2

Angelique put two plates of breakfast out as she turned on her heel to yell up the back steps once more. Barnabas was scanning the front page of the paper from the table as he sipped his coffee. No longer set to idyllically sit around and watch time go by, Barnabas had long ago at Professor Stokes's insistence been encouraged to teach colonial history at the university, a subject the former vampire and now proud father now embraced with a certain vigor. Two days out of every week, he left the Old House for that of a classroom and for the other five days he was home to listen to the sounds of a Twentieth Century family.

"Sara, William," Angelique called up the back stairs from the kitchen. "Maggie will be here in ten minutes to take you to school!" She turned back as Sara bounded down first. Her long hair accentuated by her black sweater and green skirt. The girl longed for the days when her Aunt Maggie was her governess instead of a would-be chauffeur, but as all the adults agreed, there was something about high school that could

not be provided by a classroom in Collinwood.

"I need twenty dollars for new books." The girl sat down to her omelet, bacon and orange juice. "I'm also not coming home. I'm going over to Tricia's." Angelique glanced to Barnabas with a wry grin.

"What about your allowance?" It was the father's time to speak.

"Spend my allowance on school supplies?" Sara made a face. She looked to her father as he pulled out the wallet, the mystical household implement that reputedly threw out money endlessly to anyone who wanted it. William sauntered down the stairs nearby in jeans and a red sweater as he dropped before his plate and stared at it.

"William," Barnabas looked upon his beloved son. "The bank is open if you need anything." The young man groaned as some unfrozen caveman and stared at the omelet, which his mother had made with loving care before sipping his juice.

"Darling, are you feeling well?" Angelique felt his face.

"It's nothing." The high school senior sauntered a bit. "Just tired."

"I think he's got a math test." Sara was finishing her breakfast.

"Sweetheart," Angelique turned his face to her. "You have a fever. You better stay home." Barnabas dropped his paper and looked to his heir.

"But I gotta go to school." The young man mumbled.

"William," Barnabas stood. "You probably got wet while fishing with Quentin and your cousins. You better stay home and get some rest."

"But Jamison and I..."

"William," Angelique rarely called her son by name. "Upstairs!" She led the way as Maggie honked the horn on the van outside. Sara scrambled over her breakfast and grabbed her school textbooks.

"I'll get your homework..." Sara chimed as she grabbed her books and dashed out. Brother stared at sister a minute as Angelique followed her son back to his room at the top of the back stairs over the kitchen. As he turned around, the forceful and often irresistible presence of his mother was missing, but she soon re-appeared with her "witch's box," an odd chest of medicinal cures and concoctions created from the healing herbs and roots that grew on the property. He had named it the "witch's box" first and the name stuck ever since Dr. Hoffman had passed away many years ago. Pulling her son's sweater off his back, Angelique just sat on the corner of the bed and gave him a dose of her brew and turned to reach the concoction she rubbed into his chest. She grinned like a mother as William looked up to her with obvious trust.

"What do you think he has?" Barnabas asked arriving into the room littered with books, snack boxes and puzzle boxes.

"Probably just a cold." Angelique replied as she turned to stroke her son's forehead. "William, where does it hurt?"

Her son didn't answer.

"William, answer me." She nudged him, but he didn't respond. She reached for his hand as he failed to react to her.

"What is it?" Barnabas asked.

"William, you better not be trying to scare me!" Angelique lifted his eyelid and noticed his eyes had rolled back. She gripped his hand again and checked his forehead. She yanked her hand from the burning fever she felt. Her son had passed out once he lay down!

"Angelique," Barnabas came around the other side of the bed stepping over paranormal and science fiction magazines. "What's going on? Those poultices you make didn't go bad, did they?"

"No," Angelique opened and pulled her son's jeans off to cool him off. "I replace them the first of every month! I think there's a spell over him."

"No !" Barnabas remembered. "Anything but that." He had flashbacks of when William was born. The cure that Julia had injected into his body back then had reappeared in William when he was born, but in his tiny body back then, it had turned into a deadly poison that nearly killed him. Barnabas's cure for his vampirism had been passed to his son as a deadly poison and it had nearly killed him as an infant. No one knew how he survived, but many thought it had something to do with Josette's ghost taking protection over him.

"William," Angelique shook her son's body. "Wake up! Please wake up!"

"William, this is your father!" Barnabas ordered out loud and watched as Angelique took her necklace off and slipped it over her son's unconscious head. She held his head between her hands and forced his eyes open.

"Darling," She implored him. "My mind is linked with yours, I can see and hear what you feel. What do you see? What is happening to you?"

"They're..." William replied as if he was intoxicated. "Calling me..."

"No!" Angelique shook him. "Don't go! Barnabas, call Doctor Shaw!"

"Mom..." William saw other images instead of his mother's face. He was dreaming he was somewhere else, another place in time and space. The clothes were different and he thought he was in a small cottage like the one his Aunt Maggie owned in town. There were two other people beside himself: a man and a very beautiful woman. The room was full of artwork and pictures on stands and they both became aware of him and stared to William. The woman screamed!

"I don't believe it! I don't believe!" She began crying hysterically.

"I created you!" The man screamed at him. "And I can destroy you!" He waved a portrait of William on a sketchpad. He pulled the picture off and tore it as if he was trying to destroy it. The woman ran off screaming out of the cottage.

"I drew you..." The artist looked at William standing confusingly at him. "And yet you're still here! What are you!"