Chapter 51

After dinner at the home, he and Izzy left the house in her truck and she told him to drive as far as he possibly could, she simply wanted to get away from it all. Jeremy was sitting in the back of the truck, but seeing as Kol needed to drive, he had his totem on his person so that he wouldn’t get distracted, leaving Izzy having to relay Jeremy’s messages.

“He’s asking what’s next,” Izzy said as she made herself comfortable in the seat, kicking off her shoes and trying to ignore the dent in her dashboard that Kol created not even five weeks ago.

“Well, what do you want to do next?”

“I just want my brain to shut off for a while,” Izzy sighed as she looked out the window. “Not making any decisions, just to be. Not to think about what’s going to happen next. I feel like I’ve been doing that far too much lately. I just want to do things that I like. Trying to draw without channeling spirits would be nice to try.”

‘I can keep them at bay, no problem.’

“Aw, thanks Jeremy,” she smiled at him as she leaned back to look at him.

‘That could be my new role, my new thing. Keep shit away.’

Izzy let out a snort before looking at Kol. “He’s offering to be my spiritual bodyguard so I can draw in peace, and just keep regular shit away,” she explained. “It’s not a bad idea though.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Kol replied, keeping his eyes on the road. “Because you suck at recognizing danger when it’s staring you right in the face.”

“What!”

‘I agree,’ Jeremy laughed.

“I can easily name two quite recent examples,” Kol continued. “Three!”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, the way you were acting in New Orleans, for one.”

Izzy huffed. “The hell I’m letting someone else call me a name that’s not mine or think I’m someone else, I’m me! I didn’t know what was going on, so that’s a pass.”

“Darling, you slipped into a courtyard of a deserted building, with a half locked gate and encountered Davina, a very powerful witch and an old bat with a hatred towards vampires, showing her the drawings you made of the vampires she tried to forget. And you survived,” He laughed, shaking his head. Not to mention poking still grieving vampires with a large stick, which was also a danger but they hadn’t known back then what the hell was going on. And now they did, so Kol had tried to let go of all the negative experiences so far.

“Okay.”

“The second one was hitting a wolf with your car and then pull him into the car with you!”

“That was your brother!”

“You didn’t know that at the time.”

“Okay, that’s the second. What’s the third?”

“Remember how we went to that small mining town before returning to Texas? How you stabbed me in the leg with a knife?”

Izzy rolled her eyes at him. “You’re a vampire, you can’t bleed out like that, and it heals fast.”

“Exactly, I’m a vampire and we were in a tight space together. I could have killed you.”

“But you didn’t!” she countered. “Because I trusted you, and I still do.”

‘Kol is a vampire with emotional issues, although he’s shown quite the restraint lately. Must be because he really loves you,” Jeremy noted. ‘He’s a dick.’

“He’s your friend.”

‘He’s still a dick.’

“Jeremy just called you a dick.”

“That’s alright, darling,” Kol smiled at her before focusing back on the road, putting his left foot down a bit more. “It’s why I think it’s an excellent idea if he keeps a better eye on you over on that side, he sees them quicker than we do.”

Izzy eventually drifted off into a deep sleep as Kol drove all the way through the night. When Izzy woke up, she saw that they were in a city somewhere, there was a greyhound bus station, a salvage yard and a uhaul storage that they passed. The sun was barely coming up and she rubbed her eyes before trying to stretch herself like a cat would do. “Where are we?”

“Good morning!” Kol greeted her with a smile. He was wearing a different shirt than when they had left the night before. “We’re almost in Mobile.”

“Mobile?”

“Yes,” he smiled widely. “I drove all night. I know of only two places where we can be who we are without being pestered by the spirit world and one is a place I don’t really want to return to unless the old bat is dead, and the other one is where I lived for the last fifty years or so. Here in Mobile. What better way to figure out what you want to do next than in an oasis of peace and quiet?”

“You drove all night?”

“I don’t need much sleep. I did stop for a late night snack though.”

“That explains the new shirt,” Izzy pointed out.

“I have to admit, it got a little bit messy,” Kol nodded, a fond smile on his face as if he remembered his kill. “You must be hungry.”

“Amongst other things,” Izzy said as she wiggled in her chair, feeling the pressure on her bladder. Not a minute later, they pulled up in a huge parking area with a Walmart supercenter. “Oh, yep, that’ll do,” she nodded.

“We’ll buy some food and then continue on to my humble abode,” Kol said as he parked the car. “Although I do have to admit, I don’t really live in a small apartment, but I’m certain you’ll love it.”

She felt slightly refreshed after going to the bathroom and splashing her face with water and joining Kol in doing some groceries. Breakfast food and drinks were what was most important. They could always go back for other stuff when needed.

Kol’s home was close by, they didn’t drive for long when he turned onto a lane with trees on either side for as far as Izzy could see, the lane had several small roads leading up to houses, and Kol turned into the last one. “It’s about an acre or two of land, I didn’t really pay much attention when I bought it. It’s isolated enough, yet near everything. Jeremy lived close by until I took him in to take care of him.”

‘The basement is this electronics and music nirvana, mostly antiques. To you, anyway,’ Jeremy laughed. ‘But yeah, it’s a great house.’

“Jeremy likes your house.”

“Yeah, he’d better,” Kol laughed, shaking his head as he kept driving and pointed through the trees. “There it is.”

Izzy was amazed by the size of the house as they cleared the trees. Instead of a stone path, a long path of stairs lead up to the house, that was built in partially brick, but also wood. Pillars. Large windows and cute little half-moon windows on the shingle roof. The home was massive. As he circled around the house over a small gravel road to the back onto a driveway, she could see that there was a garage attached, and a large deck looking out into the trees and the driveway that had a basketball hoop slapped in the middle.

“Wow,” she said as she got out of the car and looked up to the house. “That’s massive!”

“It has a lot of space, yes,” Kol mused as he got out of the car and leaned against it. “Nothing special, though. Our family owns a lot of houses, like the one in Las Vegas. We also have a few plantation houses and big villas scattered across the world…”

“But this is yours.”

“It is. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a library, a workshop, a storage room, a living area and a den to simply watch movies in…” he summed up. “Oh, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to love the kitchen and the view from every part of the house. This is as much mine as it’s yours, though.”

‘Early in the morning you can actually see the wild life just saunter by,’ Jeremy added as he appeared next to Kol who had left his totem in the car. ‘I often wished I could still draw in my old age because the view is simply stunning.’

Kol pushed himself off of the truck, grabbed the bag of groceries from the backseat and took her hand to walk her inside the house. “And once inside, not even Jeremy can come and pester us.”

‘Yeah, no offense taken! See you guys later, have fun!’

She really liked the outside of the house, and the moment she stepped into the home, everything fell silent. Much like it had done in New Orleans in Kol’s apartment, but this was different. It was quiet. There was always this sort of a hum in the back of her mind that allowed her to speak to the dead, and it was gone.

New Orleans had given her a headache, but this house felt peaceful. Calm. Safe.

“Are you okay?” Kol asked worried as he put the bag down and carefully rubbed her back. “Is the protection too much? I know it’s slightly different than in New Orleans as it’s done by a different witch and more catered towards my needs but…”

“No, it’s perfect, actually,” she eventually said, looking up at him with a smile on her face. “I feel like I can let go of the control that I had, even before all of this started… ease up.”

“I’m very happy to hear that, darling,” he kissed the top of her head and picked up the grocery bag. “I’ll make us something to eat, why won’t you explore the home a little? Familiarize yourself?”

~o.O.o~

“Can’t it always be this way?” Izzy wondered out loud as she was sitting on the deck, sketching some of the trees in the garden while Kol was working on the laptop. They’d been in Mobile for a week now and she felt she never wanted to leave again.

“I wish,” Kol smiled at her. It took a few days but he had noticed she’d calmed down. She was vibrating on a lower energy now and she didn’t feel as uptight. It was almost as if she was a whole different person. Her drawing wasn’t manic, either, and none was spirit related. “While this is our home, we can’t stay here and hide from the rest of the world, we do eventually have to venture outside.”

“Why? These days food can get delivered.”

“Yes,” Kol had an amused smile on his face. “But locking ourselves away from the rest of the world isn’t good, either. It’s not healthy. Trust me, I’ve been there. Jeremy threatened to set this house on fire many times to get me out of the house. He actually tried, once, by setting my car alight.”

“He did that?”

Kol nodded. “You see, I’m a bit like your parents. I hate to admit it, but their gifts? You know the story. They come from previous versions of Bella, and I have it too. It’s like she left her mark inside. Deep. Unable to get rid of. With Myriam not willing to make me a totem like she had for Bella and being kicked out of New Orleans, I had to come up with another solution as not to see spirits and having to help them. I preferred being indoors, this place is my sanctuary. But it wasn’t healthy.”

She thought for a moment and nodded. “I understand where you’re coming from, really. But now it’s the both of us here, no need to get lonely.”

“Still, I think it’ll do us good to be on the road for a week or two, then come back here. Do whatever we want.”

“But what will we do?” Izzy put her pencil down and took her glass of juice to take a sip from it.

“I don’t know,” Kol shrugged. “Find places to give you inspiration to draw so that maybe you can work on that children’s book you want to publish?”

Izzy started to blush. “It’s a dream of mine, yes. And I love working on it, but old fashioned books are no longer a thing, is it? They still sell real books but everything is digital and you pay a shit ton of money for normal books. There’s no publisher who’d want to help me publish this.”

Kol leaned on the table with his elbows and rested his chin on his hands as he looked at her with a big, goofy grin on her face. “If you want to share your stories and your drawings with the rest of the world, then we will do just that. We’ll start our own publishing house, keep the prices low.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Izzy barked out a laugh.

“I want to bet that Myriam would be very eager to help with the financial side of the business, but yeah, why not? Let’s start a revolution of getting the normal books back in fashion for a reasonable price!”

“Why?”

“Because people need to read, don’t they? Makes them smart and your voice deserves to be heard. Of all of our time here on Earth, we’ve never done publishing yet. It’ll be a fun venture! You’re ridiculously talented and you deserve to share that with everyone else,” he replied. “Do I need to remind you that money is not an issue?”

She bit her lip as she looked at him. Unsure what to think of this madness. Because it was madness and a lot of money would be involved. “Can’t it just remain a dream for now?”

“Of course.”

“What are you doing, anyway?” Izzy took another sip of her juice, trying to steer the conversation away from her dream, because it involved way too much money.

“I’m responding to some messages that were left on Bella’s website. It’s been a while since I’ve updated it with a story, too,” he replied as he pointed at his laptop. “The website needs a complete overhaul too. It’s unresponsive to all the new devices that came out and it looks like it’s an antique… which it is, but still,” Kol sighed as he leaned back in the chair. “It’s such a great repository of history, of what she stood for, and sort of a training manual for others who find themselves curious to spirits.”

“You shouldn’t take it down. It’s also a part of your life. Maybe you should print out all the stories,” Izzy smiled at him. “Like…”

“A book?” Kol’s face lit up. “Because you know… I do have this idea…”

She facepalmed herself and shook her head. “A journal!”

“No! A book! There are so many stories, maybe multiple books! Bella’s words shared with more people! Have her inspire a whole new generation!” he almost jumped out of his chair out of excitement. “We’re going to create that publishing house, Izzy, you have great ideas! And since we will have that publishing house, you can release your children’s book!”

“No!” she shook her head laughing. Oh, this was so stupid!

~o.O.o~

Dear readers,

This website has been up for at least fifty years in one way or another, and the idea has always been, and will ever be, to be kind to each and everyone, especially to those who have found peace, or those who have found themselves somewhat stuck in between.

Bella stood for integrity, for telling the stories of the spirits who no longer could tell their own, and to help them move on if they wanted to. Or, in most cases, at least ease their pain, give them a friend to talk to.

Because that’s what Bella was to the dead, and the living, a good friend.

While the website was regularly updated with stories of the departed, things got a bit quiet around Bella. She never fully recovered from the time she was on live television, she became fearful and withdrawn in that part of her life, but blossomed in her relationships with the living.

Bella got married, had a beautiful daughter and they lived a peaceful life away from everyone else. Enjoying life. Bella was a brilliant cook, and a great storyteller with the biggest heart that you can believe. She’d rather get hurt than you’d get hurt, in a way.

For many years it was speculated that Bella had passed away but I’m writing to you today that her passing has only been recent. She outlived her husband and her friend Jeremy.

Bella lived a full life. Happy with her husband, her daughter and her grandchild. Away from peering eyes and you – her fans, her sceptics and supporters.

One of Gran’s wishes was that we’d continue her work after she’d passed; telling stories of those who are no longer with us and posting them on her website.

My mother wasn’t gifted with some of the gifts my grandmother had, but I have been. Gran taught me everything she knew and while I am nowhere near as capable as she was, I will honor her memory.

My name is Isabelle, I was named after my Gran, and I really like my privacy, so that’s all you’re going to get.

What can you expect from now on?

We’re going to update the website just a little, make sure it’s up to modern standards.

I will continue to tell stories by blog posts, and I am also a psychic drawer – as my grandfather realized – so I’ll try to post drawings as well.

There will be no videos, no EVPs and I will not seek out the lost on a daily basis. It’s a hobby, I do have my private life which I like to remain private and separated. (My boyfriend thinks that might change as I seem to have inherited my grandmother’s determination and heart)

That being said, there might be plans to have Gran’s stories and blogs released as a book. A traditional book. We’re looking into keeping the costs as low as possible, I don’t want any financial gain off of it, but I am entertaining the idea of adding maybe a little bit on the low cost of the book to support a charity Gran would have liked.

I want to thank you all for the love and support you’ve shown my grandmother over the years, whether you just found her videos and this website or have been a long time follower.

My grandmother found peace and didn’t want to linger, but she did give me a glimpse of her life now. This is a drawing of my grandmother, grandfather and Uncle Jeremy looking young, and of course, the face of my grandfather is obscured as he really did not like to be seen!

Wishing you light and happiness, until next time,

Isabelle.

THE END

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