Principia Daemonica

Benedetto fille et père are gone.

Piccard is gone.

And somehow this is my fault, Giulio?

But you and Gregor must have your way, I understand so well.

Fine then.

I know who to send to bring them back. It's time to give them some work to do, anyway.

Mr Charteris isn't very happy with me right now, but there isn't a lot he can do to me, either; he'd have to be able to catch me.

I didn't know there were more people like me!

I know I shouldn't be so easily distracted, but I've never had anyone, really, to play with before.

I wonder how many of us there are?

I wish that I could just make Stepa understand that this is all because I love him, and I want him to come home with me.

It’s been five days since Joachim left. Apparently he found a way to reactivate my gate at the García house in Aquae Sulis, even though I thought the Brits had destroyed it utterly. He might have been kind enough to leave it open, but I believe sabotaging it as thoroughly as he did was his way of saying he was no longer interested in continuing our relationship. Pity.

Joachim has left the house without a word, without a note--at least not a note to me. There are a lot of papers here, but they're full of rambling about sin and hell, the sort of thing his crazy mother would have come up with, and I thought we'd got past all that. I knew he was angry about something this morning, but I didn't think it was serious.

I will never understand him. Josefa thinks he's gone looking for Talia, who's gone missing again. I think he's gone looking for Benedetto's girl, because they told him he could have her if he found her.

I don't really want to be the one to tell Giulio he's gone missing.

Fuck. Carey's missing and what's left of the house is absolutely a ruin and crawling with the fucking law. I tried to keep them away as long as I could but Henry fucked up and that was that and when Ga'ashekelah (bless them, they'd hate it and they're already damned) took me out of the picture, someone else came to collect the debt and fuck, fuck, fuck, I'm in trouble, I haven't been in this much trouble since I fucked up with that law student in Italy and his mistress, who was the most resistant host I've ever had, and Little Nicky, bless him, got the baby.

Of course, he must be very embarrassed how that turned out. Nice to see the golden boy fucking up for once.

I don't even know why I tried to protect Henry as long as I did. I think the Maya part of me liked him. The Italian bitch never stopped fighting me, which was why it was such a relief to shed and shred her at last. But Maya's insidious, damn her.

I'm beginning to see my brother's point about sticking with hosts too long.

Well. According to sources I know better than to name, the Ziteks are not, actually, at the Valeria any more. Their patroness came and got them. This is a bad thing, and I should be arsed to care, but I can't, not when I'm too busy wondering what the hell Damien's done and whether or not Delilah's all right and what Chandra thinks of all this.

Papa is already disappointed in me because Endymion made his Choice, and he made the wrong one. So here I am, bored out of my mind, listening to Henry drone on and on and on about...mostly very silly things, like what the other monkeys think of him and whether or not he can get his hands on any more money to gamble away. I think he's about ready to deal. Papa might like that.

I could be out having fun if it weren't so important that people continue to think that I'm dead. Instead I'm stuck here, where there's nothing to do for entertainment except listening to Henry and Carey ramble and wishing we'd done a much better job on Lady Jocasta.

My fucking asshole of a brother thinks he's being cute.

I don't have any idea who this Pendry fucker is and I don't care. Don't give a shit about the Dux Bellorum either, and his fucking mistress is a bitch, she sacked me just like Lilah did, that's all well and good if he wants to smear them, but has he fucking forgotten that Dashwood was with us and that he fucked Dashwood too? Not to mention, the fucking Ziteks are still in Londinium, down at the fucking Valeria, like they fucking own the fucking town?

I think the big one--the one I wanted for me--was even in one of those goddamn pictures.

It's very annoying how some people simply insist on refusing to listen to reason.

I told Henry that if he cursed the boy, it would just bring down more trouble on his head, and he didn't listen. He never does. And now we don't have the little one any more, either, and Henry's wife has dosed herself into a coma. I'm getting tired of Henry's insistence on thinking independently when he so obviously can't.

There are, of course, ways of dealing with that sort of thing.