November 25, 2000 – 10:00
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Victoria.
Coralis was getting ready to go meet with Dorothy, her mother's friend, for lunch. Dorothy had sent her a Happy End-of-Year card the previous year, through the EBEE, but she ignored it at the time.
"No, but I need to. With everything going on at work, I want answers about my parents, about what they stood for exactly. My dad said not to trust anyone. Turned out he was right, and probably more than he knew. He said to only trust Dorothy and his sister, so you know what? I'm going to have a chat with Dorothy. I also want to know why she took so long to try to contact me, but I care less about that."
"What I want to know, is why the EBEE keeps sending you on missions involving the CMMA as if you were an actual agent. You are supposed to be an apprentice with them."
"Speaking of which, I need to go to Virginia next week with Eva for a meeting with some CIA agents. I don't know what they know about us, so we're hoping that it's not a trap. I know that technically, they can't capture us there, but they're humans."
"The CIA? Didn't you two meet with the MI6 last week?"
"Yes, like I said often, things are getting nastier and weirder, and I can't trust half of the EBEE agents."
"And you think Dorothy has some insights about that?"
"Maybe not about the current mess, but I want to know what exactly happened 20 years ago, and if my parents were involved with these groups trying to rise above humans and rule them."
"I keep hearing rumours between you and Princess Veronica, so I guess the Swamtons are still on your case?"
"A bit less now, but I do need that rumour to keep running around. The last thing I need is for the Swamtons to find out about Frank. If everyone believes that Veronica and I are together, people like the Swamtons won't dig further or attempt some shady stuff to get to me. They don't want to mess with the royal vampire family of Chicago. That rumour is protecting him at the moment."
"Ooh, so you want to keep him."
"With what happened at his family party last month, it's not like I'd be able to walk out on him just like that even if I try. And right now, him being a human who knows nothing about the mess of my past plays in his favour. He's one I can trust."
"Very true."
Coralis' taxi arrived. She grabbed her purse and as she reached the door handle, she turned around.
"Frank is supposed to come around dinner time. I should be back by then, but are you going to be here, just in case I'm not?"
"Yes, is he going to eat with us?"
"I'm not sure."
Dorothy insisted that Coralis come to her house in Westmount for privacy reasons. Coralis didn't question it, assuming the woman had trust issues. She could understand why, and they wouldn't be able to talk about what they needed to in a human establishment.
She paid for the taxi and waited for it to leave before ringing the bell.
"Holy gods from above," said Dorothy as she opened the door and put her left hand over her heart, "you look so much like your dad. I'm so sorry about everything."
Tears rolled down her eyes and she hugged Coralis tight for a minute. Dorothy pulled away and passed her right arm behind Coralis' back to lead her inside. Coralis didn't know how to react, so she remained silent and followed Dorothy into her living room. Dorothy sat down on a single-seater chair, and Coralis took a seat on the couch across from it.
"Holy gods from above, where's my head, I entirely forgot to offer you something to drink or to eat. Do you want something to drink? Give me a minute, I will prepare something, and we agreed to meet at lunchtime. Ooh, I'm so sorry dear."
"It's fine, I don't need anything."
While Dorothy was in the kitchen, Coralis tried to collect her thoughts. She had so many questions and didn't know what to ask first. She wasn't expecting Dorothy to be so emotional and was convinced that she didn't care.
Dorothy returned to the living room 20 minutes later with a tray of bite-size sandwiches and a pitcher full of a bluish liquid, which she placed on the table between them.
"I'm seeing a ghost from the past sitting in my living room," said Dorothy, wiping a tear down her left eye, "I remember vividly the night your parents died. I wanted them to be spared, but the EBEE wouldn't have it, they so desperately wanted to kill and destroy anyone close to Lord Meozo, fearing that they would bring him back. Your parents hated working for him, they would never have brought him back."
Tears kept running down her eyes. Coralis remained silent, processing what the woman across from her was saying.
"I'm a huge flyball fan. I remember the first time I saw you playing for our national team, 5 years ago. Your dad was great at it. I saw him playing with Anita's family a few times. If he would have gone to an elemental school, I think he could have made the team. I didn't realize it was you until the commentators mentioned that you were the teenager who destroyed Lord Meozo for good, and memories started flooding back to me. From that point on, I could only see your dad through you."
Coralis closed her eyes for a minute and pulled the letter her dad wrote from one of her pockets and handed it to her. She tried to remain collected and keep a blank face on.
"That summer, I went to their storage unit in London for the first time and found this. He said I could trust you, but you're telling me you were involved in my parents' death. What made you decide to reach out to me after all these years?"
Dorothy struggled to read it and was crying by the time she finished it.
"Yes, I was there. I am a coward, that's why I took so long. You have no idea how guilty I felt. I knew people would come after me because of what I had done: I betrayed a lot of groups just to get rid of Lord Meozo. I wanted to stay away from you to protect you, but they got to you anyway."
Dorothy got up to grab tissues from above a cabinet standing to the right of her television and attempted to wipe the tears, but they kept falling.
"All these years, I tried to live a quiet life among humans. I work at the local library. A year ago, I went to watch a flyball game with an old friend from the CMMA, and she told me that they had started collaborating again with the EBEE. I immediately thought about you. When the crowd chanted your name in the middle of the 1st period, she mentioned that you were one of the EBEE agents who got paired up to work with the CMMA, so I decided that it was time to connect with you."