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| Someone watches Genevieve in London |
*LONDON, ENGLAND*
It had been more than a month since Genevieve left Welshport to find David Lord. Her whole life had been put on hold the day she became fused with the spirit of her doppelgänger the late Sabrina Spencer-Lord.
Sabrina's ghost now lived in Genevieve and had given Geneveive all of her memories, her life-force and the love for David that she felt was alive and secretly hiding in London.
But for all Genevieve's hopes of finding this mysterious man that she had a strange attraction to without even knowing him, she had no luck.
The one photo of David she had brought with her from the box she found at Tirymor became tattered and crumpled. Everyone she encountered in London and had shown the photo had no idea who the man was or if he was even in the foggy English capital.
Feeling defeated on this evening, Genevieve left a small restaurant on a cobblestone street in the West End. The snow had started to fall. She bundled herself up in a thick winter coat that she had purchased in London and pulled the hood over her head. Quickly making her way back to the hotel room she had rented in a quiet gas-lamp lit neighborhood, she turned a corner and noticed a man in an alleyway between two old building standing in the shadows.
She passed him and hurried her pace home through the oddly deserted London Street.
The shadowy man followed.
Geneveive could feel his pace quickening towards her. She felt her heartbeat faster. She continued to push her tired body in the wet cold air trying everything she could to evade this mysterious person behind her all the while telling herself not to turn back, to keep her head forward and keep going.
Just blocks from her hotel she made a mistake and turned to look at the man following her and then, with a sudden and quick motion, he pushed her to the street where she hit her head on the pavement knocking her out cold.
Hours later, Genevieve's body, sore and her head aching from the bump to the ground, she awoke in a strange small bedroom with a fireplace blazing in front of her as she lay on the made bed.
Next to her on a small table was piping hot fresh tea and a small ham and cheese sandwich cut into two perfect triangles. The clock next to the sandwiches marked fifteen minutes to ten pm.
Genevive couldn't believe how late it was, she had been unconscious from the fall for 3 hours.
She looked around and saw a man's coat and hat hanging on the back of the bedroom door. There were no framed photos. There were only books and more books. So many books in the room. She slowly sat up in the bed and as she did the room door creaked open.
The man walked in, Geneveive gasped and sat back on the bed and moved herself closer to the headboard in a fluff of taffeta of her street-stained skirt.
"GET BACK! GET BACK I SAY!" She shouted at the man with her left harm extended to keep him back.
Then man turned from the door to face the woman he took from the street. The woman he knew had been all over London for weeks and weeks searching for David Lord. He was tall, dark haired with a beard. His eyes were hazel and seemed sad and lonely. Eyes that had a story to tell that only he could say.
He looked at Genevieve and she couldn't believe his eyes.
"Who are you?" The man's voice said in a surprising American accent. “Why have you been passing around a photo of me?”
Genevive narrowed her eyes when she heard his surprisingly kind sounding voice. A voice void of the English accent she expected. Then, she moved closer as he did and when he stepped closer into the candlelight that was by the bed, she then realized whom she was staring at.
Seeing the man’s face in the light shocked her.
"David?" Genevieve gasped. “David, Is it really you?”
****
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| Laurel looks over his old letters |
Back in Welshport, in her modest, warmly decorated home, Laurel Ward laid her 4 year old granddaughter Samantha down for a nap in her pale pink painted room with a mountain of fluffy stuffed toys cuddled in the corner. As she slowly closed the bedroom door and peeked in one more time at sleeping Samantha, Laural took a deep breath.
It was a bit earlier than Samantha's normal nap time, but Laural had the conversation she had with her husband Peter on her mind about reconnecting with her very long estranged friend Rebecca Lord-Casador.
It bothered Laurel that she couldn't speak to Rebecca and catch up like old friends do after all these years. But the pain Rebecca held in her heart towards Laurel would never ease, and Laurel knew that.
Laurel slowly walked down the freshly varnished hardwood floors of her home and stepped into her bedroom where she had a beautifully decorated cedar box that had an iron heart-shaped lock. She removed a key from a dresser drawer hidden under freshly washed clothes and opened the box.
In it were answered letters to Laurel that she had saved from a woman who had taken care of a child Laurel had helped locate and adopt many years ago.
Laurel had these letters for many many years and she didn't even know why she had kept them. Perhaps she felt she needed them just as a record that she did the right thing passing this child off to a family could take care of the baby after what it had been through.
She pulled done of the very old envelopes and pulled out the hand written letter and read from it:
"....there is no way I will ever know if what happened to her has effected who she will become. I should hope that what you and Lady Lazaras --of whatever she is called---did to her it will be nothing but a memory of yours and not of this beautiful baby. I see nothing, no signs, of that bizarre trauma you are insisting she faced, Laurel. She's safe with me now. Let this be our final letter."
Laurel re-folded the letter and placed it back into the yellow-tinged envelope. This child, was a special child a child that had been gone, gone from the world and brought back again, but in a way that Laurel felt was unnatural. In fact, this baby, born decades ago was around 25 years old now and safe; far far away from her bizarre unknowing past.
The entire ordeal was a secret Laural kept from her husband Peter, and most especially it was kept from Rebecca and the entire Lord family.
****
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| Charlotte & Mary use their powers to search for Filipe |
Over on Goode Island, Mary, Charlotte and Morgan's frantic search for Filipe the missing Filipe overtook the afternoon. The mother and daughter had no idea where he had gone and was nowhere to be found on the Goode Island.
Morgan came in from the cold air and shook his head again to Mary and Charlotte. "No sign of him."
Mary signed "Come here, sit by the fire. We have tea for you to warm yourself."
"Why would he have just vanished like that? His injuries were so severe." Morgan noted as Mary bounced baby Caleb in her arms.
"I can't imagine he would have made if far alone." Mary said.
"Do you think someone would have helped him? Who?" Charlotte wondered.
Mary shrugged.
"Is there nothing you can do?" Morgan whispered to Charlotte as he knew of her very powerful psychic abilities. "You were able to tell my mother about David being in London, can't you do the same for your mother and Filipe?"
Charlotte thought about it but wasn't able to sense Filipe, in fact she had tried to find him psychically, but nothing had come through.
"I don't know if I can." She answered.
"Can what?" Mary said re-entering the room now that baby Caleb had been lulled to sleep.
Charlotte gulped. "What if ... what if we tried to find him with...um...my abilities."
"Your abilities? Darling, I know you feel some sort of connection to the world of the psyche but, you're so young. You don't control those abilities freely, they're very new to you. I don't want you to stress your mind. We know what happened to you a while ago. You had a seizure."
"Yes, but I think I can, I think I can do this." Charlotte said.
Mary thought about it for a second but realized Filipe's life was in danger. His injuries, the cold, the fact that he most likely wasn't in his right mind alone dealing with possible infections. She had no time to waste -- and no resource would be unwelcomed.
Mary grabbed Charlotte's hand and lead her to the kitchen table. Each sat at one end of the table and reached over and held hands. Charlotte and Mary closed their eyes and Mary began to chant a spell in Latin that Charlotte then began to repeat.
With Mary's magical powers, and Charlotte's psychic abilities, they were sure to find Filipe whose wolf attack had left him almost dead in their arms.
Together the two were seeing the same imagines in their minds. A flower that was withering in the cold winter. A sky filling with dangerous dark clouds flowing over the land and sea. A moon lifting in all its full glory and glowing in a black sky.
Then, the howling of a wolf in the distance of a dark forest.
And together in this dark forest stood Mary and Charlotte holding hands -- all of it constructed within their minds that were powerful sources of supernatural energy.
In this dark forest, the full moon guided the two Spencer heiresses as they searched for clues as to where Filipe may have gone. A dark stream of black water flashed a reflection of the moon. A cold wind blew across their brows causing a shiver to go down their spines in equal measure of terror.
"I don't feel him." Charlotte said looking out over the forest that suddenly began to grow darker as if the moon was coving the sun in an eclipse.
"Keep your eyes open." Mary said inside their minds as their real bodies remained eyes closed seated at the table.
Morgan watched from the fireplace. His heart pounding in his chest as the fire warmed his little 14 year old body.
Back in their minds, the howl of a wolf once again shook them.
"I don't feel him. I can't feel him or see him!" Charlotte said again, her voice sounding panicked.
"Don't worry, we have to keep going." Mary said.
Then, as the two made their way deeper into the blackened forest of night a wolf stepped out from behind the gray trees. It growled at then, snarled with a mouth full of teeth. In seconds, it leaped into the air and lunged at them ripping at their flesh.
The attack startled them so much their eyes flipped open at the table, and they pulled back their hands from the tight grasp. Mary rushed over to Charlotte and checked for bites, but she was unscathed.
"It felt so real." Charlotte said.
"Yes." Mary replied realizing her daughter's mind was stronger than she realized.
Then, as they both checked for signs of the wolf on their skin, a frantic knock at the cabin door. The pounding on the old wood froze Mary, Charlotte and Morgan where they stood.
"Stay where you are, both of you." Mary instructed as she slowly walked over to the cabin door that continued to be bludgeoned by the person on the other side.
Mary paused to grab a fire-poker and stuffed it into the fire heating it up and then walked to the door.
She stood there, the door banged again, and she lifted the red-hot poker up into the air and opened the door to find Fatima Braga standing there freezing and with a face as white and frightened as if someone had seen a ghost.
Mary recognized her from the day they in the village and quickly let her in.
"Do not search for my nephew. Do not search for him ever." Fatima said.
"What? Where is he? Do you know where he is? What's happened?" Mary asked frantically.
"You must all beware of what he is now. Something awful has occurred and I've taken him from here to keep you all safe, including my nephew." Fatima explained.
Fatima grabbed Mary's hands and held them in her own cold ones. "I beg you, from everything I have in me to stop any search for him. I have taken care of him. For now, he is safe."
Mary pulled her hands from out of Fatima's hold and her face furrowed "How dare you? How dare you come here and tell me not to search for the man I love! We have a child that is in that room that misses him. We have begun a small family, a family that he and I have wanted to have for years and years and we were getting that family. And now, you've taken him? You've taken him and you're telling me to stop searching for him? You're INSANE! He told me you were something strange. He warned me about you! Where is he Fatima?? TELL ME NOW WHERE IS HE!"
"You don't understand!!" Fatima shouted.
"You have to tell us where he is. He's very sick. He was injured in a wolf attack." Charlotte replied trying to calm the situation.
"It's true, I was there." Morgan replied. "If we don't find him, he might not make it. So, if you took him then you must know how injured he is. Please, please bring him back. Or at least take us to him."
"You all don't know, do you? I thought you would understand being from such a powerful coven, but you don't know." Fatima replied in a slight chuckle.
Mary lifted a brow at her comment about a coven, it worried her that Fatima knew about the heritage of witches in her bloodline. No one should know.
"Tell me where he is." Mary said with a cold tone of voice.
"I've taken him and yes I know his injuries are serious. He is recuperating somewhere safe away from you all until it's over." Fatima said.
"Until what is over?" Charlotte asked.
"O Lobo da Lua." Fatima replied.
Mary shook her head not understanding Portuguese.
"My nephew is now a victim of the wolf of the full moon. He'll wreak havoc to all living things on the night of the full moon and because of this I have taken him and placed him somewhere where no one will find him. He'll be safe."
"No, that's preposterous. It can't be!" Mary exclaimed.
"It's all true. Every last bit of it." Fatima said through eyes that were beginning to fill with tears. "Every full moon from here on until my beautiful nephew leaves this planet, he will have to be hidden away because of the creature that his body turns into. No one can ever know this. Do you understand me? This is how it shall be!"
She looked around again and stared into Mary's eyes. Into Charlotte's eyes. Into Morgan's eyes. She wanted to be sure they understood that when the full moon rose high in the sky, just like in the visions Charlotte and Mary had as they tried to find Filipe by psychic means, Filipe had to go into hiding.
"This is how it shall be." Fatima replied again. "Forever."
****
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| A worried Asha summons Reigns to the Hospital |
At Welshport Hope Hospital, Constable Gregory Reins entered the lobby in a flurry of snow and wind as a fresh powdering fell down on the island. He had been summoned to the hospital by Dr. Asha Hoffman in a private letter that was sent by currier from the hospital to the constable's office to mask her request as part of an official visit.
But this was on a personal level. She had deep concerns over what they had done to Aurora and her child.
It didn't take long for Asha to see her good friend and co-conspirator as she came out of a side office where she had been in a meeting with the chief of Staff, Dr. Peter Ward.
"Constable! What brings you to our next of the forest?" Dr. Ward asked.
Asha gulped "I asked him to meet me, Dr. Ward, we had a meeting about a patient of mine that I saw privately."
"Privately?" Dr. Ward replied in surprise. "Dr. Hoffman, you're not at all authorized to see patients on private terms. What was the meaning of the patient's request?"
"She had a cold, Dr. Ward. Nothing more. It was just the wife of an old friend that was bothering him about her cold, and I asked Dr. Hoffman over to calm her. Truly it wasn't anything more than that." Gregory chimed in lying.
"Oh? A cold? Then why the meeting?" Ward questioned.
Gregory looked at Asha for help.
"Well, I wanted to make sure that Constable Reins understood I wasn't allowed to see patients on my own outside the hospital yet, especially without your authorization so I asked him here as sort of a ... well, a reprimand of sorts." Asha said with a slight chuckle.
Dr. Ward, who was no slouch could see through their very flimsy story and sensed there was possible something amiss with the meeting in the first place but seeing as this was perhaps a personal issue and that the two were in some sort of lover's triangle due to the strange and secretive nature of their body language he decided to get himself out of the way of any kind of romantic drama. Dr. Ward lifted a brow and shook his head. "Just make the meeting quick, whatever it is, we have rounds this afternoon."
Asha nodded her head and brought Gregor into the meeting room and closed the door behind her.
"We can't meet this way. Dr. Ward clearly saw through us." Gregory said in a hushed tone.
"Gregory, this could not wait. I don't care what Peter Ward thinks. I had to see you." Asha exclaimed.
"What's happened?"
Asha checked the door again and made sure there was no one on the other side.
"It's Aurora. I don't know much longer I can keep this secret; she ran into Mary Goode and the child in town, and I could have sworn she knew this was her child. She knew, Gregory, I know she did!"
Gregory grumbled. "That's impossible!"
"It's not. She's a mother three-times over. A mother knows her child. I swear on everything she knew, or at least she felt some kind of connection to him. We have to find a way to fix this, we have to, if Nikolas discovers I had anything to do with this, that's it. It'll over for me and him and I just can't risk it." Asha replied.
"Asha listen to me, you have to stay the course. There is no way Aurora knew or can know what we did, do you understand me? No way at all." Gregory explained.
Just as the two were extending their plot, Nik came over to the main hospital from the Churchill Green Asylum building to deliver his weekly papers to Dr. Ward. Dr. Ward was eager to check on his findings on the patients he had been working with.
"These look very good, well-done Dr. Jordan. I'll look over the rest and give you some feedback, but in my opinion, you're doing a wonderful job, now that you're not letting patients leave the hospital without my signature." Ward said noting Nik's error in releasing Rebecca and Caspian prematurely.
"I've learned my lesson." Nik said nervously smiling. "Asha? have you seen her?"
Dr. Ward nodded that he did and pointed to the side office just over in the corner of the marble floored lobby. Nik thanked Dr. Ward and walked over to the office.
Nik grabbed the doorknob ready to enter when he heard Asha's voice sounding in a panic. Instead of opening, he listened.
"I don't think you understand, she knew. She absolutely knew!"
Gregory sighed in frustration. "There is no way she could have known, Asha. None. We told Aurora she had a girl and that the girl died, Mary has a boy, how would she ever connect the dots? When we drugged her she was unconscious. She never even saw the baby."
"I'M TELLING YOU!" Asha shouted back as Gregory hushed her. "She knew!"
Nik's felt his stomach drop. He couldn't believe what he had just overheard. He could not believe what the woman in his life, the woman he had given so much credit to for trying so hard to right the wrongs over her previous lies suddenly confess to something so dastardly. Could it be? Could Asha and Gregory truly have done what they said they did to his own mother Aurora?
Nik listened more.
"Let me take care of the rest. I'll talk to Aurora and ask her things to see if she'll drop any hints of knowing anything and I guarantee you, she will not know. And even if there is the slightest bit of doubt in her I will make sure to dismiss it. Just trust me, eventually, soon, this will all be over." Gregory said.
"Do what you have to, just make sure I'm kept clean of this. Nik can never ever know I helped you, do you understand me? Gregory, promise me I will not be attached to the outcome of this. You have to take it all on your own." Asha said.
"Nik will never know. This is our secret. If the two of us keep it between the two of us, then you're safe. Do your part with Nik and I'll do mine with Aurora." Gregory said.
Nik's eyes welled up with tears, but they were not tears of sadness, they were of anger. Asha had once again betrayed him, and this time was an even crueler lie, one that involved his mother and now his baby half-brother that he never knew he had.
The child Nik believed to be his halfsibling was supposed to be a girl and was supposed to have died at birth, now, the truth was out, and Nik had a bomb that he did not know what to do with.
Asha opened the small office door and Nik had vanished. Both she and Gregory never even knew he was there. As the two said a quiet goodbye to each other, Dr. Ward once again came over to discuss the rounds with patients that he wanted to visit with and discuss their prognosis.
Dr. Ward handed her the patient charts for her to review.
"Did you have a nice visit with Nikolas?" Ward asked with a grin.
"What? You mean Gregory?" Asha asked.
"No, Nikolas. Dr. Jordan came to drop off his papers for review and asked for you. I said you were in the meeting room. Didn't he see you?" Ward wondered.
Asha's face turned white; her heart felt like it stopped.
Her secret was now in the hands of the one person she wanted to keep it from the most. Nikolas Jordan the love of her life.
Her secret was now in the hands of the one person she wanted to keep it from the most. Nikolas Jordan the love of her life.
****
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| Johnathon & Jaqueline make love |
Later that night, in a room in the third floor and east wing of Tirymor House, Johnathon DeViana lay the sultry nude body of Jacqueline Gray down on his fluffy white sheeted bed. They had met earlier that night at the Siren's Call pub where they had gotten to know each other a little, and when their hands touched the witch Jacqueline saw something in a vision straight from the conscience of Johnathon's own mind.
She saw Johnathon attack someone and perhaps kill them. This vision horrified at first, but her biggest flaw was her heart yearned for love, for companionship and through her loneliness, she fell for the handsome Johnaton and his sexy smile despite the horrible vision.
Their bodies became one as they made love passionately in his bed. She felt as if the earth and moon was spinning out of alignment just as they kissed and felt every inch of each other's bodies with their hands.
Their lips were like four flicking flames burning together. Their eyes watered with the heat of passion.
After their passionate love making, they lay in each other's arms as the trickle of sweat slid down the slopes of their shoulders and hips. Johnathon lit a cigarette and puffed the smoke into the air towards the ceiling.
"Are you ok?" He asked her after a puff. "You're so quite."
She turned over and looked him in his deep brown eyes. The memory of the vision flooded her mind after her euphoric moments of love making. She was desperate to know more of his secret side.
"I'm fine. I'm glad we met." she said.
"Me too. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship if it carries on like this." Johnathon joked.
"True friendship hold a sense of honestly with the two involved." She said as he lifted a brow.
"Right." He answered nonchalantly as he slid out from their hug and got up nude to put on his clothes.
Jacqueline stared at his body, his beautiful brown skin seemed to sparkle in the light and the flickering of the fireplace. He was as exquisite as she was but still a mystery. The vision from his mind when they touched hands still haunted her.
Again, she wanted to know more.
She wrapped herself in his white sheets and slithered over to kiss. He put the cigarette in between his fingers and smiled at her seeing that she wanted more of their connection. She kissed him deeply and put her hands around his head holding him in a deep passionate kiss, one that would allow her to go into his mind once again.
As they kissed the vision returned just as it was from the Siren's Call.
She saw Johnathon fighting a man in shadows. The man fell to the floor, still with this face covered in darkness where Jacqueline could not see. Jacqueline did all she could to find out who the man was and if he had been killed. There was something about the man's shape, his body, that seemed familiar to her. That's why she was so interested, that's why she was so dawn to this vision. It called to her. It forced to see and made her crave the answer as to who the mysterious man was.
The vision flipped to Johnathon taking the man, dragging his limp body to a place, a place that Jacqueline did not understand as it too was all blurry and blocked by dark shadows of gray and black. She wanted to know more. She had to know more.
In the bedroom she brought him back to his bed and unlatched his belt again, never allowing their lips from parting. Johnathon laughed and tried to pull away, but Jacqueline was insatiable and wanted to bring him to a place where she could control his thoughts by locking him in a passionate tryst in bed again.
And she succeeded.
They began to make love again, their bodies connecting, squeezing together then pulling part and Jacqueline then out her hands on his head and froze him in place.
He was locked now in place -- she entered his mind.
There, in his memory again, Jacqueline searched to see who he had attacked, who he had dragged to a shadowy place. Where were they? What were they doing? Who was the mystery man.
She watches as slowly the memory of Johnathon's began to clear and the shadows lifted showing it was a cemetery, St. Thomas' Cemetery.
She watched as Johnathon placed the man in a secret place in a tomb and when the lid of the secret door was about to close the shadow over the man's face lifted to reveal Sebastian Lord's face.
Jacqueline gasped and snapped out of his memory and back into the love making.
She pulled away surprising Johnathon.
"What is it? What's happened?? Did I do something wrong??"
Jacqueline got up and grabbed the sheet and wrapped herself again and noticed a pink light seeping in from the behind the drapes as dawn approached.
As the lights of the very early morning touched her caramel toned beautiful face the horror of what she saw in her vision was just as clear to her as the coming day: Sebastian didn't leave her, she didn't abandon her as she had thought. It was Johnathon, Johnathan had taken Sebastian and hidden him.
**
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| Tensions rise at Tirymor House |
Downstairs, the Lord family sat in a contentious and uncomfortably group in the Cherry-wood drawing room awaiting the breakfast bell in the larger dining room down the corridor. They had recently reunited when Rebecca returned to her family home newly married to the man that had recently been possessed by the devil.
Their connection was a strange one, and the family certainly seemed to feel none of it was legitimate. At least those were the hopes of Jacob and Celeste who's hopes of ruling the Lord family empire were dashed when Rebecca's new marriage thwarted the coup.
Rebecca stood by a roaring fire and sipped on her a warm tea with Celeste and her son Fabian, the boy being just one the many apples of Rebecca's eyes.
"He's grown so much since I last saw him." Rebecca said.
"He has, yes." Celeste replied as she tickled her son's nose with hers. "I hope you won't hold too much of what happened over me, Rebecca. After all, I only wanted to build something for my son's future."
"He has, yes." Celeste replied as she tickled her son's nose with hers. "I hope you won't hold too much of what happened over me, Rebecca. After all, I only wanted to build something for my son's future."
"Is that right?"
Celeste took a breath "It's true."
"Celeste, you're a young mother. A woman who I've known since you were a girl of 8. I knew your father, and your mother. I even remember the day your brother was born. You worked as a trusted member of our staff for years...so I know you better than you think I do, whatever you thought you were doing to aide Jacob in his power play would never have worked. Because of you." Rebecca answered.
Celeste lifted a brow at her mother-in-law "And why do you say that?"
The fire warmed their skin, if flickered flashes of yellow and gold in their eyes as Rebecca flashed Celeste a coy half smile. "Because my dear, unlike you, he's self-destructive. You are stern, level headed and honest to your core. You would never have let things get to a worse point. What you to did to me and to Evie would have eaten away at you eventually; then it would have all imploded all around you. Jacob is a live wire. Unpredictable and impulsive and most of all as lethal as he is foolish.”
“I don’t …” Celeste before as Rebecca words slowly seeped into her mind.
“And lest we forget Jacob’s very short attention span to …shall we say… taste in partners. When something new and fresh walks through the door, and no doubt it will, your head would have been on the chopping block. The company has never been Jacob's end all, it's only a temporary squeeze of adrenalin for him. Just be cautious with your own ambitions…cautious and smart."
"My ambitions are soely to keep my son in his place here in this family. Not to be discarded like Charlotte has been." Celeste replied sternly.
"Charlotte left here on her own, and I wish she hadn't. I miss her dearly, but she made a choice to be with her mother and I respect that, you should too."
"Of course we do, but she also took Morgan with her. Morgan was in my brother Johnathon's care. She shouldn't have done that." Celeste noted.
Rebecca smirked "It doesn't seem like your brother was worried about Morgan anyway. I saw him come home with a very lovely woman. They're upstairs now. He's got other things on his mind. A Lord through and through."
Celeste cleared her throat and put little 2-year-old Fabian on the floor to play with his blocks. She didn't know much about her brother's love life but hadn't thought he'd move on from Genevieve so quickly.
She then turned to see Jacob to see him drinking coffee with Caspian, the two were oddly uncomfortable yet seemed cordial.
"You won't get away with this for long." Jacob whispered to Caspian.
"There is nothing I'm trying to get away with Jacob. Your mother and I have come to a very good understanding about who we are and what we've done. We've been pulled together in a very unique circumstance. I'm grateful for the chance she's giving me." Caspian replied calmly revisiting Jacob's bait for a fight.
"That is until you see Aurora again, right?" Jacob said with a bite.
"Aurora." Caspian said softly. "No. What happened with Aurora was a terrible terrible mistake that I had no control over. Everyone knows that I was not in my right mind when I...." Caspian paused before the words possessed by the devil came out of his mouth.
"When you were what Caspian, ol'boy? Go on. Say it."
"...when I was ill." Caspian sighed.
"ILL!" Jacob exclaimed with a laugh. "Now that's putting it mildly, you dragged that woman practically into hell and forced her think you were someone else then made a child with her! A child by the way she would not want, knowing who the father would be. The devil himself. Ill? Yes, ill." Jacob continued to push.
"I wish I could take it all back. From what we've heard, she lost the child at birth, and it must have been horrible for her." Caspian said sipping from his drink.
"The terror of having a child with the likes of you probably did her in." Jacob replied coldly. "But then again, no one would have blamed her if she got rid of the kid herself, I mean my god, to a have child with a demon!"
"JACOB ENOUGH!" Caspian shouted as Rebecca and Celeste turned to look. "I was not in my right mind, you know it, we all know it. I was under some kind of possession. I would never ever do the things that I did in my real state of mind. In fact I’m beginning to believe I was someone else entirely before this even happened."
Every one paused unable to process the bomb just dropped; the idea that Caspian may have had another life before his possession.
“You’re delusional.” Jacob scoffed breaking the silence.
“What are you saying?” Celeste asked the former demon.
“I … I couldn’t have always been this person. I just feel it in my heart I want you all to know that. I feel like…in time and with Rebecca’s love and trust, I can perhaps find out who I really was before I became possessed. There must be answers.” Caspian replied, Rebecca sighed.
Jacob, however, however narrows his eyes with doubt and he lifted a brow suspiciously. "I guess we'll see about that or learn a good lesson about trusting the devil twice."
"He's the same, you see." Rebecca said to Celeste.
"What?" She answered.
"It can't last, I tell you: this new version of Jacob you're convincing yourself to trust and is true to you and to your boy." Rebecca said again of Jacob's seemingly reformed demeanor.
“But this new version of Caspian, we can trust?” Celeste shot back.
“Now you listen to me…” Rebecca began before being interrupted.
"He has changed Rebecca.” Celeste continued. “We're a team. Together we have done a remarkable job, I wish you'd give your son the benefit of the doubt."
Rebecca laughed. "Oh, my darling girl, you really are in love with him, because only love would leave you this blind.”
"I wish you'd have more faith in him," Celeste said again. "Maybe that's why he is the way he is. Maybe if you were a better mother to your children none of them would have turned out they way they did. Jacob and his sorted past and the other two dead."
Rebecca's eyes narrowed and even in front of her grandson Rebecca slapped Celeste across the face "How dare you?! You don't know anything about my children and their childhood..."
Jacob interrupted "MOTHER! What the devil in wrong with you???"
"It's alright, Jacob. It's alright." Celeste said to her husband.
"This is why you should still be in that asylum, this... this insanity you have in you!" Jacob shouted.
Coraline, baby Gabriel's new governess and sign language tutor entered just seconds before the slap. She curiously and quietly watched the family unravel in front of her carefully recording every angry word to then pass along to her snooping reporter brother Baxter Murphy.
"Really, Rebecca, you shouldn't have done that." Caspian said patting Rebecca on her back.
"She knows better. She really knows better." Rebecca replied.
"I swear to god, if you ever lay a hand on her again, I'll..." Jacob began.
"You'll what Jacob? Have me arrested and accused of shooting you? Have me taken to an insane asylum? Have me killed? Kill someone and pin it on me? Dirty my name around the village? Any of that? All of that?" Rebecca replied naming all of Jacob's past crimes.
Jacob shifted uncomfortably in his clothes.
Rebecca continued "Just know that I am not someone who you'll be able to play with anymore, those days are done, and I have returned and will continue to be the mistress of this house and of the family company. Understand that."
"Alright, alright, let's just cool off now, the boys don't need to hear any arguing." Caspian said, surprising the group as being the mediator.
The all agreed to calm down and let the only fire in the room be the one in the fireplace below the painting of Albert Lord hanging above them.
Suddenly a bloodcurdling scream came from the foyer just outside the Cherry-Wood drawing room then a thud of a body hitting the floor.
It was Jane the head-housekeeper who came the door as it was thrusted open. Her heart almost stopped at the horrific sight of the person on the other side. The oxygen became thin all around her at the shock and Jane fainted onto the cold marble floor.
The scream was so intense, it sounded as if she had been slashed in the throat.
The group in the drawing room, alarmed by the sounds then heard footsteps coming from the marble floors of the foyer coming closer and closer to the Cherry-wood Drawing room and then, a shadow fell outside the doorway.
Jacob stood in front of Celeste and his son.
Cory and baby Gabriel stood up from a soft chair off in the corner of the room, she squeezed him tight fearing what was about to turn around the door.
Rebecca and Caspian too froze in place unsure of what had sounded like an attack in the foyer and now, some sort of intruder was just steps away from entering the drawing room.
Then --- the person who made Jane faint in the foyer revealed themselves in the doorway in the drawing room.
Coraline screamed in shock at the sight of the person.
Celeste gasped, Rebecca fainted into Caspian's arms. Jacob's eyes widened in shock.
Coraline's scream alerted Johnaton and Jacqueline who were getting dressed up in his room.
"What the devil was that?"
Jacqueline suddenly felt a tug on her heart. Something wasn't right. There was a presence in the house, something that felt different something that felt dangerous like a ticking time-bomb.
The two rushed to the top of the stairs but then Jacqueline pulled back and hid back in the bedroom letting Johnathon go out alone. The dangerous feeling Jacqueline was getting told her not to step foot out into the hallway or go down the stairs.
She was unsafe, and truly it was all her fault.
And there she was, in the glowing light of the fireplace in the drawing room was the very tired, the very dirty, the very smelly, the very cold and very much ALIVE Evie Jordan-Lord fresh from her grave.
 |
| Evie back from the Dead |
Her nails were broken and what was left of them had dirt caked underneath. Her face was scratched from broken bits and debris from her coffin that fell on her as Sebastian desperately busted through the lid to save her. Her hair was wet and matted too from the cold snow that fell in on her when the coffin was opened, and she was freed.
She smelled of sweat and must from the long disturbing days inside the coffin six feet underground.
Those horrible deathly moments in her grave left her shaken, traumatized and most of all furious.
She was breathing heavy. Her heart was pounding and as walked steadily into the hushed drawing room of her horrified and shocked in-laws. Evie stared each of them in the eye as if she were a mother tigress searching for her lost pup in the middle of a pack of hyenas.
But then like a ray of light bursting through a shadowy rain cloud there he was: her little Gabriel. Evie's frozen heart instantly warmed to see the beautiful face of the child she adored, but the thawing of Evie's body and heart was short lived.
She was there to find the person who did this to her. Something inside of her, something in her heart in her womanly instincts told her the one who did this to her was at Tirymor. She felt it in every cell of her body that she'd find the guilty party in the very halls of the house where Evie once lived with Sebastian as if to somehow mold her miserable life into Evie's by taking her place there.
Finally, after several moments of shocking silence, the back from the grave Eive opened her mouth and spoke to a gobsmacked Lord family:
"Where is that bitch? Where is Jacqueline Gray?"
