Chapter 25

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. She had ignored it at the time.

"I need to. With everything going on at work, I want answers about my parents, what they were standing for exactly. My dad said to not trust anyone, turned out he was right, 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 were only supposed to be in training 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 exactly what they know about us, so I'm kinda really hoping that I'm not walking into a trap. I know that technically, they can't capture me or anything, but they're humans."

"The CIA? Didn't you two meet with the MI6 last week?"

"Yeah, like I said often, things are getting nasty, and I can't trust half of the EBEE agents. Honestly, I kinda like working with the CMMA agents more. Somehow, I find them more trustworthy."

"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, if my parents really 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. 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."

Coralis' taxi arrived. She grabbed her purse and as she grabbed the door handle, she turned around.

"Frank is supposed to stop by around dinner time. I should be back by then, but are you going to be here, just in case I'm not? He probably will call before leaving his place."

"Yeah, 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 understood 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 what to say, so she remained silent and followed Dorothy into her living room. Dorothy sat down on a single-seater chair, so Coralis took a seat on the couch across from it.

"Holy gods from above, where's my head, I totally forgot to offer you something to drink, or to eat. Do you want something to drink? Give me a minute, I will go prepare something, and we agreed to meet at lunchtime. Oh I'm so sorry dear."

"It's fine, I don't need anything."

She got up and went to the kitchen. Meanwhile, Coralis tried to put her thoughts in order. She had so many questions, and didn't know what to ask first. She wasn't expecting Dorothy to be so emotional: she was convinced that she didn't care.

Dorothy came back to the living room 20 minutes later. She deposited a tray of bite-size sandwiches and a pitcher full of a bluish liquid on the table between them.

 "It's like I'm seeing a ghost from the past sitting in my living room," she said, 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 were so desperate to destroy anyone close to Lord Meozo, fearing 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 easily have made the team. I didn't realize it was you at first, 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, to collect her thoughts, and pulled the letter her dad wrote from one of her back pockets and handed it to her. She tried to remain collected and to keep a poker face on.

"That summer, I went to their storage unit in London for the first time, and I 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 Lord Meozo destroyed. I wanted to stay away from you to protect you, but they got to you anyway."

She 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 try to connect with you."