Requiem (31) This vulnerable young man, this face that fills me with grief and longing, I am trying to believe in this boy. "I've been dealing with his daughter directly, Malcolm. She's already given me the boxes so I'm not sure what he's after...But what difference could it possibly make to him? I'm told Alexander is a subject he'd prefer no one ever brought up again. The fact that he had a brother is a non-issue...And I appreciate that, Mal, but as I told you the last time we talked, it's imperative I maintain a low profile. I can't afford to give Helena Cassadine the crumb of a trail to follow..." As if she hadn't already caught the scent of him! He was a fool to believe otherwise; they all were. Biding her time, the old bitch was. But for what? Djinn circled the table, flashing him an angry glance he chose to ignore as she carried their dishes to the sink. A twist of her wrists brought the water on full, causing him to plug a finger in his ear and lean even closer to the phone. The noisy scrape of the plates had him exiting the kitchen altogether, striding through the door to a quieter realm absent her none-too-subtle attempts to relay her displeasure. Yes, yes, just deny this now. Stroll past it like your father and your cousin. It's not as if she's particularly skilled at creeping up from behind. Two fingers pressed to the center of her brow and she closed her eyes in an effort to calm, to keep this temper still. He would not respond to castigation, or churlish disputation, or even the resolute enumeration of a dozen incontestable truths. He didn't want to listen. He was in no mood for talk - and this left her, as it always did, with entirely too much to say. Recognizing the folly of trailing after him in a rage, she plunged her hands into the soapy water, picked up a dish, a dripping sponge, and began savagely scrubbing away. So much of what occupied him now was a product of self-indulgence. All the things he'd meant to accomplish had already been achieved. He'd spoken with his prince, put that bee in his bonnet, hooked him tight to the tangle of the exhumation - check, check, and done. He'd befriended the only soul who seemed to give a damn about Zander Smith, collected what belongings remained in her possession and sat through all the tales she had to tell. While his Max had been a rich, if unexpected, source of information - Djinn didn't think there was very much more the girl could share on the subject of this prodigal brother that would prove remotely useful or of any additional value to him. Add the bonus of that pernicious journal he'd secured from the mountain cabin and their miserable pilgrimage to this god-forsaken town could rightly be declared at an end. Barring a blood vengeance, which he swore he had no interest in, there was nothing left to attain in Port Charles that couldn't be attained from a distance; from the safety of a continent's remove. If she could just convince him to retire to Petersburg, Milan or Versoix...Allah knows she'd wrap him in a thobe and tent him to the heart of the Rub al-Khali if he'd allow her a final say in the matter. Let Helena Cassadine find him there with her slender swan's neck intact. It couldn't be done, she was sure of that, but there'd be a fine hunt in the trying. Alas, Zimi would not be moved. He'd proven infuriatingly adamant on the subject, leaving her with nothing but the scuff and skirmish of getting him through these most useless days. Small concessions, she thought, as she traded in her sponge for a drying cloth. All he would grant were small concessions now - tiny, tenacious little victories he'd tender on this single-minded march to destruction; gratuities he'd gift to those he cared for, who'd stood by him to the end. For Old Mother Landsbury he'd agreed to step back, to halt his active pursuit of his cousin and the conscience gone missing at Stefan's death - months ago, miles and miles behind. For Old Mariska he would wait, knowing what the wait would bring, knowing himself mad mystery enough to draw his prey even further in. And a favor transforms to a tactic. For Malcolm, the brother of the mother he'd borrowed, the man who'd cared for her these many years, (who'd had the good grace to swallow his shock at his nephew's resurrection and readily consent to work with him), Maxim had agreed to lift the burden of this woman's unending convalescence, to bring every ounce of his considerable Cassadine influence to bear in regard to her condition, her treatments; this life-long maintenance; its grinding expense. The true boon there, of course - hidden beneath an obvious filial duty - was Zimi's clear and concise affirmation that his uncle was no longer alone. Malcolm McClain could now rely on the commitment of another; he could take a breath, an overdue vacation, even grow sadly sick and die confident in the knowledge his sister's care would advance in perpetuity. All for the price of keeping a secret no one would ever ask about. All for guarding a truth discarded behind a long-abandoned familial back door. And what for Esme? What for Djinn? Which was her magnanimously-gifted allowance; her pitifully pathetic secondary prize? If he wouldn't pack a bag, if he wouldn't be smart, if his foot insisted on resisting the stride to a solid, safer ground, then what small concession would he offer her? She supposed it was the closing of his eyes each night, striving for a sleep he didn't want and claimed so often not to need. She supposed it was the aggravated lift of a fork, a bilious chew, a resentful swallow. His appetite for answers far superseded any interest he had in food. Or perhaps it was this exile from the forest; those many, many trees she'd forced him to lose. How unsettled had she been to find him gone, the journal gone, the car in the drive and night coming on? How anxious of those woods he'd walked into, that great timbered menace whose monstrous boughs and branches like phantom arms rustled to enfold him, to devour him whole? What had he heard in the voice she'd raised, in the tone she'd used to call out to him, reach out for him - the strident cry she'd spit into the wind to snatch him back as the gloom grew black, she grew blind and the creaking thicket threatened to tomb? Whatever fear he'd found beneath the shouting of his name, whatever panic had penetrated, seemed enough of a penalty to preclude his making this same rash choice again. I am not a woodland creature, she'd snapped as he emerged from that deadly, detestable darkness to touch her shoulder, to grasp her hand. I know. I'm sorry. I know. As the last plate came to rest on its stack and the cabinet door closed, Djinn sighed the sigh of negligible gain. Really, what difference did it make in the end if she denied all the hours of his days that place his nightmares would wind up taking him? The destination was inevitable. If her soul was a desert then his was a glade; if her spirit was sand then his was earth and blood and the crack of a bullet fired well enough to fell a family's grace - bring it down, rip it open, birth a demon so profound it could kill without a trace. Three men had died that miserable morning; what matter that their bodies walked on? What matter if the heart, now scourged and scathed, gutted and drained, hollowed to a hopeless, wrenching howl, still managed to beat its lonely rhythm of pain? They were dead, all of them dead from that day - the rest of their lives just a reckoning wander to a proper ground for burial. And what did this make her? What was she but the slip of a shadow silently trailing the last man down...? He'd be on the porch now, she knew it. He'd be out on that porch, reading those words of his false, feckless father not three feet from the stairs; not three feet from the railing and the staggered stumble; from the dark, blood-soaked dirt...the spot his brother had finally chosen to succumb to the earth that called for him; to at long last surrender to the truth. It all begins and ends for me with your mother's Black Irish soul. Legend has it when the Spanish fleet - King Philip's floating forest of an Armada - floundered against her English foe, several of her galleons wrecked themselves on the rocky Irish coast. These sailors, defeated and weary of war, made their way to the idyllic shore and settled in this land, mixing their fiery Latin blood with the poetic valiance of the Irish lords. The temperament formed in that ancestral cauldron was said to be incendiary; replete with passion, genius, violence and a host of mercurial moods. Where we might call these children of the children of the Spanish war manic, the Irish called them black. And black they were. When I first heard her name it was hardly more than a murmur tumbling through the mist of an antiseptic haze. I was two years into my residency at Hopkins and hadn't an hour to call my own since the dawn of Time, it seemed. When I wasn't in surgery myself I was monitoring the surgeries of others, studying style and technique; the culmination of both accurate and inaccurate diagnoses. I had rounds to make, interns to train, lectures to attend and skill to prove. Those vague whispers that went floating around about a beautiful girl newly-installed on the hospital's charity board could not have concerned me less. And when those whispers grew persistent, as they will among residents whose last long kiss and carnal touch exist as a figment of memory, I can assure you I cared little more. So what if she were brilliant, vivacious and fresh, with a wit so sharp and deliciously ribald you'd be laid to waste with laughter in thirty seconds flat? So what if her grey eyes sparked, her lips pursed like petulant cherries, her figure wound a turn so seductively smooth you'd trade in a lifetime of Fiats, Ferraris and Astin-Martins just to run a hand down its exquisite curve? Provocative, intuitive, breath-taking - all this praise meant nothing to me; in fact by month's end her mounting fame took on the quality of folktale. You couldn't take it seriously. No woman so generously gifted drew a breath to walk this earth. You know about the ball. She told that story often enough, and while I disagree with her description of me as a stuffy old pole by the punch bowl, it's true that I attended against my will. Hospital politics annoyed me; I'm certain it was evident on my face. And yes, she asked me to dance. Crushed my toes at least a dozen times to see how low that frown might go before it hit rock bottom and exploded into a much more entertaining rage. That I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of an ill-mannered response and clung to my stiff New England reserve to the end of the waltz, its final move, offered her a challenge it seemed to me she couldn't willingly refuse. Alexander, I cannot tell you the precise moment I fell in love with your mother. All I know is that it happened well before she'd finished stepping on my shoes. A whirlwind courtship, that's what they called it. I thought of it more as a magnificent curse. Given my choice I'd have married her before the week was out. Each hour we waited beyond that mark was, to put it bluntly, spiritually excruciating. I don't know whether to wish this for you or pray you never find it, yet as a truth it persists. Alexander, there are women who make you lose your place in Life - as if your existence were nothing more than a book you'd been reading, pennies you'd been counting, a piece of machinery you were trying to fix until the instant she dropped from a clear blue sky to illuminate that folly; until suddenly, inexplicably, everything you'd worked so hard to achieve and struggled to comprehend crumbled into inconsequence. I was fast-tracking at Hopkins, fulfilling my promise, proving my potential, owning my unspoken role as the chief-of-staff's golden boy right up to the minute she danced with me, to the second I took her in my arms. To say she made a course correction is to minimize the miracle of Mercy McClain. I will view it to my dying day as a moment of rebirth. Shands was her idea. I might have stayed in Baltimore forever, at Hopkins forever, climbing that assiduously-mapped and long pre-determined ladder of success if she hadn't convinced me to take the risk. They were doing good work in Gainesville, potentially ground-breaking work in the field of cardiomyopathy and congenital heart disease. If I wanted to charge to the head of the pack, to the forefront of vascular surgery, U of F's Shands Hospital was the place I had to be. She knew it. She believed in it almost as strongly as she believed in me and you know your mother, Alexander. Once she sets her sights on something, especially for someone she loves, she won't stop until that goal's achieved. I like to think we were happy in Florida. I like to think our first year floated by on a romantic breeze. Yes, I was working ten-hour days and money was a little tight, but she always had a meal in the oven, music on the stereo, a glass of wine, her curiosity. I don't know that I gave a thought to the time she didn't spend with me. I remember the deepening shade of her porcelain Irish skin and being glad she'd gotten some sun. I remember the delicate ivory lace she stitched into...shanty curtains, she called them. There was a humor there she wouldn't explain and I never quite caught. She spoke to her relatives on the phone, made a few incidental friends, fashioned us a pleasant home - it pains me to say her day-to-day life was not my priority. My head was filled with grander plans and the fabric of our future; everything I wanted to make for her, attain for her; all that she deserved. The rest, as I saw it, fell to the fold of an interim existence. Our aches, our complaints, my absences were just the temporary cost of a permanent gain. I was building her a palace, a palace fit for a queen, my focus so fixed to those clouds that I never once looked down, never bothered to see she was trapped in its dungeon, starving for sustenance; week after week, month after month, silently wasting away. The first tears surprised me. She said it was nothing, I believed her, we went on. Soon, too soon, it was the bite of a word, the fret of a lip; a numb and nebulous distraction; the soft, sad, unreasonable sorrow she wound around herself like cotton, as if she meant to muffle a scream. I was young, confused, attentive only to the surface of things. I thought if I took her out to dinner, bought her a bracelet, made love to her more - this was an issue of appreciation, I was certain of it - and so I beat myself into the ground like an old French whore, tossing her cake in the face of a deeper, darker, more profound deprivation. Something to remember, Alexander. By the time a woman's misery rises to her eyes there is nothing you can buy or bargain for, no easy gift or solution that will serve to take the pain away. Know the moment you spy that grief damage has been done. When she gave voice to the idea of starting a family, needless to say, I snatched it up with both hands. Here was our answer, our missing piece. I can hear you now. I can hear you saying...thinking me the kind of man who would throw this problem to the shoulders of an infant, selfishly, recklessly, just to be rid of it myself. Let the child fill her emptiness. Let the child calm her soul. Let this helpless human being make its way with her days, occupy her mind and feed those hungers I couldn't find a way to feed on my own. Hindsight lends some credence to that accusation, but it wasn't how it happened. It wasn't what I was thinking at the time. These were straws, Alexander. We were grasping at straws. And so we set this goal. We made this pact. And for sixty-three days she was happy. I cherished every one. Sixty-three days she'd rush to the door with the smile I remembered, her left hand reaching for my leather case, her right loosening my tie. Sixty-three days of candlelit dinners, bottles and bottles of wine; an unmade bed, a life supine; nights I would willingly and gratefully consign to her magic, mysterious passion. I thought, I hoped, I devoutly prayed those days would never end - and I defy any man to claim he could have predicted what came next; what fell to the floor on day sixty-four. I don't know why that particular test held such importance. I don't know why she gave this one the power to define her. She'd been using them all along, those over-the-counter pregnancy kits; rising at dawn to bounce to the bath in what had become a weekly routine. And while she went in hopeful...and while those hopes were always dashed...she never failed to emerge more determined than ever. She never failed to emerge with renewed dedication and a stubborn vow to get this right. But beyond her mood, beyond that vow, she never failed to emerge - until that grey September morning. I called out to her, of course. Left the bed on her silence, knocked, pounded, jostled the knob on the barrier of that bathroom door. Nothing. Not a word. Not a sound until I threatened to call the police, increasing afraid this might be the wisest thing to do. Only then did the lock twist; only then did the handle turn - only then did she permit me to see the expression on her face, the one that confirmed this glorious, libidinous, perfectly passionate stage of our life was over. We both saw doctors, I insisted on it. Anything to give her hope, anything to maintain the dream or, in its absence, provide us with a tangible reason for her failure to conceive. Was there a pill she could take? A procedure we could schedule? An operation I might undergo? We had months of this, months to wrangle over our potential reproductive inadequacies; to verify the circumstance was real. You know, you think the worst thing you can be told in this situation is that one or the both of you are infertile. I could make a convincing case that it's far more distressing to be told you're not, that there's nothing wrong with you at all, no physical impediment standing in the way of your producing a child. Because once those specialists throw up their hands? Alexander, you're on your own. Mercy fled to the church as if the devil himself were chasing after her. She immersed her soul in the faith of her childhood, with a corresponding child-like devotion. God would solve her problems. God would see this through. What Man could not put a finger on, God had the power to make right; to set true. Candles were lit, rosaries were said, she had a priest come in and bless the bed. Wednesdays swept to a confessional, Fridays to an early evening mass, Sundays genuflecting in a fevered dip at the entrance of a pew; but her days only grew darker. This inexplicable barrenness had literally taken her to her knees and there was absolutely nothing I could think of, absolutely nothing I could come up with to salve that wound - until Father Fernando creaked out of his lofty liturgical lair and caned his way down the steps of the rectory to pay the husband of his newest and most fervently devout congregant a visit he imagined might be overdue. I don't like priests. I'm a man of science. What faith I have is reserved for my skill. And I have to say this fusty old Father confirmed every cliché I'd heard about the antiquated nature of the Catholic Church. Round and round he went, circling the carpet of my office as he circled whatever he had on his mind, concertedly refusing to get to the point - as if it were all some ancient, untranslatable mystery he'd distilled from the pages of his scripture. There was something about an untended garden, a forgotten blossom, the ease with which darkness takes root in the soul. Something about a broken seed that holds a power all its own and will grow into a most dangerous flower if given the gift of our apathy. Or perhaps that broken seed will die and we must ask ourselves, while there is still time to make a difference, if we think such a death would be apropos. Was I weeding the life from my garden or giving it a chance to grow? No stranger to metaphor, I asked him straight out if he thought my wife was suicidal. Was that the impression she'd left? And what was his response? Do you know what he said? All he said, and I'm not sure I'll ever forgive him for this, was that he thought it high time I took my bonny Irish bride on vacation. They never marry. What could they know? Still. The European Society for Vascular Surgeons was holding its conference in Paris that year. Apart from the few hours I'd spend taking in the lectures of Fredricks and Pantonne on the grounds of the American Hospital, the City of Lights would be ours to explore for weeks on end. Should the idea appeal to Mercy there was no reason I couldn't attend... The crunch of gravel in the drive brought his attention up from the journal. At the sight of the Jaguar he closed its cover and set it to rest in his lap. Their eyes met through the tempered glass of the driver's side windshield, Maxim nodding a curious consent. No one out on that island appeared to see the need to phone ahead. "Good afternoon," he called, lifting himself from the chair and tossing the book to its seat. Nikolas slammed the car door shut and circled the vehicle to approach the porch. "I wish I'd known you were coming. We'd have had something prepared. I'm afraid all I can offer at the moment is Esme's concoction of tea." "Thank you, no. I'm not staying. I just came to drop this off." His cousin took the steps with a businessman's bounce, his expression resolute, and stretched a slim folder toward Maxim. "The prospectus, I assume?" "No," Nikolas refuted as the file left his hand. "Provisions and contingencies, you said. There's my provision." Maxim sensed the man studying him closely, intent on his reaction once the cover opened and he began to scan the initial page. Four lines into that Xeroxed text and his swift intake of breath must have provided all the response this young prince required. "My uncle's suicide note, along with its official verification. The handwriting analysis. The fingerprint report. That's a copy, of course, but you can tell the council I'm more than willing to make the original available if they decide they want to confirm its authenticity themselves." "And you found this...?" "Taped to the bottom of one of his birds a week or so after he died." "That's...unusual," Maxim allowed, careful with his choice of phrase. "I think we can both agree he wasn't himself at the time. Still, those words go a long way toward proving death was on his mind. As far as I'm comfortable with, in fact. You asked for a concession? You've got one. And I'll expect something in return." "Name it," Maxim directed, closing the folder to measure the cost his cousin was about to exact. "Withdraw the petition for his exhumation. Remove this from the legal arena. If they accede to that request you can inform them I'll consent to work with you one-on-one, Cassadine to Cassadine. I make no promises. You'll get what you get. That's the extent of my cooperation. Force my hand and the door will close. You can tell them that, as well." "I will." "Good. I understand you have credentials?" "I do." "I'd appreciate it if you brought them along the next time we meet. I'd like to know who I'm talking to." "As you wish." "And you'll have a response...?" "Seventy-two hours. A week at most." Nikolas seemed satisfied with this and turned to depart. Halfway down the stairs he stopped, appearing to have a second thought, and slowly turned back. "He did leave me behind, you know." Maxim tilted his head in query, unable to place the statement in context. "Stefan. You said he never left me behind, and you're wrong about that. He staged his death several years ago and forgot to let me in on the secret. He allowed me to believe he was gone. He forced me to mourn him in the furtherance of a scheme. I think that constitutes being left behind." "If you say it does then it does," his cousin conceded softly. "So you see, I've already grieved for him. Once he came back I swore I'd never do it again." Maxim nodded in silent understanding and, after a moment's pause, offered up a question. "Do you think it's possible you're waiting?" Nikolas' brow creased, puzzled by the assertion. "What do you mean?" "Nothing, really. I just wonder if you're waiting to see if it's true. What's the saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." "...shame on me? No. No, that's not it at all," the prince declared resentfully. "My uncle is dead and it would save us all a lot of time and trouble if you could just find a way to accept that. I can promise you I have and do." On this darkly determined note he turned to finish his descent of the stairs, stalked to his car, threw himself into its seat and angrily started up its engine. As the front fender of the Jaguar arced through the swing of its three-point turn and the crimson glow of its brake lights vanished in the distance, Maxim's thoughts drifted once more to his father's final resting place; this cousin's secret grave. Wherever it was, wherever he'd been cached, Nikolas seemed certain the body was still there. Such confidence was telling. Such assurance, germane. So much so one was left to conjecture how many times in a single restless, disquietingly silent night this prince left the warm confines of his bed to go to the trouble to check. And check. And check again.             Requiem (32)     I am only the result, the fruit, what's left, rotting, among the remains; what you see here, is just that; tenacious trash resisting its ruin, fighting against wind, walking streets that go nowhere. The success of all failures. The insane force of dismay... He ran a hand down the length of each scratch in the marble, sank his fingers to the furrow, pressed the flesh of their tips into the jagged gut of the stone, then brought them back to his face for a squint, a sniff, a calculating rub of his thumb - as if it were somehow possible to detect the lingering essence of a Spencer. He'd have seen these marks before if he'd bothered to take a look, if he'd made his way down the hill just once; braved the door, the dark, the hallowed hush that haunted the husk of this Cassadine crypt. He hadn't been able to accomplish that in all the days since his uncle's death, since the second Sergei hammered him into this nameless, graceless bolthole and trudged breathless from the tomb. Kanchat, he'd wheezed. It's finished. Done. And back to Smolensk he'd been sent; rich enough now to buy his mother her dacha on the river, his pockets bursting at the seam with well-earned Cassadine coin. Done was done, after all. So easy to believe that. So easy to believe all it took to put an end to the nightmare of Stefan was his covert relocation to an unmarked grave; this blank bank of empty vaults set aside for the future Cassadine dead. Let the world rant and rave and wrangle over that patch of earth at Memorial Glen, he wasn't there; he'd never been. His prince had carried him home again where nothing and no one could use him or abuse him or be infected by his madness to the end; for the rest of all eternity. A foolish expectation, judging by the gouges in this wall. "And the seal?" "Intact, your highness. The casket, she is not opened. The rug is just - how you say? Nat? Vyerkhnyaya chast'?" "On top," Nikolas supplied, grateful he hadn't had to view that particular desecration. The vault had been opened and inspected in his absence, as he waited beyond the door. "Very well. You have your instructions. Put these torches out and tell your men to take position. No one is to interfere without my order. Do you understand?" "Da." The man barreled from the crypt, barking directives to the two outside, and he took a quick glance at his watch. If his brother was right they had a thirty minute window; a dull half-hour to bide before Luke showed up to resolve this dilemma. And if everything went according to plan he'd never know he had an audience to witness the disposal of Duncan's body. If not? Well, that's what the guards were for. While he didn't think Luke held any residual interest in Stefan or his coffin, he wasn't about to play the odds. Lucky had been warned. Leave that casket alone and your father's home free. Touch it and we'll have a problem. He climbed up the hill once more and took his station off the bridle path, still amazed at the number of unspoken absolutions they'd granted on the fly; those silent, fraternal adjustments they'd made in the face of each other's well-kept secrets and cunningly casual lies. Lucky had known about this decaying corpse for how long now? Not as long as Nikolas had known his uncle wasn't buried on the mainland. Tit for tat, blow for blow, they absorbed the duplicity and let it ride. An outsider might attribute this tolerance for deception to the realities engendered by their bond as brothers at the core of two feuding families, but they both knew the truth. At the end of the day, at the heart of it all, you simply couldn't deny it. This was sheer defense mechanism; the apathetic expertise required to survive as a son of Laura Spencer. Who was your father? You'd never know. Did you have an older brother? Perhaps. We'll see. But your mother, she was indisputable. She'd be there eternally. That's right, boys, suck it up. Suck it up and move on. A guttural squawk of Russian crackled from the radio attached to his belt, informing him the men had secured their positions; the countdown had begun. It was just a matter of time until the floor show started, until his uncle's mortal enemy advanced to tend to the insult he'd delivered to this grave. If he had feelings about that sacrilege they were buried too deep to mark the moment; to spark his derision to fury and trigger the violence it would need to seed yet another uncontrollable rage. He'd tapped that savagery far too often in this last long year, surrendered to the call of its brutality without so much as a second thought. Such a simple shift, such a slight recalibration, and gone were the bonds that held him in check; the bind of each and every emotional restriction abruptly, eruptively blown apart. How seductive was the touch of that craven animosity? How enticing the embrace of a hard-held hate? He'd fallen to the force of it willingly, wantingly, desperately - succumbing to the power of its convulsive wrath with a wild sense of relief - frightened not then, never then, only later when the haze of his hatred faded and his gaze turned with a bleak, shell-shocked clarity to assess the damage done. Mary Bishop's blood pooling on the stone, Helena Cassadine's sudden absence on the bluff, Maximillian's ripple in the chop of those dark, harbor waters. He'd been told all his life he had a spirit inside him well worth containing, but it wasn't until Stefan died that he'd felt the lure of it, the lust of it; its sweet, demonic range. Something else he'd be compelled to master in the absence of an expert to guide the way. A terse intake of breath and his lungs expanded with the cleansing chill of crisp evening air. Above him the wisp of a crescent moon, a wash of scattershot stars; too few to see anything clearly but more than enough to discern a shadow blacker than the rest; any fugitive figure crossing the grass to enter that nave. His eye acquired its sightline, his boots their comfortable plant in the dirt, his ear attuned to every sound inhabiting the night. Seconds bled into minutes, minutes to a block of time he lacked the means to measure without the betraying use of a flashlight. Half an hour, surely. Midnight must have come and gone by now. He resisted the urge to pace, to shift his weight; the aggravating instinct to fidget. Not a patient man on the best of days, he forced himself to still, to adjust to the chafe of this monotony. Spencer would come. Few things in life were inevitable. This was one. "Well, well," she crooned in a warm whisper that bristled the skin at the back of his neck. "What have we here? A tomb, a prince, the moon. A little Shakespeare In The Dark? Hamlet, I'm guessing. Will it walk tonight, your father's shade? And will you go mad to avenge him?" Nikolas buried his disconcertion beneath a tone of acerbic disdain. "There are guards this evening, Lady Cardiff, in the event you've lost your way." "Yes, yes. The fragrance of Siberian labor camp was difficult to miss. Tell me, do you do this often? Is there a Saturday afternoon matinee?" He turned a narrow glare to the woman over his shoulder, took in her dark attire, her wealth of sable hair, the mocking way she was idling there and set his irritation free. "If I wanted an audience I'd have sent an invitation. As it stands you're unwelcome here. Please leave." "And forgo the only entertainment offered by this town after dark? How could you deny me this? It's most ungracious. And I'd been told you were such a gallant prince. How is it possible your wife could be so thoroughly misinformed?" She offered up the slip of a smile as she drew back to lean against a tree, in no great hurry to go. "It appears Zimi was correct," she sighed. "He will be insufferable now. Do you think, in deference to me, you might make a modest effort to be a little less predictable?" That he had been the subject of a conversation between them, possibly even a bet, pricked at his dignity and kindled the mellow burn of his contempt. "If I'm boring you, Lady Cardiff..." "Oh, only in the most inconsequent way," she avowed, neatly snipping his response in two and discarding the unpleasant half. "There's a certain charm to be found in a man who nightly guards the grave of an uncle he refuses to grieve by day. One wonders what you're protecting here. The proprietary right to despise him?" She could circle the matter to her heart's content, poke and prod and needle with her knowing barbs and wit, he would make no admissions. The confirmation of Stefan's whereabouts would not be granted to this djinn. "I'm not in the habit of explaining myself to strangers, so unless you've got that knife and another list of riddles I'm afraid as far as amusements are concerned you're sadly out of luck." "You speak too soon," Esme admonished, tilting her head brightly to the side and gesturing down the hill. "Two villainous rogues enter stage left." Nikolas spun on his heel and cursed the timing, an arm launching back blindly to command her to stay where she stood. It was an order she obviously felt no inclination to obey. He could sense her arriving at his shoulder, marked the heat of her breath at his ear, detected the subtle scent of sandalwood pulsing beneath his nose. He thrust these distractions away to concentrate on the scene below. They would have been difficult to see were it not for the erratic bounce of the flashlight Luke used to guide them. As it was, he could track their progress with ease - the stealth of their crawl from trunk to trunk to the final, peripheral mulberry tree; their sudden slouch when they hit the clearing; their cautious creep to the door. The beam stilled there, directed in a tight circle to illuminate the lock, while indiscernible tools were produced to swiftly pick it clean. The handle turned and they slipped inside. "Why do you allow them entry?" she inquired in a curious whisper. "Trespass is enough to elicit a charge." When he didn't answer she pressed him further, her tone growing piqued. "Tell me this is a trap." Nikolas unclipped the radio from his belt. "Seechyas," he commanded in an urgent voice. "Dalshe." One man emerged from the surrounding bushes to take up a post at the door, passively observing the action inside. When it became clear to Esme this was all he intended, all anyone intended to do, her irritation flared. "Is this your plan, then?" she snapped. "Spencer comes to rob his grave and you're just going to stand by and watch?" He lifted a finger to call for silence and that might have been enough to detain her, to compel her to search for his motive here, were it not for the sudden, calamitous crash that came echoing from the crypt. Marble on marble, he noted with a wince. The faceplate had fallen to the floor. His uncle's vault was open. Lady Cardiff moved to slip around him and his arm shot out to hold her back, narrowly missing the slice of the knife she now held in her hand. "Wait!" he seethed. "It's not what you think." "What I think is of far less concern to me than what I currently hear. Are you saying that's not the sound of a Spencer plundering a Cassadine tomb?" Close quarters now, her eyes six inches from his face and hard as obsidian marble; scrutinizing each shift in his expression, weighing even the air he expended on his aggravated sigh. All that would stay her was the truth. How little could he get away with? How much did she need to let this slide? His words pitched to a tone so low they were almost inaudible. "If I tell you he's solving a problem will you let it go at that?" "Spencer is the problem," she scoffed. "One of many you're too blind to see. He murdered your uncle. Retribution was yours to exact. As I recall you passed. In fact, you absolved him in such a magnanimous manner it appears you condoned the act. Well fa-la-la and fare-thee-well, my precious pusillanimous prince. Don't look now but there's a line behind you. If your hand's too weak to reach for a weapon do us all a favor and step aside." He looked into those certain eyes, this certain fury, her certain surety of purpose with a lancing stab of envy. He remembered days, long ago, when he was just this confident, just this clear, just this convinced that every answer to every question came in solid shades of black and white. Back when remedies were set in stone - when there were far fewer choices to be made and many, many more rules to obey. Long before...before what? Stefan's death? Emily? Gia? The floundering faith he threw in the face of the first of his mother's lies? She tried to push his arm away and he took her by the wrist, more concerned with this yearning for certitude than the knife she brandished in her opposite hand. "Have you ever met Luke Spencer? Do you even know the man?" "Is that necessary?" she spat, angry with the wrap of his fingers but not struggling against it, not fighting to get away. "Does knowing him for ten years, as you have, produce enough of an abiding affection to forgive the blood he's spilled? The lives he's taken? Death after death after death," she taunted through the curl of a cunning lip. "Mikkos, Tony, Victor...Stavros not once but twice. And now Stefan. Does it please you to be the only male left in the family? Does it amuse you to befriend the assassin who plowed the road to your throne? And he's so shamelessly unrepentant, too. Why, I imagine you find that droll. Surely you don't feel as impotent as all of this makes you look? Ah, but what could it matter? Why should you care what people think, cradled as you are in the comfort of your cozy Spoon Island cocoon? We're peasants, all of us, isn't that true? Dolt and dullards too base and backward to appreciate the genuine majesty bestowed by the Emperor Nikolas Cassadine and his closet full of invisible clothes." He absorbed the goad and braced for the explosion, the rancorous rage they both understood she was purposely trying to incite, but for some reason it didn't come. His heart didn't harden, his chest didn't swell, every rational thought he had didn't flash to ash on the spike of a sudden, malevolent fury. It was odd. Uncomfortable and strange. All he felt was an ache, an empty place inside him; the throbbing void of an absence - as if he were missing an organ, some vital part of his interior being that had been brutally excised; something he was only just beginning to learn to live without. His mind called up the phantom limbs, the phantom pain documented by fresh amputees. What you lose still hurts, still bleeds. But how...? But why...? And slowly, so slowly, it began to make sense. It wasn't the words she'd used or the accusations she'd made but the familiarity of the argument. Luke Spencer's continued existence. An endless debate, an eternal thorn, a perpetual torment he'd shared with only one other man. A man who was no longer there. Was this grief? It couldn't be. It must be. No. The silence was broken by a commotion in the clearing and they both turned in unison to see Luke emerging from the crypt, his legs bowed by the weight of the carpet he'd slung over his shoulder. She strained at the sight and he tightened his hold. "It's not him. That's not Stefan," he informed her in a hurried rush, attempting to quell any misapprehension that might force her into action. "Then who?" she demanded, deftly whipping the knife around to balance its tip beneath his chin. He took a step back and she stepped along with him, her glare dark and cold. "A stranger. Some anonymous corpse. He was only storing the body there." "And you let him do this?" "I didn't know." "Until?" Her blade pressed into the soft flesh underneath his jaw and his head arched back to elude its steel. "Two days ago," he managed to respond in a voice as calm as he could make it. He released her wrist in a gesture of conciliation, lifting that hand and the one that held the radio up in mock surrender. "He'll drag the body to the cliff, toss it over and leave. If he doesn't you have my permission to take whatever action you please." "Permission," she snorted derisively. "As if I'd ever bend a knee to ask for that." She cast a quick glance over her shoulder to find both Spencer men stumbling from the clearing, Lucky swinging the flashlight back and forth in the grass of his father's wake. Esme relented with reluctance, her knife easing down the stretch of his neck until it came to rest at the base of his throat. "Will you depend on the muzhik, then, to tell you when this is done? I notice you're keeping those palms of yours immaculately clean." "No. There's a vantage to your left, through that glen behind me. If you'd just...?" She grudgingly stepped apart and he turned to lead her through a copse of trees to a small outcropping of rock, a spot providing the perfect view of the bluff's plateau and the canting lip of its escarpment. Here they waited, seconds unfolding like eons, quietly, mercilessly, high above the surf. He'd just begun to wonder what she'd do if they didn't show up when Luke lurched from behind a boulder. They watched him trudge across the dirt and drop his burden in a heap at the cliff, then fall to his knees in exhaustion. Lucky approached to offer him a hand but backed off quickly when his father pointed to the rug. Some sort of argument ensued - the older man insisting, the younger one waving his arms and shaking his head - but Luke prevailed as he always did, rising to take position at one end of the carpet. Lucky arrived at the opposite end and bent down gingerly. On an apparently inaudible count, they lifted the roll between them. The first swing brought them balance, the second a sure trajectory, the third the force they needed to clear the rocks below and on the fourth they let go, the rug sailing ten feet out into the open air where it suddenly began to unravel - no one having had the foresight to tie it up or tape it closed. Nikolas jerked his head away and strained his ear for the splash. Esme, he noted, had no problem whatsoever following that decomposing body down. "A small man," she remarked as the corpse hit the water. "Certainly not Stefan." A curt nod of satisfaction and she turned to catch his eye. "Get your house in order, Nikolai Stavrosovich. You dishonor your uncle and all who came before to permit desecrations like this." "I told you I didn't know," he reminded her resentfully. "And you might give thought to discarding that ignorance while you're at it. You don't wear it well." "Listen...," he shot back irritably. "To what?" she challenged, abruptly stepping forward in a bold invasion of his personal space. "A threat? An excuse? Another stab at command? Speak if you must but I suggest you choose those words wisely. Try to come up with something of value, something beyond that same string of selfish assertions you so often rely on that never fail to embarrass us both." His mouth opened to respond to this affront, to give voice to his scorn and rebut the rudeness, but nothing came out. She was too damned close for debate, entirely too near to spit a pronouncement that was sure to result in a quarrel. Besides she had a knife, he told himself, hitching a justification to his silence - a silence that had far more to do with the intriguing arch of her brow, the daring glint in those liquid eyes, and the cruelly-sensuous curve of her provocative lower lip than he was comfortably willing to admit to. He fought his way free of this captivating face only to find himself trapped in her hair, imprisoned by this thick, raven mane; the luster of its sheen in the moonlight; the single, insouciant curl nestled at the temple of her brow. The sly scent of sandalwood battered him in waves, this odor insinuating itself into his memory, storing itself as a fragrance he'd have no choice but to recall. A hand lifted, instinctively, unconsciously, to add touch to these sense impressions, and had almost reached that tight twist of curl when her call rang out. "Nikolas?" "Emily," he announced, less to his wife in greeting than to the illusion he was now maritally obliged to discard. A single step apart, a tilt of his head, and the spell was broken. "What are you doing here?" "I went looking for you in the stables," she replied, her wary eye bouncing back and forth between her husband and his clearly amused companion. "That's where you said you'd be." "And where I was until the moment Lady Cardiff arrived." A hard backward glance and Esme moved forward, content to carry the play. "I'd come to collect my tour," she professed with an artless air of entitlement. "Maxim speaks of his jaunt across this island and I have no frame of reference. Fortunate for me your prince had the time, the energy and the inclination to address that deficiency. Ignorance can be such a burden, don't you agree?" Nikolas scowled. Emily, unable to divine the subtext of the moment yet positively convinced there was one, quickly made her way to his side to take a possessive clamp of his arm. "I don't know why you're doing this at night," she reproved. "You can see so much more during the day. If you'd like to come back tomorrow, Lady Cardiff, I can show you the island myself." "A kind offer, Mrs. Cassadine, but I think I've seen enough this evening to resolve whatever questions I had. Spasiba, Nikolushka. You've been a most informative guide." "Pazhalsta," he responded automatically with a polite drop of his head. He caught a movement in the trees and knew Lucky was waiting. "Do you think you could escort Esme to the launch?" he inquired of his wife, gently removing her hand from his arm. "I have to check on something." "Of course," she allowed, clearly relieved he was leaving this guest in her charge. Her eyes closed and her mouth lifted to receive his departing kiss but Nikolas had already walked away, intent on tying up this business and putting an end to the night. As he approached his brother he saw Lucky's gaze grow wide with astonishment at something happening behind his back. He turned and halted in his tracks. Esme, it seemed, had seen fit to take advantage of the opening he'd lost and availed herself of the kiss his wife was offering with eyes still blithely shut. Emily, no doubt driven by the need to mark her spousal territory, injected more passion into this demonstration than it customarily called for and, because of that, lost several long seconds and half a moan before she recognized these weren't her husband's lips. Once she did she squealed, backpedaling in shock as she scrambled to wipe her mouth clean. Lady Cardiff stood by patiently, from this distance it appeared almost graciously, taking no offense. "I didn't think she swung that way," quipped Lucky in wry amusement. "I don't think she does," he murmured, still grappling with the sight. His brother chuckled roguishly and clapped him on the back. "Even better." Requiem (33) Afford yourself what you can carry out. A coward and a coda share a word. We get our ugliness from fear. We get our danger from the lord. "I'm telling you she felt threatened." "And you thought kissing her would ease her fears?" "Those fears, yes." His gaze narrowed shrewdly. "Why do I get the sense this was more about keeping her at arm's length? You can be certain she will never feel comfortable approaching you again." "Well, I didn't say there wasn't anything in it for me," she tossed off lightly, pulling her raincoat from the closet and soundly shutting its door. "She's the muse of a migraine, Zimi, which you'd know had you stayed at the table that night. But no, you left her to me. A sad little sufferance I'll treat as I like." She thrust her arms through the sleeves of the coat and hiked it to her shoulders, then began to hunt for her keys. "Have you put a name to that body yet?" she asked as she sorted through the clutter on the sideboard and lifted a searching stare to the mantelpiece. "Odds are it was Duncan, a policeman his mistress was accused of killing. The corpse was never found. She went to jail for that, you know." "And I'll assume he didn't do a day. Did your prince get him out of that, too?" "This would matter to you why?" he taunted as she spied the ring on the coffeetable and skirted the couch to retrieve it. "Careful now, or I'll think you're looking for something to hold against him." "Don't be an ass," she chided, bending to kiss him on the top of his head. "You're not to go out on that porch while I'm gone. It's a steady rain they say will last through the night." She gestured to the hearth and the pile of papers strewn across the sofa beside him. "The fire's fresh and you have your reading. The last of the tea is on the stove. Can you think of anything you need from the market?" "Do they have a pill for fussing?" he grumbled, lowering a disgruntled frown to the folder in his lap. "It would be wonderful if you could find one and take it on the way home." Her fingers ruffled through his hair and tugged it gently, drawing his head up again to meet her reproving eye. "How easy would it be, do you think, to slip some sedative into your tea and spirit you back to Russia? We are all tolerating something, Zimi. You are not the only one." The knock on the door surprised them both. Djinn squinted in question and Maxim shook his head. She turned to take the stairs, her hand slipping beneath her coat to confirm the weapon she had hidden there. A cautious thumb drew the curtain aside and she eased completely, twisting the deadbolt to let this guest in. A sodden Maxie stumbled through the threshold and stepped to the side, her arms wrapped tight around her coat, her long hair dripping, her body atremble and scattering drops of rain across the floor - her greeting awash in apologies. "I'm sorry. I tried to call but I couldn't get through. I know we're not supposed to meet tonight but I had something...well, there's something...I just...do you have a minute? Could I talk to you?" "Of course," he assured her, closing his folder and casting it to the coffeetable. At the sight of her jaw's reflexive quiver, he launched from his seat. "You're drenched. Stay right there. I'm going to get you a towel." "It's pouring," Maxie needlessly explained through a set of chattering teeth. "I should have brought an umbrella." "Then I should probably take mine." Djinn returned to the closet as her companion charged up the second-story stairs. "It's good you're here. Do you think you could stay? I'm only going to the market." Maxie assented with a shiver and Djinn crossed to the door once more to brave the driving rain. "He's in a difficult place these days," she confided on a whisper. "It's best to forgive him everything." The umbrella split wide, the door swung shut and she was gone. "Here," Maxim instructed, descending the stairs with a stack of towels balanced in his hands. One arm unwound from her waist, a finger lifting to motion him to wait. She unbuttoned her coat carefully and withdrew a large manila envelope she'd been protecting from the rain. "Could you...?" she asked, offering to trade the document for the towels. "Certainly." She set the linen on the floor beside her and stripped off her jacket, then toed the muddy sneakers from her feet. "That's what I came to show you," she disclosed. "If you could just hang on a second?" She unfolded a towel to dab her face, then bent forward to wring the moisture from her hair. "See, I'm not supposed to have it. My dad would kill me if he knew. I have to hide it in my room. I won't even take it out unless I know he's not at home, and I wouldn't even be here if he hadn't gone out of town. It's hard to get anything past him, you know? And this? I'd never take the chance." "Your father's gone out of town," he remarked, making a mental note of the fact and wondering if, by the time she left, it would be too late to call Florida - concerned enough now to question whether she was right and his phone wasn't working. It took a moment for him to realize she was reaching for her envelope. He passed it back with a start. "Yep," she confirmed, padding down the three short steps to the living room and making her way to the couch. "Just a day trip. Well, tonight and tomorrow. It's a good thing his flight left before this storm." A plane. Then yes, he'd have to let Malcolm know. "Wait, let me clear that off." He circled around her to remove his papers from the sofa. "Can I get you anything? I have tea...and juice, I think. There may be some seed cake left from dessert?" She dropped to the cushions and leaned to the side to tuck her feet beneath her, waving off the blanket he brought from the hearth. "No, really. I'm okay." She took a pensive breath and released it on a sigh, her forehead furling as she fingered the fold of her prized manila envelope. He mistook the reaction for reticence. "Max, if you're uncomfortable with this...?" he quested reassuringly, sinking to the seat beside her. "No. Well, yes...but no." Her eyes rose to search his face and he was struck for an instant by the depth of their hue; that chaste cornflower blue somehow stained bolder and darker by the rain. It might have been the paleness of her skin, the way it glistened with the chill, or the tint of her lips, like iced pink roses, that brought this gaze into stark relief. Women were never so beautiful as when they came in from a storm. It was as if the tempest had transformed them; as if element had called to element to release the essence of their nature. There was a hint of transcendence in it he could never quite get past, a kind of baptismal purity - the glimpse of absolution, perhaps, he didn't know. A wonder, though. It was a wonder sharp enough to pitch a man's soul right off its rock and straight into the turbulent sea. "Do you remember when you asked me how I knew what happened the night Zander died? I told you I read about it in the paper and got the rest from the police report?" "Yes," he replied, dismissing those eyes to better concentrate on what she was saying. "You said you read the file while everyone was out searching for Nikolas." "Well, that's not exactly true," she confessed, hedging her words in a small voice as her head bent once again to the secret she held in her lap. "See, a lot of people know me at the PCPD. Some of those guys, they're like my uncles. They've been around for years. They practically watched me grow up and I guess, as a favor to my dad, they tend to keep an eye out for me. So I couldn't count on a lot of time, if you know what I mean? Not the kind of time it was going to take to read that file...really read it the way I wanted, well, needed to, actually. So I figured I'd better...well, I thought...I just..." She took a sudden grip of the envelope and thrust it toward him decisively. "I made a copy." Maxim drew back from this unexpected offering with a distinct sense of unease, his features clouding, his expression inscrutable. "I don't understand," he stated softly. "Why are you bringing this to me?" "Because you need to see it," she insisted. "I wasn't sure until you told me that story about Zander and his brother. You couldn't know those things unless you knew the family pretty well. And this," she declared, shaking the envelope persistently between them, "this is what really happened to him. It's not just some memory or memento, it's the truth." He couldn't bring himself to touch it and turned away, suffering her look of chagrin as her arm faltered and the envelope fell to rest on the cushion at his thigh. He knew she'd be confused, knew this response ran counter to every impression he'd given, every indication of the hunger he possessed for the smallest scrap of information he might pack into a suitcase and take back to the grieving Lewis family. But it was only him. It had only ever been him - his loss, his sorrow, his pain, his bruised and broken soul that labored to claim the chaos of his brother's final days - and there was only so much a man could face, only so much he could embrace of the cold, cruel truth that lay in wait for him in this merciless little town. It was one thing to revisit that life in retrospect, to endure the stories, these requisite retellings; to come to terms with the depth of his despondence and the brutal way he'd died. Quite another to meet it squarely on a page written by some civil servant, some overworked, underpaid stranger to whom his life meant precisely nothing and his death was just another scribbled chore of a job needing to get done. In the same way he'd resisted reading his father's autopsy report, that stapled sheaf of pages Natasha spat out as if it were a punctuating period at the end of her brother's sentence, he found himself resisting this. They were barely human in those bleak, procedural recountings - nothing more than bodies pedantically pecked apart, behaviors pinned like formaldehyde frogs and presented for dissection. Oh, you could say it was reality - the faithful recitation of established fact, objective, unimpeachable, bloodlessly sound; you could say that and it would be true. But you couldn't afford to dismiss what the exposure to such a pitiless reality could end up costing you. Never again would he be capable of remembering this father, this brother, the challenge of their lives, the conflict of their deaths, without a tandem recollection of the definitive number of knife wounds inflicted, the exact expense of bullets fired into an all-too-vulnerable breast. Corpses in transit, coroners consigned...God help him, what their hearts had weighed. Someday he would have to read these things. Someday soon. Just not...certainly not...hopefully not...if there's an angel left in heaven who can hear me, please...let it not be today. "I shouldn't have done this," she advanced abruptly, retracting the offer and the envelope in a mounting flood of embarrassment. "I shouldn't even be here." His hand struck out to catch her by the wrist, to prevent her taking flight. "No. Wait. Please wait." What to say? How to explain? She'd been trying to do him a favor. "It's...I didn't expect this. You've caught me off-guard. And Max, I have to tell you, that's not an easy thing to do." His head dipped low to lure her eye to the wry wince of his smile. "Despite how often you seem to manage it and how ridiculously simple you make it look." The hint of a grin, he observed, but not an ounce of concession. "Max, the truth is I'm just not sure I'm ready to submit to revisiting his death in all its gory detail. Not yet. Not without a little more time to prepare." "Oh, but that's not...oh!" she exclaimed, visibly brightening. "I don't have the autopsy report. These are only the preliminary statements given by the people who were there. Emily, Lucky, Elizabeth...Ric Lansing's is just a page and a half. His isn't even finished. I got to the station right after it happened. I don't even think they were done processing the scene. No. No," she avowed with a concerted shake of her head, her body betraying a revulsive quiver. "I couldn't do the gory stuff either. There are some things I don't need to know." Well, there was no getting out of it now. Her earnest affirmations bound him to the task like the helpful hands of an executioner graciously placing the noose around his neck. Any last words, Mr. Cassadine, or shall we just skip straight to the swing? His fingers drifted from her wrist to the envelope and he eased it from her grasp. "In that case I guess I'd be a fool to say no." He lifted the flap and withdrew the papers, leaning back to settle solidly into the corner of the couch. Discomfort erupted in a dozen different ways - the poke of a pillow he removed from his hip, the cramped angle of his neck, the need to cross his legs...no, draw a knee to the cushion for balance...and this sudden awareness of elbows. Tucked? Propped? Splayed? The physical manifestations of an inner ordeal. He knew this, knew he would never get it right and stilled eventually, forcefully, if only to banish the procrastination. His eyes blinked, focused and fixed to the ink on the initial page as he wrestled with a mind now defiant and opposing any effort at comprehension. The first few lines were lost to the struggle before he crushed this resistance and zeroed in. ...I thought I'd seen him in the park. But he was dead so I had to be hallucinating. It had to be me, my guilt over what had happened to him, what had happened in that fire. I decided I needed closure. That's the only reason I was there, to put all of this to rest. To put Zander behind me. I was saying a prayer, making my amends, and when I turned around he was standing in the doorway. He looked so haunted, so hurt, so unbelievably alone... A dull ache roused to rotate resentfully beneath his ribs. He shifted his weight to accommodate the strain. Skim now, skim through the mire of her self-serving refrain. She'd give him only instants to shine, to shimmer, to sink. ...He wanted me to go away with him. He said he loved me. He said I made him matter. He was trying to recapture all we'd lost and when I told him that wasn't possible he wouldn't listen. He kept insisting I could save him and pleaded with me to return to that past. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't give in and that's when he became agitated. That's when he started to pace. That's when he said he'd do anything to win me back, even if it meant killing Nikolas... A shallow intake of air to relieve the tightness in his chest. Skip this part. Skip it for now and come back to it later. He flipped through the remainder of her statement and moved on to the next. ...I saw them through the window and I couldn't believe my eyes. It looked like they were just talking but you could tell Zander was upset. Emily was doing her best to calm him down but I wasn't so sure that was going to work so I decided to call for help. I couldn't get any reception from the porch. I had to leave the cottage and find Ric myself... Elizabeth Webber, the wife of ADA Lansing at that time. Convenient. Unfortunate. This town was disconcertingly incestuous. Another wretched community his brother had sighted, circled, staked as an aim yet had never been permitted entry to. A memory snapped into place, cracking the misery open. That flash of fire in his eyes when he knew, when it dawned on Alexander's ten-year-old mind that there was nothing his father would grant him, nothing he would bend an ear to listen to. He wondered if his brother caught the echo of it here, in this last night with Emily. He wondered if that hardened heart reminded him of home. He coughed gruffly to clear his throat, a knuckle lifting in haste to knock the prickling from his nose, and cast a quick glance at Max, intending to acknowledge her patience with a smile. But his attention strayed beyond her, over her shoulder to that closed front door. He'd been standing there, right there, in the final leg of his life - he'd taken those stairs, crossed this floor, paced in desolation on the very boards behind her. He could almost feel a disturbance in the air as his brother's ghost stalked past; could almost envision that agonized hand rising to rake through his unruly hair. The desperation was palpable. Rattled by these sensations, he quickly retreated to the statements he held and turned another page. Spencer's scrawl was all but illegible and required a stern squint to read. Dispatch called a Code 6 - felony wanted, armed and dangerous - and directed all available cars to the cottage. I arrived with the response team. SWAT deployed to surround the house. Lansing came on-scene at nineteen hundred, coordinating tactics with PCPD liaison Detective... The letters ran to a tangle beneath a wayward splotch of ink. "I'm sorry, I can't read this," he admitted, angling the document toward her, his finger pointing to the name. She leaned forward, her nose wrinkling as she worked to decipher the muddled print. "Duncan," she pronounced, her finger joining his at the end of the line. "That's a D. Detective Ross Duncan. It was his first day on the job. Mr. Lansing brought him in from Manhattan." She must have noticed a shift in his expression. "Why? Does that name mean something to you?" "Not really, no," he replied, pulling back to his seat. "I seem to remember a reference to him in relation to Skye Quartermaine, but I could be mistaken." "Oh, you're not," she affirmed. "He's probably dead. He went missing last year and Skye was put on trial for his murder. She didn't do it, though. I think they got a confession from a woman they ended up sending to Ferncliff." He nodded and she reached for his arm, drawing his eye away from the statement. "Listen if this is hard for you, and I'm not saying it is, but if it is we don't have to do it. I just thought his family might appreciate the details." "No, I'm fine, I'm fine," he lied less than smoothly, cursing his inability to suppress the evidence of this grief, to contain its signs and signals, to keep it from leaking through the hairline fractures of his firmly-reinforced resolve. It was true, there was nothing graphic here, nothing remotely grim, yet he couldn't help but find the whole of it intensely, heart-wrenchingly abysmal. Alexander alone again, apart again, cycling through abandonment, exile, blame - careening from blow to blow, staggering from pain to pain - and that empty place behind him, that vacant shadow he was chained to; that darkly-deserted void at his back that he had every right and reason to believe it was incumbent on his brother to fill. Hey Pete, you wanna catch a movie? Hey Pete, you up for some ball? Hey Pete, there's a car, there's a jacket, there's a job, there's a girl I like. Think you could help me out? The slow burn behind his eyes warned him this wasn't going well; warned him he was one memory shy of diving straight into hell. He compelled himself to focus once again on the page propped before him, to lose himself in the flatness of its facts, but the words, this scurrilous scratch of Spencer's, skittered insensibly. A small tremor, hardly discernable, had come to afflict the muscles of his hand. He released his grip and flexed his fingers, then shook the wrist out beneath a sour frown. ...I established contact with the suspect by bullhorn and informed him the cottage was surrounded. I ordered him to send the hostage out first, then exit the building with his arms held high where everyone could see them. The hostage responded, requesting more time, leading us to believe she was convincing the suspect to surrender... Harsh minutes, those - devoid of hope, denied of love, easing his way into submission. Where were his options? What could he do? Maxim felt the pressure build; this swelling sorrow blossom and distend. ...The response team detected movement through the window. Lansing called the heads-up. Duncan warned us Smith was facing four counts of murder and suggested there was a high probability he'd shoot his way out... Primed then. They'd been primed to fire; the tension twisted taut by Lansing's stooge; this repulsively aggressive new recruit. What chance had Alexander had? One false move, yet that was the plan. Finally. Finally and at long last he'd found an act this town would sanction; a choice they'd support and oh-so-generously enable him to pursue. ...Emily announced they were coming out. She insisted Zander was unarmed. She walked through the door holding his hand and the rifle scopes sighted, seven lasered beams converging on his chest. He looked down at his shirt, entranced, and watched them dance as they hunted for his heart... His vision blurred, forbidding the next line, the next word, and his eyes closed on instinct, ignoring the solitary tear that slipped to suspend from a lash. In a flash he was back in that godforsaken forest, flat on his back, frozen in the dirt, helplessly immobile as the die were cast. You killed him! You killed your own brother! No. God, no... A single sob, so long repressed, escaped like a felon from his throat. He tried to drag it back, to snatch this betrayal from the open air, but the wheeze of his breath mangled to a moan. It was all he could do to prevent his shoulders from collapsing, his hands from compacting into fists, his mouth from gaping open to unleash his grief in one endless, insanely-silent scream. He was hardly aware of her response, barely cognizant of her swift scoot forward to pry those pages from his grasp, to take his hand, lift his chin, thumb that lonely tear from his cheek. All he knew was the comfort of her arms when they came to enclose him, the press of his brow to her breast, the light feathering of kisses she bestowed in unspoken commiseration to the top of his head. He clung to the compassion like a lifeline, fiercely, vindictively, as he struggled to halt this tumble of emotion, to press it down, to pack it back into a heart too worn and weary to do anything but bleed. And when those kisses began to travel, to trip like wistful benedictions to his temple, his eyes, his nose, his mouth, he accepted them, embraced them, seized each sweet surge of her affection as if it marked the sole remaining road left open to salvation. Soon, too soon, he was returning them in kind, molding this tender profusion of graces into one urgent, resurrectional whole. He reached out blindly, an arm encircling to pull her close, a hand sweeping up the weave of her sweater to plunge into the damp tangle of her hair. And when her lips parted, when her mouth opened to admit the desperation of his tongue, every frisked and fevered nerve of this redemptive bliss imploded. Such a soothing fire, such an indescribable relief...wait. No. Wait. "Max," he seethed, breaking off in an effort to allay this temptation. His head descended in a woeful shake as he fought to pivot past his need. "We can't. This isn't...we can't..." He lifted a stark, pleading gaze to those undeniably bright and beautiful eyes. "Max..." "Max," she echoed softly - and the purse of those lips repeating the name, the gentle indulgence of its tone, the vast expanse of understanding in this face, this spirit, this soul, crippled every impulse he had to say no. Lucky for him Djinn chose this moment to fit her key into the lock and return herself home. Max sprang back in a panic, retreating to the furthest corner of the couch, a wild blush flushing her features as she made a feeble attempt to straighten her clothes. He shot a warning glance to his housemate who possessed the presence of mind to retract whatever clever retort she was on the verge of voicing aloud. "Forgive my interruption," Djinn announced in a carefully neutral tone, setting her groceries down. "I parked in the front for a reason. The roads are much worse now than they were an hour ago. I thought, when your Max was ready to leave, it might be best to follow her down. Better safe than sorry, yes or no?" "Yes," Maxie maintained, latching onto this offer with alacrity as she jumped from the sofa to retrieve her coat and that sad pair of mud-splattered shoes. "There's no need to rush. I didn't mean to imply we had to leave this very moment." "No, no, I should be getting home." The laces of her left sneaker defeated her completely and she forced her foot past them, inserting a finger to wedge the heel. "I just came to show him..." and an anxious eye lifted to find her treasured file now strewn to chaos across the couch. "Just hold onto that, okay? I'll come back for it later." "Are you sure?" he responded in concern, at a loss of how best to assist this departure she seemed so determined to make. He wanted to rise, to see her to the door, to exchange a soothing word or two, but he suspected it would only make things worse. "Yes," she pronounced. "Are you ready?" It escaped no one's notice that she avoided looking at Djinn as she side-stepped through the threshold and out into the rain. "I think I'm in trouble," Maxim relayed on the brace of a disconsolate sigh. Djinn rolled her eyes in dismay and strode down the steps to where he sat, vexed to distraction, amid the flurry of papers on the couch. Her chilled hand took him by the chin, angling it up to pin his gaze. "You've been in trouble for a long time, Zimi," she informed him coldly. "So long now that any joy you encounter seems distinctly out-of-place. Do not reject the mercies you're granted to balance out your pain." She wagged his jaw and gifted him a rare, genuine smile. "My poor, poor befuddled love. You are your father's son through and through. You don't see it at all, do you? That's not trouble walking out your door. It's hope."         Poetic Attributions (The Introductory Lines): Chapter 31 - from the poem Photographs of My Father, by Judith Ortiz Cofer Chapter 32 - from the poem Before I Could Call Myself Angel Gonzalez, by Angel Gonzalez Chapter 33 - from the poem Etymological Dirge, by Heather McHugh