* * *
Alex ventured into the dark halls of the Combermere estate.
“Hello?” she called, loud enough for anyone inside to hear. But nothing.
“Hello?” she tried again. Feelings of déjà vu struck her mind.
She checked every floor of the six story home. There was no one in sight. What’s more, some of Lord Combermere’s personal effects were missing. Particularly some of his luggage and his clothes. There were some empty spots on his book shelves, and if memory served her right (which it usually did), the books missing from the shelves were all of fiction literature. Most of what remained were his furniture, and anything else that might have been too big to fit in a carry-on luggage.
Up on the sixth floor, where Lord Combermere’s glass wall overlooked the rest of Suburnia, the one eye of his telescope had been aimed at the O’Mallery Park. Glancing down the window with her naked eyes, the park wasn’t any more noticeable than a speck. However, leaning into the viewfinder of the telescope, she was able to see every inch of it with amazing detail. From a pack of squirrels sitting together on a branch eating raw acorn, to an entirely different detail that stole her attention.
On the body of that same tree, letters had been carved by way of a sharp blade. She closed her right eye, diverted visibility to her left in order to make out what the letters said. It took a few seconds to make out the details. But before she knew it, the jotted letters formed a series of words.
You have left me no choice.
How Lord Combermere had been able to form such flawless handwriting on the bark of a tree, Alex didn’t think she’d ever know. But what piqued her interest more than anything else, was what he could have meant by the cryptic message.
Choice?
Alex didn’t remember giving him any choices about anything. In fact, it was he that gave her the option of whether to stay or to follow him to Vienna, which led her to another question.
Why didn’t he wait for my answer?
He was packed, probably long gone by now depending on when he left. He hadn’t even waited for Alex to tell him that she wasn’t interested. He either knew what she was going to say beforehand, or he’d lost interest in her entirely.
Unlikely.
Regardless, no matter how much she thought about it, the end result was still the same. Lord Combermere was gone, and Alex was back to living whatever was left of her ordinary Suburnian life, which, after the death of her parents, wasn’t very much.
But the dice had been cast. There was no going back to the way things were. Whatever her future held in store for her, Alex knew full well that it wouldn’t be what her parents had in mind. And without a mentor to guide her or a role model to look up to, the threat of uncertainty loomed over her like a shroud. She knew that she would have to be vigilant in the coming days ahead.
At this point, you are probably wondering if Alex Frost was beginning to regret her decision of staying in Suburnia. I can assure you that she wasn’t. But if you asked whether she missed her mentor at all, I would answer you, yes. In her own, soul deprived manner, she did in fact wish that Lord Combermere was around to help guide her through the rest of her life. Unfortunately, no one can have everything they want, even if the things they don’t get are the things they feel they need to most. With Lord Combermere gone, life would be harder to go through than she’d wished. She would have to make do with being by herself. Trying to understand her soulless condition on her own, avoiding the urge to kill. These were but a few of the problems our girl without a soul would have to overcome. But for what it was worth, she was confident that if she took things one day at a time, the chance existed that she might actually make it after all.
She ended her tour of Lord Combermere’s home with his bedroom, to make sure for the last time that he’d left, and that she wasn’t somehow foolishly mistaken. There were a few empty hangers, though most of his clothes still remained. Besides that, all that was left were his furniture, and the only photograph he’d kept in his home; the one of himself and his family.
She raised the picture.
Now that he was gone, the picture was the only reference she had of him ever having led a normal life.
She took the photograph out from the frame, and that was when her eyes saw something far beyond the realms of imagination.
The photograph wasn’t one photograph. It was a collection of transparencies joined together to form one image. One transparent sheet contained the boy that Lord Combermere called his son. Another, the woman he called his wife. The next, a younger portrait of himself. And beneath it all was the background they shared.
It was a lie.