Alice had to admire Potsdam's efficiency. After a simple nod and smile in response to being thanked, she had gotten the rest of the story out of Nancy while performing the first stage of treatment to her now shirtless husband's back, discharged Asim to the kitchen where e would be given beef bones, and used the mirror in the room to notify the local authorities of the happenings all before there was sufficient water in the tub to bathe Nancy who looked like she had fallen front first into a puddle of blood. Apparently, the locals would be responsible for telling their grandfather what had happened. He would probably want to talk to them directly tomorrow. She also suspected that Grandfather would have Asim feasting on lamb bones for quite some time.

After discharging Clark from the bathroom with a basin of hot water and most of the rest of the towels to help Potsdam finish mopping up the room and Hieronymous after he had returned from Potsdam's room, Alice closed the bathroom door. Most of the blood on Nancy came from Hieronymous' clothing…her husband had been quite careless about which way the dead goblins had dropped…but she still helped her sister out of the nightgown and into the large tub to wash. After a moment, she took off her own spattered nightgown to wash her own feet and ankles and sat on the edge of the tub to submerge them.

"Sissy, why did they want to eat me?" her sister asked softly.

"Some creatures are simply evil," Alice answered. "Others have different rules from what we do, or change their minds about what they want to do very quickly."

"Oh," Nancy answered, getting a washcloth wet and starting to scrub. "But my friends didn't change their minds. The black one that opened that hole by my bed wanted to eat me very badly, but my friends didn't let him."

"Which is why good friends are priceless," Alice answered, wishing that she was advanced in her studies enough to be able to tell exactly who or what all these spirits were. She also noted that this had been no accident…some black spirit had attempted to murder her sister, but had been stopped from doing so by others. She hoped that they would be able to figure out who or what e had been.

Her feet clean, Alice turned and reached for a towel to dry them, and suddenly realized that she had nothing to put on. Nancy did not have anything either. Sighing, Alice wrapped herself in a towel to go out into her husband's room. She probably had something in one of the boxes she had yet to unpack, and one of Hieronymous' undershirts would probably suffice for Nancy.

Alice opened the door to find her husband was washed and in new pajama bottoms sitting on the edge of his bed while Potsdam was mixing yet another concoction on top of his papers on the desk, and nattering as she did so. Potsdam only looked at her briefly before returning to her task, but she did not have to get a good look at her husband to know that his eyes were following her around the room. Oh well. They were married, and watching her was probably distracting him from the pain. Carefully keeping the towel up with one hand, Alice found the box she was looking for and started sorting through it.

"…should be applied hourly until the wounds are closed. Thankfully they were not that deep. Would you mind taking care of that Alice?" Potsdam asked.

"Um, ok," she assented without much thought, and then digested the request. Potsdam probably thought Hieronymous would need to talk to her after tonight. The woman continued to natter on.

"I'll have my little helper take care of the freshman and sophomore mail deliveries, and put up a sign saying that detention has been rescheduled for Sunday. I suspect we will all be busy tomorrow…and Donald will have to get a note to mix up his glue on Sunday instead. That should take care of everyone's normal obligations."

Alice found a housecoat for herself. "What drawer do you keep your undershirts in Hieronymous? I need something to put Nancy in," she asked, turning around. It was to her husband's credit that he was able to look her in the eyes.

"Second drawer on the right," he answered, then both teachers paused, alerted to something. A moment later, Alice noted threads of White in the bathroom. She grabbed the first undershirt in the drawer and rushed back into the bathroom.

"Nancy, what are you doing?" she asked.

Her baby sister, now clean and drying herself off, turned around. "She has to say something to 'Ominous."

Alice frowned. "Who does?" she asked, puzzled. She could sense no additional presences here.

"She's one of my friends," Nancy answered. "And she wants him to see her before she has to go."

"Ok," Alice agreed slowly. After all, Nancy's friends had just proven how valuable they could be. "Put this on first," she said, handing her sister the undershirt and then proceeded to put her housecoat on.

That done, Nancy took her hand and started pulling her towards the door. "She wants you to see her, too," the child said.

Alice allowed Nancy to lead her back into the bedroom, and both professors looked at them expectantly as Nancy continued to weave strains of White like Alice had never seen before. "She says the lights have to be off before she can see you, but she won't be able to talk," Nancy announced. Potsdam, obviously curious, turned out the lights putting them into total darkness.

In the darkness, the strands of White that her sister wove seemed to glow as she crossed one over another, forming a woof and a warp until a fluttering veil was formed in front of them. Alice gasped as light patterned as a hand pressed against the veil. Instead of parting for the hand, the veil coated it as it emerged, the glowing of the veil sticking to it as the hand moved beyond the veil. Alice could not see anything that was not or had not been in contact with the veil, but the figure continued to come, a leg draped in glittering autumn orange coming next. As if gaining in confidence, the rest of the figure burst through the veil. Hieronymous seemed stunned at the sight of the apparition, and slipped off the edge of the bed to fall on his knees before her, trying to speak but his voice failing him. And Alice knew that there was only one spirit that could evoke this reaction from him.

Violet was a stunning beauty in an orange party dress with white hair that fell to her waist, and blue eyes that flashed. Instead of standing imperiously in front of Hieronymous, she knelt down beside him and smiled, brushing his face with fingers of diamonds.

"Please forgive me," her husband finally croaked.

"She did that a long time ago," Nancy announced, and the ghost turned to acknowledge Nancy, and nodded at her words. Silent tears began making their way down Hieronymous' face, sparkling from the light the ghost cast on him.

Violet then concentrated on her hands, and in the next instant there lay flowers that she offered to Hieronymous, flowers that Alice recognized. Butterfly weed—let me go. Volkamenia—may you be happy. A deep pink rose—thank you for being in my life.

After she was certain Hieronymous had had enough time to observe the flowers, Violet stood, looking somewhat abashed.

"She has something to confess," Nancy said slowly, and then stopped to listen some more. "She says she convinced Hafiz to cause so much trouble for your father that he would send him away to you. She had decided you needed someone a long time ago, and finally decided Alice would be perfect. She says she messed up your wards when you weren't looking, allowing Hafiz to overpower you. She had convinced Hafiz that it would be a lot of fun if he tried to eat Alice when she came to sort the mail, but stopped short of that and forced you to marry her instead. She made sure Potsdam came in time to 'catch' him."

Alice's mouth dropped open. Her marriage had been engineered by a manus and the ghost of her husband's lost girlfriend? And how had Violet known that Hafiz would go along with it, instead of eating her, or that Hieronymous would even be experimenting in the freshman mail room?

She then heard hissing laughter. "It is true, Master," Hafiz admitted, materializing so they could see him grinning. "And she was right…this has been a lot of fun to watch. I have not been this entertained for centuries."

Hieronymous plainly did not know how to respond to that, wearing the same look she was sure he got nearly every day when a student did not know the answers to his questions. Apparently, matchmaking was far outside the norm of services that most wizards expected from their soul and bone devouring servitors. On the other hand, she could see where a servant would be entertained by forcing the master to do something against his will. It would have been the choice between a particularly tasty supper, versus pushing the man that controlled you into an unusually awkward situation. Come to think of it, e had probably enjoyed her father-in-law's reaction to the ordeal as well.

"She says she apologizes for meddling," Nancy continued, "but that someone needed to, and your boss just isn't good enough at it."

Alice could not help but laugh as she heard Potsdam give a frustrated huff at that from behind them. "No problem," Alice said. "It wasn't easy, but the best things in life are worth fighting for."

"Why would you need forgiveness for finding me the only treasure in the world equal to yourself?" Hieronymous said, finally able to find his voice.

Violet's smile was radiant.

"She also wants you to forgive yourself," Nancy told Hieronymous. "She understands if you need to think about it first. She says that putting her in that situation was as much her fault as yours."

"But I…" Hieronymous trailed off as the ghost held up a finger to silence him.

"She says that there's no reason for you to keep punishing yourself," Nancy said. "And I'm starting to get tired, so I can't keep her here much longer. She's going into the Light after this and won't be able to come back, and she can't waste time arguing."

Hieronymous nodded slowly.

Nancy listened intently for a few moments. "Another thing she wants to tell you is that the baby you almost got after Christmas will be waiting until you are ready for him." Alice's eyes bulged. She had wondered what that baby would have been like, and now someday, she would be able to find out. "She says that he will be both great and good, and that the Three chose to give him to you. He will be needed to save others and win the coming war, now that it won't be stopped."

The Three?! As in the Three Great Spirits? There were no higher beings. And what manner of a war was she speaking of? Would it be a magical or a mundane one? If her son was destined to save others, what was he to save them from? Death? Slavery?

"It could have been stopped?" Alice found herself asking.

"You got up yourself instead of taking his hand," Nancy said, tilting her head as if to listen to someone, though not in Violet's direction. "He wanted a freely given soul to make him more powerful, but he could not have overpowered the effect you would have had on him. If you had become his consort, you would have been his greatest weakness and greatest strength. Unable to contain his ambition, you would have instead directed it elsewhere, and this world would have been safe at the expense of another."

And Alice understood that she was talking about Damien. So, he would be instrumental in promoting a war, perhaps even leading it himself one day? If she had taken his hand, he might have fallen in love with her and she could have ended up in his court as his consort. But instead she had refused to take his hand, and war against her world would come.

If this was not the best the best example of the 'butterfly effect' she had ever heard, she did not know what was.

Even considering everything, she was still glad that things had happened as they had. You could not win against evil by attempting to mitigate it; it was best to destroy it as thoroughly as one could. On a less philosophical note…her eyes wondered over to her husband, still kneeling on the floor in front of the apparition his attention now divided between the two of them. She loved him deeply, and knew that whatever sort of a life she made with him, it would be better than trying to hold a rabid wolf with strings while beating herself up for what she had unleashed on the other world. His expression was quizzical, and she could admit to wanting to know more herself.

On the other hand, Alice knew that sometimes knowing too much about the future could also have serious consequences. She did wonder, though, if there was a time window their son should be born in so he would have time to mature before responsibility was thrust upon him.

"She wants to know if there's anything you want to say to her before she has to say goodbye," Nancy asked, bringing Alice's thoughts out of the past and the future.

Hieronymous took a deep breath. "Thank you, Violet. I will never forget you."

Violet smiled, and Nancy translated. "She says that she wouldn't want you to. She just wants you to remember the good times more than the bad ones. She says that's why she wore this dress, and wants to know if you remember."

Hieronymous nodded. "The leaves on the trees were the color of that dress. You wore it to dance the Dark Dance in the light of a full moon. As the dancing ended, I stole you away for tender kisses and found the courage to tell you that I loved you."

Violet smiled, pecking his cheek before turning to Alice to pat her shoulder. In the same way she had come, Violet left, walking back into the veil letting it absorb her. After she was through, Nancy let the spell dissipate and the room was in darkness once again.

They all remained where they were in the darkness, still processing what had just happened for some time; Alice was not sure how long it was. Eventually, there was a knock on the door before the light from the hallway spilled in to reveal Clark. He looked around the dark room, confused.

"Did I miss something?" her brother asked.