Lady Midnight

Chapter 29

Emma basically spent the entire day in bed. Everyone knows the feeling. When you know you can and should get up from bed, but you have no willpower to do it. And the warmth and comfort of your sheets doesn't help the cause either.

She wiggled her toes and stretched out her arms above her head. And with one swift motion, she flopped all of her limbs back down onto the mattress.

Her long blonde hair was scattered over her pillow and would probably be hell to try to comb out later. The sun was quite low, so she was in bed all day. Well after being tortured for a few days, it's okay to take a "sick day" right?

Her mind was clearing her groggy state. There was something that was at the back of her mind. She had a feeling that Julian hadn't even tried to visit her yet.

After a huge mental struggle, she heaved herself out of the infirmary bed and walked out of the room, but not before placing a kiss on each Livvy and Taylor's foreheads. The rays of the setting sun beamed thought the ancient windows. The place where Julian was most was his bedroom.

She walked up the stairs and treaded to his room. She swung the door open to find nobody there. That was strange. She accidently bumped into his clothes hook. His jacket fell to the ground and out fluttered a piece of paper. She picked it up and unfolded it.

It was a picture.

A picture of a beautiful girl with dark curly hair and a sweet smile. There were freckles that dotted her nose. She was about the same age as the both of them. Who was this?

Emma knew almost everyone that Jules knew. There weren't any girls that he usually hung around other than his siblings and her.

Was she someone he knew? Did he just randomly see her face and commit it to memory so he could draw it later? There were so many possibilities. Emma folded the paper back up and slipped it back into the jacket pocket and hung it up.

The rest of his room seemed the same as always. Two words: Paint Everywhere.

She backed out of the room and closed the door. Where else would Jules usually go? The training room. That turned out to be wrong too. The training room was empty of people. 

She tried the kitchen. Again, no dice. She walked back to his room in case he went there after she checked it. There were a lot of bedrooms in the hallway. When she passed one door, it was slightly ajar.

Usually all of the unused bedrooms had their doors firmly shut. Emma nudged the door open with her foot. Someone certainly inhabited the space now. They just moved it. There was a full suitcase on the bed. And off to the side was an empty one.

Given the kind of clothing that was hung up in the closet, the inhabitant was a female; most likely a teenage girl. There was one little paper that stuck out of a desk drawer. It was clearly a letter, but it was only the beginning.

Dear Timothy,

That was as far as she got. Her writing was neat and precise. Who was Timothy? And what was his relation to this girl?

Emma was a master at looking through people's things and putting them back exactly how she found them without them even noticing. It's how she discovered a stash of pictures of Uncle Arthur when he was younger. His fashion sense was atrocious.

She slipped the paper into the drawer and positioned it just like she had found it, with the corner sticking out. Emma closed the door and kept a slight opening in it like before.

If she were a mundane, she would be a spy; a very good one at that. She was great at almost everything she did. Maybe that's why Jules could not visit her. He must have been showing the new girl around the Institute. Emma did the same thing when Tina came to live with them.

Emma thought back to that tour. It was from the bottom to top. So she walked down to the lowest level of the Institute and worked her way up from there.

They weren't on any of the bottom levels. The main level was blank too. Everyone else must be in their bedrooms. Uncle Arthur was most likely in his office.

She searched the hallways that contained the bedrooms. There was one hallway that she avoided and that was the one that Mark's room was situated in. There was no way she was risking it.

Yes, she would have to face him sometime because they lived in the same home, but the least she could do was avoid him as long as she could in the huge building.

She backed away from that hall carefully. Where else could Jules be?

The roof.

He loved watching the sunset. Even though he had lived there for his entire life, he would never get tired of the beautiful view of the sunset. She climbed the steps up to the entrance to the roof. Before she reached for the handle of the entrance, she paused.

There were voices overhead. They were both laughing. One was a light and airy one and the other was distinctly lower and could only be classified as Julian's.

She pushed the entrance open and peered out of the gap. They were both lying on a blanket watching the sun. Emma could tell by her hair that that was the girl from the picture that Jules drew. The light rays hitting her hair made it look lighter than it must have been.

Beside her, Jules was relaxing. The sunlight made his facial features glow. He was beautiful. He had a big smile on his face that looked genuinely happy. His white teeth made his smile shine.

Emma was about to climb out to surprise him and to meet the new girl, but something stopped her. They way they looked at each other was not just a friendly look. They leaned in and...

Kissed.

She was kissing him and he kissed back. Emma silently closed the entrance and made sure that they didn't notice the faint click of it shutting.

She ran as fast as she could back to her own bedroom and slammed the door shut. She made sure that the door was locked. Flopping onto her bed, she curled up into a ball near her pillows and buried her face in her knees.

She imagined that scene playing over and over again. She looked at the image in her mind of the picture of that girl. The girl that Julian truly liked. The events that just happened proved that theory. When Emma came to that conclusion she laid very still.

It was in that moment that her heart truly shattered.