B3/Ch9: WHEN LOVE DIES TWICE

Celeste confesses to Filipe 

In the village, at their home together, Celeste was preparing for her day at Tirymor House. She poured herself coffee, and watched as the milk she added swirled around in plumes of caramel colored clouds.

The baby in her stomach jumped. She felt it so strong. It made her smile that this new life, now its in 8th month was so lively and wild inside of her. She looked down and saw the fabric of her dress move with the baby's movements. She smiled again and tasted her coffee happily.

"You're in good spirits this morning." Filipe said, setting his belongs down on a side table near the entrance to the kitchen and walking over to kiss her. He was dressed cleanly in a tight white shirt and bow tie, he fastened the suspenders that held his pants at the waste with their gold buckles and kissed Celeste on the lips.

She seemed distant all of a sudden. Her lies were burning her mind, even in her quiet happy moments. The second she saw Filipe's face, she remembered how she was misleading him about the child inside of her. 

"Are you ok?" He asked.

"Fine." She replied shortly. 

"Celeste," Filipe sighed, "I think we should talk about your work with Charlotte, and what's been happening at the house and between us." 

"Between us?" Celeste asked feeling the fear of what that meant.

"Yes. You can't deny that we've been very distant from each other. Our whole relationship has been, I don't know, frozen or something. I barley see you anymore. You barley see me anymore. You're almost always at Tirymor and I don't know that I can say I like that. When you first started there I felt comfortable but things have changed and ... the idea that you're around Jacob all day and come into contact with Sebastian, potentially, I can't say that I feel as comfortable as I did at the start." He confessed as he grabbed her free hand squeezing it tightly.

She released his hand.

"What are you saying? That I stop working as Charlotte's governess? I can't do that." Celeste said.

"What? Why not?" He wondered.

Celeste couldn't tell him everything, but the truth was she feared what would become of her if she decided to end her job. Jacob could use what he had on her again -- the secret of her mother's affair with his father. Something that would truly ruin her family's food reputation in the village, a reputation they had all worked and strived all their lives to protect and keep in good standing. 

This notion of a good reputation seemed odd by many standards, but to Celeste living in a family of Africa and Portuguese decent in a time where families like hers were not in the circles that her family rose to with their good reputation was what Celeste and her lies were protecting.

Jacob would surly see her leaving her post as his daughter's governess as a slap to the face.

She feared his backlash more than she feared Filipe's.

"I just can't! Filipe, the Lords have provided so much for us, I can't just leave right now. Charlotte, too, she needs me." Celeste added.

"Needs you? You need to rest! You're having our child and you're up there all day. You sometimes don't even come home to sleep. I miss you. I miss us. Our child is coming and I think Georgina could cover for you. At least for a bit." Filipe offered.

"No." Celeste replied straight forwardly. 

"No? Celeste, the baby, what about time to recuperate after the baby?" Filipe added.

"Filipe, I just think...." She paused. She felt cornered. The truth had to come out. The truth was the best way for her to finally free herself of this awful covering. She could no longer lie to the man she loved but it was going to hurt, it was going to hurt him and her and so many of the people that loved them together. But she could not allow him to continue to believe the baby was his.

"What is it?" He asked as she froze in silence.

"I am going to say something to you now that is going to ruin what we have and, to be honest, it's for the best. For your best. You deserve better, and I have been hiding something from you and I can no longer hide it. This is gutting me, Filipe, it's gutting me. The child I am carrying is not yours. It's Jacob's. I lied. I've been lying. Filipe I am so sorry." She confessed as she grabbed on to his hands.

He pulled away. His face scorned. Hurt. Crushed. 

"You're sorry? You've been lying to me for months about something so personal and so important and I've been running around like a fool! LIKE A GOD-DAMN FOOL! You ... and Jacob? When? Why? WHY Would you do that to us? TO ME? We.. we've been together for 15 years, and now, you... you've just thrown that all away!" Filipe replied in the most hurt and broken tone of voice Celeste had ever heard.

"I can't get into why... It was a mistake, it was..." he interrupted her

"A MISTAKE? That is too late to say. You should have thought about what a mistake it would have been the moment you decided to lay with this man. A man that has already taken so much from me!!" Filipe said raising his crippled hand from the accident her was in with Jacob so many years ago when he worked as Jacob's personal page as a teenager. 

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." She said crying and holding on to her baby bump.

Filipe's heart shattered in his chest. It was all such a shocking moment in his life something so vial and destructive done to him by the woman he loved.

"Here." He said to her handing her a telegram.

She took it, her hand shaking as she grabbed on to the paper. 

"It's from your brother, maybe you should respond with the news of your betrayal. I'm sure that'll be less shocking to him than knowing he's Albert Lord's bastard child." Filipe said revealing he knew the DeViana family secret from the files Gregory Reigns had accumulated on them.

Celeste's eyes widened with shock. "How do you know that!?" She asked ripping open the telegram and reading her brother's response to her earlier note from weeks ago.

"I guess we all have secrets." Filipe replied passive-aggressively. 

"Filipe, listen to me...." She began before he interpreted. 

"I think you should leave. Leave now." He said turning his back on her.

"But..." She began. 

"Leave this home. I don't think I can look at you right now." Filipe replied as he turned to the window letting the morning sun warm his broken heart.

Celeste nodded that she would. She had to tell him the truth, she knew in her own broken heart that it had to happen that the baby needed to be born into the truth and the lie she was spinning to protect herself and the secrets Jacob had held over her head.

She grabbed a bag that she always packed that had a few of her things that she would take up to Tirymor. It would only last her a few days.

"I'll come back for more things when you're away." She said softly at the front door.

He turned to her, his face trembling with tears. He could not believe the woman he loved had done this to him, to them. He could not believe she was leaving. He could not believe he had sent her away. He could not believe the child was of the man who had done so many terrible things. It was so unlike her. It was such a departure from who Celeste really was. 

"Who are you?" He asked devastated and broken.

She looked at him dead in the eye and answered: "I don't know any more. But I do love you. I will always love you." 

He shook his head and did not answer her. 

Then, with one more look around her small home, the home she had spent so many years in love and happiness with Filipe Braga, and left. 

Ash she got into to the awaiting car where Hamstead had come to take her back to Tirymor for her day of work and service as governess, Celeste sobbed. 

"Miss? Has something happened?" Hamstead asked looking at Celeste in the tiny review mirror. She shook her head no, a clear lie, but if there was anything Hamstead knew it was to never butt-in things that had nothing to do with him. He took her reply for it's face value although it pained him to see her so sad.

Filipe, for his part, watched as Hamstead drove off from his sheer curtain covered window. The tears rolled down his chiseled tan-colored face. 

She was gone from their small home, the love of his life...

Forever. 

****

Matthew accompanies Evie to town hall

A bustling village of Welshport seemed to never have an idea of what had happened just the night before over in the woods. The dark secrets that seeped beneath the veneer of the Lord family's façade was always something gossiped about in smoky corners of The Siren's Call Pub or under parasol's in Village park by some of the other well-to-do ladies of the island.

As horse-drawn carriages mixed with the newest automobiles in the village streets, Evie Jordan-Lord and Matthew Winterborn mixed in with the citizens as they got out of a carriage and made their way into the town hall. 

Evie, dressed in head-to-toe black crowned with a black veil covering her saddened face, was helped down from the carriage by the handsome Matthew. They went arm-in-arm into the records hall. She was playing the grieving widow once again, and this time her heart felt somewhat relieved for the death of her husband, or at least the creature that had taken over her husband's body.

The pair walked into the large hall, it's long white walls covered in paintings of the mayors and governors of the past like tiny museum of portraits. Faces that were warn with a century of secrets of what they had done to Matthew's people. As they continued to the clerk's desk, Matthew couldn't help but look up at the portraits of Welshport's ghastly forefathers and feel as if their eyes were following him, like they knew who he was. Like they knew he had survived despite all their attempts in extinguishing his people from the face of the earth.

He wanted to spit on them, a sign of his disgust. But he kept his composure for the grieving Evie.

"Afternoon, how may I help you?" The clerk at the desk said not recognize the well known new Lord bride Evie.

"Afternoon sir, I'm here to file a death certificate for my husband." Evie replied.

"Oh, I am so sorry for your loss Ma'am. Such a young widow. Let me see here..." He said scouring the various forms in his cubby. "Ah! Here we are. You'll have to place the date of the funeral here and the date of the death here, and of course the name of the deceased." He added.

"Oh, there was no funeral." Matthew said.

"No funeral? How can that be?" The clerk replied.

"It was a personal decision because of... unimaginable circumstances, you see my husband was Mr. Sebastian Lord and as I am sure you have heard, he's been under a lot pressure since his return. Life since his kidnapping had not been good to him. He’s suffered greatly." Evie said lying about Sebastian's death and showed the form to the clerk showing whom she was filing the certificate the deceased was.

"Ohhhhh!" The clerk said recognizing the name Evie had written down. "Well, I can understand the secrecy. I've heard the terrible things that happened to Mr. Lord," The clerk whispered to keep discretion. "I thought he was doing well after he came back. I had no idea he was ill. Disease of the mind can do such terrible things." He added now starting to get confused about the whole situation. 

"Yes, that's right. An illness of the mind. It can happen to us all if the trauma is profound enough." Evie explained. "My poor husband suffered a great deal since he returned from his kidnapping he, uh... he, just never was the same. Unfortunately he departed us in a way that I, and the entire Lord family, preferer not to disclose to the public. You can understand, can't you sir?" Evie said, evoking the powerful clout of the Lord name into the fray and the lie of the kidnapping they all used to cover for the truth of Sebastian returning from the dead. 

The clerk thought for a second. He wasn't sure exactly how to proceed but he knew that there had to be a way to keep both parties happy. The county in which they lived would most certainly need proof of death, a coroner's report usually, but this was the Lord family after all. They had the entire island under their thumb and for the most part had so many people employed in the various business ventures they had around the village not including their main source of income the giant Publishing dynasty they held in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut and New York. 

"You know what, just fill out this section and I'll take care of the rest." The clerk whispered.

Evie smiled and mouthed the words "Thank you" and filled in what the clerk asked. She signed the form and the clerk stamped his approval of the death certificate. Evie was now a widow for the second time--officially and legally. 

"The family will truly be appreciative of this. Truly." Evie said with a sad smile. As she looked down at her copy she felt her heart skip. She was happy that it was over and that Sebastian, who was suffering in the state he was in, was now at peace. She could move on with her life now that he was really gone. 

"It was meant to be." Matthew said as the two made their way out of the building. "He wasn't meant to come back the way he did. Not at all." 

"Matthew, thank you for coming with me. I didn't know who else to turn to. Niky is very involved with your sister while she rests and Celeste has a lot going on, I really had no one else. This means so much to me." Evie said as the sound of horses galloping around them on the cobblestone streets behind her.

"I wouldn't want it any other way, I really mean that." He said, his deep brown eyes growing warmer by the second. 

"Now we have to get to the Publishing House, the Lords have a lot of weight when it comes to what goes into the papers. I'll have to get Sebastian's death published to solidify everything. Its strange, isnt it? He came back and I was so happy to get a second chance but now I can only think of making sure everyone who needs to know he's finally gone --- knows." Evie said thinking of the irony of her life.

"You really did love him, didn't you?" Matthew said.

"And I still do. But not this Sebastian, not the man that came back. That wasn't who I feel in love with, that man died when Mary shot him the first time. The man I loved would have never come after my brother that way, he would have never tried to kill Niky, no...that was not Sebastian not in any way shape or form." Evie explained as she pulled out the instructions for the news papers the Lord's owned to publish Sebastian second death. 

"I know what you mean. I would do anything for my sister. Anything. We only have each other, so I'd protect her life with mine any day of the week. What you did took immeasurable amount of guts, Evie. You have no idea how proud of you I am." Matthew said.

Evie sighed "Still...I keep going over and over what happened in my head and I cannot believe I did that. I keep telling myself it was to keep Nik safe but, at the end of the day I still took Sebastian's life. How will Rebecca and Charlotte and any of the Lords ever look at me the same again?" She wondered of her new found family.

"Evie, they knew what he was. They were reluctant to even welcome him back like you did. They'll understand, especially because I bet they feel the same way you do. That person, WAS NOT Sebastian. He just wasn't." Matthew said trying to make Evie feel better.

Then she looked up at Matthew who was standing by her like a guard. She smiled, and felt so close to him now, she could see he was a true friend, a true hearted person who only wanted what was best for her and she knew then that she could confide in him. 

"There's something else." She said pausing.

"Are you ok?" He asked.

"I have to tell you something I've been keeping from everyone. It just feels like I need to tell you because, I don't know, I don't feel like I'm being completely honest and at this point I shouldn't be keeping this a secret. It doesn't feel right." Evie said.

Matthew's face frowned with worry: "Evie, what is it?"

"Sebastian and I, before he died, we... conceived a child. I'm pregnant and I haven't told the family yet. I mean the idea of what they'll think once they realize what's happened will be just one more battle with those walls, I just don't know how it's going to turn out. Especially now that Rebecca is in such turmoil and Jacob's return. It's all so much for us all to deal with." She added with tears in her eyes.

"Do NOT worry. I won't let you deal with all of this alone. And for what it's worth I think they'll feel just as relieved as you did now that Sebastian  has found his way back to the other side. Rebecca will survive her own drama as she always does. Word is she's already been released, Reigns found someone else more lucrative to go after for the shooting." Matthew revealed.

"WHO? Not Celeste I hope!" Evie replied, Matthew shrugged as he grabbed hold of her hand and squeezed. She felt safe with him, safer than she had ever felt in the entire time she lived on the mysterious island.

"No, not Celeste." A voice said coming from around the corner. 

It was Filipe Braga, heading for the jailhouse as his shift was about to begin.

"Filipe!" Evie exclaimed hugging her friend tightly. "What's happened? Who has Reigns gone after?" 

Filipe shook his head unable to reveal more about the case but wondered what they were doing at the hall of records. Evie looked at Matthew who lifted his brows almost as if to say he had no idea how she would explain this to Filipe who was not only a person of the law but one of Sebastian's friends and allies. 

"It's Sebastian. He died last night." She said expecting an avalanche questions.

Filipe stood there and looked at Evie who he could clearly see was dressed in mourners black. It didn't even phase him to ask her more questions. It didn't even phase him to care that another of his childhood friends was dead. All he could think about was Celeste and what she told him just the night before, the same night Sebastian supposedly died.

"Are you going to say anything?" Matthew wondered seeing how strange it was for Filipe to say nothing.

"Yes--I, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your loss. Obviously I'm a bit confused at how it all happened. He had, as you know, what we all thought an immortal soul. So how? How can that be??" Filipe questioned.

"I wish I could go into all the details, Filipe, I really do, but the village's ears are always listening. I can't go into all the horrible information right now,  but you more than anyone else knows that Sebastian was no longer the man we all knew a loved. That man died at our wedding a year ago, and the monster that replaced him died last night." Evie explained.

"I've been so very preoccupied Evie, you'll have to forgive me for not being there for you. To protect you. To help you.." He said grabbing her hand.

"I understand. But I've had help." Evie said smiling as she looked over at Matthew. "What is it? What's been bothering you?" She asked.

"It's Celeste and I. We are no longer together. I assume you'll be seeing her at Tirymor much more than just during the day. She's moved their permanently." He explained.

Evie of course, already knew that Celeste was expecting Jacob's child, this was a secret she had promised to keep for several weeks now. But she had no idea it would have gotten to this, of course she was broken-hearted for Filipe but at the same time she felt similar relief for her best friend Celeste who was now free of her secret just as Evie was now free of hers. 

"Looks like we're all turning the page on our past lives, my friend. Understand that I'll do anything to make sure Celeste is safe in that house. She's been nothing but good to me, and she's shown me so much compassion and friendship. I'll do the same for you. We've all been through so much that I think we need this new lease on life, no matter how painful it really is." Evie said.

"Very wise words, thank you." Filipe replied. "And Sebastian, I'm still confused about that. I spoke to him not too long ago and...." Filipe paused feeling the scar on his wrist from Sebastian's bite. "he seemed fine."

Evie took a breath, her chest heaving heavily inside the tight corset inside her petticoat. She wasn't even sure how to begin telling Filipe about what happened the night Alice, Nik and Matthew went to Lockwood Thicket and what she found when she entered but if anyone could understand it could be Filipe.

But she relented. She needed to keep the story straight, after all Filipe was a deputy of the law. Everything that she spoke of going forward when it came to Sebastian and his death needed to stay the same as told to others. 

"It was unexpected as you might imagine but sometimes that is how death is. He was cremated and we're going to spread his ashes today. His darkness is now over. He's back where he belongs. In Heaven." She said with real tears in her eyes. 

Filipe looked at her and wondered how it could have happened but understanding the strange circumstances of Sebastian's existence as it was, he couldn't explain it. He couldn't explain the way he came back tio live and he certainly wasn't going to try and make sense of his sudden death a second time. In a way, Sebastian's second death was a god send to them all, and Filipe wouldn't go further into it for his own sanity.

As for Sebastian being in heaven, Filipe privately has his doubts. Sebastian's dark side was a literal scar on Filipe's arm and in his blood.

"My condolences to the family. I hope wherever Sebastian is now, he's found peace. That's what he was missing all this time....peace" Filipe said as he then excused himself to them both and headed down to work. "Oh, Evie?" He added. 

"Yes?" She asked.

"Keep an eye on Celeste, will you? For me?" He added just before turning back and walking down the street.

Evie smiled at him and nodded her  head. "Always." 

Then, as Filipe got smaller and smaller in the distance down the block Matthew looped Evie's arm into his and squeezed her close. "We're going to be ok. We're all going to be ok." He said reassuring her.

She then opened a small bag clutched at her arm to reveal a small golden urn that had what were Sebastian's ashes, or what his body had turned into once she staked him in the chest.

"Let's take him to the sea." She said referring to where they'd spread Sebastian's ashes.

****

Jacob & Celeste discuss their future   

Celeste carefully folded her clothes in her new permanent room at the mansion with a helpful Tirymor House maid. She looked at each of her times and could remember the last time she wore them, good times, times with Filipe and all their happiness together.

"This one is beautiful." the maid said hanging a long plum colored dress with a matching over coat that went from shoulder to hem.

Celeste smiled. 

"May I?" Jacob asked still leaning on hospital crutches at the room's door with the newspaper tucked under his arm.

Jane, The maid, curtsied and excused herself from the room leaving Jacob and Celeste to their privacy.

As the maid passed Jacob he entered and turned to close the bedroom door.

"Leave it open." the eight month pregnant Celeste said with trepidation. 

Jacob seemed surprised but understood her hesitation being alone.

"Well you won't be the only woman in the mansion who doesn't want to be seen or alone with me." He joked. "My mother returned last night. She thinks I don’t know she’s home but the walls at Tirymôr aren’t as thick as she thinks. It seems Constable Reigns has bigger fish to fry in my attempted murder." 

“OR,” Celeste asserted  “Rebecca didn't do it, and you lied." 

"Correct…. you did, it was you.” Jacob replied quickly. “But how could I let you, the mother of my unborn child go to jail? I had to think quickly and blamed Rebecca. No matter what you did to me, I would never let Reigns take you.” 

“You’re insane! I didn’t shoot you Jacob! I didn’t shoot you or Christian. He was my friend, I cared for him and even though you’ve done nothing but cruel things to me I would never try and take your life.” Celeste replied. 

Jacob could sense she was telling the truth. Her assertive voice, her eyes never blinked when she spoke, she never turned away to hide, a tell of a misleading person.

No, Celeste was indeed telling the truth, no one knew the truth. No one knew it was really the Hunter, summoned by Eliza who came try take Jacob & Christian’s lives. 

“I… Ive made a mistake." Jacob said shrugging his shoulders carelessly. "I doesn’t matter now, I've made it better. I called up The Globe and had them write something about her arrest." He said.

"Baxter Murphy's article in the paper today was because of you? It doesn't really make you out to be a hero." Celeste replied.

"Yes, well, I guess I made another mistake." Jacob agreed after the scathing article in the newspaper portrayed Jacob as having an axe to grind accusing his mother of his attempted murder. 

"I'm sure you did." Celeste replied knowing Jacob for a schemer. 

"Celeste, aside from all I've done I do want to make sure you are happy here. This could be your home now too. I know that things are different than what they were only a few months ago but you're carrying my child and I want to make you feel safe here. Safe for as long as you want to stay. Filipe will just have to understand." Jacob replied moving passed the topic of Rebecca and her false arrests. 

Celeste paused. Her heart shattering at Filipe’s name.

“Filipe will no longer be an issue.”

“Oh.” Jacob replied softly attempting to hide his glee at her insinuation at the breakup.

"I'm here for one thing and one thing only, and that's Charlotte. I will do what I can do continue to provide her with what Rebecca hired me for, and that’s all.” Celeste said.

"We'll up your pay." Jacob offered. "After all, you're carrying the heir to the dynasty now." He said.

She turned to him unsure of what he meant. The heir? Sebastian was the heir. 

"I don't understand." She said putting down the set of scarves she was folding.

"My spies in the village told me that Evangeline was just down at hall of records filing Sebastian's death certificate. I don't know the details yet, but apparently, he's dead. Gone. For good this time." Jacob replied shocking Celeste who had no idea. 

"What??? Sebastian is dead????" Celeste replied in shock. "How could she not tell any of us?" 

"Oh don't be coy Celeste, you know he was a menace to us all being how he was. Perhaps she didn't want to burden us any more with his... how does Evie put it? Oh yes, his "affliction"." Jacob replied.

Celeste rolled her eyes at him, knowing exactly what he meant. "You seem absolutely broken up." She added sarcastically. 

Jacob shrugged. "That creature was NOT my nephew." 

"Well, you of all people would know the difference between a monster and a man, wouldn't you? I'll have to send my regards to Evie. She must be devastated. I assume the family will keep her financially secure." Celeste asked as she sat on the bed letting her long flowery dress crumple up as she did.

"Why do you care about Evie and her future here?” Jacob sincerely wondered. 

“Jacob unlike you I have a heart and Evie is my best friend. We’ve obviously been going through our own issues lately but I love her and hope for the best for her. I hope you would too after what you’ve been through. But perhaps being death’s door still won’t shake you.” Celeste replied shaking her head. 

Jacob fell more in love with Celeste in that moment. Her kindness, in such a turbulent time in her own life shined like the Morgan Lighthouse on the south shore of Welshport. To think of Evie before her own needs, was a sparkle in the crown she already wore in Jacob’s eyes. 

“Of course.” He replied.  “Evie is family. And Celeste, you know, there are things we can do to make sure you are also kept financially sound too...and....at the same time we can solidify this child's place in the family inheritance, should it be a boy or even a girl. I would greatly hope you would consider this offer, Celeste." Jacob said cryptically.

She turned to him, her skin glistening like a caramel candy perfectly golden and warm. Her eyes deep oceans of chestnut that filled with water. She knew what he was asking. She knew she had to take him up on the offer, especially because she was with child. If she wanted any sort of future, she had to take him up on what was about to come next.

"Be my wife. Be Mrs. Jacob Lord, and I promise you, all the best things will come for you and this child. Charlotte already loves you, she sees you as such a supporting loving figure. Celeste, even I care for you. Deeply." Jacob said, stunning Celeste with his words that came off from his lips as sincere as they could from a man known for telling every lie in the book to get what he wanted. 

Celeste thought of her late mother, Cristina, and how her affair with Albert Lord produced a child that had to live in the shadows so that Rebecca could never find out. The shock, the scandal, the terrible things a jilted Rebecca could and WOULD do to that child were a source of great fear in Cristina's heart and mind. Celeste knew this and could not do to her unborn baby what her mother did to Jonathon DeViana, the son she had with Albert Lord making him Celeste and Jacob's half-brother. 

Celeste could not raise her child as Jacob's bastard. She took a breath … deep breaths, in and out, her heart was pounding like a drum. She could not believe the words that came out of her mouth next; words she never thought she'd hear herself say:

"I will be your wife Jacob. I will. But we have to wait to be married until my brother Johnathon arrives." She said. "I want him to be here and be apart of my life fully, now, not like before." She requested.

"Very well. I will make arrangements, for our brother as well." Jacob said smirking reminding Celeste that he knew the truth about Johnathon too; after all it was the source material for Jacob's blackmail and the cause for her to go to bed with him. 

As Jacob left, his leg crutches banging about as he left. Celeste stood up from her bed and looked out the window and watches as dusk began to flood the sky over the island from her second story bedroom window. Her eyes burst in a river of tears and she turned and fell face first into her mattress and cried herself to sleep.  

****

Asha Hoffman finds Dr. Kim at the cemetery

The sun had set but still showed a glimmer of orange light over the hills of the Island and passed the small Frenchman Bay waterway that separated Welshport from Maine. On a green hillside with small fall daisies growing out of the ground on a patchwork of grave plots neatly lined in perfect rows stood Dr. Andrew Kim. His coat swayed in the light evening breeze while wisps of his hair fluttered under his top hat as he stood over a grave dusted with debris from the near by pine trees. 

Kim had returned from a trip out of town to clear his head. He had suffered so much over the past few weeks and was hoping that he'd find some solace away from the island, but he found nothing of the sort. His demons followed him, they followed him wherever he went.

Here, at St. Thomas' Cemetery, is where he found some sort of peace.

He knelt down and dusted off the large grave stone that had the name DR. MICHAEL DAPHNE.

His late husband, the man and source of all the blackmail Jacob had on him.

"God I wish you were here, handsome." Andrew told the grave. "You'd tell me what I needed to do next." He added as the trees swayed in the wind creating a rattling sound of branches that gave Andrew chills up his spine. 

Andrew once again said goodbye to his husband and made his way towards the large iron gates of the cemetery, he passed a thick walled and elaborately decorated mausoleum that belonged to the Lord family. The iron gates of the entranced were chained shut, locked, from public view. But something sparked Andrew's curiosity, oddly, there was a fresh wreath of roses laid on the large plaque that had all the names of the people laid to rest inside the family mausoleum engraved on it.

Andrew looked at the wreath, it was beautifully made, the roses were so dark a scarlet red that they could have been painted in blood. A thick black ribbon was tied at the bottom of the wreath. Andrew looked around the cemetery, he was alone, if you didn't count the spirits that most likely floated around him invisible to the eye. 

This wreath, he thought, could not have been here for very long, in fact he didn't notice it when he passed by on his way to Michael's grave. Andrew lifted the wreath and saw the names on the plaque of those inside, but one name stood out due to the date of the death.

SABRINA SPENCER-LORD 

It was the anniversary of her death that very day.

Someone had come to bring her these flowers but did not go inside the vault of their family's remains. Andrew could only imagine which one of the Lords did, especially 

Then a voice came from behind Andrew.

"I've finally found you." The woman's voice said.

Andrew, jumped out of his skin with the surprise. He turned to see his former nurse Asha Hoffman standing in the damp grass and wind-swept cometary with a coat of thick wool that covered her whole body. She seemed tired, exhausted even. He hadn't seen her in months and they left on uncertain terms when she discovered and aided his horrible brainwashing of Christian Evans. 

"Asha, my god, what are you doing up here?" He asked her stepping closer to see her face better in the dimming light of the day.

"I've been trying to find you for weeks. I couldn't. I searched and searched and ask around town and even on the mainland. No one could find you." She said.

"I had to leave for a while." he replied somewhat embarrassed by what she knew he had done, the feeling of self-disgust about his horrible history of mind controlling his patients weighing heavily on his mind. “How did you know to find me here?”

"Something told me to come here. I guess it was my own intuition.” She said as she shivered in the cold. 

Andrew lifter a brow “What do you want from me? If it’s money, I can have the rest of your pay sent to you where you live. I apologize for not paying you before I left.” He replied.

“It’s not that. There is something you need to know, something I've done that I think may be a turning point in your life. I don't even know why I did it, perhaps I felt some sort of loyalty to you now that I know everything about you." She said.

"Something to show me? What are you talking about?" He wondered.

"You have to come with me. I will show you." She replied. 

"Go with you? Go where?" He asked as she stood now in complete darkness now that the sun had dipped below the hills shadowing all that had no light.

Andrew lit a match and picked up the lantern he had brought with him for this very reason.

The light illuminated his face, he extended his arm so that the lantern would shine on Asha too. 

She was there, still, her face cold with the autumn wind kissing her tan, east-Asian skin. 

"Just come with me, please." She replied. 

Andrew had no need to fear her, so he thought, and had no history of feeling as though she was untrustworthy. 

Andrew followed his former Windcliff nurse to her home deep passed the village where in side was a vat filled with preservative liquid that Asha had smuggled out Windcliff. In side this tin vat, which in reality was trough that Asha had taken from a local farm and filled it with preservative, was a body.

The preserved body of the supposed dead Christian Evans. 

Asha had taken him from the morgue, kept his tissues alive and healthy and saved his body for Andrew. 

****

Gregory Reigns at the rowdy Siren’s Call Pub 

As Asha and Andrew made their way through the village to her home, another much larger group of citizens had gathered at The Siren’s Call Pub for the evening libations. There was chatter and table games mixed with the either of beer and liquor pouring down every smiling face. 

As the town’s people enjoyed their night, Gregory Reigns burst in, forget to assemble the mob he needed to take down his long eluded enemy, Eliza Goode, the witch of Welshport. 

"What are you doing here Reigns?" A man said, holding up a beer to his lips as the froth from the head kissed his mustache. 

"Lookin rather peaked there, Constable. What’s the matter?" the young bartender asked passing Reigns a free beer. 

The noise in the room ceased. Everyone turner to the new town Constable who was sweating, so eager to get to his revenge on the witch that got away so long ago and that so easily fell back into his lap. It was destiny. Reigns could taste it.

As the crowd waited for his answers he could see through the pub’s checkered windows the spinning beam of light from the island’s Lighthouse off in the distance. It flashed its bright light out to sea and then over Welshport, then back over the sea and over Goode Island, then back around again and again, its spinning beam of light the beacon to all who come to the shore.

Reigns, stood in the center of the pub so that all the attention was in him from the 30 and 40 people he was able to lure to the shoreline. 

"FRIENDS! FELLOW WELSHPORTONIANS! Just beyond this door, through this village and beyond Morgan Lighthouse sitting alone in her hovel of a cabin where she no doubt covets our lives and curses us too. IS A WITCH!! A real true life witch who has lived in freedom on that little island named after her for decades! She is a daughter of darkness and a sister of evil. This woman! This Creature! Needs to be brought to justice! TONIGHT!!!" Reigns exclaimed. 

The crowed looked around, confused, baffled, and some even giggled and chuckled at him.

"What have you been drinking man?" One shouted

"Too many days on the island sir! Go back to Boston!" Another joked.

“Give me what’s he’s got, Patrick!” A old ha of a woman said to the young bartender.

"Batshit man I say!" Another woman shouted as the others laughed. 

"No! NO! I am not the one who's mad here! No!" Reigns began. "All of you might have been. Think of your own lives and the terrible things that might have happened. Think of this island, your home, and all the tragedy that you and your ancestors might have faced over the years. Think of the deaths! Think of the loss, think of all you might have had had you NOT lived so close to a wicked bride of Satan! THINK of ALL of this and then question my madness!" Reigns added.

The crowed murmured. They had suffered. All in different ways. They had all seen darkness in their own lives. Many deaths. Many losses. Many hurt lives suffering for decades. But none of this was Eliza's fault, in truth, none of this was due to her witchcraft, it had to do with the ancestors of those who were killed for this land to be stolen. 

The Dænian People, Alice and Matthew's people, had cursed the first settlers for all time for stealing their land, killing their people and warping the truth of where they came from. 

Eliza, this time, was innocent.

But that didn't matter now. Reigns had been successful. He had turned the tide of the audience at hand and they were now on his side thinking of all their struggles all their pains and the loss in their lives.

“Maybe he’s right?” A person said.

“Does it make sense? It sort of does.” A man answered.

“I lost my wife, the neighbors too, their home burnt down.” A man grieved. “Maybe it was the witch!” 

“We’re cursed.” A person shouted. 

“She cursed us!!” The drunk old woman screamed from her bar seat.

"What do we do?" A woman asked.

"Why would she do this? How do we stop the witch!!?" A man shouted too.

"Come with me! COME WITH ME to her island home, to where she dwells a hermit in this world. Come with me! Grab your boats, load them with yourselves and we will all go to the island, take her from there and bring her back to Welshport and show her, finally once and for all, what it is to see justice! We will FREE OURSELVES FROM THIS WITCH'S CURSE!!!" Reigns screamed

"FREE OURSELVES!!!" They shouted over and over again in the dark under the orange light of their lanterns and torches. 

And they did as Reigns said. Loaded themselves, men and women and head off to drag the witch of Goode Island back to Welshport to face her justice.

Rebecca had been successful in getting revenge on Eliza for what she did to her body and to Sebastian. And now Eliza's life would be on the line.  She had given up her freedom for her powers. She was not allowed to leave Goode Island. 

Her life, her power, her world, was now on the edge of disaster. 

                          

B3/Ch8: A BLOODY STAKE IN THE GAME

Rebecca sits accused in Welshport Jail

The evening shadows created a menacing atmosphere inside the small jail house in downtown Welshport as Rebecca Lockwood-Lord sat on the hard wooden bench inside her call. Her stoic and even regal posture, with her hands clasped in her lap, chilled Filipe Braga who was sitting at a desk near by. 

Filipe, who had been hired as a part-time deputy along side Constable Reigns, wrote out the charges that Reigns would be filing later in the morning at court.

"Ma'am?" Filipe said walking over to Rebecca's cell as the gloomy new electrical lights buzzed in the jailhouse. "Do you need anything?" He asked.

Rebecca smiled politely and shook her head now. 

"I have to say Filipe it is very good to see how well you're doing in life after leaving our house. This must feel very good." Rebecca said, reminding Filipe he used to work as Jacob's page as a teenager before an accident in a car that left Filipe's hand mangled. 

Filipe looked down at the hand damaged from the accident where Jacob was drunk driving, rubbed it as the horrible memory floated into his mind of that drunken night. 

"The job has been something to keep my mind at work." He replied softly.

"And Celeste, she must be so proud of you. Jacob's been keeping her busy... I mean Charlotte, Charlotte has been keeping her busy up at the mansion." Rebecca added, giving Filipe pause.

"Has she now?" Filipe said, wondering in his mind why Rebecca would have mixed up Jacob and Charlotte's names. 

"Indeed. You should go there. See what I see every day. You might be surprised by how well they're all getting along. Like...a family really." Rebecca added trying to get rid of Filipe by planting a seed of doubt in his mind about Celeste and Jacob's somewhat working relationship. 

She wanted to make him leave. She wanted to be alone, she wanted to get herself out of the cell with no one's eyes on her. Filipe stood there, at the bars of her cell. He was confused by Rebecca's words. He was concerned too, but just before he could talk more Constable Reigns walked in.

"That's enough from you." He said to Rebecca. 

Filipe snapped out of his concentrated mind set and walked back to his desk and handed Reigns the paperwork on Rebecca. "All set for tomorrow at court." Filipe said.

"Alright, have a good night." Reigns replied releasing Filipe of his duty.

Filipe smiled and headed for the door, and as he did he turned back and saw Rebecca staring straight at him from her perch on the bench in her cell, sitting straight up. No slouching. No movement. She lifted a brow at him, he swallowed hard, almost fearing her. Then he headed for Tirymor to see what exactly Rebecca was talking about regarding Jacob and Celeste's now close relationship. 

"Well, what was that all about. Sewing seeds of doubt in the young man?" Reigns asked seeing straight through Rebecca's mind game.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." She replied as she noticed Reigns putting down his things on his desk.

"Shall we go over again what happened the night Jacob and Christian were shot?" He asked her.

"I won't go over that again because you already know, Charlotte and myself were in the chapel at Tirymor praying that evening. I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with this crime." Rebecca asserted. 

"Then why did Jacob point to you as the culprit? Your own son!" Reigns asked.

"He is mistaken. Very, very mistaken." Rebecca answered as she got up from her bench like a queen getting up from her royal throne and came over to the bars. She gripped the bars and the chimed with the clinking of her golden ring. She smiled at him. "Constable, you know this is all a mistake."

"How do I know that?" He asked.

"Because, I am not a killer. I am not an attempted killer. I'm old enough to be your mother, and you know that your mother couldn't do something like this, so how could I?" She pointed out. "If you let me go, I can financially make it worth your while, no one need know." She said.

"Ma'am you're now attempting to bribe an officer of the law. That's a crime too." He pointed out.

"I am attempting to compensate you for finding the real person who...." She paused mid sentence when she read the spine of one of the books Gregory carried into the jail: THE CAPTURE OF THE BRIDES OF EVIL.

Then like flood gates opening, she noticed other items around his desk that she recognized from her decades of studying the supernatural, the sinister, the shadowy side of humanity. These items and tools were for hunting. A crucifix hidden near some books. A bible, leather-bound with a red ribbon book marking down the middle. A bottle of something dark, a liquid or some kind of elixir perhaps to vanquish a spirit? A ghost? A demon. No, Rebecca remembered. The dark liquid in the container was holy water mixed with the blood of a long dead saint. 

These were all silly items, things of gothic intrigue and seances but to Rebecca she believed. And it was clear it Gregory Reigns believed too, especially so by the most glaring of item of all: a sparkling rosary for protection over his body. 

It became clear to her now, like the sun peeking out from behind dark rain clouds what Reigns’ job, his true passion was all about. Reigns was in Welshport…hunting witches. She couldn't believe her luck, she was sitting in a jail cell for a crime she didn't commit and that she had tried to get Eliza Goode charged with and now, in this very jail cell, she recognized the man keeping her there was a secret witch hunter. 

"Ah…” she said in a whisper. “We are cut from the same stone.” She added. 

He chuckled at her silliness. 

“How so?”

“I can help you find what you're looking for." She said to his confusion.

"I'm looking for the truth." He replied.

"No Reigns, you're looking for someone who has sold their souls for powers. I know something about that. I know a lot about that actually. I've been searching for those people myself, albeit, not in the same way you have. I can give you a name a name that will finally show you the truth that you're searching for." Rebecca said cryptically.

"I don't know what you mean." He said lying. 

"Witches." Rebecca said moving closer to Reigns from behind the bars as best she could. "I can give you a name of one. I can. I know where this witch lives and you can have her. You have her name and do what you want with her. In fact, you'd be doing me a favor too." 

"You know nothing. Do not begin to trick me." Reigns said. "Ive seen and know more than you realize.

Gregory began to think back about his time in Boston before he was transferred to Welshport. Years and years of his life were dedicated to finding these daughters of darkness that had terrorized his own family for generations from Salem, his ancestors original home. His father, and his father before  him and his father before him were men who hunted these creatures who were so feared in the village of early Massachusetts, and their livestock and crops had all been damaged and killed off. The Reigns family had been ruined by what they believed were curses from a witch. 

Reigns had followed one here. One witch who had come from a family of witches. He sought her. He wanted her gone. And in between doing his job as Constable he was also secretly walking the streets in search of the last witch of this coven. It was his life's work, and now Rebecca knew the answer to his question: Where was ELIZA GOODE?

"Release me and you'll find the one woman who I know for a fact is a witch. I know because she too came into my life decades ago and caused me bodily harm. She promised me things and only gave me devastation. She's done thigs to my family, Reigns, that you can only imagine in your worst nightmares. I want her gone just as much as you might. I promise you, she is the real criminal here, she and she alone. I will give you her name and where she lives and you can have her. But release me. I am innocent." Rebecca said dangling the carrot in front of the rabbit. 

"What do I get in return if you are not telling the truth?" He asked, considering her proportion.

"There is no need of that talk because I am promising you truth now. I believe she is the one who shot Jacob because she is the creature that has taken so much from my own life, my ability to have children, my grandson's....." Rebecca paused before revealing the truth about Sebastian to Reigns.

"Sebastian? What did this witch do to Sebastian?" Reigns asked trying to have Rebecca finish her thought.

Rebecca only wanted Reigns to hunt the witch, she could not risk her own grandson being next on his list of capture. She saw the risk of telling about Eliza, but saw an even larger risk of giving Reigns information on what Eliza did to Sebastian, that needed to remain a secret.

Rebecca was a lot of things, but she was not someone who betrayed her family's secrets--not like Jacob. She smiled and turned away from Reigns and clasped her hands together, her arms forming a structured V formation. A sign of holding back information.

"I believe she is behind the kidnapping and ransom of Sebastian, and... also the creation of his look-alike impostor. Only a witch could create something like that... so convincing." Rebecca said lying and keeping to the family's fake story of Sebastian's miraculous return. 

As Rebecca continued to explain her thoughts on the witch in their midst with her back turned away from the bars, she heard Reigns keys jingle and the lock of the cell release.

The bars then swung open. 

Rebecca turned towards the open cell door and smiled. 

"Give me the name of the witch." Reigns demanded.

Rebecca smiled, pleased with her work and walked over just before the threshold of the jail cell. She was prepared now to finally get her revenge on Eliza for all she did. 

"Eliza Goode. Eliza Goode is the witch. Find her on her own little island and her own little cabin and bring her to justice for us all." Rebecca said sinisterly. 

The name...THAT name. It rang in Gregory Reigns mind like a death knell from a church bell-tower. It was her, it was the one he had been searching for, the last witch of the coven from Salem that had destroyed his family. 

“You know her?” He asked eagerly. “She’s been here this whole time?” He added almost salivating. 

“She’s all yours.” Rebecca cooed. 

Gregory knew Eliza had been in the upper East Coast; he knew it all along but had such trouble locating her. Eliza's perfect hiding place was that she was unable to leave her own island. She was a poisoner of her own doing and that is why no one had ever really seen her anywhere else. No one from her past had ever attempted to find her on such a remote island like Goode Island. 

Reigns stepped aside allowing Rebecca to exit the cell. She walked slowly, stoically, and serenely happy with her work. She turned back and saw Reigns getting his things together to go out and find the witch. The shine of a sharp silver knife to kill  Eliza reflected in Rebecca's eyes as Reigns slid it into the leather sheath carved with scenes of witches being burned at the stake. 

"Oh, and tell dear Eliza I said goodbye." Rebecca said as she exited the jailhouse happy with what she had just done. 

Gregory nodded his head that he would, and reached down on his desk and opened THE CAPTURE OF THE BRIDES OF EVIL. She turned to a marked page on what to do next as he was set to make sure this witch was taken care of once and for all. 

1. GATHER YOUR PROTECTIONS.
2. PRAY FOR YOUR SAFTEY.
3. DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR VOICES, SINGING OR SPEAKING.
4. GATHER THE VILLAGERS, STORM THEIR LAYER.
5. TRAP. BURN WITH FIRE. KILL. 

Gregory closed the book. Took his bible and left the jail house set for the Siren's Call Pub where he'd gather towns-people to go with him to Goode Island. 

On this night--- a witch would finally find her justice at the hands of Constable Gregory Reigns and the people of Welshport Island. 

As Rebecca made her way home with Hamstead who was patiently waiting for her outside the jailhouse as any loyal personal butler would, she warned him to bring her into the mansion under the secret passage entrance at the back of the mansion. There, she'd slither her way into the mansion via the passages inside the body of the house vailed in secrecy.,

She did not want anyone to know that she'd been released especially Jacob, not yet. 

She wanted to rest. Breath. And wait for the moment to show herself to her family a free woman and let Eliza's fate take shape all on it's own now that it was in the hands of witch hunter Gregory Reigns. 

****

Evie makes a deadly choice 

Across the island in deep in the Westernridge Woods of the Tirymor Forest Matthew and Nikolas followed Alice to Lockwood Thicket where they would finally end the terror Alice feared would bring the end of all their lives.

She wanted the vampire, the creature of the night, Sebastian Lord gone from the earth once and for all.

Through the thick wooded area as the fog seeped around trees and bushes like rivers of white smoke the threesome quietly made their way in the darkness. Alice, her telepathy one of her most powerful attributes did not need a compass or any kind of honing device, she knew Lockwood Thicket was Sebastian's hideout away from Tirymor House, she had been there before. She had seen him there, She had even fought him there before. 

For his part, Nikolas was a trembling mess. He did not fear Sebastian out-right, although there was some of that in the shaking of his hands, but he feared how his beloved sister would feel when and if she discovered he was involved in the killing of her husband. He wanted Evie,  above all else, to be safe and away from the monster that Alice said was part of a larger, more robust curse that forced and created all of the dangerous evils that had occurred on the island.

Were it not for Alice and Matthew's Dænian ancestors cursing the settlers of Welshport there would be no insanity of Albert Lord, there would be no witch of Goode Island like Eliza, there would be no murder of Sabrina Spencer-----and there would no Vampire Sebastian. 

Killing Sebastian, so said Alice, was the only way to begin the repair of all of the terror brought on to them, and this, would break Evie's heart knowing Nik was involved, regardless of his good intensions. 

Slowly the three made their way in the dark forest and through the fog. Alice lead the way. They could hear the trees swaying in the light night breeze and the waves crashing on the near by shoreline. Crash after crash of the sea broke the silence of the forest and the wind.

Then Alice stopped in her tracks. They were close to Lockwood, but she could feel something watching them.

"What is it?" Matthew asked in a whisper behind her.

"Listen...." She replied.

Nik looked around. He couldn't hear what she heard.

Matthew began to breath heavily, he heard what his sister heard. He felt what his sister felt. His own powers, long oppressed and pushed to the back his mind, from time to time broke free when he felt stressed and worried. 

"Wolves." Matthew said to group in a hushed tone.

"They're smelling us. They work for the monster." Alice replied disappointed in the animal's choice of loyalty to Sebastian. 

"They're circling us." Matthew added.

Frightened Nik stepped closer to Matthew who smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, they wont hurt us." 

"How do you know that? Nik asked.

"They're only here to scout for Sebastian." Alice replied holding Nik's hand then reaching for her brother's.

She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath and let out a howl that matched any howl any wolf could breath on a night of a full moon. The wolves, ran off and hide in shadows allowing for the three to finally make it to Lockwood Thicket without being detected by Sebastian.

In the cabin Sebastian stared awaited his guests. Although he was not alerted by his scouting wolf pack, he himself could sense the tension coming his way. There would be no ambush, not on him

He got up from a dark red-velvet chair that was in front of a roaring fire and lifted his arms above his head. The cloak he was wearing surrounded his body that began to float in the middle of the front room of Lockwood Thicket. He closed the cloak around him creating a sort of dark cocoon of fabric that in seconds vanished in thin air. 

The room was empty now, just as the three slowly pushed open the door and found only a roaring fire and a half full wine glass filled with the blood of a hare from the woods. 

The three looked around. The four rooms of the Thicket empty. 

Nik felt nervous. He sensed danger, Alice too. 

"He's not here. We should go." Nik said.

"Shhh...." Alice replied. She could sense the wolves outsides still. They would not leave their master. 

Then, in a sudden lunge reappearing out of no where, The vampire attacked Alice knocking her to the floor. Nikolas screamed from fight and fell backwards onto a coffee table breaking it into pieces. Matthew too fell backwards and hit his head on the hard floor knocking hum unconscious. 

Alice and Sebastian began to struggled for power over each other, Sebastian over her hissing with his mouth gaping open in an attempt to bite her fresh neck.

Alice put her hands on his head and tried to push him back. She screamed and kept pushing and his teeth were growing longer and longer, so long that he was able to turn  his head slightly to the right pricking her on the wrist.

Matthew scrambled to his feet. Dizzy. Disoriented. Sebastian laughed at Alice's pain and sinisterly licked the blood dripping down her exposed tan skinned arm.

She released her hand from his forehead and punched him in the face knocking him over.

"You're here to kill me but the death toll will not be one. Not tonight." Sebastian hissed.

Alice stood up, her clothes somewhat torn and she stood strong. Sebastian too stood up, his breathing heavy. His heart pounding and his belly hungry for her blood.

"I killed you once. I can kill you again." She growled as he laughed at her reference of the events two days before. 

"Did you?” Sebastian asked sarcastically. “You tried to drown someone who is immortal you imbecile! I promise you only one thing, lots and lots of pain." Sebastian said as he then rushed Alice in such speed she did not see him coming. He hit her in the midsection knocking back down the the ground. 

She began to shake in his grip, shake violently, he opened his mouth and went down to bite in the throat and as he came to break her skin, she screamed such a scream that it shook the entire Thicket like an earthquake. An old unlit chandelier fell, picture frames and candles were knocked over.

Sebastian jumped off of Alice covering his ears from Alice's banshee like call.

Then Nik got up, Sebastian turned to him and lunged at his brother-in-law grabbing him from behind and pushing his head over. Nik's jugular vain exposed. 

"STOP!" Alice screamed.

Then Nik lifted his arm while Sebastian was distracted and leveled an elbow to his eye.

Sebastian became furious. His anger boiling in his body and he began to tap into the fury of all the dark shadows that surrounded and tempted him in his sleep. The good side of him had slowly become eclipsed with all the attempts on his life and now he was becoming a full-on creature of the night. Sebastian, in his alter-ego giant vampire transformation, jumped into the air; floating, flying. His arms stretched to four times their length and grabbed at Nickolas, gripping him in his arms and squeezed him tightly locking him in place. 

Nikolas screamed, Alice opened her mouth again to scream her banshee like yell but Sebastian's giant arm swung over knocking her over and unconscious just like Matthew was. 

Sebastian, now fully enveloped into his darkest most evil mind set was now set to kill Nikolas. The vampire felt threatened, attacked and was protecting his own layer filled with three intruders. The monster he had become was not the man Nik's sister Loved, he was something else. Something demonic and evil and blood thirsty. This transformation of Sebastian, floating in the air mouth filled with what seemed like thousands of sharp fangs dragged Nik closer and closer to them with this arms now shortening to a normal length. 

Nik tried to release himself but he was trapped. 

"LET HIM GOOOOOOOO!!!!!" A scream came from the front door.

It was Evie Jordan-Lord, Nik's sister and Sebastian's beleaguered wife. She had come to stay the night with her husband and was shocked to find him in this monstrous form attempting to kill her own brother. 

"Evie." Sebastian said in a quiet more normal voice.

"Let Nikolas go, let him go NOW!" She yelled.

Sebastian began to reform into his normal vampire state almost human. His eyes still gray his skin still cold, but he was now back to the face Evie recognized, but he still had Nikolas trapped in  his grips.

"I won't let him hurt me, this is what they wanted. To kill me! Don't you see! They wanted to kill me!" Sebastian told his wife.

"Sebastian you have to stop this. Look around you. You're hurting people left and right and it cannot continue." Evie said begging for her brother's life. "You cannot hurt him. Let him go." 

Matthew came to and slumped over to his sister Alice and shook her to wake her. 

"No. I can't let them win and try and destroy me again. I have to do this Evie. I have to save myself so that we can be together. I'm sorry." Sebastian said opening his mouth, pushing the weak Nikolas's head over ready to bite down and kill him.

Evie screamed and grabbed a broken off piece of the coffee table Nik broke in a fall. She lunged at Sebastian with the sharp broke off table leg in her hand. Sebastian saw his wife coming at him with the sharp object and tossed Nik to the floor, Evie jumped on Sebastian, the two fell to the ground.

Evie was on top and she drove the stake into her own husband's chest. 

Blood poured from his body. He yelled, the wolves out side howled. The wind blew over the Thicket like a hurricane. The wolves scratched at the door and at the walls. 

Sebastian then return to his human form like he looked before Eliza turned him into this monster.

His eyes, good and kind. Amber toned. He looked into Evie's blue eyes, her hair falling down over her face like a cascade of wisteria vines of browns and gold. 

He touched her face and felt her heart beat...then another heart beat. 

He felt two heartbeats. Evie's and the small child she was carrying in her stomach. His child. 

"A baby." he said in a whisper as blood came from his lips. 

Evie cried and held down the stake in his chest, saving her brother, then she turned the stake driving it in deeper in to his chest ending it. 

Then, Sebastian vanished into a pile of ash. 

"Are you ok??????????" Nikolas asked rushing over to his sister who was devastated in tears on the pile of her husband's as that suddenly vanished into nothing. "You saved me." He said hugging her.

"I love you Nikky. I love you." She said hugging him back.

"You saved us all." Alice said as Matthew helped her up.

"You've done something incredible Evie. You've saved us, all of us. The world even." Matthew said as Evie cried in her brother's arms.

A widow---once more. 

 ****

Charlotte & the spirit of Sabrina 

Dawn approached. The sun cracked the dark sky filling it with an orange and purple glow. The seagulls swarmed the shore following the early morning fishing fleets leaving Welshport's docks headed out to the open blue sea for the morning's catch.

In her bed, slowly waking to the bright morning light was Charlotte Lord. She had locked her mind off for three days. Nothing from Sabrina, the spirit of her aunt that dwelled in her.

Sabrina was silent, angry in her silence but silent none the less.

Charlotte yawned in her her bed. Her white sheets. Her perfect white nightgown.

Then, in her perfect long blonde hair, a smear of blood. 

Charlotte then saw blood on her hands. And she began to panic. Where was it coming from? Where was the blood coming from? She quickly jumped out of her white bed and rushed to a long oval shaped mirror on a stand that was tilted towards the window reflecting the sunlight back to the outdoors.

Charlotte yanked the mirror on one side so that if flipped over on it's hinged so that it now faced her 10 year old face.

A huge dark, blood in the center of her chest. 

She searched her body, there was no wound. Nothing. No cuts. Nothing.

Charlotte closed her eyes and opened her mind allowing Sabrina to awaken.

A jolt of energy vibrated within the young woman's body. Sabrina was furious.

"HOW COULD YOU Charlotte!!! We are supposed to work together, you and I. Together!" Sabrina's ghost said appearing in the mirror to Charlotte.

"Look. Look!!" Charlotte said ignoring Sabrina's anger.

Sabrina gasped at the sight blood but from the way the blood had stained the nightgown she could tell there was no wound, that Charlotte was safe and unharmed yet, the blood came from somewhere. Then, suddenly in the reflection, Sabrina too started to see a blood stain on her own white dress. But this time, there was a wound in the center of her body. The wound was not painful, it was just something in the center of her showing her where something, had happened--- to Sebastian.

"Something has happened to him." Sabrina said.

"Who?" Charlotte asked changing into clean clothes.

"My son." Sabrina said, her voice saddened by the feeling of loss coming into her ghostly mind. "He's... he's different. Not the same, something, I don't understand." Sabrina said, her mind racing as if all the information from the past days when Charlotte closed her off came flooding into her ghostly mind.

"Is this his blood?" Charlotte asked now in a fresh dress.

"I think he's gone. Sebastian is gone." Sabrina said. "Charlotte, listen to me. Come here. LISTEN TO ME!" Sabrina shouted from the mirror, Charlotte came over and sat on the floor and started into the mirror at her aunt. "Our family is on the brink, my darling. Something is afoot and I cannot understand it. I feel as thought Sebastian is gone, but I don't truly understand how? He cannot be because he is like me. Something that cannot just be vanquished so easily."

"What do we do? What should I do?" Charlotte asked. 

"I have to think. I have to process. This is why you should never ever take me away like you did for so long! There isn't enough time for me to plan, I can't contemplate all of this all at once." Sabrina said sounding somewhat stressed with all the information streaming from Charlotte's mind into her like a wild stream gushing thousands of gallons of water into the sea. 

"I can ask Evie to bring him to us tonight. Would that help?" Charlotte asked.

"No. Maybe. I don't know. Charlotte, I can't think. Something has happened, and ... I feel it with my sister as well. Eliza is in danger. My god child, the world has gone to hell in the days that you blocked me in your mind. We, we have to rest. I have to rest." The spirit said.

Then, Celeste came into the room. She had come to get Charlotte up for the day. Seeing Sabrina, the ghostly dead-woman in the mirror startled her. 

"You shouldn't be here." Celeste said sternly. 

"There are things happening out of your control, Celeste, I need to take charge and make them right. Its been too many days. I need to take charge." Sabrina said.

"Be nice to Celeste she's having my baby brother or sister." Charlotte said sweetly going over and hugging Celeste.

Sabrina turned her ghostly head back to the governess. Her face showed disdain and anger. 

"You are keeping the child?" Sabrina said, knowing Celeste was giving herbs to help end the pregnancy.

"This is none of your concern. The child will be safe. I promised myself this and I have no worries that Jacob will harm it." Celeste confirmed.

"And what about you? Do you feel safe having Jacob's child?" Sabrina wondered. 

"I don't fear him any more." Celeste added.

"Foolish girl!!! Everything has become out of hand. EVERYTHING!" Sabrina said angrily. "You are too far now, too far along now. You must always make sure whatever happens that Jacob does not corrupt this child. Think of Charlotte, think of what he did to Mary. Think of what he could and would do to you if he feels you will cross him. YOU must, absolutely must, stay on top of Jacob, his treachery knows no bounds." Sabrina warned, knowing full well how Jacob worked after being one of his first victims. 

"Sabrina, you should think about finding your way.... out. Out of this never ending cycle you live in. There is no way out for you and the rest of us here, on this side, have to deal with things ourselves. Please... think about that. Think of what you are doing to poor Charlotte while you live in her. She has to be free of you and in a way we all do. There is truly nothing you can do from where you are that will help us. No more." Celeste said.

Sabrina went silent and after a few seconds vanished from Charlotte's mirror and back into her mind.

"Charlotte, darling, get dressed for the day ok? I'll come back in a moment to brush your hair." Celeste said leaving Charlotte to her own devices. "Thank about closing her off again, ok? Maybe forever." She added.

Charlotte frowned. She loved her aunt Sabrina but at the same time she worried that her presence in their world was creating more friction that helping. It was hard for the young girl to manage everything that was coming at her. The world, as it seemed, was spinning out of control. 

Then, Sabrina appeared again in the mirror when Celeste left. 

"Charlotte, listen to me. Listen to me my sweet girl..... under no circumstances should Celeste have this child. It will ruin us all." Sabrina's ghostly voice said.

"What? Why?" Charlotte replied heartbroken and not understanding. 

"Because this birth will only empower your father further, I want you to do something and I want you to to do it soon. I can help you, but you have to promise me you will do it." Sabrina asked.

"What?" the young girl asked.

Sabrina came out of the mirror in a fog of blue light, she swirled in the air and came up to Charlotte's diamond studded ear and whispered her secret plan, the plan she devised was so heinous, Charlotte burst into tears immediately and screamed she would not help her. 

"I WON'T I WON'T I WON'T!!" The young girl said. "And if you do do this Aunty, I will shut you off, I will! I will do it and I'll do it forever!!" Charlotte threatened. 

Sabrina then knew, that if she too wanted to get her revenge on Jacob, and find out what was happening with her son Sebastian, she would have to take care of Celeste and the baby herself. 

No more little girl games. 

B3/Ch7: ACCUSATIONS OF APPARITIONS

The wolves hunt Sebastian 

Sebastian floated lifelessly in the deep ocean.

His face was pale and had tiny little bubbles around his nostrils and lips. His hair sway with the undercurrent of the sea as tiny little silver fish swirled around his body as if he were a fresh new coral they wanted to explore. 

The greens and blues of the ocean water turned deeper into a darkness the further Sebastian's body sank. His body turned colder and colder. 

On the surface, Alice stepped on to shore. Her boy now back to it's human form. Her clothes heavy with the sea in each stitch of her dress. She felt heavy, so heavy, as she dragged her self slowly up the sandy beach dragging her long dress train behind. 

She smiled as the moon sang it's glorious cool color over her mocha skin. 

He was gone. She had done it, and perhaps saved all who lived on the island from a disastrous end by the vampire the monster, the creature of the night Sebastian Lord. 

Back in the sea, as Alice's powers slowly became weaker over Sebastian, his eyes snapped open

He was ALIVE!

He saw how far he had sank. The cold ocean water was truly beginning to turn his blood to ice. He moved, but felt no movement. He couldn't breath, he felt the string of death coming into his body--tighter and tighter the vice of the reaper latched on to Sebastian's throat. 

He lowered his arms, began to move his legs back and fourth in the water and in seconds began to move up towards the surface, closer and close and closer he got, the light starting to peak towards his cold pale face. 

And then he broke through. 

The relief of air to his lungs was instant. He bobbed up and down in the ocean. He could see the lights of the shore sparkling in the near distance. He floated there breathing. In and out. In and out. In and out. 

He swam to shore towards the tinkle of village lights and followed the sound of the fog horns of the boats docking on shore. Then he got to shore, his strength waning. he made it to the edge of the Westernridge Woods of Tirymôr Forest. He was soaking wet. Cold. And Angry. 

As he walked through the dark forest, guided by the light of the full moon, Sebastian began to feel as if he were watched. He stopped in the center of an open area that was encircled by  large pine trees. He felt safe in open areas even in the dark. The fog, the very thick Welshport fog, rolled over the ground at his knee. He looked to his left as a sound came from the trees.

Then to his right, more sound. 

Was it two people watching?

Then another. 

Three people? 

But then, in the darkness in all three directions, he saw the glowing of three pairs of red eyes and low growls of hungry wolf bellies.

The wolves, howled in the night and revealed themselves to Sebastian. They snarled at him, desperate for his flesh. The began to circle him like shark in the water. He watched them each timing their attack in their mind, each ready to pounce on his young body to eat from. 

Growls, more snarls, each wolf more and more foaming at the mouth than the next.

But this was no ordinary prey that they had found, this was a man, a creature even just like then. Hungry and angry. Anger that seeped from all their pours, and fangs; the wolves and Sebastian alike. He was not what they anticipated and when one of the three wolves finally lunged at Sebastian to rip the flesh from his arms, he grabbed it by the neck, fell to his knees with the wolves biting and snapping at him and in the fog Sebastian opened his mouth revealing his own fangs and hissed and bit down on the wolf piercing its warm skin allowing it's blood to seep into Sebastian's thirsty mouth. 

The wolf yelped in pain and fear---mostly fear--and died in Sebastian's clutches.

The other two wolves stopped in their tracks watching the merciless death of their pack leader, then they walked up to Sebastian, their tails between their legs and licked the blood off his face.

And in those moments, as the sun began to rise, all Sebastian wanted to do was to be back in his safe place of Lockwood Thicket. More wolves began coming out of the shade of the surrounding trees. They all seemed to kowtow to Sebastian, knowing he was the dominant force in the forest now, and the entire pack of wolves accompanied Sebastian back to Lockwood Thicket their  new leader, the human the village would soon fear more than the bite of a wolf. 

****

Constable Reigns interrupts the Lord family dinner

The light from the cool afternoon sun entered the main parlor of Tirymôr House through a slightly pulled drape that hung on either side of a large window that looked out on to a garden that was personally designed by Rebecca Lord herself.

In the parlor Rebecca eager awaited a personal guest she had summoned to the mansion, to the point she had even sent Hamstead down to the village to drive the person up to the house himself.

Rebecca was done playing games, and she was about to set off a string of events that would ultimately lead to what she hoped would be the end of Eliza Goode's meddling in her family once and for all.

As the family, Rebecca, her maid Georgina, Jacob in his chair, Evie reading a book, Celeste and Charlotte all sat in various states of pre-dinner entertainment in the parlor--some reading by gas-lamp, or like Rebecca fiddling with her knitting, the sound of footsteps could be heard coming down the marble hallway towards the parlor. 

Rebecca stood up from her plush sofa and dropped the knitting on the cushion beside her. 

Jacob looked up from his book and furrowed his brow unsure of what was happening.

Then, Hamstead entered with Constable Gregory Reigns and his deputy Filipe Braga. 

"The Constable Madam." Hamstead announced after doing his duty in bringing in the head of the island's law enforcement. 

"Mrs. Lord," Gregory said greeting Rebecca with a head bow. "Mr. Lord," He greeted Jacob. "what was so important that you needed to have me chauffeured all the way up here in such a forceful way? It was as if Mr. Hamstead himself were the constable." 

"Mother? What's going on?" Jacob asked dropping the newspaper in his lap.

"I apologize if there was any inconvenience Constable, but I wanted you to give us a personal update on Christian Evans murder and my son's attempted murder. We haven't heard anything yet." Rebecca said.

"As you know Mrs. Lord, with Mr. Lord's memory being so fragmented of that night and no witnesses, I've had a difficult time pinning the crime on one person. But I am definitely getting there." Gregory said without mentioning Celeste's name, the person who he was most sure did it. 

"That's what I suspected." Rebecca replied.

"Mother why would you call the constable over here for this? He should be able to do his job and I will gladly do what I can to help as soon as I begin remembering what happened. This seems a bit out of the ordinary and, perhaps a bit strange to interfere this way." Jacob said still faking his amnesia. 

Evie, Celeste, Georgina and Charlotte all look at each other feeling out of place. 

Filipe looked over at Celeste and smiled, she smiled back and covered her growing baby stomach to shield it from other people's eyes. 

"The constable may not need your memory because I know who did this you and to Christian." Rebecca said shocking the room/

"What do you mean you know Ma'am?" Reigns questioned as he and Rebecca both took a seat on the luxurious furniture in the Lord family parlor opposite each other. 

"I have it on good authority that the person you're searching for, the person who has done this to my son and to that poor boy Christian Evans is a woman who's had it out for this family for a very long time. This crime was aimed at my son but was meant to hurt me. Christian was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shooter is Eliza Goode. She's the one who did this. She and her daughter Mary, who if you recall, shot Sebastian, have wanted this family in their graves for decades. Its her that you need to arrest. It's her that needs to rot in a jail cell for the rest of her life. Her daughter may have escaped justice by choosing death, but her mother should not get away so easily. You should arrest her. Today!" Rebecca announced once again shocking the room into a fervor of talk. 

Questions came at Rebecca from left and right, confusion, and shock whirled in noise into the air. Charlotte began to tear up, knowing Eliza was her grandmother. 

"My god! Those women!" Celeste said to Reigns surprise as he had been waiting to trap Celeste as the culprit. 

"Mrs. Lord are you sure?" Evie asked in disbelief. 

"How? ... How???" Jacob wondered in sincere confusion on how his mother could know. 

"What evidence do you have?" Reigns asked attempting to make a solid case, still believing his hunch that Celeste had done the shooting was the true criminal and had been waiting for Filipe to help trap her.

"It's obvious! Mary shot Sebastian, Eliza shot Jacob and Christian. This is a chain of crimes that I believe was to have began and ended at Sebastian and Evie's wedding. I believe this was the ultimate plot to have us all killed one by one." Rebecca said, her lie burning the tip of her tongue, yet the irony was she was actually unknowingly correct. 

"We would need something substantial to make an arrest." Filipe added happy that it Rebecca accused someone that wasn't Celeste as Reigns had suspected. 

Rebecca had no idea who really shot Jacob, her accusation was purely on attempting to use her power to jail Eliza for what she did all those years ago when Rebecca's child died. This was an attempt to pervert the justice system to have an innocent person arrested and accused of a horrible crime.

Yet--- it was actually accurate, but no one knew that, not even Rebecca. 

Georgina's stomach became as tight as a sailors knot. Her mother Eliza was now in danger and all she could do was sit there and pretend to be just as shocked and angry as the others. Rebecca was determined to have the woman captured off her island and brought to justice; even Jacob who had truly no idea what was happening felt confused by his mother's sudden wade into the waters of criminal justice where she had no place being. 

"Mrs. Lord, I assure you, if you had proof I would head over to Goode Island and make sure she was taken in and taken care of but there is no proof of this. We have to have proof." Reigns said.

"Go, go to her house, Go there and I'm sure you'll find something that will convince you that my hunch is correct. Couldn't you at least go there and arrest her for aiding and abetting her daughter Mary's escape? That woman got away with Sebastian's murder!" Rebecca exclaimed.

"But Sebastian wasn't murdered." Reigns replied confused.

"That's correct." Filipe added motioning over to Evie with his eyes.

"What?" Rebecca said losing her own place in the story.

"That right, he wasn't." Evie replied shooting Rebecca a look to remind her of their story about Sebastian's disappearance and return. 

"Your own publication said that someone kidnapped Sebastian and replaced him with some look-alike person in an effort to steal the family fortune, the paper said the look-alike was the one killed not Sebastian." Reigns added.

Jacob, Evie and Rebecca looked at each other and paused. Jacob DID remember Sebastian and his return and the story Rebecca had concocted about his miraculous revival. He knew the truth about his nephew's "affliction", what was most important was that he also knew he was the one behind Sebastian's shooting and attempted murder: HE WAS.

"That's what she means, surly, isn't that right Mrs. Lord. Go on.. explain." Evie said feeling uneasy with the entire situation. 

"This is all just going out of control." Jacob said attempting to cool the room. "Mother, you don't know what you're talking about." 

"No! She doesn't!" Georgina said surprising the room with her outburst. "It wasn't Eliza Goode who did this to Mr. Lord and Mr. Evans. I know who did, I know who did this and I have to finally tell the truth." She added to everyone's shock and gasps. 

"Georgina what are you doing?" Rebecca asked of her personal maid unaware of her knowing anything about the crime.

But Georgina felt trapped, she was actually Mary living in another woman's body. And Mary didn't want her mother Eliza to go to prison. She didn't know what Rebecca thought she knew, she had no clue of that, but what she did know was that Rebecca didn't have the proof Constable Reigns needed and if he did go to Goode island he was sure to find the gun.

Mary, in Georgina's body, had to think fast to protect her mother and thus herself. 

"It was...." Georgina said pausing unable to think for a split second. Then, out of the corner of her eye she saw Celeste. "IT WAS HER!" 

"WHAT?" Celeste shouted standing straight up from her chair. "What are you talking about?" 

Filipe panicked. 

"Georgina, No!" Evie shouted. 

"That's impossible." Filipe added to Reigns annoyance. 

Georgina, her mind racing to protect Eliza finger-pointed the first person she could think of, and although the had no real proof either, she had something else on her side: a better lie that Rebecca's.

"I saw her leaving the mansion the night of the shooting. She was angry. She was upset and she had a reason to shoot Mr. Lord. Ask her! Ask her!" Georgina said, her words swirling together and coming out in fast motions. 

"THAT IS A LIE!" Celeste shouted back.

"Daddy???" Charlotte said running to her father's side.

 "Miss Kent, do you have proof of this yourself?" Reigns asked hoping she did as this helped his case about Celeste. 

"She had a gun." Georgina said lying.

"I have never had a gun in my whole life! This is outrageous. This never happened." Celeste said. 

"Detective Reigns this is all preposterous. Georgina's proof is just as lacking as Mrs. Lord's proof. We're basically at the exact same place as we were at the beginning of all this. No one knows who did it. No one." Evie said, attempting to set everyone straight. 

"You were leaving the mansion that night, late, there was something in your hand. You were angry." Georgina began again, ignoring Evie and just before Reigns slowly pulled out his cuffs. 

"I leave the mansion every night. I go home. I always go home." Celeste said to Reigns' suspicion. 

Constable Reigns had suspected Celeste the whole time. He knew there was something about her and had suspected that her worry that the secrets of her own family would cause trouble for her was the motive. She wanted to keep her half-sibling's paternity a secret and Jacob was blackmailing her with that information. Reigns knew this, he had know this for a long time and was just days away from connecting the dots, but now Georgina's supposed eye-witness to her leaving with a gun that night was perfect for his case.

"Where's the gun now Ms DeViana?" Reigns asked stoically. 

"I have no gun! This woman is lying!" Celeste shouted back.

"Celeste would not hurt daddy." Charlotte said. 

"But I saw it." Georgina said. 

"Are you sure? You're absolutely sure Celeste is who you saw?" Filipe asked. 

Rebecca's eyes were spinning. She had set off a strange set of accusations that she did not anticipate. She felt sick to her stomach watching Celeste suddenly become the one in Reigns cross-hairs. This wasn't what she had planned, she wanted her words to be used against Eliza, Eliza was was the one she wanted to suffer. Not Celeste. 

It had gone off the rails and all Rebecca could do was sit back on her sofa and watch it crumble all around her. 

"Perhaps we should discuss this in the village, shall we?" Reigns said feeding into Georgina's lie who was hoping she didn't have to resort to using her own set of magic to convince the Constable of her tale. 

Jacob knew that Celeste was more than capable of doing it, and God knows he had plenty of motive but it didn't matter to Jacob, he didn't want her to go to jail regardless. 

Then, as Constable Reigns lifted the handcuffs up that he was about to lock Celeste's hands in Jacob began to panic. He didn't know who shot him, but he also didn't want the mother of his unborn child to go to jail for something she perhaps didn't do. 

"I... I...............I'm unwell." Jacob said in his chair.

Jacob's eyes rolled to the back of his head. He began to shake. His whole body, shook into tremors from head to feet. He began to sweat and spit from his mouth. His slumped over and fell onto the floor as Rebecca and Georgina screamed and went to down to the floor to help him up.

"Jacob? Jacob!!!" Rebecca screamed slapping is face.

Reigns quickly turned back to Jacob on the floor and helped roll him over. They poured cold water from a pitcher on a side table on his face and the tremors stopped. 

"Mr. Lord??" Reigns said attempting to gain Jacob's attention away from the seizure. 

"Turn him over, turn him over." Filipe said helping. 

Jacob opened his eyes. His hands were cold and sweaty. The helped him back up to the chair he was in and he looked around the room. Once side his mother and her maid Georgina (who he didn't know was actually his ex Mary in a new body), on the other his daughter Charlotte clinging to her Governess Celeste, DeViana, a woman he was so madly in love with and who was carrying his child. Reigns was in the center of the room staring at him.

"Mr Lord?" Reigns asked again as the light of the gas-lamps flickered on all their faces.

"Should I call Dr. Ward?" Hamstead asked stepping back into the room after hearing all the commotion.

"I remember!!!" Jacob said suddenly to a hushed room. "I know who shot Christian and I. I know!" Jacob said. 

"WHO! WHO DID IT!" Reigns asked eager to finally get to the truth. "Was it Celeste?" 

"Was it Eliza?" Rebecca asking, hoping her lie would come true. 

Then Jacob, fresh off his seizer that he faked just like he had faked his amnesia looked at his mother and snarled at her. 

Rebecca tilted her head to the side, her body became tight feeling strange receiving that look from Jacob. 

"What is it Jacob?" Reigns asked noting the strange look in Jacob's eye to his mother.

"It was her. IT WAS MY MOTHER REBECCA!!" 

The room again gasped. 

"JACOB!" Evie gasped. “You’re mistaken!”

"Are you sure?" Reigns asked, just as shocked as everyone else.

"Jacob, what are you doing? What are you saying???" Rebecca asked in panic. 

"I remember it like it was yesterday and I have no doubt in my mind that it was her. I saw her face in the shadows and I know it was her." Jacob said lying, lying to protect Celeste who he was beginning to believe was the culprit. 

"LIAR!" Rebecca shouted just before she leaned over, whipped her arm back across her chest and whipping her arm back slapping Jacob across the face with the back of her hand. Her wedding ring scratching the side of his face in the process.

"Gamma! GAMMA!!" Charlotte screamed as Celeste held her back. 

"Come with me Mrs. Lord." Reigns said grabbing Rebecca by the arm. 

"Let go! LET ME GO! This is all a lie. He's lying!" Rebecca said finally telling the truth, her own plan of blaming someone else for the crime blowing up in her face.

Filipe pulled Rebecca out of the room and out of sight leaving the others in shock.

"You can all say nothing. Nothing at all. Let us investigate and interrogate her and make sure everything lines up. No word will come from my office until then. Agreed?" Reigns ordered as everyone nodded in agreement before he left to follow Filipe out of the room with their suspect. 

"I don't know what to say." Celeste said as they all took a breath. 

"You're innocent. That's all that matters." Jacob replied. "Now justice will be settled."

"Will it?" Evie asked. "Jacob, you are SURE your mother did this?" She asked.

"Why would I lie, she's my mother." Jacob replied.

Evie squinted not believing him. She looked over at Celeste who felt strangely thankfully for Jacob's sudden return of memory, thankful that she was no longer implicated, but thankful for Jacob for saving her. She almost felt grateful to him.

"Georgina, come. We'll have to get things for Mrs. Lord while she's in the village. We cannot allow her to be treated like some common criminals." Evie said, brushing off Jacob's assertion that he did the right thing.

"But she is Evie, she shot me in cold blood and killed your lover Christian. Thank god my memory came back. I remember everything now. Even that bit of Christian being your dirty lover." Jacob snarled. 

Evie lunged at Jacob and she too slapped him across the face, this time opened handed and wide on the opposite cheek Rebecca had landed on. 

"Who ever did this to you, and I don't believe for one second it was your mother, should have finished the job and left you in a grave yourself. Come Georgina!" Evie said angrily as she and the maid quickly left to gather belongings for Rebecca. 

Jacob then, slowly got up from his chair, aching from his healing gunshot wound, aching from his two laps to the face, and waddled over to the other sofa where Celeste and Charlotte were huddled together. 

"You're safe." He said to Celeste. "You'll both always be safe." He added placing his hand on her baby bump. 

****

Sebastian visits Evie 

The following evening, the fire place in Evie's private room flickered in the darkness of the room. The curtains were pulled making the room darker than it actually was outside where the moon was hidden by the thick overcast of the sky that looked like giant mounds of gray cotton floating over the island.

Evie, in a dark dress with gold trim with large dark purple birds in the fabric, picked up a brass candle stick holder and looped one of her lace gloved fingers into the circular grip and lit the thick white candle so that it brightened her way to the window where she peeped out onto the yard 3 floors below.

Then, the wall on the other side of her room that was painted like a forest of trees slid open. She turned, allowing the light of her candle to flow over to where the wall had separated and there, in the shadows of the open passage was Sebastian Lord freshly alive from his two near death experiences: One by Alice Winterborn, a second by the wolves of the forest.

"Hello my love." Sebastian said slowly walking over to his bride and kissed her deeply and passionately on the lips. She blushed and kissed him again. His amber colored eyes so heavenly to her to own gaze. She had missed him in the day when the sun was up. A half lived relationship was such a struggle for her. But she was trying to make their relationship work. God knows she was trying, especially now that she suspected she was, like Celeste, pregnant with Sebastian's child, a new heir to the Lord family fortune. 

Evie, although happy Sebastian was with her again, had terrible news for him.

"What is it?" He asked her noticing her quick change in mood.

"I'm afraid dinner has to be cancelled tonight. Something has happened." She replied mentioning their dinner date at Tirymôr before sitting herself down on a sofa near the window and the fire place. 

Sebastian followed her to the sofa thinking she perhaps knew about his violet confrontation with her friend Alice Winterborn the night before.

"What is it? What's happened?" He asked, pretending still not to know.

"It's Jacob." She replied to his surprise. "He's remembered the night he was shot, at least that's what he says. He's named the person that shot him Sebastian, he's named your grandmother." Evie explained.

"My grandmother? She would never! Where is she??" Sebastian replied leaping to his feet furious with the news.

"Sebastian calm down, please. She's  not here. Reigns took her to the village earlier and I suppose he's been questioning her." Evie replied.

"There is no way Rebecca did what Jacob says she did. No Way! How can we believe him after all he's done? How?" Sebastian replied, his tone of voice becoming stained and angry.

"Well he did, and now we have to wait until Reigns is done questioning her to clear her. I don't believe him either, but the authorities have to go with what the only witness who's living has to say. If he says she did it, they have to believe him." Evie said now standing with Sebastian who's fists were balled up and shaking.

"If all I do for the rest of my god forsaken life is destroy that man then it will be a life well lived. I will crush his body in my bare hands and beat him to a pulp for his lies, for his deceit for all he's done. FOR ALL HE's DONE!!!" Sebastian said throwing one of his fists into a large framed painting and blasting through the wall of Evie's room.

"SEBASTIAN!" She shouted. "You can't behave this way." She added.

He turned to her, his face had changed again, it was no longer the loving face that stepped through the secret passage just moments ago. It was cold, sullen and frightening in the shadows that were cast by the candle light. 

"I want his blood, I want his blood!!!" Sebastian growled.

"No! Stop this! Listen to me, stop this right now! We have to have cooler heads. Jacob is a liar and I don't believe him for one second but you cannot go around showing this side of you, this..." She paused before saying something that would anger him.

"This what Evie? What were you going to say? This 'monster'? This is what I am now, this is what I am forever. You said you understood and would stand by me and now I can sense your doubts...its so clear. Your heart rate is up. Your hands shake when you see me, they do not hold me the way they used to. Even when we make love, I can tell you hold back." Sebastian said, his mouth sharp with teeth searching got flesh to pierce. 

"I love you Sebastian, I do, but the way things change you so quickly, the way you flip from the kind man I feel in love with to the cold person you are now, it is an adjustment." She said stepping back, and when she did she stepped on the back hem of her long dark dress. She fell backwards and Sebastian, with lightening speed caught her in he fall.

She was now laying backwards in his arms, his face still cold, his eyes had gone from warm amber to pale gray. She could feel the coldness of his arms locked around her warm body. She winced and pushed at his shoulders signaling she wanted him to leg go.

"You cannot even bare for touch." he said lifting her up from the falling position.

"Sebastian we need to focus on your grandmother and making sure this crime is not pinned on her. Jacob cannot be allowed to continue to do the things he's done in the past. We now know his tricks and what he's capable of, we can make sure---" Evie said before Sebastian loudly roared over her voice.

"ENOUUUUUGH!!!" 

She froze in fear.

"I don't want to talk about him any more. I don't want anything anymore but YOU! To hell with this family and their treachery. I only want you!!" Sebastian said, throwing his arm across the fireplace mantle ejecting all of the knickknacks, photos, un unlit candle and a vase with fresh red roses all to the floor of the room.

Evie watched as the water from the flower vase soaked into the carpet. She took a deep breath and carefully walked over to the mess Sebastian had made. 

Her back was to him. He was breathing hard, the light of the fireplace in front of him warmed his cold body. His mouth still showing his fangs.

"Where are you going? DO NOT turn your back on me Evangeline?" he snarled, the darkness that Alice had so warned her about showing up in spades. 

Evie turned back and she was crying. She was shaking. His anger, his dark nature was becoming more and more overpowering. She could see there was something out of control about Sebastian, something she could not heal, something she could not fix, something she could not love away. It was everything Alice, he friend had told her would happen. 

Alice, so deep in her powers was right, and Evie was seeing Sebastian's shadowy vampire side coming out more and more.

Her tears fell over her peach toned cheeks. She only shook her head and opened the door to her private room and made her way out running down the red carpeted hallway passed Georgina who was coming to see her.

"Evie!" Georgina shouted trying to stop her in the hall with no success. Georgina then entered the room and found Sebastian leaning over the fire place surrounded by the mess his anger had made.

"What have you done?" She asked her cousin Sebastian. 

"Leave me alone Mary." He said using her real name.

"Did you hurt Evie?" She asked stepping over the roses in her pink dress who's fabric was ironically covered in pink roses.

"Perhaps her feelings." Sebastian said under his breath. "What's this of my grandmother shooting Jacob? You... you're powers aren't as strong as your mother's but you can still see the truth of what happened can't you? Is it true, did she try to kill him and kill Christian?" He added.

"I don't see those types of things. But... it could be true that she did it." Georgina said lying, as she knew her own mother had sent her spirit to kill Jacob. 

"Are you sure?" Sebastian said squinting at her suspiciously, his own truth detector working over time.

"We don't have time to discuss this, you need to leave Tirymôr, and I would suggest not returning until this matter is sorted out." She warned.

"Why?" 

"It's Jacob. I fear with his memory returned we have a lot more to fear than just accusations of murder. You could be on the chopping block next. He's tried before, he could try again." She said.

"As everyone keeps reminding me Mary, but I am not the same person I was when Jacob convinced you to shoot me." He said as she lifted a brow somewhat embarrassed of that memory. "Jacob cannot hurt me." He added.

"Never the less, your own temper will clearly be your down fall. Look at this room! Look at the mess you've made! You'll only create more of a problem and lose Evangeline forever. Is that what you want Sebastian? Is that what my mother gave up so much for so that you could come back to life? Is this the type of man your mother would be proud of?" Georgina said, her words hitting Sebastian over and over again one after the other and one more painful than the next.

No other word hurt him more than when she mentioned his dead mother Sabrina. It stabbed him, this use, it went into his heart like a flaming hot knife and he felt Georgina's disappointment in his twist that so called knife deeper and deeper into him with her words.

This again infuriated him. He turned, mouth open, fangs out. He lunged at her screaming at her to never speak of his mother.

She gasped and lifted her arm in the hair with her had open, fingers spread far apart and there in Evie's dark room she used her powers for the first time freezing Sebastian in mid air with his mouth open showing her the monster her mother made.

Georgina, who at first had her face turned so she would not see what was to come then realized she was unharmed. She opened her eyes and turned back to where Sebastian was standing. He was like  a statue floating in the center of the room with only his eyes given the ability to move. She circled him looking at his body in wonder and surprise that she had accomplished it.

"Cousin, you need to reign this anger in." She said sincerely concerned for him. "If you don't, you'll only find the darkness will take over you completely. I pray that it'll happen, because you need it to happen. You and I are still a team, I will not let that up, but you have to help me too. Keep your calm. Stay away from Tirymôr and Jacob. It's the only way we can keep you safe for now." She said.

His body, while frozen in this state began to calm. His teeth vanished. His eyes turned back to amber and his skin warmed to the touch. Georgina saw all of this happen with her own eyes and then, she snapped her fingers releasing him from her magical grip.

"I don't know how." He said softly, almost childlike. 

"You must try, my sweet boy, you must try." She said caressing her cousin's cheek. 

He took a breath, feeling exhausted from this mot recent emotional up-and-down. 

"Leave me. Please. Just leave me with my thoughts, I have to piece together what I will do about Evie, I've hurt her, I've frightened her. Please, just go, let me figure this all out." He said, slumping down to the floor and attempting to clean up the mess he had made. 

She nodded that she would leave and just before she did, she turned back around the door and watched him cry while he put the tossed down flowers back into their waterless vase. She felt pity on him. He was a man trapped between his lost life of a normal person and this creature her mother created to bring him back from beyond the grave. She could see the torment he was under as the constant battle between the good of his heart and the evil of his mind were at war deep inside of him. Evie was seeing it too, it was so powerful and seeping out into his relationships. All Georgina could do was allow him to literally and figuratively pick up the pieces of his damaged world. 

Georgina walked away from the room Sebastian was left in and quietly made her way back down the hall towards her own apartments and as she did so Nikolas Jordan, Evie's brother, was sneaking around the shadows passed the open door where Sebastian was. He saw his brother-in-law there, on his knees cleaning up the mess and then Nik made his way towards the mouth of the top of the stairs that lead down three floors to the marble foyer below.

Nik too had things to do that night. He was sneaking out with Albert's journal and headed to see the Winterborn siblings with news of what he had found. 

****

Alice & Matthew in their apartment 

At his small apartment in the village Matthew Winterborn struggled to keep his nerves in check. He was thinking about Evie Jordan-Lord. He couldn't get his mind off of the beautiful woman and how much his instincts wanted to protect her, and not just from Sebastian but also from his own sister's strange obsession in ridding the world of Sebastian.

One thing was sure for Matthew, Evie was the victim in all of the swelling darkness on the island, and he would do anything to keep her innocent life safe--even if it meant helping his sister do the unthinkable and take someone's life: Sebastian's. 

Matthew exited his bedroom and found Alice quietly sitting in the front room on a chair reading from her favorite book. She looked like a painting in that chair, cloaked in the reflections of the dim candles all around her, 8 of them in all. The various plants potted around the apartment created an ambiance of freshness that added to Alice's painting-like atmosphere.

"Can we talk?" he asked his sister.

"What is it?" She asked sensing the concern in his voice. 

"I wanted to know your plan. I want to help, I think with my help, you'll be successful and I can also make sure that you're safe. I wouldn't want you to get hurt in the aftermath of all this." Matthew said sitting across from her.

"Help me?" She asked confused forgetting she had told Matthew what she wanted to do about Sebastian.

"Yes! About Evie and Sebastian. If I can help, I will! I don't want anyone else to get hurt, not by him and...it's important that I we need to work on this together." He said.

"Oh, sweet Matthew. I know how pure your heart is. But you don't need to worry about Sebastian any more, Evie either. She's free, we're all free, and now that Sebastian is out of the way all of the evil that has surrounded this island and it's people will slowly lighten." She answered patting his knee.

Matthew looked at Alice confused. He had no idea what she mean, how could Sebastian now not be threat to them, but before he could get her clarification, the night air brought a long an unexpected visitor who was knocking on their apartment door. 

Matthew and Alice looked at each other unsure of who it could be. Matthew's first thought was Filipe, perhaps he had some news on the Jacob/Christian case that Matthew had been helping with. 

Matthew got up from his chair and went to the door and it was not Filipe, it was Nikolas fresh from his quick rush out of Tirymôr House. He was out of breath. He had run from the taxi that brought him to the apartment. He pushed his way in, frightened he was followed. His nervous energy frightened Alice and Matthew to the point they also felt as if someone was following him.

"Jesus man!" Matthew shouted as Nik rushed to the center of the room. "What is it?" 

"This!!! Look at this!! I found what this island has been hiding. I finally found it an it's horrible. I had to show you. This could be the beginning of ending all of the horrible evil here." 

"What is it?" Matthew said as Nik handed him the journal.

"Albert Lord's journal. Actually, it's a journal Albert and several of his ancestors have been keeping for generations. It documents the horrible things he and the other key families did when they first settled here from England and Wales." Nik explained before turning to Alice "It details what happened to your people." he added sadly. 

Matthew flipped through the pages reading sporadically. It burned his soft heart to see the terrible notes from the Lord men about the murders of the Winterborn's people, the tribe of natives that lived on Welshport first. Deaths. Stolen land. Murders. All of it. Right there in their own handwriting.

"This is disgusting." Matthew said. "It's as if they were happy with what they did." 

"It's the first and possible key piece to this puzzle." Nik said. 

"We already knew." Alice said shocking Nik, as he turned to Matthew who nodded his head.

"You both knew these people were responsible for such atrocities to your people even before you both were born?" Nik asked confused.

"Of course!! These are our stories, these are our people. We know every last horrible detail of how these settlers came, killed and took from us." Alice noted. "Their evil is the source of the curse. The curse placed on all who dwelled here.--- especially the remaining Lords." She added. 

"Here," Matthew said, showing Nik the last entry by Albert about the family he burned alive. "this is our family. The two children Albert writes about that he could not find after the fire went out, that is Alice and myself. We escaped. I was very little and Alice was just a baby. I took her. I escaped with her and watched from a hillside as our home and family burned in the darkest red flames I had ever seen and ever seen since." Matthew explained.

"I'm so sorry." Nik said grabbing Alice's hand and squeezing it. He pulled her in and hugged her tight. His love for her only grew stronger in that moment. 

While in their tight embrace Alice dropped a bomb "But we don't have to worry so much anymore. The apex of this curse has been destroyed. It's dead." 

Matthew and Nik looked at each other confused. "What are you saying?" Matthew asked.

"Dead?" Nik asked too. "Who's dead?"

"It's gone. Neutralized. I did it. I killed Sebastian last night and we'll all be safe. As soon as the universe sense that monster, the creature of the night is no more than our ancestors will begin the healing process for all of us. He is the final male heir of the Lord and now that he's dead and Jacob has no male children, we'll finally see justice for all us. Jacob will not live forever and we can finally be free of these Lord men." Alice explained. 

"Alice!! How could you do this on your own? You could have been killed!!" Matthew shouted taking his place as her concerned older brother. 

She shrugged, proud that she had done it.

"What are you talking about? Sebastian isn't dead." Nik replied.

Matthew turned, his brow furrowed.

"He's dead. I drowned him I watched him drown in the sea." Alice said assuredly. "He's gone." Alice repeated.

"No, no he's not. I just saw him when I left Tirymôr. He came to see Evie for dinner. He's alive Alice. He's Alive!" Nik confirmed shocking her.

"It didn't work? How, how did he escape? I did everything to make sure he stayed below the sea and I watched him drown!!" Alice shouted, her heart dropping into her stomach with the truth of her failure.

"I don't know," Nik said, "but we still have time, if you really want to do this, if you really want to take back the world your ancestors were killed over, I will help. I will do anything to help right this wrong." He added.

"Sebastian must die." Matthew said. 

Alice nodded her head, once little tear fell from her brown eyes upset that she had not saved everyone like she had thought she did. "He has to be destroyed to finally set the universe on course for the right, if not we could all be killed. His darkness and evil will only get stronger overshadowing who he once was. We have to kill him once and for all." Alice added. 

"Then we're agreed, the three of us will do it. We will end him." Matthew said out loud. The other two nodded their heads in agreement. "then lets plan this right." 

As the three began to plot their murder of the monster, Nik began to feel a pain in his heart. He was feeling guilt, guilt for doing this against his own sister. He loved Evie so much and plotting to kill her husband felt like a betrayal that he may not be able to come back from.

But he had to. He had to do it with Alice and with Matthew

To save them all. 

****

Eliza reads her tea leaves 

On Goode island, the sun began to rise peaking a bit of much welcomed warmth into the closed shutters of Eliza Goode's small cabin. She sat on a rocking chair alone in the front room as the fireplace smoldered in the hearth into a heap of smoke.

She had not slept. Not a wink.

She only sat in the rocking chair with thoughts of what was to come. She could feel danger on the horizon. She could feel the grips of something truly terrifying coming. 

Was it coming towards her? Was it towards her daughter? 

Would she finally have to saddle herself into the truth of what she was and finally use her powers unapologetically. She had yet to truly use her gifts to their full capacity. She feared doing so.

She feared the outcome and the reproductions of using her powers.

"What you give in power comes back in pain." She told  herself in her mind. 

"What you give in power comes back in pain." 

This is what she feared. Should she unleash her full powers, she'd receive in pain right back to her. Magic, in her case, was a give and take. 

Eliza, drowsy yet restless, walked into her kitchen at the sound of the tea-kettle steaming its whistled siren. She grabbed the hot kettle round it's round base and not by the safer handle option, the burning sensation on the palms of her hands sizzling while she then tipped the kettle over into a small cup and saucer. 

Her burns then blistering and pealing, suddenly healed. 

She looked into the swirling hot water and removed a pouch from inside the pocket of her white dress. The pouch was brown, made of burlap, and had a tight red thread that when synched closed the pouch up tightly. 

She unleased the red thread and poured the small flakes of red leaves that fell into her boiling water. 

The leaves soon began to evaporate into a red thick liquid. 

Blood. 

The Blood from the leaves swirled around and became darker and darker red as the water became absorbed into the herbs. 

Eliza placed a spoon in the tea and stirred, the tea, thick and dark red, then turned into a golden color, gold like tea should be. 

The steam swam up into the air around the rim of the cup and saucer. With her hands, Eliza began to lift the steam higher and higher into the air. She swirled in the steam with  her hands; shapes began to form, shapes that soon she would see as the future she sought. 

The steam showed faces. Many many faces. Angry. Hostile. Bloodthirsty. 

They were in a large group. They were filled with fire in their eyes. They wanted to end someone's life.

They wanted to capture someone. She saw a noose. And pyre ready to burn. 

Their faces were fraught with the pain of generations of suffering from an unknown source of what they assumed was bad luck, but was truly a curse. 

A curse so rooted in darkness that it clouded all their minds from common sense.

The faces in the steam were ready to end this curse and then the steam changed from many faces to just one.

Her face.

Eliza gasped and swatted into the steam vanquishing the terrible image of her face. 

Then she realized --- her days may be numbered.