City Of The Damned (Darkly Devoted Series, Book 5)

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

With the introduction of Ian, Julian had something over me, and he knew it. He successfully turned my son against me. There was nothing more I could do to him in Grismal's court without him reporting it to my estranged son. To make matters worse, I couldn't leave Mearnox, not freely.

"The meeting didn't go as well as you expected?" Julian asked as we drove back north to Cairn. Julian seemed nervous about my driving. I was speeding and had side-swiped a parked bicycle before we even left the vicinity of Manna City. I ignored his unease. He was, after all, already dead, and I was still alive. If I decided to crash the car, he would float back to Mearnox, or however, it was that ghosts traveled.

"I don't know if he hates me because I'm wrong or because I'm his middle-aged mother." I laughed softly to myself and let my elbow hang out of the side of the car. The late afternoon breeze felt divine against the bare skin of my arm. Up here, even in the wake of the Blight Rain's destruction, the air tasted sweet in my lungs. "You'll never know what it's like to grow old and become irrelevant."

"Yes, you've spared me of that, Melody," Julian flashed a quick, seductive smile in response to my gentle ribbing. "Dying young has its benefits."

"My son Orion was in love with Angela Liang recently," I mused and chucked. "It was a mistake. Everyone knew it. It was clear as daylight that she wanted nothing to do with him, but we had to stand back and let him make his own choices. Perhaps, that is the hardest part, watching your children make obvious mistakes just because they won't listen."

"Angela Liang? Of Yageron?" Julian whistled appreciatively at that. "The dumb kid has lofty ambitions. What does he want to do? Combine Tercel with Yageron and create the most evil empire ever to exist?"

"Orion has a good heart. Sometimes, he shows me a glimpse of it, and I saw that today. Am I a bad mother to confess there are days I wish Ian were a little more like Orion?"

Julian chuckled again. "No, trust me, you're not a bad mother." Julian took his eyes off the road and smiled at me momentarily. "You did the best job you could in the circumstances you were placed in. You should never have come back to Manna City."

I chuckled at that but didn't reply. Poor mad Melody, Julian must have thought that too which is why he didn't hold me responsible for Blake's crimes. Oh, Julian, you fool. I knew all along what I was getting myself into. Yes, I hesitated at the dance that night twenty years ago, but then I embraced the darkness with both arms. I wasn't misled. I was the one who led.

But there was no purpose in arguing with a ghost. Even poor mad Melody had better things to do. Instead, I squinted at the reflection of my eye in the rearview mirror and tried not to think too hard about my wrinkles.

I wondered if having them made it easier for my sons to see me as a cantankerous old witch.

Sometimes, I wondered if we have become villains of our own story simply because we've left our children a deeply flawed world to inherit. At some point, we stopped being the dreamers, the rebels, and the heroes. Overnight, it was as though we woke up and became the people responsible for the ugliness in this world only because we dared to exist, live, and love in the best way we knew how.

I parked the car about a mile away from my father's property. Julian said it was best not to drive right up to the doorway to hell. He was right. It made sense to avoid making a lot of noise and create tire tracks near the entrance of Mearnox. We continued the rest of the way on foot. As we entered the caverns, once again, we walked by the pits filled with the cries of suffering souls.

Julian was taking his time going back down to that damned palace. I didn't hurry him. He took one last drag of the cigarette he found in the glove compartment and offered me a puff. I chuckled and took it from him. I didn't smoke, but I assumed with all the sulfuric fumes I was breathing down here, cigarette smoke could hardly be considered worse.