Julia Hoffman

Chapter 20

Julia sat there crying. Her dress was a big circle around her, warning of everyone else. It wasn't fair. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Viola needed to pay. What did Viola hate the most? People who messed with her mothers man. That was Julia. Julia smiled. She wiped some of the mascara from under her eye. Someone knocked on the door.

"Julia, may I enter?" Julia smiled. Barnabas's posh voice always made her smile.

"Come in."

He looked at her, sitting on the floor, she still had black smudges all over her face. "What?"

"I wanted to check on you, you seemed so upset."

"Of course I'm upset!" Julia said. "My daughter had magical powers she doesn't want, my son is...well...and I'm a half vampire half human who just can't catch a break!"

Barnabas sat down next to her on the floor, he was still quite far away as the circumference of her dress was like a moat and he wasn't going to risk sitting on it. He leans over as far as he could and tapped her shoulder. "There there," he said.

"There there?" Julia asked. "You know Barnabas, I've known you for almost twenty years, and you give me, 'there there'?" She said, starting to shout a little.

"Well what do you want me to do?" Barnabas said, trying to stay calm.

Julia opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She leant over her dress and kissed him. "I just want for you to be how your were with Victoria or Angelique,"  she sighed.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't want you to be with me just because we have children together, I wanted to be with you because I love you," Julia explained. She reached under her bed and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She took one of the cigarettes out and smoked it.

"I thought you were stopping Hunter smoking." Barnabas reminded her.

"These are Hunters cigarettes," She said, putting back in her mouth and letting the smoke drift out of her mouth.

Barnabas sighed. He put his face nearer to Julia and kissed her. "I really do love you," he said.

"Really?" Julia asked.

"Really."

~*~

"Do you think she'll be okay?"

"Who?"

"Mom duh." Erica said.

"She'll pull through. She always does."

"I don't know how,"

Hunter sighed. "Who even is this Viola chick? She totally just walked into mom and dads wedding. And then her clothes changed so..magically. She's the hottest devil I've ever met."

"That's the trouble." Erica said. "The devil can be beautiful, because he used to be an angel. And he was gods favourite."

"Your scaring me," Hunter said laughing a bit. "What was she like?"

"She was kind and understanding and persuasive and beautiful." Erica said. "The name Viola suited her well, I don't know why, it just did,"

"Mom was pretty shaken up," Hunter said. "She's too scared to do what she really wants."

"How do you know what she really wants?" Erica said, lying back on her bed. She and Hunter shared a room, not because they were forced to, because they had always felt safer together.

"I read her diary." Hunter said, looking in a mirror.

"You read her diary?" Erica laughed. "I thought it was just medical records and stuff."

"No, it gets real deep," Hunter said. She wanted to have a big family, the opposite of her own, she wanted four or five children, but was too scared to have any after us."

"Why was she scared?" Erica asked. "I mean we're a bit kooky but we're not psychopaths,"

"She thinks it's her fault, that your all magic and stuff," Hunter said.

"It's no ones fault, it's natural," Erica said, putting a song on from her record player. There was more advanced technology, but she liked how it spun round and round, gave her something to look at.

"Mom doesn't think it is," Hunter said. "She thinks you were cursed before you were born,"

"By who? There isn't really anyone in the house with magical powers," Erica said.

"But Viola said she lived here before we were born,"

"Yeah, so? She said she was twenty-six now, she would have been six or seven back then."

"You could already to tons of stuff when you were seven, that's when you brought that squirrel back to life." Hunter said.

"I guess.." Erica said. " I don't know, to be honest I don't wanna think about this now,"

~*~

Barnabas kissed her again, this time she kissed him back. "Julia, tell me your dreams, I'll make them come true," he whispered.

A tear fell from her eye. "Even if you could, I'd worry about the result of my dream more than the dream itself,"  Julia frowned. "But this should have been our wedding night, so let's have fun for once,"

He pushed her onto the bed and no one spoke to them till morning.