Brantley shakes his head. “You like them fucking crazy.”
“And you don’t?” I ask, my eyes going to his. I really need to learn more about this secret he’s hiding.
“No,” Brantley glares. “Not anymore.”
“So how do you like them?” I ask, smirking. Is he opening up a little?
“As a saint.”
Tillie
I shut the driver’s door after zipping up into a construction parking unit. I meet him at the top, ignoring the fact that these concrete ramps could come undone any minute.
Gabriel smiles when he sees me, but his eyes also fly around the area. He has one guard standing behind him wearing dark glasses and a suit.
“Tillie.” He nods.
I smile. “Gabriel.”
He hands me a suitcase. “It’s in there. I hope you find closure and happiness when you finish.”
I laugh. “Oh, I doubt it.” Then I feel bad when I find his eyes on me. If he’s pretending to be nice to me, then he’s doing a good job, because every time I’m around him, I almost believe him.
“Nate let you go?” I ask, tilting my head.
“He did. He knows he can’t keep me long and even he knows that I’m a better ally than an enemy.”
“And could you do that?”
“Do what?” He brings his hands to his front. I watch as his thumbs twist and twirl around each other.
“Be an enemy to your son?”
“No,” he answers instantly. “No, I couldn’t.”
I squeeze the suitcase handle. “Thanks for this.” Then I turn to go back to Nate’s car.
“Tillie?” Gabriel calls out. “I know you love my son, and I know that he loves you.”
I clench my jaw. No one gets to say those words on behalf of him but him. Maybe I’m being irrational, but I don’t like when everyone else says those words to me. He doesn’t even know that these people have said that to me. Do they know what goes on inside of Nate’s mind? Because let me tell you, I’m almost certain not even Nate knows what goes on in his mind.
He continues. “But this world is different. Loyalties lay differently.”
I swing my door open, my eyes on his. “I’m well aware of how this world works, Gabriel, and who’s to say that I’m the one who is loyal to him?”
I push my Ray-Bans over my eyes and start the car up, putting it into first gear and driving out. I flick open the suitcase when he’s gone and see the book. I flick through the pages, finding the one I was up to. I know that most of the drawings were done on Perdita, but I also know that the ending wasn’t.
I go to the next page.
It’s another drawing of the trailer park I grew up in. The light turns green and I swing around, doing a U-turn while dropping down to second. I know where I need to go, and I make it my mission to work through this damn book by the end of the day.
When I was a child, I had a crush. When I was a teenager, I had a crush. When I had… My mind aches as I pull down the long, empty road. It’s worse than it was when I left. Opposite the park there’s an abandoned building with graffiti splashed all over the concrete, smashed windows, and littered rubbish floating in the wind.
I roll to a stop, the familiar gate closed securely.
My eyes slam closed. “What is with this gate, Daemon. Why have you drawn me so many damn times?
Nate’s car continues to idle beneath me.
I flip open Puer Natus again, drifting through every sketch. The baby rattle. The cell in Perdita. Was that the cell he was in? Yes? My head hurts and I can’t remember.
I flip to the next page and I stop breathing as a bracelet drops out from between the pages. It’s a knitted bracelet, plaited in a French plait. I wore this bracelet when I was little. When I had a crush. The drawing is two hands clasped together, pebbles and dirt scattered near their shoes. The view he drew is of that looking down. In the image, she’s wearing my bracelet.
I throw the book. “Oh my god!”
I swing open the car door and start prowling back and forth, the gravel crunching beneath my shoes. “Why…” I think over my memories. Why did I not know that that was Daemon? He was my crush at thirteen. He held my hand and made my heart beat faster. My heart. I tore at my chest, heat melting over my skin. I need to find him. I need to ask him what the fuck this means.
I climb back into the car, slamming the door closed and reach for the book.
“Finish the book, Puella.”
I scream out in frustration, flipping to the next page.
A broken heart, weeping through the pages.
I flick to the next, turning the cover around. A baby crib, dark and old, one that looks like it was the same one the biblical baby was put into. Was it Jesus? Yeah, Jesus. There’s no baby inside, instead, is a sign SOLD! Drawn over the small mattress.