"Kyle Spencer," Julie said, relying on her razor sharp intuition and psychic abilities to get answers to things Eleonora was not telling her. The freckled girl with light blonde hair was amazed at how correct she was even without saying anything, and her bright green eyes stared up at her as she sat with her back erect in the reading room. Chase was still in there, but he remained quiet with his face still red from crying—Eleonora had been concerned, but found it best to mind her own business.

"How did you know?" the girl asked.

"Two reasons. One, he was in Misty's shack near the marsh. Two, when we were visiting one day, we saw him there. I approached him, and I didn't know why he was there at first but I figured out that he was raised from the dead," Julie explained. "I felt his hand, and saw everything. I saw you and…another two girls who performed the spell." Eleonora was in shock, trying to process her visions in her own mind before giving her input; she sounded timid per usual.

"I-I performed it with…Zoe and Madison," she added softly, looking back up at her. "I…well, I mean, Madison talked me into breaking into the morgue with them. Apparently…you know, she thought she was doing Zoe a favor."

"Favor?" Julie asked, listening vigilantly.

"Yeah," Eleonora said, wishing not to go further. There was an awkward silence, and Chase glanced over at them, pulling his chair closer and leaning in with his gray eyes inquisitive and childlike. Julie gave him a brief look, and proceeded to understand more of the situation.

"I have a question," she began. "How did Kyle die?" Eleonora got nervous, looking at the twins with identical gray eyes.

"Bus crash," the girl answered.

"I read in the paper," Chase interjected, beginning his part of dialogue, "that there was an accident."

"The Greek house Kappa Lambda Gamma?" Julie questioned. Eleonora grew nervous, sighing as she exhaled from a deep breath.

"Yeah," she answered quietly.

"Someone, not something, caused that crash," the striking woman with ice blonde hair replied. "One of you three girls. I can see it now."

Suddenly, Eleonora's mind snapped—she burst from her seat and held the sides of her head, shaking it as tears formed in her eyes. She was guilty by association just being with the two girls the night Madison tipped over the moving bus as retribution for the frat boys violating her. She had not been involved in the accident in any way except for being present as a witness. The guilt was overwhelming, and she tossed her hands down to her sides.

"Stop it!" she rejoined. "Get out of my head!" Seeing the girl in distress, Julie stood up and walked slowly to her, the white petticoat-style skirt flowing around her black booted ankles as she raised her hands toward the freckled blonde with concern.

"I'm not in your head, Eleonora," she replied calmly, trying to reassure her positively.

"You're lying! Stop it! How else would you know?" the girl retorted tearfully.

"Julie, you're scaring her," Chase interrupted, approaching the girl and putting one of his gloved hands on the girl's shoulder.

"I'm not trying to, I swear. Please, Eleonora, don't be afraid," Julie said, frowning as the girl panicked. It all seemed to culminate within the girl, a raging storm inside as the weather outside changed in sync with her distress.

KA-CRASH!

"Ah!" Chase exclaimed fearfully—it had begun to thunder. Eleonora was directed back to her chair by Julie, who crouched in front of her to try and calm her down, patting the side of her upper arm and trying to gently pry her hands away from her face. The rain outside had gotten heavier by the second, and when Eleonora finally took her hands away from her crying face.

"Do you even realize how hard my life is?!" she shouted, tears flowing down her cheeks. Chase frowned, sympathizing with the girl as Julie held the girl's wrists to try and calm her down, looking down with her soulful gray eyes.

"I never wanted my powers…" The girl continued to cry until it escalated to sobbing. "I wanted to become a writer…go to school in Tallahassee…major in English and literature…I never wanted to be here…"

"Eleonora?" Chase asked.

"You shouldnever be ashamed with what you were born with," Julie said sadly, biting her lower lip as a solemn expression rested on her face. "Chase and I were born with powers, as well. You should embrace it, don't you understand?"

"I can't!" Eleonora cried. "I don't want to hurt any more people!" She paused for a few sobs, taking a step back from Julie and her brother. "When we resurrected Kyle, I didn't even want to go with them to the morgue." Another sob. "I still did. They made me do the bulk of the work because I have t-the…power of bringing the dead back to life. I-I was born with it. The minute we see Kyle come back to life, he…he killed the worker at the morgue when he came in!" She whined as tears fell down her face. "K-Knowing that I was responsible for…his death—"

"It wasn't your fault, Eleonora," Julie said, looking at her.

"Yes, it was!" The girl lowered her voice, looking up at her with teary, bloodshot green eyes. "Kyle bludgeoned his mother to death, for crying out loud…"

"No, it wasn't. Want to know why?" the woman replied. "Because you have a pure heart. Also, you must understand that whatever magick you do, its effects are beyond your control. Sure, it may cause a chain reaction that's unbelievably traumatizing but at the same time, you also need to think things through."

"I couldn't, miss," Eleonora said. "Madison badgered me for an hour just to get me to go. The last time I used my powers to revive someone was when my mother tried to…" She silenced herself, preventing herself from speaking further as she tried to breathe.

"Take a breath, close your eyes…" Julie's tone of voice was convincing enough to make her open up. "Tell us what happened. It will be in total confidence. We won't tell anyone."

"No, Eleonora, we won't say anything," Chase repeated. "It'll be our secret."

"Helen, what you did was wrong," Nicholas, Eleonora's father, had said. "In fact, I want you out of my house. Pack up your things." His then-wife, dressed in a revealing black dress, sat in the dining room and looked up at him, cackling sinisterly with disbelief as she took a drag of her cigarette. She uncrossed her legs as she tapped the ash off the tip of the cigarette before taking it back to her painted lips for another drag.

"You and one army, buster. I'm not leaving," Helen chided nonchalantly.

"How could you do this? After all these years of being married, you whore around like it's nothing!" her said, expressing disdain for his then-wife.

"I can't help that you're a lousy lay who can't keep it up at night anymore, and apparently you can't do anything about it either," Helen snorted. "Plus, they were bigger than you."

"They?" Nicholas sounded shocked.

"Oh, I didn't tell you?"

"No! What the hell!"

"Well, yeah. There you have it," Helen said, taking another drag before blowing out the nicotine that burned her lungs.

"I can't believe you," Nicholas said, his heart shattering in a million pieces.

"Then don't."

"You're not making this easy. In fact, this is non-negotiable. You areleaving!" Nicholas shouted, pointing toward the dining room archway that led out to the main hallway. "Eleonora is staying with me, too. She is notgoing to end up like you."

"She won't, anyways," Helen hissed. "She's a fuckingdog! What's the difference?!"

"How could you treat your own daughter like that?!" Nicholas barked. "Ruining her self-esteem, for god's sake. She's only twelve!" He paused for a moment, watching Helen put out her cigarette in the crystal ashtray. "I-I saw that big burn scar on the back of her neck, you know."

Helen's hazel eyes were flaming with rage—when Eleonora was about five, she had witnessed the girl use her resurrection powers to revive their dead cat; soon after, she had grabbed the back of her neck so much that her pyrokinesis activated and left a huge scar on the back of the girl's neck. She made no attempt to heal it, but the doctor had told her to put cold compresses on the burn. Eleonora was a reasonably intelligent child, so she did what was asked without her mother to help. Helen directed her eyes up to her husband, standing up as her black, pointed stilettos smacked the floor roughly.

"Shut up, you!" she ordered harshly.

"I'll use that as evidence in court. Abusing your child, that's not going to make her stay with you, that's for sure. The judge will be in my favor," Nicholas answered, beginning to walk away. In a fiery rage, Helen beamed at her then-husband, concentrating on his legs—the man shrieked in agony as he collapse on the wooden floor, and glance down at himself to see that his lower leg had snapped in half.

"AHHH! MY LEG!" he screamed. "IT'S BROKEN! YOU BITCH!"

Eleonora, who had been overhearing their fight from the living room, sprinted to the doorway of the dining room to see her mother walk over to Nicholas' weakened form laying on the floor, gracefully lifting one of her stiletto-heeled feet and caressing his back with the ball of it before forcefully jabbing the spiked heel into his back, being generous with the amount of pressure.

"AHHH! OWWW!"

"You're a weak son-of-a-bitch, Nick," Helen chided, a cheerful smile on her face—Eleonora had gasped in horror at the sight. "Are you really a realman at the mercy of his wife like this?"

She kicked him so hard that he struggled to lie on his back, looking up at his wife fearfully as she leaned down with a look on her face as though nothing was wrong with what she had done to him. He groaned, tears of agony flowing down his face as Helen proceeded to place a hand right over his heart, concentrating as she looked down at him sinisterly. Nicholas began to suck wind, desperately gasping for air as her power worked itself on his form. He lifted his head slightly off the ground to try and get his wife to stop, but he felt his heartbeat accelerate beyond belief before widening his blue eyes and falling back, struggling for his last breaths as he died right then and there. Helen smiled, her eyes fiery with pride.

"Let's see you in court now," Helen sneered at the corpse, standing up and slinking out of the room to the bedroom.

Eleonora had witnessed the entire incident firsthand—she was crying heavily and in distress, but managed to calm herself down before running to the body of her father, the bones of his tibia and fibula sticking out of his skin underneath his bloodied khakis and his skin a lifeless pallor, shrinking down to him and panicking. She tried to not be so frantic, but she did not want her father to die. She loved him too much. She placed a hand over his heart and another on the top of his head to drive her resurgent powers into the corpse. She focused deeply until she felt a beating heart once again beneath his rib cage, and his eyes opened as he jerked up, struggling to breathe as Eleanora watched her powers come to fruition. Nicholas' eyes looked around once again, and upon seeing his daughter, he grunted, which soon turned to speech.

"Get me to the hospital, now!" he shouted. "And leave me there!"

"He never wanted to see me again," Eleonora continued, a depressed tear running down her face; by this point, both Julie and Chase were sitting with her in the reading room, and luckily no customers had come in for the time being.

"That's terrible," Julie said, a weary whisper; in truth, she was sympathizing with the girl.

"He…he ostracized me," Eleonora added, "yet I was the one who had given him life. My mother took it using her power, and I give it back using mine." She took a breath. "I guess it was too much for him to handle mentally, knowing I would potentially end up becoming my mother."

"Did he go to the doctors?" Chase asked; he took in every word she said and frowned the entire time.

"Yes, I called the ambulance," the freckled blonde said. "My mother was mad at me, but she didn't hurt me. I find that strange even to this day. For a moment, I thought she was really going to hurt me somehow."

"How did she get custody of you?" Julie asked, furrowing her eyebrows inward slightly.

"My father gave up custody," Eleonora said. "He didn't want me. So I was stuck with my mother." She ended the talk and got straight to the point, realizing she went way off track. "Anyways, I don't want to bore you. Kyle needs help. He needs to be able to speak and function like a person again. I didn't come to be interrogated, I came for help. Are you willing to lend your hand to us?"

"Yes," Julie said without hesitation. "I will help."

"We'll keep it a secret, Eleonora," Chase answered.

"I follow my own mystical path, but I will drop by and visit sometime this week. Does that sound alright?" the woman asked." Eleonora nodded despite the fact that her mother now had a job at the academy.

"Yes. It's perfect," she said. "Thank you so much."

Fiona had been repeatedly visiting her injured daughter in the hospital, and with each trip, Cordelia seemed to be showing signs of improvement—yet she would never fully regain her sight. Helen even came along one a few occasions, which relieved Eleonora and the rest of the girls. During one visit, the woman claimed to have been getting visions of various coven members. She even got a vision of the existence of Kyle being kept in Zoe's room, but to spare the girls, she did not tell her mother.

Meanwhile, Fiona sought to fulfill her endeavor of eternal youth by visiting a plastic surgeon with the hopes of getting information about a face lift. After watching an hour-long program about several procedures, Fiona had to schedule an appointment with her primary care physician to check to see if she was healthy enough for such a procedure. To distract herself, she thought of Helen, who, at forty-six, looked like a young woman fresh out of college—her platinum blonde hair was free of grays, her fair, white skin was free of blemishes, pock marks or wrinkles, and her body was a buxom hourglass featuring large, full breasts, a wasp waist and generous, curvy hips. Fiona admired her, and was even envious of her youthful appearance—what was her secret? Apparently, there was none, according to her; just good genetics.

"Mrs. Goode," the doctor said, coming in with a file as he saw Fiona sitting on the examination table. "We have the results of your bloodwork."

"Yes? Am I healthy?" Fiona asked.

"As a matter of fact, no," the doctor replied. The woman looked at him worriedly, her hazel-brown eyes looking at him as he opened the file folder and looked down at the results.

"What's the matter?"

"You have cancer, ma'am," the doctor said.

She was shocked—this cannot be, she thought as she looked down, feeling every nerve in her body wrack up a storm. Fiona's lips pursed into a subtle frown, looking down in deep thought. This is the end, she thought, someone else will take over as Supreme, but who?

"So who this…Marie Laveau character, anyway?"

Helen had invited Delphine to come out for fresh air while Fiona was away, and they were sitting on the lawn chairs in the spacious backyard on the back veranda. Delphine kept looking at the woman with platinum hair as she dragged slowly on her cigarette, relaxing from the stress of her new job—taking care of a bunch of girls besides her daughter had been quite a chore indeed. She, herself, was still dressed in her maid outfit, while Helen opted for looser-than-usual black wrap dress with three quarter sleeves and a pair of classic black stilettos—her heaving bosom was spilling over the top of the neckline.

"How can ya stand wearin' that?" Delphine asked, looking at her strangely. "You look like aputaine."

"Nice try. I know what you mean," Helen chided, blowing out smoke. "I took French in high school."

"High school? You mean, finishin' school?"

"Nah, not in this day and age," Helen replied, flicking away the ash from her cigarette.

"I'll tell ya one thing, they defaced my home with a plaque!" Delphine replied. "I been by there a few days ago. My home's now a museum of horrors."

"Ah, death is so beautiful," Helen smiled. "I've seen lots in my lifetime alone, and I know you have, as well, madame."

"Ugh," Delphine scoffed. "I was a woman of my time!"

"Bullshit," Helen hissed. "You have a mean streak the size of your huge ass. Say, I heard you were underground all these years, yeah?" Delphine glared at Helen and sighed.

"Yes. She ain't told you yet?"

"Well, she did. I just wanted you to tell me," Helen said.

"Well, there. I told ya."

"How'd you get under there?"

"Don't ya know the answer to that, too, little miss?" Delphine questioned. Helen took another drag from her cigarette and blew it out forcefully into the air.

"No, I don't, smartass," she snapped.

"Laveau gave me a potion to help out with situation with my husband. He was unfaithful to me. I planned on killin' him for weeks, though," Delphine explained, "puttin' poison in 'is buckwheat."

"Then why did you have the potion?" Helen asked. "Why didn't you slip in his food or something?"

"It was meant for me. I was tricked. Felt sick as a dog," Delphine answered. "Laveau said I'd be buried underground to pay for my sins. Then, those niggers took my babies, you know? Hung 'em in straight line right up in front of my house. My husband, too. Him, I didn't care about, of course."

"Well, thanks for storytime," Helen said rudely; the next thing Delphine said, however, caught her attention.

"I don't care what kind of monster anybody says I am. I loved my girls, well, in my own way. Even the ugly one," the centuries-old woman said. "The moment she came out of my belly, she was a shame to me. She had the face of a damn hippo, but I loved her just the same. Hell is real. I've seen it down in that box. Time disappears. The only thing that's left is what's in your mind's eye. And all mine saw were the faces of my girls. Forever."

Helen, who took her time putting out her cigarette in the ash tray, looked at the woman with her fiery hazel eyes, thinking of Eleonora. Despite her constant verbal and mental abuse, she still loved her daughter. She had saved her life on the two occasions she tried to commit suicide, and it was the last of her healing powers she had ever used. She had tried to bring her up alone, even though Eleonora grew to be independent and self-sufficient. She had tried to keep her daughter's powers under wraps so people wouldn't ostracize them in their southeastern Florida community. She had tried to encourage her daughter to embrace her hereditary abilities even though Eleonora was so dead-set on living a normal life like a normal person. Helen sat back and looked at Delphine—she's just like me, she thought.

"Eleonora's my daughter," she finally said after a moment of silence among chirping hummingbirds and the late summer wind.

"The freckled girl?"

"Yeah."

"She's got hair like sunshine," Delphine smiled.

"When I had her, I thought 'oh, another blonde in the family."' She sounded very facetious as she looked up to the clouds in the distance.

"You're fortunate," Delphine said.

"No, I'm not," Helen sneered. "She's below me."

"Why? She's just like you!"

"Not even close. Eleonora is a dog compared to me. I'm that graceful Persian cat that slinks around with admirers everywhere," the platinum-haired woman said as she fluffed her hair as adjusted the top of her dress. "You know what I told her the second time she tried to off herself?"

"What'd that be?"

"I told her that the next time she tried to kill herself, she should hang, for I can't fix a broken neck or collapsed lungs," Helen revealed.

It was a chilling enough revelation to send fear down the woman's spine. Delphine had abused, tortured, mutilated, and even killed many of her slaves during her own time; she had even tried to punish her daughters in a similar fashion after they had planned to kill her, but it wasn't her that ended up killing her daughters—it had been her own slaves under the direction of Marie Laveau, also alive in those times. The way in which Helen deterred Eleonora from suicide was very much like being heartless enough to let her daughter die; murder by negligence, one would say.

"You're worse than me," Delphine finally said, her blue eyes widened beyond oblivion. Helen smirked, the fire flickering in her eyes like candles in the darksome night.

"I've been told, but you're not one to talk," she answered, chuckling with a sigh.

"You look so innocent and beautiful, but on the inside, you're the devil himself," Delphine mentioned. "W-Why?"

"Wanna hear a little story about me, madam?" Helen asked.

"Y-Yes."

"Good, but if I hear it being spoken about at the breakfast table amongst the girls, I'm blaming you. If you tell anyone, you're dead, you hear?" Helen threatened her eyes scarily intense at the centuries-old woman, who took her 'promise' very seriously given how she carried her seemingly soulless heart.

"Y-Yes, ma'am," she promised. "I won't tell anyone. Y-You can trust me."

A/N:

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