Chapter 43 Long Day End

Chapter 41 Confusing Family Discussions
EVEET -

Jean-Baptiste Dubois. Eveet repeated his name in her mind. And he's my uncle?

She wanted to deny it immediately, but as she sat across from him and looked into his eyes, so like her mother's, looking back at her. She simply couldn't. Not only that, but something about him felt familiar.

"I can see that you're having a hard time with that fact," Jean said, pulling her from her thoughts. He smiled lightly and reached down to the seat at his side and brought up a stack of thick, leather-bound books. They looked funny to Eveet. One had thick paper and gold-tipped corners.

There were three in total, and he set them down on the table before he grabbed the top one and opened it for Eveet. When she saw what covered its pages, she couldn't stop the gasp that slipped from her lips. She wanted, so badly, to reach over and pull the book closer to her for inspection.

It was filled with images of a girl who looked so much like Eveet as a child that at first, she thought it was her.

Jean turned the photo album around and pushed it closer to Eveet, like he was offering it to her.

"When they told me that you had finally come here and had left a rose, I almost couldn't believe it. I knew that I had to bring everything to you. Otherwise, you would never believe me, and it's imperative that you understand the danger you're in and the truth behind your mother's death."

She pulled her eyes from a photo of her mother as a child riding a pony, up to Jean-Baptiste's eyes.

"What do you mean, the truth behind her death?"

He nodded, "Yes, the truth behind her death and..." He paused and reached out to flip the photo album to the last page. "Why she let herself die."

"Why she let herself die?" Eveet felt like all she could do was repeat the man's words back to him. He wasn't making sense, but as she looked down at the photos, she knew he spoke the truth.

The last photo was of Margaux when she was much older, and she was holding a small baby. Eveet touched the tips of her fingers to the edges of the photo. "Is this me?"

"Yes. Your mother loved you more than anything. More than, even her own life." He shrugged as he said that last sentence.

Something in his tone struck something inside Eveet. "What are you trying to tell me? Speak plainly."

"Ah, but if I do, would you believe me? If I didn't have these things to prove my legitimacy," He gestured to the books on the table. "Would you still be sitting here?"

"You don't know me. You have no idea what I believe or what I may do." She wanted to be mad at him, but all she could feel was confusion.

"That is true, but what I have to tell you isn't something many know, nor would they believe it."

"And what's that?" She shot back with more attitude in her tone than she meant.

"That your mother was trying to kill you."

She pulled her fingers back from the photo like it had burned her. "What?!"

He smiled so lightly that Eveet thought she'd made the expression up. "See? You cannot allow yourself to be blinded. What I have to say-"

"Enough." She interrupted him. "Explain and do so in a way where you aren't trying to talk me into it. I want facts, not a sales pitch."

His eyebrows rose up his forehead, and he shook his head before saying, "Okay. Fair enough. To put it bluntly, your mother was being coerced by..." Once more, he paused and looked as if he were thinking about how to say the next part. "A group so powerful that she did not have control of her own body. The day she died, she was attempting to take your life."

"Bullshit." The word flew from her mouth. She couldn't remember how her mother got into her room, and if she was honest with herself, she'd never thought about that aspect of her mother's death.

"Oh?" He turned to the two remaining books and grabbed the smallest, before he opened it and thumbed to the last page as well. He turned the book and laid it in front of Eveet. "When your mother died, your father wanted nothing to do with her things. He contacted us and said that we could come and collect her belongings. If we chose not to, he would burn them instead. When we arrived, everything she owned had been put in a large pile outside your estate."

She could remember her father's rage and the days leading up to the servants piling her belongings outside. She wanted to badly to go and hug her dresses, smell her scent one last time. She didn't know what had happened to everything. Only that it had all disappeared one day.

He gestured to the book again and said, "This was her journal."

Immediately, Eveet's eyes shot down to the cursive lining the old paper.

Jean-Baptiste continued, "In its pages, you will read how your mother was attacked one night at an opera she was attending. A man came at her in the bathroom and instructed her to kill her only child. She speaks on how his words were melodic, and she had to fight everything inside her to argue back with him. She fought, physically trying to get away, but he bit her, and at that moment, all will inside of your Margaux died."

He gestured back to the words in the book before he kept speaking. "From that moment on, she lived in hell. Constantly, a voice in her mind spoke to her, telling her that she must kill you. That you must die. On the day of her death, she wrote her last passage in the journal. She'd reached out to a family protector or something along those lines. She called him the Omerta of the family. She asked for his help, but she knew that she would no longer be able to fight the voice. If she hadn't died, you would have."

In disbelief, Eveet read the last page, and it was exactly as Jean-Baptiste had said. Her mother spoke about the strength of the voice and how she could no longer fight it. How she'd reached out to someone days earlier, asking for help and telling them that she had to die.

Her eyebrows pinched together so hard that she could feel a headache beginning to form.

"Who forced this upon my mother? Who was the man at the Opera? And how do you know that this journal wasn't planted?"

So many thoughts and schemes ran through her mind. Yet, somehow, everything he'd said rang with the sound of truth. No matter how crazy it sounded.

"Some months after Margaux's death, a woman came to our residence. She called herself a Priestess. She confirmed the journal."

Her thoughts went back to the Mambo who'd visited her. "And?" Her voice was monotone."

"A vampire controlled your mother."