Page 97 of Florescentia

Through the door, then up the stairs to the main floor. Out from behind the desk, I picked up my skirts to walk faster across the skywalk. As I passed the front desk, out the door, I knocked shoulders with someone.

“Watch it,” Maxim hissed, then faltered. “Lucia?”

I raised a brow, but I didn’t have time to question him about his presence here on his supposed day off.

There was no need to wave for a coach, which were plentiful outside the Treasury, as it was a stately government building, after all. Though, judging by the crowd, it may have been faster to walk. The carriage ride was stop and go, jolt and swerve. My stomach wasn’t built for such travel. I could already feel myself becoming green.

Soon the buildings shrank and turned to flatter land, more commercial buildings, and the company of the largest cemetery in the city, which had become my least favorite frequent as of late.

The coach pulled up to the opening of the cemetery. Wrought iron gates guarded the dead, attached to a solid wall of stone encapsulating the entire burial ground. On such a cheery day, no one wanted to spend their time with the deceased. Never mind an ill-maintained city yard.

The dirt path wound and wove through the headstones and statues, the subtle hills watched over by the towers in the distance. Most of the grass by this time was hay-like and burnt, not even the goosegrass and purslane able to withstand the beating sun.

Before I could bring myself to wander, I owed someone a visit.

Well into the center of the cemetery, near the lone tree and past the old crypts, my first stop.

“Hello, my love.” I knelt before Dorian’s grave.

Obviously, there was no reply. Talking to the dead was unnecessarily embarrassing. It was more tolerable with a veil; that way, no one could see that you were talking to yourself, to a rock. He wasn’t even buried. So I was, indeed, speaking to a simple stone.

“I suppose I should talk the old-fashioned way,” I whispered. “I believe the doctors say it is good for healing the soul.”

When I was young, I used to talk to my Peculiars. It could be as little as a good cry, or sharing something vulnerable, being vulnerable. Perhaps it was time to start from scratch.

“Maybe this is why people feel better when they talk to graves. Peculiars like graveyards,” I said.

The more the silence went on, the more my heart ached. I shifted, the rocks digging into my knees.

“How am I, you ask? Swell!” I laughed. “By the stars, I am terrible at this. You’d laugh if you saw me attempt this silly exercise. But at least I knew you wouldn’t tease.” The words were coming easier now, a lightness to them. “There were so many times I wanted to tell you. About all of this. It’s embarrassing, though. An old habit I couldn’t stop.

“I just wanted the best for us. I think deep down, I knew you would have told me to stop. Maybe because I’m capable, or maybe because you’d think it’s fair, I don’t know.” I shrugged, pressing my hand into my eye socket, as if to stop any tears from introducing themselves again.

“I miss you,” I said out loud, “and I love you. I’m having a really hard time.” Another shaky breath before my last admission. “And I want to go back, make it all go away.”

The rock did not reply to me, unsurprisingly.

But now I felt a little lighter, even by only a minute difference.

Much like other things, it was time I moved on.

I stopped at the first grave beside Dorian’s, kneeling before it to clean the dust from the slab. It looked like a standard grave the city used for inmates. They always had the same cheap cut and minimal information engraved. Just enough for records to confirm the death.

John Lahue

“Hello, John.” I pulled a notebook from my purse, then a pencil. As I held one of the pages to the stone, I scraped the graphite pencil back and forth over the name to take the impression. “Just borrowing,” I whispered, as if he could hear me, digging my finger into the dirt to smear it under the name on the page. I hoped the soil counted as something of his, as it was his grave.

“At some point, the curiosity becomes obsessive.” Altair’s voice manifested like the whistling wind, then he was suddenly kneeling next to me, looking at my current project.

“I’m testing a theory,” I said smugly, “unless you have any useful input?”

“About necromancy?” he scoffed.

I stared at the smug bastard. “So you do listen to me.”

“Don’t be self-obsessed.” He rolled his eyes as he stood. “I have to make sure you’re not going to frolic into any coaches or oceans. Since you have such an affinity for insisting danger upon yourself.” His tone was trite, not much more to add, based on his body language.

Was he . . . jealous?