The Dark Artifices: Lady of Los Angeles

Chapter 21

Jules POV

Jules went to the dining room a few nights after the incident with the hitting and the bandages. He’d excused himself from the lunches and dinners by saying he had homesickness. He did have homesickness, if it hadn’t been for the bandages that had been the only reason. Nevertheless he didn’t want the others to have preconceptions about him. The room was full of people. Children and adults. Cate gave him a small child to hold in his arms. No explanation only that her name was Rebecca but he was grateful for the chance to hide his hands.

     The child couldn’t be older than 14 months, younger than any of his siblings. But they’d been that small once. He could never forget how to take care of a child. He remembered his siblings as heavier at that age though.

     “You like children?” a voice muttered behind him. He spun around and saw the dark haired boy, Isaac.

     “Isaac!”

     “You like children?” he repeated.

     “I have four younger siblings.” Rebecca was quiet and looked for eye contact from Jules. “Why is she so small?”

     “She’s a baby.” He looked at Jules as if he was stupid.

     “No, I mean, she barely weighs anything.” Jules never looked away from her eyes.

     “She lost her parents a month ago. Since then she’s barely eaten anything.”

     Jules felt sorry for her. He’d gone through it twice. When his mother died and when his father died. No, his father. He couldn’t think about his father now.

     “What am I supposed to do with her?” Jules asked and looked desperately after Cate.

     “Try to give her some mashed potatoes or something I guess”, Isaac said and shrugged. On the long table in the room were plates of fish, sauce, and mashed potatoes.

     “Fish?” Jules wrinkled his nose.

     “Not a fan of fish? I thought you lived by the sea.”

     That was the problem. The smell followed him all day at home. On the other hand it was kinda comforting now that he wasn’t home. Like a reminder of what home was. Don’t be so sentimental, Jules, you haven’t even been gone for a week, he thought to himself.

     “It’s okay.”

     It was when he thought of home he remembered, why hadn’t Emma called back? Jules had tried to contact her since then. Her phone had been turned off. Maybe she’d lost it. Like everybody else, she could forget where she put things.

     Or maybe she had more important things to do.

     He’d felt ever since they’d become parabatai that he was the one who needed her and not the other way around. After all, Jules had been the one to ask her to become parabatai. She’d needed a reason to stay in Los Angeles, she took it. Emma was always ambitious and wanted to become the best shadowhunter, Jules wanted to paint.

     He sighed heavily and felt his whole body ache. He couldn’t stay in this room. Before Isaac could argue Jules gave Rebecca over to him and ran up the stairs to his room.

     Once he got there he lunged to his phone.

No messages

No messages. Again he tried to call her phone.

     Her comforting voice answered on the other end. “Hello, you’ve reached to Emma Carstairs. I’m either unavailable or I don’t wanna talk to you.” A soft laugh. “If you have anything to say, say it after the beeeeeeep.”

     Beep.

     He fell down on his bed and exhaled. Why couldn’t she call back?!

     As if on cue, the phone called. He dived after it.

    

Home is calling

He answered before another signal could ring.

     “Hello?!”

     “Why haven’t you called me?” Emma shouted in his ear so loudly he had to take it away from his ear.

     “Hello?” Jules said again.

     “You haven’t called once, Julian.”

     What? He’d called several times. “I have called you. On your cellphone.”

     She was quiet for a second, only for a second, he didn’t need to call the hospital just yet. “Oh. That thing’s not charged.”

     Typical Emma. She always forgot. There’d been several times when he’d thought something had happened to her, all because she couldn’t remember to charge it.

     “I thought you didn’t wanna talk.” He couldn’t help but feel a little happy that his parabatai had called him for once and she didn’t even know he’d called her. He gulped. She’ll think I’m crazy when she turns on her phone again and sees all of the missed calls, he thought.

     “You’ve been away for four days, Jules. That’s like ages ago.” He could imagine her arm gestures as she talked. Arms which looked like they’d hit something only because she got so frustrated every time she talked.

     “But I did call you. What’s the matter?” he asked.

     She was quiet again. “Nothing, I guess.”

     “Then can I ask you, how are you?”

     “That’s a lame question!” she shouted and once again he had to take away the phone from his ear.

     “It’s an opening question”, he sighed.

     “Sorry”, she muttered. “I’m good. You?”

     “Okay, miss my family though.” He looked at a picture he’d put up on a wall. It was of the Los Angeles Institute with all of those who lived there in front of it.

     “And me?”

     He laughed softly. “I always miss the ones I love and can’t be with.”

     Silence met him on the other end. Suddenly he realized his mistake. “No, no! I don’t mean I love you…like a girlfriend…because you’re my parabatai…but ‘love’ like a parabatai.” He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, Emma. Bye.”

     He ended the call and lay down his bed and closed his eyes. Stupid, stupid! he thought.

     Riiiiing, riiiiing. Like last time he dived after the phone. Again it was home calling.

     “Emma?!”

     “Jules, please come home soon. I miss you too.”

    

Beep.

***

It’s not the longest chapter but it still took some time to write it. I had an essay that had to be turned in today and I have needed to work with it this whole week, uuuugh! It needed to be about revenge and let me say, I really want give back some revenge. Never again!

     It was awful, if you didn’t understand by my recent statements.

     At least I got to take a break and go watch an opera yesterday. It was really fun, but those who I were there with fell asleep. Probably not something they would do if they could choose.

     At the end of chapter 19 I wrote you could vote for which POV I would write from. I had to keep writing and wrote from Emma’s POV even though you later voted for Jules. Sorry about that. Now, this chapter was from Jules POV.

 

Bye, bye.