Three Dates

Prologue -

Helen Magnus stood before the closed casket and silently said goodbye to her oldest and dearest friend. Tears refused to come, she was physically cried out. Inside her was this icy numbness she knew intellectually was a completely normal human response to all she had endured recently.

With the Lazarus virus, the Cabal, not being able to save James, losing Ashley to the butchers in the Cabal and then in truth… her grief wracked mind shut down to protect her from going completely mad. It felt like standing naked on a glacier in Antarctica. Everything was white noise and biting cold.

Leaving James' aged and broken body behind, Magnus moved down the line of the children James' and taken into his home and his heart. She murmured words of comfort in each ear, held each young person in her arms briefly and wished they were her own lost child. By the time she moved to the last one, she'd found her lost tears and they were hot on her cheeks.

Declan was holding one of the oldest girls against his chest as she sobbed in a way that would have broken Helen's heart, if her heart hadn't been broken beyond repair twice already. She approached them reluctantly, "You must be Elizabeth, James talked about you all the time." She held out a hand.

The young woman's face pulled away from Declan's chest and narrowed blue-green eyes met hers a half second before the young woman's hand connected with Helen's right cheek hard enough to make her stagger backward and to echo in the huge chapel.

"Bitch!" The woman growled, shaking with barely contained rage. "You were with him when he died. Why didn't you see something was wrong with his suit and help him." She took a step forward and Declan caught her around the waist with an arm, hauling her back. She shrieked, "Why didn't you do something?"

Helen held her cheek and gaped, momentarily stunned.

Declan was faster to recover. He turned Elizabeth Watson to face him and gave her a shake. "What the hell is the matter with you! Of all the people I thought might make a scene today, you weren't even on the list, Elizabeth. You will apologize to Dr. Magnus immediately!"

His demand was met with a sneer Elizabeth turned on Helen, as well. "Make me!"

The small woman gave Declan a surprisingly hard shove and stomped away. Declan watched her leave the chapel before turning his attention to Magnus. "I'm so sorry. I have no idea what's gotten into Elizabeth. Never seen her hit anyone… Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Magnus said, quietly. "I think that was exactly what I needed today." And she meant every word of it. The girl's rage, quite justified rage, was the one thing with enough heat to break through the icy calm trapping her. She patted his arm, "Don't be too hard on her, Declan. Anger is one of the stages of grieving and from the way James talked, she was closer to him than most of the others. This isn't going to be easy for any of them, but perhaps her most of all."

Her acting Head of House frowned, but didn't go after her.

Helen wondered about Elizabeth, she'd known her on sight from the descriptions James gave, but beyond that they had never interacted, beyond the one time she'd come to London and talked to all the girls about puberty. James had left that bit of their education to her, just like a typical man to think she'd handle the talk better, and she'd had a room of suspicious preteens eyeing her while she explained menstruation and the other joys of being born female. She'd have fared better if she'd thought to take Ashley with her that time.

Their paths never crossed again, but something about this woman called to Helen. Her pain, definitely.

Magnus vowed to make an effort to speak to young Elizabeth before she returned home.