"But I ordered a cream soda float!"

I suppressed the urge to toss the coke float in the round little brat's face as I placed down the orders for the table. I offered a tight and completely fake smile instead. "Sorry, someone must have gotten the orders mixed up. I'll bring your float in a minute."

Mid-noon rush on a blistering summer day was like hell rising within the four walls of Mickey's Cone ice cream parlour in the city. What was worse was the fact that the manager of the store believed the customer was always right, even when they weren't. I gritted my teeth and strolled back to the kitchen with the drink in hand, expertly weaving past my fellow flustered work colleagues rushing to get their orders out. I glanced down at my order pad. Three coke floats, without a doubt. What a little shit. I should spit in his–

Someone rounded the corner of the kitchen and smacked into me. I stumbled back with a cry, caught myself, and looked down at my now wet and stained uniform. I gave a sharp look at the girl who had run into me. Nadine gave me a snooty smirk.

"Watch where you're going!" She chided and breezed past me.

I stood glaring after her for a full minute, wanting to relive the moment when I'd smashed her face in at school. But that would mean I'd get fired by the manager, and even if I wasn't 'let go', the other waitresses would make my time here an even worse living hell because they all sucked up to Nadine. For some reason they were convinced if they did right by the Head Waitress that they would score more cash from the manager, which meant that everybody practically worshipped the pom-pom shaking imbecile.

Imbecile. Damn it, I was starting to sound like Vergil. I whipped up a cream soda float, put in a quarter of a scoop of ice cream, and purposely forgot to top it off with sprinkles. I headed back to the table and shoved the drink at the kid. "Enjoy," I snapped and headed for the cashier to ring up the bills for my tables.

The ice cream parlour was overflowing with customers, and the money had been rolling in all day, but sometimes money simply didn't compensate for mal-treatment. I dealt the bills to my customers, reserving a friendly smile and 'have a good day' only for my regulars. I turned back in the direction of the kitchen but caught in my tracks when a new line of customers pitched up at the door, waiting to be served. Nadine was the first waitress standing in cue to step up and welcome them with her arms loaded with menus. The boy with the dazzling blonde mop of hair met her eagerness with cool gaze and a slight nod in my direction, and the blonde girl beside him waved at me.

Nadine stepped aside sulkily and gave me a dagger look when I went over and picked up my own armful of menus. "This way, guys," I said, leading the way to the smoking section which still had a few booths open.

"I'll have the Waffle special," Roman said after studying the menu for two minutes.

"Make that two Waffle specials," Lorry said, drawing a long, slim white cigarette from the packet in her hands. "And I want ice cream, not cream."

"Me, too," Roman said, handing the menus back to me.

"Aren't you two in synch today," I teased, snatching up the menus and heading for the kitchen.

Working weekends should be declared illegal. Like being swamped with schoolwork during the week and steering clear of the snobs wasn't tough enough, I had to get up early over weekends and spend hours side by side the people I try to avoid at school. Eva was unsympathetic about the whole thing.

Every time I tried to talk to her about it, she told me to go lament to Dante. I only did it once, I even squirted some tears, but Dante was as heartless as his mother. He just smirked and shrugged me off with an annoyed 'so people suck – what else is new?' and stared at me with that irritating lazy look that meant I wasn't going to get anywhere with him. Ever since, he'd been coming around the parlour regularly to check if I was there or not. Hell would rain down the day I decide to skip work.

I returned to their table with their orders – waffles for my friends and our super strawberry deluxe for Dante – and skipped away to change out of my uniform and grab my things in the little office behind the kitchen. By the time I headed for the exit, more customers were streaming in and lining up on the sidewalk outside.

"You're in a hurry," Dante manifested beside me like a shadow when I reached the parking lot.

"I want to get away from here," I muttered tiredly, shifting my bag onto my back and scrambling on to my bike.

"You don't want to do anything while we're in town?" he asked, disappointed.

"Nah. I want to go home and chill."

Dante let out an unpleasant sigh and spun around, ambling back toward the parlour. I watched him for a minute, wondering whether I ought to go after him or not. He was being a selfish idiot again. I wanted to go unwind, damn it!

"Dante?" I called. I didn't expect him to stop and turn around, but he did. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

"Dante," I sighed, exasperated. "I'm tired. I want to go home. I don't want to be licking your ass to find out why you're mister grumpy-pants. Now I won't ask you again."

We stared at each other tensely. I was ready to turn my bike on and take off the second he carried on his evidently fake indifference, but he surprised me again.

"My mother is gone."

I stared at him, and blinked hard. "What?"

"My mother is gone. She didn't come home from the charity last night and she hasn't contacted us."

"She's not in the city at all?" I asked.

"Nope. She just kinda went poof. Disappeared off the face of the world."

"So...what do we do?" I asked. He was taking this way too calm to my liking.

"Wait for her to come back," Dante said and licked his lips. "Vergil thinks she's run off with some guy."

"What? Oh, please. What guy? The only guys your mom gets to see day-in day-out are the homeless men who line up for soup at the shelter. I doubt she would have been swept off her feet by one of them, and anyway she would never abandon us for some guy..."

"No, Vergil seemed convincing. According to him, people last saw her conversing with a man in the middle of the street. According to them, she got in a car with him and that's the last anyone's seen of her."

"Shouldn't we go to the police?" I asked, alarmed.

"They won't do anything. She wasn't forced, she didn't resist, and apparently it looked like she was quite familiar with whoever it was. No one thinks it's bad or serious. She just fell for some douche and ran away with her heart."

"That doesn't sound like Eva."

"Cora, you don't know my mom," Dante said, twitching an eyebrow. "She carries her heart on her sleeve. She has more passion than should be humanly possible."

"She wouldn't abandon you. Not for anyone."

"Yeah. Well," Dante slipped his hands into his pockets and shrugged. "Whatever, I guess. I knew she wasn't happy. I just didn't expect...this."

"We'll find her," I said, and the words themselves extinguished the weariness from the long day of work. "Do you know where the car was? Did the people see what kind it was, what colour it was, a number plate maybe?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah," Dante said, and gave me a sidelong look. "There's no point in investigating. Vergil's left the city. Said he had a 'hunch' where to find her." Dante scoffed at the word, and frowned at me. "And somebody's gotta be at home if she comes back."

"When she comes back," I said, and went over to put my arms around him. "She will come back, Dante."

"We'll see. So," Dante breathed out, and hugged me closer. "It's just you and me now."

"That's scary," I said into his chest.

"Yeah."

I pulled away from him but I couldn't manage any comforting words. He stared down at me, and I gawked back up at him like a fish, until he turned away from me and the awkward moment passed.

"Where are you going?" I asked, starting after him.

"Nowhere. I'll see you tonight," Dante mumbled.

"Dan–"

"Just piss off. I gotta be alone right now!" Dante cut me off and I crashed to a complete stand-still.

He disappeared past the cue of customers on the sidewalk, and I was left in the lonely parking lot. I didn't know what else to do but follow him. I kept a pretty decent distance from him so it wouldn't be overly obvious that I was on his tail, but I knew he knew I was there. The fact that he didn't turn around and tell me leave him alone again was enough for me to keep track of him. Still, I felt like a stalker. I stopped dead on the sidewalk when he went through the stone pillar entrance of the cemetery, and watched him until he was gone between the mass of tombstones.

I leaned against the fence and tried to look innocent in the face of the suspicious looks passers-by kept sending me. The sun had set and the stars were out by the time I decided to get over my fear of walking over dead people and going to find Dante. I went straight for the back of the cemetery, where a shrine was built in memory of Sparda. No Dante. I found my family grave, the white marble glowing eerily beautiful in the dim moonlight. No trace of Dante there either. No Dante in the cemetery at all. I tried to catch a whiff of his scent, tried to locate his aura with my senses, and was greeted with the revolting stench of decay, and a coldness that seemed to reach out of the ground and crawl under my skin.

I bolted for the exit, and didn't stop until I reached the parking lot and got on my bike. He had to have gone home. He was probably waiting for me, watching the clock until I got home. A glance at my watch showed the time just past eight. I made it back to the Sparda fortress within ten minutes, and felt my throat pull tight when I saw no bikes in the driveway.

The house was black and silent when I stepped inside. He wasn't home. Rambo came trotting muddy paw prints into the house from the backyard to greet me at the door. I sank down next to him, scratching his ears.

"Messy dog," I said lightly, but my voice shook with the tears I was holding back. I shoved him away from me and went looking for the mop in the kitchen to clean up the mud. I flicked on all the lights in the house, found the mop hidden in a corner, and paused when the note on the fridge caught my eye.

Mom has run off during the night. I've gone to find her.
-V

Maybe it was a twin thing, but I found the note to be cryptic and ridiculously vague. Questions boiled up in my head – and then I realized Dante probably had all the answers. If I was wondering, he would have been wondering too, unless he was psychic and Vergil ESP'd all the details over to him. Dante was probably interrogating people all morning to find answers.

Then where was he now?

I cleaned up the mess and did a thorough search of the house. Eva hadn't even bothered to take any of her clothes, and I sat down on her bed to stare around the room. She hadn't taken anything. Everything was where it should be. I didn't know Eva had it in her to act on impulse. Then again, I probably shouldn't be this surprised. Dante had to get his recklessness from somewhere, right?

I went to check the small en-suite bathroom, just to be sure there was no note she might have left behind, any hint of where she might have gone. I even got down on my knees and went through her trash – and that's where I found it. The smooth elongated plastic device gleamed in the sharp fluorescent light, nestled in between a bed of tissues and empty toilet rolls. The little red line in the small window told me everything I needed to know.

"No, Eva! You stupid woman! Dante and Vergil are going to freak if they find–" I stopped. That was it, of course. That's why she ran off – and probably with the father of the baby she was carrying. Wait. What?

I hurled myself out of the bathroom and started to tip out all the drawers in the bedroom. This was insane. That couldn't be real, it couldn't be definite – but it couldn't be anybody's but Eva's, and what did it matter whether the test read positive or negative? The fact was that it was there. Nobody in their right mind would get a pregnancy test unless they suspected they were expecting, and nobody would suspect they're expecting if they weren't sleeping around, and that meant Eva was keeping secrets.

I was hoping to find a diary of some sort. A photograph, maybe. Even a stash of love letters hidden in a shoebox somewhere. But this was real life, and things didn't just fall into your lap, and the puzzle pieces you had wouldn't fit because some were bent and damaged. Eva had been so crushed about Sparda... I thought she'd never get over him. Now apparently she did, but why would she hide that from us? If she met somebody new, why wouldn't she want any of us to know? We were her family, why would she keep something this big from us?

Because she wasn't happy. Dante had said it, and I knew it was true. Eva didn't sparkle anymore, not around us. She went through the motions with a distant look on her face. Like she wanted to be anywhere but here.

Maybe she didn't want us to be part of her new life.

The thought choked the tears from my eyes. I couldn't even pretend not to care, because I did, and it hurt. Did Eva really hate us this much? Maybe raising half breeds pressured her too much. We should have done more for her. It's all Vergil's fault, it had to be, he was always taunting Dante and telling him that he was the better son. Well, at least Vergil's gone. Good riddance!

Where was Dante?

I went back downstairs and made salad, and sat with the bowl on my lap in the lounge, watching the time tick away. It was just past midnight when I swallowed down the bitter reality that Dante probably wasn't coming home either. I was alone. I flung the bowl at the floor and watched glass skid in all directions.

"If this is what karma is like then you can stick it where the sun don't shine!" I snarled at the empty house, stomping across the foyer to the stairs.

"Who're you talking to?"

I whipped around and stared at Dante silently, my heart fluttering in relief for three seconds before the tension building all afternoon erupted. He was closing the front door behind him, staring right back at me worriedly.

"Get out!"

"What?"

"If you're going to leave then just do it! Don't come back because you can't make up your mind, or because you want to be a nice guy and tell me you're going before you disappear too! I don't wanna hear it!"

"Cora," Dante sighed, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers. He closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head and headed in the direction of the kitchen.

I went up to my room and laid in my bed, listening intently. There were faint noises coming from the kitchen. Then noises from the lounge. I heard Rambo's little whines, and Dante's curt, sharp retorts. I heard Dante coming upstairs and knocking things over in his room. I heard him go back downstairs. For a long time there was no noise. And then the sound of the front door opening, and closing quietly – like I knew it would. I cried into my pillow, and when the tears ran out, I stared out my window, too raw and empty to sleep.

My alarm clock buzzed at 7 A.M. I barely had enough energy to drag myself out of bed, and I only left my room at quarter past ten. I had no reason to live. Did I? Everybody I loved was gone, either taken by force, or abandoning me willingly. What was there left for me? Nothing. Life is about the people you love, so what do you do when no one is left but you?

I contemplated taking a knife and stabbing it into my chest as I walked toward the back of the house. By the time I reached the threshold of the kitchen, I was numb enough to actually go through with it. I walked over to the wooden block housing all the sharp kitchen knives, and took the biggest and longest one out. Like a miniature katana, I thought. I grabbed the handle with a tight fist and turned the blade toward my chest. I sucked in a deep breath, and plunged the knife in.

I bit down a scream – I didn't expect it to hurt that much – and tried to wrench it out of my chest, and failed. It was excruciating. I couldn't touch the handle, and a white haze layered before my eyes. I leaned against the kitchen counter weakly, staring blankly out the window, thinking the blue sky was going to be the last thing I ever see.

Something bright white and dazzling passed right in front of my vision, and the back door burst open behind me.

"What is it? Cora! I thought I smelled blood..." Dante said in relief when he saw me, and then his eyes fell on the knife in my chest. He was in front of me and the blood stained knife in his hand before I could react. He pressed his other hand hard to my chest, and I watched the black-red liquid streaming through his fingers.

"Ow," I wheezed out.

"What the hell did you do, fall into it?" Dante snapped.

I didn't say anything. The blood stopped pumping across his fingers, and the pain began to subside. When he finally moved his hand away, all I could feel beneath my shirt was a small welt where the skin had healed.

"What would you do without me?" Dante said, rinsing his hand under the sink. He gave me a sidelong look.

"I thought you left."

"I never said I was going anywhere. Go wash up. Human blood makes the house smell for weeks," Dante said.

I took a shower, and that afternoon we spent time together strategising on how we were going to sustain ourselves. It was scary for both of us, but I was just happy he was there. I didn't want to feel empty again. I didn't want to feel numb again.