The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross Read Online Free PDF Page A

not what they should have been. When Amelia was born, I should have seen her in Penelope’s arms. I should have held her in my own arms. She should have been living and breathing, not stillborn yet somehow still alive. She should never have been taken from the dead by Morgana. This was as far away from a miracle as I was from Heaven.
    I’d barely had time to think about Amelia since I’d had that glimpse of her in Morgana’s arms in the pub. Dead and unbreathing, but conscious and looking around nevertheless. I’d been too busy battling a group of angels inside a painting in order to free the real Mona Lisa, who was being used as a secret weapon in a war between the seraphim. After that I hadn’t even had time to catch my breath before I had to help another angel save the good people of Barcelona from an unnatural peril that had awoken under the Gaudí church at the heart of the city. That one’s a long story I don’t care to repeat here.
    In fact, I’d forced myself not to think about Amelia during all that. Because if I thought about her, I wouldn’t have been able to do all those other things. I would have gone to save her instead, and then we’d all have a lot more to worry about than just a curse killing a few fey and faerie. Sometimes you’re damned no matter what you do.
    I’d returned to the faerie pub after Barcelona for Amelia. But the pub was abandoned once more, nothing left behind but a few bodies of the fey. Morgana and her court had moved on, taking Amelia with them. I had lost my daughter a second time.
    But now she had returned. And she was nearly all grown up, even though it had been less than a year since she’d been born. I looked at the patches of land I could see through the clouds. She was down there somewhere. With Morgana and the rest of the faerie court. I had no idea where, but I’d find her. And then I’d take her from Morgana. Even God could not stop me from doing that. And I’d find a way to break the faerie enchantment and make Morgana pay for what she had done.
    First, though, I had to stop the curse from killing again. I would not lose Amelia once more.
    It was afternoon by the time I walked out the doors of Heathrow airport and into the usual English mist. I took a cab to Kew Gardens and spent the rest of the daylight hours wandering the paths, losing myself amid the flowers and greenhouses. I wanted to keep a low profile, away from any security cameras. That was getting harder by the day in England. I had no doubts the English authorities were still looking for me after my last visit to the country, given the fact I’d broken into the British Museum, resurrected Princess Diana and accidentally turned an Egyptian mummy into a living god. The Brits tended to frown on things like that. Frown more than usual, anyway.
    I spent some time sitting at the edge of a pond, under a cherry blossom tree. I closed my eyes and thought of when Penelope and I had sat under another such tree, on the bank of the Kamo River in Japan during the war years. We’d been in the country looking for angels, because we had reason to believe they’d all sought refuge there for some mysterious reason. But we’d been tricked into thinking that, just part of Judas’s plan to lure us to our death.
    Penelope had told me she was pregnant under that tree, and the cherry blossoms had showered down around us, like the entire world was celebrating. Weeks later, we took a train to Hiroshima, and the world ended in fire.
    I continued on my way through the gardens. I snapped a thorn from a bush and dropped it into my pocket for later, then went back to the front gates at closing time. I hailed another cab and had this one take me to the Globe Theatre—the new one, not the original from Shakespeare’s time. Although if anyone could find a way back to the older one, it would probably be a London cabbie.
    I bought a ticket with some money I’d lifted here and there from tourists during the day and went inside. I