thunderstruck | book #2 | discontinued

V

Mia had not been lying. Thanks to Remy's mother, the police wanted to speak to Remy not twenty-four hours after her return to Calderdale, and she soon found herself in a dingy old interrogation room that looked more like a prison cell, biting her nails and sitting face to face with a middle-aged, balding policeman. Next to him sat a younger woman—Constable Rowley, she had called herself upon emerging from her office—who had been sending Remy sympathetic glances ever since she had arrived. Remy tried to ignore her now, knowing that she did not deserve, nor need, any kind of pity.

If sitting in a plastic chair behind a desk covered in paperwork confirmed anything to Remy, it was that her disappearance had been taken more seriously than she had imagined. She envisioned, with guilt twisting her stomach, how her mother must have sat in this same chair dozens of times, pleading with the police to continue their search or give her some sort of hope. Mia had even told her that she had been on the news more than a few times. It was difficult to believe that whilst Remy was in Astracia, appreciating the magic and wonder and falling in love, her family was here, unable to know whether she was even still alive. It made her sick, and she wished that her mother would stop looking at her with an overly loving expression from where she waited behind the glass pane that separated this room and the corridor. She wished her mother would stop looking at her altogether, for perhaps then she would stop feeling the desperate urge to shrink into herself.

The policewoman, misreading Remy's glance towards her mother, sighed. "We're very sorry to drag you away from your family, Miss Morgan. We'll try to take up as little of your time as we can, though we really must be thorough in our investigation."

Remy raised an eyebrow, fiddling with a loose strand on her jacket—though she didn't really need to wear one today. Somehow, while she had been away, winter had turned to mid-summer, and it was an unusually humid day. She thought this might have been the universe playing a cruel joke on her, reminding her of the heat in Astracia and how it always felt as though her clothes were sticking to her when she was outside. On her way to the police station, she had pretended for a few moments that she was still there, but it was difficult to keep up the charade when the sky was so grey. Besides, it did not take long until her thoughts returned to Maksim, and then she would have to endure the heart-wrenching ache that jolted through her body, just as strong and painful as the moment he had left her. Then, she would have to pretend that she was not thinking of Astracia or him, even though, impossibly, everything served as a reminder.

Finally, Remy found her voice, though it sounded weak and hollow to her own ears. "Is it really an investigation if I'm back?"

"You were missing for three and a half months," the officer responded. He had not introduced himself properly before, but his name tag read Officer Smith, which did not surprise Remy, for his appearance was just as boring as his title. "It's our job to find out why." 

"Can't you just accept that I'm back now and put it to rest?" It was a stupid question, she knew, but as she still could not find an excuse good enough to have put her family through so much, she was desperate for the interrogation to end. It did not help that the room was stuffy and had a strange smell to it that reminded Remy of an underground sewage system—and dark magic, but she tried not to think of that. 

The answer seemed to displease Officer Smith, and he dropped his pen to the table, leaning forward in his chair so that the metal legs scraped against the floor. Remy winced. Ever since her return, she had felt overly sensitive and overly withdrawn from the world, as though everything about her was white noise, and every so often something broke through that, pulling her back to reality in a harsh and unforgiving way.

"With respect, Miss Morgan, do you have any idea what your disappearance did to your family? Don't you think that perhaps even if we are not owed an explanation, they are?"