Chapter 5.02 – Dire Consequences

Broof had settled Melinda, April and a curious Wyatt in the snug at the flower shop apartment. He took a deep, steadying breath and turned to Melinda.

“We need to talk.”

Melinda looked curious but April had immediately gone to panic.

“You’re not in any trouble!” he assured the girl, who was already shaking; a lifetime of being snapped at and belittled by her mother seeping to her surface. Melinda, ever present and attentive, took her girlfriend’s hand and gave it a good squeeze before urging Broof to continue.

Broof took another breath that he hadn’t until then realised that he’d been holding and let it out quickly along with the words, “Melinda, we’ve traced your family.”

“What?” Melinda asked, “I didn’t catch that.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt agreed, “it sounded like ‘mmm blah blah mm mmm.’”

Broof bit his tongue, took yet another breath and then repeated, in clear Simlish, “Melinda, we’ve traced your family.”

“You have?” the girl gasped. “Who have you found?”

Broof pointed at himself and smiled. “Me. I’m your grandfather.”

“What?”

“I’m your grandfather,” Broof repeated, slowly and clearly.

“No I heard you this time…” Melinda said. “But how is that possible? Didn’t your only child, um, Cabbage? Didn’t she pass away when she was a just little girl?”

“Yes, she did but—“

“Woah,” Wyatt said, putting his two and two together. “Is Mel the child of your secret daughter, Rose?”

“Rose?” Melinda looked up hopefully. “My mother’s name was Rose! Wait, you have a secret daughter?”

“Actually… I don’t.” He looked to Lilith who looked back, somewhat encouragingly, partly impatiently. “You see, Cabbage and Rose, they’re one and same.”

“…Um, OK…?”

“Well, I mean they’re not the same, but they were the same person. Only a decade apart. Well, sort of. You see, Rose was Cabbage. Once.”

“I’m not following,” Melinda said.

“That’s because he’s talking gibberish,” Lilith muttered.

“I think I’m following. Dude,” Wyatt said, his voice breathy, somewhere between awe and fear, “Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me? Did you…? You didn’t. Holy shit, Hoggy. Tell me you didn’t.”

“I did,” Broof admitted, his palms sweating as he tried to force his confession out around the melon that had grown his throat. “I resurrected Cabbage.”

Vampires ‘lived’ a long time. Centuries. Well, most of them did. So in the grand scheme of things, three months was not really any time at all. Yet Kitty was so very fed up that three months was all she could handle.

Granted, there had been longer disputes between her fellow vampires. Back when the Reprobate group had been in full swing, Cole and Patrick had never seen eye to eye. Patrick also had never held any fondness for Seth. Come to think of it, Patrick had never liked anyone.

Kitty was so tired. She didn’t want her new group of vampires to despise one another. She wanted to build a team, for them to be united against the blood-bearing masses and, crucially, to support her as she sought to bathe the witches in terror.

She wanted it so much. So she needed to intervene in this unfortunate disagreement, lest she break the careful web she was weaving, or worse lose her prize progeny to his desolation.

Caleb and Seth had been avoiding one another since the night Seth had returned to the manor. When he wasn’t holed up in his quarters, reading and brooding, Seth was out on the hunt, taking more than his fill, slaughtering for the sake of slaughter, trekking blood and mud over her rugs.

Caleb spent his days in the basement with his girls, breaking their hearts and bones, his nights wandering the grounds or gazing through his telescope.

There was no camaraderie there at all.

So, resigned, Kitty had summoned them both to meet her for a game and her daily feed. Not unusual although, through a slight mistruth, neither knew that the other would be there.

Ever punctual, Caleb arrived first and seated himself opposite, throwing her a cautious smile.

“Hello Kitty, are you well?”

“Quite well, thank you,” Kitty responded, returning his smile.

“Play first, or feed first?” He asked.

“Play first,” she confirmed, deftly shuffling the deck and beginning to deal. She waited as Caleb’s brain ticked into gear until he noted that she had dealt three places.

“Who… oh…” He looked up with a beat of fear just as the door opened.

Seth was framed in the doorway. Late and seemingly half intoxicated, likely from his indiscriminate feeding, he stumbled in three paces, looked at Caleb and turned around to leave.

“Wait,” Kitty ordered, watching as he paused at her command. “Seth, join us.”

“I don’t want anything to do with that boy, Kathryn.”

“Tough,” she said, teasing him closer with her mind, unwillingly and with a distinct growl. “We are brethren, we need to stand together.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not this time.”

Seth went to leave but Kitty forced him to take a seat at the table. Caleb was still frozen in his seat, watching Seth as if he was eyeing a bear ready to attack at any second.

“There,” Kitty said, sitting back in her chair. “Now, talk. Seth, you first.”

“I have nothing to say to him.”

“Not a word? So be it. Caleb?”

“I’m sorry about what happened to Faith,” Caleb began, evenly and without the requisite emotion.

“Do you mean the accident or that you raped her?” Seth snarled.

Caleb squirmed in his seat. “Both, I guess?”

“You ‘guess’,” Seth snorted.

Caleb looked lost. “Yes?”

Seth was rapidly losing what little composure he had, fighting against Kitty’s hold as his ire mounted, helped not at all by Caleb’s bumbling attempt at regret.

“I am sorry. But, holy hell, you didn’t see the lingerie she was wearing—”

“No,” Seth growled, trying Kitty’s hold with vigour. “I didn’t get to see the lingerie she was wearing for me as you bloody ripped it off her before you raped her.”

Kitty couldn’t hold her baby forever and her efforts were finally failing. Seth stood up, spurred on by the power of his rage and stormed to the door, slamming it so hard behind him that the pictures on the wall shook.

She turned to Caleb, smiling sweetly. “Well, that could have gone worse!”

Caleb looked at her incredulously. “Even I know that that was disaster.”

“He spoke to you after saying that he would not!”

“He hates me.”

“Well, yes, but he spoke to you. That is progress.”

“I don’t think we can make progress, Kitty,” Caleb groaned. “He blames me for what happened to Faith. He’ll never forgive me.”

“No, my dear boy, he blames himself for what happened to Faith,” Kitty corrected. “He needs to forgive only himself.”

Lilith had never been in a room so quiet as everyone absorbed what Broof had just said.

“Resurrection,” Wyatt managed eventually. He was sitting up straight for probably the first time in his life, his voice deadly serious. “Dude, that’s like… dude, I can’t even… no wonder you’ve got no magic. Didn’t you listen to your grandma at all?”

“I listened to her occasionally…” Broof scratched his beard. “I memorised her recipe for bat cakes, not that I’ve ever made them.”

“Resurrection,” Melinda repeated. “You can actually do that? Resurrect people?”

“No, you can’t,” Wyatt cut in, still clearly in shock. “Well, we can but we don’t. You don’t mess with life like that. You can’t use magic to give it or take it away or there are Dire Consequences. Hoggy, you lost your magic.”

“But you did it anyway!” April gushed, “Because you loved your daughter!”

“Yes,” Broof said softly. “I did it because I loved my daughter.”

“That’s so sweet,” April sighed, wistfully. “Wy, would you resurrect me if I died?”

Wyatt shook his head vigorously, as if trying to clear it. “Don’t do this to me, Apes. Trying to cure your vampirism is already skating thin ice, not to mention that whole thing with bunnifying Omar… look, when I say it’s bad I mean it’s BAD. Real bad. Apes, it could fail, you could be trapped in limbo forever, I could lose my magic.”

“Oh. That would be bad, yes. I’ll try not to die,” April said breezily, clearly not fully grasping the severity of the situation. “So if Melinda is your granddaughter, does that mean that she’s a witch too?”

“Yes,” Broof said. “Although my father didn’t have any magic – it happens sometimes – so you may not either.”

“That’s OK,” Melinda said. “I really don’t want any magical powers.” And if I did have them, I wouldn’t mind losing them…

Lilith listened to this thought with interest. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what Melinda was thinking. But what if there were Dire Consequences beyond losing her magic? What if bits of her would fall off, she’d turn into a literal bucket, or Mother Earth – or whoever-the-hell else the witches believed – in would strike her down?

“So I guess the short story is – I’m your grandfather and I can donate to your cure.”

“I don’t want the short story. Rose, what happened to her?”

Broof didn’t seem to be able to formulate a response to that, so Lilith stepped in. “She passed away when she was seventeen. I’m so sorry,” she added because it felt like the correct thing to say.

Melinda didn’t seem moved by this news. “I see. I mean, I always sort of felt that she was gone… but… do you know who my father is? Is he still alive?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Lilith said, not wishing to share her inkling that it was a certain deceased, kidney-less, tartan-shirt-wearing twat. “All we know is that Rose was taken in by the Wangshafts and spent some time in the Tower.”

“The Tower? The psychiatric hospital? So my father might well be some random patient,” Melinda sighed. “Great. I was hoping that tracing my family would give me some more knowledge about my Mother, someone who knew her, why she gave me up… I…”

Broof looked to Lilith with another silent plea for help. She sighed heavily and decided that it was best to just be completely open now.

“Jessica might be able to let you talk to Rose.”

“What? Jessica as in Officer Spoon?”

“Yes, she can talk to ghosts.”

Melinda snorted. “Like, with a séance? I’m not sure I believe in that…”

“No, like having a conversation,” Wyatt said, slowly recovering from his shock at his buddy’s confession but still looking like he might pass out at any second. “It’s real, she speaks to Mum when she visits here.”

Melinda stared at him for a long while, studying his face, before deciding to believe him.

“So I… I could talk to my mum, through Jessica?”

“Yes, you could.” Broof finally finding his voice.

“I can’t let her know who I really am, though…”

Wyatt shrugged. “I think we can trust her not to tell anyone.”

“She’s a police officer…”

“She’s also a member of the GliTS and a damn fine – uh – nice person.” Wyatt coughed. “If she knew there was a greater reason for keeping you hidden, I bet she’d be cool with that.”

Melinda leaned back on the sofa. “So, I can talk to my mum? For real?”

“For real. I’ve spoken to her,” Broof said.

“Really? What is she like?”

“A typical teenager. She was really into rock music when she was alive. And she describes herself as lanky, apparently.”

“Just like me…” Melinda turned to April, eyes glassy, mouth open. “This is huge. I can talk to my mum, April!”

“Yay!” April clapped her hands and turned to Lilith with glee. “I wonder if Jessica can talk to my Mother?”

“Would you want to talk to yours?”

“No.”

“Where does she haunt?” Melinda asked. “I mean, ghosts haunt places, right? Is she in the Tower?”

Boof and Lilith exchanged another look. Lilith had to admit that they didn’t need much of an excuse to look at each other nowadays. She tried not to get distracted by his soft brown eyes and neat beard and turned back to answer Melinda’s question.

“No. Not the Tower. She haunts my house.”

“Um… why does she haunt your house…”

“Because she died there. She was attacked in the woods and Caleb, well, he did what he always did when he had a broken girl – he brought her to me.”

“’Attacked’,” Melinda repeated, reading between the lines in her intelligent way. “It was Seth, wasn’t it?”

“Um…” Lilith began, wondering if Sage was hanging around, listening. Oh, screw it, she thought, might as well be honest about everything now. It was refreshing, this truth thing. “Yes, it was Seth.”

“He killed her. I knew it. I knew in my gut that she was dead but,” Melinda scrunched her fists up, her voice becoming squeaky. “That flipping… flipping… poohead! Is there anyone he won’t try and kill or maim?!”

“Wait, is this the same Seth – the guy who Faith ran away with, right? The one who’s all over the news? The one they’re looking for?” Wyatt asked, looking around and realising that he was the only one who didn’t have the full picture. “She ran away with a murderer?!”

“He’s no one,” Lilith said dismissively. “No one of importance, anyway.” She could practically hear Sage screaming he’s my father, you lying parasite!

“He’s a vampire too, Lilith’s ex-boyfriend,” April said. “And he has crazy mind magic! He’s not super nice, though, no.”

Lilith could’ve smacked the girl. She turned to Broof. “We broke up eons ago. I barely ever see him now.”

“Oh, so you have a handsome, fearsome vampire ex who you still see occasionally? Fine. That’s fine.”

Lilith rolled her eyes so hard that she had to blink to keep them in.

“Shi-oot, really? Your ex is a murderer? There’s another vampire on the loose? Wait, how come no one told me this? Did anyone tell me?”

Lilith licked her fangs. “Look, I’ll explain everything to you later, but can we focus on the subject here? Melinda, her mum, ghosts etc.”

“Right. Yes. Sorry Mel. Uh, where were we?”

“You said that Caleb brought Rose to you. What did you do with her… after? Did you bury her? Can I visit her grave?”

“Cabbage has a resting place,” Broof said. “We added a memento to Cabbage’s grave to honour her life as Rose, also. You’re very welcome to visit. We can visit together.”

“I’d… I’d like that. Can we go tonight?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, we can’t go tonight, Mel!” April chipped in. “We’re going to see Childhood: the Musical, remember?”

“You’re going to a musical?” Lilith asked with amusement. “You two?”

Melinda sighed like she couldn’t believe it, either. “It’s a musical turning the Kaz Traitors songs into a story. Faith and I were going to go see it… before everything happened…”

“Yes, Faith would’ve really liked this show. Or she would’ve ripped the piss out of it. Either way we should definitely go, Mel. For her.”

“You know, April, I don’t think I’m up for going to see that tonight. Not now. I need some time to process all of this… I’ve been wanting to connect with my Mum my whole life…”

“But, we have tickets,” April said in a small voice. “Broof will still be your grandfather tomorrow and your mother won’t get any less dead.”

Melinda made a funny noise. “I’m sorry, April.”

She sighed. “I understand. Maybe Wy will go with me?”

Wyatt didn’t seem thrilled by this suggestion but didn’t think he could let his daughter down again after the whole ‘wouldn’t resurrect her’ thing. “Sure, I love me a good musical,” he lied.

“Then it’s a plan! We’ll go see the Kaz Traitors musical and Mel and Broof will go visit Cabbage’s grave.” She looked to Lilith. “What are your plans for the night, Lilith?”

“I’ll go home and curl up with a good book,” she said, and a bottle of something that burns, she thought.

All this talk of death had reminded her of Caleb and that he had no ghost to talk to or resting place to visit. All she had were her memories of him.

And most of those were shit.

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