Vexed: A Tidal Kiss Novella (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 5) Read online

  “He would have you on the floor before you reached the door you know,” I inform him, so he exhales heavily, grabbing the cross which he’s pulled from beneath the V-neck of his sweater and twiddling it between his forefinger and thumb. Plopping down in the seat beside Vex, he stares at me with curiosity, and I ignore him. Vex and I each pull a box toward us and begin pulling out clusters of papers and old looking books.

  It’s going to be a long night.

  Two hours later and the fighting has commenced. I should have seen this coming, and as the bishop sits, watching Vex and me with a half-amused gaze, I wonder why I didn’t.

  “Look, anything you can remember?! Anything?! My eyes are going sodding square!” Vex complains, now sitting on the floor surrounded by mountains of crinkled, aged paper.

  “I told you, I gave birth to her and then bled to death. My husband freaking stole her from me! That’s all I got!” I exclaim, sick of repeating the story to him. It had been bad enough reliving it when telling it to him the first time.

  “Well then, in that case, we’re bloody screwed. Who knew so many pissing people died in the space of a hundred years!” He throws the papers scattered around himself into the air and Christopher visibly flinches in his seat. Vex pulls out a cigarette after a few minutes as I stare at him, annoyed, and Christopher coughs slightly.

  “Please… don’t smoke around the books…” he implores Vex with his gaze.

  “Oh, sod off, mate! You try being on this bloody field trip with little miss sunshine over there! You’ll be begging me for a light.” He inhales sharply, almost choking as he takes in his first lungful of smoke before exhaling and puffing a cloud of the stuff out into the room. I glare at him.

  “I didn’t want you to come!” I exclaim, slamming my fists down on the table.

  “Well, it’s a bloody good job I did come though, isn’t it? Because you’d probably have died trying to drive that yellow tin can your brother calls a suitable ride, not to mention that if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have known we even needed to find the bloody bishop’s transcripts!” He inhales again after his rant, the tip of the cigarette glowing visibly as he slams his head into the bookcase behind him in an overly dramatic plight.

  “I’d have figured it out! I don’t need you! I can find my goddamn daughter’s grave on my own!” I exclaim. The bishop’s eyes suddenly turn wide.

  “Your daughter? But… why are you looking so far back?” he asks, glaring at me like I’m insane as I turn to him.

  “It’s none of your goddamn business!” I yell. He cocks his head.

  “Look, I should probably be furious at you two, but you really don’t seem to know what you’re doing, and I don’t really want to be sitting here all night. I had an episode of Eastenders I was hoping to catch. Maybe I can help, if you let me?” he suggests.

  “Nice, mate! How’s the Queen Vic? Alfie still causing bloody trouble?” Vex interrupts as I go to reply, and I glare at him as he suddenly flushes, dropping his gaze and taking another quick puff on his cigarette.

  Christopher looks less than intimidated at this point, and I begin wondering what the hell kind of Psiren Vex is trying to be. I mean, I know I’ve been kind of quiet on the torture and threatening front, but he’s really crap at it so far.

  “Look, I’m looking for my daughter. Her name was Arabella Dragos, born 1591. Don’t ask how. I don’t have time for questions,” I explain, and his eyes widen.

  “Okay… give me a minute, I remember that surname.” He reaches across the table, and I watch him as he sifts through the piles of books.

  “How can you possibly know about each individual person who has died here?” I ask him, and he shrugs.

  “I don’t. But I do partake in many walks through the graveyards here. I get insomnia you see. Sometimes names stick. Dragos is… pretty unusual.” He gives the explanation calmly, and I nod, watching him as I let my pupils recede.

  I sit back down in my seat, having gotten to my feet to yell at Vex, waiting in silence for the bishop to speak again.

  Vex watches me as he forms one cloud of vile smelling smoke after another, and I momentarily contemplate ramming the cigarette up his nostril for being such a jackass.

  After around twenty minutes of tense silence, the bishop speaks, passing me a book.

  “Here… Anastasia Dragos.” He points out the listing to me.

  “No… my daughter’s name was Arabella,” I say fiercely, and he frowns.

  “The birth date is the same though… see here.” He gestures to the listing again and I stare at the four letters. 1591. The year I had lost my life and she had started hers.

  “I told you that’s not her! Her name is Arabella! Look again.” I feel my whole body go numb, my heart’s beat becoming audible in my ears. I exhale heavily.

  He frantically searches as I clench my fist atop the table, and Vex frowns.

  “Love, is it possible he didn’t honour your wishes and named her something else? I mean, he did take her from you. Perhaps naming her what you wanted wasn’t his top priority,” he suggests, and I feel something inside me snap.

  Of course, Jason hadn’t named her what I had wanted. He didn’t even want me to be her mother. So why would he?

  I feel lost. Like Arabella; my Arabella was a figment. She was never real. She was someone else. A stranger…

  Anastasia.

  “There is no other record of anyone named Dragos buried near here,” Christopher informs me, the lines in his face deepening as he fidgets nervously under my gaze.

  “Where is it then? The grave for this… Anastasia?” I demand, and he sighs.

  “It’s in the graveyard beside my home. That’s why I recognised the name,” he explains with a nervous yet sympathetic glance.

  Vex gets to his feet, and I stand, caught in the moment. Do I want to go and see the name I hadn’t chosen, belonging to the daughter I had never known, etched so permanently upon limestone? Do I want to stand upon her bones and see the finality of it all?

  I’ve travelled all this way, and yet, now the sense that I have been overcome with ever since I spoke with Poseidon himself, the sense that nothing I do matters, overwhelms me all over again. My pain made new.

  I don’t have to speak a reply. I don’t have to form words. Vex does it for me, pushing me to freefall through the emotional unknown of not just any loss but the loss of a child. My child.

  “Mate, just take us to the grave.”

  Chapter six

  A Rose By Any Other Name

  The wrought iron gates, twisted into gothic swirling silhouettes, cast shadows upon my face as the crescent moon shines out, low in the sky. The bishop turns to me as Vex stills at my side, the creases of his face deep and defined in the crisp hue of the night’s stark light.

  He pushes his glasses up his nose, exhaling a fine mist into the air.

  “The grave you seek is right at the end of the central row, in front of these gates. It’s underneath the cover of a weeping willow, by the low wall,” he informs us, folding his arms across his chest, shivering visibly. I don’t feel the cold, and I cannot find it in my heart to pity him either, despite his evident chill.

  “Thanks, mate. Oh, and if we find out you’ve called the police or anything like that, we’ll come back and murder you in your sleep. Got it?” Vex voices the threat casually and the bishop breathes out heavily, staring next at me with a weary expression. I’ve been silent since we left the library, merely following Christopher and Vex out of the Cathedral, trailing behind them like a shadow and feeling my heart growing increasingly numb with each step I take closer to our destination.

  Anastasia. The name is playing on repeat in my mind like a hideous echo. It’s not the name I picked, not as beautiful, not as fitting for who I felt like my daughter would grow up to be. I always thought she’d be a stunning, extraordinary woman. A woman who attracted others with her gentle strength, the perfect mix of kindness and courage. She would have been good. Far more so than I
ever have been.

  The bishop continues to scrutinise me as I check back into the conversation and realise that he probably expects a response from me, despite my lack of intention of giving one.

  “You can go now.” I don’t thank him; it doesn’t even occur to me. I don’t feel like I have anything to be thankful for at this point. My vision, that which I have hung onto for hundreds of years, he has shattered so effortlessly with the mere discovery of a single word on a single page.

  “Come on, Love.” Vex places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. I don’t flinch away. In fact, I barely feel him as I move with his coaxing and push the wrought iron gate open. Stepping inside the graveyard I feel my feet fail to sink into the frozen soil of the ground. The scent of lush vegetation and nearby chimney smoke mix in the air as I take a single step forward, trying to swallow my fear and continue with only forward motion.

  “You go on ahead. I’ll be right back,” Vex assures me, turning and walking away, leaving me alone. I don’t follow his path, transfixed by the long row of identical looking tombstones standing uniform, cold, and hard in the ground. I see the willow that the Bishop spoke of and continue to tread forward, watching as the leaves shift, rustling. A low cobblestone wall surrounds the graveyard, and on all sides, tiny houses stand, the light from their windows glowing warm, like too distant stars, out into the cold.

  My breath is sharp in my lungs, cutting the flesh as I inhale deeply.

  Reaching the tree, I part the curtain of leaves and step inside its naturally formed alcove, turning left and exhaling a sigh as my breath becomes visible in front of me.

  In the ground, lopsided and crumbling, it sits. Her gravestone.

  Anastasia Dragos. Born 1591- Died 1658.

  Her name is barely discernible amongst the shadows cast by the tangled branches of the willow, and only the badly eroded letters of her name that scarcely remain, slightly indented into the limestone, give away the identity of the grave.

  I’m glad, in this moment, for Vex, not that I’d ever tell him that. Because I realise, despite my claim otherwise, that I never would have found this alone.

  I stare at the stone, expecting to feel something, anything. Some wave of grief, some pang of long lost love rushing back like a bitter yet warm tide. Something, anything, yet I feel nothing.

  It’s just a stone, and I’m still just as dissonant from everything around me as I had been before I came here.

  I don’t move as the leaves behind me rustle, only slump with a deep exhale of breath. Vex moves in next to me, his shadow melding with mine as it falls upon the frozen earth.

  I turn to stare at his face, the lilac of his irises penetrating the darkness of the space as he stares back at me, both of us at a loss for words.

  We stand there, staring down at her name together as the wind blows around us, and Vex reaches across to me in the dark, placing something in my hand.

  I look down at my palm as my fingers close around his gift, bringing it forward and into the sparse light so I can stare at it.

  A single white rose.

  “Where did you get this?” is all I can ask, examining the softness of the petals as they caress my fingertips. It reminds me of the silken skin of my daughter the one and only time I ever held her.

  “I… uh… stole it. From another grave. I figure they probably get flowers all the time. You need it more.” He looks uncomfortable as he brings up his hand to rest on the back of his neck, averting his gaze from mine. I wonder if he expects me to scold him, or make some sarcastic remark, but the only words I can think of spill from me in a flood of unexpected sincerity.

  “Thank you.”

  I bend down, looking at the headstone and cocking my head, trying to feel something, anything. I lay the flower on the dark, rich soil above where she lies, long gone, dead. As I raise a hand to trace the curve of the first letter of her name, the vision takes hold.

  It passes in a blur of images, threatening to break me, and as the fog recedes and the vision concludes, I feel something at last.

  Regret.

  “You alright, Love?” Vex’s dull yet noticeably anxious tone brings me back to myself as I allow my eyes to refocus on the tombstone in front of me. My hand still hangs, outstretched, over the first letter of her name. Unable to find the words to reply, I fall back onto the earth behind me, letting the frost of it seep through my jeans.

  Vex takes a seat beside me, not hesitating to join me on the ground.

  “Hey, what happened?” He moves close to me, and I don’t pull away, not even slightly as my head hangs and my dark hair falls around my face. He rests a finger on my jaw, tilting my head so my eyes meet with his, and he cocks his head before letting out a small even breath. “What did you see?” he whispers, voice soft, and I blink once, then twice, my eyes threatening to fill with tears. I flutter my lashes, refusing to cry in front of him as I harden my resolve.

  “I saw what Jason did to her,” I explain, and Vex nods, but doesn’t ask any further questions. After a few seconds, unprompted, I continue. “So, my daughter was twelve years old when she started getting the one thing from me I was always afraid she would,” I express, and Vex nods again, sucking in air as his nostrils flare and his cheeks hollow.

  “The bloody visions, right?” He guesses correctly, and I nod.

  “So, Jason had already told her horror stories about me, of course. Told her I’d been possessed. She was terrified when she started seeing things, so she kept them to herself as much as she was able.” I see her face swimming in my mind, the terror in her eyes, reminding me so strongly of Starlet the first time she’d experienced the visions. It makes my heart squeeze, threatening to shatter. Her hair is long and raven, eyes forest green, and skin flawlessly tan. She’s stunning, even as a child, and the image of her urges me to reach out and touch her, even though she’s not really there. I can see myself in her, and Jason too, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to stare upon this first clear image of her forever.

  “So… how did she end up here?” Vex enquires, crossing his legs in front of him and continuing to stare at me with unwavering and unnerving care.

  “She fell in love with a boy when she was fifteen. Told him her secret. As they never do, things didn’t last between them, and when it was over he outed her to the entire village. My husband, hero that he was, tried to send her to the same convent where Starlet was kept, but they were full. However, one of the investors in the place knew of an opening here in England. So, he shipped her here without a penny to her name. She lived out the rest of her life with the church and died…” I’m not sure how I feel about this after I summarise it this way. The overwhelming emotion I feel now is guilt. I could have gone back to find her after I’d turned. I could have tried… could have fought harder, but I didn’t.

  I twist my fingers into knots in front of me, wringing them and breathing in and out, focusing only on the fact that I’m still living and have no choice but to continue doing so. It’s a desperate moment, and yet in the midst of it all, Vex somehow, shockingly, manages to let me know I’m not alone.

  “You couldn’t have done anything to save her. You know that, don’t you? I mean, if you’d have gone back… tried to find her, maybe they would have locked you up too. Besides… you couldn’t go out in the sun…it’s not like you could have been a mother to her, Love.” Vex speaks the truth of the matter, the truth I don’t want to hear, but surprisingly it makes me feel a little better.

  “He didn’t even name her what I wanted…” I sigh, though I wonder if I should be so upset over something so trivial.

  “A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, Love. The name doesn’t matter. She’s still your daughter. No name can change that. Nothing can. Not even the gods.” He’s trying to be kind, a friend perhaps, but instead of being comforted, I’m merely frustrated.

  “I thought coming here, seeing this, would give me closure, make me feel more like myself, but instead, I just feel… the same. I feel empty a
nd trapped in a situation I didn’t ask for,” I admit, and Vex frowns.

  “Maybe then it’s not the fact you feel you failed your daughter that is causing the problem. Perhaps it’s something else…” he suggests, licking his bottom lip and blowing a cloud of warm condensation into the air.

  “Like what, oh wise one?” I roll my eyes at him, sick of the sentimental atmosphere and practically gagging to get back to our usual hateful repertoire.

  “Maybe you’re worried you’re going to fail the Psirens.” Vex speaks his ridiculous attempt at a theory aloud, and I laugh, unable to help myself.

  “Ha. I don’t think that’s it. I didn’t even want this gig.” I shrug it off, wondering why it is that Vex assumes he knows me. We’ve barely had more than two meaningful conversations the entire time I’ve known him.

  “And yet, Poseidon gave you the sodding job anyway. Funny that,” Vex muses aloud, and I scowl, partially relieved that he’s giving me something to get pissed about.

  “What, are you saying I really do want the job? Because that’s…” I begin to retort, but he shakes his head.

  “Oh no, I’m bloody sure you absolutely don’t want the job the amount you bitch and moan. Though maybe that’s the point.” He’s speaking in riddles, riddles I don’t have time for.

  “Look, whatever. Either way it’s totally unfair.” I shrug, getting to my feet. I don’t have time for his totally unwarranted personality assessment.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking…the last person that wanted to use the power of the Psirens for himself nearly got us all killed…” Vex calls after me, hurrying to his feet with little grace, as I begin to walk back out from under the willow, turning my back on the grave we’ve worked so hard to find.

  “You… thinking? Now there is a novel concept,” I quip, sick of his commentary. He had been sweet with the rose and all, but it’s not like that gives him permission to suddenly try to psychoanalyse me to death.