Chapter 2 The Weight of Secrets

Victoria's POV

I didn't sleep that night. How could I?

He was three doors down from my room. The thing wearing my brother's face, sleeping in what used to be the guest quarters. Thomas wanted to lock him in, but Father refused. Too obvious, he said. Too suspicious.

As if anything about this situation wasn't already drowning in suspicion.

I sat by my window, watching the sun rise over the frozen grounds. The same grounds where Elias and I used to build snowmen. Before everything went wrong. Before I learned what my family was capable of.

A knock at my door made me jump.

"It's me," Thomas said.

I let him in. He looked like he hadn't slept either. His expensive suit was wrinkled, his eyes red.

"We need to talk about what we're going to do," he said.

"Do? What can we do?" I kept my voice low. "He knows things, Thomas. Things only Elias would know."

"He's an imposter. Someone did their research, found old records, maybe paid off a servant for information."

I laughed bitterly. "You don't believe that."

Thomas sat on my bed, his head in his hands. "I have to believe it. The alternative is...."

"That we murdered our brother and something came back in his place?"

He flinched like I'd slapped him. "Don't say that."

"Why not? It's true."

"We did what had to be done. The family was bankrupt. Father was going to lose everything. We would have ended up on the street."

"So we killed Elias instead." The words tasted like poison. "We burned him alive so Father could keep his precious money."

Thomas stood up, angry now. "You were fifteen. You didn't understand what was at stake."

"I understood enough to have nightmares for twenty years."

We stared at each other. The space between us felt like an ocean.

"Mother wants to try the ritual again," Thomas said finally. "To send him back."

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Then we find another way to deal with him."

I heard the threat in his voice. "You mean kill him again?"

"If necessary."

I thought about the thing in the guest room. About the cold intelligence in his eyes. "I don't think that's going to work this time."

Thomas left without another word. I dressed slowly, putting off the moment I'd have to go downstairs. Have to face him. But eventually I ran out of excuses.

The dining room smelled like coffee and fear.

Father sat at the head of the table, staring at his newspaper without reading it. Mother picked at her breakfast, her hands shaking. And there, sitting in Elias's old chair like he'd never left, was the stranger.

He looked up when I entered. "Good morning, Victoria."

His voice was too familiar. Too close to the voice I remembered from childhood. It made my chest ache.

"Don't call me that," I said.

"What should I call you? We're family, aren't we?"

I poured myself coffee with trembling hands. "Family doesn't disappear for twenty years."

"I didn't disappear. I died. There's a difference."

Mother made a choking sound. Father reached over and gripped her hand.

"Enough of this game," Father said. "What do you want? Money? We can pay you to go away and never come back."

The stranger cut his toast with careful precision. "I don't want your money, Father. I want the truth. I want to know why I have these fragments in my head. Fire. Pain. Your faces watching me burn. I want to know what happened the night I died."

"You fell asleep smoking in the chapel," Father said. It was the same lie he'd told the police. The same lie he'd been telling for two decades. "It was an accident."

"Was it?" The stranger's eyes went dark. Actually dark, like someone had blown out a candle behind them. "Then why can I remember you holding the torch? Why can I remember Mother speaking words in a language I shouldn't know? Why can I remember begging you to stop?"

The room went cold. Frost formed on the windows.

Father pushed back from the table. "Margaret, get out."

But Mother sat frozen, staring at the stranger with wide eyes. "You shouldn't remember that. The ritual was supposed to erase everything. You shouldn't exist at all."

"Margaret!" Father's voice was sharp with panic.

Too late. The confession hung in the air like smoke.

The stranger smiled. "Thank you, Mother. I was starting to think I was going insane. It's good to know my memories are real."

He stood up. The frost spread across the table, coating the silverware in ice. He walked around to where Mother sat and bent down close to her ear.

"Tell me the rest," he whispered. "Tell me why you killed your own son."

Mother started crying. "We had no choice. The business was collapsing. We were going to lose everything. The house, the name, all of it. I found the book in the library. The old texts from your great-grandmother. They said a blood sacrifice could bind a entity that would restore our fortune."

"And you chose me."

"You were always Father's least favorite," Mother sobbed. "Thomas was the heir. Victoria was the baby. You were just in the middle. Lost. We thought it would be merciful. Quick."

I closed my eyes, but I could still see it. That night, watching through the crack in the door. Elias drugged and crying on the altar. Mother's voice rising in chant. Father's torch catching the oil they'd poured around him.

"It wasn't quick," the stranger said softly. "I burned for a long time."

He straightened up. The temperature returned to normal. The frost melted away.

"But here's what I don't understand," he continued. "Why am I back? If the ritual worked, if I'm dead and buried, why am I standing here?"

No one answered.

He looked at each of us. "Someone is going to tell me. And when they do, we're going to settle this debt. All of it."