"Irina talked to me. I was wary of her… I had reason to be. But she reassured me"

-0-

"I have gone back in time, to my old body, to… to make you stop hating me."

"It is not hate you, it is that I fear what you can do."

"Yes, I brought destruction to you and your family. But your not loving me condemned me to slavery."

"My love for you wasn't real. It was an illusion."

"I realize that now. We were tricked, you and I. But still…"

"Still, you hope I can love you."

"I loved you the first time I saw you. This is why I made that deal with Maurice."

"He set you up for failure. He put a spell on me to make me love you, and then let the spell fade."

"We were both victims."

-0-

"We trashed it out. In the show they transition us to being allies, and even friends, but they never show how we got there. It was that it was convenient that we made an alliance, so we made one, with no word about our wounds, nor what it took to heal them."

"Because discussing it would be a long scene with nothing but talk, and no special effects nor sense of imminent danger… You'd been shown behaving like reasonable adults. And who wants that?" Charlie shrugged. "But go on. What did you and Irina decide?"

"She put a will-of-the-wisp on Thomas to guide him away from people and into the woods, where there was plenty of game, so that he could transform without danger, and it worked. I saw him, in wolf form, following the bright spot of light, and congratulated myself on having solved that problem until Zayda came back."

"But I take that something happened to ruin it."

"Yes. Genevieve had told me how often she had tried to help the family and how most of the time she failed. Kisasi did not want her to succeed, to feel good as to what she was doing. She was condemned to irrelevancy, to good wishes that did not bear fruit. Every now and then she succeeded, but most of the time she tasted failure. And so it was with me."

"How did you fail?"

"Maurice. He was still Irina's master, and he knew what had happened to Thomas. He wondered how he could profit from it and have power over the Benchleys. He considered helping Thomas, but Thomas was not the key to the Benchley fortune or the power that came with it. He considered Frederick when he came to him for help… for Maurice had established himself as a lawyer… When you have magical powers a license to practice law is easy to get."

-0-

"I hope that you can help me. My wife is back."

"Ah, the Spanish countess?"

"She was not really a countess." Frederick grimaced. "She abandoned me and her children."

"So, you want a quick divorce? It should not be difficult to obtain."

"Ana Ramirez is threatening a scandal. She wants visitation rights to the children."

"I can see that. So, do you want a more… permanent solution? That she disappears from the face of the Earth?'

"I hope you are joking" Frederick was flushed.

"Of course, I am. But there are ways to convince her to go away. It might involve money, but I think that your sister would be happy to pay her off. She probably dislikes scandal as much as you do."

-0-

'Maurice understood that Frederick was too much in love with his own respectability and would not go for the quick and easy solution that others would embrace.

"No, Frederick was not the key to the Benchley fortune.

"But Reverend Moore was."

-0-

"I cannot get the money. The Old lady made sure of that. Leonore can only give me so much."

"Of course, if you married Leonore, you might have a better chance to get your hands on the money, don't you?"

"I am already married, alas."

"This can have a solution."

-0-

"Reverend Moore knew what Maurice was, and how much power he had. He was ready to hire him, not understanding that men like Maurice, no matter how helpful, are never servants. They always end up being masters. But he hired Maurice to kill his wife so that he could marry Leonore Benchley

"And because of that my plan was destroyed."