lorraine

by AlixxBlack

Summary:

Lorraine Warren is not the name she was born with, but it is her immortal legacy. Born to the Abenaki people with the name Kwasos-niben, she becomes Lorraine Warren when she heals a white family in need and helps them return home. From there, a chain of events is set off that ends with Lorraine being turned into a vampire.

"lorraine" is a diary of Lorraine's forever story and the way she exists in the ever changing landscape of America from the 1600s to the modern day that looks a little more familiar to you, dear reader.

(Updates every other Monday or Tuesday - the end of Lorraine's story is in sight! I'll be writing the ending in October so I've slowed the posting down a bit to allow me to focus on these longer end game chapters)

Notes:

Disclaimer 1-1: This is an original fiction piece, and to fully understand it, I urge you to read the Preface & Notes chapter at the beginning of this story. "lorraine" came to be as the result of an rpg and has a lot of moving parts, and a lot of work and effort has gone into making sure it honors the diverse characters I'm writing. This also means that the notes will include regularly updated citations that show how I developed the story that you are reading.

Chapter 1: Preface & Notes

Disclaimer 1-2: This story is written using amended rules and mechanics from the solo rpg titled "A Thousand Year Old Vampire" created by Tim Hutchings. You can purchase the materials to play this game from Tim Hutchings' directly or by distributor Heart of Deernicorn.

 

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This chapter of "lorraine" will serve as an introduction and reference page for readers. Since this story is being told through gameplay, which I personally adapted for a for-fun writing project with friends. As such, this means there's information that was pre-established, and details that have been researched to accomplish a revisionist-history-meets-historical-fiction blend. This is where I'm going to put all of those background details and research references. It will be a one-stop-shop for important information regarding this story that I hope everyone who finds it enjoys. Thank you for considering (and maybe reading) my story.

 

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.::Introduction & Background::.

 

Lorraine Warren (formerly known as Kwasos-niben, Small Summer Bear)

 

I was born to the Abenaki tribe 20 summers ago, and resemble my mother most with my long black hair and dark eyes. When I was traveling to study botany in a neighboring village, a white-man’s family fell sick. After assisting his family, he hired me to work for his family, though it did not feel very much like a choice. They could not learn to say my birth name, Kwasos-niben, so they began to call me Lorraine. As I was forced to live in to the white man’s village and home, I began to call myself Lorraine Warren when asked where I belonged. I remained with the Warren family until John Warren began to hurt me. Out of desperation, I accused his wife of witchcraft. During her trial, I got new employment with the Parrish family to care for their daughter, Gertrude. She was weak and sickly, needing more care than the family could offer her. Gertrude became a close friend of mine. I even got along with her sister, Margaret. After turning to known witch, Caroline Herring, to help heal Gertrude, I kept their secret. When Caroline Herring was publicly accused of witchcraft, and her sister accused Gertrude of witchcraft instead to protect her sister. I learned when Margaret returned home that we had to flee to avoid being killed as witches. With nowhere else to go, we travelled North towards the Abenaki villages to seek refuge from the witch trials.

 

Memories:

1 - Abenaki Tribe Life

i. As a child, I was raised with the understanding that I would eventually be wed to the Chief’s son, so I was often with the Chief’s family for dinners and during free time. I often called the Chief’s son by a nickname - Tsamolee - because he was very silly. He often shortened my name to Niben. He told me I was more beautiful than summer and that I should be the spirit we heard about in stories. I told everyone I was happy to marry him.

ii. I enjoyed helping with everyone with their gardens, which is where my love of plants and the earth started. It was not just an honor but a thrilling day when I would go to the farms and learn more about the plants to feed us. I looked forward to the days when I would go out an gather with my mother, too.

iii. After my first bleed, I was told that I would need to begin learning a profession. Expecting to be the matriarch of the tribe later in my life, I was sent off to the healer during the day to learn botany. I studied with her until I learned all that she could teach me, but I learned very quickly. As such, I was often sent to stay at nearby villages to learn even more about medicinal care for our people.

2 - Time with Wabanaki

i. Though I am not yet married to Tsamolee, I am received as though I am already part of his family. I am treated to a luxurious celebration and feast before being shown to my shelter near the healer’s hut. The clothing, rugs, and decorations are well-crafted and beautifully preserved. My first days are spent resting and learning about the Wabanki tribe peoples before I begin my studies.

ii. There is an outbreak of disease that leave many people ill. The healer delegates all non-life threatening issues to me, and I find myself operating fully on my own most days. When I am able to help with gardening, gathering, and farming, I do, because there are not enough people healthy enough to do their duties in the village. When white-men come, we teach them to benefit both their wellbeing and ours. They come and go quickly, but the extra hands make a difference for the better, and it is not detrimental to send them with baskets of food to keep on their travels.

iii. One family, the Warrens, become quite ill during their stay. At first, it did not seem life threatening, but it quickly became so. They stayed for weeks, causing me to extend my stay with the Wabanaki even further than I already had done during the height of the outbreak. Though Tsamolee sent gifts of his love with messages to come home for our wedding, I could not leave in good conscience, so I stayed and healed the people. When the Warren Family became well, they began planning their return to their home village - which they said would include me.

3 - Warren Family

i. Returning to Salem was not so much a choice as it was an expectation. What I understood would just be an assistance in health on their travels turned into enslavement, though they paid me with white-man’s money and gave me a certain level of freedom that others did not have in the same position. It is hard during the first weeks knowing that I should have been wed to Tsamolee, but I become comfortable with the family. They cannot say my birth name and begin to call me Lorraine. They tell me I am pale compared to other natives and those who do not know me believe that I am a simply a relative of Mrs. Mary Warren’s family.

ii. Mrs. Mary Warren says that she “also works as a servant” to me often, though I do not consider my place to be the same. I did not choose to work for this family under clear circumstances, but it makes things easier between us that she thinks we are the same in this way. She complains about the Proctor family and the witch trials, and I complain about the way Mr. John treats her at times because it would not be allowed if she were an Abenaki woman. There are times when I believe that we are friends, really, and I find a certain level of contentedness in my life as Lorraine Warren.

iii. I learn that Mary is not my friend in the harshest way possible. I tell her once that Mr. John should not speak to her so poorly when she is ill. Mary tells me it doesn’t matter and that it is simply because any illness with convulsions could be mistaken as witchcraft at work, and that he is simply responding with anger when he is really worried. Once after she has a particularly bad convulsion and sets a rag on fire, he slaps her across the face so hard her lip begins to bleed. I stepped between him and her and yelled at him to leave. He attacks me like a wild animal. I pack my belongings and leave without a plan, cuts and black marks covering my face and arms. When I am questioned for walking around at night, I worry for my safety, and then tell the white men on horse that I am fleeing from the Warren family because Mrs. Mary Warren is a witch and Mr. John Warren beat me for threatening to expose her secret. I am taken to their version of a healer to be cleaned and cared for until I can testify in a trial.

4 - Parrish Family

i. The Parrish family hire me to care for their daughter Gertrude when it becomes public knowledge at Mrs. Mary Warren’s trial that I am no longer working. They meet me in the town square and tell me that their daughter, Gertrude, is often sick and needs regular attention. They are clear that they cannot pay as well as the Warrens yet, but that having her will allow Mrs. Parrish to work, and the promise is that better pay will come. They are humble people and seem to have good hearts, so I go to their home to meet Gertrude. She is a young girl but has the brightest eyes. I agree to take the job, for free, until Mrs. Parrish is able to begin working.

ii. Working with the Parrish family is different than the Warrens. I learn that they are respected in the community, though they do not carry a lot of power when decisions are made. They are all very kind, but none of them have the full joyfulness that Gertrude carries. We spend much of our days alone, as she is unable to attend classes to learn. I tell her the stories of my childhood, and she teaches me to speak English. Caroline Herring comes with tinctures and poultices to help heal her, and what can be done in the home without her, I teach Gertrude to do as well. Though the other family members frequently call me Miss Lorraine, Gertrude usually calls me Lori. I learn that Mrs. Mary Warren was not my friend because my real friends are Gertrude and Margaret.

iii. Befriending Margaret was slower, but we bonded over her love of flowers and gardening. It wasn’t uncommon for her to return home with bouquets for her mother and Gertrude, picking one out for me from each one. Though our friendship was subtler, it was strong. When it came to Gertrude’s health and well-being, there was nobody she trusted more than myself and Caroline. And so, because we both loved Gertrude, and she loved us, we became comfortable sharing space together. Our bond was sealed officially when she started helping me translate my book on medicinal botany into English. While Gertrude was making sure I could speak fluently, Margaret was helping me learn to translate and read it. Together, they made me feel truly equal to the white-man, even if only in the safety of our shared home.

5 - After Salem

i. It had been a long time since I’d been escorted from the Wabanaki village where I met the Warrens, but I still remembered the basics of traveling. After Margaret told me to pack up because we had to flee, I was able to get us to a well-established village several days north of Salem, where we would stay for a long time with another part of the Wabanki tribe - and we stayed long enough that it began to feel like home. When disease once again struck in this village, I was not so lucky. In fact, none of us were. Gertrude, Margaret, and Caroline also got sick. Things became so desperate that Caroline turned to witchcraft to heal us. Gertrude was so poorly that she couldn’t even keep the magic potion down, vomiting soon after consuming it. Margaret, Caroline, and I were able to drink our entire potions and keep it down, but it was difficult. In time, though, we healed, and continued our life within the Wabanaki tribe.

ii. Tsalomee learned of my return to the Wabanki tribe some time after we had been there, though I did not learn this until he showed up with a few men, gifts at the ready from a fruitful hunting trip. He sought my company promptly after his arrival. He asked me where I had gone and why I had returned after years. I told him my stories, and he told me his - the ones where everyone thought I was dead, where my parents fell sick and died, where he deferred Chief to his brother. He asked me to return home to my Abenaki life, to marry him, and return to the life I remembered so fondly. When I told him that I could leave behind Margaret, Gertrude, and Caroline, his face twisted in confusion. He asked me if I would like him to stay, but I asked a question in return - could he love me even though I had changed so much. He kissed me and promised that he would stay as long as I still wanted for his company. We became inseparable.

iii. I went out foraging with a the tribe’s healer, looking to make more medicine for the tribe, and using some skills I learned from my time in Salem as well. While we were taking a break near a small pond, we heard screaming and howling nearby. Wanting to help, we followed to sounds to a dark cave, where we took turns calling inside to offer our assistance. We saw movement in the shadows and worked quickly to make a torch to get a better look. Once we got inside, the shadow moved further and further away until we found ourselves too far from the entrance to see it, and with tunnels in nearly every direction. When we finally tried to turn back, an unearthly growl twinged with haunting laughter filled out ears. The last thing I remember from that day is the hushed whimpering of the healer asking for mercy from “angry spirits.”

 

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.::Bibliography of Research::.

~Updated every few chapters~

(Last Updated May 30, 2025)

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Chapter 2: Spring/Summer 1794

I had heard the stories growing up - we all did. We were told those stories so that we would not wander from the village alone. In my native language it is called the Skadegmutc, but as I learned English I also found the closest words to describe what it was: ghost-witch. It was not always a woman, but it was always a magic user who has died. Sometimes it is because he started to use his magic for evil, or she started to get greedy for power, or anything in-between. It does not matter because it ends the same. Wherever the body is buried, it comes back at night and seeks to turn any passersby into prey.

The stories did not prepare me for what would come to pass.

Paguanekw and I were lured into the cave by screams and howls. We thought that someone found a den. Maybe it was bears, maybe it was wolves, either of those would have been dangerous. It was our mistake to think we were safe going in together. What we found out, in the breaths after Paguanekw begged for mercy from the “angry spirits,” was that this was not the work of simply a lone spirit. The ghost-witch had a mortal person that she used as a bait. It was a young white boy, someone who would not have heard the stories, the warnings, and he had a look in his eye that was no longer human when I met him.

The ghost-witch, though not a threat during the light hours, was not the only threat. This young white boy guarded them with hunger in his eyes. When Paguanekw complained of hunger or pain, he snarled at her. I never let on that I knew English and understood what he said, and Paguanekw did not ask me to tell her what he said, all I will say is that it was awful. This young man ate those killed by the ghost-witch, he said, and talks about how he paints the walls with the blood when it is fresh and he is bored.

What was truly the most interesting was when he talked about the ghost-witch being more sentient and aware than what I grew up believing them to be. This one is seeking to take over the body of another, to return to the living world, and lures humans to the cave to experiment. She died here and all of her dark magic papers and books were gathered from the cave tunnels over the years so that they can assist her in her endeavors. She promises them whatever they want to keep them, and then lets them feast on human flesh to convince them that they are monsters too. The ghost-witch is not wrong. Even the white men look down upon the man that eats human flesh as an evil soul.

This ghost-witch enlists Paguanekw to be the new bait. She is healthier, has more years left in her life than this young white boy with a weakened and malnourished body. She also threatens to kill me to Paguanekw, who does not wish to see me dead because she has not complied. Paguanekw obeys, eating off the travel pack stores as minimally as she can to resist the hunger that took the white boy down the dark path he walked.

I cannot say how many years she survived, luring in wanders with the bags that have food. She rations. She fasts. She collects water from puddles. I do the same. Paguanekw proves the resourcefulness that permitted her to become a healer in her tribe. We are stranded for a surprising number of years before the young white boy finally passes away, both of us suspecting that magic kept him hanging on for so long beyond his visibly frail body.

We did try leaving after the boy died, but we became lost in the tunnels. At night, the ghost-witch found us and attacked Paguanekw, weaponizing her safety against me. I would beg for the ghost-witch to leave her alone, but she never relented. We only tried leaving so many times before Paguanekw decided that what they would do is try to convince her to take Paguanekw’s body rather than mine. We do try. We try night after night for weeks. I can read the papers, so it only makes sense that Paguanekw would be the new body for the ghost-witch because she cannot read or speak the language needed. We also talked about her power and sway in the tribe, he value as a healer. None of it convinced her and she insisted that it must be me. Her explanations were that I was young and beautiful, that I had more time to live, that I could obtain power in my years. The ghost-witch assures us that she is patient.

Patience in a monster is dangerous.

Persistence in a monster is something worse than that.

I don’t know when I became complacent nor angry. Neither can I say when I became just as bad as the ghost-witch. What I can say is that I became bitter like burn root vegetables after Paguanekw died. I mourned her death, but I knew she wanted me to honor it. I butchered her body and stored her blood. I used every component of her body that I could to learn the dark and wicked witchcraft beloved by my captor. I lured people in and did the same to them. Over time, so much time, I find myself motived purely on my desire to be more powerful than the ghost-witch. I sought to be stronger. I sought to be smarter.

And, finally, a day comes when I do.

I learned the spell I needed to learn to bind her to a new body, and I learn another that will curse her to live without a voice. I make poisons and leave them on her shelves. I plan meticulously until the day comes that I can bind her to an elderly man’s body that I lure in with my screams of terror outlined with the growl I mastered too long ago to feel good guessing how long ago it might have been. The spell goes without a hitch, and while the ghost-witch is crying happy tears over the success, I muttered the curse’s words low enough she cannot hear. I listen as the man’s voice disappears and her worse suffocate in the dark magic I released so confidently onto her, making her my victim.

Prepared as I was, so was she. Quickly, she came at me and wrapped the man’s hangs around my throat. I move backwards into shelves with poison, grabbing bottle after bottle and breaking it over her head. As poison leaks off her face and into my mouth, I accepted that I would die. The anger and hate that welled inside of me for so long left me impervious to the sorrow of dying.

For as hard as the ghost-witch struggled not to let the poison into her mouth, it leaked into the man’s eyes and she breathed it in. Before long, her new body weakened, and the man’s body began to convulse. It reminded me of the witchcraft symptoms that resulted in the trials back in Salem. I counted myself lucky to have outlasted her new body in this elderly man, who I was fine to sacrifice because his time for this world was short. I slaughtered him like cattle, and I didn’t even question if it was right or wrong. I did it because it made sense to sacrifice the life of an older person. I did it because I could be stronger than an elder. I did it because I wanted to survive. Maybe for myself - maybe for Paguanekw. I could not say for sure then, and I cannot say for sure now.

As I wandered the cave with my belongings, I expected, in my head, to die soon.

But death never befell me.

Nothing happened to me at all.

Once I found the opening of the cave, who knows how much longer after, I collapsed. There I remained for days, going between fits of sleep and languid waking periods. I am convinced my time was upon when I puked up sticky balls of dark red into small mounds. It reminded me of old blood, of the clumpy dried blood on wounds, or the sloppy and thick blood on the ground where animals got butchered. It reminded me of the blood that the young white point painted with in the cave. To me, this was the sign that I would die.

Only, I felt fine after. If anything, I was incredibly hungry.

And more than that - I was so, so thirsty. I started towards the nearby pond, the same one I last saw when Paguanekw and I foraged for medicinal plants. Then I heard the heartbeat of a nearby fawn. Though I am caught off guard, my mouth began to water, and I veered to my right at a frightening speed. For reasons I still don’t understand, I bit into it as easily as I would any fruit from a basket. I lapped up the spilling blood out from it’s shoulder as if I had never tasted something more satisfying. Once I become satisfied and incredibly aware of the carnage I had caused, I raced into the pond and washed the blood from my body.

I held myself under the water’s surface for longer than I had ever done before and pondered the question: what have I become?

Chapter 3: Spring/Summer 1794, Second Entry

I laid in the tree, my soaked clothes hung beneath me to dry in the barely-there breeze of a warm evening. I should have died from the poisons. They went into my mouth, it is a fact, and I know that I swallowed them. How I ate that fawn? How the water was not enough alone to get the blood from underneath my nails to wash away. My fingertips still burn to the touch from the sand and pebbles I used to scrub away the signs of what I am.

And I should have died beneath the water. How long I stayed under was - is - unnatural. Whatever I am - it is not human anymore.

I wondered, body bare against the bark and breasts flattened against my chest as the earth threatened to pull me to the ground, where would I be accepted? Where could I go where I would not be turned into a story for children to be afraid of the woods? Where could I go where I would not be treated as the monster they beg to leave them alone? Where could I go?

If they would have accused me of a witch in Salem, it would have been better than this, I thought. How does one drink blood from a living animal and lick the pools of blood from the muddy earth beneath it to satiate a thirst so deep in the flesh and then proceed to live normally? Despite the atrocity of it, I felt strangely at satiated and calm. It reminded me of those long hours spent caring for the sick when I would fall onto my cot and wrap into blankets to sleep. My body felt as though I had done it a service by drinking that blood.

The bright moon, full and brilliant as it deserved to be, must share its light for a purpose. When I was a child, I used to tell Tsalomee that I thought it was a sign that we were meant to stay up later and see the world in its naked truth. During the day, man would disturb it with his hunting and playing and working, but at night, the earth, too, would rest. The full moon would show us the world as it would be if it did not give itself to man to survive upon. That night, I wanted to use its light to see myself for what I was - what I had become - and what I would have to do next.

Could there be a story from my childhood that spoke of me? What stories spoke of a human that ate raw meat and drank blood? There are too many to count, with each tribe having slight variations of each story. Besides, only the witnesses knew the true story.

So what am I witness to? What do I know for certain is different.

I bit through the fawn’s fur and skin effortlessly. Even though it is unnatural, it is not impossible. There were stories of desperate men. They ate what they found, regardless if it could be cooked. The men would become sick, though. I did not feel sick. I felt refreshed. I was also desperate, but what was I desperate for? It wasn’t the meat. It was the blood.

I returned to the fact that I should have been dead. In fact, I thought I was dying when I first found the mouth of the cave. I laid there for days. I threw up my own sticky blood at the worst of it. And then I wasn’t dead - not even after being under water for so long. I did not mean to go under to die, but I should have, right? Maybe I did it just to see if I would. I did not know then, or since. Why I went into the water did not matter.

I was undead then, I had decided. Undead and craved blood. I was strong enough to then bite into a living being that struggled beneath me. I held it still effortlessly. I was always considered strong amongst my tribe, but I did not believe I could have done that before this curse took hold. I figured I was also stronger. At that point, I closed my eyes and recalled the stories I had heard, not just from the Abenaki tribe I grew up in, but the stories from my travels to other tribes. What stories could they have told that would have let me know what I had become?

So many names and images floated around my head, but it is all jumbled. I could not put names to the right pictures in my head, or even sounds to letters. Though I had thought myself to be wide awake, I had soon fallen asleep.

Whenever I did wake, I dropped down to the ground. My clothes were dry enough to wear and I began dressing. I did not hunger the way I would when waking usually, though I know I should have expected as much. The things my body would need would never be the same. Even though I questioned if it would be wise, I wanted to try to get back to the Wabanaki village. I have no idea how long it has been, nor do I have any clue whether I will be welcomed or cast out. It dawned on me - Tsalomee - would he still love as his wife once I told him?

I walked for some time before I found myself intoxicated by a rich smell that was different from the fawn. It drew me in and I found myself off course to follow it. I walked and walked and walked until I found myself in a grove where there was a white man sitting by a fire cooking fish. Without hesitation, I approached him. To my surprise, though I wore traditional attire for my people, he did not greet me as a “savage.” I knew I was lighter skinned, but surely not enough to be mistaken while dressed like my people.

He surprised me further and greeted me in broken Wabanaki. I smiled at him but quickly closed my mouth. I had not checked to see if my teeth had changed. He tried to ask me my name. I appreciated his efforts, but respond to him in English for ease.

“You may call me Lorraine,” and his eyes widened at the clearness of my speech.

“Is that your given name?” He asked with gentleness and invited me to sit with him. I followed, but not just because he smelled good. He smelled delicious, actually, but I was able to ignore it.

“It is the name the white man gave me when he took me,” I explained. I told him my name was was Kwasos-niben, though my husband called me Niben. He recognized Niben from stories sometimes shared in the Wabanaki village nearby, but also seemed to know me specifically.

And he asked, “Are you the same that went missing? They tell stories about a woman named Kwasos who disappeared, returned, and disappeared again. It sounds like it could be stories about you.”

He told me that Tsalomee and Gertrude, who went by Odana-nijon. He said that she was called the “Village Child” by some of the natives who learned English or simply wished to call her by the nickname. Tsalomee swore to everyone I would return until he passed away, an elderly man, at least that is what he was told by Gertrude. She is still very young, by his account. He assured me that she still looked like a child, though she has been the tribe’s healer for many years now.

It prompted me to ask what year it is, recalling the year that I went missing must have been 1694, the same year they fled from Salem. It was warm and crops were sown. It was late spring, early summer, most certainly. Surely I had not forgotten that much.

He told me that it is 1794 now. That length of time is incredible. I struggled to imagine the passage of that time in my mind. Tsalomee, an old and grey man? Gertrude, still a child? It was a new time entirely. Would the village elders even remember my face? Would they believe me when I said my name?

“Will you take me there?” I asked, eagerness in my tone. I had forgotten how tempting he smelled until I took a deep breath waiting for an answer. I waited a long time, too, because he was handling with his fish, putting it into a bowl to pick the meat away. When he did turn to me to answer my question, though, I was stood over him. I was drooling, some of it landed on his face.

He jumped away. I did not recall getting up nor that I lunged at him. He was scared and appeared to be debating if he should run. When I shook the dazed feeling from my body, I apologized genuinely. I explained myself, though I do not know why I offered the truth so freely. Perhaps I hoped he would tell me it was not real and that I was fine?

The man did no such thing. Instead, he nodded. He said that he heard a word for it from a northern tribe he’d met some time ago. Abenaki - my own people - called this type of monster a Giwakwa. He said other tribes called it something else, and that he thought he once heard Mi'kmaq call it a Chenoo, too. The man had moved closer and got into his baggage. Like me, he kept a journal of writings and pictures. He flipped through pages until he found what he was looking for - the page on Giwakwa. The words on the page described an undead humans who hunt humans, turned into monsters by evil wrongdoings or by evil witches, and sometimes hearts made of ice. Sometimes it could be cured, the man said to me, and I did recall hearing that once or twice. I considered that the Ghost-witch could have been the culprit, but it seemed wrong. Why would Gertrude still be young if it were only me? And what of Margaret and Caroline? Were they afflicted too?

I asked him for his name, which he gave with returned ease. “Theodore Mitchell.”

“I want to know more about this book, but, first, I need you to take me back to this village where they spoke of me,” I did not ask so much as told him, but he was agreeable. Theodore Mitchell said he would be happy to help on the promise that I do not eat him. I was not keen to make a promise I could not keep -

- but I was keen to get answers.

Thankfully, I was busy enough to forget that he smelled good enough to eat. As soon as we made it to the center of the village, I asked around for Gertrude. If she remained the healer for the tribe then she would be the easiest to find. Theodore Mitchell was happy to follow me around, too, fully prepared to take notes and share with me his book of collected stories. I considered that I could share mine with him as well.

Chapter 4: Summer 1794

I missed so much when I was gone. I missed Gertrude’s sorrow and grief, unable to comfort her with a warm rag to wipe away the tears. I missed Margaret learning advanced gardening methods that we could have found peace in doing together. Caroline has had one hundred years - an entire lifetime - of more healing study than I have done. There are too many things to count that make me different from the people that I considered family, from the tribe that gave me the identity, from workers that I would have once considered myself equal to-

Theodore became my closest friend. Since returning, I learned that Gertrude works in my stead as a healer. She trained further under Caroline, who had replaced me while I was missing. Margaret found love, which she deserved, and even moved out of the village. The only thing that I now know tied us together were a pendant and a curse.

Though we do not fit the history of a Giwakwa, many of my indigenous friends used it describe the longevity of life that we have all seen. Save for Gertrude, we all relied on blood to survive, and I often felt peace knowing that at least Gertrude was safe from this darkness that consumed the rest of us.

Once I learned the cycle of my new existence, Theodore made a plan with me to leave the village. He takes me back to the cave where I was imprisoned and monitored me while I consumed animal after animal during my thirst. Occasionally, if the meadow and woods were empty, he would bleed himself into a bowl to help, which I greedily lapped up whenever he did it. Maybe I would have once felt guilty, but he smelled so good that I never protested. I lost that part of myself in the cave. Besides, I justified it as willingness, as consent, and that allowed me to sleep easily.

Eventually, we had to travel further away. We went more southwest than usual, just looking for an escape from the routine. We wanted to get away, or at least find other tribes so that Theodore could keep getting new stories. He never needed me to leave, but we were bonded, and I don’t think he trusted me alone. I didn’t either. With my husband long dead, he was the partner I needed more than I wanted, even if his company was always loved.

During this trip, on the new moon, I wretched in agony on a hillside. We’d been there many times. He held back my hair and put a woven basket in front of me. The thirst would come in a few hours but we were very near a village. Worried that I may have ventured in, he took me further away, only for us to find a woman and a man swimming. They left the water, naked and dripping. When the man started to pull her into a kiss, she obliged, but tried to pull away to get a cloth to dry herself with quickly after. Theodore coaxed me to step back but I couldn’t stop looking when I saw him grab her again.

He wasn’t as kind the second time. Or the third. I couldn’t just hear her tears, I could taste them. Theodore asked me to think before I did anything rash, but I slid from his grip easily. It was then that he said, “I’ll get the woman, then,” and he did he best to keep up with me. He didn’t do well, of course, because I’m faster than any animal I’ve crossed.

I took the man by his neck and dragged him like a quilt on the ground at my side. I walked into the water and held him under the water. He thrashed and thrashed and thrashed. Bubbles surfaced in protest until they didn’t. I felt him go limp between my fingers. When I drug him out, Theodore calmed the woman by telling her that he would never hurt her again. Hysterical as she was, she came to me and looked at her attacker, dead at my feet. She wrapped her arms around me, babbling through tears, still, telling me of the abuse she’d suffered. I didn’t feel bad for killing him before, but any regret that may have tried to creep into my mind disappeared in a flash.

“Can you return home after this?” Theodore thought to ask her, and she shook her head. She explained that she was an orphan and had been working as a servant for a family in Europe to survive when they chose to come to America after the colonies declared themselves independent of the monarchy. They came for religious freedom, they said, but during this move, the wife of the family died. The husband then found himself leaning on her to help with the children much like he’d done with his wife. She thought love was sprouting like flowers in the spring.

The man was more a monster than I was.

“Drain him,” I told Theodore. “Fill my jug.”

The woman was startled, but shook the fear away. “Are you a vampire?”

I’d never heard the word. Theodore seemed to reaching in his mind for the definition, like a word he forgot he knew. She asked if I would drink the blood. I told her I would. She started to dress herself and tell about the stories from back over the sea where she was born, how she’d heard plenty of stories about them. They were undead and drank blood to survive, not unlike Giwakwa, but were distinctly different as well. She asked about the antics of my mortal life and if I had a wound that caused my death.

Theodore took studious notes while we verbally reviewed the events of the day I died, which weren’t extremely clear, but showed me the truth of my new nature. I discussed the curse, the fact that Gertrude was different, and how it originated. We learn her name is Isobel, that she is older than she looks, even older than I was when I died, coming in at twenty-five years old. We helped sneak into the village, gather her belongings, and leave a note in the kitchen that she has left.

I watched her write it. Her words married the pain of leaving the children behind carefully navigated reality that they were orphaned just as she was, though there was a name at the end of the letter. Theodore started to guide us into the night, going further ahead of Isobel and I, at which time I asked her about the name she left for the children.

“It is a couple who lost their daughter to consumption. They grieve still, but I feel that their name will help make broken hearts whole again when they find-”

Theodore could hear us and cut her off, “They won’t find him for a long time, I reckon.”

Isobel nodded next to me. She took my hand in hers as we walked. I inquired if she was afraid of me, a vampire, as she said, who could hunt humans as easily as they hunted deer and speared fish. Isobel laughed in response.

“It is not worse than the streets I called home as a child. You saved me. I will be indebted to you wholly until the end of time,” she said to me. I remember it as easily as if I’d said them myself. Isobel clung to me with clothes finally freeing from her wet-sticky body. Her bag looked heavy on her shoulders, so I took it, and she took my hand again after.

Theodore was already a gift and guardian that I did not feel I deserved, but Isobel was going to be something more complex than that. She didn’t want to just be my friend and learn more about the darkness of the world. No, no. Isobel wanted to be there in the darkness with me. She wanted to make the darkness a safe home for me. I learned that truth the next morning when I woke up and she sat next to me eating some berries, a fresh rat sat next to her in a sack -

“Just in case you wanted something fresh,” Isobel had smiled when she told me.

Chapter 5: Fall 1794

Traveling with Theodore and Isobel was often so fun that it made me forget that I was a vampire. When Theodore would travel into the villages and cities, sometimes Isobel and I would stay behind if we did not need anything. Many evenings were spent bare, swimming in the rivers. We sang and danced around campfires when Theodore would be late. Other times, Isobel would go for trading and drinks, and Theodore would stay behind.

Things started to feel different after one trip, late at night, when Theodore was able to exchange some labor for a few bottles of rum. He and Isobel drank themselves sick, then drink some more. As they danced and fell, their playfulness turned intimate. I didn’t realize how much I missed the physical satisfaction of a romantic partner until Theodore shuddered beneath Isobel’s body when she stood and left him alone, still aroused, and trotted back to the water.

I escorted her out of the water shortly after, concerned that she would drown herself if left alone, and she passed out sometime after. Theodore stayed awake, remaining naked, and invited himself to sit by me. He apologized for him getting involved with Isobel, that he’d never thought of it before that moment, and asked if I was upset with him. I couldn’t figure out why he thought that I would be, and when I asked, he seemed confused that I was confused.

“Are we not?” He sputtered through his teeth.

“Are we? We have never said,” I responded, clear and direct. How was I to know how to navigate such a thing when I was given to someone before I could understand that there was a choice to it. Even then, I did so love him, so I did not think about relationships being more than that, no matter how much I knew it not to be just that one way.

“Did we need to?” Theodore remarked before he reminded me that he feeds me and follows me around. He described himself as desperate and longing for me. I asked him why he never said so.

We talked about his worry that I wouldn’t trust myself, which had never crossed my mind. I told him about how he smelled so different from everyone else, how it was stuck in my lungs like sickness that I didn’t care to shake. He told me I was bad at showing my feelings. I didn’t know I had them anymore.

Theodore revealed that he did find Isobel attractive, only physically, but that he felt that Isobel was more attracted to me than him. Sexuality had always been a bit more free in native tribes than I observed in the white-man’s world. It was not unheard of for women to be attracted to men and women, or just women. Perhaps it was more just the Abenaki and Wabanaki people who were so accepting of such things, I couldn’t necessarily say, but I did not know why Isobel would not speak her truth being that she had abandoned the tradition life she had known. Theodore explained it was not something anyone would discuss where their families came from, and I did my best to reconcile that, perhaps, there was so much more that we needed to discuss.

Theodore did kiss me that night, but he did not want to do anything I did feel interested in doing. I explained myself to him, that I missed it that deeper love and physical satisfaction, but that I hadn’t allowed room for something like that, and that I would much rather he and Isobel, without the influence of alcohol, come together to discuss the complexity of their relationship as it had developed in their shared weeks together.

When my thirst cycle returned, though it was easier to find animals through the brush and bramble of the woods and meadows, they simply were not out as often. The game I could catch was smaller, which left me less satiated between hunts. Theodore and Isobel decided they would take turns bleeding out for me. One afternoon saw Theodore at a fair distance away one afternoon while they were setting up a camp, and Isobel asked if the bleeding that women did would suffice for the cravings. It was a question I did not ever consider before or since. I thanked her for her consideration in finding solutions, but that I would not dare to consider it unless times were most dire.

I assured her, for myself, and as a matter of record, that we were not facing dire times. Isobel shrugged it off easily and moved to a new topic - though I did not consider it easier to navigate. Isobel said that Theodore had been encouraging her to be forthcoming about her feelings. Isobel shared that she was instantly attracted to me, which I found astounding, never having been desired by anyone but Tsalomee before these two. Isobel said that it could be the allure of a vampire, a natural sex appeal to humans, making the hunt easier.

She also thought it could be that she is just attracted to women and men, too. In those moments she revealed that she had been keen on sharing a bed with the wife of the man I killed, stating that it was more common that many would like to believe. I learned from her that many paid servants would be sexually involved with their employer families. She told me that slaves were often raped by their owners, too. It felt unrelated, but I think her message was that the only real rule is that there is consent and love. The conversation died when she put herself into my lap to plant her soft lips on my forehead, cheeks, and neck.

As we continued to travel, and the thirst got stronger, it became necessary to discuss a plan for obtaining blood. Theodore and Isobel were the ones to suggest luring drunkards who were belligerent from a nearby city. I was not keen on the idea, and not so much because I had a conscience. Without Theodore and Isobel, I cannot be sure I wouldn’t slaughter at will, so I cannot claim a moral high ground. Instead, I worried for their safety. I worried about them being caught in the middle. If anyone could find them or had seen them with the person they lured - I hated to think on it.

They did it anyway. I should have expected it.

The sluggish man that they have sit down beneath the tree near our camp is very thin. He looked more of a lone wolf than a person of wrongdoing. As it were, Isobel learned from the other women at the bar that he was known to let other men see his wife for profit. Theodore had bought the time and asked her about the arrangements, which she hated. He offered to make her husband disappear in exchange for her silence.

The second she agreed, Theodore signaled to Isobel that he was the right man to feed me. I asked question after question. I needed to know that they were careful. I needed to drink so badly. I needed them to be sure this would not turn sour and result in terrible consequences. I needed to kill this man to satiate the burning in my mouth. The moon wasn’t yet full above me but the questions blurred in the night all the same.

To be sure that he was dead, I carved his heart from his chest first. I drank the blood from his body as Theodore and Isobel took to draining blood from the limbs. We wanted to keep every last drop so that, as the thirst grew stronger, I wouldn’t rely on them to make it through. When we had all that we needed, they removed cut did their best to tear him apart. Then they buried them in multiple holes. They were deep enough to go unnoticed.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this would become the routine whenever we found ourselves near a bigger city, and they were closer together than I would have imagined a hundred years ago when I first left Salem. Isobel and Theodore met my aloofness at the cost of a life when it meant that better people would survive. Sometimes anxiety welled in my chest when I thought of what they did for me. It came to my mind most often when they laid with me, nothing but skin on skin under a makeshift camp cover. There would come a time when this routine would no longer work, whether it was physical or mental limitations. I wondered when that day would come and what I would do when it did.

Chapter 6: Summer/Fall 1795

There is something that brings out the humanity in someone when a baby is born. During the second freeze of the winter, we learned that Isobel was with child. We had no doubt that Theodore was the father, of course. Initially, I had thought they would leave me and retreated from them at the news.

They didn’t let me fester in the panic for long. Isobel and Theodore wanted to raise their baby all three of us. Hesitantly, I accepted them at their word. Never had they left me feeling misled or betrayed, and I couldn’t deny the comfort that wrapped my bones with that assurance that they wouldn’t leave me behind.

It was my idea to build a house near the Wabanaki village, more on the southeast side, further from the cave for safety, because it would allow us to remain near to the closest thing we all had to family outside of each other: Gertrude, Caroline & Marybelle, and Akikamsk & Margaret. Theodore came here on his own, and Isobel had nobody left, so they were more than welcoming to be close to familiar faces. Even without them, I knew that my people would always be there for anything we would need as a family.

As Isobel’s belly grew bigger, Theodore and I threw ourselves more into making sure that we had a solid structure to live in when our baby arrived. Isobel took on Theodore’s last name, having given hers up after her parents died, and we all agree that the baby will have the last name Mitchell as well. Even though I never thought my opinions should matter, not being the one to carry nor sire the baby, I was glad to give my blessing when it was asked.

When the day came that Isobel gave birth, it was a lovely experience. It was a short wait before we were able to welcome this child into our new - mostly finished - home. Isobel spent the rest of the day asleep, except to feed this new person in our family, and I spent the rest of the hours of the day bouncing and singing this child. Theodore went into the village to announce their child’s birth - a baby boy. 

In many tribes, it was common to wait to name a child. This was not the practice in the white-man’s world. They named their children quickly after birth. We let Isobel choose how she wanted to to name this child. We thought it was fair to give her full control of this detail. Imagine my surprise when Isobel left this task to me.

“This baby already has a piece of me and a piece of Theodore, and I want his name to be from you so that we are all part of who he becomes,” Isobel had said to me. I wrote it down so I didn’t forget. I cried when I read the words back to myself. I never thought I could feel more loved than how my parents loved me - how Tsalomee loved me - and yet there I was.

Theodore and Isobel loved me more than I could understand, despite what they knew of me.

I loved them more than I thought I could love two other people.

And now - I loved this baby boy just like any other parent loved their own child. Theodore and Isobel made it clear he was just as much my son as he was theirs.

Years and years spent in that dark cave stole the light of humanity that left me with a shadow of apathy over my soul. While Theodore and Isobel had sown a softness back into me, it wasn’t until I had that little boy in my arms that something new bloomed. It did not take me long to choose a name for him.

“Senna,” I told them one night when we sat with warm stew in bowls upon our laps. Isobel leaned against the fireplace, which we only light to cook, but still offered a warmth that was hard to turn away, even in the meandering heat of the season. Theodore repeated it to himself - Senna Mitchell - as if he wanted to try it out before he agreed.

Isobel didn’t need to say it, though. She simply smiled and nodded in acceptance. 

“Like the little yellow flowers,” she spoke in agreement rather than observation.

Theodore turned to look over his shoulder. We had a vase with senna in it right by a window near the beds. It was small and beautiful and bright, just like this baby would be to our lives.

Even knowing that thirst would come for me, time and time again, and that it would always make me feel different and unnatural, I couldn’t help but feel more settled than I did in the months prior. There were times when I didn’t feel whole because of it, even with Theodore and Isobel helping me.

Someday, hopefully very far in the future, I will lose them.

But for that moment in time - I never felt more whole.

Theodore. Isobel. Lorraine. And Senna. 

Sweet, sweet baby Senna.

 

Chapter 7: Summer 1801

I often find that it is easy to forget to record my personal experiences when I am so busy recording everything else - tribal stories, folklore from immigrants, new medicines and maladies. Theodore and Isobel take turns traveling with me during thirst cycles, unless there’s significant barriers. For example, Senna fell ill in the last winter, so I had to go out on my own while they tended to his health. I do not pursue human blood when I am alone, mostly because I do not feel comfortable in the cities by myself. Everything is changing so rapidly and people sometimes smell too good to resist consuming them wholly.

We have no need for money in the way that the immigrants do in the cities. We still live off the land and make most of our own goods. We trade what we have in excess for things we require. Sometimes we save what we can and trade it in the winter for food supply and blankets - even clothes! Senna grows quickly, like weeds in the garden, so we often have had to trade for bigger clothes and more cloth. Sometimes I look at him, knowing he has been with us for 12 summers now, and is looking more and more like a man each month that passes.

Theodore does take jobs on the canals, though. Steam-powered boats is what are used now, which make travel between cities faster and trades easier. He has long liked the idea of having money in case something would happen or change our lives that may require us to have it. He did not want us to chance the possibility of being engulfed by innovation. He said after one trip, “The world is changing. I fear that we could be left behind in it.”

I had seen the change for years, having grown up on tribal land and in Salem, but it is always more obvious when we travel to cities. So few places call themselves a village anymore. It is all towns and cities. Dirt paths which once mapped the way from here and there, hither and to, are being replaced with stones and bricks. Piers are erected along river canals. Boats that are powered by machines sit there. It disrupted my thoughts on nature the first time I saw one, and I became unsure of myself when Theodore managed to get us a ride on one to get us closer to a nearby town during the height of my thirst cycle.

Theodore and Isobel do not look much older than they were, having been quite young when I met them, but the passage of time is easier to see in Senna. It’s clear to see in Marybelle, too. Even Akikamsk has lines taking hold at the corners of his eyes. The way humans age is nothing compared to the advancement of the world, which mosts faster than a day comes and goes. Cities and towns are growing fat, taking land away from tribes, turning beautiful earth to brick and stone. Trees are stolen from the land to build homes that often look half empty or are barely holding on to their structure. There is great disparity in some places, where my time in Salem had me believing that everyone was almost equal in most regards, to now, where some homes are so extravagantly large while others are more like the home I helped Theodore build out here. So long ago were those days amongst my Abenaki family, my days in Salem… I feel stuck there…

And perhaps that is because I am a vampire. My appearance is stuck there, even more than even is my heart. Theodore yearns for more of this new world and all of the newness of it. Isobel rarely cares one way or another. She is adaptable in a way I cannot wrap my mind around. It is sometimes still a shock that she was so unafraid of me when I killed someone she had grown to love right in front of her. I wonder if I would have been just as open-minded as her were I in the same situation. It feels wrong that I am not confident I would.

Theodore really said it best. The world is changing.

He is so eager for the future in a way that is endearing on most days. I wonder if he will someday leave us to learn more about it. Though he is bonded to Senna, and is a good father in every way, his heart is full and heavy with wanderlust. It shines behind his eyes so much that it spills out over the ground. He wants to keep seeing more of the world. Isobel would never ask him to stay if he wanted to go, and I think he only stays because he doesn’t know how easily she would let him leave. Isobel accepts life exactly as it is, usually a smile spread across her pink lips.

Though there are benefits to the steam-powered boats, especially in terms of time spent traveling and access to goods, it is hard to look at it and know I will someday grow accustomed to it. It feels impossible to imagine how much more will change during my endless life. Without knowing what comes next, I do know that it will come. The unknowable is inevitably for me.

I guess the only thing I can be certain of is that I will see the rise and fall of many things. There is no urgency to me to seek it out like there is for Theodore. I will see these inventions come, I will see them change, and I will see them die. It is will be the same for the people I know.

Perhaps I can find solace in change through that perspective. Perhaps I can find a way to be joyful in the face of my grim forever. So often eternal life feels like a curse. It is my hope to rediscover the thrill in existence like that which Theodore carries within himself. This melancholy is much too heavy to always have upon my shoulders until the end of time. The sadness is heavier than waterlogged furs. Besides, if I cannot do it for myself, I should do it for Senna.

In the background of all these mournful thoughts is always Senna. I will change from a parent to a peer to a child throughout his life, and he will be the first ever to do that with me. I will see him from birth to death. I must always remind myself that, for as much brilliant light he brings to my life, I offer the same to him as well. I cannot be this sorrowful when the day comes that Theodore and Isobel die. I cannot be this apathetic while he must adapt the changing world too.

I will do better to see the positive in things as the become new again before my eyes.

And I shall start with the steam-powered boats. They will get me where I need to go faster, which means I can spend more time at home because I do not have to spend as much time getting to a nearby city at the height of my thirst. This newfound way to more speedily connect us to the world beyond our meadow will ensure we always have an easy way to get what we need.

 

Chapter 8: Fall 1830

The passage of time continues to surprise me. The years melt away like wax on a candle, and I am the flame that persists through it. I knew these days would come when Senna looks more my peer than my child, though he is beginning to foray into territory where he looks older than I do. We set out to leave when the colonists, or I guess they are called Americans now, started to drive native peoples westward. They continue to steal land from my kin and build cities.

It was a hard decision to flee, especially after Theodore and Isobel said that they would not join us. They are old now. Traveling long distances would do more harm than good to their bodies. Besides, they figured if they stay in the house, there would always be a home to return to, and I remember thinking that it would always be my home after they are long gone. It was harder to think that way when Senna said he wanted to travel with me. The party increased from me and Gertrude to include him. We packed and left quickly so that we were not held back by a long farewell.

The weeks that followed were hardly treacherous, especially since it warmed the further south we travelled. My first thirst cycle was easy enough to get through, being that Senna hunted animals and I drank them dry before they were cooked up to be eaten. He’d known about me being a vampire from a young age. It wasn’t a secret, and he never seemed averse to the truth. Gertrude was different since she did not have the blood thirst that I shared with Caroline and Margaret. It was hard to miss the signs that Senna held more comfort with Gertrude during our travels than he did with me. He shied away from me when I would take the animals to bleed them, avoiding eye contact and ensuring not to brush against me. I once called it measured caution when talking with Gertrude.

I learned in July that it was something more than that, though.

We were in a pub one night, during one of the later days in the thirst cycle when I thought I could best control myself. We were going in for a drink and some trading. Gertrude and Senna were still on their food supply run, so I had settled at the pub early. I was reading the newspaper laid on the counter, particularly an article about the Indian Removal Act. This was the legal decision that would further relocate my native people from their homelands to make way for American expansion. I grumbled and complained under my breath, cursing one President Andrew Jackson for his pursuit of this law. I groaned that I would love to “just have a chat” with him and his supporters. I didn’t know that I was heard by someone who shared the sentiment.

He did not introduce himself but he passed me a few scribbled lines on the scraps of a napkin. It was a name and an address - John McClean. The man introduced himself as simply “H” and asked that I only ever call him that, which I was inclined to do since I also introduced myself as Laura, a variation of the nickname Gertrude uses with me, which is Lori. H informed me that John McClean was a senator that voted in favor of the Indian Removal Act. We had an understanding that I wanted to speak with him, which was “a fair and righteously American thing to expect of a senator.” Thankfully, he’d not yet left to return to Illinois, the state he represented, and I found him easily at his “capital home” for times when Congress was in session.

I lured John away a few nights later when we returned home and fumbled his keys, clearly intoxicated from a trip to the bar. I asked him about his support for the Indian Removal Act and what he thought of the “savages,” as so many were wont to call us. John McClean slurred words together in support of his vote and excitement about the numbers of “savages” displaced. I snapped his neck and put him into a barrel, which I covered with debris and cloth from nearby trash bins. I brought him outside of the city here we were set up for camp. Gertrude and Senna were still out hunting, I think, so I began draining Senator John McClean on my own. I filled three canteens with as little mess as possible. When I travelled with Theodore and Isobel, we dismembered the people we took so that their bodies would never be found. I was prepared with an axe when Gertrude and Senna returned.

Gertrude shook her head easily and said that she simply was not seeing what I was about to do and advised that she would take a moment before returning, at which time she anticipated I would be doing the right thing. Senna stepped out with her. I contemplated her words, though I was sure that she meant that I should not be dismembering a person that she had every reason to believe I did not kill out of a need to drink. I heard the argument between her and Senna. Gertrude told him in no uncertain terms - drinking and killing is my nature, and that if he is unable to handle that then he must reconsider his companionship. He made a fair point to her, that people didn’t need to die, but Gertrude retaliated with a fierceness that she rarely unlocks. She told him firmly, “Your parents killed for and with her. This has always been her nature.”

Senna barged in and demanded to know the truth. Did his parents kill people for me to feed from - did they participate in these hellish acts of taking apart bodies - he wanted answers. At least he wanted them until I gave them. It wasn’t a simple ‘yes’ as he had hoped, but the complexity of it unsettled him. Senna swore he would never tell but that he would also have no part in it either, choosing to leave. Before he left, he said to tell his parents not to look after him, for he did not know them anymore. When he left, my heart broke for three people, and I cried next to Gertrude that night. She did her best to comfort me through the weeping, but the dead body was a bigger pull back to reality than her soft patience.

We decided to clean the body with boiled water and a rag before dragging him into a nearby river. Gertrude and I packed up quickly and relocated further south, using distance as deniability. As we roamed further south, I reached out to “H” again, sending a letter to his office only with the address where to reach me and my name. It was a bit of time before the response came, but it did, and this time with the name Robert H. Adams, Senator for Mississippi. It worked out beautifully, being that we were almost into Alabama already.

Gertrude and I frequently discussed my feelings about the Indian Removal Act and the people who supported it. We debated the morals of killing people who did bad things and how the other perspective could be felt in the same way, though it rarely resulted in my mind being changed. I did not see it as an equal trade, as Gertrude suggested at times, since the damage of the Indian Removal Act was far worse than a few lost lives. Old white men, I told her, many of whom were now owners of black men and women who were native people to their homes across the ocean, do not often serve anyone but themselves. African men, women, and children were beginning to be sold as possessions, forced to labor for the white man who profited from their suffering.

Though Gertrude remains steadfast in her moral beliefs, still very Catholic aligned in her core values, she was willing to accept that not all bad men suffer for their actions without intervention. As such, she accepts my path, but firmly does not wish to participate in it. She told me clearly, “It does not change my love for you and it never will.”

Getting Robert H. Adams alone was trickier than John McClean. His trip back to Mississippi was a busy one, and it required a certain level of stalking before I found a window of opportunity. I could not get him out of his home, but it was barely a challenge to me. I could get him in his cellar and be just as well. I drank from him until I couldn’t drink anymore, then assured his death by bleeding the rest of him into the drain. I dumped his fancy wines and drained his kegs over his body before leaving him, dead, to be found whenever someone missed him enough to go looking. Of course, they would look for the key first, which I threw into a pond on a nearby property.

Gertrude and I do not speak about it. Once I see that he is dead in the papers, we leave again. Somewhere along the way we decided that Louisiana would be a good place to go, with many of my native peoples being pushed to the borders on the western side of Louisiana. In some way, being nearer to indigenous tribes like mine would bring a closeness to my cause. I will get to hear their stories when they pass through. We’re still a few days out, but there’s a southern town called New Orleans, in the English tongue, that many said is worth a visit.

As I finish this passage, I can’t help but wonder when the next one will come. Now that I have lost Theodore, Isobel, and Senna from my life, I wonder if I will someday lose Gertrude as well. Though I have a partnership with H that I am sure will continue to busy me, I wonder when that union will blister. As I said, I am but a flame melting the wax of a candle revealing the ever-changing shadows that flicker around me. How much will change between this entry and the next?

Gertrude tells me to live in the present. I wish so that I could do precisely that, but too many of my days were spent living in one moment to the next. I have tasted those comforts before and they rotted upon my tongue. I want for a future that betters this land I have always called my home. I want for a life that sees my people thrive instead of die. I want for a future where people are not traded like common trinkets and enslaved like livestock.

I do not lie to her and say that I will try to enjoy the sickly sweet taste of the present.

But I do not shy away from here either. I squeeze her shoulder in acknowledgment.

Sometimes, that is all we can offer each other.

 

Chapter 9: Spring 1841

My bag is filled to the brim with journals. The first is my book on medicinal plants. An herbalism guide is what Gertrude calls it now. I still carry Theodore's’ book of stories, the legends that shaped my culture, but the many of the tales immigrants bring too. I’ve continued to write and draw in it, adding pages and sealing additional scraps as needed. It is full to the brim and I know I will need to begin another. As of late, I’ve begun keeping a manifest of the people I’ve helped and the people I have killed with malice. The ones I intended to kill.

 

James Noble. Senator of Indiana. Killed in February 1831.

Josiah Johnston. Senator of Louisiana. Easy to find. Killed in May 1833.

Elias Kane. Senator of Illinois. Joined the deceased, one John McClean, in December 1835.

Felix Grundy. Senator of Tennessee. Killed December 1840.

 

H has not sent further information since last summer, though it is possible that he will not send anything for some time. It could be that it will be years before his next clue. However, as I’ve delved further into my understanding of politics, I’ve come to accept that the turnover can be quick and fickle. Their trust in their representatives shifts with the times, with the wants and needs of the people electing them. Louisiana has very much begun to lean in a despicable direction. Though New Orleans seems to be a special place, a bubble making history in a loud and rowdy way, the rest of the state is very much buying into the wickedness of slavery. The rich and lazy men call it “positive good” while working black people to death on their plantations.

In my manifest are the names of Africans and Mexicans that are coming around the gulf and up the river in attempts to escape. My experience with boats makes it easy for me to go to the docks at night and pirate boats from drunks too far gone to hear the cries about a theft in process. Gertrude stays behind, always ready to keep a pulse on shipping routes, possible paths for the railroads, and other travels that I can aid with when I’m back home. It works to our specific strengths, something the last decade has taught us once we got settled into the hustle and bustle of New Orleans.

But now I am adding a fourth. This one does not belong to me either.

Spirituality the way that I experienced it growing up is not the same as having faith in these white Christian and Catholic practices. They pray in pristine churches with soft singing voices, nary a sign of passion, never having faced something of such a magnitude in so long that they truly had to have faith in their great Lord. My people, we prayed to spirits and we believed in the earth’s bounty. If you take, you do not waste. What you take is not in excess. Living here and seeing cultures blending together, I found more similarities in what I practiced in the occult. Fortune tellers, psychics, palm readers and diviners - practitioners of paganism and voodoo - they commune with spirits and have natural gifts that were once a cause to execute someone in Salem. Yet, these occult practices are celebrated here.

Gertrude and I have a greenhouse and clinic in a neighborhood full of people of every background, though it would be remiss of me to say we see many rich, white folk coming around. We let people pay what they can afford, and what they can’t pay for in money, we let them pay for in goods. Gertrude and I rarely want for anything as we barter with anyone coming to us in need. Some illness cannot be cured. For those we offer only comfort solutions to ease their suffering and eventual death - and we do not charge them for it. Even sometimes, people come seeking peaceful death, and we give that to them as well. We have been accused of playing “God” or that we are doing “the Devil’s work” but people still come because we are still needed. Until they come to my door with weapons and death threats, I will not be scared by their insults.

And if they do come one day in a riot, they will find we we don’t die so easily.

Every so often, we will have people submit written orders through the mail or they’ll stop by and drop a request underneath the door. When we have everything together, I will run them out where they need to go, which is always a bit of a treat. I explain this because we got a request to run to an address we had never seen before, but the name associated it with it was one that I had heard spoken late at night by the most desperate souls with broken hearts.

She goes by Mary Laville now, but it is only a variation of a name she was born with in France. As she put it to me when we began to know each other, her birth name was Marie-Anne de La Ville. She was arrested for her involvement in the Poison Affair, which I knew nothing of even before she insisted it was of no interest. It was buried by the rich and powerful out of shame anyway, she had said. She bargained for her release and fled to French settlements in the Americas. Upon arrival, she found herself in a very northern settlement and went by Anne de La Vie, and she enjoyed a good number of years before questions were asked about her age. Rumors started to jump from lip to ear. As she traveled south, she learned about Louisiana, specifically New Orleans, just as Gertrude and I had, and she felt very called to the area. That is how she became Mary Laville as I knew her.

It became clear to me that she was neither dead nor alive. In some ways, it felt similar to Gertrude. She could eat, drink, hurt, and remains fertile as if she could become pregnant. Though, she spoke of aging as something she can do if she chooses to, though she sees little point being that she is not attached to locations and experiences the way she is fond of her youth and beauty. With time, I grew comfortable and told her of our condition. She claimed to be familiar with the affliction and believes the cause was the potion we all drank when we were ill all those years ago. In the same breath, she said could cure it and give us all that we needed to enjoy the benefits of the Philosopher’s Stone just like her. I was familiar from the stories Theodore and I collected over the years. Truthfully, I never expected to find someone who had the ability to use it. And with the promise of a cure too?

I discussed with Gertrude before I inquired further. Mary said that she worked with talented occultists when she was in France, and she had been amassing their knowledge into a journal she kept close to her person at all times. She constantly assured me that she had the solution to every problem in this journal. It became so often and overt that I wondered if it was bait for a trap - or maybe even a test. Gertrude was trusting at first, believing the whispers about Mary’s abilities, but her skepticism matched mine when Mary began to request plants combinations that we knew to be fatal. She did not believe that we could possibly know so much, it seemed.

A day came when Mary said that she had all that she needed to cure us, asking which of us would like to take it first. In that same time, a young girl who bore a striking resemblance to Gertrude had come to the shop seeking nightshade, having been told she would soon die from tuberculosis. We spoke with her and asked if she was willing to assist us, disclosing fully the outcome could be death. Though she was a child, she felt sure that she wanted to do this, especially with so little information. Mary was surely up to something selfish and evil, making her a risk to the innocent and naive. Gertrude was not a fan of the proposal, but the more we spoke and planned, the easier it was for her to feel comfortable moving forward.

We staged everything perfectly, going to Mary with this young girl dressed in Gertrude’s work clothes. We left the shop closed and monitored by the neighbors so that Gertrude could watch from the shadows and step in if needed, bottle of poison at the ready. As I put this girl up in Gertrude’s name, Mary was lapping up the drool spilling out from the corners of her mouths. She put this false Gertrude on a chair in the center of the room, in a pentacle, and retrieve the tonic that she claimed would revive the death in our bodies, though I was certain it could be no such thing.

I noticed that the journal was unmonitored behind her, so I gestured to Gertrude subtly to grab it. Thankfully, she understood and thieved it easily. When Mary went to pour the false tonic into the young girls mouth, I grabbed her arm and asked her if she was sure this won’t kill Gertrude, laying it on that I was nervous and fearful of the outcome. I asked her what would happen if Gertrude wasn’t a true vampire. She laughed in a dark, stormy tone that reminded me of sickly waters. Mary turned, grabbed my hair, and tried to pour the mixture down my throat instead. We struggled for mere moments, though it felt like hours, and the false tonic spilled down my neck and chin. It burned hotter than any fire I had brushed against. It hurt unlike anything I could remember. I started to crumple to the ground like paper lit aflame when Gertrude and the young girl pulled Mary to the ground away from me. Though I am certain Gertrude would have killed her if it was necessary, I never wanted that blood on her hands. I took the rest of the mixture and poured it over her face, watching her writhe and scream under the same pain that plagued me.

I also took the poison from Gertrude’s apron and smashed it against her chest. Gertrude and the girl kept her held down while I slogged about looking for a way to restrain her. Once she was secured, we all three waited for her to die. We explained more about our story to the young girl. Hours passed as Mary went in and out of awareness, but she never died. Disfigured, weak, and whining in agony, we all decided to take her to the docks. We stowed her away in a trunk below deck on a ship set to sail at dawn. We watched and waited to ensure she didn’t escape, and when we could no longer see the ship on the horizon, we returned to her home. Gertrude and I combed through of supplies and literature, gathering all that we could to take back to the greenhouse with us.

When I was left alone with the young girl, she asked if there was a way to make her like us. Theodore and Isobel never asked it of me, and Senna was disgusted by the way I killed humans I considered beasts. Never did I believe I would be asked, and I only knew of one time where Caroline shared that she had turned her sister. Our theory was that because her sister had not been killed after the bite that she became a vampire too. While I did not question the morality of killing those who did horrendous things to other humans, I had my queries about the ethics of this girl’s request. When Gertrude returned, I posed the question to her for judgment.

Gertrude, a true sample of the goodness humanity offers, insisted that it was a much larger conversation for after we returned to the greenhouse. We invited the girl to stay with us for a few days, assuring her family that we were merely monitoring her symptoms and tweaking the recipes to meet her needs as we poured over the details of turning her. She needed to know what the consequences would be if she chose this unending life filled with thirst and the loneliness that would come as the years continued to pass. Gertrude assured it didn’t have to be bad if she chose it, though she strongly discouraged it, and insisted it would be have to be entirely her decision.

I told her my truth, too. I shared about Theodore and Isobel, and of Senna’s departure. The killing, the thirst, the blood, the changes that will come to pass - far beyond anything she could imagine. But also the losing touch with who I was, and the periods of desperation spent clinging to anything from my mortal days. It has nearly been two hundred years of life, half of which I spent in a dark cave, but so much of me feels lost in a world I was never meant to see, and I feel like a stranger in the skin of a woman who would’ve been very different if I had lived and died the life intended for me and Tsalomee.

In the end, she chose to think on it, returning home with tinctures for a week or so. She never returned, but she wrote a letter to us that she asked her mother to deliver upon her death, which came only a few short months later. In it she thanked us for giving her a look into a world she would have never known nor understood otherwise. At the end of it she spoke about her decision in coy rambling that would be covert to anyone else but Gertrude and myself.

I am attaching the last part of her letter so that I may always look back upon it and read it. If I am ever asked again if I will turn another, I will urge them to read these words. Wisdom, they say, is reserved for the old and long-lived souls. However, in my time, I have found that it is children that know best how to bear their souls to give us wisdom unfettered by the darkness that life bestows upon so many of us.

Her name was Nelly. A nickname acquired from her mouthful of a name: Anne-Ella Price Nelson. She was only thirteen years young when she died. We used money stolen from Mary’s home to help pay for funeral expenses, and found a warm friendship in her family as they grieved her loss. 

 

---

 

I asked mama if she could live forever, would she? She said to live endlessly is both to love and lose forever. I told her I was not afraid to die, even if I was so young, and she told me she was proud of me to say so. But it was not this that gave me comfort that she would someday heal from my passing. Mama said to me that she would rather anyone she loved suffer the pain of death once than to wish upon them a lifetimes of endless death. Mortality is a gift that in some fleeting moments I thought I would rid myself of if the opportunity would have come to me. When you read this, I will have died now. I promise that you did more than anyone else could ever do for a little girl short on time. I choose to believe in these dying days that foreverness comes in many forms. Keep me alive in those journals, won’t you? We lived and learned so much in our short time together.

With love and gratitude, Nelly

Chapter 10: Summer/Fall 1864

After the war began, Gertrude and I sold the greenhouse to a family of sympathizers who would use it as a safe house. We both felt called to travel north to work more actively with the Underground Railroad’s efforts, especially to offer medical support. As a cover, we also did day work in midwifery. One family hired us, the Vanguards, to assist with the final weeks and post-birth care for Mrs. Eloise Gilette-Vanguard. She kept her maiden name specifically because her family was a powerful Confederate family. Mrs. Eloise Gilette-Vanguard insisted on being referred to using her full name by slaves and staff, which she made sure we knew included myself and Gertrude. At first, I tried my best to respect her in this way. With time, I learned she did not deserve that kind of honor.

The Gillette family was powerful in the Confederacy because they were one of the first families in Arkansas, and Eloise preached it as gospel that her family has also been well established and prominent in Tennessee and Georgia, where her brothers and sisters maintained the family status. It will come to pass that I will take notes on this information and add it to the Vanguard file I put together at the end of this story. I kept very detailed references to where her family was located and their names. It is security that Eloise will not turn back on the promises I forced her to make.

Back at the beginning of our time with the Vanguard family, we were there specifically for Eloise. They assured us that Eloise’s pregnancy had been normal and that when she did see doctors they agreed that she was doing well. The reality was less clear than that. Peter confided in us that she had numerous miscarriages between their two daughters, as well as since. They remained cautiously optimistic during this pregnancy that the child would be born healthy and give them a third child. Peter hoped for a little boy, of course, but Eloise was clear that she wished for another daughter. They both hoped for the wrong thing. They should have hoped for their child to be born healthy. When Eloise went into labor and delivered the baby at home in their bathroom, the child was born cold and blue. Devastated as they were, Eloise focused on the fact that the child was a boy and frequently remarked that a girl would have survived. She cited their daughters, Scarlet and Georgia, as proof. Peter retreated from the house in response and spent most of his time working. It worked out well for him, I supposed, because the harvest was only weeks away rather than months, so time in the fields was easy to justify.

As for us, Gertrude and I were paid to stay after Eloise’s pregnancy ended to tend to all matters related to her wellness. Though he did not mean to talk about her mind, it was clear that he meant it. Scarlet revealed that Eloise had become unstable after miscarriages in the past, leaving Peter victim of her wrath in those dark times. Whenever we were needed, we came, and essentially became hired nurses to the family. Gertrude was respected more than myself. 

Though my skin was lighter than other natives, having lived in the north, Eloise commented on my “savage” features making it clear that I was not white. She did not treat me as badly as the slaves, but she did regard me as barely above them simply because of the care I could give her. Peter was much kinder than his wife, as was his daughter Scarlet. In fact, they enjoyed my presence and sought me out over Gertrude. 

Georgina followed her mother’s example. She confided in Gertrude often, saying most foul things about their slaves and me. It was only with great reluctance that Gertrude repeated the disgusting things Georgina told to her. I found myself enraged by the slurs and hateful language that portrayed whiteness as godliness. Even at times Gertrude would become enraged and yell about it as we sat in the candlelight of our cabin in the evening. For as long as I have known her, Gertrude is hard to anger and slow to show her displeasure outwardly.

Opposite to their wife and sister, Peter and Scarlet often confided in me their Abolitionist values. Peter preferred to treat the slaves as paid workers, admitting that he often sneaks money to them as a show of appreciation for their contribution to his wealth and success. He also considered many of the slaves to be his friends, referring to many by their nicknames. In fact, he often described a woman named Dottie. She is considered to be one of their older slaves, if you asked Eloise, but Peter regards her as his greatest confidante. Despite being ten years her elder, Dottie shared in the level of  she received from Peter, welcoming their budding friendship to be more than just an ‘master’ and ‘slave.’ As the weeks unfolded, it came to be that Scarlet shared that she suspected her father was having an affair with Dottie. After she said it, I started to see it as well.

When it came to Georgina and Eloise, neither of them cared enough to see anything more than Peter’s kindness as naiveté about “the blacks.” They disregarded his closeness to their slaves as being immature. They often declared him to be misled from his youth being raised in the North. Despite being so much like her mother, Georgina began to think something was amiss when Peter began talking long walks at night and Dottie started working later. Whenever she gossiped about it to Gertrude, she did her best to dismiss the possibility by reciting many of the same hateful things back to her. Too often Gertrude needed to purge her regrets for speaking so foully once getting home. This only worked for a short time, though, and Georgina convinced Scarlet to go for a night swim at a nearby lake. Along the way they caught Peter and Dottie kissing and holding hands. 

Georgina had rushed back to the house to tell Eloise, but Gertrude and I were still there only by chance, delivering tonics for headaches until our next visit. Scarlet and Georgina argued in the garden. Peter returned with Dottie, Georgina told her father that he had to tell their mother within a week, or she would tell the truth. Peter did not argue - he did not even respond. He simply watched her as she stormed into the house. Scarlet complained of illness before going inside, telling us that she may need additional care during the week. It ensured Gertrude and I were in the home tending to her as this tragedy unfolded in their home. 

When at home with Gertrude, I joked that they were lucky to find them doing something so tame. When Gertrude asked me why, I told her that I knew Dottie to be pregnant and that she said she had only lain with Peter. Even if I did not know about the affair, Dottie shared in many of the same symptoms that Peter had described in Eloise’s previous pregnancies and miscarriages. I would have wondered about the similarities even in isolation. Gertrude agreed on both matters by the time we were ready for bed that night.

Georgina and Scarlet would have nasty confrontations when their mother was out of the house, or at least out of the room. Each interaction became more intense, aggressive behaviors emerging slowly but surely. After a week, Peter convinced Georgina that he had plans to tell their mother in the following week while Dottie was not working. Though Georgina said that she accepted his proposal, she later confronted Scarlet for supporting him through this debacle. She complained that protecting Dottie was unnatural and that she would be putting their father on the spot at dinner because she believed Dottie should be punished for seducing their father.

Scarlet smacked Georgina so hard across the face that there was a clear handprint on her cheek. Fiercely, Scarlet scolded Georgia for meddling in affairs that did not concern her. Her chastising belittled Georgina as a child unaware of the social politics of marriages and affairs. Georgina defended her stance that their mother deserved better, labeling Peter as dirty for kissing a black woman. We all stodgy with bated breath to see if she knew they were doing much more than that, but she never mentioned anything else. Scarlet remained steadfast that they needed to let their father break the news because of how delicate the matter is, but Georgina did not budge. Well, not her stance. Georgina did tackle Scarlet to the ground, though. They began to physically fight, resulting in Georgina with a split lip and bloody knuckles. Scarlet’s nose bled profusely and her eye was swollen shut.

When Eloise returned with Peter from an afternoon lunch with friends, Georgina sputtered blood from her mouth as shouted the truth of her father’s affair with Dottie. Once all that needed to be said was out in the open, Eloise simply held her a hand over her stomach before asking Gertrude to assist her into bed because she “felt quite unwell.” Peter stood in front of his daughters in defeat. Scarlet ran to him and wrapped him in her arms. Moments later they left to the back garden.

Georgina remained in the center of the room, sneering at me. She expected me to tend to her wounds, and eventually said as much. However, I told her that I was worried my dirty skin would taint her blood and advised her to seek assistance from a white person. Georgina stormed off in a tantrum over my refusal. I laughed at her as she went because if they were as rich and respected as they claimed, they would not have relied upon the cheap care of a white girl and a native woman. I knew with certainty that more secrets lived in those walls, but I did not care to know more than I already did. If that was how horrible these women chose to be openly, then I did not need to know how much worse got.

As nightfall came, Georgina retired to bed only after being sedated by Gertrude. She did the same with Eloise, more as a precaution than a necessity. As for Peter and Scarlet, I assisted them in packing so that they could flee. I made quick arrangements to have them leave with Dottie to travel north. Gertrude took them out of town and came home once they were in safe hands, which was about three days later. We never discussed why she was the one that took them instead of me.

But we both knew.

Gertrude could never do what we both knew really needed to be done here. I could. Eloise and Georgina needed more than a stern suggestion to leave their Arkansas life in the past. This situation required demands and a constant presence.

Until the day the sale of the Vanguard home was final, I was there watching. Eloise provided to me all of the important documents that she would need to prove her identity elsewhere. If I thought she was lying, I sat in her room, drinking blood from rats as she fell asleep. Even though I could not guarantee her ongoing cooperation, I could make her so scared of me that the chances of her risking defiance would become so very small. When the day came that they were leaving, I did not think there would be treachery. She handed over the family documents, her wedding rings, and any keepsakes that identified the children as they were named at birth. When she was about to walk away, I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back to me with a harsh tug. I stared her down, snarling all the while, and made myself unequivocally clear.

I will kill both of you if you betray me, and it is a promise I am too eager to keep.

Now this file is tucked away with my journals. While I do not know that I would say I have gained anything in the way of usable goods. What I truly walk away with from this experience is a new awareness of my power. For so long I have thought of myself as someone to whom things happen, and as a person who reacts to those things. For years, I have been turning, changing, but I think I have finally come out on the other side of this evolution. No more will sit and wait for things to happen to see what I will make of myself.

Here-forth and forever, I will make things happen.

Chapter 11: Winter 1864

We arrived in Chicago several days after Gertrude said she couldn’t stay in the south. Being surrounded by the Confederacy and their lynchings was overwhelming. We decided to pack up and head north one morning on a whim, and Chicago is what we settled on when we were jumping onto the trains traveling the railways. It was faster than traveling by foot, and I simply wanted to get Gertrude somewhere new for a chance to live a different life.

We had been living in the alleys and learning the lay of the land, but we have been able to pick up jobs since arriving. Gertrude wanted to get into something different from medical care. She is so young, so it seemed unlikely she would find anything in that line of work anyway. Instead, she’s found work at a bakery. She likes it and gets to bring home one pie or loaf every night. This helps us save up money before we start renting a small cellar from a pub owner. 

At first, we were just offering to help him empty the cellar because he can no longer get down there, but when Gertrude and I mentioned we were looking for a place to live, he asked if we would like the cellar. We pay him a small amount every week while helping him around his house. Gertrude shares her breads and pies with him. As for me, I started offering to help clean shops. There was one shop who was a very shaggy looking man with dirty hands and a dusty face. He called himself a fletcher, though he admitted he did more woodworking now that men use guns more than a bow for their hunting. He introduced himself as Mister Bas, pronounced like “boss.” I initially thought that this was similar to the South when slaves were made to call the families they served “master.” However, he said that it was just the family name, which helped ease my discomfort around the word.

Weeks turned to months quickly and we found that it was winter far sooner than we realized. It was different than the winters of the far north where I grew up, where Gertrude spent many of her years. Wind whipped around with a level of ferocity that rivaled rabid animals in the wild. Though the skin wasn’t damaged, it sliced through to the bone. I wear layers in a way I never used to, and I found myself missing the warmth of Louisiana each morning when opening the door to leave the cellar. Gertrude often shared the sentiment, though she finds the snow and harsh waves of the lakeshore to be a different sort of beauty than she’s seen before during our travels.

Gertrude always tries to see the positive in things around her. It has always been on of my favorite things about her. In so many ways, I love her. I have loved her as my patient, as my child, as an equal in womanhood, and as my greatest friend. Too easily I find myself thinking of her as a sister, as someone that I will have with me forever. I find comfort in her presence. I know that she shares the sentiment.

But I see something different in her eyes here. She tries to befriend the other children. Sometimes they go out to play, or they want to read and write together over tea. Gertrude comes home with a heavy sadness weighing her slight body down. Were we not already in the cellar, I think she would sink straight through the floor until she crashed against the cold earth. Complaining is not in her nature, but she talks about the trivialness of the topics the girls discuss. They gossip about the antics of wily women and their husbands, or about boys they want to court them, and discussing the politics of the still-young American country. Gertrude sees in them a naiveté that she cannot enjoy herself. She also feels left out in these conversations.

Even if she were attracted to men, Gertrude would not grow up and get married. She would not go on to know if she can bear children. Advancing her education is entirely out of the question.  Forever she will be seen and perceived as a child. It is so limiting and damning that she declines their invites at times. Her struggles to relate to them leaves her feeling so sorrowful that she is full with it to the top of her head. It leaves her sodden like a rock stuck in mud dried flush with the earth again. Digging her out is instinctual, but it is not without heartbreak, and one day Mister Bas notices it bothering me in my eyes.

I tell him simply that Gertrude is unwell of the mind, that she does not feel as if she belongs. It seems needless to reveal to him the truth of our nature. I thought to myself that he would not believe us even if I did tell him. It is a simple conversation, I thought, and it ended normally enough.

Until the next day, of course, when Gertrude came to the shop after finishing her work early. She had in tow a cobbler that she wished to share with me and Mister Bas. I sent her off after we took a break, assuring her I would not be too far behind. After she left, Mister Bas asked how many years she’d been so young. I thought he meant to ask her age and reminded him that she is fourteen, which is the age we decided upon for her. Mister Bas corrects himself and simply asks how long we have been alive.

How many centuries, he asked specifically. He meant to know how many hundreds of years we had continued to be amongst the living, parading around as mortal when we were nothing of the sort. Mister Bas asserted, “Her eyes look older than any child I have ever met.” I asked after him if he had any drink, or if he might be sleeping poorly, since such a notion seemed silly to come from a man I knew, up to this point, to be another mortal man running a shop. He must have sensed it in my mind, for he went on to explain himself quite clearly.

Growing up, we heard many stories, and I was more than familiar with Moos-bas. He was often depicted as a free spirited mink that was a powerful fletcher that hunters looked up to in their boyhood. He was a childhood favorite because he was known to also, on occasion, grant wishes. Despite the many stories of our ancestors having met him during their hunts and travels, I have never known someone who met him personally, or even claimed to have done. Yet, I accepted that this man in front of me was he.

He spoke of how the eras of life change his role, and though Abenaki peoples would always know him as Moos-bas, the mink spirit fletcher and wish grantor, others would come to think him a djinn or guardian angel. He talked about the many iterations he’s been and the many he’s yet to become, and he did so with a joy in his voice that I envied. Truly as immortal as one can be, Moos-bas basked in the thrill of endless possibilities. I certainly did not smile upon a similar fate for myself, but my mind strayed to Gertrude.

My mind returned to the original question.

Her eyes look older than any child he has ever met, huh? I told him the truth. I was a vampire, and Gertrude was something without a name. As I tell him the story of our creation, our affliction, and how Gertrude is almost frozen in time with no benefit nor curse, he begins to understand the troubles in my mind that I had not fully unearthed even within myself.

“Do you wish me to heal her?” I have heard people say that questions hang in the air, but this was something else. It did not just hang there, it took up every free space between us in the wide expanse of the workroom. Our gaze held strong as the question grew bigger and heavier, demanding an answer.

Could I give it, though? Was it my question to answer? Gertrude had never said she wished to be mortal again. But I do not think that she would ever dare to say as much. Gertrude once thought she would die young and now she is practically damned to do the exact opposite. The poor girl had been threatened with guaranteed, finite time and then punished for wanting more through events out of her control to have more than she could ever fathom. More than any of us - more than Margaret’s suffering after killing her mother, more than Caroline killing her sister, more than myself trapped in a cave - Gertrude has suffered the most. She has seen the light and the dark, yet all she craved for herself was everything between the two. Gertrude wanted to soak into the grey middle like a white shirt stained in the wash. Still, she would never say it.

I found myself nodding without speaking. Of course I wish for her to be healed! I want for her to live for only one more lifetime, and for her to fully be able to explore all that it offers. I want her to find love in the bare bosom of a woman that craves love just as she does. I want her to enjoy domestic bliss and all the silence with a romantic richness that embraces the stillness. I want her get tall and to mature into a full-bodied woman that can buy dresses that make her feel grown. I want her to drink and to dance. I want her to go to school. I want her to get wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. I want her hair to grey. I want her body to grow weak from a long life.

Moos-bas assures me that when she wakes in the morning, she will be healed, that he will come in the night and bestow upon her a mortal life. I wondered if I should warn Gertrude that this change was coming, but it felt too insincere to keep it a secret. I already felt as though I had crossed a line by deciding without her. The only way to honor my love and respect for her would be to tell her as soon as I got home.

And I have done.

At first, Gertrude laughed and denied any such possibility. She said she often wished for such a thing, but it never came to pass, so it must be a joke. As I told her about Moos-bas the way his story had been told me, a flicker of hope shifted over her face. After listening intently and sitting on the recollection of my evening, Gertrude admitted at long last that she would be delighted were it to be truth. However, she assured equally that if it were false, that I must quit the job at once and find someone of more sound mind to work for that would not prey upon the desperation of tired women.

Gertrude has long been asleep, treating the night as nothing more than any other. I sat in her room with a blanket and my journal, recounting in my journal all that has passed. As I wrote a few paragraphs back, Moos-bas appeared at her bedside, though this time as a mink. It was unnerving to see him in this animal shape but moving with the easy and style of a human. His critter body got into her bed and placed two paws upon her head. A golden hue lit up from beneath her skin, followed by a shimmering fog coming from behind her teeth when she exhaled. I have seen and practiced magic, but nothing that has looked so serene. Moos-bas came to my lap, sitting on my journal, and I pet him gently as I looked upon Gertrude. She looks the same but I know that she is different.

How will she know? Will she hunger? Will she tire faster? It has never been clear with Gertrude what she is and what she is not, except that she is not dead and she is not alive. I tell Moos-bas that I will see him at work in the morning and that I am thankful for his kindness. Soon I will lie down myself, but for now I will simply get out Theodore’s journal so that I can update the entry about Moos-bas with my now lived experience.

Perhaps we will return to them when spring comes. Theodore and Isobel are old, after all, and would enjoy the extra care and company. Perhaps I could leave Gertrude with them when I feel drawn to this or that again. I think it would suit her if she wants it. I shall ask in the morning.

Chapter 12: Fall 1865

Returning to the cabin I helped build came with a well of emotions. When I knocked on the door, shuffling and knocking around filled the stagnant air of spring when we had arrived in - Vermont. That is what this place is called now. Despite living here for some years after it became a state, it was not something I paid mind to when the lands were my home. Before it was Vermont, it was simply the land of Abenaki, which soon became the greater Wabanaki tribe. It was simply land. It was simply dirt and grass and streams that we shared our time with. Now the land has a name, yet it lacks the agency I once knew it to have, and the only thing that remains and is familiar are the walls of the cabin. And even then, they looked different from when I saw them, which had been a shock when Theodore had first ushered us through the threshold.

We discussed Gertrude’s healing first, how she was mortal again, just as they were. They were excited to have her, though they still asked on about Senna, if he had been crossed or had a change of heart. I reminded them that he thought me a monster when he left and that it would be unlikely that he would seek me out. Isobel tutted and said that he was always as wild as the flower I named him after. I still remember her callousness as I write this now, even though it has been a few months since then. Isobel did not long for Senna if he could not love me, and though she wished to know if he was well, she still had the man and woman of her heart. Senna was never kept in the dark when he asked about me, and so she found his abandonment a sort of betrayal. Theodore, though, was wounded in a way from which he never healed.

Gertrude returned to school, though we both agreed once we decided certainly that we would stay here for some time, we changed our names as well. When coming up with our new identities, Gertrude picked for me the name Laurie. She always called me such, but we went with a more traditional spelling. For the last name, I chose Wren, for it reminded me of the birds we saw all over the country as we travelled. Choosing a last name related to an animal was important to me, a sliver of my heritage still present all these years later. Now the people know me as Laurie Wren, the daughter of of a family friend. I came one day with an orphan to help tend to their needs late in life.

As for Gertrude, we also gave her a new name. We toyed through the variations but settled upon Trudy, which was a nickname that repeated in her life. Whenever she tried to befriend others that were her appeared age, it was a natural shortening of her name. It would be an easy transition for her just as my choice was for me, and then she opted to take the last name Warren, as an honor to me. In this way, she would always have a part of me with her. I had kissed her forward, then, and we decided that this was how it would be.

Again, we begun blending into the mortal world around us. I know that have some years before questions will come, but they will always come eventually. I only need as many as Theodore and Isobel have left or until Gertrude finds a partner to keep for the rest of the days. She remains doubtful that at time will come to pass in her life where women can love openly, but I remain confident that she will find true love all the same. I figure, let them talk, call her wretched, call her wrong - there will be nothing that they can say that she cannot survive. Their words will only be words, and when she dies, Gertrude will welcome it like a long lost friend.

There are few talents I can advertise, and people are weary of a woman my age that is not married. Well, the man are lewd without witness and critical when there are listening ears. The women gossip, as they often are wont to do in their housewifery, which Isobel insists is less a reflection of me than it is of the women nattering. Isobel says she knows many of these wives and their mothers and that, for all the rumors they mill about, their skeletons are often bright and shiny next to their perfectly pressed dresses. Theodore says the men that are perverse openly are often not nearly as dangerous as the men who keep quiet. He refers to foul mutterings of disgusting humans from his free evenings spent at the bar over the years. He said that it was important to remain aware of the surroundings. I remind him often I could kill any of them in an instant if I wish.

I do not wish, though. I hunt and break down the animals for meat, setting up a table in the evening hours or during the days when most all men and women are free of work. People pay good money, or at least good money as far as I am concerned, and so I start after it daily. Gertrude’s baking skills remain fresh and so she helps with leftover meat by making pies. She makes fresh fruit tarts with wild berries when she can, and promises that next planting season we will begin a garden. Working comes naturally to Gertrude, and it makes her popular amongst the her peers. Boys swoon after her, especially when her locks eyes on the girls instead. The girls that wish to be her are wooed by her maturity just as well, but some have a twinkling in their eyes that turn shared giggles into something closer to the air of romance.

I am writing now, not because of Gertrude’s new life as a young woman, but in our new life as providers and pillars for this community. People seek out my meat so much that I paid for a rudimentary building be erected so that I could run my own shop. Some people chattered and judged me at first - a woman? Running a shop? On her own? It was akin to sin for those that believed women were best suited for kitchens and bedrooms, but it was an impossible dream for the women who found themselves othered by their own.

At first, I just needed someone to help run the front of my shop while Gertrude was at school, and, I would sometimes pay for someone to mind after Isobel and Theodore when they were unwell. I always hired women, and I always hired the ones in need. These are the widows, or the mother’s with children out of wedlock, and sometimes women who are trying to save money to leave their husbands. They were told they couldn’t be trusted as seductresses, used merchandise, or battered victims. People thought them thieves and liars. Not I. 

For I am a thief and I am a liar.

I am also a murder and a vampire.

These women are not different from the women that judge them and the men that harm them. They will never be as different as I know is possible. And there is nothing they could steal or lie about that would make me think of them as less human. None of them are like me. So I hire them.

I hire many of them. Gertrude teaches baking skills so that we can sell more with the extra hands. The young children of mother’s that work for us require nannies, so we hire women to help with these things too. Even though it is now nearing the end of autumn, and it has only been a few months, we are running out of space in the shop for all that happens. We started to erect an extension of the building next door so that the bakery can have space for itself. Gertrude works closely with a mother and son to run it during the day, and she will come after her schooling to help and check in, as she does not want their staff to think that she is simply ordering them about. It is a sentiment that the employed appreciate.

Someday, the rumors will change. The women we employ will be desirable because they will have the power of self sufficiency. They will have the knowledge of success. They will not rely on men to give them stability, and that will make the men who cast them aside lap up the regret spilling from their tongues. I remind all of the people we pay for work that their value comes from within and that they will never again be forced keep those who do not suit them in their lives.

Perhaps one of the new rumors will be that we are witches, and a full circle would be completed in that way. Truthfully, though, I am a witch now.

I have been studying the compendium I stole from Mary Laville back in New Orleans. I’ve been seeking a way to keep the thirst at bay, if there might be a spell that allows me lessen the effects or how often I must drink blood to survive. When there are languages I do not know, sometimes Theodore is able to assist. He knows recognizes many of them, and simply recognizing the language is enough to set me on the right path.

The passage that I’ve begun using is in French, which is no surprise considering this is where Mary Laville began her existence. I know a fair bit, as many spoke it in New Orleans, and, even being rusty, I was able to translate most of it. What I couldn’t translate, Gertrude helped fill in gaps, and even Isobel offered some insight on slang she knew. When I finally had the whole passage, I learned of a concoction that was crafted with the intent or prolonging the effects of potions and tinctures. I tried it first with a tincture for pain with Theodore, to see if he could wait longer between medicines, and it worked. I was elated, but I did need to keep testing it. After that, I tried it with milk and stew, seeing how long it might sit before turning to rot. When that was a successful trial, I took a bucket of blood into a corner at the shop and mixed in the magic liquid to see how long it would sit in the elements. I also put some blood into a canteen with the potion mixture to see how long it might last at a different volume.

After a week, I could confirm that the magic was working well enough for the purposes that I would require of it in terms of preservation. The blood would keep in open air and in a canteen easily. I could probably keep a keg at the ready, which I will never do for fear of being questioned. For now, things are brilliant. The magic potion prolongs the benefits of drinking blood, which also means I drink less. So far, I have had no issues, and I consider this to be a ‘win’ in my journey as an immortal being. I am thinking that I can return to the simpler living I knew before I was this thing, this vampire. It feels that this is my moment to come back to the woman I was supposed to be all those years ago. I can return to where I began.

This new focus inside of me towards magic is giving me renewed excitement in this forever life. Though I already have so many journals to keep, I am pleased to be using this compendium to its fullest worth. I was never drawn to magic that way Caroline was when we were so young and mortal, but I do see it now. If I ever happen upon her again, we must exchange knowledge so that we can both be stronger in our pursuits. It will be lovely, I suspect, if it ever comes to pass.

For the time being, I feel the wholeness I felt when building this cabin. Though Theodore and Isobel deteriorate before my eyes, this is still a family home. It holds our stories, good and bad, happy and sad, and the totality of that warms my cold skin more than any fresh blood ever could.

I love them. It might not be a picture of perfection, this life, but it is mine.

It is forever mine, and I do not think for a second that I would trade it away.

Chapter 13: Spring 1866

I cannot say exactly when I started to notice that blood was not responding to the potions, or at least I cannot say when I started to think that it was not my error. Perhaps I spoke the incantation incorrectly or an ingredient wasn’t measured appropriately. It was my instinct to think it was an oversight on my behalf. After all, I am still so new to the use of magic like this. It prompted me to do smaller batches, though, isolating the blood from different animals in different buckets. I did not want to waste large batches of blood, after all. Our staff is too large, our connections too many - the others cannot afford me becoming a menace in my vampiric nature. It would ruin their lives.

Some buckets reacted the same way from the same batch of potion mixtures. Initially, I merely kept track of which breed of animal’s blood reacted badly. The blood turned to black sludge, wet and thick so much so that it would stain the wood of the bucket and erode the finish of metal fastenings. When I dumped the foul substance outside, it would kill the grass instantly, but I can think of nowhere else to dump it when it happens, so I continued to dump it in the fields behind our shops.

This inconsistency intrigues me, so I start asking the famers about their livestock. Do they get sick? How do you tell? Do they study blood in animals the way they have come to do in humans? The farmers talk about how they know based on symptoms of their animals - their craggy eyes, scaly skin, or lethargy. I ask if I can takes notes, only to quell my curiosity - and so a yet another new notebook has begun. I have so many now: the herbalism book, this magic compendium, Theodore’s book of stories, my manifest of lives, and now I’ll be studying blood in an effort to understand this phenomenon.

Gertrude looked for books at school about medicine to see if she could sneak them home. When she could not find anything further, she suggested a trip to a neighboring town with a public library, which was helpful to a certain point, I suppose. I learned mostly the names of men who study blood and about human anatomy. Modern language that suited my pursuits got jotted down, as did snippets of studies that might provide further insight and context. Mostly what I learn is that disorders of the blood do exist and can be an early indicator of other illnesses. Though I already knew that blood could do this, seeing the suggestion that it can be an early warning sign made me think I should begin to ask of the health of the animals I butcher.

Animals in the spring time from farmers is slower, so my opportunities for conversation are somewhat diminished, with their visits being limited to their own meat purchasing ventures. However, Gertrude befriended their children at school. She asked the questions I spoke over at night around the fireplace. She reported all she learned to me every night. Since then, I have begun to track who purchases the meat that I am able to connect to the tainted blood. I want to know if they become sick when they eat the meat of infected animals. I have heard of studies like this, read about them in my research, and I am adding many steps to my routine very quickly. It will make it difficult to pinpoint a specific factor in the final outcome, which is the black sludge, but I know that information is easier to sift through than guessing with nothing to base the ideas from. Gertrude tells me that I am very smart for a woman that has never gone to school. I thank her each time she says it because I know she means it as a compliment, though I have never considered the white man’s education system to be of greater value than the lived experience I have gained in my many, many years.

As luck, or fate, would have it, one of our employees becomes ill. I know it seems cruel to call it lucky that she is ill, leukemia she is told. As for time left, it is thought that since she is already showing symptoms that it can’t be much more than a year; two, if she keeps in peak health otherwise. Gertrude is not surprised when I bring it up at home, late at night, when there was no chance of being heard. Isobel might have inserted her opinion, which would have aligned with me, and it would not have felt fair and objective. I proposed revealing myself to this woman, testing her blood, to see if the potion worked on human blood. I had no reason to guess it would be different, and Gertrude agreed. What surprised me was that not only did she agree with my proposal, she came up with a better plan to enact it. Instead, she did not want to tell her I was a vampire, but rather just let her know I was a witch; and that I have been studying blood in animals with magic. Gertrude also proposed that I have a control source of blood, someone’s blood that won’t turn to sludge certainly.

She offered herself, of course.

When running the tests, it is exactly as I expected. Gertrude’s blood is unchanged by the magic potion. Though it keeps for a few days, we wash it away in the sink. I do not wish to drink human blood if there is no need. We keep the woman, Angeline, one night after work and show her the buckets. We explain the magic and the tests, her hand over her heart and eyes wide. The risk was high, of course, but it would not be impossible to call her trustworthiness into question if it came to it. Gertrude and I both had done worse to survive, and many people would turn their eyes away if it meant they would remain stable in their own lives. It is how America came to be a country with states and white men, after all. It is a weakness I have no qualms exploiting to my favor. Perhaps in controlling this beastly affliction I have become cruel, but I prefer to call it a steadier head.

Angeline accepted it, though, which was great luck. Proper luck, not like her being ill. She agreed to a bloodletting, if Gertrude will do the same, and so we did there in the shop. As expected, Angeline’s blood turned to sludge. It confirmed my theory, and it was hardly a surprise to her since she was already handed her death sentence. As she cleaned her wound with Gertrude’s help, she inquired what magic can do for the sick besides telling them that they are, which I did not plan on being asked. I surmised that she wanted me to dabble in a cure. I rolled the thought over like a piece of meat in a spit, a hog over fire, and considered the further risk of it.

Angeline volunteered herself as an experiment, “I am dying anyway,” she reminded us. It is not the first time. We saw this and used it to our advantage with Nelly. Her letter remains in this journal and the other. Seeing the pensive consideration on my face, surely, Gertrude said it could be discussed in a day or two. I knew that she wished to speak with me on the matter before anyone made promises. Angeline was stoic and hard to read, but she agreed on the promise of consideration. Nobody wanted to press further. No matter how small the night seemed in terms of progress, it was still a lot of information that would weigh heavier on the mind than it would on the bones.

My mind has not been full of ideas, of the possibilities that could can come with such trials. Medicine can move slow, I have heard the doctors talk about it at the bakery. Gertrude hears just as much at school, about sickness and the new things doctors are trying. Having both been healers and medics and nurses, depending on the when and where, it seems only natural that we would find ourselves in the folds again now.

I guess my thoughts on it are simple enough - I may as well do something good with all this time that I’ve got spread out in front of me, an endless horizon of opportunity. Like the hands of a clock, things will happen in a loop. I will get to see the benefits of the work I do, should I choose to do it. It will be interesting to hear what Gertrude thinks. We may even discuss it Theodore and Isobel, for extra measure. The consciences of others is never a bad resource when thinking of gambling with human life, after all. Perhaps were Senna still around, he would be proud of me I think so. I may never know, and like with all other things around me, I can only make peace with the things I cannot control.

Chapter 14: Spring 1866

I cannot say exactly when I started to notice that blood was not responding to the potions, or at least I cannot say when I started to think that it was not my error. Perhaps I spoke the incantation incorrectly or an ingredient wasn’t measured appropriately. It was my instinct to think it was an oversight on my behalf. After all, I am still so new to the use of magic like this. It prompted me to do smaller batches, though, isolating the blood from different animals in different buckets. I did not want to waste large batches of blood, after all. Our staff is too large, our connections too many - the others cannot afford me becoming a menace in my vampiric nature. It would ruin their lives.

Some buckets reacted the same way from the same batch of potion mixtures. Initially, I merely kept track of which breed of animal’s blood reacted badly. The blood turned to black sludge, wet and thick so much so that it would stain the wood of the bucket and erode the finish of metal fastenings. When I dumped the foul substance outside, it would kill the grass instantly, but I can think of nowhere else to dump it when it happens, so I continued to dump it in the fields behind our shops.

This inconsistency intrigues me, so I start asking the famers about their livestock. Do they get sick? How do you tell? Do they study blood in animals the way they have come to do in humans? The farmers talk about how they know based on symptoms of their animals - their craggy eyes, scaly skin, or lethargy. I ask if I can takes notes, only to quell my curiosity - and so a yet another new notebook has begun. I have so many now: the herbalism book, this magic compendium, Theodore’s book of stories, my manifest of lives, and now I’ll be studying blood in an effort to understand this phenomenon.

Gertrude looked for books at school about medicine to see if she could sneak them home. When she could not find anything further, she suggested a trip to a neighboring town with a public library, which was helpful to a certain point, I suppose. I learned mostly the names of men who study blood and about human anatomy. Modern language that suited my pursuits got jotted down, as did snippets of studies that might provide further insight and context. Mostly what I learn is that disorders of the blood do exist and can be an early indicator of other illnesses. Though I already knew that blood could do this, seeing the suggestion that it can be an early warning sign made me think I should begin to ask of the health of the animals I butcher.

Animals in the spring time from farmers is slower, so my opportunities for conversation are somewhat diminished, with their visits being limited to their own meat purchasing ventures. However, Gertrude befriended their children at school. She asked the questions I spoke over at night around the fireplace. She reported all she learned to me every night. Since then, I have begun to track who purchases the meat that I am able to connect to the tainted blood. I want to know if they become sick when they eat the meat of infected animals. I have heard of studies like this, read about them in my research, and I am adding many steps to my routine very quickly. It will make it difficult to pinpoint a specific factor in the final outcome, which is the black sludge, but I know that information is easier to sift through than guessing with nothing to base the ideas from. Gertrude tells me that I am very smart for a woman that has never gone to school. I thank her each time she says it because I know she means it as a compliment, though I have never considered the white man’s education system to be of greater value than the lived experience I have gained in my many, many years.

As luck, or fate, would have it, one of our employees becomes ill. I know it seems cruel to call it lucky that she is ill, leukemia she is told. As for time left, it is thought that since she is already showing symptoms that it can’t be much more than a year; two, if she keeps in peak health otherwise. Gertrude is not surprised when I bring it up at home, late at night, when there was no chance of being heard. Isobel might have inserted her opinion, which would have aligned with me, and it would not have felt fair and objective. I proposed revealing myself to this woman, testing her blood, to see if the potion worked on human blood. I had no reason to guess it would be different, and Gertrude agreed. What surprised me was that not only did she agree with my proposal, she came up with a better plan to enact it. Instead, she did not want to tell her I was a vampire, but rather just let her know I was a witch; and that I have been studying blood in animals with magic. Gertrude also proposed that I have a control source of blood, someone’s blood that won’t turn to sludge certainly.

She offered herself, of course.

When running the tests, it is exactly as I expected. Gertrude’s blood is unchanged by the magic potion. Though it keeps for a few days, we wash it away in the sink. I do not wish to drink human blood if there is no need. We keep the woman, Angeline, one night after work and show her the buckets. We explain the magic and the tests, her hand over her heart and eyes wide. The risk was high, of course, but it would not be impossible to call her trustworthiness into question if it came to it. Gertrude and I both had done worse to survive, and many people would turn their eyes away if it meant they would remain stable in their own lives. It is how America came to be a country with states and white men, after all. It is a weakness I have no qualms exploiting to my favor. Perhaps in controlling this beastly affliction I have become cruel, but I prefer to call it a steadier head.

Angeline accepted it, though, which was great luck. Proper luck, not like her being ill. She agreed to a bloodletting, if Gertrude will do the same, and so we did there in the shop. As expected, Angeline’s blood turned to sludge. It confirmed my theory, and it was hardly a surprise to her since she was already handed her death sentence. As she cleaned her wound with Gertrude’s help, she inquired what magic can do for the sick besides telling them that they are, which I did not plan on being asked. I surmised that she wanted me to dabble in a cure. I rolled the thought over like a piece of meat in a spit, a hog over fire, and considered the further risk of it.

Angeline volunteered herself as an experiment, “I am dying anyway,” she reminded us. It is not the first time. We saw this and used it to our advantage with Nelly. Her letter remains in this journal and the other. Seeing the pensive consideration on my face, surely, Gertrude said it could be discussed in a day or two. I knew that she wished to speak with me on the matter before anyone made promises. Angeline was stoic and hard to read, but she agreed on the promise of consideration. Nobody wanted to press further. No matter how small the night seemed in terms of progress, it was still a lot of information that would weigh heavier on the mind than it would on the bones.

My mind has not been full of ideas, of the possibilities that could can come with such trials. Medicine can move slow, I have heard the doctors talk about it at the bakery. Gertrude hears just as much at school, about sickness and the new things doctors are trying. Having both been healers and medics and nurses, depending on the when and where, it seems only natural that we would find ourselves in the folds again now.

I guess my thoughts on it are simple enough - I may as well do something good with all this time that I’ve got spread out in front of me, an endless horizon of opportunity. Like the hands of a clock, things will happen in a loop. I will get to see the benefits of the work I do, should I choose to do it. It will be interesting to hear what Gertrude thinks. We may even discuss it Theodore and Isobel, for extra measure. The consciences of others is never a bad resource when thinking of gambling with human life, after all. Perhaps were Senna still around, he would be proud of me I think so. I may never know, and like with all other things around me, I can only make peace with the things I cannot control.

Chapter 15: Spring 1869

My how have the years passed so quickly. Three years, it has been, since I started this venture of hiring women in need. Now I have cultivated a pocket of culture that is matrilineal within the greater patriarchal world that defines America’s systems. While white men remain in power, making laws and voting, and running this nation, it is women who know their secrets. It is women who see what happens behind closed doors, who clean up the messes men leave in their wake, and it is love for women that often humbles these same men, too.

Through the years, the gossip and secrets that have come through my doors have amounted to a lot of power. Knowing what businesses are failing, who needs loans and supplies, and having women be employed in agreement for assistance - it has done wonders for making me the most powerful woman in town. But dramatic betrayals and financial failures aren’t the only rumors that come through my doors.

The youngest women, the girls that were young teenagers when I first started running my businesses, are entering their adult years. They go to lavish parties where everyone drinks and dances, sometimes much more sultry activities happen too, but they come back in the mornings to report that people are suspicious of me. They think my untarnished youth is unsavory. Amongst those rumors are that I bathe in blood, just like one Elizabeth Báthory. Others outright state that they think I’m a vampire to these girls. They suspect too, Gertrude tells me, and they talk about it behind my back, but it’s not from a negative place. There is respect between all of us, myself and the women who work for me, and their daughters, so they talk about it from a place of vanity and admiration. They think they want what I have.

It is all but confirmed that I’m a vampire, but it does not worry me the way it would have in years past. Let them chatter, let them swoon - none of it can touch the influence and control I have here. And soon, my reach will be far and wide. Some of these young women have expressed a desire to open their own businesses, to build their own empires of independence. Gertrude has gone off to neighboring towns, scouting properties and land, identifying who should go where. She is an amazing businesswoman and the ideal heiress to the riches I am amassing. A time will come when I must leave, when the rumors become too true, and the worry becomes too strong, and I know that when that happens she will be well off. Gertrude works mostly independently nowadays. It is just as well, of course, I still oversee all the work each day, splitting my time between the many shops. I take one day each week to touch base with the builders, since I’m having the cabin renovated.

Theodore passed away last spring. He lived an astonishingly long life, and Isobel even more so. She spends most days in her bed or in a chair by the fireplace. Though she is sad, mostly she is just tired. I know her time is coming soon, but for now I make sure to be with her in the evenings and on my off day, discussing all the dreams we once had for the house when we were in a lovers tryst all those many years ago. It seems life a different lifetime now. I guess it has been, really.

As the cabin is built out and up, it looks more and more luxurious with each week, even in its unfinished state. Isobel is aware enough to see the work being done. It brings me joy when she offers her insight on colors that look good together, fabrics and furniture ideas. It keeps her in the heart of this home, keeps the kindling of the hearth from her. I make the workers pivot sometimes so that Isobel’s vision is respected. This is a family home and it started with her, with us. Gertrude doesn’t mind, either, though I think it might be in part because she travels so often these days. What should she care if she does not see it often?

Before she left for this most recent trip, it dawned on me that she is a proper woman now. In every way, she is the epitome of beauty. She has a thin frame but a slightly curvy figure with hips that make her waist look small and breasts that plume just slightly over the tops of her dresses. She has grown taller than me. In the right light, she is intimidating, in spite of her soft nature. I worry about her traveling alone for a number of reasons, but most definitely because she goes to parties alone to make connections. She rejects men often, and a sober man doesn’t always handle her refusal well. When they’re drunk, they are worse. The solution isn’t for me to track each rotten bastard down. I cannot and will not always be there to keep her safe.

Which is why I had custom Colt revolvers made for us - matching. Gold filigree has both of our initials on the handle on the right side, LWGP, and a wren on the other. I probably overpaid for the customization, in hindsight, but I do not mind. Truthfully, I have more money than I know what to do with - yet. Gertrude and I are always looking for ways to use our money for a good cause every day. There are no breakfasts, no dinners, where we do not discuss what the next move is going to be and sharing our visions for the future of this business venture of ours.

Perhaps it is unhealthy, but this is simply how Gertrude and I have always been. When she was just a little girl bedridden by illness our days were spent talking and talking about what we believed were impossible possibilities. Nothing was guaranteed then, and then everything was guaranteed forever, it seemed. Now that Gertrude is grown, finally, we are reminded how truly back to the beginning things have become for her. Nothing is guaranteed again.

With a colt on her hip and a home base to call her own, though, I think there is a good chance that the odds are in her favor. That is all I ever wanted for her, too. I just wanted her to see adulthood and grow up. Now she has done.

Since we fled her home, left her family behind, and now that we are without her only living relative gone in the wind, I have chosen to feel pride for the woman she has become after all this time. I think her parents would have been happy to see her today. I wish Margaret could see her. Perhaps I will commission a painting of her when she returns, just in case Margaret never gets to see her alive again. The home will always be deeded to myself, Gertrude, Margaret, and Caroline. It will remain a private estate no matter the cost.

And cost will never be a concern. Not for us.

Not ever again.

Oh Gertrude, what a life we have made for ourselves here.

Chapter 16: Winter 1872

Susan and Lucinda.

I remember when Susan came to us, tattered clothes and swollen stomach with her daughter tugging at the scraps she called a dress. Susan was abandoned by her husband after she had been raped by his friends who had stayed too late after drinking too much at dinner. She came to us asking if we would take the baby when it was born. Gertrude and I inquired deeply into her reasoning, and what we learned was that she did not wish to give up the child solely because it was the result of a brutal attack - though she did give up the child in the end. She said it was also because she couldn’t care for herself and Little Lucinda. Well, she was little then, at least.

Even though Lucinda is only eleven years old, she is very mature. Where other girls her age are playing in the streets with dolls and doing each others hair, Lucinda is in the shops. When Gertrude is home, she considers herself an apprentice. It is normal for her to be sitting in my office with me as I go through papers and travel from shop to shop. In fact, she was with me when I had an important meeting with an accountant to review the shop her mother runs. The financials were off and money was missing in the hundreds from the last three months. I had Lucinda sitting outside the door, thinking that the smithing next door would be loud enough to hide our hushed voices. But she heard and she tattled so quickly.

“My momma takes it and she told me not to tell,” Lucinda was so bright-eyed and quiet when she told us. She had a whole story about how she smuggled the money out of the shop and how she was able to convince everyone that the errors were typos rather than missing monies. It was thorough. Too detailed to ignore, I would say. Immediately I hired an investigator. The results of that venture weren’t quite what I expected and somehow even worse than the story Lucinda offered.

Susan was not stealing the money at all. The culprit had been Lucinda the entire time, making her more than just mature for her age but startling cunning as well. If that had been the only result of the investigation, perhaps I would have advised Susan and Lucinda to find a home elsewhere and start over. Unfortunately, the truth required a serious level of interference.

As it turns out, Lucinda was stealing the money so she could run away from home. She was hiding it from her mother and fussing with the paperwork so it would go unnoticed. When at home, her mother hit her with sticks and belts. Sometimes she would drink too much and throw shoes at Lucinda. On weekends, strange men came to the house and proposition Susan for time with her daughter, but Lucinda dwindling her money savings by paying her mother more to keep them away. When she could not win the bid for her freedom, well, what Lucinda told me left little to the imagination. The abuse and selling of her body by Susan was absolutely abhorrent and unbecoming of the kind of women that we employed.

Susan was fired at once, and Lucinda moved into the manor. She attempted to report us for kidnapping, but when the police interviewed the investigator and Lucinda - the case was easily made against Susan. She was arrested, of course, but some of the men who had gone looking to buy Lucinda from her mother were in law enforcement and the courts. She was let go quickly. Though my first instinct was to kill her, it had been too long since I drank from a human, and I rather hoped to not break from my routine. So I turned to witchcraft instead.

I sent Susan on her way yesterday, but not simply by threatening her even though I did as much. I used magic to alter the crystal necklace that Caroline made for us. Then I hexed it so that Susan would be infertile while wearing it, as well as cursing it to be bound to her person. If she loses it, it will reappear on her neck. If she tries to destroy it, it will repair itself and appear once again resting against her chest. Susan will have no more children and cause no more harm. Perhaps this will give her a chance to build a new reputation and reinvent herself as a good woman.

Gertrude said she was proud of me for being so compassionate to let her get a second chance. I think she is kind to believe I would not have snapped her neck and left her to die all the same if I did not have so much at stake here. I am less cruel, sure, but I will always be vicious to the core. Nature requires balance, after all.

We anticipate rumors and questions. It will not be without notice that Susan has gone. Her arrest was not public so very few people actually knew that it happened. Those that do thought it was from drinking. As far as most people knew, that was her only vice. And it was true enough, as even I knew that she took up drinking after her baby died shortly after birth. She worked through the pain, it seemed, but she was always hosting drinking parties on the weekend, and almost always hungover on a Monday morning. It was assumed she was arrested for it, finally.

Lucinda says she does not plan to correct assumptions. For years Gertrude and I have lived by the motto of “let them talk,” because it will almost always work to their benefit that people not know the truth. Since Lucinda is in our home and our care now, she was informed that there is one rumor that is true: I am a vampire. It did not scare her, though she was shocked to know it. If anyone asks after Susan, we decided over dinner that we will say that she left to care for a dying relative and did not want to disrupt Lucinda’s education and life here. When she does not return, people will assume the depression of losing another loved one broke her. They will think she is drunk somewhere. They will think Lucinda is better of with us.

And they will be right.

Now that this matter has been resolved, we will have Lucinda be Gertrude’s official apprentice. Gertrude will begin teaching her the ways of the our business, and when she travels, I will keep her with me. It is hardly a change, only more official now that she is a member of the Mitchell-Warren family. It is a shame that Isobel passed away before we could bring her into our home. I think more than anyone she would’ve been most thrilled for this addition. Though she always said it was just as well that Senna was gone for not accepting me as I am, there was always a hole in her heart where a mother’s love once filled the space. If only I could have seen that hole closed before she died.

I guess it is no matter - this is the curse of immortality. I will always see the best and worst that life and luck have to offer. Where it is bad luck Isobel died not feeling like a mother again, good fortune has blessed Lucinda with Gertrude and I to raise her into a strong woman. Sometimes, luck would see it both ways and call that life.

At least that will never change.

Chapter 17: Summer 1874

The last few days have been the most intense days I’ve experienced in so long. I am choosing to see this as a dose of good fortune, though it may not seem like it when I’m describing it. As I retell this story, I’m not sure if I should start at the beginning or if I should just say it as it is - as it has ended.

I guess I should first share the cast of characters, as if this were a performance.

Scarlet Vanguard is front and center in unexpected turn of events. Gertrude, the other starlet in this story, brought her back from New York. She went for a benefit party to scout potential business opportunities and partnerships and found Scarlet there seeking the same thing - funding for an orphanage she opened with Dottie. Well, Dottie and Peter still keep their blended family very secretive and hidden away, so the orphanage is in Scarlet and Peter’s name, but it is Dottie and Scarlet who run it every day. Scarlet went because they need donations to improve the accommodations.

Gertrude assured her that she would find the money she needed if she came to the manor. Scarlet arrived with a trunk and a bottle of wine in her hand. I welcomed her into our home and had our house staff assist in moving the trunk to our guest room. I urged Scarlet to save the wine for dinner when Gertrude would be back home. Scarlet happily obliged and went off to clean up in the bathroom after her long travels.

When dinner came and we all sat down, discussions and promises burned the minutes away. Gertrude suggested starting a foundation, said it could be called the MWW Charity, but Scarlet and I thought that we could come up with a better name. We had all agreed that Gertrude & I would make a sizable donation and sending a plaque to be placed in the foyer with our names at our expense so that others may be interested in doing the same. Men like to brag that they are good, I told them. We also agreed with a toast that no man liked to be outdone by a woman. There would be no mistaking the name Laurie Wren & Trudy Warren.

Once Gertrude left, Scarlet suggested taking the wine to the sitting room by the fireplace. We didn’t light the fire, of course, because it was already warm from the summer heat, but there was more comfort to be had in the lush armchairs and smaller space. The first thing Scarlet asked about was why Gertrude and I use new names, how we ended up so far north, stripping back entirely the formalities of business dealings.

I explained that we changed our names after we fled to Chicago. Gertrude had become overwhelmed by the Civil War and the constant hate surrounding us, and it wasn’t a lie to say so. Scarlet shared that it was hard to find a place where her father and Dottie could be in a relationship without risking the safety of their family, especially with her baby brother, Heath. Things were better but not insanely improved, and segregation is rampant everywhere. I understood the importance of getting further and further north and finding a populous area where interracial couples and families might be in less danger. Never safe, just not having to check around every corner. To feel safe was simply not a luxury accessible to everyone, very contrary to the claims.

I shared more about the entity that has become the Mitchell-Warren empire. We commiserated about men and their unearned power, and she complimented the feminist nature of my efforts. As conversation went on, and we both drank a bit more, Scarlet made herself even more cosy. She stripped her shoes and stockings; and then unbuttoned the blouse she wore, allowing her bare skin to be exposed. Her fingers drug across her collarbone while she let out of a soft sigh. 

I should have known then that we would end up in bed together when my stomach twisted in on itself seeing her in such a relaxed state. Scarlet started to reminisce about all the different ways that Gertrude and I had taken care of her family. When she spoke of me, though, there was something different in her voice that I wanted to ignore, and did for a short while. It was not until she said that she felt more fond of me than anyone else whom had worked for the family. I thanked her for the kind words, and assured that there were aspects of working for them that were not entirely bad. Scarlet laughed through what was otherwise a lengthy stretch of silence. I was confused at what she found humorous.

As I said, we ended up entangled in my sheets. Scarlet said that she was taken by me from the moment she saw me. She described it as being “charmed” at first, before joking that magic did not exist. She didn’t know then that she was wrong. About magic and plenty of other things, too.

Of course, Scarlet has had lovers since then, men and women both, but she said she never wanted to settle. She said she hoped against hope that she would find me again, or as close as she could get, thinking of me as the person she was meant to be with until the end of time. It was all encompassing, bordering on overwhelming, but I breathed it in like this sort of thing was brand new to me. It had been so long since I had felt any kind of lust for intimacy that I had forgotten how entrancing it could feel.

I told to her that I was shocked and confused. Scarlet reminded me that she wasn’t a child like her sister when we met, and that she’d already explored her sexuality with others long before she ever laid eyes on me. Men do not often think about these things, I have found, and the secrets whispered in the night air only further confirm this truth. Perhaps not all women care to think on it, but since they carry these young girls in their wombs and see them preyed upon like fawn chased by wolves, I do think it gives women a different perspective on the innocence of youth. There’s a respect from women who are mothers, from women who were once victims of the male hunt, from the witnesses of the horrors that makes them walk in packs in the streets. Scarlet knew instinctively that it would matter to me, if she could manage to determine if I was interested in taking women to bed. Though, I am sure she would have still professed her cravings to me all the same.

In any case, I had known that she was an adult, at the very least. I wasn’t sure her exact age, but she wandered more freely than Georgina did back then. It is also true that Scarlet was exceptionally kind to me, but I had not considered it as a sign of flirting. I was hired for a job, and I did it. I supposed I had been dense about Isobel and Theodore, too, and managed to spit out that I hadn’t been worried about her age. I just needed a moment, was all. Scarlet stood, moving to sit on the floor next to my chair. She rested her chin on my knee and smiled up at me, “So, I have a chance.”

We talked more about our sexualities and past romances. I told her about my tryst with Theodore and Isobel in vague terms, and she shared that she found herself at sex parties in the frays of New York night life. As we found ourselves opening up emotionally, we became equally aroused by each other’s physical touch and proximity. I offered to show her to her room, but we ended up in my mine. Naked behind a locked door, and a single lantern still lit just so we did not run into furniture or roll off the bed.

It would be unnecessary to write the entire escapade of our sex from that night. I will simply say that when I was gasping against the nape of Scarlet’s neck as her fingers found the deepest hidden crevices of pleasure in my body when I became too aware of her artery throbbing against my lips. I did not intend to let my teeth press against her skin, but she moaned at the pressure. Without speaking, she moved her hands faster and I bit harder. In the brief moment I realized I was drinking from her and pulled away, she pushed herself back into me. I licked the blood from her collarbone as we switched positions.

She asked me to bite her again while I returned the favor of a full release. I rolled her body so that could plant my lips on the other side of her neck, too entranced to stop myself to consider the risks of what I had already done. She commanded me to push deeper, bite harder, and even scratched at her own chest enough to break skin with her nails. I licked the blood clean from those wounds too. Once we are both fulfilled, Scarlet kissed me, even with her blood in my teeth and smeared over my chin. She breathed into my mouth that she wasn’t hurt and that she enjoyed rougher sex than most. In fact, she said there were groups of people with similar interests, if I ever wanted to explore it more. I did not respond, knowing how terrible it would be for me to even consider it as an option. Without another word, we both laid down and slept with bare bodies in the flickering light.

Only a couple years ago I had chosen not to kill Susan so I did not drink human blood. Yet, I was in bed with Scarlet’s blood coursing inside of me. I did not see it until morning, but she laid next to me with purple lips and icy skin like a cold winter’s snow. Scarlet woke up complaining about her stomach hurting and being thirsty, but she said she said she had just drank too much. Naively, I accepted it as an answer, but I did wonder. I took her to the kitchen and watched her turn away food and drink of any usual kind. When I encourage her to find something at her leisure, she sniffed out my canteen. She guzzled it quickly without even asking what it was, though she did ask for more. It was confirmed in that moment that I had turned her by not killing her. It was reckless. It could not be undone.

I had to explain to her the truth of the situation. I am a vampire, and now she was too. She thought it was a joke at first, but when I told her to look in the canteen there was a strange calm that settled over her face. Scarlet seemed to accept it with very little effort. Actually, her only concern was about whether or not she would be able to continue operating the orphanage. How could she be around children if she was craving blood all the time? Lucinda and Gertrude came in right at that moment. A new round of explanations had to come, which required everyone to sit at the table. Scarlet immediately started to ask how long had Gertrude know, and had Lucinda known all her life? Those answers were more complex than I think she had anticipated.

Unlike this this entry, I had to start from the beginning and tell it as it truly happened. Gertrude made herself a cocktail to drink while picking at yesterday’s bread load. Lucinda watched eagerly as Gertrude and I talked Scarlet through the whole story, picking fruit from the bowl at the center of the table. Being fair, Lucinda had only heard parts of our origins here and there, and never in order, so she was learning alongside Scarlet in those moments too. In the end, Scarlet said she needed to take a bath and that she would return to make a plan on how to move forward safely once she had time to think on it all on her own..

Lucinda and Gertrude remained in the kitchen after she left, both of them staring me down. It was clear that they each had different reactions to the development. For ever glitter win Lucinda’s eyes to have someone new in our folds, Gertrude has a muscle tensing in her jaw and hands. I knew I needed to speak to Gertrude alone, so I rushed Lucinda away to get ready for school.

I didn’t know what Gertrude was going to say to me when I got the two of us alone. I thought she was mad because I turned someone, that I was careless about Scarlet’s safety. Never could I fathomed that Gertrude was about to tell me she had been in love with me for decades. I was not prepared for Scarlet’s pursuit of me, let alone Gertrude’s jealousy of her. And yet, there she crumpled against the cabinets, telling me that my bedding Scarlet was unfair. She gushed about always having this childhood fancy of me, and how the years passed with it rooting deeper inside of her; and how, when she was mortal again, she was hopeful that she could finally be old enough to have a chance. She said it all with tears in her eyes, “I thought the rules didn’t apply anymore,” which she said because she knew it would matter to me. She had heard me chastise men for buying children’s bodies and taking child brides. She had been preyed upon herself by adults. Gertrude knew it made a difference to me, but she thought immortality made things different for her.

And maybe to someone else they could forget that they had known her when she was so young. Her face was still round, her body shapeless, and her hair in braided pigtails draped over her shoulders. No matter how old she became, she was still that child in my heart. I have never thought of her as anything else. Gertrude has always been a young girl that I have helped to raise. She was always a precious resource in my mind. I only thought of her as my family, someone that I wanted to see happy in life. 

Yet, there I was, the reason for her heart breaking.

There was, and there remains, nothing I could ever say to Gertrude to make her hurt less. I did try. I insisted that she deserved better than this unrequited love. I validated her feelings, letting her know that I understood how she found herself wrapped up in such strong feelings. After all, I have been the most constant thing in her life. When I was missing, she bonded with Tsalomee, and she became the healer I was meant to be, and she stayed waiting for me. When we had to leave, she came with me. I regarded it as her wanting to tag along with someone who was like a mother. I should have questioned her more, or asked Margaret how she let Gertrude go so easily. Did Margaret know? Did everyone else know but me?

She asked for a kiss, just one kiss, but I told her it would be worse than all the evil in the world combined to give her this. It would be like opening a door to ‘maybe someday’ when that day would never come. Instead, Gertrude accepted a kiss on her cheek. Her heart would hurt worse for knowing I will never return those romantic feelings, I knew it, but she deserved to know. It was not an option - not to me. She wept into my shoulder when I pulled her into a tight hug, and I held her there just as I had always done. To me, right then, she was the young child fearful of the future she wanted to have but couldn’t guarantee would come to pass. Only this time, it was a promise. It was sure that she would never have me in bed next to her as her lover. It was a certain loss to her.

Before she left, she was as kind as ever, apologizing for not being happy for me. She said she should be thankful that Scarlet handled it so well and was ready to coexist pleasantly, at the very least. Gertrude insisted that this was her own issue to deal with and that she needed to let two things be true at once - that it hurt and it was a gift. She has always been so wise beyond her years, and she has more than others. For all the hidden pain Gertrude has suffered, all the brilliance she has shined upon the people around her, not a single life that she has touched has been made worse by it - and they don’t realize how lucky they have been to have shared the same air as her.

She was right - two things can be at once. I have always loved and appreciated her, but equally I have never seen her as she deserved to be seen. Perhaps my presence only worsened that truth, worsens it still…

Gertrude offered to tend to all my responsibilities for the day, to allow me to continue explaining and answering questions with Scarlet. The conversations ended up being less about what to expect. I explained the magic I used and how I’d been without human blood for so long. She pried in my personal life experience more once we covered the essential details. I figured if we were going to share an existence in any capacity, she may as well know the truth of my decisions. Killing people - wicked ones, greedy politicians, hateful types - nearly her own mother and sister. But then there was the mercy killings, too.

Even as I write this, I am astounded by the simplicity with which people accept things that should be impossible. I remember how white people would question the stories of my culture, or how they could call fables and folktales simple children’s stories to control their behaviors. So often I wondered why they could not both be true, like what Gertrude said. If it was not doubting critical aspects of culture, it was refusing to believe all humans deserve fair treatment. Women cannot vote. The Africans and Mexicans are treated like property rather than people, even if the American government would confidently claim otherwise. My native people are pushed further and further away from their homelands, to the west, and are being forced to abandon their heritage - cut hair, trousers and buckled shoes.

People find it hard to believe simpler things than immortality and vampires. Scarlet’s only concern is how she will keep other people around her safe - kids in the orphanage, future lovers - and the rest she accepted at face value. Supposedly, Scarlet found no reason to doubt my honesty. After all, she said, “I have see the bare asses of this great nation in the world.” She meant it to be that she had seen worse than what I was telling her. She is wiling to learn magic and uproot her life at a moment’s notice, if needed. I suppose when there is no other choice to be made, one must be radical in acceptance.

For Gertrude’s sake, I will be returning to New York with Scarlet to announce my donation to the orphanage in a public press release. I will stay there with Scarlet to oversee an expansion, traveling with her to New Jersey to find a middle-ground place that will allow both of us to move easily between our homes. I will return the manor briefly, touching base with Gertrude and reviewing important financial paperwork with the accountant. Or as requested, I suppose. Sometimes business dealings will call for it.

Once we are in New Jersey, there will be a schedule to split the time. Lucinda is older now, so she doesn’t need constant supervision. Gertrude will be in my position, primarily, and running everything almost completely independently with my ability to help ever present still. There will come a time when that will not be an option. This will give her time without me, filled intentionally the way it will be when I leave indefinitely.

And we know that day will come. We have always known it.

Scarlet and I already know exclusivity over the span of forever is absurd, and I am under no illusions that we will have this fantastic love story. However, we established that we can always rely on each other and that we will coast through forever as a committed pair. Whether that means sex, collaboration, going into hiding, or traveling through the ages as the world changes - it is the deal that we did not plan to make when she arrived. Nevertheless, I am glad to have it.

Truth be told, I was scared of the day Gertrude would die and I would be without anyone. I would find myself meandering, wondering if I would ever cross paths with Margaret and Caroline again. Would I even recognize them? Would we pick up where we left off? The uncertainty of that train of thought made me grateful to know that Scarlet is guaranteed.

And even if I am not Gertrude’s sweetheart, I am guaranteed to her, too. If she ever calls upon me, I will be there. There is nothing that would stop me. There never will be - it is an unchangeable fact. I love her with my whole heart, even if it is not the way she wants. I can’t wait to see the joy she feels on the other side of all of this change.

For now, I will spend the coming days preparing for a long departure. Staff and packing, not unlike what Gertrude does regularly. It will not seem different to anyone else. It will not look out of character or surprising. Alas, I will know that it is different. The residents of the Mitchell-Warren Manor will know that everything is different now.

I will see it as good fortune. It does not yet taste like gold, but it will.

Chapter 18: Spring 1880

I have been here for 25 years. It is hard to believe because I have not been anywhere this long in my life, except in that wicked cave. Here we are, though, Gertrude is well established and Lucinda has taken over all the tasks that were previously Gertrude’s. That means Gertrude does everything that I have done in the past. As a result, I have spent much of my time in New Jersey with Scarlet. Besides all that, Gertrude has a partner that has joined the family. As far as anyone outside the home is concerned, Emilie is simply another woman in our organization whom was taken in by Gertrude and Lucinda. They share a room in the center of the house with no windows and is shrouded in fabrics to muffle their voices. It is impressive how careful they are, and how business-minded they are together, too. The three of them with flourish, four if Lucinda finds a long-time partner in any of her many suitors.

Both orphanages are successful, and Scarlet has been brilliant in these years transitioning to a vampire lifestyle. It has been a gift to see her flourish in a way that I do not believe any of us were able to do when we became immortal. Scarlet makes it look easy. I am not jealous, and I am glad that I have given her the ability to be so smooth in the change.

However, my name is known. Laurie Wren, of the Mitchell-Warren wealth. I am the figurehead of this expansive business collective. I may be in the background now, but I am known because of financial power I built over the years. Many people pay money to me, or to my name, because they owe their debts to me. There are families who are only well and secure because of what I have been able to give them. In fact, I am too known. The rumors that were there before are only stronger now. It is more obvious that I am not aging or ailing. Even with make-up, I am not appearing old enough. It is making people wary. Thus, it is time for me to leave.

Scarlet will be fine without me for another ten years, probably. She has more time, I think, than I do. She already had the aging of a woman nearing her thirties, and nobody questions her yet. Scarlet will listen to the rumors, and when it starts to be questioned, she will come find me. Gertrude will always know where I am because I will always send post. I think I will be able to move away and pass for as young as eighteen with the right styling and beauty practices. It will give me potentially another 25 years if I choose to settle down somewhere, though I may simply travel around. I am not committed to any one specific path, I guess.

There are may of my people in The West. I have heard the stories of the Trail of Tears. I have heard about the bloodbaths. I know the wrongs. Going in search of them will not lead me to anyone that I know - they are all dead. It might, however, give me a chance to help rebuild their cultures alongside them. Perhaps I can become a representative for them, being so well accepted into society as I am now. Or perhaps…

Perhaps they would turn me away. I fear I have become too much like the white men that stole our entire world from us. I speak their language. I wear their clothes. I read and write. I use their money. I wonder if I have become too “white” in my lifestyle to be accepted by my people. Do I even get to call them “my people” when I have become so disconnected from them? Are they just a people I once knew?

It is an emotional dilemma for another day. For now, I must begin packing my most essential belongings so that I may board the train tomorrow. In preparation for my travels, I have had to come up with a new identity. It seems that I have been Laurie Wren for only a moment in time. It feels a short as a breath, a blink. Once I leave New Jersey, and get past New York, I will begin to use a new name with a new backstory.

 

 

In just a couple of days’ time, I will become Allaura Reenan.

Allaura Reenan is an orphan from the South East coast with a small fortune traveling West for a new start after spending the last years of her youth in a makeshift orphanage. If people ask questions, Allaura will explain that her father ran a tannery and her mother was a seamstress. They operated their business out of their home, which made it easier for illness to come in and out of their doors, illness that took them away from her. She was homeschooled so that she could help with the business, and hopes to use her skills to get started in The West.

 

 

My life experience will make the stories convincing. It will be easy to believe because I have the knowledge to back it up. The skills I have and the business savvy I harbor within me will be understood to be result of my upbringing. It is not unheard of for women to not further their education. It has only been a few decades that we have been permitted to attend college, and there is still so much judgment of women in the workplace with degrees. They are whispered to be old maids, hags with no prospects. I have seen it first-hand in the women I brought into my circle. There will always men in the world who will always find ways to hold women down for their own gain.

Nobody will question me, at least not too deeply. They might try to prey upon me as a lone woman, but they will suffer greatly if they do. Whatever the future holds for me, I mean, for Allaura, it will become another chapter in these pages telling the story of this immortality that plagues me. I do not resent it anymore. Not most days.

But it is strange to be unsure about my next steps. It has been so long since I have been without a plan, aimless in my pursuit. I am nervous, but I think it is good.

All my best to Laurie Wren - she was the best version of me yet. I look forward to remembering this period of my existence fondly.

Chapter 19: First Winter 1881

If I were still north, this would be the first winter, the start of the new year covered in the whitest snow. Out here in Colorado, the youngest state of the country so far, it is mild and when there is snow it is dirtied a muddy red. Only a few years ago it was just a territory waiting to be thieved again from white men hungering for more power. I find myself in Denver, which is still holding on strong to the mining beginnings from its early days as a settlement camp.

Yesterday I wrote to Gertrude to let her know this is where I will be staying for a time. I have grown weary from the long days of travel and a fleeting existence here and there. Perhaps with a city that is yet to be fully developed and a state that is still getting established I can find a way to carve out a place for me as I did in Vermont. I did it once, I said to Gertrude in my letter, so I must be able to do it again. After all, no man nor woman can hurt me. There is nothing here they can take from me - no loved ones, no home, no reputation. I am anew here.

I was too hopeful in that letter. I have no had luck in finding a place where I fit. At times I have sat in bars amongst rich couples and powerful men, but they sneer at me when they pass. I think my skin, which was always light enough to pass amongst white people, and lighter still from being a vampire, is still too dark. Or maybe it is my face that gives me away. I see my heritage in my features, in my hair - deeply rich as freshly turned soil, as shiny as the glittering waves on turbulent waters. I am both lean and muscular, made hardy by manual labor and living off the land in my mortal years. Nothing about me is quaint or approachable, I fear.

Perhaps I might not have noticed how much I stand out were it not for the fact that I also find myself unfit to the poverty class families, the working ones. The wives with husbands in the mines are quiet and grateful, even if annoyed and desperate simultaneously. On the occasion I am stricken into conversation, I am suggested to be too loud or bold. I think these women find me to be trouble. I think perhaps they are running from trouble, too. Unlike the rich ones, I feel sorrow for the poor. White men, colonizers, they do not discriminate solely based upon the colors of skin, but upon class and sex as well. I feel pity that they must submit. I feel pity that anyone must submit.

And I pity myself for being unable to overcome this hurdle. I am realizing that I have never been on my own - not even when I was trapped in that vile cave. I have always had someone with me. Now I do not know what to do with this adversity and self-doubt. Have I been crippled in this way? Do I lack the necessary emotional strength to build myself up again? These are questions only for myself, of course. I will never reveal to Gertrude my struggles, nor Lucinda and Scarlet. To tell them is to further disable myself.

This is something I must overcome on my own. I must find a way to be on my own. There will be other times in my existence where I will have only myself, and if I am to make it through those times without losing myself to madness, I must make this a time of learning and growth. I must reflect, I think, to begin to identify the aspects of me that have endured this test of time in immortality. It will be like building a cabin or remodeling a house. A foundation, it is called. I will find the foundation of myself and rebuild from there. 

It is possible. I must not forget it.

Chapter 20: Spring 1881

Now that the weather is warming in the night, I have started work as a gardener. I always come back to the earth and her bounty. I make tonics and potions that I sell to neighbors for very cheap, some of which I bring with me when I visit the make-shift tribe tucked away in a nearby woodland. They are made up of many different natives, translators within the group to aid in communication. There are no Abenaki, none from my tribe, here, but the language is known from past dealings. I have been speaking in my birth tongue for a little over a month, something I thought I would never do again, and am visiting them as often as possible. Sometimes they come into town for essentials, which they communicate to me so that I can purchase for them. All the worry I had about not being accepted is withered now. They have accepted me and make me feel like I belong.

They invited me for the Sundance Ceremony, which is translated name, a common practice among many tribes to celebrate the coming of spring. They can sow crops and begin their usual work in nature in this new year. We, actually, since I will, too, begin to grow my own crop and sell it in a stall in front of my house. It is meager, but the simpleness of it suits me. I am rediscovering the power of modesty in this way.

Since multiple different backgrounds occupy this tribe, the Sundance Ceremony was planned for the entire day, so that each tribe represented could share their traditions with the group. Though I was offered the chance, I declined, stating that it had been far too long since I had been to one that I could not remember anything well enough. Little did they know that I’m not just speaking a few years of lost memory, but rather hundreds of years between those events and now. They know me as I was when I was a mortal, they know I lie about my name and story in the city, but they do not know everything. I thought I would never tell them the truth when I woke up on their land and started my morning in the sweating tent.

Truthfully, I was a different woman amongst those hot stones. I did not know all that would come to pass, good and bad. Many dressed in regalia, full headdress and painted face, though several opted to wear their brightest colors on simple clothes as well. I, for example, wore a beaded vest and berry dyed burlap dress. I braided my hair down both sides of my face, tight and thick, putting feathers at the ends in tied twine. Paint was not on my face, though, only as a preference more than anything.

Many hours were spent dancing, singing, enjoying sweet grass, an afternoon roast, and prayers in rotation between them all. When the sun finally started to set, we began a talking circle to share our wisdom from the winter months and how we will contribute to the tribe’s wellbeing through the spring. I spoke of beginning anew, just like the new crop, and how starting over can feel like a burden when it is a natural gift. I shared that I will lend my knowledge where I can, more vast than they might realize, and continue to act as a liaison between them and the urban world of white men.

Others, those who had been in Colorado’s lands longer, vowed to share their expertise. Women promised to lend a great hand in working the land and learning to hunt, especially the women who did not yet bear children. The community and willingness to continue blending our different traditions and practices was incredible. It was always incredible, but to see it after all these years was a gift I had not expected. All of the people, lost from their families or escaped from captors, came together in the thing that united them: native heritage to these lands.

The Sacred Pipe ceremony started once the sun set against the horizon. Once everyone had taken their round, music and festivities resumed around the campfire. It was free. Everyone did what they pleased and laughed. I found myself entranced with the sound of a beating drum and a flute fighting one another for dominance in the air. But I was joined by more than that - a spirit in the night found me and danced in the wind as I twirled about.

I recognized the voice in ears. Instead of being startled I felt comforted by the long-lost tone of my betrothed. Though I rarely thought on it, my biggest regret has been missing out on the whole life that I was meant to share with Tsalomee. As his spirt engulfed me, telling me the stories of this full life he lived without me, visions of him growing old spilled into my mind. Memories of him sitting with Gertrude in the medic’s hut, images of him wandering fields in search of me, him proudly bringing home fresh kills to the tribe…

I found myself crying as I danced, and crying as I hit the ground in defeat and exhaustion. I cannot know how long I had gone on like that, how long I kept moving just to have those spiritual moments with him, but it wore me out. My body was just a heap in the dirt. Shamelessly, I begged him to stay with me, but I knew it was impossible. A translator found me and escorted me to the sweating tent again, to cleanse myself before going to sleep. I had hoped Tsalomee would visit me again in my dreams, but he did not. When I woke, though, I had a sense of closure that I had not known was absent within me. In a way, I now had the experience of seeing Tsalomee’s life as he experienced it. The stories from Gertrude, they were good, but they were not his stories. These were.

One might not think it makes a difference, but the soul knows that it does. My soul, if that is what I have anymore, is at peace from this exchange. There is a wholeness from that time of my life now. This, however, was only the good part.

There is a word for the magic I am about to explain. I had never considered to dabble in it before, but to be assaulted just after sunrise following a day of levity by the shrill howling of a woman in labor as she was carried to the healer’s cabin is something that will scramble one’s brain. That is no excuse, though I wish it was. I have been studying this magic compendium for years. I have read the pages and know the spells too well. So much time has been spent reading them since I have been on my own that I can perform any one of them by heart. I could make any potion without looking.

Even the dark magic. Even necromancy.

I raced to the cabin, my vision still blurry from the abruptness of it all. A quiet ripped open by agonizing howls. As I entered, the Elder Men that stood guard tried to rush me back out. Family only, they tried to tell me. The woman’s cries were carnal, feral. People I have killed sounded like this as I ripped their throats out. Animals I have butchered sounded this way when I tackled them in the wild. I screamed as loud as I could to the women inside that I was a healer in my tribe, I have helped with births many times. The pregnant woman’s mother soon came out and brought me inside to assist.

There was blood - too much blood. Either mother or child would die, and I knew that I would need to act quickly. I understood enough to ask questions and get an update - she says she feels pressure but the baby is not coming down. They have reached in and cannot feel feet nor head. As I check vitals of the woman, she is fading. Panic settles in the room and becomes palpable as they watch on, dabbing her brows dry and giving her water to drink.

First thing I do is command a woman to return to my encampment and retrieve my bags. There is a potion I keep on hand for pain management always. I will quietly enchant it for more potency. I explained to the woman that I must forcefully move the baby into position, that it will hurt, but I have a medicine that will help. She was already losing light in her eyes and her breaths were so shallow, too. Magic amongst natives is not as risky as it is within cities and around colonizers. They will believe I have been gifted, touched by the spirits. I promptly imbued the mixture and carefully poured it into her mouth so that it slid easily down her throat.

I did not have the pleasure of waiting for her breath to steady because I had a child that was also in danger. I enlisted the help of their healer, a young man who had bee studying under his sister, who passed due to sickness last summer, and had only a marginal amount of knowledge for matters such as this. Birthing was very much the women’s business, but it was the closest these people had to medical support, and so it was just another custom adapted to fit their needs.

We pushed and shifted the baby in the woman’s belly for what feels like forever, but once we can see the position is improved, we assist the in pushing as well. I was certain that I had solved the problems, and pretty discreetly at that, but I did say I used necromancy. I controlled life and death.

The baby came out without a cry from her lungs. The mother’s body went ragged after pushing, but not a limpness akin to exhaustion. Everyone’s breath was locked into their lungs, watching in horror. I looked at the young boy, tears welling in his eyes, fear of failure creeping over his body. I looked at the women around me. If I were not here, they would have to let this be - they would be mourning two people when they should have celebrated a birth.

But I was there.

The spell came out of my mouth as a chant, and the women joined in with me as I took the child into my arms. Somewhere, life is being drained from another mortal, and I know it. A life for a life, but I can bear the weight of selfishness. It is no heavier than immortality, murder, and blackmail. I have done dastardly things with a good heart and pure intentions, and I have been generous with a wicked motive. This would burden me no more than things I have already done.

Joyous cries came when the baby began to whine and turn pink in her cheeks. The deeds were not finished, though, for the mother was also dying. She was without pain, and I could have let her pass that way, but I was hardly in a state of mind that would permit me to let it be. I began the spell again, weaving into it a healing charm as well. As the Elders fawned over the baby, cleaning her and wrapping her up, I fawned over the mother until she stabilized. As color returned to her lips and a sparkle to her eyes, it was only when she sat up and asked to see her child, a daughter, that I was satisfied my work had been a success.

As I stood in the room with them, the Elder Women said that there would be a birth announcement and a naming ceremony. They wished to name the child after me, they said. I declined politely, which is all but unheard of in my culture, but I then left to clean up in a nearby river to avoid further questions. When I returned to the grounds, one Elder was waiting for me. She called herself Elder Neshnabek, after the name of her tribe. She grew up without her mother and spent much of her childhood fishing with her father and brothers, constantly wondering what her mother was like since all she had from them were stories. It was her objective to make me understand that what I gave this baby girl was a debt that could never be repaid, though a debt I would never plan to collect either.

She implored me to explain why I would not accept the child being named after me. I do not know why I told her, but it came out easily. Being a vampire has not felt like a secret to me, not ever really, and I suspect because I have been accepted into this mixed tribe that I simply felt no need to deny it. At least, not over something as important as this - a child whose spirit may be tied to me for the rest of their life? It is my curse. I do not want it to haunt her.

Elder Neshnabek left me, assuring what I shared was serious and that she would not speak a word on it to anyone without my permission. She also said that the naming ceremony would continue - though the permission was not mine to give on that matter. This was her telling me, in no uncertain terms, that my feelings were considered but not necessarily accepted. I guess that is fair. Naming the child is a task that the elders carry and they will choose the name they feel is best fit.

Alas, I cannot control their perception of me and what I did.

The naming ceremony came that evening around a huge bonfire, another evening of sweet grass waiting for the Elders, mother, and baby. It was out of my hands so I did my best to enjoy the evening, eating and singing. When the time came, the name they settled on was Kwasos-nis.

The Second Small Bear.

Everyone knew that it was a honor to me. It was partially my name, and it was a name from my tongue. The women had heard the stories by then, too. I had been seen going to the cabin by others. There was no avoiding the recognition. I was asked to join the elders and hold the baby I magicked back to life. Child and namesake. It was important to them, and I gave it to them, but I will never not worry about what I have done. The necromancy, this child named after me.

The effects will yet be seen.

On my travel back here, to this meager cottage I rent in the frayed edge of Denver, I find a pile of mail. A wrapped package with several envelopes draw my eye first - this is from Gertrude. I open the box first, finding a care package of goods from all the women who missed me. In the handwoven basket are soaps, jewelry, hair adornments and hats, even a dress. The surprise is pleasant and appreciated. There are letters from Scarlet, one from Gertrude, and one marked from an Alice?

I read Scarlet’s letters first. She is doing well and admits that she misses my company. I miss hers just as much, considering we were in a bit of a romantic entanglement since I turned her, but she has a healthy appetite and will find pleasure elsewhere. I can take it or leave. There is no jealousy, only a wish to have someone to keep my company. I can miss her and be glad she is not here. New orphans come, old orphans grow up and leave - some die from illness. Gertrude visits and does her best when she can, and Lucinda has chosen to commit to a young man studying medicine who occasionally lends his hand when asked. Scarlet says that she is impressed with Gertrude and that I should be proud.

Gertrude’s letter focused on different things, of course. She talked mostly of the business and included scribbled responses over the months to previous letters. She treats her letters almost like a diary in that way, responding and sending it all as a stack in one chunk when she could. I love to read them. Her responses are witty and brash, much likely myself I suspect, but I hear it in all in her voice. Gertrude is incapable of meaning harm in anything she does and I know she writes all she does in jest or with love. The last note in her pages is that she has included a letter from an Alice, noting that it came from Europe. She said it could only be from Caroline or Margaret, but that she chose not to open it to find out which person it had been, being that it was addressed to me. It must have been sent in hope that it would find me at the manor, or at least someone who know where I was at - either of them must have hoped Senna would have returned at a certain age, I am sure.

I hesitated and turned the envelope over in my hand. I could only assume it had been several months since it was sent, knowing how long I have been traveling and waiting to find a settled place to stay. As I sit and ponder whether I have received this letter in a timely manner and why it was sent for me, I figured regardless of that, I can record my responses here. There is too much land and ocean between myself and the sender for me to have really done anything about it. I should not let myself feel hurt reading it, I said.

The letter is from Caroline. It is strange to me that she would think of me as passing judgment on strength and weakness. I suppose I have never been close to her, even when working with her for a short time to heal Gertrude. I rationalize quickly to myself that Caroline has lived a different life and her perception is shaped more by herself than by me. I learn in this letter that her life has carried on somewhat normally. Marybelle has married and has children. In fact, Caroline has married too.

While operating a business cart doing what she has always been so good at, she found herself entangled in a messy situation. She chides herself as not being discerning enough, but from the outside looking in, I find that judgment to be absurd. She took the suspicions seriously and took adequate action to investigate it. I see no errors in her decision.

Alas, I understand that trust is hard to come by and hard to give out. Something I often mull over in my mind is that trust often dances more with luck than logic. For example, politicians are meant to be trusted, but they only represent certain men of certain skin colors. Husbands are meant to love their wives and provide for their families, but I have seen them cause harm and kill them. Women are meant to be subservient to men, yet they conspire with women like me to escape for a sense of freedom and self-control. Logic says these things have been the way for many years, logic says to trust the tried and true.

But it is luck that rewards trust most. It is often best shared when least expected. I trusted Theodore. We trusted Isobel. I trusted Henry Clark. Gertrude and I trusted Lucinda, their partners will be trusted as well. All of these were chance meetings. Lucky happenstances, one could say.

For Caroline, this was an unfortunate turn of events. The shame she feels in these words, rushed and frantic, these are not from a woman who did anything wrong. These are the words of a woman who has lived beyond her years in a world that would kill her being a woman, a witch, or a monster. At least, vampires are spoken to be monsters, yet I have never known any of us three to do anything but good for others. None of us are morally bankrupt in our immortality.

Gambling debts, greedy men, corrupt women - it is a medley for disaster. It is a shame Caroline became mixed into the mess. She has changed her name for the first time now, hence sending it as Alice. Her husband is going by Baxter now, a change from Carter. They are unsure if they will return to America or continue trying to establish themselves somewhere in the European nations. I have no way to write her back, not knowing where she is going, so I am at a loss for how to proceed.

I guess this is my fault, I could have tried to use the crystal necklace to see where she was at if I still had it, which was the catalyst for her writing me anyway. It is expected that Caroline would monitor us so closely. I was not familiar with magics then, and I never did fully understand how the necklace worked. I wonder if I should try to scry her. Perhaps I could send a spiritual message combining spells from the compendium… 

It is not something I wish to dwell on today. I will look into it when I find myself free and at peace again. These past few days, including the receipt of this mail, has weighed me down emotionally. My mind and heart are heavy, even if my heart does not beat. I need to rest. I will be busy doing gardening work soon, and it would be best to begin these small jobs with a clear mind.

And, for the first time, I must remind myself that there is plenty of time.

Time is a currency with which I will forever be wealthy.

Chapter 21: Summer 1885

Under normal circumstances, I would have been confused that she found me. It has been 44 years since I was in New Orleans, when she would have know me. I have changed my appearance enough to look different. I doubt anyone from that time of my existence would recognize me easily. I keep my hair shorter than I would have normally preferred, being that hair is so sacred to my native people. In fact, I tend to wear it in curls that bounce around my my shoulders, making it look even shorter than it actually is! The use of makeup aids in keeping myself looking ever youthful. When I go to the salon, I watch women do their makeup and try new things I see to change the shape of my eyes and face.

The version of me she would have known, I still went by Lorraine then, and I had long hair that I wore loose or into a single braid. Makeup and beauty efforts were not in my routine. I do not even use a name close to the one I was known by back in Louisiana - Allaura Reenan compared to Lorraine Warren, they are not similar enough to make a connection. I did it intentionally.

Of course, these were not normal circumstances. Mary Laville, the previous owner of the magic compendium, could not have amassed so much knowledge without learning a trick or two. When I saw her, I pulled my gun out and aimed it at her hips. If she wanted to try me out a second time, I would make her suffer again. Only this time it would be to the ultimate end. There were no children watching me to make feel that I needed to show mercy. Gertrude, a much more morally good woman than myself, was in favor of not killing Mary either. So I did not then, but there was nothing that would have stopped me then.

She surprised me, funnily enough. She waltzed into my home and asked if I had any tea. I did, and I put it on the stove. Mary did not waste time letting me know that she came in peace, that her motives were in kind spirits. She did not wish to have the compendium, at least not in her possession. I assured her I would kill her before she would take it, but she insisted that it would not be necessary because she wanted to propose a partnership - and maybe a “friendly acquaintanceship foreverforth.”

Mary had been using dark magic to keep her youth, the sort of magic that requires a young soul in exchange for beauty and preservation. It required potions with increasingly rare ingredients. Even if she could maintain everything easily, she wanted for something less tedious and time consuming. She was clear, “I want to live my eternity, not chase it.”

I want to live my eternity, not chase it - it was a very moving in a darkly sort of way.

She envied that I did not have to work to stay alive. My assumption was that she wanted me to turn her into a vampire, and I told her promptly that I would not do it. She tilted her head back and forth before telling me that she did expect me to decline, though she had not planned to ask. As such, she came prepared with a plan that she thought I might be willing to help with more willingly.

There was no point in trying to convince her away from immortality. She was doing it on her own, and before me, so it was a matter of whether I would help or not. Those choices branched out like a tree in front of me. To help could mean future entanglements with Mary if she called upon me and I did not like the idea of being expected to be at the ready for her. Friendly acquaintanceship would remove her from the list of worries that would follow me forever, and I cannot deny that it would not bring great relief to my mind. There is also the possibility that not helping her could result in her eventual death, which was the most ideal outcome. I knew then that refusal could result in an altercation, and I did want to avoid that as well.

Unsure and uneasy, I asked her to defend her request. Could should make a good case to convince me to agree to help her? If I had been expecting a grand persuasion, I do not recall, but it would have been for naught. Mary simply said that she is better as friend than she is an enemy, iterating that she has always been her most successful when she works with powerful people rather than against them. And she did not mean powerful in terms of rulership or political allegiance, she actively used her connections to stand against people of that standing. Mary meant power in a magical sense. Maybe we both guessed it, but I know the compendium so well that I can do magic without it. As I write this, I do wonder if she did not already suspect it, since she was associating me with magical power.

Lackluster as her effort seemed, it did convince me. I asked her to tell me more about her quest. While she had been traveling at sea, against her will, she made sure to say, she crossed paths with many practitioners of magic, each with their own stories and suggestions for immortality. One story told of a potion that could be concocted and used to bless a totem that would allow the possessor of the totem to be immortal in their current state. It sounded like just that. A story…

But I once thought stories of bloodsuckers and monsters were just that, too.

Mary detailed a magic not too unlike what I had done to Lucinda’s mother. The creation of the totem was a complex weaving of spells and curses. Mary expressed that the totem itself was the source of youth, and that if she died it would then give immortality to the next owner of the totem. Her belief was that if I were to kill her will a spelled poison or with black magic, the totem would pass on to me because I would be the one to have killed her. As she spoke of it, accepting of it as truth as I was, I did wonder to myself equally how this sort of dabbling was discovered. Is there a record of the magic? Did a sorcerer or witch research it the way medicine is studied today? Are there notes breaking down the exact details?

Mary expressed that she came to me because she was in search of a ghost, and recalled my mentioning once I had encountered one much earlier in my existence. I easily confirmed my years in the Ghost-Witch’s cave, stating that I was not able to destroy the Ghost-Witch. She asked me to explain it further, and I did, and she seemed pleased. As we reflected, we both concluded that drawing essence from a ghost that cannot easily be defeated, if at all, then it would make a good ‘heart source,’ as Mary called it. The ‘heart source’ is what makes the totem a source of life that grants immortality. The assumption seemed logical and sound, and there was no reason to not try.

The concoction and spell called for ghost essence, which is why she had asked about the Ghost-Witch. There is a curse that can pick apart the delicate physical form of the ghost, causing it to reduce into a frothy syrup or clotted cream. She wrote out the spell and broke it down piece by piece, and I could confirm as much from what I knew from the compendium. The more we spoke about the different aspects of the process, it made more and more sense that she took such care to find me. The Ghost-Witch exists because it died, and it continues because there was no known way to put the soul to rest. Even if someone ever did find the body that bound it to the earth, destroying the it would be a guessing game. That, however, was no the mission, and the objective Mary laid out made her quest very easy. The more we discussed it the more at east I felt agreeing to help her to avoid keeping her as an enemy.

I told her that I would need to make arrangements with my tribe, which Mary was disinterested to know about for no reason that she expressed. She asked how many days would I need, which reminded me of the little jobs I usually did and how I might lose work with those families in the future by leaving for any period of time. It worried me to uproot my life for her vanity. I told her that if she can give me a week, I think I could make suitable arrangements for some of the younger women to keep my home and work while gone. I could always bring money back and buy supplies for them to pay them back for their time. It only took a few days to get everything set. I explained that I had a friend ask me back for a visit, and that I would be gone for a short time. I avoided saying how long, being that I had no idea what barriers we would face.

Our first stop when reaching Vermont was the manor and we arrived without warning. When Gertrude saw Mary standing with me in the frontmost common room, she pulled her gun out. Mary handled it well, saying that I could explain that this was a new era of allegiance. I discussed the arrangement with Gertrude while she kept her gun aimed at Mary. She questioned my judgment, reminding me of the battle scar Mary gave me, or Nelly’s willingness to sacrifice herself to take Mary down. I growled at her in self-defense - how could she think I forgot those things frivolously?

Lucinda slunk around the corner in a sleep gown, a rounding belly held by one hand as she leaned on the corner of the doorway. I asked Lucinda to entertain Mary while I spoke to Gertrude privately, which she did readily. She said the baby was kicking her and keeping her awake anyway. It took some time to convince Gertrude that I believe Mary would be a better friend than enemy, especially given the longevity of my coexistence with her. Though reluctant, she agreed to stand down. 

She remained at the ready if Mary tried to do anything even slightly suspicious. The agreement we shared was superficial, not unlike a business transaction. Truthfully, I did not see then, nor do I see even now as I write this, that she will ever agree that Mary could be a friendly acquaintance. It is refreshing to see this level of aggressive caution. The biggest worry I have always had about Gertrude is that she would be meek and mild-mannered in the face of danger. I feel ever better leaving her in charge than I did before I moved west.

Mary’s presence will never be unmonitored when she is in the house and in the community. I assured that we will not be at the manor for long, since we would be going after the Ghost-Witch in a day or two after resting. There was a bitterness on Gertrude’s face but no moves were made to fight the plans in place. This all went against everything she knew me to stand for, but there was no moral value to consider when it could mean protecting myself and the people I loved. It was a difference that Gertrude and I always knew existed. I always wanted to ensure a certain level of safety in the world for my loved ones, and deals with the Devil, as they say, were not off the table. After all, I was one of the Devil’s monsters, if anyone were to be asked, and it seemed a small price of discomfort.

Traveling with Mary was not unpleasant. She was funny enough and did better in the woods and meadows than I expected. When I had to stop to drink, she stayed close by and kept watch, not necessarily because I wanted or needed it, but because it was the right thing to do. When we found the cave’s mouth, I told her we would need a plan to find our way out, “It is a nasty maze,” I said to her.

Mary enchanted a bag of stones, which would glow in the darkness and lead us back to the entrance of the cave. It was as good a plan as any, and I even verified the spell worked by tossing a rock into the cave where it emitted a sparkling fog not unlike a small fire’s smoke. We ventured inward. We made a distinct effort not to speak, mostly because we did not want to draw attention to ourselves. It was our hope to stumble upon the Ghost-Witch, but we found the cavernous room where I had been held prisoner instead. It is easy to identify because there is a stale odor that reeks distinctly of decay. The stink belonged to the man I killed to try and trap the Ghost-Witch long enough to escape. He was now bone and rags, but the dirt beneath him is fertile from his rot.

As I looked around the room, it was clear there were prisoners since me. The poisons and broken glass remained scattered on the ground. I walked Mary through the events that took place when I made my escape. She did not seem surprised, though she said that it made sense with her knowledge of me. I suggested we go further into the cave, but she thought it unwise. Instead, she asked for us to stay in the room for a short time, just in case. We found a spot that cut into the wall and allowed us to sit comfortably without being seen from the entrance of the room. I started to scratch out the beginnings of this passage while Mary chose to sleep. It was disrupted after a short time, though, when the Ghost-Witch appeared. It sensed our presence from the deep tunnels. I nudged Mary awake.

Once Mary was ready, we went into the room and cast an immobilizing charm on the bones of the man I tried to bind the Ghost-Witch to before, but it did nothing to stop the movements of the Ghost-Witch. Mary ducked to avoid an attack, which I responded to by weaving a binding spell to an object in the room, which was one of our pre-planned options to try. I focus my mind on the glass jar on the table in front of me which is between myself and the Ghost-Witch. Mary joins in on the chant to strengthen the magic, and it works much faster than I anticipated. Once the Ghost-Witch’s screech echoes off the glass only, we approached the jar. She used magic to seal the jar, and then off we went back to the woods.

It was so easy that I felt beside myself. When we did make it out of the caves and found ourselves in a familiar meadow, the exact same where I met Theodore all the years ago, when he was young like me. Mary noticed my sadness, and I found myself telling her about Theodore and how I missed him. Turned out, as it were, that Mary had a similar love, a sort of romantic square where she and other witches and sorcerers shared in a deep commitment to each other. It was not necessarily sexual or romantic, but they were always invested in one another wholly. She said they were all dead too, or across the ocean if they somehow escaped their bonds. Mary swore she would never return France, or any part of Europe, for that matter, because it would be too painful. 

We already knew what we were going to do to extract the essence of the Ghost-Witch, and I helped readily. Once it was done, we set up camp so that Mary could sleep before returning to the manor. I thought of Lucinda and Gertrude’s life continuing without me. Lucinda was pregnant, and quite far along based on the size of stomach. I decided that I would propose that I stay a little longer - just to see the birth of Lucinda’s first child. If anything were to go wrong, I could be of assistance, perhaps.

I ran the idea by Gertrude and Lucinda when we returned. Gertrude suggested staying with Scarlet until closer to Lucinda’s due date, though Lucinda was more keen to have me stay in the manor. Gertrude’s concern was that some of their new dealings would be affected if word got out that I was back in town. It seemed like a minor issue that would hardly be a concern if I simply did not go outside, but Gertrude would not budge on the matter. Emilie later came to speak to me, stating simply that the my visiting coincided with some strife in the community. New families, expansions, and suspicions about her being unmarried - she was finding some previous connections newly strained. Emilie told me that Gertrude did not want me to see her struggling. There was also the matter of Lucinda’s husband, the doctor.

He was being investigated for prescribing medications to people to be sold on the streets with a kickback of money to him. Gertrude and Lucinda were understandably uneasy about the potential for dirty dealings to be tied back to the family. Since Lucinda’s pregnancy had already been difficult, they were doing their best to balance the secrecy of it as Lucinda prepared for a future divorce. Begrudgingly, I agreed to stay with Scarlet. My agreement was based upon the condition that Mary would be permitted to stay in the manor for added protection. Gertrude was resistant, but only barely when Emilie said it would be helpful to have extra eyes. It was easier to spin a story of a new woman in the house than to hide my presence anyway. Mary would assist in the investigations to earn her place in the house, and she would be in contact with me should there be serious concerns that need a more dire intervention from an a name that already struck fear and obedience into the hearts of the community.

And that was where the journey with Mary ended. She gave me the excess ghost essence in a hollow crystal on a braided string. I wear it as a necklace for now, until I can return to my home in Colorado, where I will store it with compendium safely. I traveled to Scarlet’s orphanage on my own, and I was welcomed much more pleasantly. Scarlet invited me to her room, not just to catch up, but to share while I visited. The loneliness of living alone was melted away instantly by her kindness and her plush lips on mine.

It was nice to feel that sort of warmth again.

Chapter 22: Fall 1885

Scarlet is an incredible woman, both as a lover and as a friend. We had been enjoying working in the orphanage together, but also spending our weekends at parties and dinners. It was a surprisingly easy life. There was a part of me that could have been lost in it.

All things that feel perfect for forever do come to an end for harsh realities do not hesitate to humble us all. Gertrude and Lucinda were visiting, or rather retrieving me. The winter months were near, as was the birth of Lucinda’s child, and it was time for me to return to the manor. We were going to spend a couple days together in New Jersey before returning home. But Mary called unexpectedly and asked for me to take the call instead of Scarlet. She reported to me that Emilie and the doctor were killed. The quick recollection of events painted a picture of Mary going to meet Emilie and the doctor to escort them home, but Emilie had a change of plans for the afternoon and was not at the shop she said she would be - and when she found them it was only because she stumbled on a scene in the streets. Police were cordoning off an alley, and Mary was able to get through because of her work with them on the investigation of the doctor. She said she would give more information when we returned to the manor, urging us to return as quickly as possible.

Lucinda isn’t terribly upset about her husband. The case against him was already made, and the divorce papers were already drawn up. His death, though not planned in any way, did mean they no longer had to take all those extra steps to be rid of him. Everyone was just waiting until after her birth to put things into motion. The bigger concern is Gertrude’s loss of Emilie. 

When I turned my attention away from Lucinda to Gertrude, she knew. She reached out to smack me, not because she was angry at me, but she was angry at the situation. I held her down as she screamed and wriggled beneath my grip. Tears streamed all over her face, leaving no spot dry. Where she was not wetted from her tears, she was sweating from the struggle. Scarlet left to retrieve some bourbon and whiskey to help soothe Gertrude’s grief. Lucinda sat on the couch and held Gertrude as she cried. Scarlet stayed with them while I left the room to get my belongings packed up. After a few drinks, I figured we would leave within the hour.

It did not happen like that. When I returned to the sitting room, the three of them were being held at gun point. Scarlet stood in front of Lucinda, being that she was pregnant, with Gertrude covering Lucinda while on the couch too. When I entered the room and dropped my bag, the assailant turned around to acknowledge my arrival.

The look on Scarlet’s face should have alerted me that I would be met with the angry scowl of a grown Georgina. Who else could be holding Scarlet hostage without her looking shocked? When I saw her, too, I could not even be lost on the reason for her appearance. I greeted, “Hello, Miss Georgina.”

Georgina’s life has been miserable. It was a conclusion so easy to reach that I could have reached it in my sleep. Georgina and Eloise had no documents to reclaim their identities in the South, which ended up losing the Civil War. I asked what brought her, but she fired a shot at me and grazed my shoulder. I winced but proceeded to close the gap between us. Scarlet slammed Georgina to the ground. In the same breath, Gertrude took out her gun and shoot Georgina’s hand to get the gun from her grasp. Lucinda walked over to kick the gun away. Georgina laid beneath Scarlet screaming with her blood pooling against her cheek, and her hand completely obliterated on the rug next to her face.

I dismissed Gertrude and Lucinda from the room, knowing that whatever would come next would not be - easy? Suitable? I guess part of me didn’t want them to see me remove this problem totally. I do not know if Georgina killed Lucinda’s husband and Emilie, but I did not think that it was a coincidence that she showed up here. There was no fight from Gertrude, already familiar with everything I am capable of doing. But it took Scarlet telling Lucinda that Georgina is her sister to convince her that this was something more complex that a simple break in crime..

Scarlet wrestled Georgina onto the couch, keeping her pinned back with her arms behind her head and hair in her fists. Georgina growled curses at her, but they were nothing but bitter words from a mortal mouth. With the threat neutralized, I walked swiftly to my bags and pulled out that familiar file with all the documents from the Gillette-Vanguard family. I walked up to her and showed her that I still had it. The way she hissed to me that it didn’t matter, as if she would not have come looking for me after she found Gertrude, enraged me. I had kept the file in case this past returned to haunt me, and it had done. And there she was saying it didn’t matter? I ripped the envelope in half twice, though, and she changed her tune. She screamed that I was committing a crime and that I cannot do what I was doing. She yelled about all her misgivings in life and how she just wanted to reclaim her name. She and their mother never regained their footing in life, even after marrying. Her husband gambled their money away, drove her to drinking, and abused Georgina until the day she died. There was no money for a funeral, which landed her in a pauper’s unmarked grave. I stared her down as she continued her sob story.

After their mother’s death, Georgina decided look for her father and Scarlet. Since they had changed their last names when they fled. The only way to know she answered to Scarlet would have been to overhear one of her closest confidantes using it. The name she used after fleeing the South was Angelica Charlotte Smith, which was the last name the whole family took on to start their new life. Georgina had thought as much, but she looked for wedding announcements in the newspapers. She thought, surely, Scarlet would have married, and she started by looking in the northern cities with the highest black populations. That is when she found Scarlet’s photo in a newspaper in New York regarding her plans to open a second orphanage in New Jersey. Georgina travelled to the property and was watching from a distance, learning the routine, when she spotted Gertrude and Lucinda visiting, at separate times. 

She masquerading as a passerby and listened closely to the names that were used. She heard both women use their birth names, their past names - the names that Georgina would recognize. Thought Scarlet looked exactly the same, she claims she recognized a familiarity in Gertrude that was confirmed upon hearing her name. It reminded her of me. Her thoughts of vengeance against Scarlet for supporting her father’s affair with Dottie, a black woman, and how it derailed the rest of her life. She started to think she could find me if she targeted Gertrude.

And that’s when she thought she could destroy all of our lives by drawing everyone for a funeral. If the death did not draw in me, Georgina remained hopeful that when she killed Gertrude that I would eventually show up. She said very clearly, “It’s called the Mitchell-Warren manor. Your last name, I recalled.” 

I let her talk until she felt that she had said all she needed to say. Scarlet did not tire while keeping her neutralized. Once silence confirmed she was spent, I walked over to the fireplace, used magic to start a fire and threw the file pieces into the flames. When I turned back to her, I asked her if her life was so ruined then what could she possibly gain by returning to the disgraced Gillette-Vanguard name? Georgina spewed racist and hateful names, kicking furiously trying to escape Scarlet’s grasp. 

I looked to Scarlet, wordlessly asking if she would wanted to do it, and she froze.

Scarlet is blameless. To kill someone will change a person, and I did not wish for her to ever have to know how lest she chose it. And I would only ever hope she did it out of necessary. So I took the opportunity to reveal myself to Georgina - a vampire - right before I rushed into her and sank my teeth into the front of her throat. Blood gushed from her fresh wound in the shape of my mouth, staining her raggedy dress and the couch cushions. Scarlet flinched at the gurgling breaths of her dying sister. With something between apathy and shock on her face, Scarlet asked if she would become a vampire. I picked up the gun from the floor, the one that Georgina brought with her, and shot her between the eyes. Twice. I confirmed that she was dead, moved her body to be flat on the couch, making her invisible from the silhouette of any angle.

Scarlet watched as I cleaned up the scene of this new crime. Gore hidden, I called Gertrude back and told her to head back home with Lucinda. I will stay behind so I can finish disposing of Georgina’s body and cleaning the room more thoroughly. Besides the need to cover up a murder, I felt that Scarlet should not be alone. 

In the aftermath, Scarlet had to call everyone in the home to the kitchen, where she wove a tale of an attempted robbery. She served everyone tea, which I laced with a memory tonic. Scarlet had to call the staff back separately for me to ensure they also forgot the events of the evening, but we were able to get everyone off to bed successfully through the stress. It was fortunate I had what I needed to brew a light memory tonic at all, but executing the plan so effectively was pure luck. I am glad we do not have to know the alternative outcome. That is one less thing that will leave Scarlet’s body tense beneath her covers.

I charmed the door locked to the lounge. I do not want anyone stumbling in there and finding Georgina’s body. Even as my pen skims across this page, I do not know what I will do to discreetly get rid of her. Scarlet has cried herself to sleep, and I had stayed to keep her company thinking that she would not want to be alone. At the same time, I also did not sit in bed with her. Though I know I did what I needed to do, and I do not regret it, I cannot help but feel mournful for what I will inevitably know as the “before” with Scarlet. In the stillness, I am sat the vanity to recall these events. It is yet to be seen how my relationship with Scarlet is changed from these events.

Just as I wrote at the beginning or this entry, the harshness of reality will always force humility upon us. There will be no warning. There will be no mercy. Growing up with my people means that I have always known, and made space for, the cruelty of the world. So, as I close my thoughts, I must reflect on humility. 

Today, I will find peace in knowing that I have saved everyone I love in more way than one. And I have done it at the risk of my own comfort and joy. May the universe see that I have brought balance rather than committed a wrongdoing…

Chapter 23: Fall 1889

How does one take a book that has hundreds of years of knowledge as someone who is presenting themselves as being in their twenties? The offer to publish what I know was originally just going to be an article in the newspaper paid out to me as a bonus from one of my client’s husband. The more I shared about what I knew, she thought maybe it called for something longer than an article. I was invited to dinner to discuss it, at which time the husband said he knew someone in publishing who would do a book with the right letter of recommendation.

The letter of recommendation was written before I even got home that night.

I showed the book and said it was a collection of pages from journals of people who came through the orphanage. Others were inclusions from travelers I passed by, and the rest was explained away by having native roots. It is known that I am close with the tribe outside of the city. The questions were minimal regarding how I got the information, honestly, but I made sure to sow the seeds of an origin story anyway. After a meeting with the publisher a few days ago, I am now tasked with putting together a more cohesive concept. That brings me back to the original question.

How do I make it more cohesive? Simplify or organize? Groups? Larger or smaller? I am just going to dive in and take notes in here. It is the best place to process my thoughts.

 

Flowers & Fruits- (12)

• Chamomile, steeped or compress - stress, rash, nausea
• St. John’s Wort, consumed - mood (leaf)
• Calendula, compress or consumed - insect stings & bites, wounds, infections, blood flow (stems)
• Lavender, consumed or compress - stress, sleep, burns
• Lemon Balm, consumed or compress - wounds, infection, insect bites, colds, fevers, digestion, mood, sleep, head pain (leaves)
• Common Yarrow, consumed - inflammation
• American Arnica, compress - bruises, muscle strain
• Lily of the Valley, consumed - heart health
• Queen of the Meadow, consumed - pain relief
• Rue, consumed - inflammation, seizure prevention
• Beware of high risk of overdose, will cause rash to skin!
• Milk thistle, consumed - organ health
• Evening Primrose, consumed - pain, menstruation

 

^ Flowers & Fruits - how can people keep these plants at home? Should I take photos and paint over them? Should I simply paint what they look like? And what about the personal touch? To most people, I am just an orphan gardener. They do not know what I know or how long I have known it, but if I add a personal touch will it raise questions? Maybe I can call Gertrude and Margaret for feedback. Perhaps if Caroline is still around, I will get advice from her too.

 

Leaves & Herbs- (22)

• Pale Purple Coneflower, consumed - colds, infections, wounds, immunity (root, stalk)
• Feverfew, consumed - head pain, fevers
• Ginkgo, extracted - energy, memory, breathing
• Beware - seeds are toxic! 
• Black Cohosh, consumed - menstruation
• Goldenseal, consumed or inhaled - colds, infections, breathing
• Green Tea, consumed (liquid) - energy, heart, weight
• Hawthorn, consumed - heart
• Aloe Vera, compress - wounds, infections, inflammation, digestion
• Basil, consumed - wounds, appetite, digestion
• Thyme, consumed - congestion, digestion, coughs
• Rosemary, consumed - breathing, energy
• Sage, consumed or compress - digestion, organ health, mood, infections, insect bites
• Peppermint, consumed or compress - digestion, infection, fevers
• Ashwagandha, consumed - sleep, digestion, seizure prevention, pain relief, heart health, mood, mental acuity
• Vitex Negundo, consumed - inflammation, infection, sores, skin, pain relief
• Tea Tree, consumed or compress or steeped - infection, inflammation, energy, skin, insect bites, burns (oils)
• Hyssop, consumed or steeped - colds, fevers (flowers, oils)
• Mugwort, steeped - digestion, stress
• Agrimony, compress - wounds
• Lady’s Mantle, consumed - gynecology (flowers)
• Motherwort, consumed - heart health, childbirth
• Wild Senna, consumed - digestion

 

^ I think that this section is too large, so I will have to break it down into just leaves and just herbs. I think four sections will work better for readers. Quarters is easier to split evenly. After that, I probably need to balance the sections a little more evenly. 

Senna - I wonder where he is and how he is doing. Should I ever try to track him down? Where would I start? Maybe I should stick to one project at a time…

 

Stems & Roots- (12)

• Ginger, consumed - nausea, immunity, inflammation, digestion
• Ginseng, consumed - energy
• Valerian, consumed - mood, sleep
• Globe Artichoke, consumed - organ function, digestion, heart health
• Beware - harvest before flowering!
• Lemongrass, consumed - breathing, fevers, infection, stress, mood, pain relief, digestion
• Khus, compress or steeped - inflammation, heart health, pain relief, skin, sleep, mood, seizure prevention
• Marsh Mallow, consumed or compress - inflammation, infection, breathing, digestion, pain relief, insect bites, skin
• Great Burdock, consumed - skin, infections, burns (leaves, seeds)
• Great Yellow Gentian, consumed - organ health, digestion, weight
• Elecampane, consumed or steeped - digestion
• Heal-All (Prunella), consumed or compress - blood clotting, throat infections
• Garlic, consumed - immunity, heart, inflammation

 

^ Some of these aren’t native to this land, but I have them. I wonder if others have these plants, maybe well off families on the coast. Would this book even make it that far? I will be asking Gertrude and Margaret. Perhaps they can ask people for me as well. This should be enough to get started.

 

This seems foolish. Who would want a book like this with medicine coming so far along. Do they doubt what the doctors do? Is it risky to create proof of my existence in this way? I am overthinking it. I must be. I need to take a break. These pages are all I have looked at for hours. They are beginning to look the same.

Chapter 24: Winter 1890

I do not know when the urge to leave hit me, but I think it was something that came all at once, rather than a little at a time. After my book was published earlier this year, the privacy of the life I had come to enjoy in Colorado was ripped from me. I had not realized that I wanted to be left alone until I had mail coming to my house - gifts and complaints, harassment and interviews. At first everything felt a bit flattering, almost familiar to Vermont. At first. For a short time.

Then it became much less familiar, a very foreign nightmare. No trip to town was quiet. No night home was without clambering outside, sometimes from vandals, and others from people wanting to surprise me with new plants added to my garden. It became entirely too much, and I packed everything that actually mattered to me into some bags I could carry and took off. There wasn’t any actual plan, just to head north in search of solitude. I could have just gone to my beloved tribe, but they could have found me. That would not have ben enough.

Moving into the winter season reminds me of the winters I grew up with, snowy hills and crunching steps. I could taste the dryness in the air with heaving breaths from pulling my knees high into my chest to take each step. I have not experienced winter quite this way since I was stolen by the Warren family. There is a danger to it. I am very in the elements. I should be worried, but I am not.

Even living off the land with my people, it would be remiss not to acknowledge that I always had shelter. Everything I needed to make it through the cool, dark months was stored and ready for use. Perhaps my being a vampire has made me reckless. After all, I know I would not die from the cold alone, or by any other traditional means for that matter.

The only concern I had when leaving was whether the blood would freeze, but magic is literally at my fingertips. It is only a worry to someone without the means I have. A vampire and witch? I have powerful allies and a magic compendium with knowledge lost to even the most devout practitioners of the craft. Though I am keen to forget it, I am just as powerful as I am capable.

On my travels, I found myself stopping just to assess my surroundings. Nighttime requires shelter, even though I could have kept going, but it is more out of respect for my possessions than anything else. I do not want to risk my belongings becoming damaged. Not too far off, I saw the glowing light of a small town, and I considered going into town to stay in a hotel room or hunker down in a tavern for a few hours.

Traveling further north would not necessarily mean getting away from people permanently. America ratified Montana last fall and Wyoming just this summer. Still, these places are only populated in small bubbles, much like Colorado was when I first arrived. Aside from taking care of my belongings, I considered how strange it might look if anyone were to see me walking at night in the cold. Though I was not committed to one decision or the other, what were the odds that I would find a trail of blood leading to half-naked man in a heap.

When the sun began to set, I had started to gear towards what I thought might be a road. There was a break in the grass and whipping of dust and dirty with the wind, so it felt like a good guess. As I trekked closer, I had noticed blood trails in packed snow. My first instinct was to think it was merely an animal dying. In fact, my mouth watered at the thought of fresh flowing blood. And fresh flowing blood was what I found.

But it belonged to a man, haphazardly thrown into the snow. He was trying to drag himself back to the path to a dirt road. I approached him, letting him know I could help. I did not wait for him to consent to my help, though. He screamed out in pain when I rolled him onto his back, which gave me a better view to assess his injuries. Through gasps and groans, he explained he had been beaten by some men because “they found out.”

My evaluation was that his ribs were broken, and potentially his nose. It was hard to say because his face was so swollen. Thankfully, no bones were protruding, and when I saw his skin, it did not look like he was bleeding internally either. I pick him up with ease and start seeking shelter somewhere in the nearby woodland area. It must be an hour or so, I estimate, before I find a significant area that isn’t covered completely in snow - a drop off that dips back into the ground beneath a tree line. I set him gently onto the mossy earth to start healing him.

I got him talking, working with his most obvious wounds first. He explained that he was beaten for bedding a wealthy family’s son. He was punished for being attracted to men. It enraged me, for a number of reasons, and I did not hold my tongue on them. It distracted him while I do my work. Sometimes he even laughed at my bluntness.

The night is too cold for an injured mortal, so I my next task was to start a fire. I began collecting sticks and splintered fallen trees. I used the wood to build a sidewall to break the winds and slow any chills. Since this man doesn’t have anything on his person, I take what I have and share it with him - blankets, clothes, and food. I do not usually partake in food when I am alone, but keeping it with me felt like a necessary illusion. He picked through some of the nuts I had in a bag, he told me his name is Joseph, but insisted that I can call him Seph. Apparently this is the nickname he started to use to hide himself in the shadows. 

“It sounds more feminine,” he had said. It made me angry all over again that he’s even had to do it in the first place. But I agree to call him Seph. I introduce myself using my latest name, Allaura, and he asked where it came from since it is not a name he has heard before then. I told him I had no idea.

We made it through the night, and when day comes I suggest that we make a plan for him. Seph was sure that he could not go back for fear that he will be killed if he is seen again. He asks to go along with me. I explained to him I am traveling without a destination, and in the winter. I expected it to deter him, but he was fine with it. I told him that his clothes are not suitable and that he might die to the elements around us. 

“Better to die here than there,” he declared confidently. 

This is not an unfamiliar exchange. I know when I will not convince someone to change their mind. Alas, he also had a point. To him, this was a decision between one death or another. Since he is sure of his choice, I take inventory of the clothes that I have and what else is needed to keep Seph warm. All I need to be convincingly dressed, but that still requires resources.

For the first few days, we travel slowly through the woods. I kill some deer, both for food and for their pelts. I use magic to speed the drying process up so that I can sew together a warmer outfitting for him. We do this for what I think is a couple of weeks before temperatures drop too drastically and snowfall starts to stick for longer. Seph started to show signs of illness, too.

I refuse to let him die, even though I have no idea what to do with his presence either. Along the way, I search for caves, knowing there’s a risk of coming across bears, but desperate measures are required to survive. Seph is barely able to move when I finally found a cave that only had one bear sleeping. I charm it to keep it awake and barricade Seph and myself inside. My first action is to convince Seph to sleep so that I can remove one of the legs of the bear so that I can make him food and replenish the blood I’d been drinking for weeks. My supply is critically low, even when I have been drinking fresh blood to supplement it. I worry that if the temperatures remain this low that I may have to consider going into a deep sleep. I’ve never had to do it, though I learned from Mary it is something she heard other vampires must do when they are unable to get enough blood to remain strong. The stories vary so much that I really do have to learn about my powers and immortal talents as they show themselves.

When Seph woke, well, he didn’t just see me finish the soup I was making for him, but also witnessed me drinking blood too. How did he know? The smell, and the dribbling down my chin. Understandably, he is confused, frozen in fear when I approach him.

Ridiculous as it was, I dared to ask him if he would believe me if I said I was drinking wine. He shook his head, so I asked him if he would believe me if I told him I was vampire witch instead. He shook his head to that too. I obviously did not blame him for not believing either thing.

Seph keeps his distance from me for days, but he knows he cannot leave either. The temperatures are frigid and can be felt inside the cave, even with rocks covering the entrance and a magic fire going at all hours. I stopped trying to conceal the magic I use, and drank blood openly too. He will believe what he pleases, but as long as he is alive and safe, I do not mind what he must tell himself to remain sane and silent. The quiet, however, did not last too long.

After I removed the second leg to feed Seph, he started to open back up. He admitted that he did not know what to think at first, but he is sure that he has seen enough to know that I am not lying. Plus, he thought the fact that I am working so hard to keep him alive and healthy that I cannot mean him harm. I assure him that I do not drink from humans and have not for a very long time. I even added that it had been longer than he had been alive.

He asks what I will do if I run out of blood, and I am glad he has asked. It gives me a chance to tell him that I may need to sleep for long periods of times to ration the blood I do have saved up. Seph asks if there is anything he can do to help, should he offer his own blood. He offered to bleed himself into a bowl if it would help. I declined fervently.

After I explain the long sleeps, he asks if I can teach him some magic to keep the fire going and help him keep the bear at bay. It is a lot to try to teach a young man with no experience with magic, but I can certainly try. We take a few days to prepare, with me bringing snow in and charming it to help keep cuts of meat for a longer time. Seph listens intently, and even asks to take notes on any scrap paper so that he can reference it without trying to wake me. Genuine as he seemed, when I finally laid down to sleep, I did question whether he would leave me in the cave alone. I stood to lose nothing, since if he did leave he likely wouldn’t make it back to a town. Even if he did, there’s no chance they make it back to me in these conditions. The risk is low to me, and the only risk is him reading the books in my bad and discovering how to kill me.

I trust that he does not want to, so when I close my eyes tomorrow I do so assuming I will wake in a week or two to his shaking when he needs my help once more.

 

 

 

First Sleep Notes, courtesy of Joseph “Seph” Quill

-First attempt at fire, unsuccessful, no sparks or smoke, will try again later

-Second attempt at fire, mixed result, smoke puffs from kindling, no fire seen

-Third attempt, mostly successful, a small fire began but puttered out quickly

-Cut one slab of meat, prepared soup, drank broth and alternated with meat during night

-Bear seems to stir and whimpers, spell seems to work to placate the beast, marking as success

 

 

 

Seph wakes me early, but not necessarily earlier than planned. He tells me that he was having trouble to get fires to last and worried because it was about to putter out. Once I stir, I refuse blood until I absolutely must drink it, focusing instead on replenishing the snow and starting the fire back up. I move the boulders to air out the cave with measured efforts so as to not lose the built up heat. I see the air cooling in front of my eyes as it leaves the cave through the crack.

As I look over the notes, Seph recorded very little in my journal. It is simply from the first few days, so I inquire what may have deterred him. His excuse was that he was reading the journals about botany and mythos. He found them interesting and enjoyable. Since I anticipated him reading the books, I am not taken aback. Seph apologizes for rummaging, stating that he simply wanted to see if there was somewhere that he could draw and write poetry. When he saw that each notebook had writing and a purpose, he put personal items away. The botany and mythos journals seemed to be collections of knowledge, therefore feeling safe to read. I assure him I do not mind and ask him if he has questions about anything he read about, since I could answer most any curiosity he might harbor.

 

 

 

Temperatures continue to drop, which I only know when I venture out of the cave. I only go far enough to seek more wood. I break off branches and any large logs that I can find. I bring them into the cave and start an area of storage. This way, if Seph cannot get the fire spell working consistently, he can at least add wood to the fire to keep it going.

Seph asks me how long I’m going to stay awake, but I cannot tell him until the moon is out. If we are in the waning phase, I had to explain, then I have to go to sleep again to make it through the worst of the cycle. When I do confirm we are not in the waning stage, we discuss the benefits and consequences of me sleeping for longer periods of time. We both agree that it remains the best course of action, even though neither of us like it. Most of the time spent awake is then spent teaching Seph some o the nuances in making the magic work.

Something I have learned from the compendium that there are levels to magic, and that advanced magic comes easier to practices minds and hands. I noticed in my studies, too, that magic seems to come easier to people who already have a piece of fantasy about them. Caroline, for example, was of witch’s blood already. Mary had been using the magic of others to maintain her youth and beauty when she began practicing herself, and much worse in the many years since. As for me, I did not practice any form of magic until many years after turning into a vampire. Even when I began to do it, I thought it came to me much to easily. The theory I had then has only grown in strength, myself more sure than ever, that repeated exposure to magic leaves a residual trace within the person affected.

Before going to sleep again, I practiced with Seph as often as reasonable. He had some marked improvements, which brought him a level of confidence that I think helped as well, but he wasn’t successful enough to make a difference consistently. Without a doubt it has been a concern of mine. As long as he keeps the bear subdued, though, I think he can manage most any other threat. There is always the chance that another bear could show up, but it is such a small chance that I do not eve bother to prepare him for it.

When the time comes for me to sleep again, I let him know he is welcome to read anything he desires from the botany and mythos journals. I even tell him he is welcome to read from my personal diary should he so choose, but that the magical compendium is not to be touched. Seph cocked a brown but agreed. I was tempted to explain myself, though the urge passed.

 

 

 

Second Sleep Notes, courtesy of Seph Quill

-Fire is still hard, but I have been able to get kindling lit multiple times

-I have read through the botany journal in its entirety, but I will start again to see what I recall

-I have written notes in the mythos journal, adding variations of tales I grew up hearing

-Meat supply is low

-Allaura’s real name is Lorraine, I did not read her diary but I saw it written in a letter that fell out of this journal, I will ask her about it when she wakes

-I have been eating just brother for days

-Lorraine’s body wretches while she sleeps so I checked the moon, it wanes

-I refilled the snow at the determent of my warmth and motor control, took days to regain

-Tomorrow I must wake Lorraine - supplies are short and I need her support

 

 

 

The first thing Seph assured me is that he waited for the waning period of the moon cycle to end before waking me. It was a considerate decision, and so I thanked him for the generosity. I look over his notes, choosing to focus on supplies first. He needs meat and wood. Snow is doing well but could be refilled, and it sets me on my way. The next couple of days really are getting the cave back in working order.

When the dull nothingness returns, though, Seph does asking about my name. He asks about my life, too. He says he did not read the journal, showing me the letter that fell out. It is from Nelly.

“She died in 1841,” I had told him, explaining that she had been terminally ill. He asked if she had asked to become a vampire, which I suppose is a natural next thought on the topic. I let him know that she inquired, but not seriously. She chose to die to avoid suffering endless loss for an endless lifetime. Seph thought on it but ultimately disagreed that immortality is a curse.

I should have guessed. He wouldn’t mind being able to live to see a time when queer men and women could live in the public eye without shame. He hoped to see black people be celebrated, and for others to support women as independent beings. The idealism in his eyes and words, yearning for a future that he won’t ever get to taste - I almost felt guilty that these things are nothing more than a dream to him.

It prompts him to ask me how things have changed in the world, and I take him back to the world I grew up in and a life more familiar to his great grandparents than himself. We delve into the reality that homosexual relationships weren’t as frowned upon in indigenous tribes as it is in the white man’s world. I blame their religions for it, and he agrees. Seph admits to me he doesn’t believe in a higher power, at least not in the way of a singular god who created all things. He fairly points out that a god that creates homosexual men and women cannot also create men and women who hate them, for that cannot be divine love. He mourns the life he has lived, and I sit with him as he does. In those moments, I realized that I felt emotionally bonded to Seph than anyone else before him. He brought a perspective to conversations that I have had many times over that made me think about things with a fresh set of eyes. Though our wounds are so different, they are alike enough to sit with each other in a richly vulnerable state.

When my third long sleep comes, I feel confident that Seph will be successful with the fire this time, so I hope that more time will pass. The winter seems to drag on forever. Seph makes a fair point that it must feel longer than it is because the day and night cycles are hard to track from within the cave, and that they are not always checking for fear of letting in too much cold. With no way of knowing how much time is passing, he does his best to reassure me that he does not mind and will be fine while I am asleep. I remind him that he can read my journal if he runs out of things to do, but he tells me that he does not expect he will. He says he prefers to hear the stories from me directly.

 

 

 

Third Sleep Notes, courtesy of Seph Quill

-The wind is louder than ever and I worry another storm has blown into the area

-I have tried to mend my clothes using the supplies Lorraine has, it is strange to use a bone needle but it is very effective

-I continue to take notes in margins of this mythos journal but when there is room I also draw what is described if there are no pictures already

-I went to refill snow and could barely move the rock due to snowfall but I was able to scoop snow with my hands

-There is another book in Lorraine’s bag but a real one, not a journal, that is published under the name Allaura Reenan which is the name she gave me

-The cold is blistering even next to the fire in a cave but Lorraine says when she kills the bear for good that she will take the pelt and make a large blanket to be shared

-The fire went out while I slept but I was able to get it lit again which is a large success

 

 

 

Upon waking, I found Seph slumped over against the stony wall of the cave, and the fire down just embers a few feet in front of him. This seemed normal enough that I figured he was simply asleep and drank some blood to build of my strength before trying to stir him. I noticed the snow was in low supply, so I also decided to get snow while Seph slept. I went through the usual motions, just peeking at him in passing to make sure he was still asleep? Make sure he was still there?

Just before I go to hack off the final leg of the bear, I finally went to get Seph’s attention. It is then that I finally notice that he is very pale and his eyes are sunken in. I panic at the sign of him, smacking parts of his body to get a response. He grumbles and moans a bit, even flutters his eyes, but it isn’t enough of a response. I magic the snow into water with some fire and pour it into his mouth, rubbing his throat to help him swallow. Looking at him closer, I see that his lips are cracking. His skin looks dried, almost like when I am working on hides. The texture was a bit like flaking paint. His fingernails looked damaged, too, with a bumpy texture when I touched them.

He was weak, but I kept giving him water and helping him to swallow. It took a couple of hours, but he was soon able to explain that he couldn’t get enough snow because the rock barricading the entrance was both too heavy and too packed down by the fresh snow. He got as much as he could, but it was not enough and he began to dehydrate from lack of water.

As he regained strength, he explained that he was using less water in his stew, relying heavily on the fats and oils from previous meals. Eating less and drinking less also meant sleeping more, which in turn meant he ate and drank even less from long bouts of rest. In the end, he just became too weak to replenish the snow when needed it, and remained sat where he was at in hopes that I would awaken to help him.

Though the logic was flawed, I understand that he would not have been thinking clearly at the time. There is also the chance that the smoke inhalation from the burning fire only sped up the dehydration process. I think it allowed soot into his mouth and lungs, too.

I stayed awake longer this time, this time collecting more snow than before so that I could melt plenty just for drinking purposes. When I ventured out, I would search for small animals. If I could, I captured them and brought them back to the cave. I managed to get a couple of rabbits and a fawn. While they are not ideal animals to use for making water skins, I make them work. I drink the blood from the animals as I work, and save the meat for the stew. Seph tries to learn and help along the way, and when the next sleep period comes, it seems that everything is set up for success.

As I write this, I am certain that Seph will be fully self-sufficient this time. He should not need to make difficult choices again. I hope. If it goes poorly, I will not sleep again until spring.

 

 

 

Third Sleep, courtesy of Seph

-I forgot how different bear meat tastes from rabbit or deer until just now when I began eating bear again

-Lorraine making water jugs is incredible

-I have been reading back through this entry where Lorraine has been keeping track of the winter and I admire her even more for the level of thought she puts into everything

-Everything is going well and it seems the snow is beginning to finally melt down

-When Lorraine wakes up, I do not believe she will need to sleep again because the harshness of winter seems to be passing

-Will Lorraine let me go with her when spring comes or will she force me to return to my old life of hiding in the shadows and wondering when I might be killed for who I love

 

 

 

Most discussions after I awoke were focused on Seph not wanting to go back home. He swore that he did not have anything he wanted from his hometown. He didn’t have anyone he loved enough to go back for or contact to let them know he is alive. Seph just wants to start over somewhere with someone who would not make he pretend he does not like men and would not force him into church to be shamed each week. Plus, he said that he heard Colorado might be more tolerant of “different folks.” I do wonder where he heard such a thing, but hope is a beautiful thing to witness.

I told him why I left, where I was going, and what my goal was, but that I did not think I could do that if he remained with me. It would not be a fulfilling life for him. As expected, he disagreed adamantly. I swear to him that cannot allow it in good conscience. We go back and forth on the topic for days, but I guess one could say he won the argument. Once I see some grass poking through the snow, I accept that we will both head back to Colorado. I left without warning, but it was not unheard for me to do as much. I have taken long trips in the past, so if I return after the winter season, there will not be too many questions. Coming back with a man in tow might raise some brows, but I do not think anyone will pry too much. Those who find that they are brave enough to ask will get an honest answer. He is a man who needs a home.

And he is a pretty good man, I would say. There are worse people to welcome into her home.

Chapter 25: Spring 1891

We have been back in Colorado for a few weeks now. Seph has been adjusting well. I expanded my farming area significantly since Seph took an interest in continuing to live off the land as we did in the cave. I show him my simple tools and how they are used, little by little, each day. Many of them ones that I have crafted myself, although some have been gifted to me from my forest tribe. The few tools that I have that are not made by hand are ones I have taken from homes where families no longer wish to keep them. I create them or collect them, which is frugal and efficient. It also reduces wasted resources that have been taken from the earth.

It never used to bother anyone, and it does not bother Seph, but some people have been asking about it when I do my usual gardening work. I am often told that landscaping and grounds maintenance would be easier with modern tools. The response I offer is always the same, at least for the daily gardening. Why would I need more than a couple of small essentials and gloves? When the conversation turns to the growing size of my farm, I changed the course of the conversation to one focused on practicality and education. I would explain that I had extra hands now, and, as long as we could both manage it, larger machinery remained unnecessary.

“What about your weaving?” They questioned.

“What about your yarns?” Another inquiry that often followed.

I remind everyone querying me that some of the goods I have are handmaid but not by me. I get them from the other native people when I visit them on the weekends. It seemed to trigger memories of the times that they have come into town to sell goods, since survival is easier in one place with some of the modern advancements they try so desperately to convince me I need. I do some textile work, mostly making my own clothes and custom designs on items I like from in town. In any case, I have to remind them that even when I work on things by hand, it is not a problem to me. It is as fun to me as any card game and dinner party that excites the rest of them.

I fear the problem in their eyes is that I am young, and even though they believe me to be an orphan that grew up to a certain degree with next to nothing, they think I should be more interested in these advancements. However, I do not wish to maintain livestock, which is a requirement for much of the equipment they want me to obtain. The machinery that is needed for the textiles are also rather bulky and would be very difficult to fit into my home. After all, the house is not very large. 

If I were to expand the cabin, I would have to do it with only Seph’s help. Though it would not be impossible, it would bring with it new questions. This forced me to consider that, perhaps, the people in town thought my far more financially secure than is reality. I do wonder if my idea of well off is skewed by my days spent in the manor surrounded by richness at every turn, all from my own doing. It would not be unheard of to have an unclear understanding of what makes one poor, secure, and wealthy having been in such a high position before, and I would never deny the possibility of this being that case for me.

In any case, however, I lived in the manor with plenty of money for a very long time. I do not wish to redo what I have already done. I came here to start anew and reconnect with the parts of me that felt faded. I feel that I am doing just that, but perhaps at the detriment of my social standing amongst those meant to be my peers.

Friendly as I am with everyone else, I do not consider anyone in town my friends. I have great customers, but that is all they are to me. Their prying into my desire to do these things the “old-fashioned way” should not matter to them enough to even ask about it more than once. Seph agrees, and has even encouraged me to stop using tools altogether and do it with my bare hands. His attitude is sharp and fiery, but I do find myself tempted by his suggestions.

Whether it is fortunate or not, I am not that bitter and petty. I know that when people start to notice these little things that they will only pay attention more if challenged. The last thing I want to do is overstay my welcome and risk being found out by someone for either being a vampire or being a witch. Neither would be received well, I suspect.

Despite all the focus on these considerably “archaic” methods that I use, I recognize that I need continue to work to make myself appear to be aging. My efforts to disguise myself will always remain a priority until all of the options are exhausted. Seph will be uprooted with me, I suspect, when the time comes. I do not want to chase him out of a life that he is getting very comfortable living.

Maybe I will get a sewing machine and learn how to use it…

Chapter 26: Spring 1892

Mary came for a surprise visit, and in tow she had a magazine that leaked into every sentence. Inside it is a story titled “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The first thing she asked me to do is read it so we could discuss it over dinner, which she offered to prepare. Seph wanted to read it as well, so I ended up reading it out loud to them by the fire.

As expected, Mary immediately shared how thrilled she was when she first read it, and that hearing aloud only made her feelings stronger. The pair of us have been eras of life where women served singular purposes and were traded like assets. We have seen women with emotions be painted as demons, witches, and monsters because those feelings were inconvenient to the men affected by them. In most ways, I found the story to be a bit boring, but the message was clear even if indirect. It requires thought to understand, and my first thought is that most men will not put the effort in to assess the real meaning of the tale. As women, we are still too often belittled and driven mad by the rules that were never designed for us to be treated as equals to the men that made them.

My identity as a woman has never outweighed the other identifiers for my existence - immortal vampire, native person - but that does not negate that being a woman has definitely come with just as many adversities. The space in my thoughts is more often occupied by being a vampire than being a native, and being a native has taken up more of my motivated action than being a woman, yet I would be a liar to say I do not share in Mary’s thoughts on the matter: this is a message that is direly in need of a restless audience.

Of course, when it became obvious that I was supportive of more people understanding the woman’s mind and experience, Mary used it as an opportunity to make a sharp turn to a new stage of the conversation she intentionally generated with her visit. She told me that women have been “speaking to one another, amongst themselves,” and that they are wanting to push for the same rights as the men.

Specifically, women are wanting to push for the right to vote.

My tongue slipped a little too harshly, “All women or just the white ones?”

Even though she recoiled, seeing exactly what I already knew of myself, she did nod in confirmation of my suspicions. I scoffed, even if I could not be all that surprised. It made, and makes, sense that only the white women were feeling emboldened to make demands. Black and brown people are still wanting to feel safe and have access to the same quality of life as their white and light-skinned peers.

As the discuss evolved, Seph’s reaction, which had been initially quite supportive if mild, became stronger. He expressed what was most notable from the story was how he shared similar experiences as homosexual man performing as a straight man in front of other people. There were women that knew, or at least suspected, the truth, but they endeavored to “fix” him. It did not matter to them that he only felt attraction to men, because they thought it would pass once his sadness and loneliness passed.

The thought expanded while he spoke on other issues of the mind, such as the men he has known men to punish wives for not bonding with their children or bonding too much. He shared about a man who nearly killed his wife over the matter. He was jealous that their son was getting all her attention. He mentioned that many of those same men would then complain of their wives being irrational about prioritizing mothering when they were “wives first.” Seph said that logic should mean that they were children before they were women, and daughters before they were wives - the implication did not need to be said.

“So where does that leave them?” The summarization marked the turning point of the night.

Though the conversation puttered off from there that night, Mary brought it up again quite promptly in the morning. I began to wonder if she had a motive behind forcing all topics back to this one thing. During that conversation, I agreed with many of her points and even contributed some of my insight. Access to information is limited, which is not disputable, especially when the disparity between skin colors is considered. I agree that women are as capable and smart as men. We point to my success in Vermont with the manor and estate that I built up that will last for generations to come as proof of it. Women make-up an equal part of the country, which is another easy point to confer upon since it neither can be debated.

She pressed on and on about the need for this movement to gain momentum. Mary remained relentless. Day after day. For over a week! I suppose I should not have been alarmed that I was motivated to change my heart on the matter, not when it came from her lips, but when it was Seph’s voice making a suggestion.

“You should write something up about all of this,” he said. I saw Mary’s grin spread over her lips like blood spilling from a cut throat. That had been her reason for coming. 

She did not want just for me to read this short story. Mary’s visit started to make more sense from the perspective of her wanting something from me. Had that not been the reason she showed up unannounced last time as well? I feel ashamed that it took me so long to realize it. Perhaps I am too comfortable, too out of touch, with my natural instincts.

I declined  to do as much yesterday, and the rest of our evening meal passed without another word from any of us. This morning, in a strange turn of events, there continued to be no further mention. I thought on it all day today, preparing myself for the argument in each moment spent alone. When dinner came again, still no conversation began. It was comforting to me at first, but then it irritated me when I noticed they were transfixed on their plates and did not even acknowledge our shared presence. It was not as if I had simply declined. No, it was more like I committed a heinous crime. 

And I could not help but question how easily talks about women’s rights had died when I turned down an idea. Was this not the very same topic that had infected every conversation? Was this not days upon days of interjection and obsession to advocate for this request to be accepted? How could their efforts be so strong, only to fall so easily with defeat? Should I assume their passion on the matter died when I said ‘no’ to writing on this issue?

When I calmed, I then asked myself the most important question. Did they give up, or was this a test to see if I would change my mind? Would the two of them employ such a tactic? I am no fool.

It was a test. I sat with their sudden silence and mulled it like fine wine. Women do deserve the right to vote. This white-woman focus on feminism is far from the fairness and equality that is desperately needed in America, but I fear that it may be the only way to make any movement forward for women’s rights at all. 

I had to lie and bribe people to get an account at the bank. I had to prove inheritance of Mitchell-Warren manor, which took more money and more back alley deals. I had to amass power to break the rules I did, which then scared enough people into submission that it never became a the risk that it could have been in other parts of America. Recreating that success anywhere would not only be challenging, but I am also convinced that it would be nearly impossible for mortal women.

I do not want to do it in this way, but I will offer my to help Mary all the same. She will give me editing credit using a past name of mine, that will be a requirement for me, whenever appropriate, and she will be the face of this movement she is wanting to start in her name. That is the arrangement that I’m going to offer her, and if she is unwilling to take it, then I will offer it to Gertrude or Lucinda instead. Either of them would be ideal women to head up any kind of feminist movement.  They embody all of the best traits women offer to society.

Even if I know women who look like me will see no benefit for many years to come. Even a small step is a step in the right direction, and so I must put aside my desire for everything to change all at one time. I want to support change for the better and be on the right side of an important cause.

Chapter 27: Sumer 1899

 

The beauty of nature is an impossible thing to capture in any painting or drawing. Yet, with the invention of the camera, this box that captures a scene or a moment, has made it possible. Seph suggested I get one, as something to pass the time in the winter, so that I would not be alone with myself while he painted and partied late into the nights. Sometimes even into early morning hours, if he was lucky. I agreed that it would be an interesting skill to have, and quickly purchased one with a refill of film.

The film allowed for 100 images each roll, which I found to be rather impressive. I did not know what to do with this camera, but I thought I ought to try to capture the beauty of nature with it. My question to start was simple: could this box truly show the impressive reality of nature and time passing hand in hand? So I went to the edge of the woodland area just beyond our house and photographed the same tree and the same rock every day at sunrise. This routine carried on for the greater part of the winter days, all 100 images imprinted on the film roll.

I got the images back about two or three months ago. They are quite stunning, and it is a marvel to see them in color on this special paper. We were early into spring when the film was returned, so the work was picking up again, but I was enamored by the images. I wanted to do something more with them. Again, Seph suggested a brilliant idea to me. He thought I should put these photos into a book so I can easily flip through the pages.

It gave me an idea. Setting to work quickly, I started to bind paper together, tight and short in space, using thin wax to adhere the photos to the pages, and then I was able to flip through the images rapidly. It was almost like traveling through time in an instant. I was so impressed I showed Seph, and then eventually the team who published my botany book. They shared my fascination. As the conversation generated itself, of course it was an easy ‘yes’ to pursuing the publication of a photograph book. Once I got home that same day, I started writing the introduction and sharing my story about loving nature as it is in its simplest state. What once was a judgement of my strangeness is a gift and talent now. Or rather, it has always been so, but others will now feel the same as I do.

What startled me most, though, was when I was invited to a dinner as a guest and instructed to bring my “prototype” of the book. That was a few days back, now. My photography book has been published for a couple of weeks now, in a short run. I wanted to ask for more information, but Seph talked me out of inquiring too much. He encouraged me to let go of my confusion, so I let it be and prepared myself for the evening.

We went to the dinner together, where I was surprised with the presence of a New York publisher who had seen the book and was extremely interested in the concept. He described the idea of having photos meant to be flipped through so as to simulate moving through time as “visionary” and “future-minded.” I did not care for the description, but only because I did not feel I had done anything unique so much as use a new tool to do what so many have done for years with pencils and paints. Still, I accepted the compliments that came with sharp jabs into my ankles from Seph to corral me into normal behavior.

Seph bragged about my eye for beautiful things, suggesting he was one of them, which gave the impression that we were engaged, I suppose. They voiced that it was uncouth that we live together without being wed, but Seph covers up for it well. I found him up north, wounded and ill, and cared for him in the wild. This was truth, but he detailed a business dealing gone wrong and getting mixed up with the wrong crowd of people, “rough and tumble types,” he had said. With that one conversation, we became betrothed in the eyes of many, and people congratulated us on the street. Some even remarked, “We had so wondered when you would wed.”

It was all quite odd. In the end, I was offered, and accepted, a publication deal in New York, with the money to be paid out to Seph’s bank account, rather than my Colorado publisher’s. He says it will be good to have the money directly, just in case I was ever cheated out of money before from having a middle man in the process. I doubted such at thing happened, having known the family for years, but I understood what he meant. New York dealings are trickier, in a way, and it would be more money coming back to me than my first book.

The photography book will be sold in stores soon, and I must go to New York City to do a speaking event to promote it. Since I will be in the area, I have invited Gertrude and Lucinda. Scarlett declined, but only because Peter and Dottie have moved to New Jersey due to their old age, and are both have been consistently ill. I will travel to visit her after my engagement.

When I spoke to Gertrude about my wedding plans with Seph, she was quite alarmed. Rightfully so, I would say, and it was the reaction that I expected. Why would I marry a homosexual man? As we talked, she did come to admit that it was a good idea. Gertrude lamented that many outside of her social circle had begun to question her own unwedded status. Being that she knew some homosexual men herself, she wondered aloud if she ought to the do the same thing. As it seemed, it would protect both people should questions arise. Maybe it would not be a foolproof plan, but it easily could keep up appearances.

Lucinda called just this morning, having missed my initial call to Gertrude about the wedding and travel plans, and she was thrilled to hear that I was making things work in my favor once again in a new place. She told me that it suited my nature. Lucinda sees me differently than others, and I am unsure if it is my truest nature that she sees or an idealized one. Like Gertrude, she idolized me, but different things inspired that feeling in her. Unsure how to build the conversation, I accepted the kind words, but turned the conversation to new topics. I asked on about her child, and she started to babble on and on with joy about how well school is going and the play meetings she goes to with other mothers. She revealed that she was lonelier more often than not, sad being a widow, but dating around again has been laborious. I attempted to life her spirits by saying perhaps she will find a good man while visiting New York City. The effort was successful and we ended our call with cheer. Sometimes I forget how much she has grown since I first met her.

Seph and I are marrying in a small ceremony surrounded by our closest friends from my tribe, and the few customers I have a mutual respect towards. There will be a preacher and a small lunch in a tiny church downtown. We do not plan to make a big deal of it, not more than is necessary, and it will simply be a formality that we use to our benefit.

It is important to me that it is known that I do love Seph, dearly. There is still a part of me that imagines a time when I could have married Tsolamee, that I could have enjoyed my union with Theodore and Isobel for longer. Seph is not a romantic love to me, but he is something of a soulmate. We are so perfectly close, and if I must be wed to someone, he makes a great candidate. He is the perfect other half for this part of my existence. He does make it feel like a real life.

Writing all these pieces with Mary, too, has altered my perspective. Sharing myself with someone who is similarly oppressed keeps me aligned with my personal morals. I know that we will understand each other’s battles, oppressions, and suffering. Homosexuals are not whole people in the eyes of whites the same as blacks and browns. All of us are worthy of attack and death when we no longer fit into the visage of a white man’s dream.

He is a good partner to have in life. I have heard many people say, you should marry your dearest friend, if you can, for then you will always be a happy couple. Seph is a wonderful friend, indeed, too. Dare I consider myself lucky? If Seph could say, he would think so.

Chapter 28: Spring 1900

Even though Seph has been around for a decade, nearly, he has typically kept his sexual prowess relatively private. Every so often if someone became a bit more serious of a partner, a casual dating of sorts, they would come around for dinners or stay over for breakfast. I have never much minded.

Or, I think, I never minded before.

Being married has changed my thoughts on it. I think?

Perhaps it is the reputation of it all. There were always whispers, were there not? People questioned what our relationship was, what with him living with me even though we never commented on our connection. What was there to say that would not result in more gossip? It seemed to me all these years that the least salacious rumors were the ones that were were simply unwed partners. It kept Seph safe from those who seek to harm him for laying with men. It kept me safe from whatever their imaginations could come up with, and distracted from how little I have aged in the 19 years I have resided here. Once I did makeup and dressed in such a manner that I looked younger, and now I do what I can to look like a women in her late thirties.

The way it was before was protective, in a way.

Being married now, if anyone starts talking about his perceived indiscretions, more attention lingers around our lives. Questions start being asked. The power I have in this community simply does not provide the same insulation I have enjoyed in the past. To most people here, I am an author and gardener, and nothing more than that. To others, I am neither native enough to belong in the woods with my people nor white enough to be included in any of their elite circles. There is an understanding that I am “worth more” than what I portray in my style of living, I suspect, but I will never belong with them. In their eyes and mine.

Seph can speak about what he wants, but I find myself biting my tongue and selectively engage the conversations about his conquests.

 

---

 

Nothing changes overnight. For a week or so now I have been ignoring the conversations Seph starts about the rough sex in closets and shadows that he has when he is out late at night. I always busy myself to show physically that I am not invested in what he is saying. It rarely discourages him. At least for now, anyway.

However, last night he brought home someone that he has in some sort of back and forth with over several weeks. Or was it months? The name Seph screamed as his headboard slammed into the wall all night was familiar. I had definitely heard it before, and I thought for sure it had been from Seph, but the recollection of his voice saying was wrapped up in the grunting and moaning to the point that I simply could not be sure if it was a real memory or a blurry made up one.

While I made breakfast, Seph and this man - Hugh - they came out wrapped in linens I made while I was cooking up some eggs. They did not ask for a plate of food, so I did not offer anything to them either. I ate my food silently while they spoke openly about needing to shower, showering together, and whether they should eat before they have any more sex. The boldness annoyed me, so I cleaned up and left. As I was passing behind them, Seph suggested Hugh come back again in a few days.

I think I will make a trip to the woods to get out of the house. If they are going fuck each other that loudly again, I would rather not be on the other side of the wall.

 

As I was writing this, Seph came in to sing the high praises of my being such a “great wife” to let him bring his lovers back to the house. I think he was being sincere through a veil of cheekiness. For my own record, and I have never expressly told him that it is okay, and he has always made those decisions independently of whatever I may or may not have felt about the matter. The only thing I let him do is continue, which is only permitted through my silence. There is an absence of consent for his behavior.

He also babbled to me that Hugh just might be the greatest love of his life. They are having dinner before another night filled with sex in two days. They will be partaking in their escapades here. I think I shall make the calls that I will not be coming around to my customers on Friday.

 

---

 

I came home to a bit of a mess on Sunday. Both literally in that dishes were piled on the table, and that Seph was drunk on the floor by the fireplace. Once I was able to get him up and into his own room, I was able to better assess the physical damage. I cleaned the broken glass and dishes, started washing blankets covered in sick and the rug. Hours of time passed before I sat down to collect my thoughts.

Tomorrow will reveal more, I suspect. Whatever happened surely has to do with Hugh. What else would cause such a scene if not heartbreak? I will hear him out and see what I can do to support him. All things negated, I am his best friend and his wife.

It would be disingenuous.

 

---

 

Spring is in full swing, now, and the world around us is in bloom. Dewy blades of grass and flower buds opening under the bright sun, branches swaying in light breezes that define the afternoons. You would never guess it if it you were inside the cabin, though. At home, everything is icy and mournful.

The last few weeks have been spent nursing Seph’s broken heart. Hugh ignores him in town and at the bar. He comes home instead, these days. We both drink hot whisky by the fire and read in the evenings now. Seph chooses to read books, while I read letters from Mary - the letters she receives from the readers of our essays. The impact of our writings is nice to see, though I only read them out of obligation for when Mary phones. She would be most irritated should I not be able to carry a meaningful conversation on the letters from our readers. She always calls them “our readers” so that I do not forget that we are doing this together.

I have been teaching Seph how to cook, not that he was unable to cook before, but we are expanding his skills. One of my favorite things about him is his willingness to do homemaking tasks. He is truly invested in both of us being able to do everything around the house. We have been having a great time spending this quality time together. It has been nice to bond over the food and cleaning up when we are done. Sometimes we even bake cake or cookies just because it sounds good. Sometimes, it seems like he might actually be doing better and have left Hugh in the past. I like how he smiles during those times.

Then there are evenings where Seph and I talk about what he needs in any partnership he might pursue, not just what feels good in the moment. To be successful and fulfilled, Seph needs someone who is fearless. Not necessarily in the sense of being completely out in the open, but someone who will not shy away from their feelings. That was the problem with Hugh is that he was never willingly to acknowledge the reality of their attraction to one another. During these discussions, Seph reveals that nobody he has been with has said they love him, and some will not even admit that they are having sex. At best, these men call it “a good time,” like a passing fancy or a silly trend that will eventually stop being fun.

None of this is to say that a major breakthrough has been achieved, but we agreed that the thing he needs right now is to just take time away from pleasures in the flesh. He and I can focus on ourselves and our home instead. I cannot pretend that I hate the idea of it, either, because I find that I feel lonely when he is out and about with one lover after another. Strange how sometimes in the moment we feel okay with something only to later realize that we were not as at peace as we thought.

 

---

 

The surprise and rage I felt at seeing Hugh and Seph ripping each other’s clothes off when I left my room for a bath last night is indescribable. I came right back to my bed, but not before hearing Hugh declare that this would be “the very last time” they are fucking.

Seph does not believe it. We discussed it after Hugh left a few hours ago. They shared some tea to talk about the night. Apparently, Seph suggested they run away together. He assured Hugh that I would not mind, that I would not take it as a personal slight. I had to correct him and let him know I would mind and I would be hurt, but that what he probably meant to say is that I would still be able to understand. He could not distinguish the difference between the two. Hiding my irritation was challenging, and I suspect he noticed as much. Conversation slowed and then stopped, so I had to change the topic to something else to fill the quiet.

I reminded him of all we have talked about for weeks. This is not what he wants. This is not what he deserves. Still, Seph swears that he knows Hugh too well. He insists that this will not be the last time they get together. There is this delusion that Hugh will choose to have a life with him in the end. I disagree with him, politely at first. He claimed that I simply did not “get it,” as if I had never been in love or yearned for something forbidden.

At that point, I could no longer reason with him. I stood up abruptly and slammed my hands on the table. With belligerent insistence, I told him that he needs to commit to what he deserves or let himself be stuck in the same cycle for the rest of his life. Before I could leave the room, he promised he would have a conversation with Hugh when they meet at the bar tonight. He tried to promise that he would not compromise on what he deserves, just like we have been saying.

I wish I could understand how he could enjoy these last weeks, just the two of us, and still choose someone who will never prioritize him as a person or a partner. I have been his closest friend and most reliable confidante ever. What about our quiet life fails to meet his expectations? It may be selfish to say, but I do think he could be happier if he chooses to just be with me for this part of our shared life.

 

---

 

Seph kissed me. I have not taken the time to really think about it, but I want to record the events of the night as accurately as possible before I try to understand what Seph kissing me means. It was a long night, but I have to start at the beginning.

As expected, this all starts with Hugh. Seph had plans to meet Hugh at the bar, to talk about things, according to Seph. When he did not show up, Seph decided to walk to Hugh’s family estate. He has been working for his uncle for about a year now, after he finished college to earn money while waiting for a facility to be build back in his hometown. A factory, I think it was? These are things I have know to be as close to fact for months, even before he showed an interest in Seph. As to the matter of his engagement to a young woman, this was speculation at best. The fiancee was never discussed socially. It was a whispered question, rather, because he was always turning down flirtatious women.

In any case, Seph went to see if Hugh was okay since he did not show up. When he arrived, Hugh’s aunt told him that he was called back home for some wedding preparations and that Hugh forgot to call. He did leave a letter in case Seph came looking for him. Only it was not a letter at all. Hugh left a wedding invitation with Seph’s name on the envelope. He returned to the bar and got really drunk. The bartender phoned and asked me to come get him before police needed calling.

Rain had been pouring most of the afternoon and night, so I trudged through puddles. Seph had left the bar on his own accord, it turned out, because I found him passed out on the ground somewhere along the way. I managed to get him back home and straight into the bath.

After cleaning him up and dressing him, I sat him up on the couch while I made some mint tea. When I went back to the couch, I brought with me the bear blanket from the closet to wrap around him. As we drink, he explained that he had just spoken to Hugh that morning on the phone. According to Seph, he had to have known he was leaving when they were on the call. His aunt said that he packed some sandwiches for the train ride since he would miss lunch. Seph had spoken to him just after breakfast. I listened intently and let him be angry without judgment. When he was done talking, I took his free hand in mind and assured him that even if he believed in this thing so wholly that he still deserved better. This was not a time to chastise his hopefulness. Heartbreak happens in waves. Letting go takes time. I can forgive the foolishness while still learning a lesson.

This is when Seph leaned over and kissed me. It was sloppy. But it was also desperate. Or was I desperate? After he kissed me, though, he left with his tea and told me he looked forward to making eggs for breakfast for me to show his appreciation for my always being there for him. I was too stunned to say anything back. I kissed him back but I cannot say more than that. I can barely conjure the memory in clear detail to my mind even now. It feels as though it happened to someone else.

What ever will I do with us now?

 

---

 

Would it be insane for me to think that Seph and I could have a real relationship together? Spring is coming to a close, temperatures are rising to the point that spring plants are drying and wilting under the heat. I sow new plants in the garden while I fantasize about the possibility of another decade in Colorado with a real husband in Seph.

He kisses me daily now, anywhere from my lips to my forehead to my hand. We cuddle on the couch with our legs tangled under the bear pelt blanket and wine in our glasses. We go everywhere together, do everything together, and sometimes even sleep in the same bed. Well, rather, he comes to my room when he is lonely at night.

This would not be the first time I have been friends with someone who I thought was not interested in me physically, only to be shown that their sexuality is far less rigid. Isobel and Theodore were a natural fit in my mind, but Isobel sought me out confidently. Is it really so impossible that Seph would show a similar fluidity?

I am finding myself yearning for a settled and simple marriage. Even if there is no sexual love, there could be romantic connection. Is that possible? Surely there are marriages that function just like this elsewhere. I will need to discuss it with Seph, just to make sure he is thinking and feeling everything the way I am receiving it.

 

---

 

I am not proud of my behavior, which is not a feeling I have often. But how could Seph do this to me? I awoke with a plan to talk about the dynamic between us. I thought everything was going to be smooth and happy and - different? Eggs and toast were laid out and ready. When I asked him if he had anything on his mind, he said he was glad I asked and then told me that he would be going to Hugh’s wedding.

“I need closure,” he said so casually. As if he were not stabbing me in my already cold, dead heart. As if because I have no blood of my own that it could not boil.

Is it not reasonable for me to assume he should have known better? Did he not show me with his actions that he was invested in the both of us as a couple? Has he forgotten that he was the one kissed me? Was all of it a rouse to keep me on the hook while he muddled through his feelings and made a plan? A scheme to have me while still trying to figure out a way to weasel his way back into Hugh’s heart? All of it feels like a betrayal.

I screamed at him that he was being childish trying to get Hugh back after he has given every sign that he would not choose him. Seph agreed that it was childish to chase after someone who keeps trying to get away, but assured he is not chasing Hugh to get him back. The declaration was that he needed to see him one more time and see him with his fiancee, at least to see that he will be happy with her. He wants to close the book with finality, not uncertainty.

I told him that it is not fair to me for him to go.

When he asked me why, a true look of confusion in his lying eyes, I could not contain the rage roiling beneath the surface. How dare he look at me like I have said something unfathomable? How dare he act like he could not possibly know why I am upset? At the top of my lungs, I screamed at him in no uncertain terms…

BECAUSE I AM YOUR FUCKING WIFE!

And his response was so inhumane that I forgot my own humanity.

“Only on paper,” he said with furrowed brows and shrugging shoulders. He did not show any signs of caring about the storm he created. The only way for me to make it clear, it seemed, in the moment, was to flip the table into him. Barring my teeth at him, a growl rolling in my throat like thunder, I drowned any reminders of what I have done for him deep in my chest.

Every step through the house I grabbed things and threw them on the ground. Vases. Boxes of tools. Stacks of blankets. If it could be picked up and tossed, it was. My tirade ended after I slammed my door shut, moving my dresser in front of the door so that he could not come after me to try and calm me down. I did not want to be soothed.

I deserve to be mad.

Right? I will not ask anyone else. I would have to tell them about my response, and I already know it was wrong. Regardless of my feelings, and how right I would have been about Seph’s ridiculous decision making, it has been voided. I know what they would say. I do not want to hear it.

 

---

 

This morning, I listened as Seph crept around the house. It was clear to me he was packing his belongings. Before he left, he stopped outside my door and shouted that he does not owe me anything as a husband because I knew that he only liked men when I met him. He put the blame on me for misreading what he thought was general friendliness in a platonic marriage that protects us both.

The only thing he apologized for was kissing me. He said he was drunk, and while he was wrong for initiating the kiss, I was wrong for letting it continue. He said he hoped that time away would help both of us see the situation differently enough to talk about it when he comes back. Tempted as I was to tell him not to bother coming back, I ignore his attempt at a two-way conversation. I waited for the front door to close behind him before I emerged from my room.

He cleaned up the mess I had made.

Of course he did. How else could he get the knife deeper? If not to put the house back together before he leaves? Hurt me, help me, abandon me.

Nobody will ask questions. They will know he has gone to the wedding. But will they see it in me? Will they see that I am different? That I am throbbing with anger?

 

Maybe he is right. I want him to be right.

I want to go back to how it was before this morning. Before Seph kissed me. Before Hugh started toying with him. Before we got married, even. It was supposed to protect us from the judgmental nature of ignorant people, but I fear all it has done is create fear and mania within the confines of a space that was supposed to be safe.

 

I want that safety back.

Chapter 29: Spring 1914

I am unsure where the years have gone. I do not leave the house except to tend the garden. My garden only. I gave my customers to the native girls for work. They like to shop in town, they stop by for tea sometimes. I only understand the passage of time through their growth.

As it were, I brought this century in by coping with Seph running away with Hugh. It was exactly as he hoped. Hugh could not marry a woman. He is attracted to men. He was in love with Seph. They went for dinner the day after he arrived in Tennessee, and they decided to run. Since then, they have lived a relatively quiet life in Chicago. Nobody asks too many questions, they tell me. How do I know?

They call. Well, Seph calls. I take them begrudgingly. There is bitterness in knowing, but there is suffering in not knowing. Having confirmation that he is happy is almost like a salve. It stings, but it nearly heals me to know at least one of us is doing well. Gertrude calls almost every day, just to check on me because she knows I do not do anything these days. Or years now, I guess. She has been asking me for some time to return to the manor. If I am going to stay inside all the time, I may as well have good company, she says.

Margaret has left, it seems, and under very concerning terms. Gertrude suspects Margaret has gone rogue in the sense that she is killing people with malcontent. It makes her sick to her stomach not knowing for sure. I tell her not to worry. Margaret has been the least troublesome of all of us. She has blended seamlessly into the world around her, even during hard times.

What convinces her the most is when I remind her that I have killed people on purpose, too, and that she has not worried about whether or not I am uncontrollable ever once. It settled her worries about what could be happening. She thanks me often for being the voice of reason when her mind goes awry. It is then when I explain that even as a young girl she had been the wisdom behind my ability to maintain control. Doting upon one another always lifts our moods. In many ways Gertrude is my other half. Though we are not in love, we do love each other so much.

Above all else, Gertrude is everything to me.

It always distracts me from how wounded I am from Seph’s betrayal.

The fallout for the last fourteen years has been strange. The girls tell me that I am a bit of a fairytale in town. Everyone knows of me. The story goes that Seph finally proposed and married Lorraine only a short time before he disappeared. The speculation is not far from reality. They say he left for Hugh’s wedding, met someone, and never returned. Hugh’s uncle never speaks about him, so it is unknown that he left his fiancée at the alter. Regularly, they offer to correct the rumors for me, to share the truth. I always refuse their kindness. It is still very unsafe for homosexuals to be free in expressing their love.

No, I tell them to let everyone think I am a ghost story. If I learned anything in Vermont it is that people will talk either way, best to leave it be. The second something comes out that seems to be from me or endorsed by me, the stories will evolve into something even more disturbing or upsetting. Nothing they can come up with on their own will ever be as bad as the truth.

I am a vampire. Am I not already a ghost story as it is?

As for why I am writing now all these years later, it is because Seph has invited me to visit him in Chicago. He has said that he would love to see me again, if I am willing to come. He misses my company, or so he suggested. I do not know what has compelled him to invite or what pushed me to accept. Maybe I seek the same closure that Seph did when he decided to go to Hugh’s wedding. A part of my mind must believe that I need to see him in his settled life with Hugh to be able to accept this reality.

I leave for Chicago in two days time. I do not know what to expect. I do not know how to feel. The only thing I know is that I will leave in the night.

It would not be a true ghost story otherwise.

 

 

---

 

 

Growing up with my people, we trusted the earth beneath our feet, the wind in our hair, and the air in our lungs. It would activate our instincts like a second language. This is why I should have known something was wrong when I stepped off the train and saw Seph waiting for me in the station alone. Something inside of me wretched and scratched, attempting to come out of me like a warning. I ignored it, curtly approaching Seph and greeting him as though I had never been angry with him even once.

As we walked, he carried my suitcase, ever the gentleman I remembered from before our complications and regrets. We move around silently at first, letting the familiarity marinate around us so that, perhaps, we will be comfortable once we are in the car and away from the protective shell of public chattering. He spoke first.

“How is your garden? Will the girls tend it while you are visiting,” he had asked. It was innocent and simple. If roles were reversed, I would have asked something similar about his painting and writing. He did police sketches as a job, these days, but he had sent paintings as a holiday gift a few times since he left. Canvases showed up with renditions of the things he missed in Colorado. The things he claimed he missed about life in the cabin.

I interpreted it as missing things from the life he had with me. Even if I knew I was only hurting myself believing it.

I told him about the girls and how they have grown, like the weeds in my garden, I spoke with dryness on my tongue. We joked about how it seemed that people are not unlike plants in too many ways, but the conversation quickly died when he had no way to further the imagery. Though conversation might have stalled for others with our same past, we fell into old habits. I babbled on about how the understanding we have about human genetics started as a study in plants - peas, to be exact. I lectured him about Gregor Mendel’s experiments almost a hundred years ago, which he did find interesting, despite him not saying much when I spoke.

The eerie feeling had almost slipped away by the time we arrived at his home, but it crept back over my body like spiders crawling on skin when we parked across the street and he gestured to his front door. Something seemed off, but I could not say confidently whether it is the dankness of the air or the darkness of the center townhouse. Not even a lantern lit above the door. Seph insisted that I wait just a moment while he turned the lights on inside, as if I was not already accustomed to navigating in the dark in my two hundred years of existence. Still, I respected it his need for niceties and awaited his call to enter.

Looking back, I should have asked more questions immediately. There were signs that I did not miss so much as pretended were unassuming, because I did not feel as though I had enough context for the strangeness. Admittedly, in isolation, all of these things do seem very odd. Knowing the ‘why’ behind anything would not have done much to detract from the creepy happenings.

Alas, there was also the matter of Seph’s kitchen, which was a disaster. He said this was due to an uptick in violent crime in town and longer hours at the station. He explained that Hugh worked unpredictable hours in a factory and would not be in for the night, though I had known him to work during the daytime in all the months prior to the visit. The house reeked of deadness, which he explained was due to rats in the walls. They were on a long waitlist for an exterminator. He passively commented, “Rats in Chicago - what’s new?”

I suggested getting a saw and a cat. This elicited a strangled laugh while he aimlessly stirred his black coffee. No creamer or sugar cubes in sight. I wondered what he was stirring. My justification was that he was trying to cool his drink.

When he showed me to my room, he told me not to worry about the sounds from the floor above, that the attic was full of bats, in addition to rats, but that he was picking a ladder up the next day to assess the situation for the exterminators. He claimed that it was his hope this it would have moved him up the list in priority. I offered to do it for the low price of “their blood.”

He declined on the grounds that I deserved better quality nutrition that that of vermin.

Seph left me to my devices after that, which was the first comfort I found since arriving. I used the time to call Gertrude, who informed me that she had received a request from Margaret to visit her in Boston in the mail right after our last call. A part of her was feeling guilty for not wanting to go, for the hesitation she had in accepting. Another part of her, though, wanted answers. Gertrude longed to understand what was happening with her sister, she said exactly-

“I want to know what she she is doing, or at least know what this person who looks like her is doing with her body.”

We discussed it at length, more than any time before when the topic has risen. She broke down every single reason she believed Margaret is a danger to the people around her. Gertrude told of every murder she has learned about that she thought might be linked to her sister. I spent my time countering her concerns with logic, helping her splinter everything into the tiniest pieces so that she can rationally assess what to do with the invitation. Even though we talk it to death, she is still undecided by the end of that call. She asked me to call in a few days so she could explore her feelings alone, think about what I had said, and I assured her that I would.

After that, she put Mary on the telephone, and we discussed some essays that she wanted to compile for print into a small batch book. She has a team of men sympathetic to their effort willing to help with the printing. There would be no cost for the book, just attending a meeting in person in New York to share their feelings in a peaceful rally, and maybe conjure some plans to make more demands. She tells me that a war is the horizon, which I would not have known otherwise. I had not been reading newspapers, nor did current events come up much when speaking with Gertrude and Lucinda. Mary babbled on for too long, and eventually asked if I had read through the draft she mailed yet. When I told I had not, she hung up. It was a directive to read it instead of talk over the telephone. So I did just that until Seph called upon me for a drink by the fire ahead of dinner. I obliged, obviously.

With shaking hands, Seph stared ahead into the fire when I sat down. He did not have a glass for his rum. Instead, he took swig after swig directly from the bottle. He apologized for the smell, the very same he spoke about earlier, I assumed. It seemed redundant to me, so I ignored it.

I thanked him for letting me tie up his telephone line for so long. He asked if it had been Gertrude on the call, and I confirmed, so he asked if she was well, which I denied. We discussed her anxiousness towards her sister briefly, but turned our attention more towards Mary. I told him that she predicted a war will start soon. Seph agreed that it was looming like a dark shadow waiting to swallow the world whole. Hugh had friends that had visited Europe recently. Their stories told of vacations that were dampened by the constant threat of violence.

At some point, Seph said he needed to talk to me about Hugh. Naively, I thought perhaps Hugh left Seph and this would be the true reason for his absence. Though they had enjoyed a committed, if closeted, relationship for years, Hugh was prone to intense nervousness. He feared the consequences of perception. However, Seph started by saying that something very bad had happened. He explained that he had tried to fix it.

“But everything went wrong every single time,” that is what he said before he revealed a series of haunting truths that I never could have predicted. Not even if I had really paid close attention to each warning sign that something was amiss. Nothing at any point in time could have prepared me for what Seph recounted for me.

About six months ago, he told me, Hugh had died. It was unclear what the cause was, and he had died while Seph was working a long shift at the station. He was already stiff by the time Seph got home. He cried for hours, and even slept with his body for days until the flesh started to soften and stink. When he poked around the autopsy reports at work and read books from the library, he said he learned that this stage of decomposition had something he called ‘slippage,’ which is where the layers of flesh begin to separate from each other. This causes it to slide off of the bone. Seph said that he did not even realize that Hugh had bloated because his eyes were so swollen. His research informed him that Hugh was heading into a state of active decay, so he dropped the temperature of the house and got to work teaching himself necromancy.

Aghast, I scolded him, “Without consulting me?”

He admitted he did not desire to ask for my help knowing how he had hurt me. Seph was in contact with some old friends in Colorado, the ones who already knew how to keep secrets, and they had told him about my reclusive lifestyle. All this time, he knew what he did and how it changed me. The justification for never addressing it was that he feared my anger. He argued that he could not ask a favor of this magnitude given the damage he had done to them. Seph painted me as unapproachable because I was heartbroken. These excuses made me sound irritable and volatile by nature, not by circumstance - circumstance that came to be because of him! It was his actions that soured me!

And yet, there I was, in his living room, watching him drink himself sick with tears smearing his reddened cheeks. When we made eye contact, he continued with his dark tale. As if housing a dead body long past expiration, the explanation of events only got more twisted.

He found a book containing remarkably similar to the spells I had taught him the winter we lived in the cave. In his mind, it was close enough that it must have be legitimate. Using his limited knowledge, the spell book he found, and a book of Latin… Seph lured a homeless man back to their home on the promise of paid labor. Apparently, he recalled the stories about how I saved a mom and an infant from dying in birth. The worry I had about the balance of life and death, the cost I may have never seen. Using that information, he said he wanted to kill this ‘useless’ and ‘hopeless’ man to bring Hugh back to life.

It only worked partially. Hugh was alive again, but his body continued to rot. Skin fell from his body, liquid pour from his face. Seph called it “purge fluid,” which was caused from gases building up in his body. To lighten the mood, likely because he could see my scowl in the flickering light of the fireplace, he joked to me then, “I know a bit about science now, too.”

I was not amused.

Seph fashioned face wraps with a salve to keep his skin fresh, since he knew more advanced decay of Hugh’s body would see what skin remained become dry and brittle and black. He changed the face wraps whenever the smell is too strong when visiting him in his room. And the rest of his body? To keep insects from burrowing into his skin, Seph wrapped his body in damp burlap. No skin is exposed, except only when refreshing bandages and burlap.

Unfortunately, the efforts to revive Hugh did not stop there. Seph continued working on spells to reverse the decomposition of Hugh’s body. With no guidance, he created a patchwork magic for his own devices. He swapped words out or hacked up spells he already knew and found in books. Each attempt had varying success, and each attempt had another murder going along with it. Seph had killed seven more men and women in an attempt to bring Hugh back to his mortal glory.

The attempts were unsuccessful. Instead, his body was frozen in varying stages of decay, a foul odor emitting from him with each rattled breath and movement. Seph told her he was kept on the third floor away from the rest of the house so as to control the stench. Supposedly, it was effective enough at first. He also confirmed there are actually rats in the walls, but only because he put them there on purpose. In addition to the rats were parts of the bodies of his victims that he could not break down and sneak out in the trash inside. I questioned whether or not the smell was masked, what with rotting bodies in the shared walls, but he snickered like I made a raunchy joke.

Pointing with the rum bottle, he directed my attention to the fireplace. In it I see a bouquet of lavender, roses, and chamomile. Next to it an open cast iron pot. I detect rosemary and yeast, leading me to believe that is pork and bread inside. The fragrance was there when I arrived, but it was not in the forefront of my mind. I blocked it out, but once I saw it, it was all I could smell. Seph must have known because he laughed, not unlike a man who has won a bet or proven someone right.

His voice sounded dark when he concluded, “It smells like incense and cooking to them.”

For all the aromatic relief his concoction gives, I still smell the pungency of death in the air.

 At this point, before he could even ask me for help, I demanded to see Hugh. I needed to know what he had done to this poor man. Seph had been playing witch with folklore stories and a dictionary while Hugh’s soul remained restless in a body that had turned. Morality is not always something that would be described as my strength, but this is a different breed of insanity. Desperation had contorted Seph into something more of a monster than a man.

And, of all people, I would know one when I see one.

To say I was shaken when Seph opened the door and revealed Hugh shambling through an empty room - it would not be saying much because no words could describe the feelings I had at the sight of him. In those moments, I no longer hated him for taking Seph from me. No. No. No…

Now I pitied Hugh for the misfortune of being loved by him.

For all the effort Seph put into trying to keep Hugh covered, it was abundantly clear the state of his body was dire. Layers of burlap could not hide the parts of Hugh’s body that were skeletal. Other parts of of the body were grossly misshapen, and wet, too. Those are the parts of the body that were somewhere between bloating and active decay, based on Seph’s brief education on the stages of decomposition in the living room.

But some of the wet spots did not look like decay fluids. Actually, some parts of the burlap appeared to be stained red from blood. It was hard to see in the light, but Seph said he did not keep lights on in the room to maintain a cool temperature. Even windows were covered. When my eyes darted over, I was told that the windows are frosted with white paint and stuffed with newspaper, between the glass and the curtain, which was nailed to the wall so that no air came in or slipped out.

It is also of note that the floor was covered with tarp. Oh, and soiled bandages and burlap. There were piles in the corners, some which had flies and maggots swarming them. My jaw clenched and my mouth was closed, but if I would not risk finding scraps of Hugh’s body with my tongue…

…I assure you my jaw would have fallen off my face and my tongue would have drug with each step closer to the mass of rotting flesh that I had to accept was Hugh.

When I got eye-to-eye with Hugh, I gagged on my own bloody vomit. One of his eyes was the foggy white one would expect of a long-dead body. The other is extremely dilated, but the whites of his eyes are bright red. There was also something wiggling in the corner of his left eye. I jerked away from him when he wheezed in something that might have been happiness to see me. I did not look at him long enough to evaluate how he felt, or to what extend he could feel. 

A snarl contorted my face so much that it hurt. I did not feel like myself in my body as my anger started to boil over. I stalked towards Seph, and that was when he broke down. He crumbled. He screamed. He cried. And then he begged.

He begged and begged and begged and begged! 

He beggeduntil he choked on his words and snot. He retched on the tarp. Seph pleaded for me to fix his mistakes. Mistakes? 

These are not simply mistakes. Eight dead people is not a mistake. An undead man suffering in a makeshift morgue is not a mistake. Fakery of witchcraft is not a mistake. Inviting me under the guise of simple company is not a mistake.

Not only did he betray my friendship. Not only did he betray the protection of out marriage. Not only did he abandon me without warning. Not only did he mislead me about his priorities.

Now he expected me to submit to his pathetic groveling?

Who am I to say I would have responded differently if anything had been changed. Would I have been compassionate if this was Gertrude trying to save Emilie? Would I have been patient if this were Lucinda wanting to bring Raymond back? Would I have faulted Caroline if she were trying to keep her husband and daughter alive? Would I have criticized Margaret for wanting Akikamsk back, no matter the cost? Maybe. Maybe not.

In that moment, though, something in me became a black so dark and evil that my snarl transformed into a wicked smirk. I said to him, clear and kind, “I will make this right.”

Oh, oh, oh.

But I did not say by whom I would do that.

 

 

---

 

 

I think what happened next was my first step into a depravity that I cannot contain. It is free now, and I cannot say I regret it. Every step I took was intentional. Every decision I made was done with hate. The efforts were executed with a vile craving for vengeance that would frighten even the most heartless of men.

I sent Seph in search of fresh soil from a florist, and to find some clay from a potter. It took him a couple of days to get the quantities that I needed, during which time I weaved my spells into Hugh’s corpse. I worked at removing all the moisture, drying everything out. I get him to a point where he does not need coverings. He is still unsightly, but I do not need him to look good. My only goal is to turn his body into a golem.

When the day came for me to execute my plan, I ordered Seph to wait downstairs. He trusted me wholly. He asked no questions, which I preferred and enjoyed. I wrote the purpose of his new existence on a piece of paper from this very journal and shoved it into his mouth so far that it is nearly in his throat. Enchanting his body, I gave the soil and clay movement over his bones and leathered flesh. When I could see his magical glow like power flowing through empty veins, I bestowed back upon him a name. His name.

“Hugh,” I said with a tap on his chin from my thumb. I cupped his cheeks until independence jittered into being beneath my hands. He stated his purpose, and my lips curled with giddiness. With pride, I stepped away and opened the door. I watched him march out of the room, making his way downstairs to do what I created him to do.

I did follow him, at a slight distance, and listened from behind a cabinet in the hallway. Initially, Seph was thrilled at the sight of his husband moving the way he used to, with lithe confidence. There was no remark about his earthy figure. Joy came out in laughs followed by an outpouring of love in slurred words. At some point, though, his laughs became cries and groans. Once I was sure that Hugh had Seph in his grasp, I moved into the doorway to watch with pleasure. Soil and clay still writhed around Hugh’s bones, even as he grasped Seph’s neck and slammed him against the wall above the headboard of their bed. The eagerness to know what kills Seph first, suffocation or head trauma, presented as a fluttering in my chest. My fingers tapped against the wall as I held myself in place.

There is no specific moment when the light left Seph’s eyes. No one second where his body went limp. Truthfully, I did not know he was dead until Hugh’s corpse-turned-golem figure exploded. Soil, clay, blood, pus, and bone shards flew everywhere. It even obliterated a large portion of Seph’s corpse. They were both gone in an instant. I loved it. I felt empowered by it.

And, most importantly, I was relieved.

My things are packed now. I am ready to return home. Before I go, the last order of business is to set fire to the house. I cannot use gasoline or the fireplace, since that will leave a trace. I need the whole townhouse incinerated. The only answer is the drench it in magicked flames, which I will do while I call Gertrude from the telephone booth outside. I need to let her know I am on my way back home, and that we will discuss her trip to Boston again very soon.

I hope that she can talk me back to sanity, or rather humanity. I fear that something in me is forever changed. And I worry I cannot undo who I am now.

Chapter 30: Spring 1914, Continued

It is not my usual practice to engage with the mortal world, at least not in this way, but I have determined that this is not a very typical situation. In fact, I am not even here for a mortal person. Vampires and witches, they are always a bit of trouble for me. They often break the rules and muck around with my responsibilities as the reaper of souls. I do mean “the” in the proper.

I am the one and only Death.

Without her knowing, I have witnessed this specimen, Lorraine Warren, a woman of many names otherwise as an immortal being. She has toyed with the scales before and since, so it seemed fitting that I pay her a visit. At first, I thought it was simply to terrorize her, but my intrigue got the better of me. I read through this journal she keeps, the magic book she has long studied and added to, and both have given me an insight that prompted me to think better of my plans.

Why punish her when I could recruit her?

She has been back in this meager cabin for two days now, and I have watched her movements. The moon cycle is waning, so she does not drink blood as often. It was my intention to poison her supply to get her into a state of limbo, in-between life and death, more than she is already, without damaging her body and risking her true end.

I did not come to kill her.

Since I cannot poison her, I will have to wait for her to enter a resting state so that I can burrow into her mind and manually trigger her body to shut down. It will be easier to manipulate her thoughts and put her through the trials. I will record how she does in each one. Time is a funny thing in the mortal world, so I do not know how long this will take. Will it be hours? Or days? Maybe weeks or months? It is not my place to know or say.

 

 

---

 

 

These trials manifest themselves based upon real events that individual has experienced. The first trial is about birth, the bringing in of new life. It is a fragile process, and it is not uncommon for people to die as a result. Perhaps the woman dies but the infant lives, or the infant dies before it ever leaves her body. Sometimes they both die. All of it is simply the cycle.

Lorraine’s brush with this experience presented in the form of a birth where she saved the mother and child. I read the entry from when that happened and she knew that she had done something wrong. Reality was supposed to be that only one of them survived. The test is to see if Lorraine can conclude which one.

The test presented as a single room, an atrium, where Lorraine was alone with the mother on the table. As her patient writhes on the table, screaming and crying, she watched with analytical eyes. She did not even flinch, almost as if she was haunted by this moment often. Despite what people think, I do not simply know all. It is a manual task that I have to do with intentionality.

That said, it is not often that I need to do it.

Lorraine watched the scene play out in front of her. The pregnant one continued screaming in agony. She ripped at her dressing, scratching her skin. She injured herself repeatedly, demanding help and trying to claw the child from her womb. Unshaken, Lorraine stood still with a blank stare.

The tricky thing was that Lorraine knew the answer. I could hear it pulsating around the atrium like a crisp wind. She had long believed that if she were not present for this birth, they both would have died, but she had developed new opinions over the years. In front of her, a puzzle she had solved using magic to the outcome she wanted, now back with consequences to face.

If she did not get the correct answer, she would have had bloodstained hands for the rest of her existence. As I said, she knew which one should live, so the real measure was how she would make sure it happened as such. The wait might have be agonizing for mortals, but time does not feel the same for me. I do not even experience time the way immortals do. Time is infinite and nonexistent at the same time. So I cannot say how long it took for Lorraine to begin executing her plan, but she acted swiftly once she started.

Forcefully, she rolled the mother onto her side and poked around her back. This was done to find pressure points, hoping to numb her from the waist down. When she described a tingling, Lorraine put her back down and started pressing hard against the belly. Her voice was different when it came from her mouth, but she told this woman to push. Between the two of them the child emerged, already blue and silent. The relief is so intense that the mother hesitated in asking after the baby, but Lorraine had already begun to wipe the body clean.

She then laid the dead baby in the mother’s arms, emotionless. Her muttered condolences were only clear because she thought them as well. It was the only thought she had until she noticed the newly materialized door at the back of the atrium. She walked through it, successfully completing the first trial correctly.

We will see how well she does once the trial gets more person.

 

 

---

 

 

The second trial setting was just as simple as the first. Lorraine was in a round room with a round table holding a pensive on the table. As a witch, it was instantly understood what would need to happen next. She would look into the pensive, cast the spell to activate the enchantment, and watch the end of two lives. The first, Mrs. Warren, the matron of the family that stole her from her people but cared for her like family.

The second, Gertrude Parrish. As it turns out, Lorraine cares deeply for the people she is tasked  with caring for, which was something she was always fated to do. A natural healer. A passionate helper.

As she watched the pensive with great focus, she was not as reserved as she had been in the first trial. Every emotion played out on her face with precision. I suppose anyone with feelings would visibly react to watching people they love being killed. What does end up shocking me is that she flips the pensive onto the ground. She did not do anything else once it shattered and the echoes stopped, causing the whole scene to be even more jarring.

With the pensive destroyed, water and crystal shards everywhere on the floor, the only next step was for her to choose who lives. Behind her materialized two archways, tapestries draped in front of them. One for the family name “Warren” across vibrant red gold threads, while and the other was adorned with the name “Parrish” stitched with greens and brows. Whichever path she walked through would be the life that she saved. Not only would it rewrite history, but she risked losing her eyesight with the wrong choice. Not that she knew that, of course. Only I get the joy of knowing what the correct answer is, but I did have the privilege of hearing her thought process while she decided.

For a second, Lorraine, I want to write directly to you. I want you to know that there is something to be admired in your commitment. Whether that is the commitment to justice, or the commitment to love, or the commitment to the grander impact, you are unlike others in this way. You will always give everything you have to the paths that you choose.

Mrs. Warren was killed by her husband. He murdered her in a drunken rage after Lorraine left. She told Mrs. Warren that it was not acceptable for him to behave the way that he did, a warning that she would ignore. Lorraine moved on out of necessity. Mrs. Warren stayed, and when she was finally was ready to walk away, she faced the ultimate punishment. But she could have done so much by leaving him so publicly. It could have shown others they could leave, too. Would it have changed the world? Not immediately, but eventually.

Then there is Gertrude. Lorraine did not see who killed her. She did not want to know what the rest of the scene looked like after seeing Gertrude’s lifeless body covered in blood. It was her breaking point. If she had taken in the entire moment she would have known it was Margaret Parrish who killed Gertrude. A sister kills a sister. If Lorraine had seen it, I wonder if it would influence her decisions in the next trials.

When she found the exit doors, there was hesitation. She had no context, and even her awareness of the events being strange only added to the pause. To her, this is a doorway to what? Memories? The scenes of these crimes? Was it trickery? She even wondered if she was being attacked by another immortal. She suggested to herself that it could be another witch. A small part of her mind whispered wickedly that Mary might have turned against her.

All the door did was guarantee the full lifetime of the person she chose. In saving Mrs. Warren, Gertrude will have died as a child as they fled Salem. Should she choose Gertrude’s door, Mrs. Warren would die at her husband’s hand and Gertrude’s life will remain unchanged. She would be immortal, she would be healed, and she would carry on until she is killed by her sister.

So what is the correct answer? It is Gertrude. Firstly, she has so many years in her lifespan that it is impossible to deny that her impact on the mortals around her. Secondly, even more than Lorraine, she was a healer. She sought to help and affect positive change. Gertrude was the epitome of pure goodness. There was not a life that she crossed that was not better for it.

And, lastly, without Gertrude, Lorraine would not have become who she is today. Mrs. Warren started the path for her, but it was that love that she shared with Gertrude that shaped every action that she has ever taken. Lorraine has called Gertrude her other half, her moral compass.

For that reason, the reward for choosing correctly is that I will erase all pain and suffering from Gertrude’s death. She will not feel any physical or emotional betrayal by her sister in her dying moments. Though Lorraine will not know it right away, she will know it when the time is right.

I suspect she will be thankful for it.

Lorraine did open Gertrude’s door after much deliberation. The debate was fairly trite, not unlike some of the same thought sequences from the first trial, and probably the mould for which the next trial’s will be based upon. The only noteworthy thought was that Lorraine believed Gertrude’s existence to be too intertwined with her own to choose Mrs. Warren, or any door with any other name.

This trial is over, and she stepped directly into the next one as the door exploded behind her as it closed.

 

 

---

 

 

Lorraine found herself in a new room where there were four people in nooses - Nellie, Mary, Seph, and Hugh. In both stories, one person was already on my docket. And in both stories, someone was breaking the rules. Both times, Lorraine acted in such a way that was fully committed to one side or another. Though I find I admirable, she interfered in a serious way both times.

Lorraine let Nellie choose if she wanted to live forever. Lorraine let Mary choose what to do with her life still belonging to her. In contrast, when it came to Hugh and Seph, she chose to take both lives. It was a little confusing, I am sure, because Hugh was literally a corpse. Seph was doing real magic. It was not practiced. No outcome was guaranteed one way or another when he made spells up. Necromancy is not a perfected magic, either. Hugh was very much alive, even if rotting and stinking.

This trial was about balance. She had to choose to hang two people and let two live out the rest of their lives. Lorraine instantly knew the life she wanted to save between Mary and Nellie was that of the little girl. She even made a move to get Nellie down, but then she glanced to the side and seeing the rest of the faces staring at her, unblinking. This stopped her in her tracks.

Now, the correct answer was Mary. It is a strange idea, to be true. This is a woman who has sacrificed others greatly to maintain her youth. She really has only ever aligned herself with her own wants and needs. Until she met Lorraine, Mary had never considered the morality of her choices or the impact it had on other people. Being bested by Lorraine put Mary on a good path, and there was so much that she was going to be able to do with the immortality she chased to an unusual finish line.

Just as controversially, the other correct choice was Seph. Despite him doing something desperate and selfish, what he was doing did not harm anyone else. Hugh, on the other hand, had a long history of hurting people. Before stringing Seph along, he had many other lovers that he treated the same. His fiancée, who was fully aware of his proclivities, was going to let him continue with his ways. There was never a need to abandon her, so long as he remained discreet. And yet - he left her at the alter for a man to whom he would be perpetually unfaithful to in their shared years. Hugh had enjoyed two of the kindest people the mortal had to offer, and yet he squandered their sincerity.

The only imagined casualty Seph had in his pocket was Lorraine. He showed great promise with magic, and could have been a great eternal companion if Lorraine had remained impartial to her loneliness. Whatever caused her to attach to Seph differently than she had done with Scarlet blinded her to the outcome that was necessary.

I listened as Lorraine mulled over the scenario. Even though she still did not understand what was happening, she suspected there was something more afoot than just a series of nightmares over her greatest moral dilemmas. As she weighed the possibilities, she also considered the potential solution. It was quite a journey to listen her mull over every option. The vicious things she thought about Seph and Mary revealed an angrier nature inside of Lorraine than any of her journal entries would suggest.

Spoken words were fewer and more measured. There was something special about how well she filtered her thoughts before speaking. It reminds me of politicians. I wonder if in a different era she will go down that path. Not aging would certainly pose a challenge, but I think she has the intellect to work around it.

In her mind, she wanted to save Nellie and Hugh. She saw no value in Seph’s life after the harm he inflicted on her, and the harm that she believed he had passed onto that innocent fiancée. As for Mary, she saw her worth in her life now, but she struggled to rationalize the overall impact she has made in the world. Mary’s scale is more balance than Lorraine could know.

What she said aloud, though, was simply that nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Slowly, she processed that Nellie would have died anyway, even if she wanted to be turned into a vampire. Lorraine and Gertrude would not have agreed over what to do, and then she would not have followed through. Nellie would have always died, no matter what, and she hanged her before she could talk herself out of it. Nellie’s body jerked and twisted around for a few seconds before it dissolved completely. Mary was released from her noose, fading away in a yellow glow.

When it came to Hugh and Seph, the internal struggle was even louder. What she said did not match what she thought, but the reasoning eventually converged and made her her finally admit that her killing of Seph was irrational. Not only because she killed a friend, but because what he did to either of them was not malicious. Lorraine had pitied Hugh in the end. Even in those self-contained conversations, she thought about how Hugh treated Seph in the beginning, and how angry it had made her. She had always believed Seph convinced him to change, that Seph pursued what he wanted so relentlessly and convincingly that surely Hugh became the man that Seph thought he was in his delusional mind.

What Lorraine had to consider was that he was not the changed man Seph wanted. Of course, I know that he was sleazy rat. Hugh cheated and lied and tricked everyone constantly. Everything he did, he did deliberately and greedily without regard for anyone but himself, and least of all Seph. If there was nobody to defend Seph in the room, Hugh would pretend the man did not exist.

Her love for Seph prevailed and she let Hugh hang. Just as happened with Nellie, he writhed and gagged under the lethal strangulation of the noose before dissolving into nothing. Seph was let free and faded into a bright light. Since her decisions affect real life, Seph will be revived. History will be rewritten that he escapes the house fire. Seph will report to the police and insurance that Hugh attempted to kill him out of jealousy for Lorraine.

Seph will return to Colorado and watch over her physical form as she goes through these trials. She will get a second chance to make her relationship with Seph right, and he will learn the full expanse of magic from the compendium. Seph will do many good things with that magic, and Lorraine will not lose her vision.

How very lucky for them both.

 

 

---

 

 

The room of the third trial started to spin around a stationary Lorraine. At this point, she carried all of her emotions in her dark eyes. The rest of her features are languid and slack over her skull. She did not know that she was nearly done. I suppose it made sense that she would be - exhausted? detached? numb?

When the room stopped whirling about, it settled into a more modern scene. There are white walls, metal doors, and a concrete floor. The only remarkable feature of the room are the matching picture frames with documents contained behind the glass. Each paper displayed a list of crimes committed by a single person. Lorraine will have to condemn one to death, which is the purpose of this trial.

This fourth and final test is about absolute death. Immortality is not as eternal as the mortals believe. Immortality is difficult to fathom when the lifespan of a mortal is less than a century. Immortality seems like forever until eternity is known. As Death, the original master over the ceased existence of every other being, I can assure that eternity is immeasurable. There is nothing to add context to it. Forever is still too small a unit to explain what it is to simply be before the beginning and beyond the end.

Absolute death contextualizes that the list of crimes belong to two immortals. If Lorraine recognized the list on her left as Mary’s biography, she did not think it. The list on her right will not belong to anyone in her mind, especially since she did not see who killed Gertrude in her earlier trial. Despite the murder of children being on both lists, and one list being significantly shorter than the other, Lorraine had an instant judgment. Truthfully, I felt robbed of an intense internal deliberation.

When Lorraine saw “murdered mother” and “murdered sister” on the righthand list, she was certain that the actions of that person were done with hatred and malcontent. Mentally, she acknowledged that being charged as a traitor for a rebellion and being labeled a criminal for revolting against the crown are not objectively good or bad. Acting against a power is more complex than a broken law, since power can be abused.

There was a short moment where she thought about all the times she had killed, how she justified her murders for the good of others. She quite nearly reached a the conclusion where she could explore how, just as with treason, murder can be charged even in cases of self-defense. Disappointing as it was that she did not fully explore the moral aspect of these things, there was something akin to joy to see her follow to her gut feeling.

Lorraine sent her fist through the glass frame and snatched out the paper with the list of crimes. At first, she looked over the paper, turned it over in her hand, and hoped a name would reveal itself. It was only when she looked up that she saw behind the broken glass the image of Margaret as she looked the day Gertrude had her painted for the manor’s gallery room. All at once, Lorraine put the pieces together, understanding that it was Margaret that killed Gertrude.

She let out a feral scream, which I have taken as my cue to wake her.

This fourth trial is ended, and Lorraine has passed each one. Once she comes to, without knowing it, she will be initiated as a Master of Death. We are now bonded until her existence ends, whenever such a time comes to pass.

My first command of her will be for her to kill Margaret Parrish. That one has become bottomless in her apathy and hate. It is uncontrollable, and, if it is not stopped, then she will do timeless damage to the mortal world. Impartial as I am, I do have a duty to keep things in order. Margaret has already upset the universal balance in small ripples. Surely Life is regretting the gift she bestowed now.

I do not expect that Lorraine will take issue with the pledge I ask of her. Margaret took the life of the most precious person in either of their lives. Even if not a personal slight, it is a heinous one.

It has been an interesting venture documenting these trials for Lorraine in this journal. How rare it is to have proof of Death’s existence in such a personal medium. I do not gift such things often.

You are very special indeed, Lorraine.

 

 

For now and evermore,

The First Master of Death

Chapter 31: Spring/Summer 1914

The ride to Vermont might have been the most challenging time of my entire existence. I had to process and accept my new status as a Master of Death, firstly. It made sense to me that this would happen, being that I had danced around the fringes of necromancy magic for many years. However, it wasn’t the only thing I had to think about along the way.

Going through the trials changed reality when I came out of them. Specifically, Seph was no longer dead. He was no longer in Chicago either. The new story was that Hugh had a breakdown and set the house on fire, killing himself. Seph narrowly escaped and came back to Colorado. He watched over me while I went through the trials.

Seph was not alone when I woke up either. With him was Death. I never had a clear image of what Death looked like before that moment. There were drawings, of course, and stories. None of them did a sufficient job. A constantly shifting shadow with a bright glow simulating the skeletal structure of a person, but also some level of distinct animalistic features. Vaguely human, but obviously not. If I had reached out, I was not sure I would touch anything, and yet Death handed me my journal the same as any other corporeal being. It was confusing.

Then there was the matter of Gertrude’s death. These trials revealed to me that Margaret killed her. Death did inform me that the trials removed any suffering from her passing. Knowing this did not change my unbridled rage about it. She was dead, and it was not from old age in peace. My fury instantly defined me.

There was an agreement. In becoming a Master of Death, I had to take a pledge. For me, this was killing Margaret. She was taking life frivolously, including Gertrude’s, and it would not be tolerated. Without hesitation, I agreed. I know how to kill vampires. Whether it be with magic or a stake, I will end her reign of terror. I could not imagine an injustice worse than taking from the world a good soul that could change the world in that moment.

Questions swirled through my brain the entire time. The answers that I imagined only infuriated me more. The worst part of it all? I had insisted that Gertrude not worry. It was at my urging that she let her guard down. She trusted in Margaret because I told her to.

In some way, this was, in part, my doing.

I had never felt more defrauded in my time.

When I arrived in Vermont, it was late evening, so I was able to move through town relatively unnoticed. Some people greeted me, and I performed the role of a normal person until I arrived at the manor. Entirely by chance, I am sure, I found Margaret trying to attack Lucinda. I could not see it, but I could hear it. Lucinda was screaming, profanities and insults.

I also heard Raymond trying to reason with Margaret.

They were in a siting room in the middle of the house, no windows, and no witnesses. Once I got in the room, I grabbed Margaret by her hair and threw her across the room. Her body had crashed against a hutch filled with glassware and trinkets. Everything broke, the hutch tipped over, and Margaret crumpled in a heap to the floor. Before she could get back up, I went to her and kicked her in the face repeatedly.

Raymond called out behind me to stop, that Margaret is not well, and that this is not the right way to solve the problem. In anger, I demanded to know if he was aware that she killed Gertrude. He did not answer. I screamed at him again to tell me if he knew.

Lucinda answered in his place. She said that she had begun to suspect as much, and that Gertrude had not been in contact since arriving in Boston. They had not found her body yet, so it was not confirmed by anyone else that it happened.

I returned my attention to Margaret, who then had her hand around my ankle. She tried to pull me to the ground with her. Instead of falling to her efforts, I dropped to my knees and took her by the throat. I lifted her up, turned her to Lucinda and Raymond, and told her to tell them the truth.

Margaret could not even honor Gertrude’s memory by saying that she killed her and left her to rot like a common rodent. Instead, she burst into tears that are strangled between her choked screams. There is no amount of shame that she could feel that would ever be enough.

I told Lucinda and Raymond that they should leave the room. It was time to kill Margaret, and I did not want them to see it. Especially Raymond, who I knew thought of Margaret as a second mother to him. It would not have been a concern for me if Lucinda remained. She already watched me dispatch Georgina when she was pregnant, but her relationship to Margaret inclined me to give her the opportunity to leave out of respect.

Raymond refused, though, and I was not prepared for his opposition.

He defended her, “She is not an evil spirit. She is hurting. She only knows how to hurt.”

“We all hurt,” I had bit back at him. Margaret was not the only one who has lost the person they loved. Margaret was not the only one who lost a child they cared about, human or otherwise. Margaret was not the only one who struggled to fit into the new world around us. Margaret was not the only one cursed with forever.

She was the only one who chose to kill innocent people.

She was the only one who chose to kill a good person.

She was the only one who had killed her mother and her sister.

And she was about to kill Lucinda, I was sure of it.

Raymond remained adamant. He even tried to free Margaret from my grasp. I pushed him away easily. Then I got a stake from my pockets and pressed it into Margaret’s back. The way she relaxed beneath my hands was comforting. She knew she deserved to die and was not going to fight it.

She said as much to Raymond.

“It will be okay. You will be okay. I am going to be okay.”

Her shuddered words were pathetic. They were the last words of a useless monster trying to act like they did not care that they were about to die. Raymond was in tears at her words, and he made an immediate effort to get her from my hands again. I pressed the stake into her back, not through her body, but enough to elicit a cry of pain from her throat.

Lucinda remained at the back of the room, separated from the events transpiring, though she encouraged Margaret’s killing. She agreed that Margaret deserved it. In fact, she announced that she had long suspected that Margaret was the cause for the bodies found before she left the manor. She told Raymond that Gertrude suspected as much, too, because she had files on her desk tracking the movements that she believed to be Margaret’s killing spree.

I told him that Gertrude had discussed as much with me as well. This is when I told Margaret that Gertrude doubted whether she was a safe person anymore. Her own sister identified her as a danger. My voice dropped so low that it became a growl while I told her that I had convinced Gertrude to visit her because I wanted to believe she could still be trusted.

“But you are just a vile presence that destroys everything you touch,” which finally broke her. She wriggled and forced herself from my grip. The stake drug up her back to the base of her skull as she dropped. When she broke free she did not plead for her life, but chose to beg Raymond to leave. The idea was repulsive to him, which was secured as truth when he wrapped his arms around Margaret to keep her close. He shielded her from me with scolding eyes.

Unexpectedly, it worked. Something inside of me changed.

We looked so different from when we first changed. Our hair and skin, and the way we dress. Though we are similar and recognizable as our selfs, we are still just an interpretation of what we once were. In that moment, Margaret looked like the child she was when I first met the Parrish family. She was an older sister in misery about her sister’s terrible health.

Only, today, she is devastated by her sister’s death.

A death that, before immortality, we were always fearful would come. Murderer as she was, that day she was just a broken woman mourning the loss of everything she thought she had in this strange existence we suffer. There was nothing about her that remained - not even the person she thought she was.

And I found myself in a place emotionally that I decided to pity her rather than kill her.

I looked at Lucinda and tossed her the stake from my hands. Before she could speak, Raymond made an offer to me.

“I will kill her if she ever becomes a danger again,” and he sounded so much like a grown man that he seemed even more a stranger to me than he always had been. It was hard to believe him to be an adult in his thirties, because he was still a little boy to me. Yet, he was engaged to marry and start his own family.

Lucinda made an even better promise, at least in my opinion.

“I will kill her before it gets to that point.”

And I believed her. She has always been fierce, ruthless. There was nobody more fitting to take Gertrude’s place, as was always the plan, and I was warmed by my love for her. She was such an incredible woman, and one that I helped to raise into a force to be reckoned with in every room she entered.

Before leaving, I told them how I knew she killed Gertrude, in brevity. The plan was always to get to the manor and wait for Margaret to show up so I could kill her. Then I would go off to find Gertrude. In giving Margaret a chance that even she does not think she deserved, the only thing left for me to do was to find Gertrude. Margaret did not remember exactly where she was, and that was fine, I guess. I would travel through Boston until I could find her.

As I sat on the train to Boston this morning, I started to document these events. It was already in my mind that I had defied my orders. Even before it happened, I knew consequences would come my way. Not abiding by the rules is what put me in the trials, and it could be thing that sees me ended. 

Or at least ended as I knew it. Know it. One minute, I was looking out the window. The next I was standing in the middle of a war zone. Guns were firing, bodies were falling. And me? People ran through me. They did not see me.

That is when Death appeared. I had no questions.

The terms of my punishment were stated plainly to me. I did not kill Margaret, and for that I had to repay the debt. I would reap the dead of the war. My new task is to stay until I have gathered souls to move into whatever afterlife path was chosen for them in an amount not disclosed to me. Death will come to me when I have earned my freedom.

“Out of an abundance of compassion,” Death said, “I will allow your books and journals. They will keep you company for these years to come.”

There is no way for me to know now what I am going to lose for my defiance. Time is a something I am not afraid to lose, for I have it endlessly, but I will lose people. I will lose possessions. Already, I know that my custom colt revolver is gone. It was always on my person, but it is gone. Probably, it was left on the train. Someone will pick it up. It will become an intriguing collection they keep in their life. That person will not know the history.

Truthfully, I am not all that sad to be rid of it. With Gertrude gone, I hoped to distance myself from everything about her. She is gone. I need to let her be gone, so everything about her needs to be gone from my life too.

Without knowing what my future holds, as I sit in a field littered with the bodies of souls I forced through the rips and folds of worlds, I commit to never returning to the Manor. The Mitchell-Warren legacy belongs to Lucinda and Raymond now. Let them build their life with Margaret. Maybe they can tell a better story than the one I wrote with Gertrude in those walls. Better than the one I started with Theodore and Isobel.

It is not mine anymore.

Chapter 32: Spring 1915

This is the first time I have endeavored to write in my journal since being plucked from the train by Death. What is there to keep track of in these pages? Shall I write of the horrors I see in every minute? hour? day? It has been months, perhaps nearly a year even. I only know because of the seasons. Since I am only tending the dead, I do not overhear conversations.

And since I am neither alive nor dead, but not quite like a vampire either, I do not thirst. It is strange to not feel compelled to anything anymore. At least as a vampire I craved, I hungered, I felt pangs of suffering. Now I feel nothing.

I do not even flinch at the sight of brains pouring from the skulls of killed soldiers. Seeing disemboweled humans is not unlike my memories of breaking down an animal for parts. At the beginning, I wept at the sight of human life so carelessly ended, and for what? Control over land? Had we not seen this same story before, almost endlessly on repeat, with similar outcomes? What did anyone truly gain with such cruelty?

Those thoughts do not come often. If they stayed my mind, I could go completely insane lingering. Most of my efforts go into tracking every dead person I usher away from this world on paper. I write about them in that notebook I already kept of the lives I affected. I scrawl out their names, because I do ask for them all, and what I remember about them. It is the only way I can cope with so many unknowns.

How long will I be here? I do not know. Death will not tell me. I simply continue until I am told to stop. Knowing the end would almost be worse, because I would chase it, and escaping the punishment with no other goals would disillusion me.

Do Seph, Lucinda, Raymond, Margaret, and Mary look for me? Does Caroline know I am missing? Do anyone know where I have gone? Usually, I operate on the assumption that I have simply disappeared to them. They might have even reached the conclusion that I was ended. Sometimes I find peace in that they have accepted me as gone for good, but other times I prefer to believe they still seek me out. At the least, I allow myself to dream that they remain hopeful I will return before they die. Wanting to be wanting can be a dangerous path, unfortunately. I hesitate to welcome those thoughts.

Misery is the only way to describe how I exist now. I cannot stop bullets from firing. I cannot heal the wounded. I cannot stop the deaths around me. I cannot do magic.

I cannot. I cannot. I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.

The only thing I can do is witness death, reap the dead, and…

 

…wish I was dead.

 

I wish I was dead.

Chapter 33: Summer 1920

Existing is different for me than it is for the others. Ever since becoming a master of death, the death of Gertrude, and the war - even I know that I am just an empty husk. I do not even thirst the same way as before, which is made worse by the fact that I do not get to choose when I am in my body.

And I do mean exactly that.

There are periods of time when Death yanks me from my body. I am sent to deal with the souls of the dead. My time is not my own. Seph still lives in Denver, but my days are spent in the woods. Since they already know I am a vampire and a witch, I have told them about my new fantastical curse. Even though they were uneasy about it at first, the child and mother I saved so many years ago vouched for me to the tribe. So, most days, I am in the gardens and amongst the crops, but never alone.

Seph comes to visit with mail from Caroline, Margaret, Lucinda, and Mary. Occasionally, I will go stay with him, just for a change of scenery. My time in Denver was expired, unfortunately. I no longer could keep up with the expected aging process. Per usual, the rumors were that I died and Seph was the sole inheritor of my property and belongings. In the eyes of the American government, he is a widow. He plays the role well in public, but he admits that he misses the company whenever I visit. When I suggest he find a new partner, he chastises me. Those days, he said, are behind him. He is in his fifties now. As far as he is concerned, his only goal is to make sure his investments continue to keep the bank account full. 

I always tell him that if he needs for money to simply call Lucinda or Raymond. They will give him whatever he needs. The wealth I built will last for quite some time. For all there is in the bank, there’s even more stashed away in a hidden vault within the home. When you have a lot of money, you learn to think of the worst case scenario. You make sure it is always accessible because you fear not having it. Or, at least for me, I feared the people I love not having enough.

For all we have been through, I do love Seph. He is family. He will always have enough.

Since I do come back to the house, this also means that if I get a call, Seph will ride out to get me. This was the case a few weeks back. Margaret had called Seph and said it was crucial that I call back as soon as I was available. Even though there was no context, Seph noted that there was something in her tone that tipped him off that this was more important than other kinds of calls. We have arrangements when I come and go, so I report to the elders so they know where I am going to be. It reminds me of orphaned children passed around to their family members until nobody can keep them.

Unfortunately, it is a necessity when my body is so vulnerable.

Master of Death?

It does not feel like it.

Anyway, the call from Margaret seemed most likely to be about Raymond and Emma. I suspected that they were likely expecting another child. If I recall correctly, Emma is over thirty years old now, and there are certainly concerns about the safety of the child should she become pregnant. Despite Caroline and Mary’s presence, both very talented and capable women, it is no secret that I am familiar with necromancy. If there is a fear of death, and a fear of exhausted options, then there is most certainly a desire for my presence.

I am surprised to find out upon my return call that Margaret wanted to tell me about a ritual that Caroline found in that ancient tome of hers. I forgot she even had it, to be frank. As it turns out, they both feel that it is a viable option to be cured. There was no response when I asked what Mary thought of the ritual.

I hollered for Seph to bring the compendium, which remains in the house most of the time. During my long absence, Seph kept guard and taught himself some of the magic in it. In the back are some blank pages from the last extension I added to it, and I have Margaret read the tome line by line. After I read it back to her to verify all the details, I tell her that I need to review this information and see if there’s anything in the compendium that is similar or could confirm the details. We decide that I will call back in a few days, and Margaret said she would let Caroline know.

The instant the phone is put back, I start pouring over the compendium to find anything to suggest to me that there is any shred of hope for Caroline and Margaret. Judging by the desperation in Margaret’s voice, this theory of Caroline’s was convincing. There was this sense of promise. I do not want show up if there is no chance, so I am going to do the research. This needs to be worth everyone’s time. At least I feel that way.

 

 

 

 

 

Ritual Components-

 

• Fresh water purified by the earth (cleansing)
• Blood of a living mortal (life)
• Hair of a vampire (the curse)
• Tooth of a deceased mortal (death)
• Tails from lizards/newts/salamanders (rejuvenation)
• Peat from a bog (life and death cycle)
• Pomegranate seeds (mortality)
• Stir with a stick from a Hawthorne tree

 

 

Caroline - blood from a living mortal

Margaret - Stick/branch from a Hawthorne tree

Me - fresh water (waterfall, here), tooth of a deceased mortal, tails (here or there), bog peat (there), pomegranate seeds (ask for help from Seph)

 

 

Spell to enchant the potion-

 

Of life and death and back to life, cleanse this curse and be born again

New veins, new trees, fresh body that bleeds

Of life and death and back to life, cleanse this curse and be born again

Return to the first season, reborn again, breathing

Of life and death and back to life, cleanse this curse and be born again

Of life and death and back to life

Cleanse this curse, Cleanse this curse, Cleanse this curse

And be born again

 

 

 

 

 

I am sat now in my old room, my bag packed, and writing this all down so that I do not miss important details. I will transcribe the most essential pieces into notes for the compendium, just in case it works for Margaret or Caroline - or Scarlett, should she ever be interested in attempting it. She has not been in contact since the war ended. Her time in New Jersey was also up. It was time for her to step down and move on to a new life, as is the way with immortality.

When I arrived, I did my best to engage in some form of polite conversation. Margaret was nervous and eager, so she queried repeatedly if there was anything she could do to help. I was thankful that Caroline, equally as anxious, would busy Margaret with menial things. Of course, Caroline also offered to help, though with a less intense demeanor. She helped me unload the ingredients from my bag while Margaret sought a large enough cooking pot, or a cauldron if there is one. We do not need something particularly large, I only have one jug of water.

There were no specific measurements. With witchcraft and potion making, there is a certain level of guessing. One pinch is not the same as another, after all. I still had to trek out for the peat. I had arrived early enough in the afternoon that I felt that I could comfortably go bog hunting. Caroline and Margaret both offered to join separately, but I declined. Mary tried to walk with me, too, but when I talked about how long it might take, she quickly abandoned the silent quest.

It did not take long. I just did not want company. I am not good company these days, anyway.

Caroline and Margaret were eager, enough so that if I had agreed to do the ritual that night, they would have been pleased, I’m sure. However, I thought that we all needed a period of solemnity before we did it. If it worked as intended, it would change our lives. We would be remade as mortals. Hopefully at least one of us, if not all three.

Or it could be none of us. It seemed wise to sit with it one last night. Margaret and Caroline would not change their minds, so I never expected as much.

In the early hours, while Raymond and Emma are still asleep, I gathered Margaret and Caroline to meet in the library so that we could begin. Mary camped out amongst the books so that she would not miss the opportunity to ‘witness history.’ Her disingenuous nature made it hard to decipher if she believed it would work or not, but her interest is always pure. Mary shares in a key personality trait with me - a hunger to know more.

Without any notes about the order to put the ingredients in, I chose to to treat it like baking. I carefully placed all of the ‘dry’ items into the stone cauldron that had been hiding in the cellar. Tooth, a couple of tails, a couple of handfuls of peat, and half of the pomegranate seeds. We paused and discussed whether our hair should be added at this stage. Between Caroline, Mary, and myself, we determined that this should be the final step before we stir the mixture. Then we add in the fresh water and blood. We empty half the container and one bag into the cauldron, but we do have one more of each just in case we need it.

We put our hair into the cauldron last. Margaret passes the hawthorn branch to me with wide eyes, and I accepted it with a neutral expression. The spell weaving for this ritual required a chant, which I had been studying closely so that I would have it memorized for this moment. As I sunk the branch into the liquid, I stare directly at the contents beginning both a stirring motion and my recitation.

To know if the potion was successfully enchanted, it would turn into a dark, iridescent syrup. It was believed it would also come with a rich, warm fragrance that would ‘remind one of a sunrise.’ I took that to mean it smelled like rays of sun on skin. The potion did grow dark in color, and it did thicken with stirring. It seemed to take hours of being in a trance before the air in the room shifted, smelling fresh and warm the way summer does when one stirs the dew on the grass. During the process, I quieted any doubts in my mind and focused only on the outcome.

Regardless of my hesitation, I wanted to be successful in this ritual.

I want it to work for them.

When the potion turned, we each took our goblets up in our hands. We drank it one by one until the potion was gone. The flavor was not unlike a sweet ale, even if very earthy like a freshly plucked carrot from the ground. If it was hard to drink, Margaret and Caroline gave no signs.

There was nothing to tell us how to know if it worked, or how long it would take to know. I watched Margaret and Caroline closely, trying to gauge their responses. It was obvious that Caroline had to her doubts. She fidgeted with her wedding ring, her hands shook, and she was muttering so softly that her words are unintelligible even to our heightened senses. I did have my guesses what she might have been saying, though.

Margaret has always harbored a hatred of herself, I think. She has killed people exclusively from a place of anger and hate as a vampire. The only thing that has given her peace is the unconditional love of another - Aki, Aster - that makes her feel complete. Her eyes were glazed over, maybe in defeat or maybe in worry, if not both. Abruptly, she said that she was going to go help Emma with breakfast.

Caroline leaned forward, her palms on the ground to push herself back onto her feet, and was getting ready to leave as well. I happened to notice that her skin on her chest had black streaks, not unlike blood poisoning. I chose to keep my mouth shut out of caution. Could it be a sign of the ritual working? Could it be a scar from the war?

No such sign was obvious on Margaret, either. I considered my theories, and, in the end, kept my thoughts to myself. It is a cold conclusion. I am aware of it. Margaret would be devastated if I told her what I had observed. This would yank her out of the illusion. Would it not be better if she realized it slowly rather than all at once? Would that not be better for her grief?

Mary asked me who would clean up the mess. Obviously, this was only to break the tension and my train of thought. I gestured for her to join me, both a command and a request. We end up in the backyard to hose the cauldron out. It was a relief that Mary did not try to talk to me about the ritual.

Margaret came outside to call us to breakfast. As is my usual response these days, I decline. However, Mary is starving and she starts skipping away. With her sleeves rolled up, her fingers green from cutting vegetables for what I assumed were omelettes, her top buttons undone, and her hair messily pulled atop her head, and in direct sunlight - I could take in her appearance more completely. As I was scanning her for any sign of the ritual working, she made a comment on mine.

“Your pupils look so big. No clouds today, though, huh?”

If anyone had tried to convince me to pull the rug out from underneath her, they would have met an unfortunate end. Regardless of the horrors she has done, Margaret is family forever, and I have long forgiven her. She deserves to grieve at her own pace. And so does Caroline.

I stayed silent out of respect.

And out of pity.

Chapter 34: Fall 1925

Seph and I made the difficult decision to leave Colorado. He loved it there, of course. I could no longer venture out, since I would be recognizable. I had been there far longer than I really should have been as well, but there had options to extend my years there. Those disappeared when Seph broke his foot and required me to move back into the cabin.

After many weeks of arguing and debating the options, I won the battle, though Seph won the war. I wanted us to move. That’s just part of what I have to do, so my attachment to places and things is very different to Seph’s. My thought was that we would move back towards Vermont, hop to the coast somewhere in Maine, or further south in the Carolinas.

Well, we agreed about living on the coast.

Seph was just thinking more along the lines of the east coast.

We moved to California. We arrived about a month ago, I think. We are settled now. It is a very different culture out here, and I think it will take a lot of learning and adaptation to fit in with the people. Since we wanted somewhere small on a single floor, we are a little bit further away from the hustle and bustle, but I think it’s fine. Seph mostly wanted the endless sunrise and proximity to the ocean. That was the selling point for him. Even though we could have that in the Carolinas, he insisted it would be better in California. Los Angeles was taking off, too, which meant it would be a fun city to be living in, and he asserted that the argument made itself.

We live near a bus stop that goes to the beach. He’s been at least once a week since we unpacked. Sometimes he goes with the neighbors. I love that he is making friends so easily.

As for me, I am trying to find a good solution for when I am pulled for what we have been calling Death Duties in recent years. I think the joking makes us both a little less sad about it. Sure, the trials to become a Master of Death gave Seph a new lease on life, but it came with consequences that did not end with the war. This work is forever.

My existence and work are forever. More than forever. Timeless, endless.

I do not like to think on it for long.

In any case, I need a solution, so I have told others that I have seizures but have not responded to any treatments or medications. What would they recommend for some home care, or do they know someone looking for a spot of cash? I thought all the aspiring actors and musicians came out here? Is that not the reputation Los Angeles has garnered? I had expected more individual names when getting recommendations, but I was shocked by the consistent name drop for a business - Just Like Family. They insisted that I go for an interview, apparently there was no need for an appointment ahead of time because the manager was always available in office.

I plan to bring it up with Seph tonight. Hopefully we’ll be able to agree on that topic completely.

 

 

—

 

 

Scarlet and I fell out of contact many years ago, and she had gone from New Jersey by the time I returned from the war. It was her time. Everything about us has been casual and criss-crossing our time together sporadically. Another chance to share a few years together, maybe more.

One of the doctors on staff, an Edmund Miller that insisted on being called Eddie, knows about Scarlet being a vampire. She spared me the details, but after a few run-ins, they connected over aiding underserved populations. He found out she was a vampire entirely by accident, which happened when she was helping with a blood drive and some bags went missing only to be found in her purse. This is a gig they still do, apparently, but on a scale where it isn’t noticed.

As for the staff that will actually come to the house, there is a staff named Anne. She takes the lowest-level need cases, mostly people who more need a helping hand than anything else. While Anne has worked in different hospitals and doctor office’s, she isn’t trained properly as a nurse. Her mother is one, so she knows enough to be helpful, but she prefers to help run errands and clean house with people. Most importantly, she helps with a lot of blood drives. Between Anne and Scarlet, they discreetly keep her blood stores strong. Plus, they have a mortuary assistant that doesn’t ask questions for the right price. It probably helps that Scarlet throws an “incredible sex party” every month or so as an added bonus. Anne swore up and down, “It’s the talk of the town!”

Since Scarlet is a voraciously horny woman, so this feels extremely appropriate for her. Despite that, she does seem just a tiny bit embarrassed that I learned about the parties in that way. I would never judge her for it. Before Scarlet can try to make a joke to lighten the mood, Anne leaned closer to me and winked. She offered to personally escort me to a party if I wanted.

I politely declined for the time being, but implied maybe I will partake some day.

The most important part of that meeting was that I secured Anne’s services to come out to the house a couple of times a week, at least to start to see how that schedule works, and then we can adjust as needed. She will be coming around for breakfast tomorrow so that Seph has a chance to meet her. Eddie and Scarlet will stop by, too, but at different times since they have other obligations that are bit more fixed on a schedule than Anne’s responsibilities.

There was a short period of time when it was just Scarlet and myself at the end of that meeting. Obviously, her first instinct was the apologize for losing touch. Friends who fall into a period of no contact and reconnect seem prone to such. I assured her that I was not worried and that she is entitled to her time as she wishes to have it. We shared a tight embrace, during which she ran her fingers through the ands of my hair hanging from a loose twist.

She talked about how I always look like me, no matter my efforts to fit in, and that she thinks it is because of my hair. As she touched her own shorter hair, curled and blown out around her face, it was undeniable that she looked like a more modern and refreshed version of her self. It was her experience that changing her appearance in this big way made her feel like she could start completely over, and embrace this part of her that will never go away. 

Then she posed the question to me - did I want a fresh start, or did I always want to be a slightly new iteration of Lorraine Warren each time I go somewhere new. The obvious response, and the one I gave her, was that I am not trying to be a different person, just a better one. Or at least a mimic of a good person. 

I do wish that had been the end of the conversation, but the questions sat with me for many hours after they came to pass. Part of me did feel offended that Scarlet would suggest that I change my hair on a whim. And yet - another part of me wondered - could a new hairstyle, or some other significant body modification, help feel excited about life again? Would I be able to feel new, just as she suggested?

And new as opposed to what? Used? Am I a used body, like something picked up at a second-hand shop? None of these insecurities have crossed my mind before, and now they plague me. As much as I want to pass blame onto Scarlet for this doubt of myself, the doubt had to have been there for her words to water the seed and let it grow into this domineering thing inside my head.

I guess I will have to think about it more, maybe even talk about it with Lucinda and Seph. This is not a decision that should be made lightly, nor is it one I want to ignore since it has such a firm grasp on me. For now, I will continue to coexist with the curiosity of such a thing.

 

 

—

 

 

I have never noticed my hair growing longer since turning into a vampire, but my hair was already very long when I turned, too, so I do not think I would notice either way. Margaret cut her hair many, many years ago. Did it seem to grow back? Certainly it had done, because when I went to do the ritual at the manor, her hair was long again and tied up on top of her head. Just like when she was younger - mortal.

It seems safe to assume that my hair could grow back if I cut it off, which makes it feel far less permanent and negligible. Scarlet is a bold woman, and notoriously hard to read because her body language is so controlled and discreet. After speaking to Lucinda, who knows Scarlet the best of everyone in my familial circle, she said to confront Scarlet about the comment. Perhaps there is something deeper motivating her suggestion to alter my appearance. When speaking with Seph, he was far less worried about her intentions, and more curious why I became so attached to it. He said it reminded him of when he was young and they accused him of being “one the homos” that “defy God’s word.” Seph, per his recollection, would deny the allegations. Many of the men who outed him were also fooling around with him behind closed doors and in the shadows, so he would deny it knowing full well he could turn the story around.

Sharing his experience was meant to say that my agitation and desire to blame Scarlet for saying something somewhat innocuous is reflective more of my inner turmoil than of her being inconsiderate. This erasure of responsibility leaves a foul taste upon my tongue, even if I can see some level of truth to it. My instinct is that it wrong to blame me for my reaction when Scarlet should have known better that to recommend this change in casual passing, and yet I do feel this responsibility for how I choose to respond to it. 

In all honesty, I have not felt quite like myself in a very long time. Scarlet’s questions are both a lifeline and a curse. What I will do next, I cannot say even now as I write this.

Alas, I want to ask Scarlet to explain herself. The missing context matters, even if only in emotional terms. I will decide what I decide, with or without her input, I suspect, and the only person to blame for it will be me. This choice is mine and mine alone.

 

 

——

 

 

Scarlet had me over for dinner so we could talk. She resides in a place she calls a “the townhouse” instead of ‘home.’ Architecture is one thing I never learned much about, despite building my own homes throughout my existence. Like most of my people, we build what we need to meet a specific purpose. The manor only became so big and grand out of necessity. The cabin in Colorado expanded only marginally, and remained quaint and cozy compared to many of the homes that were popping up in the nearby fields when we departed.

Her townhouse is two stories tall with a small cellar, and she has very little that she keeps inside of it. The furniture is minimal - two chairs for sitting, a table for only two people, and two bedrooms with only a bed and a wardrobe. The room that she claims as her own, however, does have a lovely rug. It is a scarlet red with flecks of white and tan from stitching. The duality of the rug, as a decoration and as a declaration, is not lost on me.

When pressed, Scarlet would reveal that she wondered if Los Angeles could represent a different kind of life for me. “One where you live with the people, not among them,” she had said exactly. She was not wrong. The closest I came to living ‘with the people’ was my time in Vermont running the manor and estate. Even then, I was still not exactly at the same level as the people who worked under the canopy of my business holdings. All she meant to suggest, as it turns out, is that I stop trying to blend in and embrace the chaos of mortal living.

I stayed the night with her, talking and walking around the back garden. When sunrise came, I left and started on my way back home. Inevitably, I found myself passing businesses along the way. One that stood out to me, though, wasn’t a studio or storefront. This was just an earnest sign in a yard. It advertised hairstyling and cuts for any textured hair. Intrigued, I went to the door of the house and knocked gently, unsure if this was an intrusion.

A little, black girl answered the door with a hairbrush in one hand and a shoe in the other. This shoe matched one that was already on her right foot. Half-screaming, half-yawning, she asked if I had an appointment or if I was ‘a walk-up’. After telling her I assumed I was ‘a walk-up’ after seeing the sign, she said that she would get The Moms so they could see who is available. The girl took off but left the door wide open, which feels a little dangerous to me. In the background, I could see several children racing around in varying stages of dressing and grooming. It did not feel like an invitation in, so I remained on the stoop waiting for someone to return.

Eventually, the girl came back with a women with darker skin than she had, who smiled and offered a hand out to me as a greeting. She introduced herself as Auntie Audrey. Without expressly being told, she escorted me through the house filled to the brim with people, floor to ceiling and walls to wall. At the very back of the house, there is a porch enclosed with netting to keep out bugs. I am told to sit while she gets her things. “Can’t leave’m out when we got all them kids runnin’ about,” she had declared just before disappearing again. Upon return, she had two more women, all of whom seemed to be comparable in age with my assumptions that Auntie Audrey was potentially in her thirties.

I introduced myself and explained my reason for stopping, within reasonable limits. It was important to me to know if they had worked with indigenous peoples hair, and if they were aware what a significant event it is within my culture to cut their hair. If I am going to do this, I want it to be honorable. 

Auntie Audrey said she did not know all the little things, but did say she worked on a lot of “mixed ladies” in the past, some who had spiritual connections to their hair too. The other women vouched for her, and assured me that they will not do anything I did not wish for them to do. This was enough, and really all I could ask, so I told them I was ready to move forward.

I let her feel my hair and brush through it, getting a feel for how it moves and responds to different instruments without executing any permanent change immediately. The other two women, later identifying themselves as Tawny, Audrey’s sister, and Corrine, their brother’s girlfriend. Their backstory about becoming hairdressers stems from their own family’s diverse racial background. Though sisters, Audrey and Tawny have two different mothers, resulting Tawny having lighter skin and a smoother texture to her curls. Corrine’s paternal side are indigenous to what is now colonized as Central America, having travelled north to mine gold. As for her mother’s family, they immigrated from France and made their way across the country for leisure before settling in California. As such, she has many colonial features, such as her brow bone and jawline. But her eyes are darker than her already deeply shaded hair. They’re not too unlike my own, which I found gave a little more comfort with these women taking care of my hair. In a way, for all the lying I had to do, I felt seen while with them.

As I learned more about them, I shared about myself, too. I discussed how I was born in a tribe, but was forced to work in white homes, separating me from much of my cultural practices for a very long time. As with others, they received the same story about Seph and I being an uncle-niece duo looking for new memories in California. Once a couple of hours had passed, Auntie Audrey and I agreed on the final length and style. It was also established that the hair will be collected so I can burn it with sage and release my old inhibitions and anxieties back into the world so that I can be unbridled by their burden. Originally, I intended to do this at home by myself, but Corrine insisted I go back for dinner anyway, so it only seemed natural that we could do this together.

And that is where I am off to this evening. Unexpectedly, I have befriended these hairdressers, but it came at a time when I needed new people in my life. Seph’s years are numbered. Scarlet is not someone who will ever be tied down, and Gertrude is long dead now. The people I have called my friend for so many years are nearing their respective ends.

Hesitant as I might usually be, I threw the caution in my mind to the wind. Didn’t Scarlet just tell me to live with the people, not among them? For the first time in decades, I am excited to learn more and connect to these women with such colorful and expansive histories. There is much to learn from them, I can feel it in my bones. Seph is happy for me to have found my own friends.

And he thinks my hair looks good, too.

It is a bit strange having my hair dance at the base of my neck in with wisps of hair framing my face, but I expect I’ll grow more comfortable with it in due time. Transitioning into this new era feels more significant than any time before it. I really, really want to embrace what it means to be this new person - Elaine Quill, the daughter of Seph’s younger brother, looking for herself on the east coast of America.

Oh! I do wonder what I will find.

Chapter 35: Summer 1930

Margaret called in October, almost immediately after the stock market crash. Lucinda and Raymond withdrew a lot of the estate’s money from the banks and cashed out on investments that hadn’t fallen too greatly. Margaret called asking after the hidden money, but Lucinda would call too. She wanted to relocate to California, to live with us on the east coast for her final years, but had not yet discussed as much with Raymond and Emma.

As for Margaret, through the months, she talked of her plans to use the money to keep people working and do something interesting with the manor. It sounded to me that she wished to turn it into some sort of attraction. I had no real opinion on the matter, though I was confused by the vision. Lucinda often chided me for asking if she was sure she wanted to be so far from her son, reminding me of how the transition to Gertrude and Lucinda running things had to be swift and distinct. That was part of her desire to move, as it turned out. She felt that Raymond and Emma were not only well prepared to take over, but that, given the significant economic event, the timing was right, too.

I agreed. Raymond and Emma needed to champion success through this disaster on their own. If Lucinda remained in the manor, there would always be someone wanting to bypass Raymond and Emma because of a disagreement. Their leadership during such a trying time simply could not risk being contested. Truly, it needed to be an absolute change.

During my calls with Margaret, her efforts also brought back all the passion that started the whole Mitchell-Warren estate to begin with - helping others. Thousands and thousands of people in Los Angeles are without homes, jobs, if not both. And the number of children being abandoned or orphaned? Many run away from home with their siblings because their parents can’t care for them. Scarlet and I worry over it late into the night when Seph is sound asleep.

And we kept worrying about it even after Lucinda definitively made the decision to move out here. Before she came, though, I started a restoration project. I had just enough money to buy a small foreclosed apartment building. I paid the squatters to help restore it, and they were able to find rooms to rent, some offering to keep doing any odd jobs I might need. I kept them on until the very last moment, giving them as much opportunity to get on their feet. After inspections, it was determined the maximum occupancy for residents was 165 people, and a safety occupancy of 300 non-residents. We never plan to have that many people on the property, of course, since we are going to teach children and teens how to take care of themselves.

Or I guess - we are teaching them. I was able to get six kids to move in, a set of twin girls, and a set of siblings that had parents disappear while trying to find work. The twins are twelve, but were already selling sex to buy clothes, blankets, and food. The siblings are five, seven, and fifteen. The fifteen year old was babysitting for people in exchange for food, all over Skid Row, but also in Hoovervilles and other shanty groups. The youngest, a little boy, broke his foot, and she wanted to jump at the opportunity to be somewhere with proper medical care. Thankfully, Scarlett agreed to spare some staff for me.

We are officially recorded as “The Children and Teenagers Without Lodging or Guardians Shelter,” but Scarlet started calling it ‘The Cat’ for short. It’s catchy, I guess, because the kids really like it. But others think it’s dumb. In fact, when our oldest, who says her name is Julia, gets meowed at when she comes to help get the most vulnerable children and teens off the streets. I think it’s rude, but Julia says that there are bigger problems to be upset about, so I do not say anything to anyone about it except Lucinda and Scarlett.

Some days, I am confused by the number of kids that do not want to come. There is such instability in the country now, and I see no signs of it changing any time soon, and they are choosing to live in it. But there are other days where I understand. In some ways, it reminds me of when I chose to stay with the Warren family after learning I had been tricked into servitude. Even if I had it better than most, I still did not feel that I had a choice. The rejection etched into their frowns stems from being scared of something new, or even something good, and not knowing how long it will last. On Skid Row, in the Hoovervilles and shanties, it will always be a struggle and never changes. That predictability offers something akin to comfort.

I look forward to furthering the development of ‘The Cat’ so that the impact is undeniable. We will just have to prove that the promise is not false. It will take time, and, as I have always said, it is the one resource I have in abundance.

 

---

 

Our home is full. Lucinda sleeps in my room, which has been outfitted with three beds for months now. Scarlet does not use her bed, not usually, and mine is used only when I am pulled away. Perhaps it is a kindness from Death itself, which seems out of character, if an entity of that nature could have one, but I have not been taken away very often. Could it be due to Scarlet and I doing important work here.

Her business remains, though she and Eddie have scaled down significantly. In fact, they both sold their homes and put the funds back into the business. In order to keep their full staff and patient load, they scaled back hours for all staff, too. Some pay and some work is better than nothing, after all, in these times especially so. Anne’s work with the company was eliminated, since she did not have formal training, but this is just as well. The children at The Cat love her.

We have nine children in all now! Julia is a better recruiter than I am, if I am honest. She was able to bring two sisters to the house, each who were pregnant. With few options for such girls, as this is simply what they are - young girls - Julia wanted them to at least stay in the home until they gave birth to ensure they stayed healthy and safe. They agreed. We have them roomed together. Eddie is speaking to his connections to see if there is a licensed obstetrician who will come to see them, but if he cannot, we can serve their needs between the two of us.

As such, I have been spending more of my days and nights at The Cat rather than at home. Between Anne, Scarlet, Eddie, and myself, someone is always home with Seph and Lucinda. Most days, Lucinda is completely fine to be on her own, despite being slightly older than Seph, it is Seph who is in the poorer health. There are some things Lucinda can do, helping him with any medicines or remedies, walking around the house, and feeding him. The tasks outside of the home are where the rest of us play the biggest role.

Our days are structured at The Cat. While I teach labor skills in home repairs, gardening for food, and making clothes, Anne teaches homemaking skills through cooking, cleaning, and money management. When Eddie is at the house, he’s started offering to do basic first aid training to the kids. As for Scarlet, ever the truest version of herself, she aims to teach sexual safety with the older ones. For all the teaching and guiding that we do, we do everything in tandem. The children do not work harder than we do, and that has built a significant amount of respect. In many ways, they are a second family to me - to us.

But we are not alone. Tawny, Corrine, and Auntie Audrey come with their children. Sometimes they bring food and just hang out so the kids can play together. Other times, they will braid hair. It is so appreciated all of us, being that we do not have the same hair. One of the pregnant girls has been so proud of her pouf, and often asks after The Moms when they are not visiting.

I hope as time goes on, more people will come to support these children and teenagers. They did not choose life, and they do not willing choose to suffer the consequences of the adults before them. Perhaps when there are more residents we will see a bigger interest in imparting wisdom unto them.

Until then, we all do our part, and as such, all parts work as intended.

 

---

 

I cannot believe that we have twenty-three children living at The Cat now. Of them, we have four pregnant teenagers, meaning I stay at the house overnight on a daily basis now. Anne has moved into my room with Lucinda, so all of my belongings are stored here. Whatever I wish to not be found is well hidden with magic, inaccessible to the children and volunteers who are not aware of my - being? Except for my hand tools. I have left them in the garden to be used by the children, and of course myself because I am helping them, but I think their value to me is changing. The longer I am here in California, the more I start to see myself in a new light. The emotional attachment to the tools of my youth and early years, it feels lighter now. 

The world is always changing an evolving, and the belief of my people has always been to give back to the land, the people, the spirits, and the self. In my heart, these tools serve a new purpose now and have a new value to new people. It feels as though I have imparted them upon these children who will be able to live longer lives to impact other lives. If one sat with the possibilities, the impact could possibly be infinite. I am okay having fewer belongings to mind as I move around, now and in the future.

Caroline has reached out to me, speaking of her future concepts. She must have found out the telephone number from Margaret, which is no matter, since I have no restrictions on who can contact me. Even now, Raymond sometimes calls to see if Lucinda will speak with me about finances. I think his queries stem from two things, still learning the management side of things and the full expanse of accounts belonging to the estate, but also to question how Margret continues to spend money without affecting the accounts. I assure him through Lucinda that Margaret and I speak regularly, that he should not worry on it. Her money is “off the books and always has been,” but he worries. I find it endearing, even if annoying. Lucinda agrees.

As for Caroline, she has great aspirations, as she often does. Always multiple projects running at once! She is working on a coven, with her beloved friend Tommy and his wife expecting their first child. But she is also planning an enchanted garden, which I assume she plans to grow Wisteria in, alongside other consumables. This is something we both agree is necessary. People need these things now more than ever before, which is quite the statement coming from us. We have seen hundreds of years come and go, and we have seen hard times, but there is nothing quite like this in our known history.

The Wisteria is important to her. Her thought is that Wisteria can be used in a vitality potion, a potential cure for detrimental and chronic health conditions. She reminds me of Eddie in that regard. He is always asking after me about using magic and medicine together, which I am not opposed to doing, but I have different values to Caroline on this subject. I still use magic, of course, and I have seen what good it can do…

But I have seen what awful it can do, too. I am a servant to Death itself for my dabbling. Mary, for years, was a menace to society in every regard all over the globe, corrupted by it. There was a version of reality where Seph abused his knowledge. I do not give the gift of knowledge regarding magic freely. Eddie has all but asked explicitly, and Scarlet does not seem as neutral as she claims to be on the topic. Regardless, I am sure Caroline will make the perfect conversationalist for him.

I say this because she is wanting to head out here. She calls it an ‘adventure,’ and while I do not pretend understand why she would leave behind the beginnings of a coven, I cannot deny my pleasure to have extra hands. With four pregnant girls, and Eddie still working full-time with Scarlet in home care, it will be a relief to have a third person at the ready. For all the help that Anne could be, and the potential to call her mother for assistance, we have not yet found an obstetrician who can spare the time to come out. I fear that there is worry about payment, and I have wondered if I could get money from Margaret, but I do not want to rely on the old money of a life that no longer belongs to me. It was inherited by the people who deserved it, and it remains that way. It is as I wished.

It will be a gift to have another person investing their time into the children. To me, it sends the message to them that they are worthy and deserving. They need goodness, support, and hope. The more people that can show that to them, the better!

In fact, as I had hoped, teachers and police come to The Cat occasionally. The teachers read. The police talk about their jobs and teach self-defense, should they ever find themselves in scary situations. We do not get much in the way of donations, at least not financial ones, but some people make blankets and drop off freshly caught fish. Some are more consistent than others, but the kids really do enjoy the feeling of community extended to them by living here.

Things are going well, and I hope to keep furthering what The Cat can offer to these children. The first step in that direction is to make more people aware of this thing we have created. That is what my afternoon will be focused on, as I will be heading to a radio station to be interviewed. I hope that this will reach some folks who have the ability to give time or resources. Every offering not only helps, but perpetuates a lasting change in their lives for the better.

Chapter 36: Spring 1932

These last few months have been most strange. Seph passed away just after the Pagan-turned-Christian holiday. Though it was not entirely unexpected, he had been poorly during this life in California, it was odd to see Lucinda outliving him being that she is nearly a full decade his elder. She is living a curiously long life for the mortals of this era. It makes me wonder - did Mary play a role in this? Was she doing something she would consider a kindness to me? To the oddly curated family of chosen friends we have pulled together over the last century?

All of that is to say, Lucinda remains as healthy as a woman her age could be, and even still invites neighbors around for potlucks and long nights of Bridge. Scarlet and I make ourselves scarce on those evenings, not that it is particularly hard. Neither of us are home very often anymore.

Caroline has been visiting as well. She stays in Seph’s room upstairs, but she also is often out of the house. She helps with our new pregnant teenagers. We have gained quite the reputation at The Cat for being kindly to the “child prostitutes,” which feels most vulgar to describe them as, in my opinion at least. Adulthood always worked a bit differently in the tribes, and, even over the years, the white customs seem to have altered their perceptions as well. I would have been old enough to wed after twelve or thirteen summers. I have heard stories from the Mexican travelers and immigrants that it is not much different further south, and that their girls are levied responsible as adults at fifteen years. The white man seemed to consider their girls adults around fourteen two hundred years ago, but these days they consider eighteen years to be the age where adult responsibilities truly manifest.

For this reason, and my own experiences with these youths, I find it odd to call them “child prostitutes,” as if they are of a sound mind to consent to these things they do - or that they choose to do them with full awareness of what their actions could cause. Too many girls have come to us asking for boarding and help, not even knowing about their menses or where children come out of their bodies. We once had a girl actually ask if the baby will come out of her rear or naval. “I have heard both ways,” she whimpered to us that night we did her check-up. 

As the world evolves, demanding more from us on all fronts, the invisible line that separates the children from adults moves further away. I remember my many long chats with Gertrude, talking about being a child in 1600 versus being a child in the 1800s - how properness had morphed into subtlety; how femininity was prized above all else; how autonomy was less about being able to do things alone and more about proving how much could be done alone. I could see it all the time in these children on the streets. They all wanted to prove they could survive on their own.

Having Eddie and Caroline at our disposal is wondrous. Caroline has a maternal instinct that Eddie simply lacks, but there is comfort in knowing that Eddie has learned how to perform abortions. They are illegal medical procedures, and he only offers them to girls who are so early along that nobody would know just looking at them. I don’t think that Caroline likes that we do this, even if she conveys some level of sympathy. We are from a different time, as I said, and some of these girls would have been ostracized by their peers simply for being unwed or without child at their age. Perhaps those ideals linger inside of her.

Prohibition has left many rowdy, left in a constant state of unrest. I have witnessed the violence increase on Skid Row, as well as everywhere else. It is dangerous to let the children go with us now. We go in pairs and shifts. Eddie typically goes with Anne, since she is the most defenseless. Scarlet will go with some of the past residents who have since moved and aged out but still volunteer their time, and then I go with the other mortals who have come to be regulars among The Cat staff. Usually, it’s just Tawny who dares to venture out with me. The stock market crash forced her to move back in with Corrine and her family. Auntie Audrey has had to make her eldest children find work to maintain the bills, since fewer people come for hair styles and cuts, and her husband has been reduced to just a few hours a week at the factory. Tawny wants to help children because she knows how easily any of her own teenagers could have become like them. In her words, “I could have been then so many times.” She doesn’t talk about what she and Corrine went through growing up, but Auntie Audrey raised them. I have never heard mention of a mother or father in their lives. Audrey sometimes mentions a Francine, sometimes called Franny, but she is the only one. If I had to guess, I would say this was probably Tawny and Corrine’s mother. Audrey never talks about this woman as a mother, though. It seems their family is far too familiar with hardship and darkness, things that the white populous faces daily now.

One of the last remaining great parts of life while The Great Depression wrecks all the normalcy we thought we knew are Scarlet’s many sex parties. People come in troves to her now-weekly gatherings. Since we are all busy at The Cat and with the business, these parties are hosted by each of us in a rotation when it is Scarlet’s day to be with the children. Though she insists that she is always a participant in these group encounters, Eddie and Anne report otherwise. She is vigilant that her parties are not mistaken for speakeasies. In fact, alcohol is not allowed at all.

Corrine and Anne have begun to suspect that she also colludes with politicians and mobsters, stating that there are important guests who are always behind locked doors who send for people that they wish to have as company. Scarlet personally escorts them to these rooms. I had never witnessed such behavior until recently, as she usually only wishes to court me on those nights, and always after everyone has left. We have regained some intimacy working together on so many fronts. It is familiar, just like the orphanages on the east coast. It makes things easier for us.

Just last week, I was returning from a party. It was running later than usual. Scarlet insisted I take off back to The Cat so that Anne could go back home and check on Lucinda. This particular party wasn’t necessarily close to The Cat, but enough so that I could easily walk the distance. Nights are dangerous, with crime ever on the rise, so to hear screams and fighting… It is not unusual.

These screams were different. For one, I was taking a shortcut past a graveyard. It would scare others but not me, not since I could defend myself. I think even for someone who maybe would be scared and still took the risk going down that path, though, the screaming would have drawn attention. I think, perhaps optimistically so, that anyone would have jumped the fence and went to see what was happening. Scarlet might have done. Caroline would have, most certainly. More than once she had gotten herself into a tangle with being a fair bit too trusting.

As I got closer to the screaming, I could hear more sounds. Chattering amongst women, some were casual and almost joyous, but others were harsh and commanding. Then there was the sound of metal to earth. An all too familiar sound to me - scooping dirt to fill a hole. I have heard it as much as my own breathing. I have done it many times with my own hands.

My mind began racing, but not in the way mortals who are panicked would experience it. The thoughts rushed in like a flood gate released, awareness of the only possible explanation landing in every crevice of my brain. Someone was being buried alive.

Once I could see all the women, springing into action was effortless. I do not use magic often, but when I do, I suspect it is a sight to behold. Despite not having a family heritage in witchcraft, or some divine blessing, I do have a connection to the living and dead. Spiritually, I am with the earth and the afterlife. I have practiced and challenged my skill. When I strung perfected spells together, I sent the women flying dozens of feet away from the hole. Some of them started to stand up as I jumped into the hole to save their victim, but I once again held my hands out with fierce spell-weaving. Roots jutted out of the ground and wrapped around their feet. I whipped back to the woman and pulled out of a knife from the inside pocket of my jacket.

As I cut her free, I asked, “What do they want you dead for?”

I don’t know if I had expected her to speak truthfully or not, but when she explained in a ragged and rushed tone, I could not believe it was anything but that. She was working the streets, selling her body to pay for hospital bills. Her son had been severely ill, but when the bills started to come in, without her husband, who had died shortly before her son’s illness, she had no other options. But why did these women target her and not anyone else?

Well, it’s a tale as old as time. Some of their husbands - paid.

In a final effort to secure our escape, I made sure that these women would not move for a long time. Unsure where to take her, I returned to Scarlet’s party site. With the help of some staff, Scarlet secured a room for the three of us to speak privately. We easily determined that we needed to get her out of California. With nowhere else to send her, Scarlet said the first thing to do would be to get her son. Scarlet asked the woman for a slew of personal information - name, address, important documents, purse - and it quickly turned into a plan to secure our home as a safe house. She said she knew some guys who would keep an eye on the property until she could be secured a new place to live away from California. Lucinda would be familiar with such a protocol, and Anne was not one to question motivations. The only person that would need clued in would be Caroline, and I wasn’t worried about whether she would understand the severity of the situation.

This was another moment, though, that made me think the rumors were truer than false. Does Scarlet have mob connections? Are those the men in those secured rooms? Scarlet is a quietly powerful woman. But which is heavier? The quiet or the power?

Anne was sent to the woman’s house to pick up her son and important documents. They were then escorted in black cars back to our house. Scarlet and I later went to her residence after the party was over and packed up as many belongings as we could in the bags and suitcases that were in the home. We prioritized things that could not be replaced, of course. Upon returning home, I made it a priority to call Raymond and Emma. She needed somewhere to go where nobody would be able to find her, nobody would know her. Did she need to go as far as Vermont? Probably not, but she agreed to go if she were welcome.

I was pleased when Raymond answered so early in the morning, but he said that he had an early meeting so he was just packing up to leave. Not wanting to hold him up, I explained I had a woman who needed a new start, and would he house her and find her work? Raymond did not hesitate to agree. He said he would leave a note for Emma to call when she got the children off to school. I left the number for The Cat, since I would be going there for my shift. Anne had already put in the extra hours to help, she deserved a chance to properly rest.

Scarlet stayed at home whenever she could, but would send for me when she had to go to the office. Undead as we are, the need for sleep is nigh. We don’t need for it the way mortals do, though I know for a fact that Scarlet takes a long sleep once or twice a year. Busy as I think I am, she is always doing more than I ever do, making her iconic and admirable too many ways to count.

When I was at The Cat, though, the children were talking about something they heard on the radio. Eddie, who had not yet left for the office, shared the newspaper for more information. I ordered everyone not to speak of it, that it was nonsense, and that they should worry themselves only with what they know is true. Eddie caught on to my defensiveness, even made a strange sort of face at me, but did not press the matter. We both knew Scarlet would explain it later.

Whether I should have kept my mouth shut, or, rather, I should have put the pen down, only the test of time will tell if it was the right choice. But I have been published. I have edited work that went to print. I have written in this journal for lifetimes. I know how to weaponize my words if I want to - and in this case - I really did want to.

I sent in an anonymous accounting of events. I described the women as cultists making a human sacrifice. That I witnessed their spell backfire, and the woman flee traveling south. I used emotional language knowing that it would influence the public to question the women’s motivation for going directly to the media. The public would turn on them faster than this story caught fire.

And they did. Every person that any of them ever wronged came out, spoke up, and tore them to pieces. I could not have wished for a better outcome. Crimes that these women had committed became public knowledge, and most of them were arrested for things more serious than their failed murder, which couldn’t be proven without a victim anyway. There was safety to be offered in having these vicious women off the street. Still, this woman needed, no, wanted a new start. Her husband was gone and there was nothing about her life here that she could maintain on her own.

Vermont will give her a chance to enjoy life with her son without compromising their safety and comfort. The Mitchell-Warren reputation was built upon that principle. As for getting her there, though, that relied heavily on Caroline. She had been here for a long time, and everyone at The Cat was pleased to have her. Eddie was smitten, as I expected, by her talking of magic and medicine. To lose her would be a great detriment, and yet - I had to ask her if she would escort this woman and her son back to Vermont.

At first, it seemed unlikely that she would agree. It was hard to read her expression, but as the story unfolded, she understood the importance of it. Tommy and his family were on that side of the country, too. It was clear that she missed them. She agreed to help this woman and her son. Something that Caroline could always be counted on for was help. 

In this way, I think she is more consistent than Margaret and myself. We are volatile, though in starkly different ways. Margaret is a highly emotional person, and she feels everything plainly on her face and sleeve. She is not a particularly difficult woman to read. As for me, well, I think I am intellectually chaotic. My allegiance is to knowledge and logic. Though I have acted emotionally in the past, it has always resulted in great suffering. I think of Mrs. Warren. I think of Gertrude’s death. I think of Seph’s undone murder. I think of Scarlet’s turning into a vampire.

It makes me shudder, even all these years later.

I did not name this woman because I know she will have a new name soon. Her son will, too. Becoming attached to this idea and identity are unnecessary. I will come to know her as the new person she will become under the care of the Mitchell-Warren legacy.

I think the way I will end this reflection is by saying that I am so glad I was walking that night.

I am so glad that I could save her life.

If I had not saved her, I suspect I would have eventually saved her son from the streets.

Chapter 37: Summer 1933

Sometime last fall, a pair of twins showed up at one of Scarlet’s parties. People show up at her events all the time without Scarlet knowing who they are, so it was not peculiar to me when she said she didn’t know the twins personally. Her theory was that a regular invited them along. She trusts her guests to behave, and if they don’t, well, then she trusts that they know what can happen to them at the snap of her fingers.

Scarlet doesn’t know everyone, but she does knows dangerous ones.

Not including the fact that she is dangerous all on her own.

The twins stood out to me because they had a similar accent to Isobel. I was surprised to even recognize it after many years without her. It holds a special place in my heart, so I ended up being drawn in by them. At first, I just listened to them talk. The woman, Lilias, and her brother, Lachlan, hail from Scotland, though they grew up in the streets of Great Britain. Even their story reminds me of Isobel, who had been living on the streets and working as a maid off and on. Lachlan and Lilias told people they wanted to work in the “pictures.” They wanted to be stars on the big screen! I could see it for Lachlan, because he is charismatic beyond belief. Everywhere he goes, he fits.

I do not think the same about Lilias, who prefers to be called Lia. Friendly as she is, there is something different about her. She is always dancing around and moving, and she loves to touch people or be touched by people. It makes her a very popular lover’s choice at the parties. But Lachlan rarely lets her be alone, which I find strange. Someone said that they think the two commit incest when they are alone. I cannot agree, but I cannot justify why against the rumors. It is not a jealous lover’s territorial guarding.

I will have to talk with Scarlet about it and see what she thinks.

 

 

---

 

 

In speaking with Scarlet last night, while we walked home from The Cat, she told me that she is in my frame of mind, too. She does not believe Lachlan is in an inappropriate relationship with Lilias. In fact, she says that Lachlan keeps asking around about me, and that she suspects he is attracted to me in some capacity. I disagree, but I have come to realize that I always disagree. I guess I do not see or do not look for any subtle signs of flirting.

As for Lilias, the strangeness has not gone unnoticed by others. Some think she is taking something illicit, while others think she is completely insane. It was then that Scarlet explained that Lachlan and Lilias make money with an occult shop that they also live in, which was more shocking to me than it should have been, I think. It took me by surprise since it had never come across my ears during all the conversations I had both with and about them.

Lia does crystal ball readings, as well as some palm and tarot card fortune telling. Lachlan does “the heavy lifting” because he holds spirit sessions where he speaks with the dead. The story was that he almost died during his birth so he was connected to the spirit world because he was never supposed to survive. I have heard stories like that before, so it is not so far-fetched that I do not believe it. If it had come from him directly, maybe, then I would not be as suspicious about such an origin tale.

This conversation did not satisfy me so I think I will call after Mary. She will be able to give me another opinion without any vested interest, but she is also more familiar with this specific kind of occult magic. There is a chance she can help me parse how much I should believe, or how to tell if they are faking.

 

 

---

 

 

Mary is always so talkative. It took us over an hour to even get to the reason for my call! She told me all about Raymond and Emma’s parenting strife. The children are, well, children, and they are challenging the boundaries and rules whenever they can. Staying out late, sneaking out when they are in trouble, skipping class, and throwing bonfire gatherings in abandoned buildings. Mary dismisses it, as do I, but she finds it all quite hilarious.

“Growing up is still growing up, doesn’t matter if it is 900 or 1900!”

I remembered it because it was so poignant. Some things really do never change.

When I did finally broach the topic of Lachlan and Lilias, the conversation slowed and sometimes stalled completely. As far as Mary was concerned, there was no reason to worry or even seek a second opinion. The occult, in her mind, is common and accessible. What could be the problem? Cheat or not, how did it affect me?

This forced me to think about why it mattered. What about it made me uneasy? Why did I feel entitled to their story? The obvious answer was just that I wanted to feel close to something that reminded me of Isobel. Yet, it did not feel so simple.

She told me that I would need to figure out why I want to know the truth, what I would do with it, and whether or not it would change anything in anyone’s life for the better. Of course, she insisted that if it were her, she would just ask, since she wants to know everyone’s business. Mary did admit that we are different ‘breeds’ and that she never cares to beat around the bush on any subject.

I would have loved to ask Margaret about her shop. I knew about it secondhand. Raymond told Emma about it over breakfast, not having realized Mary was in the pantry getting down some jam for toast. After that, she asked me if I had known about it, which I had not, and so she thought of it as this very salacious secret that she could gossip about to me. Even all these years later, she thinks I hate Margaret. Sometimes, when I miss Gertrude, I do hate her, but it passes, just like everything else.

Margaret fled last year, unfortunately. A worker that she had hired caught her in what some would call a “compromising position,” though Mary thought very little of it. She described it as innocent fun. I am not inclined to believe Mary’s version of events outright, since she is prone to exaggeration. That said, knowing Margaret, it couldn’t have been as “compromising” as this betrayer made it seem.

And, exaggerated or not, Margret still ran away. None of us know where she is, though she tries to make contact with Raymond every so often. Knowing she is still alive is all anyone really wants, and it’s all we can hope for.

 

 

---

 

 

It was a week before I was able to work into a conversation with Lachlan that I had heard about their occult services. Lachlan seemed a little embarrassed about it, but did not shy away from my queries. He quickly confirmed that they do it to pay the bills and get food, emphasizing that it is not lucrative. In fact, he even said that they don’t advertise it.

Since he seemed so uneasy about it, there was hesitation when I insisted that I was actually very interested in the occult. It wasn’t until Lia came to find us and heard us talking about it that he lamented and agreed. Lia was very excited and said she didn’t want to wait even a day! He scribbled their address onto a napkin with a charcoal stick before rushing the both of them out of the party. I went to the address two days ago now.

The shop was dusty in all the places people wouldn’t be going to when they come for a service. Do they actually live here, or are they squatting? This certainly is not exactly a part of town that people visit for fun, or where the city cares about what happens to the people living here. There were also other indicators, candles as lights and very aged photographs that are not their family. To bring it up would do nothing positive, so it was just a mental inventory.

Lilias wanted to go first. Her eagerness and confidence could rival most people I meet in a day, and I found it very endearing. I told her about Margaret, asking if she could find her in her crystal ball. As she thought about it, she said she would certainly try, even though there’s very little information to use. Magic can be finicky and difficult when there are limitations. No alarms were going off, so to speak, off of that alone.

What indicated she was a fraud, even if a very good one, was when she used some words interchangeably that I knew did not work the same. She described the crystal ball like a pensive, that she could use a locating spell, but that it only works if both parties want the same thing. To someone who is not familiar with magic, perhaps that makes sense enough, but I know that is false. A crystal ball has similarities to the pensive, but the pensive shows events that have already passed. A locating spell can be used with a crystal ball since locating spells need a conduit to give the glimpse using a visual medium. Locating spells can be used with other things, such as enchanted paper thrown into fire. Still, she was right to a certain degree.

If someone doesn’t want to be found, even powerful magic cannot succeed.

However, Lachlan - he is truly a gifted spirit speaker.

Lucinda died at the end of summer, in her sleep, rather unexpectedly. It was a strange experience. Death came to me personally, which rarely happens. I had not been pulled to death duty for some time. It made the appearance even more confusing. Since Lucinda had passed in her bed at peace, Death came to ask if I would like to care for her passage into the afterlife. The offer was not made when Seph had died, so I didn’t even know it was an option before Lucinda, but I did not decline the offer. I was able to send her off in the way that she deserved.

Lachlan used an ouija board. I had seen them before, but not like the one he had. What he had looked like something he made himself. He explained why it was made the way it is, why the board itself is not magical, and what the role of planchet is when spirit speaking. Everything he says makes sense, tracking with my knowledge of magic. Unlike with Lia, her brother is quietly sure of himself. He doesn’t have excitement. There is no performance.

For him, it was Lucinda that I wanted him to contact. Though my heart would love to reach out to Gertrude, she is a good-natured woman. She would be easy to reach, I suspect, even for someone who is not very good since I have powerful magic myself. Lucinda, on the other hand, was always a wild spirit. Reaching her and having meaningful communication? That would be a task.

Imagine my surprise when he was not only able to reach her, but the answers to questions only she could answer were correct. The connection was so strong that Lachlan offered to invite her into his body and be her mouthpiece. Tempting as it was, I felt that there was no need. I told him that what he had done was enough. I took them to a diner to eat and invited them to Scarlet’s next party as my personal guests.

There is no doubt in my mind that Lachlan’s story is true. He was never supposed to survive, and for that he is close to the dead. There is a magic in him that is natural. Perhaps, too, very terrifying. I want to keep an eye on him and learn more about his abilities.

 

 

---

 

 

Scarlet and I find ourselves at odds.

Lachlan confirmed without me ever asking that Lilias is not a witch. She has no magical skill to speak of. Instead, she is an avid reader of occult texts. He calls it her ‘lifelong fixation.’ As children, the obsession was harmless, which remains as much in Lachlan’s eyes. The bigger threat is Lia’s “mental issue.” When he explained this further, my heart broke.

After their mother died from tuberculosis, as many do, they had to find a way to get through until Lachlan could find work. This meant that he often took things without paying and lying to Lilias about it. She would often see him steal, but he lied to her about it. Growing up, their mother called her ‘impressionable’ and ‘gullible.’ Lachlan thinks she cannot differentiate between fact and fiction when not explicitly stated. She lacks the ‘art of the implied,’ he said. He told me that this is why she is so convincing as a fortune teller and occult expert. Subtlety misses her.

This lifestyle and inability to really understand the nuances of things resulted Lilias taking some books the same way that she had seen Lachlan always do. One common lie was that - he was coming back later to pay. Lilias thought that everyone could take things and pay later, and so when they travelled through London and happened upon an occult stall at a side street market, well, she did exactly that. Not being coy or cunning, she was caught and arrested.

He was able to convince the courts that she was “mentally disturbed” and “cognitively disabled,” words that he said were written on legal papers he had to carry with him between hearings. Thankfully, she was evaluated by professionals, and it was determined that she was not able to understand the legal proceedings in the same way as her peers. After that, it was recommended that she be placed in a mental hospital. Though the theft charges were dropped, which was largely due not just to her mental status, but also because Lachlan returned the books that Lia took and even paid the price of each item for any possible lost profits. He had to work every side job he could find to do it, and he still had to sell some of their belongings to meet the amount.

But it was determined that she had to remain in the hospital as a “dysfunctional” person that would never be able to contribute in a meaningful way to society. The theft happening at all was “proof” that he could not care for her, which he had tried to argue. Months went on where he could only visit her in a mental hospital where he saw signs of abuse on her skin and in her words. Most visits were spent with him holding her while she shook and cried, trying to understand why he had send her to such a bad place. Try as he did to tell her that he did not do it, Lia said he could have made them stop like he always did.

Lachlan made it his mission to read everything she had collected over the years to break her free. It took a few months, but he was eventually able to woo and trick some staff so that he could get her in the garden for an unsupervised visit, which was not approved by any of the management. It wasn’t on the books so it didn’t officially happen. To add to it, he brewed a tonic for the people he worked with to make this happen, and used it in a lemonade that he served to each of them during the afternoon. This would make their memories foggy, if not completely wipe them out.

By the time anyone would have known she was gone, Lachlan had conned his way into two tickets on a ship sailing to New York. They were going to be on the water before anyone could track their movements, or even make a lucky guess as to where to look. After that, naturally, they worked their way across the country. They didn’t choose California to be movie stars. It was just an easy lie.

Lachlan said it very simply, “I thought Lia would blend in with the dramatic eccentrics.”

He just wanted to find somewhere that nobody would imprison her for being different. Lilias was smarter than anyone would give her credit for if they knew what the doctors said about her. She is kinder than anyone I had ever known, even Gertrude. On the surface, Lilias is just like us. The only thing is that her brain is different. It is simpler, happier. Being with Lia is a pleasant gift.

It is a shame that Lachlan has to hide those things that make her incredible for her safety.

I went to Scarlet immediately. There is no way I can let them continue this life of discomfort and desperate survival. Lia needs a safe place to be herself. Lachlan needs support to enjoy life without the burden of worry. They need a family.

Scarlet sympathized, hell, she even had empathy for aspects of their story. She was very clear that she understood why my heart ached for them. What she did not understand was why I wanted to bring them to The Cat. We are caring for children, not adults, and we are not at all equipped for someone with Lia’s mental challenges. It enraged me that she would suggest that Lia could not be trusted to function on her own. Had she not done so at Lachlan’s side for years?

There was renewed softness when she sensed my agitation. Her thought process was that we have dozens of children to care for, still some who are pregnant, others who have their own babies already, and there’s not enough rooms for so many staff to live on the site. We had only allocated 4 bedrooms for live-in staff, which were occupied by myself and Eddie, and one that Anne and Scarlet alternated between them. I assured her that the twins would share my room and be entirely my responsibility.

When she accepted that I was set on this, there was nothing more to say. We decided I would do as I wish and proceed how I saw fit. Alas, an impasse. Surely it would come up again, yet I do not care. Tomorrow I will extend the offer to them. I do not know what to expect, but I know what I am hoping they will say.

 

 

---

 

 

Lilias has been more than accepted, but fully welcomed as one of the growing family at The Cat. Since she loves reading, she often reads during breakfast, and always does her rounds reading the younger kids to sleep. Some children don’t know how to read, so she also works on reading skills. Lia loves to help with the babies and toddlers. Most of the time she gives the young mothers a break for a nap, which is always received with immense gratitude.

Then there’s the music. Lia loves singing and dancing, so in the downtime after dinner, there’s always a bit of a party in the common room. Nobody questions the things that make her seemingly odd, instead celebrating them as her best traits. The only rule Lachlan and I have for her is to only talk about magic with the staff. She knows who is staff, and only talks about this fascination with the approved people in the approved places. The rigid expectations help her because she knows what to expect, and it never changes.

The best part? Lachlan doesn’t have to lie about anything to cover his own questionable acts.

Anne has been tickled by Lachlan, especially since they are basically doing the same work at The Cat. It gives him a legitimate source of work even though he has no viable income. He offered to keep spirit speaking on the side so that he could contribute, but I did my best to make The Cat self sustaining. The only things we have to buy are really animals goods such as meat, eggs, and dairy. We had contemplated chickens several times, but it is cheaper to buy the eggs than it is to maintain the chickens’ food source in addition to our own.

Lachlan does spirit speak on the side. I told him not to if he didn’t want, but he does genuinely enjoy it. That is the thing about people who do magic, they love it. Seph used magic for much of his life after I taught him. When you have this access to this thing that makes life easier, or at least more exciting, it is hard to leave it behind. It is almost like trying to forget who you are, in some cases, and that was absolutely true for him.

He is every bit as generous as I thought he might be, too. Whenever he does make a spot of cash, he shows up with extra groceries. Lachlan and Lilias blur the line between staff and resident, but never so much that they aren’t respected as authorities in the home. They give as much as they take, which are exactly the expectations for the kids.

Scarlet told me to give them days off at the townhouse, though, so that the line was still defined. They deserved time off, after all. I agreed and on their days off, they share Seph’s room. Since Eddie, Anne, Scarlet, and I still spend our days off there too, well, we’ve started calling it the Wayward House. We are all always coming and going, having a great time together in every way.

A question often arises - whether we will tell Lachlan about Scarlet and myself. Knowing that he is fantastical like us gives us some belief that he can be trusted, but Eddie says the more people that know the more likely it is that someone will let the secret slip. Scarlet usually sides with him, but Anne agrees with me that he is one of us. He would not gain anything by betraying us. It is hard to brag about that being a fair split in opinion, though, because Anne fancies him. She would love nothing more than to be able to talk with him about everything.

Something I have come to realize, too, is that Eddie is interested in Anne in a more serious way. He does not dare say so, of course, since Scarlet has much stricter expectations and rules than I do. To pursue a life with Anne would be in direct defiance of Scarlet, who he does respect greatly, and risk his job. Either because he would need to quit or because she would fire him. I certainly cannot pay him, and it is his combined salary with Scarlet’s that keep the townhouse livable. It helps with The Cat, too.

And, of course, Scarlet maintains that Lachlan lays it on thick that he has his eye on me. The culture of causal sex and this sort of group love makes it hard for me to really be comfortable opening myself to the possibility as a true option. Scarlet is a string that will always be attached to me in so many ways, but I have not had a serious relationship outside of that which I shared with Theodore and Isobel. Whenever the conversation lingers, Scarlet tells me that the fact that Lachlan and Lilias remind me of Isobel seems like a supernatural sign that it is time to be open to something more intimate and committed, even if it goes against what she thinks is the safest choice.

Everything feels more complicated with the sex and romance aspect of our silly arrangement, but I cannot help but feel very complete and sure that I have done the right thing. I am surrounded by people who want to do good and make connections to further that cause. Lachlan opened my eyes to something that I was so long ignorant to in my many lifetimes, and this will let me build another branch of the good that we can do out here.

There is a day that will come, maybe a long time from now, when I will have to ask myself if I have built up something that cannot be maintained without me. Thankfully, this is Los Angeles, and everyone looks younger than they really are and nobody asks your age. For now, I think I should try to enjoy this really fun change. 

Lachlan and Lilias bring such joy. We should soak it all in. Goodness knows that we need more of it.

Chapter 38: Fall 1933

Lachlan found my journal. Well, actually, Lia found it. She told Lachlan that she found this incredible story about a woman named Lorraine who is a vampire when she was tidying up my desk. She thought Lachlan would like it because it was “scary sometimes,” and Lachlan admitted he was always a fan of spooky stories told around a campfire. He shrugged and said, “A boyhood thing,” when he approached me about it.

You see, he doesn’t know me as Lorraine. He hasn’t. 

The woman he knew was Elaine Quill. A woman who knew about magic, accepted it, and ran The Cat to be almost completely self-sustained to give the homeless youth a safe haven. It was simpler. It was easier. It was - human.

And Lorraine Warren, the real me, is a vampire. A murder. A witch. A reaper. A writer. A photographer. A gardener. I’ve worn many hats. Hell, I have even used many names. Elaine is my fifth one now. I write them in the back of my journal to keep track of each new person I become.

I expected him to be angry, and maybe there was some anger, but not for the reason I expected. He was upset that I was slow to trust him with the information. Lachlan thought I would have eventually told him, despite my many assurances that Scarlet and I could not come to an agreement about whether he should know. He was well aware of the debate from the journal entries - and we discussed that once he realized it was a diary he should have stopped reading - but he remains steadfast in his belief that time would have made it impossible to keep this secret from him.

Especially since Scarlet recently announced that she would be leaving California very soon. She is leaving the business to Eddie and Anne. She’s been around for almost three decades now. Though she was older when I turned her, she knows that questions will crop up soon. On that point, we did agree. I knew it was coming. We both knew.

Now that Lachlan knows, he is constantly asking me if I would leave soon, too. Or would I push the limits like I did in Vermont and Colorado. I explained that those situations in those places were different, and pointed out that I am physically younger than Scarlet. While she could make herself up to look younger or older with a wide spectrum of options. The range I have is smaller, which leaves me far less room to really play timelines.

Then he asked the question I feared he would - “And you would have left me behind, then?”

I said to him that I am many things, but I am not a fortune teller or seer. I do not know the future, nor do I claim to. He did not like the answer, but he pushed the diary to me across a table and told me that he would tell Lia that it was a scary and sad book, just like she thought, so that she would not try to read it herself if she saw it again. In the regard, we remain on the same side.

When I informed Scarlet what happened, she was unsurprised. Again, she pressed the matter that Lachlan is very interested in me as a proper wife. She was serious and harsh when she scolded me, “The boy wants to court you! At least let him know if you return the feelings so he can move on with his life.”

In a rare moment of anger, slammed my fists on the table before getting to me feet, and I shouted that my last experience with a relationship was far from ideal because of my own poor judgment and that I am truly, quote, “sorry that I don’t want to rush into something that might hurt everyone involved again!”

Scarlet dismissed me, as she is wont to do when she decides that she is right - or worse, when she knows it. I do fear that this is the latter. It would be foolish to sit here and write this and deny that I don’t see the way Lachlan forcefully tried to get into my social circle, or the way he clings to my company when we’re not working at The Cat.

And, if I am completely honest, I thought perhaps Scarlet was simply jealous. Eddie had stopped pining after her, knowing that she would leave, and found himself excited in this new life with Anne. They quietly wed at The Cat in the spring, and she was soon pregnant. Scarlet suspects that she was pregnant beforehand, but it hardly matters since they were happily coupled, settled.

As Scarlet stepped away from the business in increments, Eddie has needed more hands nursing the kids at The Cat, so we have been teaching Tawny the basics. We don’t have nurses clambering to volunteer with us, not as work picks back up and things start to look better economically. Tawny loves doing hair, but she was more excited helping at The Cat than she ever was working with her family. So, completely off the record, Eddie pays for her out of his own paycheck, and he trains her the way he would train any onboarding nurse or medical student. It will work for what we need. Plus, she loves it.

It also helps fill the hole that will be left behind by Eddie being busier during the day and Scarlet leaving. With Lachlan and Lilias in place, there was still enough staff to be helpful with all the “aged out” kids still coming back to help in their free time, too. Obviously, there would need to be a few more hands with a regular schedule, which is why that shall be going my focus in the coming years.

Back to my main point with Scarlet, though, without Eddie’s romantic attention, and Lachlan vying for my affection, I had thought perhaps she was jealous that she was not craved. I have never known her to be a jealous woman, nor a greedy one, but I once thought that about myself - and then I murdered Seph. In my mind, it was not something I thought was true, but I could not rule it out entirely.

I spoke truthfully. Lachlan is great company, and I never rebuff his efforts to remain close or his kindnesses - the extra money he earns to spend on The Cat, the bouquets he put together for their shared bedroom, the nights spent dancing in the backyard, and trips to go swimming on our shared days off. It would be easy to think we were a couple. There are times when it definitely felt that way.

And yet? Lachlan is right. I would have eventually left him behind.

I will leave him behind.

I have to leave him behind… because I don’t want to think about the alternative. It was painful to lose Gertrude. It was aching to lose Seph twice! Watching Lucinda go, knowing she came here just to die, knowing I sent her into that next life. I’ve have had the comfort of Caroline and Margret being forever with me. Near or far, we are endless together.

Lachlan can’t be. But I fear he would ask. I fear what I would say.

Worst of all, I fear how I would feel if I told him ‘no.’

 

 

---

 

 

After sitting in with Scarlet during a meeting where she informed high ranking members of the mob, police officers, and multiple politicians, I decided that we needed an extra day away from The Cat and the house to really decompress from the stress of those conversations. Many contracts for silence were signed, though other times threats were made, but mostly everyone expressed their sorrow to see such a great host leave the area. Scarlet expressed that her time in the area was over, but that she was sure someone new would come along.

They thought it was going to be me, being that Scarlet and I were linked as far as anyone in those rooms knew. Scarlet assured that they would not like me in charge, which I reaffirmed. I lack the nuance and social pull that Scarlet had acquired. Her reputation locally starkly contrasted mine. Of course, they knew my reputation - the Row Savior. It was a nickname that was never said to me, but I knew some of the kids said it of me in other company. I did not like it, and I asked the other adults to discourage its use if they heard it.

“Your reputation precedes you,” each group of sex-hungry powerful elites assured me. I hated it every single time it was said. What a gift it was to have someone as swift as Scarlet to act as a buffer. She moved the conversations along quickly. We had a hotel room to retire to on the other side of town with a balcony, a large soaking tub, and a beautiful view - and that was a nice buffer, too.

At least it was supposed to be.

Just as Scarlet left to draw a bath for us to soak and sip on some champagne laced with blood, an unexpected visitor arrived. It wasn’t the kind that knocks on a door, and not the kind I welcome with open arms.

“Lorraine,” the voice is deep and low, but never quite human. It sounds like voices humming in the wind, almost words. There is no way Scarlet would have heard it over running water, even with our heightened ability to hear from further distances.

“Is there any way this could wait?” I ask, though I knew that it never actually matters. Death arrives and occurs whenever it pleases. I am at the mercy of my orders as a reaper of the dead. I run my tongue over my teeth in frustration, or maybe as a sign of submission - even without an answer.

“I am afraid it cannot,” there is something akin to empathy in the statement, and I can assure myself now as I write that that I did not recognize it in the moment. My response was rigid, dismissive, and cold. Flicking my hand through the air back and forth, all I could manage was a gruff sigh. Or was it a grunt? Perhaps it could have been both.

The pair of us blink out of the hotel into a much less welcoming scene. It is dark, too. Well, darker than the one we were in before in California. We must be somewhere else that it is later into the evening, somewhere further east. Before I turn around, though, Death raises a hand with a solemn expression, which is a notable change even my irritated state.

Death declared to me, “This is a long overdue payment.”

Now, I did have my suspicions. Death showing up personally only happened on two occasions - just recently when Lucinda passed away, and then the first time for my trials when Gertrude was murdered. There must have been a part of me that already had guessed that this was someone I knew, or at least was connected to somehow. Why else could this not wait? For the briefest moment, I thought it might have been Mary. After all, she had done plenty of wrong and was immortal just like us. It was not impossible to think Death had a score to settle with her.

As I said, it was but a fleeting second that I considered Mary the reason for this showing. Once the entirety of Death’s behavior sunk through my brain like a ship on rough waters, the statement wasn’t just a warning - it was a reminder.  I knew the reason this reaping had to be done by me - the reason why it couldn’t wait another day - the reason for Death’s rare performance of humanity. The soul I needed to collect…

It was Margaret.

Despite expecting something of a crime scene, I was not at all prepared for what I did see. To my left is a dead man. Brutalized! His soul must have already been sent along by Death. Then there’s a woman holding Margaret’s body. She is crying. She is also bloodied. It seems to me that she probably killed the man, and I assume that a safe bet is that she was trying to protect Margaret.

Unsuccessfully, unfortunately.

But I also see the familiar wispy fog wrapping around the woman’s body. I cannot say with certainty that it is Elizabeth, but that is who Raymond told me she left with last year. This is my only clue, since it has been too long since I saw her last, and I know age will have changed her. It has been nearly 20 years now.

“Margaret,” I said with the familiar tone of finality, “It’s me.”

As with all the other souls, there was a bit of shifting to create a distinct shape, but when the foggy air rises it is Margaret’s face clearly staring back at me. For a moment, it seems like she doesn’t know who I am. The only other person I saw at the time of death that knew me was Lucinda, so I do not know if this is common. Lucinda recognized me right away, but she also died peacefully.

Margaret, on the other hand, died a pretty traumatic death, being that there are only a couple of ways to kill us vampires. I wonder if her memories are in shambles.

“Lorraine?” She asked gently, an air of bewilderment. “What’s happening?”

Stammering, she asks why she is in two places at once and why Elizabeth can’t see her. I told her that Elizabeth can’t see any of us - her, me, or Death. That is when Margaret looks beyond me and sees Death near the entrance of the home. What was a lack of understanding morphed in stages - first horror, then anger, soon after that there was sobbing, ending in a cool and flat affect of relief.

In the moment, she looked pathetic, not unlike a soggy dog in a thunderstorm. I felt an icy pity for her the way I did everyone I reaped. Collecting the dead in a war does that to a person and it is rather quite permanent. Still, I offered comfort to her as a friend, the way I would have any other time.

“This is but a moment, the final moment before eternal peace,” a line I had recited often came easily from my lips. But this time, I was at her side, my hand reaching for hers. She didn’t acknowledge me beyond accepting my physical touch to her spirit.

Margaret whispered goodbyes in a hushed tone, telling Elizabeth how much she loved her and how she regretted turning her. That if she had just let her die, that if she hadn’t given in, then they could be still together, even if it was in death. Heavy drops of her misty form fell over Elizabeths shoulders and evaporated against the fabric of her clothes.

It was only when she finally brought her gaze to mine that she seemed to process my being here with her. I offered her a gentle grin, the closest to a maternal expression I could manage. Love children as I do, well, I just never saw myself as a mother. A carer, not a parent. Unsure as I felt, Margaret received it and took the first step back from a mourning Elizabeth.

“What happens next?” Margaret was not asking out of curiosity. She was seeking guidance, instructions. At my touch, a door can be opened and split the veil, or a couple of taps with my foot can force a rip directly in front of me when a door is unavailable. For this situation, I wanted to walk Margaret to the door.

I wanted to send her off with love.

As we slowly, or possibly even lazily, wandered towards the front door, I explained how painless this transition would be. It isn’t like dying, not when someone dies like that - a stab straight through the heart. That’s violent, shocking, and agonizing. Walking through the veil? It’s like walking through your front door after a long trip, or being hugged by a loved one near the heat of a fresh, winter fire.

“But my loved one is right there,” she declared with little more than a sigh. It did not hurt my feelings that she hadn’t considered me. In fact, it is fair. When have I ever been there for her? Or Caroline? To me to expect that status as a dearly beloved - entitled. That is simply nothing I deserve from either of them.

It was what she said next that struck a chord inside of me, “She’s going to come find you. I told her to go to you.”

Almost as if I was breaking character, I gasped, “What?”

“She’s a new vampire. I turned her because she was going to die. Elizabeth won’t know what to do,” the explanation was somehow the most emotional she’d sounded. With all the jarring, upsetting things she is facing, it was this one that she cared most about - she wanted me to help her.

So I promised her, “Elizabeth will have a home with me for as long as she wishes.”

“She asks a lot of questions,” she warned.

“Not a problem,” I had laughed.

“Elizabeth can get pushy,” and she laughed this time, too.

Before I reach for the door knob, I yank Margaret’s soul into a hug. As I am holding her spirit with mine, our essence intermingling in the shared space, I tell her something that I should had told her far too long ago.

And I think they were fitting last words, “I forgive you, child, and I’m so sorry.”

For the first time since we were turned into vampires in this remedy gone wrong hundreds of years ago, Margaret actually looked happy. I pushed the door open and her transformation began. Smoky air blurs any features as her mortal forms comes back into existence before my eyes. She throws a glance over her shoulder as she steps into the door frame, and I can see the rosiness of her youthful cheeks. Wisps of her hair fly with the movement of her head, her marks of her immortal years are gone - no freckle, no green thumb, no mossy tinged skin. She looks so very human.

My final parting exchange is a gentle wave as I start pulling the door closed. As I do, though, I hear a familiar voice that breaks me out of my detachment to the reality of what I’ve just done - Gertrude. It was Gertrude’s unmistakable howl of joy when something made her happy.

She called out, “Lucinda! Margaret’s come! She’s finally home!”

Once the door was closed, Death wasted no time returning us to the hotel room. I returned to my body laying in a bed. Scarlet was not in the room, but she must have found me. Why would I blame her for leaving me alone? What could she do with me, especially not knowing how long I would be gone?

Death does not linger. Again, this is not a surprise, but I see it now as a small sign of respect. In a rare moment of true overwhelm and despair, I was crying. My knees were in my chest, I had pulled a pillow to my face, and I was shaking. The bed was shaking, too, and it betrayed my efforts to avoid bothering Scarlet as she relaxed.

There were only seconds between the scratching of the bed frame’s leggsagainst the floor and her naked body crawling next to me in the bed. As Margaret draped herself over Elizabeth, Scarlet did the same for me. It felt like hundreds of years of injustices and frustration and pain all came to breaking point with losing Margaret.

I had just written already this season that it would always be us three, and now it is a falsehood. It is a lie. She is gone. If she can be gone, anyone can be gone. Caroline. Scarlet. Mary. Lachlan.

Oh, Lachlan.

I didn’t tell Scarlet what happened until morning. Hard as it was to move so breezily past Margaret’s death, we had to discuss Elizabeth’s impending arrival. We do not know her demeanor, so being a new vampire is not as easy to prepare for as it was with Scarlet. We make a plan over champagne, and then she puts me in a bath filled with bubbles. As I sunk my body in, she tossed rose petals and stems of fresh lavender into the water while we reminisced over all our lost loved ones for hours and hours.

Shattered as I felt, Scarlet healed the one thing I could never fix alone: myself.

 

 

---

 

 

As was told to me, Elizabeth arrived in Los Angeles looking for me around two weeks after Margaret’s death. I prepared everyone for her arrival by establishing clear boundaries - she is not to know where The Cat is located. She is not allowed to visit or work there. In fact, she won’t be allowed to leave the house. When explaining this to Lia, we told her that Elizabeth would be in danger if she left the house because “something horrible could happen.” We didn’t say to do whom, of course. There’s still a secret to be kept, after all.

The rest of us did decide that Lia wouldn’t be allowed to be with Elizabeth alone. Not necessarily because we didn’t trust Lia, or even because we didn’t trust Elizabeth, but because they both were variables. We did not know what they would and would not do - Lia because she is different, and Elizabeth because she is new.

When establishing the parameters of her stay, at least at the time, Elizabeth did not ask a lot of questions. Actually, I’m pretty sure she was taking notes on paper while we talked. It was so easy at that point that I wondered if Margaret just felt so reserved and inside of herself that the few questions that Elizabeth did ask felt intrusive.

But I was wrong. After I told her she couldn’t leave, what the dangers could be with her being a new vampire, and that we needed to train her body to cope with the change over a period of time so that she would be equipped whenever she would venture out on her own. I transitioned our conversation to a sort of interview exchange. I opened the table to queries she has about being vampire first.

Her first questions were alarmingly personal - do you eat people? Have you ate people? Do you just drink blood? Or do you eat the body too?

Taken aback as I was, the only path was to answer candidly. Maybe I was influenced by Lachlan’s reaction to my dishonesty? I don’t know, but more truthfully, I think I wanted her to come into this situation without any misunderstandings or assumptions that could lead her astray. I feel a responsibility over whatever Elizabeth will do with this immortality even though I am not responsible for her transformation. Alas, I am responsible for her existence hereto.

These answers - sort of, yes, yes, not really - prompted us in the direction of actual lore. I pulled out Theodore’s book, a long forgotten journal that sees more time with Lia than it does with me these days. I showed her all of the factual information. We can go out in the sun, heightened sense and strength, no need for sleep, how new vampires are made - when bitten without killing but the change only occurs after a fatal event. I explained how I turned Scarlet as delicately as possible, but she still blushed. She might think I didn’t see her tiny smile, but the curl in her lip was easy to see when reading every reaction for clues to a personality.

All this told me is that Elizabeth is nothing like Margaret. Not nearly as soft and innocent, or rather private and guarded at least. Immediately, I could tell that she will get along well with Lia. Their giggles will fill these rooms without a doubt. Exciting as it is that she might be a more lively woman, it also worries me. She could act recklessly.

The conversations about the lore of vampires transitioned us into a conversation about why she must hide and become a recluse if there’s no imminent danger. I explain that, while we do have access to blood, that doesn’t mean that the cycle easy to go through. After all, since this will be her first cycle after turning, the regurgitation will be very violent and very traumatic.

“But why didn’t I have a cycle as the moon waxed before?”

When I walked her through the calendar, going back to the day that she changed, it was two days prior to a full moon. She had just attacked a man, no less. Going through such a change so close, we hypothesized that she was too new for the curse to respond to the moon’s movements. So this will be her first one. Together, we put the notes into Theo’s journal for future reference.

As I explain some of the things that will happen, from how she feels to the blood clots that will come out of her, the all over body pain, she snickered at the seriousness on my face. She asked if it was really that bad? Then she said something that actually sent me howling in laughter, “It just sounds like a period, but, I guess, from your mouth?”

This felt like a good time to end the conversation. Since we were still a few days out, I suggested that we get her set up in the upstairs bedroom. Seph’s old bedroom has become more of a guest room than anything. Lachlan, Lia, Tawny take turns in the bedroom that once belonged to me. Scarlet and I will go to the guest room sometimes if we are worried Lia and Tawny might hear us talking or suspect we never sleep. As far as Lia and Tawny are concerned, we will just share the room with Elizabeth now.

I guess we could call it a vampire lounge, since there will be three of in there.

I write this now with the hindsight of her arrival and first cycle. How has a month already passed? Over this time, she has fawned over Scarlet. As it turns out, Elizabeth was a child at her New Jersey orphanage. Though Scarlet hadn’t been there during her time, she was practically a piece of folklore among the staff and children. Elizabeth adored her, and often stared at her figure just a little longer than she would ever admit aloud.

From the outside, she seems to get alone with Eddie the most. He asks lots of questions and she responds with her own. They speak for hours when Eddie and Anne come over for dinners. Anne is noticeably pregnant now, which Elizabeth absolutely loves. Etiquette on how to speak with pregnant women is completely lost on her, being so inquisitive and focused on this pursuit of knowledge. Anne finds it amusing, though, and often flirts with Elizabeth often. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, even after learning of everyone’s entanglements.

Try as we did, Lia always talked about the sex parties. Elizabeth was constantly flushed in a pink that could put any peony to shame. She told stories about sex on tables, in open spaces surrounded by voyeurs, in stairwells, and bent over balcony railings. Lia talks about how she gets to enjoy the “sensations” with so many people: men, women, and people who aren’t quite one or the other, and others who seem like they are both. Lia always tells Elizabeth that she doesn’t judge because sex is a shared experience, and as long as everyone is choosing to do it, what do the body parts matter? Elizabeth’s eyes are swollen at the end of every conversation.

Lia is her best friend, of course, because they can talk endlessly about everything and nothing. Their friendship was easy. Do not be fooled, they both leave me on edge, maybe more than the wilder children at The Cat sometimes, but I am so pleased that they have each other during this weird time for Elizabeth.

Tawny loves to brush Elizabeth’s hair and put it into plaits and braids. Sometimes she brushes it into curls that frame her face. Though Tawny has concerns and questions, I find her to be the most understanding of Elizabeth’s arrangements. In fact, she tells me often that girls like me and her, women who are not white, understand the terror of having to be hidden away for safety better than anyone else. Tawny brings Elizabeth things to keep her busy - books, pencils and paper to draw, string and beads. Out of all of us, she is the most maternal and comforting by far. Sometimes, I wonder why she never settled down and had children, but never enough to ask her.

And then there’s Lachlan.

Scarlet and I understand what it is, of course. He is jealous of the attention I am giving to Elizabeth. He does not speak to her, unless it is to redirect Lia from a topic that is too close to a forbidden line of conversation. Anytime that Elizabeth tries to talk to him or invite him to play a game, he grunts and urgently finds a new place to be in the house. She tells me that he broods outside the front window, which is cracked so he can hear what goes on inside the house, and is always watching. He rarely involves himself when Lia is not present.

It isn’t just Elizabeth, either. When we gathered people to talk with them about Margaret’s death, my reduced presence at The Cat for a few months, and it came out that Scarlet had been staying with me in a hotel during this crisis… Lachlan has avoided Scarlet as well. His jealousy is worsened by the confrontation about my lies, so I  hesitate to call it petulant or childish in any way. He is hurting.

I am hurting him.

Scarlet keeps telling me that I need to just have a conversation with him and confront all the things that are being left unspoken. We need to get on the same page and clearly establish what will and won’t happen between us. If it were just a suggestion from her, I would not toss and turn over it when lie down at night to relax.

Unfortunately, Scarlet is not healing me with sweetness alone. She keeps forcing me to address things within myself, within my control, and affected by me. Scarlet will leave after Elizabeth has gone through one more cycle - an extension she made only to support a new turned vampire, and to support me during a transition that she knows will be hard on me. Of course, she is also making sure there is a resolution to the turmoil between Lachlan and myself.

Scarlet will see to it that I either accept Lachlan’s love or rebuff it.

I suppose that will be another entry for another time.

Notes:

Thank you for reading this labor of love. If you enjoyed this, please make sure to share the love! Give a kudos, leave a comment, or even share this story with your best buds. I appreciate you taking time out of your day for my story.