The Dark Artifices: Lady of Los Angeles

Chapter 1

Emma knew what she'd see as soon as she entered the training room. She could feel it. She could even consider herself a psychic by now. Every day she'd see the same thing; Cristina and Jules holding hands and laughing, together.

Why couldn't he see that him and her, Jules and Emma, were meant to be together? Maybe because they already were, together. Together as parabatai. Closer than brother and sister, but that wasn't what she wanted to be. She wanted to hold his hand.She'd wanted it ever since they'd become parabatai four years ago.

Already outside the door she could hear the sound of Jules' deeper, although still boyish, voice along with Cristina's sweet and flirty.

She threw the door open. There they sat on a bench talking and flirting with each other. Cristina held one of Jules' hands in hers. Inspecting the fingers one by one. Emma knew what she'd find; layer after layer of paint. Because that's what Jules liked, painting. Emma knew every little thing about him.

They looked up then. Jules hair was dark and messy as always. Helen was no longer here to cut it or comb it. Emma had taken the duty to do it herself until Cristina had come along, a few months ago. If Cristina spent so much time with Jules she could do it herself. Apparently she didn't. Apparently she liked it messy. Although she doubted it. Cristina's own hair was gorgeous as always. Straight, black, controlled unlike Emma's own hair. She always got frustrated with her own long, blond, mockingly curly hair. It made her wear it in a braid.

"Emma!" Jules exclaimed. He looked truly happy to see her. She couldn't help but smile at him. She forgot her jealousy. He came running for her and embraced her. She resisted the urge to smell his hair.

"Why so surprised?" she asked him. They let go of each other.

"You've seemed so down this past week and after yesterday-"

Right, yesterday. She'd watched their flirting for hour, for days. Yesterday she hadn't been in the mood for another day and had rushed off. But she came back today, she always came back.

"I'll always train with you," she said and looked over his shoulder and at Cristina. She was checking her phone. Maybe that Facebook-thing she'd tried to teach Jules about. Emma had never been interested in the mundane networks. She found them rather boring. Too flat. She wanted to move.

"Well, I'm glad you came," he said and laid an arm around her shoulders.

"Me too."

They started where yesterday's training ended. They were sparring and she barely noticed Cristina in the corner of her eye.

Until it was her time to train. But today she didn't ask to train with Jules.

"I wanna train with Emma," she said to him. Emma stopped in her walk away from them and turned around.

"What?" she asked.

Cristina strode over to her. She smiled at her and laid an arm around her shoulders as Jules had done before. "I wanna train with you. Jules, you can leave."

He did as he was told. Nobody dared to argue with her.

Emma made herself ready to spar again.

"No sparring. Swords," Cristina said and took a sword hanging from the wall.

Emma took her Cortana. She never wanted to use another sword. It was a Cartairs sword and it was given to her by her deceased father.

They stood facing each other. Both in fighting position, eyeing their opponent.

Emma stroke out first. Cristina parried, but from then on they fought like they had no other choice.

Emma could feel sweat rolling down her forehead. She let down her guard for just a moment and Cristina cut her right arm. Over her old scar from when she'd hugged Cortana years ago.

They stood still. Emma could feel her anger well up inside of her.

"You cut me!" she shouted.

"You let down your guard," Cristina calmly explained.

"You cut me!"

"Actually, I did you a favor. Now you don't have to be so damn self-conscious about that scar of yours. Now you got it in a battle."

Emma couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Battle? We are training."

Cristina shook her head disapprovingly. "This was a battle about Jules."

"What?"

"I know how you feel about him, Emma."

"He's my parabatai."

"Exactly." She took her phone and bag from the bench and left.

Emma was left alone, shocked. She bandaged her arm and walked out. Would Cristina tell anybody? How could she have been so stupid? She should have hidden her feelings better. Nothing good could come out of it anyways.

She ran to her room and locked the door. Didn't even stop to switch on the lights in the room. She plunged onto the bed, face down. Tears wet the sheets.

How could she have been so stupid? she thought over and over again.

She forced herself to sit up and stop crying after she didn't know how long. When she did so she felt a hard surface under the sheets. She reached for it and found a folder.

Cordelia & John Carstairs. It was the file she'd stolen so many years ago. Once again she opened it. The strange marks on her parents bodies covered her vision and mind. She'd looked at the photos at least once a month these last years. It'd been five years since they'd died now. Still she knew it was her responsibility to seek justice.

She set down at her desk and opened a notebook she'd filled with theories over the years. Now was the time for justice.

She was so caught up in her investigation she barely heard the knock on the door hours later.

"Em?" she heard Jules' voice say.

She got up and unlocked the door for him. He opened it and had to squint in the dark room to see anything. She sat down on the chair again.

"Why so dark?" He switched on the lights and now Emma had to squint at the light.

"What do you want?" she asked slightly annoyed somebody came to interrupt her work.

"And why so testy?"

She looked up at him. "I'm working."

He crouched beside the desk and looked at her papers. "With what?"

She tried to reason with herself whether she should tell him or not. He was after all her parabatai.

"With my parents death."

He got a pained expression. "Em. . ."

She wrinkled her nose. "Don't 'Em' me. There was something strange about their death and I know it."

She gave him the folder. He eyed through it and creased his eyebrows as he did so.

"Okay, so it's a bit strange-".

"A bit? There is something strange and I'm out for-".

"Vengeance?" he finished for her.

"Yes, vengeance. Don't give me that look. If they'd been your parents-". He flinched and she caught herself. He turned away his face. "Oh, Jules, I am so, so sorry." She stroked his cheek in a soothing motion.

"I know who killed my parents, Emma. My mother died in childbirth. My father." He stopped to look at her and now she prayed he'd looked away so she didn't need to see" " the guilt in his eyes. "I killed my father, Em."

"You had no other choice, Jules."

"That's not the point. The point is, it won't help you to know who killed your parents. It will only hurt you more."

"Please, Jules, let me do this," she pleaded, why she didn't know. She shouldn't need to ask him, but it'd be easier if her parabatai approved.

He stood up and opened the door to leave, but turned before he closed it and said, "I won't stop you from doing anything, as long as you don't stop me from going with you."