scorpius felt something tingle up his spine. Something had happened. Maybe perfect-boy wasn't so perfect after all.

The next page was entirely blank. The one after that started with a black pen, while the whole journal so far had been written in blue, probably some pen with pink fluff on it, he would imagine. Even her writing was more stark now.

Mum things I should go away, seek a distraction. There is nothing that can distract from this. What is there to distract from, he's dead. A distraction isn't going to change that; nothing is going to change that—ever.

Comprehension dawned on Scorpius. Her lover-boy had been killed. He leaned back against the head board and dropped the journal down on his lap. Flicking through the pages, there was pages and pages of her lament.

"Is that why you joined the resistance? Because he was killed?" He saw her over by the window, which made her translucent to the point of invisible, but she stepped to the side of the window so he could see her more. He could see her frowning as if she looked confused. She didn't remember.

The soothsayer's words returned—'make her remember'. "Harquin, he died and you cried." The frown deepened. "Then you decided to avenge him." Scorpius could understand that; she had just taken on an enemy that was so much stronger than her and she'd lost. "Got yourself killed."

"You killed me," she said. "You killed him; you killed anyone. That is what you do. Cause suffering and despair. That is your purpose."

"No it's not," he said sharply.

"IT IS!" she screamed. The air suddenly turned freezing cold. "YOU KILLED HIM!"

The air was growing charged as if static electricity was generating. The hairs on his arms were standing. "This was in England; I wasn't even there."

"YOU KILL, YOU DESTROY. THAT IS ALL YOU ARE."

She charged him and her icy fingers came down on his chest, scraping across his skin and pain shot through him. Okay, maybe she could maim while fed. The soothsayer had said so, hadn't she, that Lucy could tear him apart.

He tried to grab her wrist, but his fingers moved straight through her. Pressure was building, he could feel it in his ears. She really was attacking him now and he had no defense. The pressure grew so high he felt his eardrums burst. This was more than she'd ever done.

Throwing his sheets off him, he ran for the door, feeling her chase up as he ran down the stairs, fleeing.

A tactical retreat he told himself as he rushed out of the house, feeling her icy fingers grip for him. He felt her give at the boundary of the house and now he stood barefoot and bare chested on the cold street, people looking at him as they walked past. Crossing his arms, he braced himself against the cold. Fuck!

Lucy had just found her claws again, and she'd learnt a new trick. She was capable of tearing him apart, he'd been told and she was now discovering her more damaging capabilities. Why did he have to be a guinea pig for this?

He couldn't stand out here all day, but like any woman, Lucy probably needed time to cool off and he had to be absent until she had. Walking in now, would just see him suffer through round two, and he still had no defences against her. Blast that damned soothsayer for not giving him anything to restrain Lucy with.

Walking up to the front door, he rang the intercom and told whoever answered to have the driver bring the car out front. Freezing cold seeped up his feet and legs as he stood waiting, people still staring at him. Fuck them, he told himself as he rubbed her hands down his bare arms.

The car came and he jumped in the back and told the man behind the wheel to drive. Their staff knew not to question their orders, so the man drove until he got further directions. Scorpius wasn't of mind to decide where to go, he just needed to be somewhere for a moment, so he turned on the heat and sat back, staring out the window.

So Lucy's lover had been killed, and he could assume that some part of it had to do with their empire. Perhaps the guy had been part of the resistance, or maybe just some innocent bystander who got caught in the cross fire. However it happened, it had motivated her to fight back.

For a moment he frowned, wondering at this devotion that would drive someone like her to revenge. Obviously vengeance was part of their game, any slight was met with brutal response, but no one in his family had never been motivated like this—like Lucy. And he'd taken on personal responsibility for this tragedy in her book. Admittedly, he had killed her.

The tears and the despair in her journal sank into his mind. Pure, irrational grief. If Claudine was killed, how would he feel? The sad truth was relief. He would feel relieved, and this was the woman he was to tie himself to for the rest of his life. He had to admit the short comings of it, but then he would never suffer the all-consuming despair like Lucy had.

Lucy had accused him of being destruction, of wreaking pain and grief wherever he went. It wasn't like that. They needed to stop fighting. They were the ones baiting a bear, then blamed it for the consequences. They knew full well what the consequences would be, so at some point they had to take responsibility.

-0-

After stopping at one of the high end stores, he went to lunch on his own at one of his typical restaurants, feeling out of sorts all day. He could call someone to join him, but he didn't. He felt a bit like an exile and he couldn't settle on anything, knowing he was a refugee from his own house. Anger should be coursing through him, but it wasn't. In truth, he wasn't entirely sure how he felt. On one hand, he needed Lucy to know and acknowledge her life, on the other, he felt … sorry that she was raging so.

Annoyed that he didn't have a watch or a phone, he had to ask the waiter for the time, wondering if it had been sufficiently long that he could go back now. But then who knew with ghosts? He didn't normally bother with angry women, except Claudine, which he had to bother with. Jewelry solved all problems, he'd found, but it certainly wouldn't be of interest to Lucy. Nothing materialistic would ever be of interest to her. She wanted something else entirely, but he couldn't really get a grip on it.

He decided it was time to bite the bullet. There was a part of him that wanted to go back there and he couldn't really understand why, but it was more than it being in his rightful place, his apartments. There was something fascinating about Lucy. Like an onion, he wanted to get to the next layer. They had come so far already, from a terrifying (if he were to admit it) entity, to a superficial person, to now a much more complex person.

Now he wanted to know what drove her to the resistance, how that happened. What had she done in the name of the resistance? Had a bit of the grubbiness of it rubbed off on her? She couldn't have been part of that and remained as pristine as the girl he'd read about in her diary. The resistance weren't filled with innocents; they were just as hardened as anyone on his team.

He really, really wanted her to be tainted by the things she had done in the name of this unrecognized war. Then she wouldn't be so completely out of reach.