Chapter Five

Alexis woke to the sound of coffee brewing. It smelled good. She tried to remember the last time coffee smelled good. As she stirred, she realized that she was in Ned's bedroom. It had been a long time since she had last woken up in his bed. Feeling uncomfortable, Alexis crawled out of bed. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair a mess, but that didn't matter. Nothing seemed to matter today. Alexis made her way to the stairs and, as she descended them, saw Ned restlessly sorting through the newspaper. She smiled at the blankets on the couch. Ned had always been a gentleman. She remembered talking to him and Kristina almost all night about Stefan and Nikolas. Actually, it wasn't quite morning, yet. It was about four a.m. That meant Alexis had only been asleep for a couple of hours. She didn't even remember falling asleep. She must have dozed off and Ned must have put her upstairs and slept on the couch.

Alexis cleared her throat when she reached the bottom of the stairs. Ned turned sharply towards her. "Hey! I didn't know you were up."

"Well, I was doomed to only sleep a few hours. Actually, your coffee woke me up. It smells good."

Ned smiled knowingly. "Sorry. I couldn't sleep much either, I guess. I figured you'd sleep for a while, you were out like a light."

Alexis slowly stepped towards Ned. "Listen, Ned, I really appreciate you letting me and Kristina stay here last night. We weren't intending on staying that long."

"Alexis, it's no problem," Ned quickly cut in. "You are always welcome here, you know that. You always will be."

******************

"Helena Cassadine, you have a visitor," the prison guard announced as he pulled out his jumble of keys. Helena smirked at her cellmates and waited for the guard to open the door. He grabbed her arm and led her to the visitors area. Helena sat down and faced her visitor. She gave him a wicked smile through the thick glass as she picked up the phone. "Well?" she asked deliciously.

"Well." the man hesitated. "There's good news and there's bad news."

Helena's smile disintegrated quickly into a deadly glare. "What?" she snapped. How could anything have gone wrong? And just how bad was this?

"There was another car coming down the road," the man explained. His voice was barely above a whisper so that no one but Helena could hear. "But they were only two blocks away from the church, so I had to do it then."

"And? What happened? Tell me this instant you incompetent fool!"

"Well, Stefan was killed and Nikolas was badly injured."

"You imbecile! What did you do?" Helena put her head into her hands. This was not good, not good at all. It was giving her a headache.

"Well, I had to think fast, madam. Since we were already blackmailing Alan Quartermaine into helping us fake Stefan's death, I figured we could get him to fake Nikolas' instead. Look at the bright spot madam, Stefan is no longer a concern of yours."

Helena grinned. This was turning out better than she had hoped for. "Wonderful. I knew I could count on you. Yes, this will serve my purpose in a much better, much more delicious way. So everyone thinks my darling grandson is dead. Oh, that is rich. I must say, I wish I had been able to be there during Stefan's final moments. Oh, well, it's final and I musn't spend too much time regretting things past. Is everything ready?"

The man nodded. "Everything is in place."

"Good. Now I want you to be clear on this. Make sure that Nikolas is treated better than you would ever have treated Stefan. But leave him no room for escape or to get out any hints to anyone."

"I've been keeping him on the drugs we were going to give Stefan."

"That's excellent. Let's keep it that way. And Damian, don't mess this up. Do we understand each other?"

TBC