Author's Note: I am determined to finish this story, so I shall. This story will leap around in time, but it will make sense, I promise.

I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that Royce is seventeen years old canonically and I will not change it. There will be sexual content in this story. I will, of course, label those parts in case anyone wants to skip past them.

I will also be posting trigger warnings for any part of the story that I believe requires it.

With that said, there are various mentions of suicide in this chapter.

Anyway, onward.

Bukater Mansion
Woods outside of Arden, Ohio
February 2014

Dana sighed as she sat in the tub, red water surrounding her. Being trapped in this house was not as intolerable as it had been thirteen years previous. Their current captor, a young woman named Violet, had given them all free reign of her giant estate until they were needed. All the original members of the Black Zodiac were present and accounted for, except for Jean. She had passed on and so a new Withered Lover had to be found. Her name was Alaina Perez and she had been dead for a mere four years. Susan had confided in her fellow ghosts that the girl had died of a drug overdose.

Thirteen new ghosts had joined them. They made up the White Zodiac. One of their number was Dennis Rafkin, who had been surprised by the lack of hostility directed at him from his previous victims. He was a ghost like them now. There was no purpose to torment him. Horace had killed him. In their eyes, that was punishment enough.

Only two ghosts of the White Zodiac were left. The fifth, the White Violin, and the eighth, the Black Heart. Violet and her psychic, who was none other than Dennis's sister, Aria, had been having a hard time figuring out which of their candidates would get the position.

That thought is what brought her back to what was troubling her to begin with. One of the ghosts that was an option for the White Violin was one she knew. Not personally, of course, but it might as well have been for how much Royce talked about her during their entrapment the first-time round.

Emily March.

Royce seemed to be under the impression that despite witnessing his death, Emily had managed to get over him, and was alive and happy somewhere. That was not the case. The love of his life – as well as the fifty-seven years that had passed since his death – had only outlived him by fifteen days. They were resting hand in hand in their shared coffin, a gorgeous marble slab marking the spot. Emily's surname had been changed to Clayton post-mortem, which made the truth so much more heart-breaking to Dana.

"Hey beautiful," she regarded Dennis with a gentle smile as he walked into the bathroom and took a seat on the tiled floor, his back to the tub. "You still beating yourself up trying to figure out how to tell slugger that his lady love has been dead as long as he has?"

Of course she was. He knew her too well.

"I don't want to break his heart, Dennis," she folded her arms on the rim of the tub, resting her chin on them. "I've grown quite fond of that ill-tempered little shit."

Dennis was quiet for a moment.

"Me too."

Dana knew it was hard for him to express fondness for the ghost who had actively attempted to beat him to death thirteen years previous, the bleeding injury on his temple a consistent reminder of this fact.

"He'll blame himself," she picked at her cuticle as she spoke. "He already feels so much self-loathing for dying and abandoning her to begin with."

The psychic on the floor gave a humorless chuckle.

"It's best we tell him now, Dana," she looked at him in question. "Violet and Aria left with the team an hour ago."

Dread struck Dana with the force of a wrecking ball.

"She decided on Emily for the White Violin."

He nodded.

"It's probably best that Royce finds out she's dead before she shows up here," he shrugged. "You know, so he can break stuff and throw a fit. Get it out of his system."

Dana stood, the confidence of an army commander flowing off her in waves.

"Have Ryan take Billy and Alice to a different area of the house, out of range," she started walking to the door. "I'll retrieve Horace and George. If Royce takes this as badly as I believe he will, I'll mostly likely need them both."

March Home
Madison, Ohio
Same Day

Aria stared up at the sprawling ancestral home of the March family. While it had not been occupied since the thirteenth suicide to take place within its walls back in April of 1994, it was still in perfect condition. As one of the oldest buildings in Madison, it was a protected landmark, meaning it went through consistent maintenance to keep it from becoming rundown.

"You're sure you want to go in by yourself?"

She turned and looked at Violet before nodding.

"I have no doubt that she'll want to hear what I have to say."

Taking a deep breath to steel herself for her oncoming task, she turned and approached the door. If Aria was surprised when the doorknob turned and the solid wood swung open as if to welcome her, she did not show it.

Nor did she so much as flinch when the door closed behind her with a click, the house seeming to come alive beneath her feet and all around her.

The soft sound of a violin coming from above her head drew her up the stairs. As she walked, she let out a sigh of relief, grateful that she wouldn't have to summon Emily against her will.

Bukater Mansion
One solid hour of chaos later

Telling Royce Clayton that the person he loved most in the world was dead – and had been for a mere fifteen days less than him – had gone even worse than Dana had imagined. She had greatly underestimated how distraught the teen boy would be with the news.

"How did she die?" Royce looked up at Dana from his spot on the couch, his fingers clutched tightly around the locket that usually resided in his coat. "Emily? I didn't really give you an opportunity to tell me that before I lost my composure."

Dennis huffed, flicking a feather from a decimated pillow off his shoulder.

"That's a way of putting it," he glanced around at the destruction. "I've seen less damage from an F5 tornado."

Dana silenced him with a look before addressing Royce.

"Well, to be frank, she did what I did," she motioned in the general direction of her many deep wounds before looking back at the miserable teenager. "Except she limited the damage to two slashes, one on each wrist."

Royce stared at Dana with an expression of such abject misery that she couldn't help but wonder if a heart could still break after it stopped beating.

A/N: That concludes this chapter. I was originally going to put Emily and Royce reuniting in this chapter, but at the last minute, I decided to save it for the next one.

I hope you like.