Series 11/Chapter 6: KISS OF THE WITCH

Dominique & Gabriel at his office

The night grew cold. It was the real first touch of winter overlapping an autumn night. There was drops of frost forming on leaves all around and the cool breath of an arctic chill from the north had settle into Collinsport.

At Collinwood, chaos had settled into shock and horror as Angelique's plan to keep Victoria Winters from her family and thus her secret identity locked away to free herself to be with Curtis under a shape-shifting disguise was now exposed.

Curtis, his heart breaking in a million pieces for the woman, Cassandra, he loved was stunned.

Victoria, too, was in shock. She couldn't believe the rest of her family was alive. All this time while she was trapped at Windcliff she believed them all dead. Angelique's twisted spell had lasted long enough, and now Vicky was finally home and able to speak for the first time in what felt like ages.

In the drawing room, Alex, Carolyn, Andrew and now David huddled around Vicky listening to her whole harrowing story, of how she recognized Angelique at the Hotel, and how soon after Vicky mysteriously fell ill and Curtis began to behave strangely and suddenly she was locked away at Windcliff and how Angelique had posed as Cassandra and Dr. Wolf this whole time making her believe the family had died in the battle between Alex and Angelique almost 8 months earlier.

The games were over. But Curtis, who was pacing back and forth in the foyer, could not believe a word of it. He wanted to believe his love was real. That the woman he made love to, the woman he saw so much joy in was truly and madly in love with him and return and incapable of doing what his mother way saying.

"Vicky, thank god you made it out of there. We had been trying for months to see you and no one would let us. They kept telling us your doctor refused anyone except Curtis." Carolyn explained holding her half sister's hand as they sat together by roaring fire.

"We really did try everything." David added.

"I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without...." Vicky said looking for the woman who helped her escape. "Where is she?"

"Where's who?" Carolyn said looking around.

"There was a woman who helped me escape. She was a fellow patient, we shared a room. She was right here! She came here to find..." Victoria said quickly cutting herself off before mentioning Dominique's quest to find David.

"To see who?" Carolyn questioned as she held Vicky's hands.

"I'm confused. I think I'm just confused." Vicky replied slowly turning her head to see if Dominique was hiding behind any of the old furniture.

The group looked around too and saw that the front door passed the foyer was open.

"Maybe she ran off, maybe she went after Angelique." Alexandra said, knowing that wasn't true, but trying to help her aunt feel better.

Andrew got up and went into the foyer to see where the woman was but found no one except for Curtis. Andrew could see the stress and confusion written all over Curtis' face. He grabbed Curtis by the shoulders and stopped him in his tracks.

"Listen, you have to calm down, you have to go in there and listen to what your mom is saying and come to terms with what happened. Angelique has done some really off the wall things; she played everyone. Not just you." Andrew explained.

"No, I just can't believe that. I won't believe Cassie was someone else the whole time. She....I loved her. I still love her." Curtis explained.

"She had you under some spell, Curtis, it's the only explanation." Andrew said, trying to make sense of why Curtis was so locked in love with Angelique as Cassandra.

"No. It was real. I swear it was all real." Curtis replied.

"Any sign of this woman Vicky is talking about?" David asked walking in from the drawing room.

"No. We didn't see anyone with Vicky. If there were, must she ran off after Angelique. When we came downstairs there was only Curtis, Carolyn and Vicky here." Andrew said.

"I didn't see anyone run after Angelique." Curtis said confirming Andrew's account.

"Well Vicky swears someone helped her escape Windcliff and came with her here, but no one saw anyone with Vicky." David concluded. "I just got off the phone with Windcliff too...they're fine with her staying here, luckily being the husband of their Chief of Staff we're not longer just harboring a fugitive."  David added.

"Did you mention the other person that came with Vicky?" Andrew questioned.

"Yes.....they had no idea who I was talking about." David said shocking Andrew and Curtis equally.

David then turned to Curtis, he could sense his frustration and anger about Angelique's lies, it was spilling out of Curtis like heat from the sun, feverishly pushing the truth from his own mind.

"Curtis, look, I know you're upset about all this but the thing is, Angelique, well she's done things like this before. It's not your fault. But your mother needs you now. She's been through so much and needs you to be there with her so she can begin to heal." David replied in his most fatherly voice.

Curtis could not keep still. His heart was still racing and he couldn't make sense of what had just happened. There was a rush of energy inside of him, the power Angelique had over him was still there, still spiraling and swishing around in his veins. The love she had for him broke over him like a fever that would not cool.

"I have to find Angelique. I have to know if what we had between us was real. I'm sorry. I have to find her!" Curtis shrugged off David's hands and looked at this mother sitting in the drawing room from the foyer. Then he looked at the open from door, the darkness outside called to him, the night air, cold and bitter pulled him away from his family and he dashed off into the darkness to find Angelique leaving Vicky heartbroken on the sofa.


Alex, now sitting to Vicky's right, as Carolyn sat to Vicky's left comforted her aunt. She took Vicky's other hand and squeezed tightly and closed her eyes. She could feel Vicky's energy was weak but fighting. She could feel with her whole body the power that Vicky had and how far she had come.

In the corners of her mind, Alex could sense that Angelique's hold over Vicky was weakening but was still present. Suddenly, as Alex sat on the sofa with Carolyn and Vicky, a chill ran up her spine and filled her brain and into her mind. Without even knowing it, Alex opened her eyes and found herself transported into a vast black open space. Alone.

Her footsteps echoed in what felt like a giant chamber, empty and bare with nothing around her. Just blackness

"Hello? Hello!?" Alex screamed.

"These powers become you. They've stuck to you like honey from a wasps nest. I never knew you'd be able to control them with such prowess, but here we are." A voice purred from the emptiness of the void, Alex recognized it as Angelique's.

"What do you want? Where have you gone?" Alex replied, as Angelique's body materialized right before her face out of thin air.

"I'll never leave you Alexandra, I've become apart of you now that you've taken everything from me. And I do mean everything. My whole world is now just.... as blank as this space we're in now. This is my last bit of power flowing from me into you. It seems you have won." Angelique said forcing herself to pass the powers fully and finally to Alexandra but then added a grim "Good luck." at the end of her sentence.

"NO! What are you talking about? I don't want this, I never asked for any of this. I don't want these powers." Alex replied.

"You speak with such sincerity and yet you seem to revel in everything that I have unwillingly given you. Don't you see? The powers that you have are not given you, you were chosen Alexandra, chosen to take it them on from me. I had nothing to do with it....it was him." Angelique said rolling her eyes.

"Him? Him who?"

Angelique did not answer only smiled evilly as the blank room began to change colors before Alex's eyes.

"I only became like this because of Claudia, she put this...this black magic into me! She started this! I never ever asked for it." Alexandra said, mentioning Angelique's beloved daughter with Barnabas that had gone missing just 3 years ago.

It was true, when Alexandra first came to Collinsport with Carolyn, a vengeful Claudia had possessed Alexandra. Alexandra did horrible things while possessed but when they two souls were separated, some of Claudia's residual powers remained inside of Alex. Alex was a sort of sponge for the supernatural dark forces that were in her blood. Leeching amount of powerful energy that merged with her own.

But nothing as powerful as the powers Alex obtained as a result of her absorption of Angelique in a battle almost 8 months earlier, a battle that Angelique was keen on rectifying by killing Alex on site to again control of her strength---which she had failed at three times.

"Don't speak of my daughter, don't you dare. It's because of you she's gone. It's because of all of you she won't set foot in Collinwood. Her betrayal by a family she wanted to be so close to and a part of....you've all banished her without ever really knowing her. But even when her powers went to you, it wasn't because of her, it was also because of him....Alex...he thinks you're special. He sees something in you that he saw in me." Angelique said defending her missing daughter.

"Who is he? TELL ME!" Alex screamed.

"One day you'll know. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow or even the next day but when he comes to collect from you the gift he's given you through Claudia and now through me, you'll meet. Be patient....and Alex......be careful." Angelique warned.

"I swear, we never wanted it...I never wanted any of it." Alex pleaded.

"Don't you see? It doesn't matter what YOU want, it never was about you. And It's too late. You have it now, you control all of my powers. Everything is yours, as of just a few hours ago I no longer have any strength in me what so ever. You've won....I just hope you don't ...let it go to your head." Angelique replied as she circled Alex 'round and round, like a shark coveting it's next meal.

"Get away." Alex hissed seeing Angelique piratically licking her lips like a tiger ready to pounce on a gazelle.

"Don't worry, young one. I won't hurt you. He protects you now. Forever." Angelique grinned. "although I wish I could hurt you."

"What have you done to Curtis?" Alex said.

Angelique winched at the mention of her beloved'd name, as if Alex had pressed a knife deep into her heart and twisted.

"Do not ever speak to me of Curtis. He's suffered enough. What I did was the only thing I knew how to do. It's all I've ever known. That's something you'll never understand Alexandra. The pain of being what I was without knowing what true love could feel like. I had to fight for it. I had to get it for myself....anyway I could. I wanted him to see who I truly was inside, Cassandra was the real person inside of me and she brought out the best in him in ways I could never imagine. We truly love each other. Deeply." Angelique replied stopping in her tracks. "And now it's all over, but I guess the Collins family is pleased with that, I've never really had any luck with any of those men."

"You don't play fair. They can love you too if you only allow it to be without tricks and spells." Alex pointed out.

Angelique scoffed, rolled her eyes again and giggled to herself. The new young witch could never know what she had seen all her life, the treatment of women by men, the way she had to fight battle scratch her way to the top of where she once was all because men like the three Collins men she loved had always underestimated just how powerful she was. Now, Alexandra would have a taste of that power, and how she used it would be a result of how the world treated her. Only good can come from good, but as Angelique knew well, the world at times was filled with more darkness than light.

"Keep that mind-set, young Alexandra, it should work in your favor as the wolves come hunting your blood. Trust me when I saw this, your powers, those that were once mind, are stronger than anything this earth has ever seen. Know how to use it to your advantage because the moment you open your mind and realize just what you're capable of....there's no turning back."

As Angelique spoke she stepped closer and closer to Alex. As the two were inching closer and closer together. Alex could feel Angelique's breath on her face. She could almost feel Angelique pulse, a heart beat that thumped into the air like a radio air wave ...boom boom boom.

"One last thing....to seal the deal of the devil." The floundering witch said with a hiss in her voice.

Angelique then grinned a Cheshire cat grin and leaned in and kissed Alex on the lips, the final touch. The final passing of the torch. The power exchange that would last forever.

Angelique pulled away, her face grinning with the release of what she felt was a giant weight lifting from her shoulders...her powers were like shackles around her ankles,  now those shackles were released.

Angelique, for all her hurt and horrors was now free of the powers she thought she needed to survive. Her own curse lifted.



Alex opened her eyes and she was back on the sofa with her mother Carolyn and Vicky. She felt like she was gone for hours but it had only been seconds with her eyes closed.

"Honey? Are you ok?" Carolyn asked noticing her daughter seemed off.

"Your hand is like ice." Vicky said to Alex.

"She's gone. I think she's gone now....she's really gone." Alex replied of Angelique.

"Who?" Carolyn asked.

"Angelique." Alex replied to Vicky's stunned facial expression.

"How can you  be so sure?" Vicky replied.

Alex didn't know the answer to that, but she knew, in her heart, her blood, her every fiber of her being that it was over. The witch was no longer a witch. The weight over Alex too lifted.

"I just...." Alex said softy, heart beating in her chest like the flickering wings of a butterfly.
" I just Know."

Carolyn and Vicky looked over at each other, both knowing full well the way things in Collinsport came and went like the wind. The eyes brooding with skepticism, but Alex remained sure that Angelique Bouhcard gave her one final goodbye with a kiss.

Alexandra and Angelique 

****

The late night wore on, feeling endless to those who's life had been turned upside down by Angelique Bouchard and her villainous treachery. She had gone too far--again--but across town other's had just as much anxiety and stress as the souls at Collinwood.

In his off, under a dim light that only shined on his desk District Attorney Gabriel do Arco scribbled on his note pad Julia Hoffman's name over and over and over. He couldn't get the vision he had from earlier that day out of his mind. It was just one more vision in a lifetime of visions that Gabriel had experience.

Gabriel was a special human being. His heart was as tough as gold. His soul was pure and strong. He was a righteous man who fought for those he loved fiercely and protected all that he could with everything he had in him. It was the reason he became a lawyer and the reason he rose so high until becoming District Attorney. But the righteous world he surrounded himself in was not only one of the law, it was also in an ability that he was born with.

Gabriel was a man who could see into the mind's of those who were troubled and in pain and who needed his protection beyond all understanding. He would often come to places where he was needed. He was often the first person his friend leaned on when they needed him. His sister Dominique included.

As he scribbled Julia's name over and over again an unexpected knock came at his office. Gabriel sat there for a second unsure if what he heard was real. Then the knock came again. The main room beyond his office was dark, no one else was in the building. He got up from his desk and slowly walked over to the door, he grabbed the knob, turned it and standing there was is freshly escaped from Windcliff sister, Dominique Do Arco.

"Dom??!" Gabriel said, as Dominique jumped into his arms. "What are you doing here?"

"I got out. Again." She said making her way into this office. "I like your place."

"How did you know I was here?" Gabriel said neglecting the fact Dominique just confessed to an escape.

"Gabriel, I always know where you are. I can feel you remember? We're connected." She replied as Gabriel's mind slowly began to assemble the fact Dominique was really standing in his office.

"--But....what are you doing here?" Gabriel asked, his voice sounding concerned with a small twinkle of fear.

"Victoria and I finally got out of that place and I helped her get home." Dominique explained, her brow furrowing with the memory of the bizarre incident at Collinwood with Angelique/Cassie. "It was frightening," She said out of the blue.

"What was?" Gabriel asked.

"I saw things I never ...I don't know what I saw. I don't know what happened, but then I saw David and I was scared. I didn't know what I should do. He was there just like I wanted him to be, we were so close but I couldn't...I just couldn't. So I ran off."

"Because he's moved on without you, right?" Gabriel said, to Dominique's sad face.

She realized that their time at Windcliff together 20 years ago when they initially met and fell in love must have just been a blip on David's radar. She couldn't make sense of why he had forgotten her, or how he had moved on. But it was reality, and reality was not something Dominique, in her frame of mind, could make any sense of. She had returned to remind him of their love, but it was slowly creeping into Dominique's rattled mind that it was not to be.

The bigger picture was that Dominique was connected to David Collins more than anyone really knew and this was the true reason she needed to see him.

"I don't think he remembers ---us." Dominique answered.

"Dom, he has a lot going on and I know that you've come back to try and have him remember but ....do you think that's really a good idea? Right now? Remember what I told you years ago when you wanted me to help you get to David? I said that there was a time and a place for everything in this world and that people need to be in those places so that they can deal with the next challenge in life. Do you think David is up for ...well, you know?" Gabriel questioned.

Dominique stood up and went over to the window of Gabriel's office. She looked out onto the dark street below. Her eyes followed a single car driving up the main street until it became blurry and turned onto another street in town. She looked out and saw the bright streetlights illuminating the small downtown area of Collinsport and touched the glass of the window, she closed her eyes and remembered the time 20 years ago when she and David met and they were both patients at Windcliff, how he would hold her close, how his heartbeat felt on her skin when they made love and how she felt like they were truly made for each other. She could feel him right next to her even there in Gabriel's office.

She opened her eyes and removed her hand from the glass of the window. Her hand did not leave the mark of warmth on the window. Her hand did not leave any trace of anything when she release it from the glass.

"Are you ok?" Gabriel said grabbing her hand from the glass.

"I don't know." She replied.

"Dom do you remember what happened 5 years go when you were still in the August mental hospital? Do you recall anything from then?"

"I don't want to talk about it." Dominique replied sternly.

"I think you need to. I think you need to realize what's going on, and I want you to know that I can help you. Please....let me help you." Gabriel said, his body now close to his sister. He turned her around and they hugged, her body fully engulfed by his strong arms as he began to glow, his whole spirit began to light up the room filling every corner with the bright yellow light that came from him, it was his aura, it was his protection for his sister. She turned her face and began to cry as the memories of 5 years ago broke into her mind once more.

This man, her brother, her protector and guider had always been there for Dominique through all her troubles and he was there for her now,  but she needed to be open to the truth, otherwise no one could move forward, especially and most importantly Dominique who was trapped in two worlds.

"Do you remember? Think back....5 years go, and what you asked me to do." Gabriel asked.

"I do." She said, her eyes filled with tears.

Gabriel let go of his sister and she looked up at him, her story, her return was to reconnect with David but on a much deeper level than what she had explained to Victoria. The reason Dominique was separated from David at Windcliff was because of their closeness, their affair ....and her subsequent pregnancy from that affair. Windcliff officials wanted nothing to do with the bad press that would come with having two patients creating a child together. So they separated the two torn lovers, sending Dominique up to an hospital in Augusta and encouraged the doctor their to abort the pregnancy.

But in Augusta things were different. The doctor's chose other avenues, and David and Dominique did indeed shared a child, who was now around 24 years old.

David never knew of this baby later given to Gabriel to raise after birth. The trauma and embarrassment this had on Dominique who already suffered from terrible mental illness became too much for her.

She struggled to regain control of her life in the years since her separation from her baby and David, but 5 years ago, 5 dark and horrible years ago, something snapped and Dominique in her most weakest and powerless movement changed everything for her baby, her brother and herself---forever.

**AUGUSTA, MAINE, EVERWOOD MENTAL HOSPITAL 2014**

Dominique stood in the bathroom of her hospital room. She stared at herself in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. She thought about everything that had happened to her. The lover she lost, the baby she had to give up years prior. She thought about the pain of her whole family had endured because of her severe bi-polar disorder that forced them to institutionalize her....an event that the family would regret because of its old-fashioned approach. The feeling of loss and sorrow filled Dominique and the whole Do Arco family...constantly.

It was their own horrible curse.

Over her lifetime, Dominique had suffered too, as she grew older her mental health began to deteriorate. Her family felt they had no choice but to place her at Everwood as a teenager. Dominique would become better with time and much medication, but she could never, and would never live freely outside of a mental hospital.

Upon her parent's death in the late 1980s, her brother Gabriel would be her outside ward. He'd come and visit her every weekend. He even moved closer to Augusta as he was now raising Dominique's young child with David....a daughter named India.

The siblings were close. they were best friends. He was always her shining light in a dark sky.

But Gabriel could not protect her from everything, not even the dark thoughts that plagued Dominique's mind on this very night in 2014.

Still staring into the mirror at Everwood, Dominique reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter she had stolen from a nurse with a terrible smoking habit that had been left the nurses station just hours before when one of them wasn't looking. She flickered the trigger on and creating little sparks with each flick. She wanted out of this place. She wanted out of everything that had to do with Everwood.

Dominique looked back at herself in the mirror and knew what she had to do.

She walked back into her room from the bathroom and gathered the white sheets from her bed. She felt the starchy and scratchy fabric rip at her arms as she carried the bundle of sheets back into the bathroom where there was a small fiberglass tub that the nurses would bathe her in. She stared down at the tub as flashes of ice cold baths came across her sick mind.

She growled to herself in those memories and threw the sheets in the tub. She flicked the lighter again. The orange spark lit a glowing light in her face that showed the madness in her eyes.

She'd create a fire, she thought, something to distract the staff. And when they'd come rushing into her room she'd escape. Out over Everwood Mental, out of Augusta and back to her daughter and David's arms.

Dominique lit the sheets and watched them begin to burn. They started to become swallowed up by flames, bright and hot. They started to open up and turn black and the heat was becoming stronger and stronger.

What Dominique had not realized was that the fiberglass tub wasn't the best place to create a fire.

The flames became so intense as the tub itself began to melt and cause a huge back-draft of flames that suddenly began to fill the room with thick black smoke and a smell of melting plastic. The smoke was so thick, Dominique became disoriented and couldn't make her way to the bathroom door.

The smoke choked her. She passed out, her head slamming on the white tile floor of her bathroom.

The fire engulfed the whole hospital. Many escaped with their lives.....but not Dominique.

Over in a small apartment in Augusta, Maine, Gabriel was sitting on a sofa reading a book with India not knowing of the tragedy his sister had created. Not knowing the devastation her faulty mind had started only because she wanted to be free, wanted to be out, wanted to be back in the world of those she loved. He had no idea. No idea what was to come.

As Gabriel read the little girl in his custody the story he suddenly, and without provocation became violently ill. He rushed to the bathroom leaving India on the sofa, somewhat startled, with her book.

Gabriel ran to the toilet bowl and began to heave as if he was going through a terrible sudden stomach flu, but as he opened his mouth only black smoke came out. Thick like that of the fire at the Augusta mental hospital that had just burned to the ground with his sister inside,.

He looked into his bathroom mirror, his eyes were bloodshot, his heart and pulse racing.

Then an empty feeling came over him. An emptiness he had never felt before. His aura began to glow hot like the flames Dominique had set and his heart began to grow hot like coal, in his chest a light burning bright then dim, bright then dim, bright then dim.

Dominique, his sister made a mistake. She died on the bathroom floor of her hospital room--an error--a horrible horrible error in judgment clouded by her suffering.

***PRESENT DAY, GABRIEL'S OFFICE***

The woman standing in the room with Gabriel, the woman Victoria met in the hospital was all a spiritual allusion, a spark of energy like the lighter, this energy was Dominique from the other side. She could not pass into the light in peace without her daughter and David meeting each other. This elaborate life-form was a spirit, who needed finalization with the world she left behind, and her brother, her guardian angel Gabriel, was going to make it happen. He promised her this.

Dominique turned to the window again in Gabriel's' office, her reflection just a dim light standing next to her brother.

"Will you bring me my daughter?" She said

Gabriel nodded his head yes and smiled.

"I'll send for her when the time is right. She's been doing so well despite some set backs in her life but she's a beautiful 23 year old woman who has a lot of love and a lot of passion. You will be proud of her." Gabriel explained as he looked into the light that was his sister's spirit in the reflection of the window.

"Where is she?" Dominique asked as she turned back to her brother. He looked down, and there she was in her past human form.

"She was living in Savannah, but left not too long ago. And now she's been studying at NYU." Gabriel said. "Ill ask her to come here."

Dominique smiled and held on to her brother once more. Her peace was coming, her peace was coming soon.

****

The Rose cottage on the Collinwood estate was quiet and serene. The only sound was a ticking clock above the fire place. Ticking away the minutes of the 11 o'clock hour. The light came only from the moon above, hidden behind gray clouds and a thick candle in Julia Hoffman's right hand, in her left hand a filled syringe with a medication that would render her granddaughter Quinn in a medically induced sleep that would allow Julia to hypnotize her and erase any thoughts or ideas on Julia's secretive past. 

It was a drastic measure, something Julia knew full well could come back around and bite her. But she was desperate, she was at the end of her rope and couldn't think of any other way to move Quinn past the constant prodding into her past. It was, in Julia's mind, her last resort.

Julia slowly walked her way to Quinn's bedroom. She was surrounded by a darkened house, only the light from the flickering candle shined on her face, her stone, emotionless face. As worried and as guilty as Julia felt for what she was about to do, she showed nothing on her face. Just a blank stare.

As she crossed from the living area into the hall way, she felt a sudden coldness. It was as if someone had left the window open and the icy air from the outside entered. She turned behind her and the  hallway window at the end of the hall was shut, but the wind, a cold frosting wind, still blew the curtains up.

Julia's eyes widened. The window was closed. How could this cold air be blowing? She turned slowing towards the window and walked closer and closer to the flowing white chiffon curtains that were lifting with this icy breeze. The light from the candle reflected on the glass, Julia's eyes, wide and gazing below could not believe what she was seeing.

Her breathing began to become heavier and heavier. She could now see her own breath as it excited her mouth and into the air like a fog hovering above. Julia's eyes lifted from ground where she could feel the air coming from and into her own reflection in the window. 

As she looked closer, the light from the candle reflected on someone else's face behind her.
A man's face. A man's eyes. Dark hair. Darkness. 

It was Barnabas.

Julia gasped and jolted around dropping the syringe on the floor to see that no one was there. 

But the cold was. The ice cold air of death and angry was there. 

Barnabas's spirit, his aura and whatever was left of his soul was there in the Rose cottage attempting to reach out to Julia. 

"No. No, no." Julia whispered to herself in the ice cold hallway.

Julia looked around and there was no one else in the house. She put the candle down on a side table and fell to the floor searching for the syringe. She was on her knees now, patting the carpet in the complete darkness looking for the needle that help the key to Quinn's silence.

She couldn't find it, it was too dark. She looked and looked but Julia could not locate the needle.

Suddenly the candle lifted itself from the table and floated down to where Julia was to shine light on where Julia was searching. Her eyes saw the candle floating in mid air, just in front of her as if nothing. As if it was totally normal. The candle then turned to its side and began to drip wax on to the floor. 

Julia gasped and threw herself backwards, falling over and sitting on her backside watching the wax melt on to the hallway carpet. 

Julia was frozen where she was watching the candle. Then in the wax, the initials B C were carved in the hardened wax signaling to Julia that indeed Barnabas Collins was with her. He was there. He was watching and he knew what she was about to do.

Without skipping a beat, the syringe began to roll out on it's own from it's hiding place under the side table and across the hallway carpet floor meeting Julia's hand.

Barnabas was taunting Julia. He was telling her to do it. To do what she wanted to do. He was giving her an open opportunity to do what she had planned to. But this was no ordinary signaling from Barnabas. He was, if anything, a person in life that wanted to warn people of their own down-fall. He knew full well what dangers could arise when a person became obsessed with total control, just as Julia was attempting with Quinn. Control. Total control of her state of mind and free will.

Julia was still frozen in fear. She grabbed the syringe and jumped to her feet. She slowly backed away from the hallway and went into her own room. The candle blew out and fell to the ground. 

In her room now, four more candles were burning, Julia quickly turned on the electric lights and blew out the candles. She sat at her desk, slumped over and buried her face into her arms and sobbed. 

She couldn't do it. She couldn't go that far. She couldn't put her granddaughter thought any more pain than she had already suffered. If the secret was going to come out, Julia would not stop it from doing so. She would take the pressure, the pain, and the suffering that came with whatever and who ever was going to find out the truth and nothing but the truth.

Julia looked up from the desk and into the mirror, her makeup was smeared. She began to adjust the dark swirls of black eyeliner under her eyes that had smeared with the tears when suddenly the electric lights went off and the candles snapped with new light.

Julia gasped and turned back around in her chair. there was no one there. She was alone. She turned back in the mirror and sitting on her bed was Barnabas Collins smirking at her with an evil grin.

"What do you want? What do you want from me?" She said into the glass.

Barnabas stoop up and walked over to Julia who was panicked. Her body shaking with fear. 

But Barnabas only shook his head, as if to say he was disappointed in Julia. The one woman he knew could protect the past that was a treasure trove of secrets was now growing soft. He placed his hand on her shoulder and she could feel it. She could actually feel the weight of his invisible hand on her shoulder. 

She started to breath shallower and shallower. 

"Nothing....I finally want nothing from you." Barnabas said in a whisper of a voice. 

Julia looked behind her and still there was no one there, she looked back at the mirror and Barnabas was gone. 

Julia sat there, alone and shaking as the feeling of fear began to dissipate. The air returned to it's normal temperature and Julia grabbed the syringe and dashed into her bathroom breaking it open over the sink spilling out the medicine she had planned for Quinn. She couldn't do it. She couldn't continue the cycle of secrets and lies. She couldn't use her methods to keep her past in the dark any more. This wasn't the relationship she wanted with Quinn, not one based off of keeping secrets. Not this way.

She looked into the mirror and saw the reflection of her most formidable adversary starting back at her in the darkened bathroom. The one person that was often the reason for so much of her own heartache and struggle was not a supernatural creature that lurked in the dead of night for the souls of the innocent.  Julia's biggest demon was Herself.

Julia is haunted by Barnabas