Page 102 of Wolfsbane Hall
He cupped her face again, his eyes measuring her reaction and the effect of the poison leaving her body. But his brow furrowed, because he instinctively understood something was wrong.
“I hate you, Dean.” The pain was unbearable now, and hot, thick tears dripped down her face. “But mostly, I hate myself for loving you.”
Celestine’s knees buckled, and she fell down the street she’d just walked up, and Dean caught her in his arms. Blood trickled from between her blue lips, and she felt the color leaching from her face.
Celestine’s secret had finally caught up to her.
The things she had never told anyone else were forcing her to pay up.
And Dean’s machinations had sped up the process. The truth was that Celestine Sinclair had always been dying, long before she was ever poisoned.
She’d been dying long before she’d ever met the Specter. Celestine had a broken heart in far more ways than one.
INTERLUDE
Eight Months Ago
Monday, March 3, 1939
St. Mary’s Hospital
The room was cold, bright, and uncomfortable. Celestine sat in her medical gown, waiting for the doctor to come in and update her on her prognosis. She’d been seeing Doctor Levi-Jones for the past eight years since passing out during a Wolfsbane Hall casino night. Dean had rushed her to the hospital, but since she was conscious again, she made sure the medical staff knew Dean wasn’t related to her at all and that he didn’t have permission to know anything about her medical records.
Celestine was born with a defective heart. She’d known about it for almost as long as she could remember anything. She wasn’t allowed to play with the other kids because her parents were afraid that her heart could fail at any minute. They feared that physical activity and too many stressful emotions could kill her.
They tried to stifle her emotions. They tried to make her stoic and broody like Dean. But Celestine wasn’t made for hiding anything away. She felt every emotion in a big fashion. She was waves breaking on the shore.
It didn’t work, but she never really got to have fun with other kids or be a normal kid. So, she never learned to make friends. Everyone in her life had treated her like a fragile porcelain doll, and the Specter was no exception.
She’d begun to expect it of people.
So when she collapsed, she knew exactly why.
The doctor had given her three years to live back then, but she had made it eight, and possibly she would have made it eight more, but with the frequency of her lightheadedness, she highly doubted it.
She knew she was dying.
It was a matter of when, not if.
So when Doctor Levi-Jones walked in with his clipboard in hand, Celestine immediately asked, “How long?”
“If you’re lucky? Six months,” he said matter-of-factly.
Celestine tried to not cry in front of the doctor, but she’d never been good at holding it in. Tears spattered onto her hospital gown. It was so much sooner than she’d expected, even knowing since she was little that she would eventually die from her broken heart—her defective heart. She’d hoped she’d make it ten more years.
But that wasn’t in her cards.
“What are the symptoms I am going to have?” she asked.
“You will start to experience shortness of breath, persistent coughing with white, pink, and sometimes red mucus, shortness of breath, dizziness and fatigue, nausea, swelling, lack of an appetite, and you may experience confusion and disorientation.”
Celestine nodded, unable to give a full reply.
The doctor placed down his clipboard. “Get your affairs in order.”
What affairs?
“Yes, sir.”
