Annabeth Collins sipped the cup of mulled wine, feeling its warmth flow into her, soothing, calming.

Quentin Collins stood beside her in the firelit drawing room, concern evident in his clear blue eyes.

"Easy," he cautioned. "Not too much at once."

His large hand covered hers for a moment, steadying the cup she held.

"You can stop trembling," he said reassuringly. "Whatever it was you were running from is gone. You're perfectly safe here."

She half-consciously stroked the talisman, its smooth stone cold once more beneath her fingers. There had been no pain with the time transfer this time. And once again, the wounds at her throat had vanished.

"What's your name?" Quentin asked.

She told him, realizing as he gave her his own again that she had seen him before. The day she had first entered this house, a day in 1986, she had seen Quentin Collins in a vision, and she had known, with a certainty only the Sight could afford that somehow, he would survive this turn-of-the-century world and enter into the lives of those who inhabited Collinwood generations from now. He would be changed by the years, yet the years would not change him.

Like the man, a contradictory riddle...

"I have to admit it's not every night I find ladies in distress on my own front lawn," he was saying. "What were you running away from, anyway?"

Her fingers still stroking the talisman absently, she said, "Nothing. I mean, I thought it was something, but... I'm sorry. I really do feel very silly."

"Not at all. Here, then." He took the empty cup from her, placing it amid a clutter of its twins on the tray of the elaborate liquor cabinet. "Let me take you home. Do you have a room in the village, or are you staying with friends?"

"I..." She faltered, no convenient story coming readily to mind.

"You don't have a room?"

"No friends either, I'm afraid. It's rather difficult to explain."

"No doubt. I'd love to hear all about it some time." His smile went straight to the most trusting part of her soul. "Let me have the maid make up a room for you here. We can worry about where you came from and where you're going in the morning."

"No, please. Don't go to any trouble on my account."

"No trouble," he insisted. "In fact, I'll consider it de rigueur. You have my curiosity positively peaked."

He vanished out the paneled rosewood doors only to return shortly with a woman in maid's liverie beside him. She was tall and blonde with sharp, angular features and a haughty expression that clearly stated she did not wish to carry out Quentin's request.

"Gordon can take her down to the village," she said defiantly. "And she can hire a room there. Collinwood is not an inn."

"Beth, dear, you're behaving very rudely in front of our guest."

"She's your guest, not mine. So don't give me orders about what to do with her. You've been back in this house all of one day and you act as though you'd never gone away.

"Beth--"

"I don't have to answer to you, Quentin. I'm not your-"

He tried to clamp a hand over her mouth to stifle the tirade and snatched it away, bitten. "Now Beth--"

She slapped him; a smart, glancing blow across the left cheek, and stalked away, her long gown flipping angrily after her.

"I'm sorry," Annabeth said, embarrassed for him. "I never should have--"

"Please don't say it." He smiled again, Beth's insult to his dignity apparently already forgotten. "Don't say you're sorry; it only gets you into deeper water. Take it from me." He proffered a hand to help her up. "You're welcome to stay in my room for the night if you like. I uh... won't be using it this evening anyhow."

"But...

"No buts. Come on."

True to his word, he led her to a room in Collinwood's west wing and left her there to rest. But her, sleep was haunted by visions of Barnabas Collins and the witch, Angelique. Were they also here, in this era? She hoped not. Perhaps, if she had only Quentin Collins to deal with in this time, she could find a way to make the talisman guide her home.

A soft sound roused her from her fitful sleep. She opened her eyes to the silhouette of a tall figure looming over her in the darkness.

"I knew you would be back," it said in a deep and resonant feminine voice. "I waited for you."

Something long and gleaming caught the window's moonlight, then sliced downward to tear into the bedding where she would have been. She rolled frantically away, scrambling from the bed to make a run for the room's open door. The figure came after her, panting like some wild, rabid animal.

Her flight to the door was suddenly blocked by yet another intruder. Beth, the maid who'd snubbed her earlier, stood in the doorway with a lighted lamp in hand. Annabeth nearly knocked her over.

"Jenny!"

The sharp address was given, she realized, to the figure that had just come very close to skewering her.

"You know you're not supposed to be here. Come back to your room, Jenny. Now."

The woman she addressed moved cautiously into the glowing lamplight, a shock of wild red hair with green eyes in between. The glittering point of a silver letter-opener still protruded from her clenched fist.

"Not until I kill him," she snarled, and Annabeth understood, suddenly, that whoever this wild woman was, she'd intended to harm not her, but the man who usually slept in this room.

"Quentin isn't here," Beth said with a suspicious glance in her direction. "He's away, remember?"

"No. No, he's back. I heard. You can't lie to me." The green eyes focused on Annabeth. "He left this one here. Another of those tramps from the village. Another gypsy girl. But he was here!"

"I'm afraid you have it wrong," Annabeth said. "Very wrong. Both of you. Quentin never--"

"Quentin never came back," Beth cut her off. "From Egypt. He isn't here, Jenny. Now please, come back to your room with me."

"No. I'll wait for him here. He's my husband. I want to be here when he comes back."

Her husband? Annabeth failed to hide her surprise at that, but Beth's warning look kept her from expressing it aloud. "You can't wait here. Come on."

Another figure appeared in the hall; a severe-looking woman with a silk -frilled night dress pulled hastily around her shoulders. "Did you find her?" she asked Beth, and stopped short, seeing Annabeth and Jenny standing together just inside the doorway of Quentin's room. "What's going on here, Beth?"

"Nothing, Miss Judith. It's all right." Beth handed her the lamp, moving hastily to Jenny's side to disarm her of the letter-opener. We were just on our way back to our room, weren't we Jenny?"

She led the disturbed Jenny out of the room and disappeared with her down the corridor, leaving Annabeth to face the austere Judith Collins alone.

"And who might you be?"

Annabeth was at once self-conscious of her rumpled 2Oth century clothing, her unkempt hair, and the faint yellow glow of the talisman in the lamplight. "I... I was lost," she said lamely. "Quentin was kind enough to lend me his room for the evening."

Judith looked thoroughly skeptical. "I see. As usual, my brother wastes no time aligning new conquests."

"But it's not what you--"

"--Just see to it you are out of this house by morning. I'll have no more of Quentin's indiscretions going on behind these walls. Not again. He's going to find that certain things have changed around here since he's been away."

"I really don't know what you re-"

"--Just be gone, " Judith snapped at her. "By morning."

Abruptly, she turned and walked away, the glow of the lamp encompassing her like a halo as she went.

Annabeth was awake for the rest of the night. She paced the elaborately decorated room, mentally pleading with the talisman to work its magic and take her home again. But the round amber stone remained cold and unresponsive.

A soft tap at the door a few hours after sunrise roused her from a meditative session in one of the room's upholstered chairs. She opened the door to a pleasantly smiling Quentin Collins.

"Morning," he saluted and handed her a small bundle of clothing. "I borrowed these from a... well, from an acquaintance who's about your size. I thought you might like a fresh change of attire."

At least, she thought, he hadn't said, "suitable attire."

"Thank you," she said sincerely, "but I couldn't accept it. Your sister Judith has demanded my removal from the house, and I think it would be wise if I comply with her request."

His smile promptly became a sneer. "My sister the oracle," he said acidly. "All the instincts of a bloodhound and a face to match. Look, I'm sorry. Really. But you don't have to go, not just yet. I don't even know where you came from. In fact, I don't know anything about you."

She grew angry in spite of herself at his obvious efforts toward familiarity. "Maybe it's best we keep it that way," she said sharply.

He looked hurt, not understanding her outburst. "What's wrong?" he asked innocently. "Judith can't have frightened you that badly."

She hesiteted, not certain she should tell him. "No," she said finally. "Your wife Jenny paid me a visit last night. She tried to run me through with a letter-opener."

Quentin's face fell. "Jenny was here?"

"Looking for you. I really don't think I should get any more involved with your family's private affairs than I already--"

"You're involved whether you like it or not," he interrupted. The friendly smile held suddenly changed to a look of guarded suspicion. "I'm not at all sure you're the complete innocent you pretend to be. Why were you stumbling around out there in the dark anyhow? Who sent you here?"

"I told you. Something was--"

"Chasing you. Yes , I remember. What I don't remember is seeing anything there -- or anyone. Maybe Judith is right. Maybe it would be better if you just went back wherever it is you came from."

She looked genuinely crestfallen. "You don't know how much I wish I could," she said. He softened at that, sensitive, perhaps, to the distress that had crept into her voice. "I'm sorry," he said honestly. "I mean that. If you'll just tell me what the prbblem is, maybe I can help."

Something inside of her seemed to melt away. She took the bundle of clothes back out of his hands and carried them back to the upholstered chair, where she sat down, waited until he had taken an opposing chair, and began to tell him at least part of her harrowing story.

* * *

In a tower room not far from where Quentin and Annabeth sat talking, Jenny Collins cuddled a doll in her arms and quietly sang it a lullaby. A second doll lay securely covered in the baby's cradle at her feet, a wooden child asleep in its wooden bed.

"Rest now, babies," Jenny whispered to them. "Your father will be home soon. Home to see you for the very first time."

The "child" in her arms joined its twin in slumber, and she tucked both of them safely back beneath the quilted coverlet, humming the lullaby all the while.

A soft voice behind her said, "Their father is here now."

Jenny started, wheeling to find the transparent specter of a lovely blonde woman in an old-fashioned gown standing near the dust-smudged tower window.

"He is in his room," the beautiful ghost said, "With the trollop you saw a few hours ago. He is with her, at this very moment."

Jenny's eyes grew wide with fury. "No..."

"It is true. Would you like to see, Jenny? Would you like to stop them?"

Jenny's red hair bounced with her enthusiastic nod, then just as quickly flew from side to side. "I can't. My babies. I have to watch my babies."

"Yes, of course, the ghost smiled. "But look at the door, Jenny. Do you see? It isn't locked anymore. I've opened it for you."

The door had indeed swung open on its creaky hinges, revealing the beckoning corridor beyond.

"My babies, " Jenny repeated plaintively.

"Go and find them. I will watch over your children. Here though Take this with you."

The ghosts' spectral hand held out a solid object, which Jenny accepted without question. The weight of the bulky revolver felt strange in her hand.

"You must kill them," the ghost said. "Both of them. He has left you alone all these long months, abandoned his own wife, his own children. And now he is with yet another of his women. Another village tramp."

"No. I won't let him!" Mad Jenny rushed through the open door, the pistol catching sunlight from the windows as she ran.

The ghost of Angelique, still wearing her evil smile, watched Jenny go, believing that she had once again destroyed Barnabas Collins' elaborate plans. She knew that in the secret room of

the mausoleum not far away, her husband slept once again unchained. The gypsy Sandor had last night released him from his prison, and tonight Barnabas would no doubt present himself at Collinwood, a part of some insane plan to save Quentin from an untimely death. Well, she would see about that...

* * *

Quentin had been fascinated by Annabeth's description of the talisman's powers.

"You still haven't told me though," he said, "just who -- or what -- it was that chased you here last night."

She flushed. "It's best that I don't. Believe me."

He seemed to accept that answer, and after studying the pendant she wore for a long moment, asked, "You say this was in a drawer, here in the west wing?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember the room?"

"I think so."

"All right then. Show me."

* * *

They left the confines of Quentin's room mere minutes before Jenny entered it, the gun poised, ready to kill her errant husband and the lover she was certain he was with. Finding the room unoccupied, she circled it for long moments, then wandered back into the corridor, searching.

* * *

"It was here, Annabeth said. "In this bureau."

Quentin looked around the dusty, disused room with an air of familiarity.

"This is Edmund Braedon's room," he said, and at her confused look, added, "He was a houseguest of my grandmother's for a while back in 1859. He was ostensibly a shipping magnate, but rumor had it he was also a part time warlock."

"Then the talisman was his?"

Quentin nodded. "You know I played in this room the whole time I was growing up, and I never found anything in that bureau but dust. Maybe objects of magic really do have a way of gravitating only to those who are best suited to use them."

"You talk like a man who knows something about these things."

"I do. And if you could learn to control this talisman, there might be no end to the powers you could wield."

She shuddered, her hand reaching to cover the faintly-glowing stone. "No," she said, "It's attracted nothing but evil, no matter where it's taken me. I want nothing else but to go home again, and to put this thing back exactly where I found it."

"I doubt if that will be good enough," he told her. "You're a sensitive. The talisman was attracted to you. The only way to stop that attraction is to destroy it."

The pendant seemed to warm with anger at Quentin's suggestion, and she released it. "If I destroy it now, I may never see home again."

Quentin's answer was interrupted by the ominous click of a revolver's hammer, and they both spun to find Jenny Collins standing in the doorway.

"Adulter," she breathed. "Village trollop! He is my husband!" The weapon in her hands was pointed squarely at Annabeth.

"Jenny," Quentin begged. "Jenny, for God's sake, don't."

He started toward her, but was too late to stop the inevitable. Jenny's fingers squeezed the revolver's trigger, and its echoing explosion shattered the ghostly silence of the west wing. Annabeth screamed, a fire in her chest swiftly becoming an agony. She saw Quentin reach Jenny and snatch the gun from her hands, heard him shout something she couldn't understand -- then the room seemed to collapse in upon her, and everything was dark and still...

* * *

"Annabeth?" a voice said to her. "Annabeth, answer me. Are you all right?"

The voice, which sounded as though it had come through a long tunnel, seemed more and more familiar, until she finally recognized its owner as David Collins.

She opened her eyes, and recognized the drawing room of Collinwood's great house.

"How did I--?"

She stopped mid-question, aware that it was probably pointless to ask, but David answered the query anyhow.

"We found you upstairs, in the west wing."

"We?" She saw then, that someone else was in the room, standing near the fireplace. It was Barnabas Collins.

Fearfully, she sat up on the sofa, drawing back when Barnabas came toward her.

"You needn't be afraid," he said with a cautious glance at David. "You fell, in that room upstairs. Don't you remember?"

She could see the recognition in his eyes, and knew that he remembered her from both 1796 and 1967. But this was not the Barnabas Collins she had known in those times. Not the same at all. The hatred, the fear, the aura of death; all of these things were gone from him now. And the sunlight coming through the room's bay windows fell across his face, his hands, his suit. The sunlight.

"Apparently you had some sort of nightmare," he was saying. "But all of that is over. You're all right now. And nothing here can harm you. Nothing at all."

He handed her an object that took several moments for her to recognize. It was -- had been -- the talisman. Where the stone had once been there was now only the twisted remains of the filigreed silver setting. Edmund Braedon's magic stone had been shattered by the bullet from Jenny's gun.

"Quentin..." Annabelle murmured.

David looked puzzled. "You were wearing that broken pendant when we found you. And you were calling for Quentin then, too. Why? He won't be back from Europe for at least another year."

"It's... it's nothing," she said, and dropped the pendant's remains into an ashtray near the sofa. "Just part of the dream, I guess. I must have broken the necklace when I fell. I'm afraid I was snooping in one of those rooms instead of being where I was supposed to. I'm sorry."

"Please," David told her, his tone more than amiable for once. "Don't apologize. Collinwood's old rooms invite the curious. I've done more than my share of exploring them over the years."

She smiled weakly and decided she would need to say no more. The talisman's evil power had at last been broken, and she had survived the horrors of the past that it had shown her, as Barnabas and Quentin had survived them.

She would let it end there.

Some secrets were best left undisturbed.
 
 
 

The End