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| Surprise dinner guests at Tirymor House |
The afternoon chill seemed colder than the day before. There was no fresh snowfall, but the air was cold enough to keep the small bits of moisture frozen on the leaves and trees around the island. A few hours before the dinner bell rang at Tirymor House, Jacob, Celeste, Lear, the two boys Fabian and Gabriel, and Gabriel's new teacher Cory Tyler, sat in the adjoining parlor next to the dining room dressed and ready for dinner.
Cory had been welcomed into the household via Lear's invitation who had hired her on behalf of his Lord cousins to help with Gabriel learning to communicate by site via signs and gestures, it was early in his teaching as he was nearing a year old but Cory was sure of her process.
As the groups sipped brandy by the fire and made small talk of Gabriel's small but growing progress, Johnathon DeViana suddenly walked in.
"Well aren't you a site for sore eyes?" Celeste said to her younger brother who she'd been a bit irritated with in the last few days.
"I'm still welcome to dinner, aren't I?" Johnathon asked sarcastically.
"Of course, we're happy you’re here." Celeste said as Jacob stayed silent. "The more the marrier." She added.
"That's exactly what I hoped you'd say." Johnathon replied cryptically. "I've invited two guests."
Lear and Cory shot each other looks as the tension in the room between Celeste, Jacob and Johnathon grew thick enough to cut with a knife.
"Lear, why don't you help me take the boys upstairs." Cory suggested.
Lear nodded and quickly picked up Fabian; Cory held Gabriel.
As Lear, Cory and the boys passed the drawing room door, Lear gasped as he saw who was standing behind it.
"Lear?" Celeste said but Lear did not answer, he kept going passed the door leaving Johnathon to answer for him.
"I think he saw my guests."
Celeste stood up to face her brother "What have you done Johnny?" she asked suspiciously.
Johnathon stood aside and cleared his throat and when he did in walked Rebecca Lord-Casador and her new husband Caspian Casador to the shock and horror of Celeste and Jacob.
"What is the meaning of this? Mother what are you doing here? What are both doing here?"
"I'm home for dinner of course, and I must say son, I was fulling expecting a bit of a surprised reaction from everyone but the disgusted looks on your faces are a bit distressing." Rebecca said. “I didn’t frighten you dear, did I?” She added with a sly look in her eyes.
"Rebecca, I... -- I don't know what to say." Celeste replied to her mother-in-law.
Rebecca walked over to Celeste and pulled her in to kiss her once on each cheek. "You should say welcome home."
Celeste, in a defeated whisper repeated "welcome home."
"Mother, this is incredibly outlandish. You’re unwell and should be recuperating ant the asylum. And with him!! Answer me, what is he doing here with you? You should both be at the hospital where you're both being treated, this is a dangerous thing you're doing -- playing with your mental health. This is serious! Come, let's go, I'll have Hamstead take you back." Jacob interjected as he grabbed his mother by the arm.
"You'll need to let her go." Caspian replied as he stood in his way.
"Do not speak to me, you monster."
"You’re projecting son.” Rebecca said. “Projection, it’s a term I used in my many therapies at Churchill Green…but You should listen to Caspian." Rebecca replied as she shot Johnaton a look.
Johnathon, Caspian and Rebecca had recently entered into an alliance, together they'd join forces against Jacob and Celeste in clever power move as Jacob had recently consolidated all control of the family company when he forced Rebecca into the Asylum and had her declared mentally incapacitated; all of it filed fraudulently despite Rebecca’s very real mental breakdown.
Her past, and temporary mental issues aside Jacob had purposefully committed his mother to take over the family company and by all accounts, even Caspian had returned to his natural self post exorcism.
Rebecca and Caspian's quick marriage too would nullify Jacob's attempts at pulling power and money under his name and heirs -- as per Rebecca’s late husband Albert Lord's will.
Getting back into her home, Tirymor, with Johnathon's help garnered Johnathon a key to Rebecca's rebuilt kingdom. This three-way-power alliance was solid, and it flew in Jacob's fiery face.
Jacob turned to Caspian and spoke to his mother without looking at her. He narrowed his eyes with disgust for the man in front of him. "What are you doing exactly, mother? I can tell by the little glimmer in your eyes that you've come home not to retire as you should but to be some kind of fly in my brandy. So go on, out with it. Tell me what this visit with the devil here, means to me."
"I wish you were as kind as you are arrogant, son, but that might be my fault. The way I raised you pushed you to be this---this person. This greedy scoundrel of a person who I don't recognize anymore. Or maybe I do recognize, but for some reason I tried to look the other way all these years."
"Rebecca, whatever you think happened, it was for the good of the family." Celeste replied to Johnathon's scoff, she turned to her brother and gave him a look that'd burn a hole in a wall.
"Rebecca has done all she could to finally reach you, and I think this moment will be the golden moment in this family's recent history. You'll see what she has to say is for the best." Caspian replied.
"I don't understand." Celeste replied as she looked to Johnathon again. "Do you have something to do with this?"
"I've just come to see Rebecca home. The three of us ran into each other in town, and she was adamant she wanted to be back in the home she loved, so I helped her." Johnathon replied.
"You don't have to worry Celeste; I already know everything about Johnathon and who his father is. In times like these I see family as family and he's now family, thanks to Albert, and thanks to you." Rebecca added.
"You're insane!" Jacob shouted feeling the other shoe was about to drop and his brand new empire was about to crumble. "ALL of this is insane! I've made sure that the whole world knows it, and I'm calling Churchill Green and I'm getting them to come up here and take you and this freak back to the hospital!"
"Freak." Caspian replied chucking at the word Jacob used.
"You'll find that these forms here," Rebecca began as she pulled a small folder out of a briefcase she had been carrying and handed Jacob the papers "will clear the both of us of anything you think we are. Insane, is the word you're using, I'd say suffering from a brief mental ailment that we've luckily recovered from."
"Jacob?" Celeste asked in confusion as she watched him go through the papers.
"This is preposterous!" Jacob shouted. "The hospital would need my approval for this. You're a menace mother, a menace! For god's sake we can't have you roaming around this mansion near the children, one of which you tried to kill, or did you forget that night at the lighthouse."
Rebecca turned stone cold "I will never forget that."
"And this, this man, this thing, will you never forget what he did to you? To Aurora? Should I begin to remind you of those things? Your new friend has quite the history here at Tirymor, perhaps I should refresh your memory." Jacob added.
“Your laundry list of my monstrous deeds pale in comparison to yours." Rebecca then said.
"No one in their right mind would have released the two of you from Churchill Green. This must be some sort of game, a trick of yours again Caspian. Did you place them under some kind of devilish transe?" Jacob asked.
Caspian's eyes narrowed, he hated his past when he was possessed, something he could never ever forget or overcome. His notoriety as that monster would last longer than his own life.
Yet Caspian remained calm and replied "The hospital has ways of letting people find themselves once someone in attendance, approves. The administration only needs the attending doctor, our doctor, to review our case and our mental capacity and sign off on our discharge. You'll notice that it's all signed and officiated by the board at Hope Hospital and by our attending Doctor. No one was paid off by the way." Caspian said noting how Jacob liked to pay his way to the top with judges and doctors and lawyers.
"Nik Jordan is the doctor. Aurora's own son. After what you did to his mother, you're telling me he signed this? Without a second thought?" Celeste asked as she grabbed the forms from Jacob.
Rebecca nodded. "We had an arrangement."
"I knew it! See, a trick!" Jacob shouted.
"Not a trick. A trade, for our freedom we were to help free his sister Evangeline, yet another one of your illegal incarcerations at the Hill. Unfortunately, that poor girl's premature death came before we could help her." Caspian replied.
Jacob growled at Caspian under his breath.
As Jacob and Celeste continued to look over the papers, towards the door Cory Tyler stood and listened gathering more and more information the infighting at Tirymor for her brother Baxter the journalist who was dying for intel on the family that paid his bills at the newspaper. She worried, of course, that if things got out, she'd be the first to get accused of leaking the stories. She knew, now, that she had to keep a low profile and not be seen, but on the landing of the staircase above her, Lear watched her eavesdropping and wondered what her own motivations were.
Back in the room, Jacob's eyes widened as he came to the last bit of paperwork in Rebecca's files.
"This is... this is a lie. This cannot be true!" He shouted.
"What is it?" Celeste asked as she took the forms from a shocked Jacob.
"You can't do this to our family. I'll have you committed again this is proof that you're unwell!!" Jacob said to his mother and her new husband as Celeste snatched the forms from his hands.
"It's shocking, I know." Johnathon said. "But it's all aboveboard."
"You know about this?" Jacob asked turning to his scheming half-brother.
"Married????!" Celeste shouted as she looked up from the papers she took from Jacob.
"I was wondering when you’d get to that part. That's right. Man and Wife and in complete control of the house and business' that I've always been in control of." Rebecca answered.
"It doesn't make sense, how does your marriage put the two of you in control?" Celeste wondered.
"My late husband's will stated as much and since we filed our marriage just under the wire of the deadline that was stipulated in his will, you'll note on the date, that this process has rearranged any illegal way the two of you have tried to take anything out from under. The marriage is legal, binding and by every single letter of the law, you can ask my untrustworthy nephew Lear to look it over if you want, but trust me when I say it won't be broken. Albert's will is iron clad should I get married." Rebecca explained.
"What about your grandchildren Rebecca? They'll be effected by this in their future." Celeste added trying to figure out where her own son would stand in this new altercation of financial control.
"How dare you!" Rebecca replied. "I adore my grandchildren, all of them, I would never ever try to take away anything from any of their birth rights. Not like Jacob. He's the one that ousted my poor Sebastian, and I saw nothing of Charlotte in the papers. He's the one who fights the rights of the heirs."
Celeste felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. She felt exposed and in danger of losing everything, she turned to Jacob her facing panicked and worried.
“I don’t understand, what did your father’s will say?”
"My father's will was a joke, he thought that should my mother marry again it would put her in better positioning with the board of trustees at the company because there’d be man working with her, but we all know none of that matters. Mother has outlasted most of those trustees anyway, she’s just used the verbiage in the will to out maneuver us. A loop hole, that’s all this marriage is - the result of a loop-hole.” Jacob explained.
Rebecca smiled “How did I raise such a cynic? But he’s right. A very old sexist idea that I could only run the company well if a man was by my side. For years that was Jacob and the board and Jacob turned into rich fat cats while I did all the work. But now, Jacob’s little move on me is switched out from under him. The board will see Caspian as my equal now that we are married. I played right into their corporate misogyny play book. To my advantage of course.”
“Married or widowed, sane or insane, none of this matters. I control the family now, not you." Jacob shouted back as he yanked the papers from Celeste's hands and ripped them up in Rebecca and Caspian's face.
"Those were copies." Caspian said. "The official files are filed and secure with the courts."
"Get the hell out of here." Jacob growled.
"Where should we go Jacob? Should we sleep in the garden? Perhaps you could give my new husband and I a roll-away-bed to sleep in the gazebo. You remember the gazebo, don't you? You built it just a couple of years ago. It's lovely Caspian, I'm sure you remember it. I certainly do."
Jacob paused. He looked at his mother who stood there with smirking at him with her arms crossed across her stomach. She was dangling the bait over his head of the body of Jacob's former con-man friend Gaspar DuBois that Jacob had buried below the gazebo.
Gaspar's grizzly murder a mystery to the family, but he was Sebastian's very first victim.
Jacob felt the need to hide the body or the scandal and truth of their con-artist connections would destroy them all.
Jacob sneered at his mother. He was caught. Stuck. No one would believe him if his own mother came to the authorities to tell them about Gaspar's body. He panicked right there in front of all of them and began pacing, Celeste had never seen him worry this way. It was frightening to her too as she felt that he had always been confident and sure that nothing could topple them from power. Her status as the lady of Tirymor felt as if it were on thin ice and perhaps this would be the end of her. She feared what Jacob would do if he finally decided he didn't Celeste thanks to his mother's twist int he game.
Celeste rushed over to Jacob who was staring into the fire "We can fight them."
He looked had as she held on to his arm. He yanked his arm out of her hold, a bad sign for her.
"This is not going to happen, I will not let this mad-man anywhere near the business my father built." Jacob shouted.
"I want nothing to do with the company. Your mother has been running the business all these years and she's done it well without the input of a man. I'm just married to a woman that I love. That's all." Caspian replied.
"You bastard!" Jacob said turning to Johnathon who helped Rebecca and Caspian.
"I've given my father's wife what he wanted her to protect. His company, his legacy." Johnathon replied.
"I'm sure." Jacob replied with sarcasms. "And I'm sure you'll be handsomely rewarded."
"Johnathon please tell me you didn't know about this after all we've given you. After all we wanted to do with you. We were a team." Celeste said feeling betrayed.
Johnathon looked at his sister strangely— they’d given him nothing. Only the run around.
"No one is losing anything!" Rebecca chimed. "Jacob you'll stay in the company as you were before you tried to take control. Johnathon --yes-- will receive a better position in the company because he is your brother, a son by Albert. That's all we're doing Jacob. Putting things back into the right place. That's all." Rebecca said.
As the family stood there in a beat of silence, Outside Cory hid behind a large pillar of the foyer as the housemaid Jane entered to call for dinner, the maid quickly noticed the awkward silence and the two extra people.
"MRS. LORD!!!" Jane said with glee and confusion. "Should I set two more places??"
"It's Mrs. Lord-Casador now Jane, and yes. Please reset the table for two of us. Use the Gold leaf China if you haven't already. This is a special occasion." Rebeca said.
"Oh! Yes, Mrs. Lord.... uh Mrs. Lord-Casador. Right away." Jane replied right before leaving but paused as Jacob called her back.
Jacob grabbed his drink, then the bottle of brandy and passed his mother and new stepfather, who happened to be his age. "I won't be at dinner; I've lost my appetite."
Celeste quicky followed her husband.
"She'll probably not join us either." Rebecca said with a sarcastic grin.
The room then fell silent awaiting the China switch in the dining room just as Rebecca, Johnathon and Caspian poured themselves a quick pre-dinner drink to celebrate.
"I hope you'll find the home accommodating to you, after what happened the last time you were here I'm sure it feels a bit strange returning." Rebecca said looking down into the amber toned brandy.
"I'm doing my best to forget." Caspian replied.
"I want to make sure too that we somehow honor Sebatian and Evie. I think that what I did, and what Jacob did to them both is a stain on this house, and we should do anything, however small, to honor their lives." Rebecca added.
"A garden maybe? This spring." Johnathon added.
"A garden." Rebecca said smiling.
"Well, then," Caspian said to his cohorts as he raised his fresh brandy "to Sebastian, Evie and to new beginnings." Caspian said.
"To new beginnings." Rebecca and Johnathon replied as their glasses clinked in at toast.
****
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| Wolves in Morgan’s dream |
Later that night as the moon swam in it's reflection over the bone chilling winter sea, Morgan Thorne tossed and turned in his bed in his small room in Mary and Filipe's cabin.
He hadn't slept well all week, and on this night his new nightmare was darker than any other he had been having.
In his dream, Morgan walked along the forest grounds around the Goode Family cabin. It was an odd night in his dream, he could see snow all around the shadowy woods of night. The trees, pine, beech and oak, were covered top to bottom with snow too. He could see his breath. But the air was not cold, in fact he could not feel a single degree of winter's touch.
Aside from the strange weather that could be seen as pleasant, Morgan could feel his anxiety growing.
The woods were silent for the most part. He could he rustling in the bushes. He could feel something watching him deep in the dark of the forest.
Morgan turned to look behind him, a fatal mistake, there was a wolf glaring back at him with eyes glowing amber and gold.
It's teeth were sharp and his belly empty. Morgan looked like the perfect meal.
The wolf's growls grew louder and louder almost booming as it echoed in the canopy of trees above Morgan.
"Don't turn, walk backwards slowly." Morgan told himself.
In the cold snow, Morgan walked backwards, he saw his feet fall deep into the white but he could not feel the icy on his skin. He looked back up the wolf followed and when he lifted his left paw to walk, Morgan could see it was damaged. It was turned inwards and smaller than the other three paws.
"Steady....steady." Morgan told himself.
But the wolf's hunger was stronger and much more powerful than Morgan's steady heartbeat. The beast suddenly lunged upward and leaped into the air falling down on Morgan. It's mouth wrapped around Morgan's forearm as the boy attempted to protect himself from the many razor sharp teeth.
Morgan screamed in pain in his dream and suddenly woke up in his bed where Charlotte was shaking him awake by the same arm that was bitten in the nightmare.
"Are you alright? I heard you through the wall, you were screaming so loud." Charlotte said.
Morgan sat up in his bed, sweating profusely. "Wolves. I was dreaming of wolves, no... one wolf. He was so big. His eyes they were like two gold coins on fire. It bit me in the arm, and I could feel.... I think I could feel it's teeth go into my body."
Charlotte recoiled "You haven't been sleeping. I'll ask my mother to make you something to help you sleep soundly. Warm milk might not be the cure this time." she noted.
"A broken paw. Mangled or something." Morgan said out of nowhere to Charlotte.
"Broken paw?"
"The wolf. His left paw was deformed or something, it was hurting him I think too each time he stepped forward towards me. He was sort of turned inward."
Charlotte walked back towards Morgan in the bed. Her mind suddenly sparked with curiosity because of a very peculiar coincidence in his dream and in real life.
"Did you notice anything else about the wolf?" She asked.
"Just his eyes and his paw. It was hungry too. I hope I don't go back to that wolf dream anytime soon."
"But the paw," Charlotte pushed "It was his left paw? Mangled?"
Morgan nodded.
Charlotte smiled and told her friend that she'd go to her mother now for help in his sleeping aide. A drink, Mary would make, that would lull the boy into a safe world of sleep.
As Charlotte left the room to find Mary, she walked down the hall and wondered about the dream. The paw. The mangled paw. She realized the coincidence was perhaps just that.
It wasn't even something she should think about, Charlotte told herself. It was nothing. She said to herself again as she entered the living room and found Filipe on the sofa reading a book late at night.
"Charlotte, everything alright?" Filipe asked his stepdaughter as he put the book down and put his hands across his lap.
And there it was, the coincidence Charlotte had been thinking about... Filipe's mangled left hand. It was due to an injury Filipe suffered many years ago when he worked for Jacob, Charlotte's father, as his personal page. Jacob forced Filipe into an automobile with him when Jacob was drunk and chose to drive himself and not allow Filipe, who was sober, to drive.
The accident left Jacob with just cuts and bruises all those years ago. He healed fine. But poor Filipe was left with a broken arm and a hand that was mangled when the flipped car fell on it.
Charlotte stared at his hand that she was familiar with. She had known Filipe all her life. She always knew of his injury. It wasn't something strange or bizarre to her.
But something in her psychic mind told her never ever to ignore coincidences. The universe, the 14-year-old Charlotte knew at this young age, would send us signs to tell us something, to warn us, to connect us with a reality or to foretell something of the future.
He senses were telling her the wolf in the dream with the mangled paw was some sort of sign coming from Morgan's nightmares to tell her about Filipe.
The wolf's paw. Filipe's hand.
Why the connection? What did it mean?
"Charlotte???" Filipe said.
"Oh! I'm sorry, It's Morgan. he's had another nightmare. Is my mother up?"
"She's asleep already. She put Caleb to bed and went right to sleep. Is Morgan alright?" Filipe asked.
"Just a bit shaken." She answered.
"Should I warm him some milk?" Filipe asked.
"My mother would make something else. It helped me sleep better than just milk." She said with a frown hoping to seek help from her mother whom she remembered making her a hot toddy when she was very little and very ill right before Jacob took her from Mary.
"I think I can get him something." Filipe smiled.
She watched her kindhearted stepfather go into the adjoining kitchen and wondered where or how this symbol of the wolf and Filipe would meet.
What did it mean, she kept asking herself.
Then she realized, it would be better to tell her mother of the dream in the morning. Her mother, with all her budding powers, could help figure it out.
"That's it." Charlotte said to herself. "She'll help us."
****
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| Buried alive |
A shift in her body. She could feel the tightening in the muscles in her back like the pull of the a rubber band minutes from snapping.
It was Evie laying in her coffin still reaching and pulling at the lining of the lid with all she had in her.
She could feel a strange chocking feeling in her throat. It was a crippling anxiety suffocating her faster than the air tight coffin…and it worsening; the fear that she would never ever see the light of day again or worse the beautiful face of her son Gabriel.
As the panic continued to wash over here again, she began to kick and punch the lid screaming at the top of her lungs, begging for someone to hear her in the ground. She remembered reading in books in old dusty London Libraries, that when people died in early Victorian days, about 30 years before her own life began, in strange circumstances of the death that could not be explained by medicine, the family of the deceased would instruct the gravediggers to leave a long cord in the coffin that would connect to a bell above ground.
Should the person awaken from their ailment, they'd pull the cord to ring the bell and hopefully be recovered before suffocation set in.
Evie's mind was that desperate and in search of some kind of escape. She reached over her head to feel for a rope.
Nothing.
She felt around the ridge of the lid for something to yank.
Nothing.
There was no rope, of course, this was just something Evie hoped for, she wanted to feel this rope, this hail-Mary of an idea that someone would have thought of this antiquated idea to free her from her cold dark grave.
But Jaqueline's spell of sleep had convinced everyone of Evie's death. No one would expect her to be alive and the air in the coffin was set to expire whenever the witch desired. She could be there for weeks if Jacqueline sadistic cruelty wanted.
Evie had no clue as to when it would be over, what she did know was she would fight all the way to the end.
She continued to kick and scream; her shoes became bend at the toe at the force of her feet banging on the lid from the bottom where her feet were.
Hours and hours passed, the night, cold, dark and buried in snow, went on without even a sound of Evie's screams on the surface.
As the panic continued to wash over her in the moments, her body began to react. She was exhausted. She couldn't bang and kick and punch anymore.
Her voice too became horse. She began to cry and slapped her face over and over again hoping it was all some nightmare induced by the medication she was on at Churchill green. The slaps, she hoped, would wake up again in her hospital bed.
But once more, she was disappointed when she would not and could not find a way out of the coffin buried in the grave under the frozen ground.
"I can't breathe." She told her herself her throat began to tighten again. "Dear god I can't breath! I can't breathe!! I CAN'T BREAAAAAAAAAAAATH!!!" She screamed as tears fell from her swollen tired face.
Her screams went on def ears....to everyone except for those buried in the cemetery.
There was one more person who was trapped there. He too was locked away in a secret crypt below a tumb.
Tied up, locked away in the coffin under rocks placed by Johnathon DeViana, lay the resolve and calm Sebastian Lord.
He had given up on himself. He had decided this was fate. This was his end. He'd lay here forever and let time take him as he was, a monster of the world of the undead. He would not fight it, he thought, he would not go back to a world he could not live in happily. What would be the point? What would be the reason?
He had found his place, the final resting place in a grave that was not his and decided to keep it.
But as he lay there, eyes closed, face pale and cold, he heard something. Far off in the distance that he thought was his imagination. His vampire mind playing tricks on him.
"GET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Evie scarmed.
Sebastian's eyes snapped open. He knew that voice. He knew it was Evie. He could feel her, in a way that he had not been paying attention to. She was there, she was at the cemetery.
"HELP! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!" She continued to scream as she spit and coughed and struggled in the coffin hoping to break the top so she could get out.
She could not.
"Evie?" Sebastian said in a whisper. "Is that you?"
"DEAR GOD! HELP ME!" She shouted.
"It's Evie. It's EVIE!" Sebastian said to himself. As he too began to move in his coffin to get himself out.
Evie's mind began to wander. Her life was now shortening. She could see things in her memory. Faces:
Her mother.
Her father.
Her brother.
Sebastian.
Charlotte.
Matthew.
Alice.
Her baby, her sweet, sweet baby Gabriel. His was the face that lingered most in her mind and would not leave her.
"Gabriel. My darling. My sweet boy." She said through a gasp of tears and shortening breath. "Forgive me for leaving you," She added "I never meant to."
Sebastian rolled in the coffin. It began to rock and forth and back and forth on the large stone catafalque his coffin lay on in the secret crypt. He moved and moved and the coffin did too and when it rocked hard enough, the coffin fell off the stone catafalque and burst open. Sebastian feel on to several other coffins that were all broken and old with only bones and dust in them. he un did his ties that poorly secured him and he sat up in the small space below the trap door that Johnathon and secured with large stones from the cemetery.
Sebastian began to push and push and pound on the trap door in hopes he could get to Evie--- wherever she was.
"I'm coming for you Evie! I'M COMING!"
****
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| Johnathon & Jacqueline meet |
Later that night, over at the Siren's Call Pub, Jacqueline Gray sat in a booth alone as cigarette smoke swirled around her in puff of white like clouds on a gray winter morning.
She sipped on a glass of white wine wondering where she'd go and what she'd do next. Sebastian had abandoned her, she thought. He left her stranded at Lockwood Thicket without even a single word -- no goodbyes. No explanation.
Heartbroken and lost she willed herself to order yet another drink to drown her sorrows. No spell, no magic elixir could fix a broken heart, she knew that. Only the sweet nectar of wine could do this for her--for the time being of course.
There was one thing she could do. She could relish in the fact that Sebastian hadn't run off with Evie. Evie, Sebastian's would-be widow, was trapped in her coffin; safely tucked away under the frozen dirt of St. Thomas' Cemetery away from all she loved. Away from her child Gabriel. Away from her mother and brother. And most of all, and best of all if you asked Jaqueline, away from Sebastian Lord.
If Jacqueline could not have Sebastian freely and truly -- no one could. Evie would lie there in her grave by Jacqueline's powers for as long as time would last.
She would not come to her rescue. It was too threatening to have Evie living in the world where Sebastian could return and take back his love. No, Jacqueline's cold jealousy was too strong an emotion for her to think in a rational way. She preferred to let the woman she envied die a real death in the coffin than to have her return to the surface and become in involved with Sebastian once again.
The fresh glass of wine arrived, and Jacqueline thanked the bar maid just as the door to the Siren's Call opened letting in a swirl of snow and cold wind.
It was Johnathon DeViana who had come from Tirymor to escape the wild back and forth of the family drama. He ordered his own glass of frothy beer, and looked around the bar. There were familiar towns people there drinking their own woes away but one new face that Johnathon had never seen.
One specific beautiful face: Jacqueline Gray's.
The lonely Johnathon walked over to equally alone Jacqueline and tipped his hat.
"Evening." He said.
Jacqueline looked up from her wine "Evening."
"I hope I'm not being improper, but could I join you? We're the only two people here who seem to be on their own. I'd hate for us to miss out an good conversation." Johnathon said with a grin.
Jacqueline looked at him suspiciously and re-wrapped her shawl around her shoulders "Very well." She said.
"Johnathon." He siad interoducing.
"Jacqueline."
"What brings you here alone tonight?" He wondered.
She obviously could tell him she was mourning her vampire boyfriend and had just buried his widow alive in the cemetery. She tilted her head and sipped her wine "What brings anyone to a bar on their own? Heartbreak."
Johnathon nodded in agreement "Me too. Well, it's been a while since she left but the sting never really goes away." He said of Genevieve who had left him months ago and vanished to England in search f David Lord, her kindred spirit.
"She, the woman you loved, left you?" Jacqueline asked curiously
"She did." He replied. "Off too parts unknown. Well, again, I do know. She's traveled to England to find another man. A man she doesn't even know but feels she's in love with. Its a very strange story but a true one. You'd think she could find love with people she does know rather than indulge in fantasies of somewhere she's only seen in portraits and photos."
"Sounds romantic to me."
"You're a romantic? Well, that's a good trait Jacqueline. I like romance too, but wouldn't you agree romance should be shared between two people who can look into each other's eyes, face to face, not from an ocean away?" He asked.
Jacqueline smiled "Yes, I would agree with that. I'm sorry she left you."
"I'm not." He replied to her surprise.
"But you're here drinking your woes away because of her. I'd say you are."
He smiled with a boyish grin "Maybe."
She sipped her wine as the glow from the table's candle flickered in her eyes, eyes of chestnut brown. Eyes so sparkling and beguiling that Johnathon was very, very interested in her. She was this beautiful woman he had never seen before. Her curly dark hair seemed to be floating in thickness, her skin such a beautiful tone of mocha and her hands, he could tell, were delicate and soft and perfect in his eyes.
But the witch who had done terrible things to Evie was as dangerous as she was beautiful. Her own loneliness was only pushed off by Johnathon's attention for the moment and even though her heart yearned for Sebastian, she was intrigued by Johnathon, who was very handsome, well dressed and had a smile that lit up a room.
"Did you come here just to sulk like me?" he asked her.
She shrugged. "Perhaps."
"Tell me, I've given you my bleeding-heart story, now you." He joked.
"Ladies never kiss and tell and they certainly don't sulk and tell. Let's just say my story isn't too far off from yours." She answered with a sip of her wine as he sipped his beer. "The world is full of broken hearts Johnathon. We're just two in a million. A billion!" She added feeling the wine now sweep through her blood.
"I think that it'd be nice to make a new friend, us two in a world of a billion broken hearts. What do you think?" Johnathon asked reaching for her hand.
She pulled away.
"Friends." She replied.
"Everyone deserves new friends."
She thought about what he was saying. She knew he meant more than that. She could sense how attacked he was to her and in truth she was too. She could feel the energy oozing from him. The power of his sexuality filling the air and hers too grabbing on to that energy. The alcohol helped.
They were two ships passing in the dark night and they sought some attention. Some kind of physical affection and need that all humans need.
She lifted a brow and reached for his hand, the same hand that had reached for hers a second ago and bit her lip slightly.
"I'd love a new friend." she said softly.
But when she touched him a flash of light hit her brain. In that light she saw Johnathon beating someone. She saw him dragging someone's body. She saw him putting that person into some sort of box or hole. The face of the person was covered by shadows, obscured by some sort of shade. She could not see who Johnathon had -- what she thought-- killed. She could tell from the emotions she was feeling through her vision that this was an act of violence that he had committed crudely, a way for him to get something for someone else. It was not an accidental murder; the crime was fueled by darkness and greed.
She let go of his hand and stared at him. She saw him in a blur, and sort of fell queasy and not in her right frame of mind.
Both of them were in a slightly drunken stupor which made her quickly forget what she had just seen.
"Jacqueline? Are you alright?" Johnathon asked in a slow and slurry voice.
"What? Yes. Yes." She replied.
"Would you....like to ...maybe....come with me?" He asked nervously.
"Home?" She replied with a lift of a brow.
He nodded like school boy.
She said she'd love to go home with him, and the two quickly left the Siren's Call Pub back to Tirymor House where they'd find new friends made good bed-mates.
****
 |
| Rebecca visits Gabriel in the nursery |
The clock on the main stairway of the mansion, a grandfather oak chested 1732 set, chimed 30 minutes after midnight.
The house was quiet. Sleeping couples held each other tight as the cold wind outside hit the windows and frosted them with a winter's kiss made of sleet.
As the lights in the long hallway were glowing in a dim orange, Rebecca Lockwood-Lord-Casador slowly made her way into the nursery. She had just come home in a triumphant return with shocking news for her family.
But her heart ached.
She was horribly sad about Evie's death and Sebatian's seeming disappearance.
She knew of his return a year and a half ago and wished she had treated him differently when she begged him to vanish from Welshport and leave Evie be.
A request of him that she felt horrible about — the shame in her heart for Sebastian Rebecca now knew was unwarranted. She loved her grandson, vampire or not.
For his part, Sebastian stood firm and did not do as she asked and Rebecca learned this one the fateful night on the lighthouse balcony when she came face to face with him in a surprise reunion.
Rebecca wondered had things been handled differently would she and so many of her family members suffered less.
She knew she was squarely to blame for Jacob's entire wicked personality, but how much could she truly take on? Her guilt held her and would not let go.
As she stepped into the nursey, Gabriel and Fabian who shared the room, slept soundly.
She looked at her grandson Fabian and smiled. He was just as adorable as she had remembered, and she kissed her little hand that poked out through the painted white bars of his crib. She crossed herself and prayed for God to protect little Fabian.
She then remembered Charlotte, Fabian's 14-year-old half-sister and Rebecca's beautiful granddaughter and hope to see her soon now that she was back.
She then went over to little Gabriel and marveled at how much he had grown in the months that she was away at Churchill Green then welled up with tears remembering how she could have killed him that night at the lighthouse.
"For what I have done, I will never forgive myself little one," She whispered to Gabriel "but from this day forward, no from the day I woke from that nightmare forward, I will do everything in my power to protect you and love you and never ever allow anyone to hurt you again. I promise you this Garbriel my love, I promise you and God and the world that no one will do anything to hurt you. For Sebastian's soul and for Evangeline's I will do this for them."
Rebecca, in her dak dress kneeled next to Gabriel's crib. Her long white hair with hints of thick red locks that had yet to match the rest of her aged head, was down and the curls swept her lower back in a cascade. She touched the little boy's hand and kissed it like she had Fabian's and watched him sleep.
At the nursery door, Cory Tyler watched and listened as Rebecca begged her forgiveness to the two boys out loud. She wondered how she could then go back home and tell her brother Baxter of all this. She wondered what he'd do with the information of the Lord's once again in turmoil and of the scene of Rebecca with the boys in the nursey.
She knew how hard and painful life could be. She and Baxter didn't exactly grow up in a happy home. How could she now use the misfortune of this family as a away to shame them or embarrass them publicly. Baxter had his motives, but what were hers.
She adjusted her thick winter coat and turned to leave but almost jumped out of her skin when she was confronted by the six-foot-two Caspian who had seen her watching Rebecca the whole time.
"Find something interesting in there?" He said in a whisper.
"What? No, no I was just checking on the boys before I left for home for the night and saw that Mrs. Casador was there with them. I didn't want to interrupt." Coraline whispered back.
"I've been watching you this whole time listening, Coraline, you should be ashamed of yourself." Caspian replied.
"Mr. Casador, I assure you I ... I meant no harm. I did listen, yes, but only because I'm in charge of the boys' safety especially Gabriel's and you know as well as I do Mrs. Casador's history. You'll forgive me for listening when all I wanted to do was be sure the boys were safe." Cory said.
Caspian lifted a brow and decided to let her off the hook.
"Just go home." He whispered.
"At once. Mr. Hamstead is waiting for me downstairs already to drive me back." Cory said as she quickly passed Caspian who grabbed her arm as she passed him and held it.
"Coraline." He said.
Her heart was being so fast it felt as if it were going to jump out of her chest. "Sir?" She replied.
"Whatever you heard my wife say, to those boys, that's between the three of them. Is that understood? No one, and I mean no one, will know what you overheard -- good, or bad--- whatever it was Rebecca said was only meant for her grandsons to hear."
Coraline inhaled deep knowing a threat when she heard one and nodded her head "I understand." She whispered as Caspian's hand released her.
Cory then quickly made her way out of the hallway down the main staircase and into the awaiting freezing car that would drive her home in the middle of the night to her safe bed.
Coraline had a lot to think about this cold January night.
Would she finally give in her to cunning reporter brother Baxter's demands for secret intel on the family at Tirymor House, or would she disappoint him and keep the family's secrets-- and her life --- safe and sound?
