This is the second time I have needed to do this but…

To Jackal.Faced.Woman: Thank you for the review! I am happy to get constructive criticism. The only problem I have is that, I'll look over my own work many times and still not catch half the mistakes and I have no Beta. Not sure how that is supposed to work on FFN and IDK if I trust other people to proof my stuff before I post it. Any advice or recommendations are appreciated.

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The Nevada sun was murder on Iola as she worked, and she had slathered herself in sunscreen before she left the house this morning. She had reapplied it at lunch time when she was certain that she had sweated it all off. Still, so far it had been a good day and she had gotten the sizing of the pieces she needed and was about a quarter of the way done with cutting everything down to size.

"Miss Roman!" Her client, a Mr. Halifax, called out to her from the front of the shed he had given her to work in.

"Yes Sir?" She asked as she straightened herself out from her hunched over position. She faced him and took in the good-looking man who was only a few years older than her. Mr. Halifax was thirty, a very yummy looking thirty at that, standing at 6'3" red blonde hair and green eyes and a brilliant white smile. He had genuinely nice teeth too and Iola had to remind herself that, no, she could not engage in intimate acts with her client, no matter how nice he looed or how attractive his teeth were.

"Miss Roman, your cousin is here to see you," Mr. Halifax said as he came further into her workspace.

Iola felt her eyebrows come together over her nose, "Which cousin?" She asked, half to him and half to herself. No one had said that they would be visiting her.

Mr. Halifax smiled a charming smile and responded, "He said his name was Serdar."

Iola felt reluctant affection fill her. Her Cousin Serdar, Seren's brother, was older and had kids, one he had named Violet after her, and she loved him, but he always brought trouble wherever he went. She gave Mr. Halifax a wobbly smile, "That's awesome. Sorry he popped in uninvited."

"It's fine," he said and waited patiently as Iola took off the safety gear she was wearing. "I asked him to wait at the gate."

"Ok," Iola said as she set her gloves on the worktable and made sure everything was turned off. "I'll get back to this as soon as I speak to him.

Mr. Halifax shook his head, "Nah, feel free to cut out for the rest of the day. Family is an important thing after all, and I wouldn't want to keep you from yours."

The smile Iola gave him was more genuine this time. "Thanks," she said softly and followed the older man out of the work shed. She wondered what Serdar wanted, he rarely came round her without his wife, Nadia, Violet and his son David.

At the gate she spotted him, no wife, no kids, so either they were at a hotel or he had pulled a runner on them again. She narrowed her eyes at the man, who, as she approached, looked more and more tired. "Serdar!" She called and the man looked up from where he had been kicking around the gravel.

HE gave her that tired smile he always gave her when he was working on sobering up, "Hey, Ro," He when she was close enough. He reached out to her and wrapped her into one of his bone crushing hugs.

Mr. Halifax smiled at them and whished Iola a good rest of the day with her cousin before he left them at the gate. Once she was sure that he was out of ear shot, Iola turned to her cousin, an unamused look on her face. "What happened?" she asked as she started to walk with him.

"Trying to get clean," He muttered. And she knew why he would be too; he had seen something that had made him want his senses sharp. Someone, something, had reached across the veil of death and shown him something concerning, those were the only times that Serdar got sober: when something bad was coming.

Iola lead her cousin to her car, noting that he didn't have one with him. Probably took a cab. "Get in," she said as pulled her keys from her pocket and unlocked the car. He didn't fight or fuss as he climbed into the car. Once they were buckled in, she pulled away from the gate, tossing an assessing look at what she needed to work on, and drove out to the main road. "What did you see?" She asked once they were a fair distance from her client's home.

"It wasn't clear," He said, closing his eyes and leaning against the headrest, his black curls were sweaty and stuck to his forehead. He was pale, the natural tan from his Mediterranean heritage doing nothing to disguise the symptoms of withdrawal. "I know it scared the shit out of me though. There was blood and screaming and I know it was you screaming but it was indistinct."

Iola was going to end up with a permanent frown on her face. "You bring Nadia and the kids?" She asked.

Serdar nodded, "Yeah, they're in a hotel right now." He rattled off the address and Iola used one hand to type it into the GPS on her phone. Her cousin needed to lay down.

"How am I the younger of us?" She muttered.

Serdar snorted and she bet he would roll his eyes too if he were not keeping them closed. "Fuck if I know."

She smiled sadly. "Sorry, dude, that was rude of me," Iola sighed. He had decided to clean up and had come to let her know that something potentially very bad was coming for her. It was enough to make her forget her new stalker.

He shook his head, "It's fine, not like I've been the greatest roll model for you. None of us have been really but, you know, probably better than anyone else in our generations, how bad this stuff can get."

Iola sighed and nodded, "Yeah, I know." Sometimes the gifts were so overwhelming that she wanted to follow Serdar's (and the rest of her cousins') example and let some substance or another cloud it enough that she could ignore it. Her generation of the family seemed to have an amped up level of sensitivity and it hurt them sometimes. Seren had nearly died trying to cut her gift off and Serdar was always looking for something to mute it. Charles was perpetually drunk, trying to hide his gift even as his son was starting to show sings of being gifted. Barton, while not addicted to anything other than tabaco, ignored his gift completely. Iola's brother's had done their best to avoid addictions and, like her, were doing well, but when Silvester's empathy got too much he would have blackout fits, Michael got aggressive when he saw things in the future he couldn't change and Duncan was becoming a hermit because it was getting hard for him to tell the living from the dead. Really, Iola had been in the same boat as Duncan when she was young, incapable of knowing what was alive and dead. He would come out of it soon though, she was sure.

It took Iola an hour to get to the hotel in Reno that Serdar had booked his wife and kids into while he hunted her down. "Y'all want to come over?" She asked as she pulled up in front of the hotel.

Her cousin thought about it for a moment before he shrugged. "Sure, you wanna take Violet?" He asked.

Iola smirked, the girl that had been named after her was very like her and having her around always made Iola smile. "Sure, I can take her and David and you and Nadia can follow me home."

"That works," he said as they got out of the car. The Valet took her keys and Iola followed Serdar up to the room.

"Iola!" The shout of young violet, only 13, jumped up at her nearly bowled her over.

"Oof!" Iola grunted as the kid crashed into her. "You are way too old to be doing that, Kiddo," She groaned.

"Violet!" Nadia chided, even as she got up from the couch where David was sitting and approached her husband and his cousin.

""It's ok, Nadia, don't worry," Iola tried to placate as the mother gave her an unsure look. "You cut your hair," She pointed out, trying to distract the woman.

Nadia knew what she was doing but went along with it anyway. "Yeah," She reached up to run her hands through the bob hair style. "It was getting to hot in Arizona to keep it long."

Iola nodded; she may have only recently moved to Nevada, but she could imagine how bad it was in a state like Arizona. "I don't doubt it is worse than here," She said and sat down on the couch in the suite. "So, y'all are coming over for dinner. My house is small, but it is comfortable enough to have everyone in the back yard."

"That's awesome!" Violet shouted. Her younger brother looked disinterested and outright bored without his video games but at least one of the kids was excited.

"Aww, thanks Iola," Nadia said with a smile.

"Can I stay the night with Iola?" Violet asked her parents, practically jumping up and down.

Nadia and Serdar looked at the younger woman and shrugged. "Up to her," Serdar said and Violet turned big pleading eyes to her.

Iola usually would have said yes in a heartbeat but…. The Serdar's visions and her new visitor made her stop to think about it. She turned to her older cousin and asked, "Would it be safe?"

The man thought about it for a moment, really concentrating, before he nodded. "Yeah, should be fine."

Iola smiled and turned to Violet. "Sure kid," She said and Violet cheered.

Getting a night bag together for the kid was easy and then they were setting out with Nadia and Serdar following her home while she had Violet in the car with her. She listened to the smaller girl prattle on about the things that she had been making for school projects, using some of Iola's old work for inspiration and what shows she had gotten into that were like ones Iola liked as a kid. On and on the girl went and Iola smiled through it all; she rarely got to see the kid, but she cared about her all the same. Maybe a bit of a girls' night was what she needed.

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Ok, here is the new chapter for this one. No Dracula at all but that's ok, we can focus there next time.