Page 62 of Scent of Desire
“You’re free to visit. I believe the gentleman here has a key in his pocket?” She opened the passenger door of her car. “Who knows, you may find something rather interesting.”
Her lips curved into a slight smile.
She knew.
She remembered.
“Let’s go, my love,” she said to her husband, entering her car. “It’s time.”
Hugo and I remained magnetized by the couple. Their car engine roared, and just like that, they left the manor like phantoms belonging to the past on the road to heaven.
“Did you also get the feeling they never truly existed?” Hugo asked, his stare locked on their green car, which was now just a black dot in the distance.
“They got their happy endings.” They were proof that curses could be broken. I shot a glance at Hugo. “Now, let’s find him. I believe you have the key?”
Hugo furrowed his brows, searching in his pocket before taking the key out of it. “Would you believe me if I told you I have no idea where this key came from?”
“Well.” I raised an eyebrow. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
Hugo opened the gates, which squeaked with a shrill noise, and I ran toward the manor, followed by the croaking of the ravens and the dead leaves flying in the path. Ivy had grown on the facade, giving the impression that the manor was abandoned and much older than I remembered.
I wrenched the dusty main door open, and a draft froze me in place. It felt like death, and dark, haunted spirits had just escaped from the hallway, finding their happy ending too. The manor was deadly and empty with no recognition that someone had once lived here. No furniture remained. It was as if Radcliff had never existed. Even the scent was different—it smelled only of dust and wet wood.
“What’s all this?” I stepped inside, searching every corner for a sign of Radcliff. But everything was gone apart from the chandelier.
Hugo didn’t reply. His face was completely closed off. He wasn’t even shocked.
I confronted him, my lips twitching in an expression of disgust. “You knew he had left, didn’t you? That’s why you agreed to drive me here. Did you lie about the key too?”
“No, I still have no idea where that key came from, I swear,” Hugo defended, raising his hands in a sign of innocence.
There was no need for him to reply about the rest. He had always been on Radcliff’s side. I shook my head and bolted up the stairs to find anything that would lead me to Radcliff. He must have left something. The Devil had always played a game. Tricks. I just needed to find which hints he could have left me.
Radcliff could anticipate all my actions and read my soul. But I could also read him. I wrenched the door of his office open, thundering inside of it. Nothing. Then, I went to my old bedroom. Nothing. I burst into every room with determination, but I ended up finding nothing.
Starting from scratch, I inhaled the decaying air of the hallway upstairs. I was about to give up when I noticed a detail that had escaped me until now. All the paintings of Dante’s Inferno weren’t here anymore. Only one painting still hung. The one of the portrait of the young boy. The one that was so beautiful but haunted.
I stopped in front of it, grazing the boy’s face with my fingers. I lost myself in his eyes filled with pain and secrets.What did you want to tell me, Radcliff? Was the boy you?I readjusted the wobbly frame, putting it right, which wasn’t quite like Radcliff’s perfectionism.
An envelope dropped from the painting.
An envelope with my name written on it in black ink.
I knew it. I opened it eagerly, finding some documents inside. It was Radcliff’s research that would hopefully help me get my mother’s perfume back from Carmin. A beaming smile took over my face, and hope surged through my veins. I looked at the bottom of the envelope to see if there was anything else.
“What’s this…”
My heart pounded in my throat.
I pulled out a card with one sentence.
Goose bumps paralyzed my whole core at the view of the plant remaining at the bottom of the letter.
A purple flower bound in hell, whose posterior sepal formed the helmet of the lord of death.
The queen of all poisons.
