Estella rubbed her jaw as she searched for a small collection of books on time, debts, and forbidden myths. Matthieu and Theodora swore that they had books on these topics at one point in time but after the wars the books went missing. No one has been allowed to carry a book out of the library or Archives since. As for her jaw, it had been bothering her since her meditation attempt. The incense seems to have given her a sinus infection.

She was just running her hand along the top of the twentieth century section when one of the service bells chimed across the room. Startled, she slipped and slid several rungs down on her ladder, landing roughly on her feet.

The ring—a particularly high pitched noise—told her it was the front door, the real one, which was concerning. No visitors were allowed at Saint Tourre when asylum seekers were present in the house.

At the main stairwell she caught Oliver and Annette peeking down the hallway at her from the Archives. Annette’s eyebrows were raised in curiosity while Oliver’s face was pensive. Turning to go down the stairs, Estella caught their heads disappearing from sight, perhaps dragged back from their spying by Hannah or Eva.

The bell rang again when she reached the door. Estella paused to peer through the peephole and cursed. It was only a matter of time, she supposed, but really she had enough to deal with.

“Counselor, Bonjour.” Estella greeted the German woman with a sharp smile, all teeth—a habit long picked up from her family members. All her teeth were still human.

The counselor smiled wide at her, friendly, and tried to nudge her bag between Estella and the door frame. She’s trying to get in. “Estella, how lovely you look despite being put in such a horribly burdensome position! Left all alone to handle the asylum of the Becker coven.” She tutted, “Your grandparents would simply hate that.”

Estella’s smile turned into a grimace, and her eyes narrowed to a glare. She didn’t not acknowledge the woman’s words more than that.

At her silence, the German counselor further tried to prod her travel bag into the house. “Just let me put down my bad dear, and I’ll help you sort it all out. It’ll be okay, help is here now.” She shaped her face into one of sympathy, her round eyes matching her round face. “You must be so overwhelmed.”

Estella gripped the top of the bag and forced it back. “No, counselor. You may not enter this house.”

“Oh, but Estella! Think of how scared you are, to have the lives of other people on your young shoulders. It’s too much for you.” Her plump face turned into a sweet smile. If Estella was anyone else’s grandchild she might have folded into the German woman’s arms, she looked so warm and inviting.

But she was not just anyone’s granddaughter.

Behind her movement stirred on the stairs. Estella wished she could take her eyes off the counselor for one second to look to the heavens in exasperation. She did not need an audience.

The counselor noticed their guests too. She also realized that her current tactic of concerned friend wasn’t working either. “Halo!” she called past Estella. “You all must be the Becker coven.” Instead of her bag, she tried to shove her hand past Estella now.

“Family,” she corrected and grabbed the offending appendage, shoving it back to the other side of the door frame.

Rage filled her at that moment, she was sure her grip on the woman turned painful. What time she has left and this is how she has to spend it? Defending Saint Tourre from impudent encroachments?

“Quiet.” she ordered. “You don’t speak to them. You leave.”

The German woman’s smile turned sharp, “Now, now child. Perhaps they would like informed and experienced assistance. They are, after all, in very dire need of people who know what they are doing.”

She would not hit the middle aged woman. She would not hit a middle aged woman. Estella took a deep, calming breath.

“Besides,” the counselor continued, “I do have a right to see after my constituents. Herr Becker is German, you know.”

“That has no bearing here and you know it, counselor,” she hissed.

“Why don’t we let them decide?”

Estella swore she was going to crack a tooth with how tightly she clenched them together.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Well, Herr Becker? Wouldn’t you prefer to have a fellow countryman’s assistance rather than an inexperienced child?”

John cleared his throat. His face was unreadable as his eyes flicked between the counselor, Estella, and his family. “First, your counselor, it is Mister Becker. I have not gone by ‘Herr’ in a very long time. I consider myself American. Second, I believe I speak for my family when I say that Mademoiselle de Luca is doing a fine job and that we do not need your input.”

“But you do need my support, Mr Becker.”

Eva’s voice rang out over the party, “Oh but we will have your support, won’t we? Or you give over authority of witch lives to the Commission, right?”

The counselor was silent. She was right, Estella knew. Eva pressed, “So we have it, don’t we?”

“Well—well, yes. I suppose you do. But surely—but surely you prefer a more experienced counsel than an ignorant child.”

Estella really was tired of being dismissed like a toddler, “You have made your opinion on my abilities very clear, counselor, and now it is time to go.”

“You dismiss me?” the older woman scoffed, her face distorting in outrage. “You have no right to be here. You’re just a stray that Jacques brought home. Can’t believe I am supposed to take directions from some half breed mistake and not—”

“Enough,” growled Oliver who was suddenly standing behind Estella’s shoulder, his breath brushing her ear. “Mademoiselle de Luca asked you to leave and my parents have refused your help. Go.” The last word came out like a hiss.

Whatever Oliver’s face looked like, it must have been adequately frightening because the counselor backed from the door. Estella imagined he was baring his teeth, fangs protruding, cheek bones taking on a sharpened appearance, his already light skin taking on a pallor.

“Goodbye, counselor. Have a safe journey home.” While Estella could not physically throw the woman out, she could slam the door in her face and relish it. Which she did.

She then walked over to the blood red cord that hung behind the door and pulled it. The front door subtly distorted and then stale air filled her nose. Peeking outside, the counselor was nowhere in sight. Good.

When she stepped back from the door, her back met Oliver’s chest. His hands came to grip her elbows.

For a moment, she was suspended in that closeness, in the intimacy of his touch. His scent engulfed her, filling her lungs.

She could drown in it, dig her hands in its earthiness.

Estella forced herself to step out of his reach, fighting the blush that colored her cheeks—his family was right there, watching them.

“Estella…” her name hung loaded between them. What was there to say? She was humiliated and challenged in front of them, in her own home. Her inadequacy was thrown in her face with an audience.

The counselor called her a mistake of nature. She had always wondered if people thought that but no one had ever dared say it. She didn’t choose this life.

She tried to close herself to the hurt from the insult but it was hard. The urge to wrap her arms around herself rose within her, to hold herself the way her family would have held her.

Eva stepped forward, “Estella, what she said to you—”

She put a hand up to stop her, “Please. Do not. She is right.” She chewed her lower lip. “Partially. I am inexperienced. I told you that and you refused her anyway.” She breathed deeply, “Thank you for not accepting her help. That would have made this a lot harder.” But still, a part of her wished that they had taken the counselor’s offer. Who was she to an educated legal professional?

“Of course, Estella. You’ve been so kind to us. How could we let that awful woman help us?”

It was a rhetorical question but it reminded Estella of the provision she wrote into the contract at the end—and how maybe the time was approaching to use it.

____

Two weeks out from the hearing date, Estella was in the drawing room adjacent to her bedroom reading the newest draft of the Beckers’ defense. It was the wee hours of the morning—since the meditation incident she’s avoided sleeping, afraid of what she might find. Or what might find her.

But tonight wasn’t the nightmares that kept her up. The sinus infection seemed to have no end in sight. She wasn’t sure what she should be doing with the drafts other than edit them and offer her opinions on what she thought her family would say, which boiled down to, “here’s this historical precedent and here’s this previous ruling etc etc.” The book, The Persecution of Witches 1300-1700, served as her lap desk.

In the middle of stretching her jaw while writing a comment, she coughed. When her face emerged, in the corner of her elbow was bright blood splatter. The pain in the back of her jaw, which she had been ignoring as a dull ache, roared to life. Like fire, it spread from the back of her teeth to her incisors to her gums to her tongue until the metallic tang of blood filler her mouth.

Half-blind with pain, Estella ran to her bathroom. In the mirror she looked at her mouth, trying to see through the blood seeping through her skin, drowning out her teeth.

“No! No! No!” With each guttural cry of denial, blood sprayed and spilled across her vanity making it look like a crime scene as tears streamed down her face.

She was supposed to be done with this, she begged silently. Over a year had passed since her last transformation, since her body’s last adoption of vampire attributes.

With frantic force, she hit her sink with the heel of her palm, sending a crack down the bowl to the drain and over the edge where it disappeared into the cabinet.

The sobs started to choke her, the blood clogged her breathing. Estella struggled, gasped, coughed for air. She started to beat her chest like she did the vanity, trying to knock loose the blood and saliva drowning her.

Through the spots clouding her vision she stumbled out of the bathroom, knocked into her lingerie chest, and tripped over her chair, smacking her face against the floor.

She did not get back up.