He had dared to hope that she might get better, but as the quiet days dragged on she seemed to diminish. She could avoid him, now, slipping away from him soundlessly to some other corner of the house, still unaware of her own state.

He found her one day in the bathroom as he'd first seen her, slowly tracing a path of blood along her wrist with one of her old blades. This time, he couldn't bear to watch from the door.

"Stop it!" he yelled.

Violet barely seemed alarmed.

"Let me see that," he added, attempting to soften his voice as he reached for her arm. The cut was deep; he wondered if it would alarm her when it healed in a couple of minutes. He leant down and sucked off the blood with his mouth, for a moment wishing he could suck out the poison in her.

"Gross!" Violet exclaimed, jerking her hand away.

"You're right! It is gross. You're mutilating yourself."

"You do it." She snapped.

"Not anymore. Promise me you'll never cut yourself again. She looked down at her wrist, not seeming to notice that the cut was growing steadily smaller.

"I promise."

~:~:~

Tate hated Hayden the moment he met her.

She found him in Violet's room, reading a book next to her while she slept. He didn't know how long she'd stood there watching until her fist smacked down on Violet's dressing table. Violet started, rolled over in her sleep.

"Oh, did I wake Sleeping Beauty?" Hayden sang.

Tate sat up swiftly, closing his book.

"Who are you?"

She smiled widely at him, a gesture he did not return. "We haven't met yet, have we? I'm her daddy's dirty mistress. You might've heard of me."

"Oh, sure," Tate replied with a smirk. "So you're the little homewrecker. Look's like everything's going just swell for you. How's being stuck in a house with your fuck buddy and his wife?"

Hayden's nostrils flared, which did little for her appearance. Tate decided she looked like a snub-nosed shark.

"I've come with a message for you. The rest of the house is fed up with your little girlfriend getting the special treatment. It's bad enough we have to stay invisible from the humans most of the time; they at least want to be able to walk around normally when it's just us."

"Who died and made you housekeeper? You should chat to Moira. She gets a little tetchy about her territory."

Hayden smiled humorlessly. "I can see why little Violet likes you; you're a cocky one. Are you going to tell her, or should I?"

Tate's jaw hardened. "Violet's fragile. She isn't ready to know what happened yet."

"Whatever, man. I'm just telling you what I know. I don't care how you explain it, but if you don't want her losing her shit when a bunch of people with open wounds and some killer period costumes start wandering though her house, you better come up with some kind of story."

Hayden smiled again, then swept her hand over Violet's nightstand, sending her things crashing to the floor. Tate dove at her, but the little ghost disappeared with a laugh.

~:~:~

He knew that she'd been right, however little he wanted to admit it to himself. He'd been lucky that the others had stayed away this long without appearing to Violet. The only problem now was finding a way of easing it to her gently. He came close to telling her that night, when Violet looked up from the sunset she'd been watching from her window.

"We could run away, Tate."

He paused over the book he had picked up from her floor, not trusting himself to look at her.

"Where would we run to?"

"It doesn't matter. Away from all the shit. Like the birds in that book. We can run away from my parents and this house and this bullshit town, everything. They wouldn't even notice. We could be halfway across the state before they realized I was even gone."

Tate closed his eyes. "Do you really want to leave so badly?"

The sun had disappeared completely, and with a little sigh Violet closed the window and went to stand by her mirror, her feverish resolve of a moment ago gone. "No, I'm just talking shit. I think I'm just sick of my parents. They've planned some brutal family dinner for tonight, as if it's gonna make me feel better."

They all got like this, in the first few weeks and months of being spirits in the house. He'd known it, had expected it, but somehow Tate wasn't quite prepared for the pain that would come when the inevitable truth arose: that she could never truly leave, that these walls would be her eternity. It seemed wrong to him, this vibrant little soul locked forever in such a place of misery and despair.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" he asked, glancing over at her.

She looked over at him, confused. "Why're you asking me?"

"I don't know," he said, looking away from her. "It can't all be shit, right? There's gotta be someplace better, somewhere. For people like you, at least." He smiled ruefully.

Her face was unreadable as her dark eyes studied him. "Not you?"

Tate looked down again. "Ever since you got here this is the better place." He dared to meet her gaze, her dark eyes unflinching. He couldn't tell her, not tonight.

~:~:~

She didn't cut herself again, for which he was grateful, but he had taken to following her through the house as she wandered. He kept himself hidden from her, but the other ghosts could see him, and kept a wide berth, although he doubted that they would agree to stay invisible for Violet much longer.

She discovered Beau in the attic on her own. Tate had never connected with his brother the way he had with Thaddeus – Beau was kind and innocent and guileless, without any of the strength or fire that drew him so to Violet. The boy bored him, and a small part of him was aware of how sensitive the little soul would be to the corruption of his own.

He followed her into the loft slowly. Beau looked up eagerly from his corner, reached for the red ball that he and Constance used to play with on the days that she condescended to visit him. He rolled the ball to Violet, who stopped it with her shoe. She picked it up, looking at it curiously.

Beau lumbered forward, his shackles making the movement more frightening than it was. "Play!" he called excitedly to Violet.

She screamed and leapt back, stumbling into Tate's chest. His arms reached out instinctively to hold her.

"You're scaring her," he said sternly to Beau. "GO AWAY."

His registered the hurt on his brother's face for an instant, before the misshapen face disappeared into the shadows.

Violet was breathing heavily into his shoulder, and it occurred to Tate that her fear was far closer to her these days – the bravado that he had come to expect of her was disappearing.

"Violet," he urged, "It's okay. Calm down, okay?" he stroked her hair gently.

She looked back at the now empty corner, her breathing hitching into helpless little sobs. "I feel like I'm totally losing it," she whispered.

Tate breathed deeply. It was almost time.

"They're from the past," he said softly. "The ghosts of people who have died here. They're appearing to you now because you're evolved. Don't be scared. All you have to do is tell them to go away, and they will."

She was calming down, and now looked at him curiously. "You really know your way around this house."

"I guess I do," he paused, brought back to the sudden reality of the charade he'd almost forgotten. "I've been exploring after my sessions. Don't tell your dad."

She looked at him with those eyes, and he knew that if she kept along this track she'd guess far too much too quickly.

"There's more, you should see the things I've found. Come look," he pulled her hand, and she followed without question.

He took her to the basement where he'd collected souvenirs of those that had lived there before. He passed her the boxes; the gays' magazines, the things his own mother had left. He glanced at the box of Nora's photos, remembering her showing it to him as a child – somehow, the memory was an uncomfortable one now.

"What's in the other box?"

He started, pulled back from thought, and passed the box to her.

There were other boxes in the little hidden vault, but this one seemed to catch her attention, and Tate let her take it back to her room, knowing that Nora wouldn't remember it was there.

~:~:~

His first session with Ben Harmon since Halloween was the next day. The doctor had relented on letting Tate back in the house after their little heart-to-heart on the park bench.

It was not a particularly illuminating meeting; Ben was evidently still grappling with whatever personal issues were occurring in his home life and Tate too focused on getting back to Violet to pay much attention to anything the other man said. It was a relief to him when Ben announced the end of their session.

Ben leaned forward, whatever had been on his mind apparently coming to the surface at last. "Look, I, uh, need to ask you something off the clock. And I have no right to ask you this, but I'm desperate. I'm worried about Violet."

Tate shifted uncomfortably. He'd hoped to avoid any more deep and meaningfuls with his psychiatrist if at all possible.

"I get that," he said easily, "she's your daughter. But you know, she's not a little girl anymore." She's a little ghost wandering through your corridors at night. "And at some point, you're gonna have to let her go."

"She won't talk to me anymore. We used to be very close."

"She's been through a lot," said Tate.

"She talks to you," interrupted Ben with a meaningful look. "I know she talks to you. What I'm getting at, Tate, is…if Violet is in trouble, real trouble, please come to me right away. I don't wanna lose her. I can't. I wouldn't survive it."

Tate smiled. "I wish you were my father. My life would've been a lot different."

~:~:~

Leaving the session he heard his name being called. Constance was in the hallway a floor down. He crossed over to her.

"What do you want?"

She'd been crying. His voice startled her – she turned to look at him with her personal brand of sentimental adoration that made his stomach sick.

"Well, I wanted to see you," she said with a breathless smile, reaching for him. He pulled back automatically, and she withdrew her hand, stroking along the skin of her own cheek.

"Are you feeling any better? Are the…visits with the good doctor…helping you?"

"Yeah. We're really getting to the root of the problem. Turns out I hate my mother."

He left her in the hall, stepping back up to where Violet waited for him.