Dear reader, welcome back to the Bookacy Family Alphabet Adventures! This is chapter 40, and at that, a bit of a special feature. Since this story has been going on for quite a long time and many generations, I thought it would be time to do a recap chapter, encompassing the story from the founding generation to the current generation, generation C. So without further ado, let's get to it!

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”Dad, we're looking for Cory's glasses, have you...” started Barbara Mendoza as she stepped into the study, but forgot to finish her sentence. Instead, she asked: ”What are you doing?”

Aadam turned around in his chair. ”Oh, hi sweetie, I didn't hear you come in.” He pointed towards the computer screen. ”This? It's just a little project to occupy my mind. I've been trying to write down the story of our family, I mean, the most important events. A memoir of sorts if you will. Only, it's a pretty long story, and I'm not so fast at typing. I'm worried that I might not be able... finish it”, he said, looking a little uncertain, not wanting to worry his daughter or make her sad.

”Oh”, she said. ”That sounds interesting. Would you maybe want to take a break and tell me more?”

Aadam was happy to take a break, and even happier that Barbara was showing interest in his project, so he obliged, and the two of them headed downstairs to the empty living room. On the way there, they met Cory, who had found his glasses.

”How... how did you become interested in our family history, Dad?” asked Barbara when they were sitting comfortably on the couch. ”We never talked much about it when I was younger.”

Aadam sighed a little. ”Well, you see, Barbara, you probably know this all is a bit of a difficult issue in our family.”

She nodded.

”It's sometimes been... difficult for me to even think about it, let alone talk about it. But ever since...” he swallowed.

”... ever since your mother died, it's been on my mind a lot”, Aadam continued.

”I hope this doesn't upset you terribly, but her death made me realize that I may not have all that much time left myself, either.”

Barbara nodded again, biting her lip. She couldn't deny that she was aware of the same thing. She wiped a tear off her cheek.

”And well, that somehow brought to my mind that in addition to Adson, I'm perhaps the only sim alive who has witnessed most of the family history first hand, who can still remember it entirely. So I thought maybe I should try to remember as much as I can and write it down, for future generations. Before we all forget.”

”Now I've been trying to do that for a couple of days, but it seems it's a rather slow process, and a long story. I don't know if I'll have enough time”, Aadam finished, a hint of sadness in his voice.

Barbara pondered on that for a while. Then, slowly, she said: ”Well, why don't we... why don't we do it so that you tell it all to me? That should be faster, and I'd love to hear it. And if you want, we could even make recordings. Then I could finish the manuscript, if... if you don't have the time.”

Aadam smiled. ”That's a wonderful idea, sweetheart. If you can bear the ramblings of an old man.”

Barbara squeezed his hand. ”Of course, Dad.”

”In that case. I'm happy with this solution, it's much better to get to spend some time with you rather than with the computer, and I suspect you're a faster typer too. And if we record, you don't have to rely on memory, either.”

”That's settled then”, said Barbara. ”Brenda?” she called.

”Yes?” a voice asked from upstairs.

”Could you please put some coffee on? I think me and Dad are going to need some.”

”Okay, just a minute!”

Barbara stood up. ”Then only to find my tape recorder. Do you want to get started right away?”

Aadam smiled again. ”I'm ready when you are.”

The following is the story of the Bookacy family as narrated by Aadam Mendoza.

The Legacy was founded by my mother, Author Bookacy. She came to Alphabetia with the hope of having a family of her own, and very little money to her name. She never spoke of her early life, or any family she may have had, so I can only tell you about the events after she had moved to Alphabetia.

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Author was a Pleasure sim with the personality 4/4/4/5/8 (Aquarius).

From what she told me, she had quite a rough beginning in Alphabetia, financially. To the extent that in the very beginning she didn't even have a shelter of any kind, only few meager possessions that she had to keep outside, exposed to the elements.

But she didn't mind. She got a job in the culinary career and started working towards earning some money, and eventually, a house.

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The Legacy had an Extreme start (worth 5 points in old an old rules Alphabetacy), meaning that Author had to purchase a 5x6 lot and wasn't allowed to marry or move in anyone for the first week.

Not long after moving to Alphabetia, Mother met my, well, I suppose in some sense my Stepfather: Count Curtis Barthelet. He was the Grand Vampire, and at that, a handsome and powerful man. And perhaps the noblest and kindest man I have ever known.

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Count Curtis, or Curty, as Author called him, was a Pleasure sim with the personality 7/4/5/4/3 (Cancer).

There was an instant spark of interest. Despite my Mother's extremely tight finances, the two of them went on a date together. In fact, I remember Mother telling us that on that very first date, their meal consisted of cake, as it was the cheapest item on the menu and the only one she could afford. At the time, it didn't bother either of them in the slightest.

Count Curtis, like my Mother, was a Pleasure sim, and they had similar personalities and views on life. Needless to say, they soon fell in love.

They continued to date whenever possible, and it wasn't long until Count Curtis agreed to move in with my Mother, and they got married. Although actually, at that point there wasn't much of an ”in” on the plot of land that Mother owned.

That was about to change, though. At that time in Alphabetia, Count Curtis was a rather wealthy man, and now that he was married, he would happily spend his fortune to provide for his family. They were able to build a house, and not just any house, but a rather big and comfortable one, too.

As I said, Curtis was a vampire when my Mother met him, one of the Grand Vampires. In fact, also Mother tried vampirism briefly on his suggestion, and later admitted that it was really quite enjoyable.

But of course, for sims with day jobs, let alone small children, there were some practical problems.

So in the end both Mother and Curtis took the curing potion that she bought from the matchmaker. She was completely back the way she used to be, but he'd been a vampire a much, much longer time, and the Grand Vampire at that. So he still had some vampire-like tendencies even after taking the cure, and he had them until his death at a high age. He was always a Grand Vampire at heart.

At the time when they got married, Mother was already pregnant with his child, their firstborn. Being pregnant was in fact going to be a pretty frequent occurrence for her. Despite being Pleasure sims, Mother and Curtis were quite fond of children, and wanted many.

I don't remember much of that time, but there's plenty of evidence that especially Curtis loved children and was capable with the little ones. It was a very good thing that he was, since he and my mother had five children together, and well, then there was of course me.

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Mostly the children they had were the result of the Alphabet Legacy rules that give extra points for generations with a lot of children; I wanted a head start on the points. That didn't mean they loved their children any less.

Their firstborn, the first of my four half-brothers, was Adrian. As the oldest, he got used to responsibility early on, taking care of us rest, and later on, none of us were very surprised when he became the heir. He had some fluctuation in his Aspiration early on. As a young boy, he aspired Romance, in college he briefly tried Family, but in the end settled for Grilled Cheese, which suited him perfectly.

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Adrian was a Grilled Cheese/Fortune sim with the personality 2/8/5/5/7 (Libra), named after Adrian Leverkühn from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. Romance didn't seem to suit him (and after a generation of Pleasure, it would have felt like repetition), so he re-rolled in college and got Family, which I didn't like for him either, so in the end he got cheesed.

The secondborn was Adson. He, too was a Romance sim, but unlike Adrian, he actually remained one. As a youngster, he was perhaps a bit of a party animal, and even in adulthood he's been after many women, but in the end it seems he's happiest with just one. He's the only one of the siblings, in addition to myself of course, who's still alive. And he's going to remain alive, since he has an immortal life partner, to whom I'll come a bit later. Out of all my half siblings, Adson is the one with whom I've always been the closest.

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Adson is a Romance sim with the personality 7/8/2/10/3 (Taurus). He was named after Adson Melk from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

After Adson came another two boys, twins. The slightly older one of them was Abraham, a Knowledge sim who was always one to blend in the crowd and not need much attention. He could easily have been forgotten, but his loyalty as a friend as a brother makes him remembered by all the family even now.

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Abraham was a Knowledge/Family sim with the personality 4/8/5/5/3 (Aries), named after Abraham Zogoiby in Salman Rushdies The Moor's Last Sigh.

The slightly younger twin was Arthur, a Family sim and also the quiet, loyal type. He and his twin were especially close all through life. He didn't really ever do anything dramatic, but rather concentrated on loving his family, be it his birth family or the one he founded after graduating college.

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Arthur, named after Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, was a Family/Pleasure sim with the personality 7/10/8/6/3 (Aries).

Finally, the youngest of the five was the only girl, Aurora. She took after both parents by being a full-blooded Pleasure sim. She always lived life to the fullest, enjoying all of its small pleasures.

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Aurora was a Pleasure/Popularity sim with the personality 7/4/9/5/3 (Scorpio). She was named after Aurora Zogoiby, also from The Moor's Last Sigh.

But of course it couldn't be so simple. If it was, it wouldn't be me telling this story. The Sim Deity in charge of our universe, who was a lot more directly involved those days than she is now, had other plans. It's not exactly clear what she had in mind, but she got involved, and that changed everything.

I'm of course talking about my Father. Salahuddin Chamcha. From what I've gotten to know, he, like my Mother, was a new sim in Alphabetia, and a playable. In a sense, because Alphabetia is a Legacy challenge neighborhood, he wasn't even supposed to be there. He didn't have a purpose for the challenge. That alone is a strong hint that a Sim Deity was involved.

Why things went the way they did had originally to do with my Mother's Lifetime Want. As I said, she was a Pleasure sim, and she wanted to have 50 first dates. Perhaps it was because she was a rather social character, and enjoyed meeting new sims. So from the very beginning, even when she was dirt poor, my Mother went on dates. Whenever she could, she employed a matchmaker to be able to meet new dates.

Of course, when Mother met Count Curtis, fell in love and married him, things got a new twist. But she was fairly open with him, and as a fellow Pleasure sim, he understood that she had a dream that she needed to fulfill, and that dream was not a real threat to their marriage.

So Mother kept having dates, asking for them from the family matchmaker, but she kept them casual. There was no need to make them romantic, she already had the love of her life. But she liked to meet new sims, so she did dates. Sometimes very brief ones, sometimes a bit longer if they got along well, but always casual ones.

It was inevitable that in a place the size of Alphabetia, my mother would eventually meet the only playable sim in addition to herself, especially as he had moved in so close to the family's home. So they met, and came along right away.

Perhaps it all could have been prevented if Curtis hadn't been so very ambitious and busy at that time. He was often at work, and when he was home, he liked to relax at the chessboard. From what I later understood, I think Mother was feeling a little bit neglected. If that hadn't been the case, maybe none of it would have happened. Or maybe it still would have.

But, after they became friends, it was only natural that my Mother made my Father one of her many dates. She sometimes did that with sims she met herself, since the matchmaker could only introduce her to so many new sims.

Only, that date went a little too well.

I'm still not sure what made them attracted to each other, but clearly it was the case. I think I can safely say that that night, they fell in love.

They were both vulnerable, Mother because of her feelings of neglect, and Father as I believe he had been rather alone for a rather long time. They were both intoxicated by their feelings, and that, above all, was I think the reason behind some rushed decisions they made that night.

As a result of those decisions, the family grew with one more child. Me.

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Aadam, named after Aadam Aziz in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, was originally a Pleasure sim. His personality is 6/9/6/3/4 (Aries).

Seeing how different I looked from everyone else in the family, I'm quite sure Curtis knew right away that I couldn't possibly be his son. But Mother wasn't ready to talk about it, so he made a wise decision and didn't take the matter up.

He decided to love and take care of me as if I was his own, perhaps his natural love for children helped with that. He was always fiercely protective of all of us. And even though we had our differences later, I must say that now that I'm older and wiser myself, I admire him for his decision.

Although she wasn't able to tell her husband the truth about me, about the time when I was a toddler, Mother made a decision. She needed to make it clear to Father that what had happened was a one time thing, and it wasn't going to happen again. She was happy with Curtis and us children, and didn't want to continue seeing Father.

I don't know exactly what happened, but it seems she could have been more gentle about it. Or perhaps it wouldn't have helped, knowing my Father. In any case, it quickly escalated into an argument.

In the end, Father left. And after that, none of us saw him for a very long time.

Although I was loved and treated well, I can't say that my childhood was easy. As soon as I started to realize that I looked different from the rest of the family, I felt inexplicably lonely. I felt that I didn't fit in. And in time, I was able to guess that probably there was something about it that Mother hadn't told me. Partly because of how I looked, and partly because the guilty looks I sometimes saw on her face.

I was rather upset.

Perhaps it was partly due to my anger and sadness that I originally became the closest with Adson. He, too, disapproved of my Mother's behavior, and being older, he of course was better able to tell what the situation really was. I suppose he sympathized with me, who felt different and wasn't even told the truth, as he saw it.

I suppose it was no surprise that by the time I became a teenager, I was a bit of a rebel. I realized more and more clearly that I wasn't told the truth. But I didn't confront my Mother, or Curtis, about it.

Maybe I preferred feeling misunderstood.

Now that we were teenagers, dating had entered the picture. Adrian was seeing a pretty cashier girl, named NicoleThompson. They might not seem like an obvious couple, but they came along famously.

To think of it, it was only Abraham who wasn't really dating back then. I think he just wasn't terribly interested yet. Adson wasn't seriously seeing anyone either, but he had girls here and there. But the rest of us were quite steady.

Arthur was seeing Meadow Thayer from our school, and Aurora, who was into official dates, met Andrew Phillips through the matchmaker.

And I met my girl, Rebecca Custer, when I went Downtown one evening, and we kept seeing each other regularly after that.

I still remember how happy we felt together.

There was no contact between the family and my Father, but from what I've heard from other sims who were in touch with him at that time, it seems that he had some kind of a mental breakdown. He spent his time mostly in solitude, and he couldn't give up on Mother although she'd been quite clear in saying that they had no future. I don't think that at the time he even knew he had a son.

I sometimes still wish that I could have been there for him then. Maybe any of it wouldn't have happened, maybe I could have helped. But at the same time, I know it would have been futile. Father is a very determined man, and in the end, one teenage boy, whose head was also far from clear, would have made no difference at all.

His love for Mother, the deep love that I realize he must have felt, turned into an undying obsession. As much as I regret to say this, that obsession still shapes his life today.

We were still teenagers when Mother and Curtis got old. Both of them felt happy and fulfilled: Mother had managed to have those 50 first dates she had wanted, and Curtis had become Mayor, even if only a very short while ago. They had each other, us children, and they had been successful in many other ways. They had every reason to be happy.

They wanted yet something that would last for generations to come: a business that would run in the family. So they set to work, and founded a small bakery. It was a lot of work, and definitely not always a bed of roses, but somehow the little store became rather popular.

When it was time for us to go to college, all of us six siblings as well as Adrian's girlfriend, Nicole, briefly lived together. But we soon noticed that it was a fairly infeasible solution. We were already seven as it was, which was quite a crowd, and as Arthur wanted to live together with Meadow, Aurora with Andrew and I with Rebecca, we realized it was quite impossible for all of us to live together. So we separated.

Adrian, Nicole, Aurora and Andrew decided to live together. Thanks to Adrian and Aurora's scholarship money, they could afford a plot of land and a reasonably sized house, although the interior decorations were quite sparse at first. This was the house that later became The Bookacy Greek House Greek House, which is still the Greek House of the family, and I believe the young ones will again join it when the time comes.

The twins decided to live together as well. For them, it was a natural solution.

They were joined by Arthur's girlfriend, Meadow. And during his early days in college, also Abraham started showing interest in romance. He briefly dated one of his professors, maybe he was drawn by someone so smart.

But in the end, Abraham found he was more interested in one of his fellow students, Kendra Patch. His relationship with the professor was never that serious, and when it naturally died away, it wasn't long before he met Kendra, and that was almost literally love at first sight.

I shared an apartment with Adson. After all, we'd always been very close. We didn't realize it at first, but there was a slight problem in our arrangement.

Namely, we also shared the apartment with my old sweetheart, Rebecca. That in itself was no problem at all. She was such a sweet girl.

But, it happened that I wasn't the only one thinking that. We all failed to see it at first, but there was an obvious chemistry between Adson and Rebecca. Perhaps it caused a bit of tension, it's hard to say, but on the surface we continued to live together in a perfectly normal way.

In the Greek House, Adrian, Nicole, Aurora and Andrew continued to do a good job about keeping the house standing and making it popular. At some point, they could even afford to get the walls painted.

I think the main reason that they got the Greek House off to such a good start was Nicole. She was a very smart and determined young woman, and even during their college years, when everyone else was perhaps yet a bit childish and so, she took care of fincancial matters and such. All of us siblings had a lot of respect for Nicole.

As I mentioned, during college Adrian decided Romance wasn't the right aspiration for him, and after briefly trying life as a Family sim, he became a Grilled Cheese sim.

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Nicole was a Fortune sim with the personality 6/6/5/8/0 (Gemini).

For me, college became an exciting time for rather different reasons. For me, that was when I met my Father.

Despite Mother's attempt to keep it a secret, Father had managed to find out that he had a son. Already back then, he had very good connections in Alphabetia. He discovered I was in college, so he decided to come and find me.

It was a very, very big thing for me. You have to understand that although I'd always had the feeling that I wasn't being told quite everything, as a kid I was never able to pinpoint what it was. When he came to find me, it all clicked for me.

Needless to say, we came along amazingly well.

We spent a long time talking, and it was like I was on fire. I introduced him to Rebecca and Adson of course, and both were pleased for me.

I even went as far as introducing him to my childhood friend Marsha, who had come home from school with one of us when we were kids. As a townie, Marsha was still a child, although me and my siblings were young adults, and I think she was pretty lonely. She was hoping for someone to adopt her, and in fact, Father later ended up doing just that. At the time neither me nor Marsha realized that it maybe wasn't purely out of the goodness of his heart.

In the meanwhile, my siblings kept living the usual college life, with its parties and gettogethers.

Via Adson, they knew that I had met my biological father, but I think they didn't pay much attention to it. There was no reason why they should, of course. If anything, they were happy for me.

Their life wasn't only about parties. They also needed to build their skills and prepare for the real world.

Nicole's skills in many areas were already impressive in her college years, so she spent her time learning things like flower arrangement that could be useful when running a business. And she earned a lot of money too, by painting.

They also took care of naming a sim who would take care of the Greek House for them until their children would be old enough to go to college, ”a placeholder”. One of the cheerleaders, Laura Custer, agreed to do this for them.

And of course, when it comes to young sims in love, some engagements were to be expected. Adrian proposed to his Nicole, who was thrilled and said yes without hesitation.

And they weren't the only ones, of course. Actually, to think of it, Aurora and Andrew may have made it first when it comes to engagements.

Soon the real world called. It was time for both Adrian and Nicole to graduate and to move back to Mother's house to start a life together. They both had worked very hard and graduated with honors.

At this point, the family was already quite wealthy, so they decided to move into a bigger house, one that was built and designed for them. Now Adrian and Nicole got settled in, and started planning their wedding. Neither of them wanted to wait very long.

At about that time, Father officially adopted Marsha. As I said, in hidsight it clearly wasn't purely out of the goodness of his heart.

But with Father one always has to keep in mind that although he's able to use sims for his own purposes, he does have genuine and deep feelings too. Mother was the prime example of the latter, and I think I can say that he did genuinely care about Marsha. And well, me too.

Around the same time, or perhaps slightly later, Father also developed a strong interest in immortality. From what I understand, the idea that was so fascinating him, was spending an eternity with Mother, once he got her to see that they were meant to be together.

He happened to have one of the Grand Vampires, Count Pao, among his contacts, so he asked for a favor.

And with Count Pao's assistance, Father became a vampire. He could of course have achieved immortality simply by drinking enough elixir, but I think the Knowledge sim in him was also fascinated by vampirism itself, and of course the inherent danger.

The night of Adrian and Nicole's wedding came, and me and the siblings were all invited. Most of us were still in college, so we traveled for the big day. Mother and Curtis had arranged for a very nice wedding in the back yard. I remember Mother saying how she wished that she and Curtis had had the money to throw an actual wedding party back then.

What no one except me knew, was that Father had heard about the wedding, and he planned to show up. He wanted to confront Mother; I think he was convinced that if she saw that he'd managed to become a vampire, an immortal and forever young, she'd realize what she was missing out on. That if she saw him after all that time, she'd remember how they felt about each other and would want that back.

But first, Adrian and Nicole got married.

After the ceremony was over, Father looked Mother up and went to have a word. At first it seemed to go well, as Mother thought that he was there to show he had no hard feelings, but that soon turned out not to be the case. As it became evident that Father was hoping to resume their old relationship, Mother was upfront and told him that wasn't possible. She had chosen Curtis and her family, and she was happy that way, even though that meant she was now old and would face death in due time.

Father did not accept this. He accused her of being ”brainwashed” into thinking that staying in the Legacy family with her chosen spouse would be better than sharing an eternal life with him, as a vampire. He told her that he was prepared, that he'd take her away anyway and that she'd thank him later.

I heard every word of that conversation. Father had asked me to follow from the side, but not interfere unless he signaled me. I'm horrified to think what could have happened if he'd really tried to take her away against her will, what I might have needed to do. At the time I would have been willing to do almost anything for Father, even things that would now horrify me, so much I loved him and admired him. But thankfully I didn't have to do anything.

Curtis had heard raised voices, and decided to take care of the situation himself. He walked over and sent Mother inside. Then he, firmly but politely, told Father that clearly Mother had made her choice, and Father should leave the premises.

Father wasn't ready to give up yet. He was prepared for this possibility, and knew what to do. He attempted to bite Curtis and make him a vampire, with the plan to gain control over him and force him to step aside while he went for Mother. But Father was in for another surprise. Curtis was able to shake off his hypnotic gaze, and apparently without effort.

What Father didn't known was that his plan wouldn't work against a Grand Vampire. The vampires have a rather complicated power hierarchy, and on the top of that hierarchy are the Grand Vampires. When bitten, a new vampire is to a varying extent under the control of the biting vampire, and that power depends on many things, at least on where in the hierarchy the biting vampire is and how long they have been a vampire and so on. It would take a great amount of power to bite a Grand Vampire and make them submit under another's power. Even another Grand Vampire would struggle to accomplish it.

Curtis made it clear that Father couldn't possibly win, and suggested again that he leave. And in the end, Father did.

Afterwards, Mother and Curtis had a long discussion. Mother kept apologizing, but Curtis stopped her short, revealing that he'd actually known. He'd of course noticed immediately that I looked different from my siblings. Later, he'd met Father as he had seemingly by chance wandered on their property. Upon hearing his voice, Curtis had known he was my biological father.

So Curtis forgave her. And not only that, but he took up the matter of protection. Both of them knew that because Mother had again rejected Father, he might be dangerous to the family, and they both had ideas about how to protect it.

At the time, I wasn't exactly in contact with any of the family, which still makes me sad. What I know of those events I've based on later discussions with family members and what I heard from Father.

But meanwhile, Adrian and Nicole got started on their own family. They had two children together, which was a lot less than Mother and Curtis, but I'm sure quite enough.

The older of the two was Beth. She resembled her mother a lot, both in looks and personality. Although in her career wishes, she resembled her grandfather most, wanting to become Mayor. In general, she aspired Popularity.

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Beth is a Popularity/Pleasure sim with the personality 2/9/10/10/0 (Sagittarius). She was named after Beth March in Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women.

The younger sibling was Baudolino, who, like his mother, desired Fortune. He was very ambitious and business-minded, hoping one day to own 5 businesses in the top rank. His high ambitions may have partly contributed to the fact that in due time, he was named the heir.

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Baudolino, named after the name character of Umberto Eco's Baudolino, is a Fortune/Popularity sim with the personality 2/8/5/6/7 (Libra).

The third child of the family was a bit of a surprise at the time. As a teenager, Adrian had once been abducted by aliens when stargazing for his scholarships. Now, as an adult, he frequently used the dance sphere in order to fight off the calories from all the grilled cheese sandwiches he was eating. One time the family noticed that the sphere was empty, and Adrian was nowhere to be seen. In a few hours he was back, and as was the case in his teen abduction, he had no recollection of what had happened. Later on, it turned out he was pregnant, and in due time gave birth to a healthy little boy.

The boy was named Bill, and he grew alongside with his two siblings, equally loved by both Adrian and Nicole. He took after his two siblings, aspiring Popularity like Beth and having an ambition for business like Baudolino.

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Bill is a Popularity/Fortune sim with the personality 2/10/3/10/10 (Libra). He was named after Bill Weasley in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

When the kids were still little, Curtis got the safety measures underway. He'd been studying robotics for a rather long time, and finally he knew enough to build a full-sized simnoid, one that would function as a household helper and companion as well as a security robot. Mother initialized the simnoid, who was named George.

George would be able to, on his part, provide security for the family if Father ever caused trouble, as Curtis strongly suspected. And of course, he was right.

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George, like Author, is a Pleasure sim, and he also has her personality: 4/4/4/5/8 (Aquarius). He was named after Hercule Poirot's male servant in Agatha Christies Poirot novels.

While Adrian and Nicole were starting on a life together in Alphabetia, I was still in college, and so were some of the other siblings. The situation between me, Adson and Rebecca was getting more and more awkward every day. It was now evident to me that the two of them were heavily attracted to each other.

And somehow it didn't bother me. I had decided to change my aspiration into Knowledge – perhaps it was somewhat influenced by Father also being Knowledge, but to this day I think it suits me much better than Pleasure ever did. And with that I felt that maybe me and Rebecca weren't such a good match anymore.

So finally I took the matter up with Adson. I told him that I knew how things were, and if he and Rebecca felt happy together, then I wouldn't want to stand in the way. It wasn't long after that until the two of them were officially involved.

Well, officially and officially, since both of them, especially Adson, kept seeing other sims too. But in any case, they were together, and they were clearly happy. That's what mattered to me.

As for me, I started acting on Father's orders during my college years, in secret of course. He asked me to try to join the Secret Society he knew existed on campus, and I did. It took some effort, but eventually I made it in.

Father's main interest in the society was, as later became evident, the Laganaphyllis Simnovorii that they had, Dolores. Before I graduated, I convinced the society to give her to me. Truth to be told, there wasn't much need for convincing, they seemed happy to get rid of her.

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Although it wasn't mentioned in the story originally, Dolores the cowplant is named after Dolores Umbridge in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

I may regret the events that took place later partly because I joined the Secret Society, but I can't regret the joining. If I hadn't, it might be that I'd never have met Joy. Joy Mendoza was a member of the Secret Society, and we met through it. And quite soon, she was probably my closest friend. And needless to say, we were quite fond of each other, so one thing lead to another rather quickly, and soon we were also romantically involved.

Speaking of romance, after Adrian and Nicole, also other siblings started to tie the knot. Of course, Arthur with his teenage sweetheart Meadow, and Abraham with his Kendra.

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Meadow Thayer was a Family/popularity sim with the personality 4/4/4/7/6 (Aquarius), while Kendra Patch was a Family/Fortune sim with the exact same personality.

Aurora and Andrew waited somewhat longer, but eventually they got married too too. Adson and Rebecca didn't, but they did decide to live together after college.

I'm glad to say that all of the relationships were happy. All of the couples also eventually had children, which resulted in plenty of cousins in generation B.

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Andrew Phillips was a 9/2/6/3/5 (Virgo) Pleasure/Knowledge sim, and Rebecca is a Romance sim with the personality 2/8/2/6/7 (Libra).

After graduating college, I went to move in with Father, as we had agreed earlier. I found him preparing for a move. He had been looking for a place that would suit his purposes better: one the location of which wasn't known, one that could easily be protected, and one that would be more suitable for little Marsha. He asked me to look after Marsha while he went finalizing the deal for the house.

And soon enough, we did move. Our location was now unknown, and we had very good protections. Marsha got her very own room. And as soon as Joy was ready to graduate, she joined us. I was very happy to finally be able to introduce her to Father.

We'd had a bit of an argument earlier. Father was shocked to hear that me and Rebecca had broken up, and I had a hard time convincing him that it had happened in mutual agreement. In fact, I think he never really believed that. And at first, he seemed suspicious on whether Joy could be trusted, but after all, he seemed happy enough to meet her, and have her live together with us.

If only I had known how things were about to turn. Maybe I would have done something differently. Maybe I could have... But it's useless to speculate.

I've only learned about it after the fact of course, but around those same times Mother did her part on protecting the family. She contacted Sunny Straight, the family matchmaker, whom she had befriended during her dating days. Sunny had been watching the family from afar and thus knew my Father and understood the possible danger he posed, and she also has a rather extensive knowledge about different kinds of magic: witch and warlock magic, vampire magic and of course the gypsy magic that the matchmakers can perform.

Sunny placed a protective spell on the family, and asked Author to make sure that each heir or heiress in turn would be aware of it, but otherwise it was to be kept quiet, so as to not alert Father. In short, the purpose of the spell was to prevent Father from resurrecting Mother against her will, but it would be effective only as long as the family didn't bring anyone back either, disregarding those protected by an aura. The full detail of the spell is likely still unknown to Father as well as most others.

Sunny also gave Mother a bottle of curing potion in case of any vampire attacks, as she foresaw that Father might try to use his vampirism directly against the family.

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Few sims know the full content of Sunny's spell (main line and protection group only), and only Author heard it when it was originally cast. Aadam asked Barbara to turn off the recording while he explained it, and Barbara worded the relevant parts of the manuscript accordingly, with care. Here is the spell in its entirety:

This house is the home of the Bookacy Family Alphabet Legacy. Under this spell shall it be, for its generations to come. No outsider shall disturb the peace of the dead of this house, not until this spell is broken from inside the family. Is one not given the protective Aura of Heir or Spouse, when one leaves, one leaves, and leaves for good. There is no coming back, not in one's full form. After an Heir or Spouse has been named, the Aura can never return to its previous holder. In this house, decisions are final.

Protection was needed sooner than anyone had expected. One night, I believe it was relatively soon after the oldest, Beth, had become a teenager... I'm so terribly ashamed to even tell you this, but in the name of honesty I must. The events of that night, my part in them, have haunted me all my life. There's no way I can justify my actions, but maybe I can explain a little by saying how much under the influence of Father I was those days. I don't think even Father intended it to end the way it did, although I can't know for sure. In any case, there's no excuse.

The family got to know when late in the evening, Curtis got a panicked phone call from Adson. Rebecca hadn't returned from work that day. Adson had tried calling her, without answer, and a little later, called to her workplace. He got to know that she'd left from work normally. That's when he started to get worried in earnest. And that's when he got the ransom call.

It was Father, of course. I had helped him kidnap Rebecca from the parking lot of her workplace. Rebecca was an ideal victim: she wasn't part of the main family, so she wouldn't be as alert, but still, she was Adson's companion, so she could be used as leverage. Not to mention our close relationship – Father used me as a bait to lure her in the car. Then he called Adson (who couldn't be sure who it was) and told to come meet him in an old abandoned building in the outskirts of town, no police.

Me and Father didn't know it, but we were being watched. After Adson had called him, Curtis had right away contacted the family cops, Arthur and Kendra. He then arranged for Abraham to look after Adson and Rebecca's little son, Barry.

When they arrived to the meeting place and saw that someone was indeed inside the abandoned house, Arthur and Kendra first hesitated but then decided it was best that Curtis and Adson first go inside alone, and they only interfere if there is a conflict. Arthur gave Curtis a small transmitting device so they could follow the situation.

When Curtis and Adson entered the house, they met Father and me, and Rebecca. Father had used his vampire powers to get Rebecca do as he wished, to sit on her chair in a small pen we'd made for her. Now he made a simple demand: either Curtis and Adson would give Mother to him, or... he drew their attention to yet one living thing in the room, Dolores. Neither knew exactly what she was, but the implications were clear.

Rebecca seemed drowsy, but I remember that in a clear moment, she told Adson not to listen to Father, that he was out of his mind to make demands like he did. How right she was about that.

Curtis was smart. He played time, asking about how we got Dolores. Father realized this, but maybe he couldn't help boasting, so he explained it, my shameful part of it. I think Curtis was also trying to prevent Adson from interfering, but to no avail.

Adson went to Father, furious. He asked whether Father was mad in his demand and said they would never let him have Mother. Father was angered briefly, but he knew he was winning. He told Curtis and Adson that they had one hour to bring him Mother, or Rebecca would die.

But then, Curtis silenced us all. What he was about to tell us, Father wasn't prepared for at all.

I'll always remember Curtis' voice when he told us. He said it calmly, simply, and yet sorrow was evident in his every word.

He couldn't give Father what he wanted, not even if he wanted to. Mother had died the previous night. Peacefully, of old age. She was gone.

When Father heard the news, he literally collapsed, falling on the ground. He sobbed uncontrollably, called for Mother, who could no longer hear him. It must have been his greatest fear, and it had just become a reality.

Everyone became downright paralyzed, staring at him and not knowing what to do. But unfortunately, Father's momentary mental collapse started a chain of events that changed our lives forever.

I don't think anyone knows exactly what happened, but I can guess. Father had been keeping Rebecca obedient using his vampire powers, and now that his concentration had slipped, he was no longer controlling her. In other circumstances, that might have enabled her to escape, but she was still in a rather confused state, and there was another powerful lure present. Dolores. She hadn't been fed, so she used her luring power, to which Rebecca was especially vulnerable.

I still have difficulty saying it aloud. To the horror of all of us... Rebecca stood up, and like a sleepwalker, walked through the gate that we thought was locked. She... she went up to Dolores and reached for the cake she used as a bait. Dolores acted instantly. She bent down, clasped her giant jaws together, and... swallowed Rebecca whole. There was nothing anyone could possibly have done.

For a brief moment, none of us was able to do anything. I remember Adson crying out, and that I couldn't help sobbing. I'd had a vague feeling of dread ever since I heard about Father's plan on the way to Rebecca's workplace, and now I knew exactly why.

After that, it all seemed to happen almost at once. Curtis and Father were the first to recover, and at the same time Arthur, alerted by the noise on his transmitter, rushed in the room. Curtis had time to tell Adson to rescue Rebecca's gravestone from Dolores' reach. At that point, Father was on his feet again, and told me to run. Curtis yelled ”After him!”, at which Arthur and Kendra set on to catch us. Curtis tried to follow us himself, but quickly fell behind.

We were faster. The darkness was on our side, we knew that area better than Arthur and Kendra. We lost them, and were able to return to my Father's new, highly protected lair.

In the morning, Curtis returned home, and told the horrified family that Mother's passing had just been followed by a terrible tragedy, and that the family should prepare for the worst and hurry the protection plans for the house.

Poor, heartbroken Adson was in front of an even harder task. He took Rebecca's grave to Abraham and Kendra's house, where he and little Barry were staying for the time being. Then he had to explain to Barry what had happened to his mother.

Abraham and Kendra promised that they could stay as long as they needed and wanted to.

In fact, they did more. Already that afternoon, after doing some research, Abraham carefully approached his brother.

He didn't want to give any false hopes, but from what he had seen and heard in the Science field, maybe there was something that could be done. Maybe death wasn't as permanent as it seemed.If Adson was willing to try, willing to help Abraham, then they might be able to fix things.

Without knowing it, me and Father were having a discussion about the same topic already in the night, right after we had safely arrived to Father's house.

After having an argument about who left the gate open (in which Father showed that he still hadn't understood Rebecca had done absolutely nothing wrong towards me), we calmed down a little, and Father surprised me by saying he wasn't going to give up. When I asked him what more he could possibly do now that Mother was dead, he just hinted that there may be ways.

All of this left me very worried and anguished. Rebecca was dead, and even though it was an accident, it was at least in part my fault. That guilt has never entirely let me go. And on top of that, Father was now planning something that was likely just as dangerous and reckless as our previous plan had been. There I was, too deep in it, with no place to go but my Father, and I was starting to have some serious doubts about whether that was a good place to be.

In the morning, I couldn't handle my guilt alone anymore. So I went to Joy, and told her everything. Starting with family history, ending with the horrible events of the night, everything.

And in the end, she wasn't even all that surprised. She'd lived together with us for a while and noticed signs that not everything was right when it came to Father. And listening to her talk about it, I had to admit to myself that she was right. But even Joy hadn't realized how bad things really were, how badly they could go wrong.

She couldn't really give me much advice. She would stick with me, and we'd figure something out, she assured me. But she couldn't make my decisions for me. And at that time, I was too scared, too proud, too troubled to make the decisions I should have made. I was wanted by the police, and likely deserted by my family. I felt I had nowhere else to go. So I stayed. We stayed.

Life went on, even if it didn't always feel like it. In the Legacy house, it was soon time for a birthday: both Baudolino and Bill became teenagers, and even if they were still mourning Mother and shocked about Rebecca, it was time to celebrate.

And after the celebrations were over, it was time to take care of security. Curtis, Adrian and Nicole worked together on a new security system to protect the Legacy house. A sturdy fence was built around it, and a state-of-the-art electronic system was added. Nicole did a lot of the calculations, and while she was at it, she even had time to decorate the yard. What can I say. Nicole was an incredibly smart lady.

When all was said and done, the house was very safe. If anyone without a safety code tried to enter the gate, or if anyone tried to climb (or fly) over the fence, they would cause an alarm. It was the best that money could buy, and tailor-made.

After all this was done, life settled into its usual ways for the Bookacies. The kids studied a lot and were quick to learn, possibly due to Nicole's genes. They even got accepted into private school. Baudolino wanted to greet the headmaster personally.

And also, another thing to get their minds off recent things was taking care of businesses. There was of course the family bakery, but as a sharp and ambitious businesswoman, Nicole had her own little venue too.

As sad as it was, Curtis' time came to an end when the children were teenagers. It wasn't unexpected, but that didn't make it much easier for the family.

I'm sorry to say that as I couldn't make things right with Mother, I couldn't make them right with Curtis either. When he died, I didn't even know about it for a rather long time as I was in hiding, and I never got to say to him how much I appreciated him, as I only realized it much, much later.

It was also only much much later that I got to hear the last wish Curtis made, the one he said aloud to Adrian. His dying wish was that if I ever came back to my siblings and asked for their forgiveness, they should try to give it to me if they at all could.

To me, that says more about Curtis than any words I could possibly come up with.

A little after his father's death, Adrian got a phone call from an old friend, namely Marsha. As I mentioned earlier, she had come home from school with us when we were little, and become friends with several of my siblings. Back then she was a townie girl, who was destined to be little for all time, but since Father had adopted him, that had changed. She had her teenage birthday a little after Adrian's boys, and excited about growing up, she wanted to get back in touch with Adrian.

Father learned about their friendship when Marsha asked for his permission to make a phone call. Realizing who Adrian was, he encouraged her to keep in touch with the family. He understood the potential value of information that he could get from Marsha in the future, and apparently thought that the risks were minimal: it was easy to make young, naive Marsha promise not to talk too much about her family and convince her it was only because Father had recently taken up a career in Criminal and didn't want his business talked about because of that. So, Father got lucky in finding out about this contact to the family, and being able to manipulate bits and pieces out of a young, willing informant.

In any case, Marsha phoned Adrian, and showed up behind the gate one beautiful day. Adrian was very happy to meet her, and to hear she had been adopted. Now she would get to experience life to the fullest. He invited her in.

Marsha got to meet Adrian's kids of course, who were quite close to her in age. Marsha is a very sociable character, so she quickly became friends with all of them, but with Beth, she was especially close. After that first day, the two of them were nearly inseparable. Nearly, because of course Marsha couldn't bring her friend home. But they met very frequently, be it at the Bookacies' or at various places around town.

The girls shared everything, their secrets and their hopes for the future. So at some point, it was only natural that Beth invited Marsha to come live with her and her siblings when they went to college. Marsha, of course, was thrilled, and when Father heard of this possibility, he again encouraged her to embrace it.

As the children were finalizing their scholarships, Adrian was on a quest of a different kind: to eat 200 grilled cheese sandwiches. He had consumed plenty during his college years and early adult life already, but there was still ways to go, and he wanted to speed up. So those days he was keeping everyone on a rather cheesy diet, and the rest of the family was grateful to George, who helped Adrian with his sandwich quest and sparing them of it.

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Adrian's incredible sandwich race towards elderhood was actually due to my mistake. I hadn't realized that in order for a sandwich to count, the sim has to finish it (that triggers the memory), and Adrian had been starting a lot of sandwiches during college and early adulthood. As a result, at roughly this time, he had about 30 memories of having a cheesy sandwich, instead of the over 150 I thought he should have.

Before we knew it, it was time for the kids, including Marsha, to go to college together. The girls' plan was now becoming reality, and it was time for us to say our goodbyes.

Only the evening when Marsha came to say goodbye, me and Joy got to hear the name of her friend with whom she was going to stay. I knew that Adrian had a daughter named Beth, and that rang an alarm bell for me. It caused me to think that maybe Father was planning something he wasn't telling me, but I had no idea what.

And of course, seeing that Father was there the whole time, neither me nor Joy got a chance to say anything to Marsha. So off to college she was, together with the rest of them.

Soon after Marsha had left, Father and I had a talk. Father had been doing some research, and now he was ready to tell me what he had found. He had talked to some former colleagues in the Science track, and they had told him that it was possible to construct a device that would bring back the dead, by enabling one to contact the Grim Reaper himself.

His description made me realize that I had probably seen such a device back in college, in the Secret Society. But as an adult, I no longer had access to the society or the device, so something else was needed. But Father had a plan ready. He had the necessary expertise on Science, but some more was needed on the Paranormal side of things. This was where I came in. Because I was college-educated, I should be able to get a job in the Paranormal field, and then be able to use my expertise to help Father build the device.

After the last, catastrophic plan, this one sounded almost good to me: there was no need to hurt, or threaten to hurt, anyone. Father was even convinced that once we'd bring Mother back, certainly the family wouldn't be upset about their loved one being alive again. I wasn't maybe entirely sure about that, but definitely it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Besides, I didn't have that much of a choice. So we set to work. The first step was to get me into the Paranormal field. Right then there were no openings, but we were sure I'd be able to get the job before long.

The kids got settled into college and their dorm easily. They took care of the immediate matters, such as buying new clothes suitable for young adults, and each of them also chose a major subject to study early on.

In addition to their studies, the kids had extracurricular activities. Most importantly, Baudolino started his career as a business owner from a small art gallery that his parents had purchased for him, so that he wouldn't have to spend all his scholarship money on it. To treat the children as equally as possible, Adrian and Nicole also bought Bill his first business, and to Beth, who said she wasn't interested in having one, they promised help with connections, and also financial help if she needed it for something else later.

Baudolino's Art, as the shop was called, was a success. This was in part thanks to Baudolino's siblings, and Marsha, who frequently came to help him at the store. For Bill, it was of course a good chance to practice his skills thinking of his own future business, and for Beth and Marsha, it gave the chance to meet plenty of sims.

And of course, it gave them a chance to spend time with Baudolino.

After a while of living in the dorm, the kids also contacted Laura from the Greek House (the name of which, by the way, is The Bookacy Family Greek House Greek House) and asked to become members. And of course, eventually everyone made it in.

Marsha was in regular contact with Father. Which was only natural, seeing that she was his daughter too. Although indirecty, Father did admit that he was gathering information through Marsha for his own purposes. She was an easy source, being the talkative popularity sim she was, and also very attached to Father, who had adopted her and raised her as her own. Besides, Father made sure to ask things casually, and only things that wouldn't raise any suspicions even in a sim much more suspicious than Marsha.

Marsha didn't seem to be any danger, or even giving any vital information, so me and Joy didn't try to do anything. After all, it would have carried the risk of Father finding out, especially if Marsha didn't believe us. But we did try to keep an eye on things.

All in all, those early college days were filled with studying, meeting new sims, parties and all those good things college should be made of.

So far, my life had been relatively quiet during Marsha's college years; I mostly just tried to keep an eye on Father and his plans. But that was to change one day, when Joy came to me and told me she was pregnant.

Normally, that would have been the happiest day in our lives, and my gut reaction was to be overjoyed. But then I started realizing the situation: we lived in hiding, and the unborn child would be under the influence of Father. I had slowly come to understand that he was a dangerous man. Joy fully realized that, and in no time she was sobbing in my arms.

We decided, with a heavy heart, that it wouldn't be safe for Joy and the baby to stay, and in fact, it would be the best if Father didn't know about the pregnancy at all. So we carefully made up a story about how Joy had a work assignment out of town, and it'd be unreasonable to stay. Like Father, she was in the Criminal career, so adding a bit about how she might be able to offer him some useful contacts from further away was enough to convince him.

We were able to, barely, keep the pregnancy from Father, although at the time she left she was already showing. Right before the cab came for her, I got down to one knee and proposed to Joy. We both knew things were far from ideal, and could even be dangerous, but no matter what, I wanted her to know that I'd always do my best to be there for her. She accepted.

After spending a while in college, the kids were also starting to look around in a romantic sense. Bill was the first of them to find a partner. Sparks started flying between him and one of the common friends of the Greek house crew, Ira Riley. Bill, like his half-siblings, hadn't really had time for dating in high school, as they were all studying quite hard for their scholarships. Now his discovery that he liked boys was almost instant, and of course, Ira was happy to find out.

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Ira is a Fortune/Pleasure sim with the personality 4/7/8/3/3 (Gemini).

This was back then when I didn't yet have ACR. But Bill was gay all on his own anyway: I just caught him heart-barfing a male dormie one day and realized that meant he had a gender preference. I'm still not one hundred percent sure how it happened, but as Bill has ten Nice Points and the Greek House has a male cow mascot, I have my suspicions. In any case, I'm very happy about how it all turned out, because Ira has been nothing but awesome for Bill all this time.

Beth was perhaps starting to feel a bit disappointed already that she hadn't met anyone who would really interest her, but she needn't have felt so. Thanks to the Greek House popularity, she met Sean Cameron, who was a fellow Popularity sim and instantly on the same wavelength. It wasn't long before they were officially dating, too.

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Sean is a Popularity/Knowledge sim with the personality 4/10/4/4/3 (Leo).

Baudolino surprised his siblings by bringing home the groceries delivery lady, Marylena Hamilton. They met via Baudolino's business contacts, and had been talking on the phone since. After that Baudolino started inviting her to the Greek House, and soon it was evident that they were more than friends.

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Marylena is a Fortune/Pleasure sim with the personality 4/19/6/4/4 (Gemini).

Marsha, too, eventually found romance in the form of Bailey Thayer, one of the Bookacy kids' first cousins who frequented at the Greek House. Bailey, like Bill, was a half-alien, because Adrian wasn't the only one who'd met aliens. His brother Arthur experienced the same when he was studying logic for a promotion, and to his surprise found himself pregnant. Bailey, too, was instantly accepted as part of Arthur and Meadow's family, and now he was finding happiness with Marsha.

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Bailey is a Knowledge/Family sim with the personality 0/10/8/6/7 (Libra).

Even with all the love in the air, the kids didn't forget about other things things that needed attention. Now that Baudolino's Art was doing quite well already, it was time to get started on Bill's first business. As a teenager, he had purchased a venue that he named Bill's place. Running this business was pretty relaxed: other than selling tickets, it mostly consisted of relaxing and socializing with customers, which suited the four of them well. Occasionally someone would even bring a date over.

Meanwhile, I'd made an important decision. I knew I couldn't leave Father behind, I just loved him too much, but regardless, Adson deserved to know what I knew. So one afternoon when Father was in his coffin, I gathered my courage and headed for Abraham's place where I knew Adson and his son were staying.

When Abraham saw me on his lawn, he was furious. He wouldn't even have let me see Adson, I'd hurt him enough – and of course, he was perfectly right. I tried to explain to him that I didn't expect either one of them to forgive me, but I still wanted to apologize. It was only when Adson himself showed up at the door, Kendra behind him, and asked what was the matter, that Abraham gave up.

I repeated my sincere apology, and told Adson I had information that could help him get Rebecca back. Adson was willing to listen.

Kendra invited me in and sat us all at their dinner table with some leftover sandwiches. I told them what I'd learned about resurrection through Father and explained that unfortunately I didn't have the knowledge required on the Paranormal side of things, because there still hadn't been an opening in the career. Kendra seemed worried, but Abraham told me that my information made sense. He'd been looking into the same but gotten stuck, and he felt that he may have just found the part he was missing. He'd persuaded Adson to join the Paranormal career, and apparently he'd had better luck than I – or so I thought at the time.

Kendra urged me to turn myself in to the police and try to make a deal, but I explained to her that I couldn't: I couldn't leave Father, and besides, I would soon have my own family, and even though I probably couldn't be as present as I wanted to be, I absolutely couldn't risk jail because of the baby. I'd have to live with my guilt and try to keep an eye on Father. Kendra reluctantly accepted that.

As we were parting, Adson told me of Curtis' last wish and said that all of the siblings would want to try to respect it. He for one would try his very best. Words can't describe how much that meant to me, coming from Adson with whom I'd been the closest and whom I'd hurt the worst.

Abraham did indeed find my knowledge useful. After I left, he worked for a couple of hours, and yet that same evening, he invited Adson to the lab he kept in a small separate building in the yard.

At first, Adson was shocked and angry to find out that Abraham was in possession of Dolores, the laganaphyllis simnovorii that had eaten Rebecca. But Abraham explained to him that Dolores wasn't actually dangerous if kept properly; she had been kept in hunger prior to eating Rebecca. Besides, he'd used Dolores for his studies when working out the details of how Rebecca had died and how she could possibly be brought back. When he got Adson to calm down, Abraham directed his attention to the device in the corner: he'd been able to construct a Resurrect-O-Nomitron, which could contact the Grim Reaper himself and bring back Rebecca.

They understood that meddling in such matters would always have its risks. But Adson only hesitated a moment. He wanted Rebecca back, more than anything. So he asked Abraham to make the call.

It worked. There was a cloud of red smoke, and in the middle of it, appeared a figure that did indeed seem to belong to Rebecca. But as the smoke began to fade, Abraham and Adson started to realize not everything was as it should. Rebecca looked somehow different.

She was a zombie.

Both Adson and Abraham were of course horrified about what they'd done – and so was I, when found out about it later. But Rebecca herself wasn't so easily shocked. It did take her some getting used to, but she believed that she could still keep living quite a normal life, or well, death. She readily forgave us all, and told us not to worry when we apologized. She did eventually make us feel less guilty.

And it turned out that Rebecca was right: she could keep living perfectly normally. She and Adson realized they were still in love, and they even got engaged. To this day they haven't gotten married, though, I think they're perfectly happy as things are. And Rebecca got to contact with her baby, Barry, who was in college already, and rather astonished to hear his mother's voice.

As Rebecca is immortal, Adson decided to keep drinking the elixir of life to keep her company for the eternity she would live. He's currently the only one of my siblings who's still alive (and forever young), and although Adson and Rebecca have been sad to see many of us close ones passing, Adson says as long as they can be together, they'll be happy.

There wasn't terribly much of college left, so Beth, Baudolino, Bill and Marsha made the most of it. Parties were a regular occurrence – with three popularity sims, that was unavoidable, really – and now that the businesses had increased the funds of the Greek house, the kids had bought some more entertainment, like a poker table. Actually, they even had a pool in the back yard.

Bill and Ira were the first of their generation to get engaged. They already had plans for getting married right after college.

Bill was also busy in another respect: he, like Baudolino a bit earlier, managed to get his first business to level ten before graduation. Now both of them still had four to go.

Around those times, I spent as much time at Joy's new apartment as I could. As Father had to sleep days in his coffin, it was relatively easy for me to sneak out. But unfortunately, when it was time for Joy to go into labor, it was nighttime and we both knew that it would be impossible for me to leave the house.

Thankfully all went well. To our great surprise, Joy gave birth to not one but two healthy baby girls, whom we named Barbara and Beatrice. We both knew that taking care of them would be taxing for Joy, especially with me often absent, but at the same time, we were thrilled.

Of course, now more than ever, I made sure to visit as often as I could.

As the Bookacies and Marsha were about to leave college, and the previous placeholder already graduated and planning her wedding, it was time to find a new placeholder for the Bookacy Greek House Greek House. Ryker Lillard happily agreed when Beth asked him, and he then pledged in and became a full member right on time. The Greek House was in good hands until the next generation.

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Laura the placeholder married Barry Custer, Adson and Rebecca's son.

And then suddenly, classes and exams were over, businesses were in good shape, placeholder matters had been taken care of, and all there was to do was to throw a graduation party. A good time was had by all, and Marsha even surprised Bailey by proposing to him in the middle of the party. He said yes, of course.

And then, it was time for generation B to grow up and go home.

Baudolino and Marylena, of course, moved in with Adrian and Nicole. They got settled in, and Marylena found she came along with both of Baudolino's parents very well.

Soon after that, Adrian finally ate his 200th grilled cheese sandwich, and became permanent platinum. It was about time, since his elder birthday wasn't far away. Nicole was already permanent platinum twice over, as she was very efficient in her careers – as in everything else. She had contemplated about attempting to have 5 top ranked businesses, but when she learned that Baudolino and Bill were both striving for that goal, she decided that she'd already accomplished quite a lot and would make some room for the younger generation.

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Nicole became both Business Tycoon and Hall of Famer, and fulfilled an LTW at both.

Baudolino and Marylena had been quite busy so far, but now that all the urgent matters were dealt with, it was time to think about the future. And Baudolino had been doing some thinking already, as one evening in the family livingroom, he got down on one knee and asked Marylena to marry him. Of course, she'd guessed he would propose, but it wasn't quite the same as it actually happening.

Both of them wanted to get married as soon as possible, and so a wedding date was decided and the planning started.

Yet before the wedding, Baudolino got started on his second business, Furniture Heaven. After selling art, it felt rather natural to move on to furniture. This time around, when he didn't have his siblings around as much, Adrian and Nicole stepped in and helped him run the business.

Once the business was off to a good start, it was time for Adrian and Nicole's birthday. They were the same age, and threw their birthday party together. Plenty of relatives were of course present, and I hear it was a very nice family gathering. As it was nighttime, I unfortunately couldn't make it, as it would have made Father suspicious. I sent my apologies and congratulations via Abraham.

Adrian and Nicole were the first of my generation to turn elders, and they looked quite distinguished at that. Several of my siblings followed in the coming years, except of course Adson, who continuously drank elixir for Rebecca's sake, and myself. I was quite a bit younger than ther rest, and also drank quite a lot of elixir, on Father's demand.

Soon after Adrian and Nicole's birthday it was finally time for Baudolino and Marylena to tie the knot.It was already becoming a tradition to have the wedding in the garden, and again I hear it was a beautiful ceremony. This time all went without any interruptions or disturbances, and so Marylena Hamilton became Marylena Bookacy.

After all that time, I still hadn't been able to get a position in the Paranormal career. Father was starting to get suspicious about why that might be. Those days he spent a lot of time on the phone, trying to get a hold on someone who'd know about it – using a false name of course. He tried the local Exorcist Association, the Paranormal Happenings registry, even the City Council But no matter how hard he tried, no one seemed to know anything.

It was also about that time that I happened to hear a conversation between Father and Marsha, who'd come for a quick visit after moving back to Alphabetia. I listened to her talk to him about her wedding plans and her fiancé, and Father seeming quite interested and happy for her. But I could tell it wasn't just that he was happy for Marsha, it was that he realized Bailey's connection to the family, and was hoping that Marsha would supply him even more information than she already did. After all, she was the best kind of source one could imagine: trusting and talkative.

I didn't like the situation. I felt that Marsha was being used, and I feared that at some point, Father might think of using her for some other, far more dangerous purpose. But for the time being, I had no means to do anything about it.

Just before the wedding, Baudolino had done something that he had wanted to do for a while: purchased a vacation home on the beach on Twikkii Island. It was very suitable that he and Marylena were the first to visit it, on their honeymoon. It was a very nice vacation home, and like their real home, it had all the newest protections against any intruders.

The vacation was very enjoyable, and provided a much needed break for both of them. And after the vacation, it was time to go home and get started on their own family.

Baudolino and Marylena had three children, just like Adrian and Nicole before them. The firstborn was Cyrus. He was a cheerful, easygoing young boy, who cared deeply about his family. He aspired Fortune, and wanted to become Hall of Famer one day.

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Cyrus is a Fortune/Pleasure sim with the personality 8/8/4/4/7 (Aries). He was named after Cyrus Cama in Salman Rushdie's The Ground beneath Her Feet.

The secondborn was a girl named Cho. She was a very ambitious little girl, who knew from a young age that she wanted to be the heiress of the family. As she aspired Romance and wanted to be in love with twenty sims simultaneously, she was to feel conflicted about her ambitions and future hopes later. She was indeed named heiress when she became a teenager.

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Cho is a Romance/Knowledge sim with the personality 2/8/9/7/4 (Gemini). She was named after Cho Chang in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

And the youngest child was another son, little Charlie. He, too, was an easygoing young fellow, which also reflected in his future ambitions. He aspired for Pleasure, and wanted nothing more than to have 50 first dates, just like his great grandmother.

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Charlie, named after another Harry Potter character, Charlie Weasley, was a Pleasure/Popularity sim with the personality 2/9/5/6/4 (Leo).

Not long after Baudolino and Marylena's wedding, also Beth and Bill had theirs. Beth and Sean's wedding was a big occasion, and a lot of relatives and friends – including Marsha of course – were present. Not that Bill and Ira did any worse in that, although in pictures it looked less crowded as there were more distractions and sims were more spread.

Marsha and Bailey, too, got married as they had planned. Alongside with a lot of other cousins who had grdauated from college alongside with Baudolino and his siblings. I was at the wedding with Joy. Father couldn't make it, which wasn't really surprising. The wedding had to be arranged at daytime, which provided him a useful excuse. Of course, the real reason was that he couldn't possibly show his face in front of most of the Bookacy clan after what happened to Rebecca and how the police were looking for him. Marsha didn't know about this of course, so while she was disappointed, she accepted the situation and Father's excuse.

I tried to get a word alone with Marsha at the wedding, as I was still worried and wanted to explain the real situation with Father, but as she was the bride and everything, that turned out to be impossible. All this time and I still hadn't gotten the possibility to warn Marsha.

The childhood years of Cyrus, Cho and Charlie were a calm time for the family. Adrian and Nicole enjoyed their retirement and the time to spend with their grandchildren, while Baudolino and Marylena worked on their careers (they were both in the Medical career track), and in Baudolino's case, business.

Now that he was done with both Baudolino's Art and the Furniture Heaven, it was time for a third business. This was where Adrian stepped in. He went to his son and explained that it was time for him to take over the family bakery. It was a rather succesful one already, but no one had ever had the time to bring it to the topmost level.

And so, helped by his parents and Marylena, Baudolino finally took the Bookacy Family Bakery to level ten, rather more quickly than his two previous businesses. Under his command, the business gained a good review, too. However, rather ironically the bakery is to this day the only business ever owned by the family that hasn't received the Best of the Best Award.

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Ironically, because as the official family business, the bakery is the only one where I'd score points for it.

Now that Baudolino had three top ranked businesses under his belt, he naturally went for his fourth. His next step on that path was purchasing a venue named Baudolino's spa, a nice spa and gym that also sold makeovers and massages. Like with all of his businesses, Baudolino was soon in full speed and the customers were enjoying the services.

Since the family now had a vacation home, Adrian and Nicole decided to utilize it and take the kids for a vacation, too. And well, since Baudolino and Marylena had already been there, it felt only fair that the rest of them got to experience the Twikkii magic for themselves.

The vactaion was a big success. Everyone had a good time, and the locals were very friendly. In fact, one of them instructed them to go to an interesting location nearby, where the surroundings were mostly untouched, like the original Twikkii Island had been before there were so many tourists. The family decided to follow the advice, and they did agree that the place was beautiful. They even found a small hut hidden there, and a local witch doctor living there. He was a very friendly man, but clearly he didn't have guests very often. With his slightly clumsy simlish, he asked the family to relax, while he had to do something. He tried to make hut more accomodating, but only managed to get an electric shock when trying to fix his modern appliances.

This was where Nicole took over and firmly told the witch doctor to rest, while the family helped him with his appliances. After a bit of hesitation, he did, and afterward, he was so grateful that he wanted to give the family a small gift. It was a small doll, which was not only a memory, but it was supposed to have some kind of protective powers as well. Since then, the doll has been sitting in the family's souvenir shelf. It hasn't shown any particular powers, but it's a nice memory in any case.

During the vacation, also some family matters were sorted. During his early teens, Cyrus had perhaps had some ideas of being the heir. He did know that Cho wanted it, and he'd assumed that she'd get chosen, but he had thought about it too. When on Twikkii Island, he got to know that Cho was indeed the heiress, and he and Charlie (who hadn't really shown any interest in being heir) would be the spares. Cyrus was slightly disappointed at first, but in the end, he got over it quickly. It wasn't so bad being a spare, after all.

After the vacation, things settled into normal again. The kids kept working on their scholarships, Cho did some dating, and Baudolino kept working on his fourth business. The family also got a bird, who was named Chunni, and since then, she was a popular attraction for both residents and visitors. The same can be said about the Don't Wake the Llama game that the family bought at roughly the same time.

After tirelessly helping the family for such a long time, George decided that it was time for him to pursue his lifelong dream: he wanted to have 50 dream dates with that special sim. So he asked Baudolino for permission (which he promptly got) and called Sunny Straight, and started looking for that special sim. At that point, he met a couple of men, who were nice enough, but that something was missing. But George didn't give up. Sooner or later mr. Right would come along.

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Chunni was named after Chhunni Shakil in Salman Rushdie's Shame. And yes, I misspelled the name, but Chunni she then was.

At that time, I was feeling very depressed and hopeless, stuck and still unable to bring myself to leave. Father kept making his seemingly endless phonecalls to the authorities. I didn't have any good alternatives, I thought: either Father wouldn't be able to find anything out, in which case I might be stuck in his house for an eternity, or maybe he would, which would mean something terrible would likely happen and I would have very little power to stop it.

Regardless of what I wanted, a little bit after Charlie's teen birthday Father made some significant progress. His persistent calling finally propagated through the bureacracy, and he was able to reach the Mayor, who, as I later found out, was none other than my half-niece, Beth Cameron.

Using his fake name, Father was able to find out that the previous Mayor – Curtis – had passed a law that allowed a sim to take a position in the Paranormal field only after an inspection of his or her lineage. The law was carefully worded so that it wouldn't seem like favoritism, but of course, its real purpose was to prevent Father from doing exactly what he was trying to do. It was Curtis' final attempt at securing Mother's rest, and one that not many sims knew about.

Beth felt bothered by the phone call, and from the caller's keen interest on the law and the fact that he seemed to recognize her grandfather's name, she realized who he must have been. She immediately alerted Adrian, who then let the rest of the family know. But in the end, no one could have been prepared...

The family had been alerted, but in the end, they didn't know what Father might do, so all they could do was to stay alert and to keep living their everyday lives. And that's exactly what they did.

Baudolino kept working on his fourth business, the spa, and often family members were with him to help. And of course, George was of a tremendous amount of help, given that his needs are different than those of regular sims.

It was through the spa that he one night met Count Pao Howe, one of the Grand Vampires. They both were instantly intrigued by one another, and as they struck conversation, they found out that they had a lot in common. (At the time, neither of them realized that they were already connected: George didn't know that Count Pao had been the one to help Father become a vampire, and Count Pao didn't know that George or his family had anything to do with his past mistake that he would have preferred to forget.) Later on, when they went on a date, the feeling only became stronger. George had been looking for that special sim for a while, and now it seemed he had finally found him.

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Like Author's, George's turn-ons are vampirism and red hair.

The peace didn't last for long, however, and I I've never been able to forget the events that happened after that, even though parts of it I would really have wanted to.

One evening, Father showed up in my room and said he had news for me. He then told me about his phone conversation with Beth, and I understood why I hadn't been able to get a position in Paranormal. I may have thought that in that case, Father would have to give up, but that turned out to be wishful thinking. He already had a plan.

He wouldn't tell me what it was, saying we didn't have time, and told me to come with him. At that point, I couldn't but follow him and dread what it was that he might have in mind.

I was even more worried when I saw that we were headed for Marsha's place. Father had kept in touch with Marsha, but mostly on the phone, so this was exceptional. Would Marsha's role change? Would this be where Father would use him for more than just information?

Father stepped aside and told me to ring the doorbell, just in case it was someone else who opened the door. But it was Marsha right away. She was thrilled to see us, especially Father, whom she hadn't expected to show up at her door. I couldn't but stand there and smile, as she hugged us both.

Father explained to Marsha that he would like to meet Beth, whom she had talked about a lot. Marsha had apparently often suggested that they meet, but Father had been too busy. So, now that we were there, and to his understanding it would be only a short walk away, maybe it would be a good time to finally meet Beth? Marsha was excited about the suggestion and agreed right away.

I had no idea what was going on, but I knew it couldn't be anything good as we headed for Beth's house.

But what none of us knew, was that we had been seen. Seen by Marsha's husband Bailey, and recognized. He was the one to put two and two together, and to leave me in an eternal debt of gratitude.

When we arrived to Beth's house, Father suggested that me and Marsha wait on the yard while he talks to Beth first, saying that he needed to talk to her about business matters. Marsha happily agreed and said she could try out Beth's swimming pool in the back yard, as she had her swimming suit with her thanks to training at work. Father said it was an excellent idea. I still don't know whether he knew she would suggest that, or if he only improvised and chose the most convenient method...

In any case, Marsha headed for the swimming pool and I followed, completely numb. I knew I should warn her, but didn't even know where to start or how to get her to believe the things that I would have to say about her adoptive father. Helplessly I watched Marsha enjoy the pool.

Meanwhile, Father went to ring the doorbell, this time openly. When Beth came to open, she immediately realized whom she was facing, and what he would want.

Yes, Father admitted. He wanted a Resurrect-O-Nomitron. But from Beth, he would be satisfied if he got an opening position in the Paranormal career. Beth told him that she couldn't and wouldn't bypass the regulations, it would be unethical of her, as the Mayor of Alphabetia. She told him he couldn't scare her that easily. To which Father simply said that he had rather good ways for that, and asked her to follow him into the back yard.

When Beth saw her best friend in the pool, she understood immediately what Father was threatening her with. She couldn't but stare in horror.

Marsha, of course, had no idea what was going on. She tried to get a grip on things, but didn't get an answer. Father asked whether Beth might have changed her mind. She needed time, and repeated her refusal, saying that she couldn't do it.

Marsha tried again to get their attention, asking what this was about. This time, Beth was quicker, and briefly told her that Father was trying to blackmail a Paranormal position out of Beth by threatening Marsha's life.

Marsha's reaction was incredible. I could never have believed someone in her situation, completely unaware of a loved one's true nature, would be able to grasp it so fast. Father had just asked Beth again whether she had changed her mind, when Marsha firmly told her to not obey him. I still remember the stony look on her face when she said she'd rather die than let Father hurt her friend's family.

As Beth was unable to answer Father's repeated question, he turned to me, and did something I've never been able to forgive. He tossed me a wrench, and coldly told me to detach the pool's ladder.

I refused. I told Father that he was mad, asking me to hurt someone, and my own sister of all sims. I told him I wouldn't do it.

When Father saw that I wasn't going to make a move, his face turned to cold anger. I could never have believed he would look at me like that. And he... he said that either I would detach the ladder, or he would hurt both me and Joy. And I knew exactly how dangerous he could be.

I'm not even sure why it had to be me. When I refused, he could have easily walked over and done it himself. I suspect it was to further intimidate Beth, to show that he was able to scare me into doing something so horrible – and she didn't even know me and Marsha were siblings. And well, partly it must be his nature. When he gets something into his head, he won't back down, not one inch.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but when Father threatened Joy, whom I love more than anything, I became completely powerless. I was a terrible, terrible coward. I took the wrench and detached the latter. I wanted to say something, to plead Marsha's forgiveness, but I felt that what I was doing was something one couldn't even apologize for.

Then I tossed both the wrench and the ladder somewhere behind me in the snow, and cried.

Beth gave in. She didn't have any other choice. She couldn't possibly let her best friend drown, even if Marsha was bravely telling her to do just that from the pool. She would do anything.

And then, it all happened very quickly. Father was just about to say something, when there was a yell from one side of the yard. It was Arthur, with Beth and Marsha's husbands in tow, and they were rushing towards all of us. Bailey had alerted the family cops. I think Arthur said ”Not so fast, Chamcha!”

Already while running to the scene, Arthur took the command. He told Bailey to jump in the pool and help Marsha, who seemed tired already, and me to help him to re-attach the ladder. I remember hearing Father cursing at Arthur.

We did as we were told. Bailey threw his sweater to Beth and dove in the pool, while I grabbed the ladder from the snow, and quickly helped Arthur put it back in place. We were able to pull a shocked but otherwise unharmed Marsha out of the pool.

It was only after that, when Marsha was already in her husband's arms, that we realized that Father was missing. Sean said he'd thought that when running towards the pool, he saw a puff of red smoke, and I was able to tell the others that this red smoke was my Father, transformed into his bat form. Even if we hadn't all been concentrated on saving Marsha, it would have been very hard to catch him, especially in the dark.

Father was gone, and he'd left me behind. But he wasn't done yet.

From here on, we only have secondhand information about Father's actions and whereabouts. But I think we have a pretty good picture.

It seems that after leaving Beth and Sean's yard in his bat form, Father headed straight for the Bookacy house. I don't think he even had an actual motive as such, from what I heard afterwards, it seems he was merely frustrated and venting that frustration on an innocent target. Or I suppose, in his mind, not innocent, as all of the Bookacy family must for him be linked to the fact that he couldn't have Mother.

It would have been foolish of him to try to enter because of the high-level security, and I think he must have realized as much. But thanks to what seems to have been pure luck, incredible luck, it turned out he didn't need to.

The oldest child of generation C, Cyrus, had taken up a job as part of his efforts to gain as many scholarships as possible.That night just happened to be a working night, and Cyrus had just arrived home from work. When Father showed up, he was still outside the gate, admiring the heavy snowfall.

It's horrifying how easily it must have happened. All my Father had to do was to walk up to Cyrus and get his attention. That was easy, he just politely addressed the teenager. Cyrus didn't have time to react. He had just begun to register that the man in front of him was unnaturally pale and that fact had just started to flick switches in his brain, when it was already too late. Father had used his hypnotic vampire power, grabbed Cyrus, and bitten him in the neck.

Cyrus' yell alerted George, who came running out of the house. He saw Father, but Father had also seen him. George rushed at Father, but in an instant, Father was in his bat form again, and both much too fast and much too hard to see in the dark to be caught. Father escaped, again.

The family immediately alerted Sunny Straight, whom they were used to trusting in these matters. Yet that night she showed at their doorstep.

After listening to Cyrus' tale, everyone was fairly certain that the attacker had been Father. They were all worried about Cyrus, but Sunny was able to offer some reassurance. Although vampire bites sometimes proved lethal for the unprepared (usually very young or old sims, or those with an illness), it seemed that Cyrus was just fine. He would have to protect himself against daylight, but otherwise Cyrus himself should be safe.

The rest of the family was a bit more of a tricky question, however. Theoretically, since Father had bitten Cyrus, he could have some sort of control over him, although subtle. That would depend on his strength as a vampire, but Sunny was of the opinion that for a vampire of only Father's age, very strong control shouldn't be possible, especially considering that Cyrus was the great-grandchild of a Grand Vampire. She was, however, worried about the fact that apparently the potion she had given Mother long ago for exactly these circumstances, hadn't been strong enough to cure Cyrus. That showed that Father was stronger than she had estimated.

In any case, they estimated that there shouldn't be any immediate danger, and the best thing to do would be to keep an eye on Cyrus until Sunny would be able to find the necessary ingredients and produce an antidote strong enough.

Elsewhere, Marsha was of course heartbroken. She had never realized that her adoptive father and tha man who was after Beth's family were one and the same sim. She blamed herself. Thankfully Beth was there, to reassure her that she couldn't possibly have known. Beth herself had never gone into details about her grandmother's life, so Marsha had no chance. And in fact, the only sim who could have given her the full story was me. I had wanted to warn Marsha, but every time I tried, something prevented me. And only that night I had realized that she never had even heard of those old events.

Poor Marsha was even more horrified of the fact that Father would have killed her. Just like that, his own daughter. That was what made us all realize that he had passed some invisible line, where no one could really understand his thinking anymore.

Marsha even talked about leaving the police force, she said she had made a stupid mistake and shouldn't bring all of Alphabetia Police into shame. When Beth and Sean heard this, they firmly told her that this wasn't the case and Marsha shouldn't give up her dream, and rather, she should want to be in the police even more now, to protect the town. After having told Sean everything she knew about Father, and about their conversations, Marsha felt better, and decided she did want to pursue her dream. After everything, she wanted nothing more than to put Father behind bars.

For me, that night was the longest of my life. In the morning, I had made a decision. I only returned to Father's house to gather my things. His using Marsha had shown me what already his using Rebecca should have shown me: he was an extremely dangerous man, and I couldn't protect him from himself. The best I could do would be to protect me and the rest of my family. That day, I left my Father's house for good.

I left him a letter, explaining what I had done and why. I told him that I loved him and that I wished him all the best, but that I didn't want him to try to contact me, or find me or Joy in any way. I even warned him that if he did, I would be ready to take action.

It was extremely painful, but it had to be done.

I have only seen Father once since then, and only very briefly. We didn't talk, so I have no idea what he thought about the letter or how he felt. I hated the idea that it would cause him pain, but after everything that had happened, I couldn't even imagine that he really cared for me or missed me. I had to think that it was me that it hurt more.

After all, there was still no question about it: I couldn't forgive him for what he'd done, and there was no way that I could continue living under his roof and getting mixed into his delusional plans, but despite all that, he was my Father and I loved him.

I still do.

I went to Joy, of course. She had been more patient and forgiving with me than I deserved, and now I was finally able to live up to my promise, and be with her and the girls, even though it had already been way too long. (My girls, my sweet little girls were teenagers now.)

We got married. With as many of our relatives present as could possibly make it, and of course, our daughters. It was the most beautiful day of my life.

And after that, I felt that I needed to do something for the family. So I contacted Marsha (who, like Joy and Rebecca, had completely forgiven me although I didn't in any way deserve it), and with her, we organized a secret meeting with those members of the family who were in powerful positions on either side of the law. We would all do our best to protect the family. If Father were to try to harm anyone, or go against my wishes and try to find me and Joy, we would be ready.

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Joy was a Knowledge/Fortune sim with the personality 5/3/7/3/7 (Pisces).

When all the necessary precautions were taken care of, life went on, as it always does.

The family learned to deal with Cyrus' vampirism, and soon enough it felt like nothing out of the ordinary. The kids kept working on their college scholarships, and in the case of Cho and Charlie, dating.

As for Baudolino, he was able to reach his fourth top rank business, the spa, and started looking for the fift and final one.

The family had known for a while that Adrian and Nicole were getting old, and at every occasion possible, they spent time together. It didn't have to be anything special, just being together was enough.

It was yet before the kids headed for college, rather shortly after the whole mess with Father and Cyrus' vampirification that we all received the news that Nicole had passed away. She left from a a game of Don't Wake the Llama with her grandchildren, and with a smile on her face.

The family, while sad, at least knew that Nicole had had a long, happy life.

Everyone grieves in their own way. George spent a lot of time together with Count Pao, whenever George's home duties and the count's vampirism allowed it. Most nights they would find time for a date, with a nice dinner and conversation. During this time, they grew very close.

Baudolino and Marylena, in turn, found comfort in their ambitions. Marylena took care of Nicole's, the venue that her mother-in-law had passed onto her, and Baudolino contacted the real estate services for his fifth and final business. Soon he found what he was looking for, and purchased Tyke's Tower Toys, which, like the name would imply, sold toys. Happy with the challenge it provided, Baudolino went into the toy business.

Not long afterwards, it was time for Cyrus to head for college. He'd worked hard on his scholarships, and with his vampirism and lack of aging, he was actually already a bit overdue.

After all his hard work, Cyrus was a bit hesitant about going. Was it going to be safe? What if something happened? Maybe it would be safer to stay home and wait until Sunny would be able to provide a strong enough curing potion. But his father talked him out of it: Cyrus was a Fortune sim, so he couldn't possibly even consider passing such a great opportunity. Besides, they did't know when Sunny would be able to bring them the cure, and college was a relatively safe environment, with all the adults that could intervene if something did go wrong. Cyrus understood that Baudolino was right.

Baudolino also gave his son a rather substantial amount of money (in the form of statues). It was meant for doing a full renovation at the Greek House once Cyrus got there, for making it as nice as possible. And of course, Baudolino wanted a state-of-the-art security system to be installed there, too. Safety first.

And with that, the firstborn of generation C headed for college.

Cyrus adjusted to college life quickly. Thanks to his parents, the professors and other staff were prepared for a vampire student, and other than a couple of early close calls with the sun, he had no trouble with his vampirism either.

As a sociable character, Cyrus got to know his dorm mates soon enough, and found out he had a lot in common with them. They were always ready for a party together, and on occasion Cyrus even invited his younger siblings and friends around Alphabetia to see abit of college life. The kids were of course pretty excited.

Early on, he also contacted Ryker the placeholder pledged into the Bookacy Family Greek House Greek House. Ryker was quite pleased to hear that his placeholding days were almost over and he would soon have some company over. They came along nicely, and Cyrus made it in to the Greek House rather effortlessly.

Cyrus' happy college days were interrupted by the news that his grandfather had died. He had hoped to see Adrian one more time yet, but as he could only visit at night time, it had been impossible.

The rest of the family had been there to say their goodbyes, however, and it was comforting to know that Adrian had gone happy, to join his wife in the land of enormous paycheck bonuses and neverending grilled cheese sandwiches.

While Adrian's family was still grieving, the rest of us had other things to do. Starting the day when I left Father's house for good, the secret group I had founded had been trying to locate Father, led by Sean. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done.

I was no longer unwilling to reveal the location of Father's lair, but as I tried, we found out that I couldn't. I had lived there for years, and now when I tried to go back, I only managed to get lost in the woods, and I had never had trouble before. I had to be rescued by Sean's team.

Sunny was able to tell us that, as we had suspected, this indicated that Father had used magical protection to hide the location of the lair. She said that this was exactly the kind of magic that vampires were known to be able to perform.

So we were back to square one. We had to simply continue monitoring all activity that could refer to Father, but he showed no signs of life.

We of course couldn't know exactly what he was doing, but we knew that we had to stay alert. None of us believed that he was in his lair mourning me or Marsha, whom he had lost due to his plots. As Baudolino put it quite frankly, he clearly didn't have the humanity for that anymore.

Around that time, I also had my elder birthday. It was about time, really. Even though I was much younger than my older siblings, I had also put off aging by drinking a lot of elixir, mostly on Father's request. And well, seeing how much living with him in the end delayed everything in my own life, I suppose it was a good thing to keep on the elixir.

But in the end, I was quite happy to become an elder. I would live for a long time yet, and would get to experience a completely new phase of life with its joys and challenges. And unlike Father, I knew I'd be fully ready when the time for death would come.

To be honest, the decision to grow old had a minor safety aspect to it as well: Father would not expect it, seeing how much he wanted to stay young forever, and if he happened to go looking for me, well, he wouldn't be looking for an old man.

Marylena took care of her husband in his sorrow, and talked him into going back to his businesses. She said that what he needed right now, after losing both his parents, was doing something he very much enjoyed. And besides, he was so very close to his big goal.

And she was right, on both counts. Going back to Tyke's Tower Toys did make Baudolino feel better, and also quite soon his lifetime efforts beared fruit: he achieved his lifetime want of owning 5 top ranking businesses.

I suppose Marylena knew what she was talking about. A short while earlier she had achieved her own dream of earning 100,000 simoleans.

Cyrus now got company on campus: his sister was now old enough to go, and with her, came the first cousins of the Bookacies. Bill and Ira's adopted daughter Claire had been Cho's best friend since teenage, and it was only natural that she joined her cousin on campus. Beth and Sean also hadone child, a son named Carl, who was also happy to join the crew when it was suggested to him.

It didn't take long for the three of them to know their way around campus, and of course, join the Greek House.

Meanwhile, the youngest, Charlie, was still a bit too young for college, but he didn't really mind. He knew he'd get to go soon enough, and besides, he still had things to do back home. He was very determined to get his 50 first dates, and wanted to have a head start. So more often than not, the Bookacies would meet young ladies whom Charlie introduced as his current dates.

As it tends to go for many young sims, once the kids arrived on campus, sparks started to fly for many of them.

Cho dated many of the boys she met on campus. After all, she did want to have 20 simultaneous loves at one point or another. She wasn't quite the date monster that Charlie was, however, as she didn't want to rush things but rather picked out boys she already knew a bit, and liked.

It's perhaps worth mentioning that already quite early on, one of the boys she was frequently seen with was Nicholas Charvat. He seemed especially fond of her, and clearly Cho enjoyed his company as well.

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Nicholas is a Fortune/Knowledge sim with the personality 6/5/8/3/3 (Scorpio).

Claire was maybe in for a bit of a surprise in college. As a teenager, she'd been excited about college for one good reason: the boys. And she imagined that she'd do like Cho and date a large amount of them, probably never aiming for a very serious relationship. But once she came to college, that's not really how things turned out. She met a nice guy named Trevor Mace, and although their start was a bit on the slow side, in the end she found out that she wasn't actually very interested in anyone else. Her life wasn't lacking any romance, though; Trevor made sure of that.

As for Carl, he was dating mainly two girls: Veronica GilsCarbo and Audrey London. Like Cho, he was fully open about his relationships with all parties involved, and everyone seemed to be enjoying it. For the time being, no one knew how serious matters were, but the consensus was that probably not very.

The only one not to show much interest in dating those early days was Cyrus. He seemed perfectly happy to be concentrating on his studies, the numerous parties and cleaning on his spare time.

It didn't take much longer for Charlie to finish his work on his scholarships and become old enough to hit the campus as well. Marylena was perhaps a bit teary-eyed, but it was time for the youngest to go, and Charlie was very eager to, having listened to his siblings' stories for quite long enough.

One by one, all of the young ones moved in to the Bookacy family Greek House Greek House. Cyrus was the first to do so, and he arranged for a full renovation like he had promised to his father. The first time Baudolino was over, he almost didn't believe his eyes. The place had changed quite a lot. And of course, Cyrus took care that a very good security system was installed during the renovation.

In the Greek House, things didn't change very much. Both Charlie and Cho kept up with their serial dating, as both were determined to reach their set goals. If we add to that the constant action between Claire and Trevor as well as Carl, Audrey and Veronica, the house was rarely without any romance.

Cho was dating both young adults and adults, and sometimes she was as daring as to ask out a professor. Prof. Eric Dallas was one of those times. The two of them came along instantly, and it was one of those occasions where neither wanted to leave the dating to just one or two occasions.

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Eric is a Romance sim with the personality 7/4/8/1/5 (Libra).

As for Cyrus, he was in some sense the odd one out, not seeming to be attracted to anyone. But whether he knew it or not, he was being noticed. The rest of the youngsters found it pretty obvious that his long time friend, Chris Jalowitz, was crushing on him and tried to make her feelings known. The only sim in the house who didn't seem to notice this was, of course, Cyrus himself.

This naturally caused Chris to feel somewhat insecure. Did Cyrus' behavior mean that he tried to avoid Chris when it came to romance? Was it a subtle way of saying no? She thought and pondered on it, and eventually turned to Cho and asked for her advice. Cho said that her brother was a bit different in that respect, she'd noticed before that he failed to notice some things that came naturally to other sims – despite clearly being a smart guy otherwise. Her advise was that clearly Cyrus was unable to take a hint, and Chris' only option would be direct action, just asking him out.

Chris still hesitated, and asked for Claire's opinion, too. When she said the same thing, Chris finally gathered her courage and asked Cyrus on a date. To her surprise, he said yes. On their date, he explained to her that he knew he was different. He didn't notice these things, and he didn't necessarily make a distinction between friendship and romantic love. But since these things seemed to be important to others, and he liked Chris a lot, he wanted to give it a try, if Chris was willing to be understanding and to provide guidance occasionally. She was. And the rest is, I suppose, family history.

Everything seemed to be going great, college life was just as it should be: studying, parties and dates. No one, not one sim suspected anything was wrong. But something was wrong. Afterwards, both Cho and Carl remembered minor things that maybe should have been noticed, but no one saw anything alarming in them. It was just that a few times, they'd found Charlie in Cyrus' bedroom at daytime, apparently just watching him sleep. When addressed, he seemed absent-minded for a moment, but quickly returned to his own self, to whatever he was supposed to be doing.

It was a small thing that no one took notice of at the time. And why would they have? They were looking for any and all odd behavior from Cyrus, but no one expected it from Charlie. And besides, he seemed perfectly healthy, happy and motivated. He was actually the first one of the bunch to reach his lifetime goal. It was quite impressive: Charlie was still in college when he had his fiftieth first date. Not many sims have done the same, definitely not in Alphabetia. So no, no one suspected that anything could be wrong.

And even if someone had suspected something, no one could have been able to predict the events, the terrible tragedy that was to face the family during the siblings' college years.

No one knows what exactly was on Charlie's mind on that day, but after the fact we can be pretty certain that he wasn't himself. Based on the descriptions of those who were there, the events must have gone roughly as follows.

One afternoon, at a time when Cyrus was almost ready to graduate, Charlie came back from class. Now normally he would have gone to fix himself some lunch, then perhaps taken a round or two on the game console in the living room. Maybe he would have called to a nice girl for a date. But on that day, he didn't do any of those things.

Instead, he seems to have gone directly to the downstairs bedroom, where Cyrus was in his coffin, sleeping for the day. And for some reason that no one knows exactly, he stepped up to the coffin, and opened the lid.

As Cyrus' brother, Charlie definitely knew better than to disturb a sleeping vampire. But that day, something went badly wrong.

As the lid clanked open, Cyrus was awakened, or I suppose it'd be better to say ”awakened in some sense of the word”. He sat up in his coffin, growled and reached for Charlie, whom he didn't seem to see or recognize.

Charlie's scream of horror alerted Cho, who ran to the room. Also horrified of the sight of her beloved brother reaching out of his coffin with madness on his face, she did the only thing that came to her mind. Cho yelled ”Stop it!” at Cyrus, and surprisingly, he did. Cyrus laid down back in his coffin, and the lid closed.

Cho then asked Charlie whether he was alright, and what the hell he thought he was doing, but she didn't get an answer. When she turned to look at him, she couldn't believe her eyes. Charlie tried his wrist for a pulse, then he suddenly collapsed on the floor.

Cho's screams awakened Cyrus, fully this time, and he climbed out of his coffin, confused and horrified when he saw his brother curled up on the floor. He and Cho were unable to do anything but stand there and scream.

It was a pure coincidence that Professor Eric Dallas had chosen that moment to deliver a date bouquet to Cho. He was on the front porch, and when he heard screaming from inside, he came through the front door – that he knew was normally always locked – and found Cho and Cyrus in their incredible state of distress, and poor, dying Charlie on the floor.

Eric acted on instinct. Something told him that it was already too late for Charlie, but that Cyrus could still be helped. It took quite a bit of yelling, but he was able to gain control of the situation and get Cho to act. Together they were able to force a severely smoking Cyrus into his coffin.

By the time that they had accomplished this, it was unfortunately too late for poor Charlie. He was dead.

Sunny Straight got there as fast as she could. She found Marylena and Baudolino in the Greek House already, both heartbroken and nearly incapable of speech. Eric was able to give some kind of a description of the events.

But it was Cyrus who was in the worst state. Sunny found him curled up on the floor and unwilling to even move. Cho was silently stroking his hair. With effort, Sunny persuaded Cyrus to take medication that would make him feel at least tolerable. Only when she told him that she finally had the new, stronger cure, he showed signs of life.

Perhaps under other circumstances Cyrus would have even enjoyed being a vampire, but now he despised of his state and wanted nothing more than to get rid of it. He took the cure offered by Sunny and emptied the bottle in one go. The transformation looked painful, but when it was over, Cyrus was miraculously his own self again.

Sunny sat everyone at the dining room table, and slowly she got to know what had happened. Cyrus mentioning that right before Charlie had woken him up, he'd been having a dream, caught her attention. When she asked for details, Cyrus told her that he'd been moving in an empty house, but one where someone still seemed to live. He remembered a little girl's room as well as a laboratorium. This made Sunny even more curious. She asked whether Cyrus had seen a coffin, and when he said that he had, her suspicions were confirmed. She later shared Cyrus' tale with me, and yes, the house that Cyrus saw in his dream was Father's.

After listening to Cyrus, Cho and Eric, Sunny had come to a conclusion. She was fairly certain of two things: that this terrible accident had to do with Father, and secondly, it was just that, an accident. Apparently there had been a connection between Father and Cyrus, and it was a complicated kind of vampire magic that had lured Charlie to his death. Sunny explained that this level of control was the kind that was extremely difficult to achieve, even for much older and experienced vampires than Father. She thought it very, very unlikely that Father, or indeed any vampire alive today, would be able to gain such control on purpose.

To Cyrus' worry over being a murderer and going to jail, Sunny was able to say that a roomful of sims would be willing to testify for him if it ever came to a trial, and say that he would never have hurt his brother on purpose. And, she knew of previous similar cases, and they had all consistently been ruled in favor of the vampire: they could not help acting like vampires when disturbed in their sleep.

At some point in the conversation, Cho shrieked in horror. She'd just realized that in the middle of all that had happened, seeing Charlie collapse, forcing Cyrus back into his coffin, she hadn't even thought about pleading the Grim Reaper for Charlie's life.

No one could blame her. Eric said he had been there too, and he hadn't thought of it either, and Sunny tried to comfort Cho by telling her that in cases of strong magic involment, the chances of successful pleading were reduced in any case. And what Cho and Eric did, very likely saved Cyrus' life. No one ever thought for one second that either of the siblings were guilty of anything, but I know guilt. Life may go on, but if Cho or Cyrus have ever been able to fully forgive themselves, I don't know. Deep down, likely not.

As the heiress, Cho wanted to fix things. There and then, it struck her that if resurrection was impossible, Father wouldn't be working on it. She suggested that they'd find out how to do it, and bring Charlie back. Pained, Sunny explained to her that it wasn't that simple.

First of all, resurrection as such was a risky business, as evidenced by what happened to Rebecca. The only sim they knew that had even close to all the information needed, Abraham, was now dead himself. And in any case, would Cho want to risk Charlie coming back as a zombie? And there was a further reason: the magical protection on the family. Charlie was a spare, so he didn't have the protective aura of an heir, and thus if the family brought him back, nothing would prevent Father from doing the same to Mother. And that had to be prevented. Not only did resurrection go against Mother's wishes, but bringing back the foundress would severely shake the magical balance of the whole Legacy neighborhood. There was no telling what would happen.

Cho exclaimed that she'd happily give up the heirdom, if giving it to Charlie would help him come back. But unfortunately, explained Sunny, the protective aura couldn't be given after the fact, and besides, giving it away would put Cho herself at risk.

In the end, the only thing to do was to accept that Charlie was gone, for good.

The events that eventually lead to poor Charlie's death naturally raise the question of how exactly Father was involved in it all. Now, despite our continued efforts, much isn't known about Father's actions during the time Charlie and his siblings were in college. However, based on what we do know after the fact, and the bits and pieces we were able to gather during that time, we have some kind of an idea.

It's likely that he's had an accomplice of some kind. Gathering all the information that he had, accomplishing all those things he did, would have been very difficult to do alone. I personally know that he's always had very good connections and he has resorted to them before. Also the fact that before he used to have me as this kind of an accomplice supports this conclusion: now that he no longer had me, it would be characteristic of him to get someone to replace me. Not to mention that after the incident with Marsha, he was also wanted byt the police and that restricted his movements. We don't know whether the alledged accomplice continues to be in good terms with Father now, so we have to assume that this is the case.

What we also know is that Father is currently a warlock. This, too, is something he can't have accomplished alone; he has needed the help of a witch or a warlock first to become one, and likely later for his training. Whether this witch or warlock and Father's accomplice are one and the same we don't know, so it's safest to assume that he's had and possibly still has more than one sim on his side.

We also don't know the motivations of these sims. It's possible that Father has not revealed his full intentions to them, only his own colored view of matters, or that he has downright lured them into doing what he wants done. Sean has also suggested that not all inhabitants of Alphabetia necessarily need any luring, and that suspicion later got confirmed though not from a direction that we expected. Some sims in neighborhoods like Alphabetia think that Legacy sims have everything much better than they do, that they use other sims as means to an end, and therefore hold a grudge.

As for why Father wanted to become a warlock, we don't know that for sure either, but Sunny has an interesting theory.

We know that Father's ultimate goal is to resurrect Mother, and he very likely hasn't given up on it. We also know that he's found out that he can't legally get a position in the Paranormal career, which would, in addition to his own knowledge in Science, allow him to construct a Resurrect-O-Nomitron. In addition, he's lost his college-educated accomplice – me – so that even if he were to get around the law somehow, say, forgery of the required paperwork, he still wouldn't be able to have the position since he himself hasn't been to college. So it's only natural that he would try to look into other ways of getting his hands on the device.

According to Sunny, it's possible for a skilled witch or warlock to make an object appear out of thin air. It takes a lot of mental power, skill and practice, and for complex objects (like the Resurrect-O-Nomitron) it's unlikely that a single witch or warlock could do it on their own. Father has shown with his long-time vampirism that he has a kind of a tendency for magic, he's got determination and patience, and he's had the time to practice. To our understanding, he's now quite a skilled warlock. So Sunny's assumption is that Father's intention in becoming one has been to produce a Resurrect-O-Nomitron magically, and personally, it makes a lot of sense to me.

As we're unable to find or get into his house, we can't know for sure whether he's succeeded or not. But based on later events, I have reason to believe that he has.

Now the following is admittedly speculation, but let's assume for the moment that Father did manage to get his hands on a Resurrect-O-Nomitron using magic. If he did, what would logically happen next?

Well, of course very soon after finally possessing the fabled device, Father would try to use it. But if Sunny's protection works as it should, and I believe that it does, he would fail.

Knowing my Father, if that were to happen, he'd be very frustrated and angry, but that would never stop him. He'd want to know why he still wasn't able to bring Mother back. If I've been correct so far in my speculation, then I suppose we could say that Charlie's death was (if it was accidental, like Sunny says it likely was) a lucky break for Father. If no one had died prematurely, it might have been rather difficult for him to find out about Sunny's spell. But now, as a Legacy spare was dead, the word about that would spread quickly. With his excellent connections, Father would no doubt get to hear about it – if he didn't already know, due to how it happened. He'd also hear that the dead sim was only college age, and that it was a terrible accident, among other details. For my Father, I imagine, a natural question to ask at that point would be: if a wealthy and powerful family has lost their beloved son to an accident at an early age, why aren't they resurrecting him?

Finding out the reason could be trickier: the family hasn't been talking about it to outsiders really, which is rather reasonable if they want the protection to be as effective as possible. But, with his connections, I don't think it would be impossible at all. Especially after something as traumatic as death in the family, there's often a need to talk, and all of the family members admit to talking about it with a few close friends, at least to some detail. It's possible that someone from those friends turns out to be not so trustworthy after all, but personally I'm for some reason leaning more towards the possibility of an eavesdropping contact that went unnoticed.

If we assume that Father had some – although not all – knowledge about the protection, that leads to an interesting situation. If he had heard that there's a protection and that it's impossible for him to bring back Mother unless someone from the family resurrects someone (fully) first, he would likely come to a certain conclusion. What he would want to do would be to break the protection, or rather make the family break it so that he could resurrect Mother. From the case of Charlie's accident he'd be able to tell that even though clearly the young boy was dear to everyone, he wasn't resurrected, despite the pain and sorrow, so as to keep the protection in place. So what he would need would be for someone to die, and not just anyone, but someone that is somehow so important that the family couldn't do anything else but resurrect them. This means that with this chain of logic, there would be one obvious, tempting alternative that would very likely cross Father's mind: to kill an heir.

I know I can't really prove any of this. But interestingly, that just happened to be what he tried next.

But that wasn't to happen quite yet. And even though security must have often been on the minds of the Bookacies, for now they had more important things to take care of.

The funeral was a small occasion, with only the closest relatives present. Charlie's grave was, for the time being, located on the Greek House grounds, where he had enjoyed his life so much. At the time that was the only solution imaginable, simply because it required no particular arrangements and no one had the strength for anything else. Later on, when some time had passed, Cho had the grave moved to the family graveyard, where Charlie would rest together with his deceased relatives.

At the time of their grief, the family seeked for support for their loved ones. The extended family was of great help, as were significant others. Those days, Trevor, Chris, Audrey and Veronica were often seen at the Greek house, as was professor Eric, who had clearly become close to Cho.

Even Nicholas, who seemed to have been avoiding the Greek House for a while, seeming rather depressed, rushed to comfort Cho as soon as he'd heard the news, and promised to support her in her hard time.

Also at that point, there was not much of college left. Cyrus graduated, and Cho convinced him to throw a graduation party. She pointed out that Charlie wouldn't have wanted him to stop doing the things that he enjoyed. Cyrus took her advice, and also used it on her: Charlie would have wanted his sister to try to keep enjoying the things that she enjoyed, or if they'd lost their appeal, to find something to replace them. This got Cho to continue her dating. She wasn't a long way from her lifetime want anymore.

When Cyrus had already moved to Alphabetia, and Chris with him, there were some things for Cho to take care of yet. With Claire's help, she got the garden into tip top shape, and although it took a couple of tries, the garden club accepted their membership application and finally also awarded the Greek House a wishing well.

The Greek House also needed a new placeholder, now that Ryker was graduating and moving to Alphabetia with his girlfriend, Chloe. After a bit of pondering on who would be a trustworthy sim for the task, Cho chose Nicholas. He seemed like he was perhaps expecting something else when Cho approached him, but accepted nevertheless, and Cho gave him the necessities for running the Greek House in the Bookacies' absence.

For some reason, Claire seemed upset when she heard about it. ”You really don't get it, do you?” she asked, and it really seemed that Cho didn't. She had no idea what her cousin was talking about.

But Claire couldn't do much. If Cho really didn't realize how deeply Nicholas felt about her, and if she maybe didn't feel the same way, then there was nothing to be done. Nicholas was friends with all of them, and he'd confided in Carl. His worry was legitimate: Cho was a Legacy heiress, and in the end she'd marry a service sim, so a sim like Nicholas didn't stand much of a chance, no matter how much he loved her. He knew he'd been setting himself up for heartbreak, but he couldn't help it.

So no matter how it went with Cho's love life, Claire was still her cousin and best friend. And now it was time for their graduation party, the one they of course threw together. Lots of friends and relatives were on the guest list – myself included – and it was, like Cyrus' party earlier, a much needed possibility to get together and to forget all worries and sorrows, even if for a little while.

A short while after the graduation, Nicholas' worries came true. To everyone's surprise, very soon after moving to Alphabetia, Cho was now engaged. She'd been able to achieve her lifetime want of 20 simultaneous loves in a very short time in her new life as a proper adult, and after that, one of those loves had gotten down to one knee and proposed. It was professor Eric.

When Nicholas heard the news – from Chris, who tried to tell it to him as gently as possible – he was devastated. Ryker happened to visit the Greek House that very day and found his old friend in an utter state of distress. He listened to Nicholas and tried to be as much of support as possible, but in the end, it was as Nicholas said: apparently the woman he loved was happily engaged to someone else, so there was nothing for him to do that wouldn't make things worse or make him look like a fool. In the end, he just had to grit his teeth and carry on to the best of his ability.

Baudolino and Marylena were as surprised as anyone of their daughter's engagement, and truth to be told, they weren't entirely convinced that she knew what she was doing, or that she did it for the right reasons. They liked Eric, no doubt about that, but it was all so sudden and surprising. But, they too were powerless. They could gently try to ask her about it – and they did, with little result – but other than that, all they could do was to let their daughter make her own choices.

She was definitely old enough now. And speaking of aging, it was time for Baudolino and Marylena themselves to get older. Like in the previous generation, they celebrated their elder birthday together. Both of were still parents mourning, but they also agreed that a small family gathering would also do them good. The only way to go on was to try to keep living.

They both also felt that it was time. And seeing that their daughter was now engaged, however surprising that might have been, there were clearly very enjoyable old age experiences in front of them.

Before any of that, however, something surprising happened.

If Charlie's death – as I suspect – was a lucky occurrence for Father, now it was our turn to get lucky.

Now that the consequences of the tragic accident were mostly taken care of as well as possible and everyone was trying to get to their normal activities, George contacted Count Pao. He needed Pao's love, support and company now perhaps more than ever. So one evening, he invited the count to the Legacy house, to spend a quiet evening at home and explain the sad reason behind his recent absence. Before he knew it, George was pouring his heart out to Count Pao, about what had happened to his young master and how it broke his heart. Among his story, he just happened to mention Father's name. And the sympaethic count's whole demeanor changed.

This was how we came to know that Count Pao knew my Father, that in fact he was the Grand Vampire who had helped him become a vampire back then. Pained, he explained how at the time, he was a young Grand Vampire, who had trouble with the Alphabetia vampires.

He was, much like those sims Sean speculated about, bitter, having heard of playable sims and how everything was supposedly so easy for them, how especially Challenge and Legacy families used everyone else for their purposes. Back then, he was a good target for Father, and didn't need much persuasion. Attempting to turn Curtis into a vampire (Pao didn't know that he was a Grand Vampire) as well as using kidnap were originally his ideas. Only later he'd learned how far Father had been willing to go and realized how wrong he'd been. But then it had been too late. He had made some excuses to Father, slowly disappeared from his circles and tried to live with his guilt.

Count Pao didn't expect George to forgive him, or indeed even ever see him again, but George didn't even think about not forgiving him. He knew Pao's true nature, and he couldn't think of life without him. So he forgave him. And, he did more. He realized that as one of Father's contacts, and one that was supposedly even now in terms with him, could turn out very valuable to the family. So he talked to Baudolino, and then contacted myself and Sean. A plan started forming.

The planned wedding day came closer, and and everyone kept doing what they needed to be doing: going to work, meeting friends and relatives, planning the wedding. Eric now lived with the family, and he came along with everyone. Although Baudolino and Marylena were somewhat worried, it gave them some relief to see that the young couple themselves seemed quite excited.

It also turned out that Cho was pregnant with the couple's first child, and that only added to the excitement. She would be quite big on the wedding day, but she wanted to stick to the original date, so that was how it would be.

The morning of the wedding came, and everything was as it should be. It was late autumn, so there had been some question about the weather, since the intention was to have the wedding in the garden. But in the morning, the sky was clear, and there was no worry in sight. Marylena proudly helped her daughter to get ready.

And everything was ready. The guests were there.

The bride and groom were there.

In fact, even though none of the wedding guests knew it, even Nicholas was there. Cho had invited him, but he had made his excuses. In the end, he decided that if the woman he loved was getting married to someone else, he had to see it for himself. But he didn't want to be seen, so he didn't join the guests but rather watched from afar. If Cho hadn't realized his pain so far, he didn't want her to see it now.

Everything was beautiful, everything went according to plan. Until. Until at the very last moment, when the young couple was standing under the arch, shortly after Nicholas had turned his back on the view and walked away...

… Eric backed away under the arch and said:

”I'm so sorry Cho. I can't do this. I can't.”

Marylena said later that she might have had her suspicions about her daughter and the reasons she was going to get married for, but she would never have imagined that Eric would back away.

It was a rather terrible day. Eric snuck away without a word of explanation, and Baudolino and Marylena took care of the guests, who thankfully soon left, understanding the family's need for its own peace.

Cho was in some kind of a shocklike state, and neither of her parents could even get a response out of her. Baudolino phoned his cousin Bailey, who was a doctor, and he came over. Somehow, he managed to persuade Cho to first eat something and then sleep. He was of the opinion that the pregnancy was on its last and that the labor could start any time, and actually, it could have easily started already, seeing the stress peak Cho had just gone through.

It turned out that Bailey was right. The very same afternoon, after a few hours of peaceful sleep, Cho woke up to what turned out to be labor pains. Everything went well, and the family was joined by a healthy little baby boy, who was given the name Dirk.

Only few nights after Dirk's birth, it was time to set in motion the plan that had been on our minds since we found out about Count Pao's past.

We had no means of getting to Father, seeing how well he had protected himself. But Count Pao had been wise and dropped contact with Father with polite excuses, and in good terms. We all believed that he would be able to contact Father without causing any suspicions, and yes, spy for us.

We were right. Pao was able to contact Father and to discuss with him, and apparently he wasn't suspicious at all. For instance, he didn't show desire to search Pao for recording devices – which he was, bravely enough, carrying.

The news that Pao brought, however, weren't very encouraging. Based on what he heard Father say, although he didn't say it directly, it seemed that his plans had escalated: he was planning the death of an heir.

We estimated that the news on Dirk's birth likely hadn't reached Father yet, so Cho was the likeliest target. Something had to be done, before Father could do whatever he was planning to do. We had to prepare a counter strike.

But meanwhile, it was wedding season here in Alphabetia. Many of the generation C members were graduating college and getting married. And then of course, the first pregnancies were announced too.

Among the sims to get married were also Cho's cousin and best friend, Claire, and her long time boyfriend Trevor. Some were perhaps surprised that Claire, who had been all about boys, would settle for just one. But for those who knew her the best, maybe it wasn't very surprising after all.

If Cho had a difficult time seeing all those weddings and happy couples around her, she hid her feelings well. And of course, she was the first to congratulate Claire in her wedding. Cho may have been dealing with a lot at that time, but she did it graciously.

With time, it got easier. In part it was helped by the fact that Cho didn't have to indefinitely ponder about what might have gone wrong. Because one day, Marylena took a call from the front gate, and to her surprise found there Eric, wanting to talk to Cho, to apologize. Slightly hesitating, Marylena let him in, with the warning that Cho might not be willing to talk. Eric said he would take that risk.

At first, Cho was furious. She yelled at Eric, blamed him on humiliating her and making her look ridiculous. Eric listened calmly, and when she stopped out of breath, he told her that he understood and accepted her anger, and knew she had every right to never forgive him. Regardless, he was terribly sorry.

But, he pointed out, if the first thing Cho accused him of – the man who left her at the altar – was humiliation, then perhaps it was a good thing that they didn't get married after all. Seeing Cho now, he was sure that however terrible Cho's experience had been, her heart was not broken.

Eric explained that while he had been genuinely, madly in love, he was still going to get married mostly out of the desire to please her. And Cho, she was going to get married out of some kind of a sense of obligation, a feeling that it was her duty as the Legacy heiress. And really, neither was the best possible reason.

In the end, Cho couldn't argue with that. She knew that Eric was right.

After all that, both Eric and Cho admitted to having done wrong, and sincerely apologized to each other. Understanding that the kind of damage that had happened probably couldn't be fixed so quickly, they decided that so far it would suffice to call a ceasefire. Later, time would do its job. Maybe it would be possible to be in friendly terms.

Having heard her daughter and her ex-fiancé reach an agreement, Marylena came from the next room, clearly having waited for a suitable moment. With Cho's approval, Eric got to meet his son that afternoon, and was very happy to do so. All of the adults were happy with the end result. Even if they wouldn't be living together, little Dirk would come to know two parents.

The wedding season was far from over. Cyrus and Chris were also engaged (Chris had proposed), and shortly after Dirk's toddler birthday, it was time for them to get married. As Chris was a Popularity sim and was eager to meet the rest of her fiancé's family – many of them she'd of course already met and befriended – the wedding was going to be a big one.

The size of the wedding was partly what gave Sean the idea. We knew that Father was out there, and based on the tape that Pao had brought to us, it seemed very likely that he was planning to attack Cho. And what we didn't know when he'd get his chance. So Sean's idea was simple: we should arrange him a chance. With a sufficiently big party, it would be easy to arrange for all of us who were part of the operation against Father to be there, and also, perhaps it could be made seem safe to him: in a big crowd, he could blend in.

So we got started. Count Pao acted as our spy, taking a big risk but saying that he had to do what he could. He carefully planted some information, casually mentioning the wedding and so forth. Father swallowed the bait. He seemed interested, and asked Count Pao for more information on the wedding, which he of course provided. At the same time, our suspicions got confirmed: Father was indeed planning an attack aimed at Cho.

So when the first guests arrived that day, we were ready. We couldn't tell the rest of the family, of course, it all had to be genuine. But we hoped it would be quick and easy.

The day went without any disruptions. Cyrus and Chris had planned the actual ceremony to take place after sunset, and the day was reserved for a long buffet lunch and some catching up between relatives. It was a very pleasant occasion, and the sheer number of relatives something quite stunning. The biggest surprise of the day was provided by Carl, who showed up with not one but two dates – Audrey and Veronica – who were both visibly pregnant.After the initial confusion, surprise, maybe even shock for some, warm congratulations were given to the trio. They'd clearly found their own path to happiness.

Amongst all the friendly chatter, most of the guests didn't even notice that something was going on. Even though we didn't expect anything during the day, thanks to Father's vampirism, we still had to be prepared in case he'd surprise us and send someone in his stead. All of our operation members were equipped with a small earphone, through which Sean, who was on the lead, gave his instructions. We took turns to keep watch, unnoticed by the rest of the guests. Operation White Dove had commenced.

Evening fell, and still there were no disruptions. Count Pao arrived, seemingly only in the role of a family acquintance who wants to respect the couple, but in truth of course, he was there because of the operation. Sean was worried that if Father saw him, he would realize that Count Pao had a part in our plot, but the count himself said that if it succeeded, Father would know in either case. And before that, his presence shouldn't look suspicious due to his links to the family.

The evening went on, Cyrus and Chris announced that the ceremony would start soon and went inside for some last-minute preparations. Us members of the operation quietly kept watch. At this point, we'd done everything we could, and we could only hope that Father would come. We were fairly certain that he had trusted the information that Count Pao had given to him – and in fact, all of it was true. He simply failed to mention certain crucial facts, such as a large crew of secret operation members waiting for him. All in all, we believed that the information had made this occasion seem like a good chance for Father. We believed he would come.

And in the end, he did.

Afterwards, we were fairly certain that Father must have simply waited for no one to look in his direction, then climbed over the hedge in the quiet corner near the wedding arch. It seems that after that he trusted to blend in the crowd, which was relatively reasonable, seeing that not everyone necessarily knew everyone else, at least well.

It's chilling how far he got simply by that.

I was the first to notice him. I first even thought it was Carl; Father looked different than when I'd last seen him, and I only saw him from behind. I mentioned something to Bill, who was keeping watch with me, and he told me that it wasn't Carl.

That was the moment when my brain started ticking. It was as if everything was in slow motion. I saw a glimpse of his face, its paleness, and then, slowly, I realized that he was walking towards Cho.

After what seemed like an eternity, but at the same time no time had passed at all... I was able to find my voice, and yelled. I heard Bill yell beside me.

Some guests paniced, some were only starting to notice what was happening. But the members of the operation quickly found Father among them, and started running towards him.

It almost seemed like he hadn't noticed that his cover had failed, or maybe at this point he was too desperate to care. I don't know. He'd stopped, a small distance away from Cho, and he reached for his pocket. And only when we saw it, we realized that he had a wand. Father was a warlock.

In the end, it was Bill who saved us.

I was running, everyone was running, but in my heart I knew I wouldn't make it. We hadn't expected Father to be a warlock, and we definitely hadn't expected him to get as close to Cho as he got. Sean and Count Pao were quite close, but I think they wouldn't have made it.

But then I heard Bill yell again from behind me and briefly saw, or perhaps rather felt, something fly over my shoulder... And then, Father yelled in pain, there was a flash of bright light, and he collapsed on the ground.

When I turned around, I saw that Father wasn't the only one with a magic wand. Behind me, Bill was still holding one, after having stunned Father.

Thanks to what I would almost dub a miracle, no one was hurt seriously. One of the cousins' spouses, Weldon, got a bump in the head when his mother-in-law, Laura, ran him over as she rushed to the aid of the operation. Cho, who hadn't even had the time to realize what was going on, fainted on the yard, but was perfectly fine when carried inside by Nicholas, who'd just shown up late to the party.

Speaking of Nicholas, after having made sure that Cho was alright, Chris instructed sims to do necessary tasks to make sure everyone was fine, and then dragged him apart from the other guests for a moment to give him a well-earned scolding. In his depression and self-pity, Nicholas had been neglecting his friends, to the point where he didn't return their calls. If Ryker hadn't filled Chris in on the situation, she would have called the cops. Even now, she hadn't even known if Nicholas would show up for her wedding or not.

Nicholas sheepishly apologized. He knew he'd done wrong, but he'd been extremely down. Now he'd decided that he had to come congratulate Chris and Cyrus, and hopefully he wouldn't have to face Cho, or maybe only briefly. He had been planning to only quickly pop by, and then sneak out again. He was sorry. And only at this, he learned that Cho wasn't actually married after all. Chris scolded him again, and let him process the new information.

It's perhaps needless to say that that night, a certain slow process started. Not much was said, but likely for the first time after her painful experience with Eric, Cho finally started to see how she felt, and how Nicholas felt. It was a new beginning.

Father was alright, too. He was simply knocked out by Bill's adrelanin-intensified stunning spell. While he was out, Bill explained to him how he felt that in the midst of all of these Mad Scientists, Captain Heros and Criminal Masterminds involved in the operation, he'd felt that maybe he, too, just an artist and a nice, old green guy, needed something good in his sleeve. So a bit before his elder birthday he'd contacted the Good Witch, who was an old friend of his, and asked her to turn him.

When Father came around, Sean took control. He kindly suggested that Marsha do the honors, and Marsha accepted with pleasure. She was the one to put Father in cuffs and officially arrest him.

Just as she and Sean were about to take Father away, he must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, and turned to look as far as he could. He recognized me. I still remember his voice when he asked ”... Aadam?” I couldn't but fight back the tears and look him in the eye.

After that, Marsha and Sean walked Father to the police station. Me and Joy stayed behind to watch as long as glimpse of them could be seen. That was the last time I ever saw my Father.

After everything, when the guests had recovered from their shock, when all immediate needs caused by the longer-than-expected occasion had been taken care of, and when Sean had apologized to Baudolino for taking a risk that could have ended up badly for Cho, and to Chris for turning her wedding into a police operation, there was still one thing left to do.

Bravely all the relatives stayed to watch, despite the shock and the fatigue, as Chris and Cyrus finally got married. It was a very beautiful ceremony, and despite especially the groom not being the most romantic type, it could also be described as quite romantic, with its self-written vows and obvious feeling behind the words. That ceremony signaled the beginning of a new, more peaceful era for the Bookacies.

Life settled into a routine for the family. Even though the relationship between Cho and Eric hadn't worked, they were now frequently in touch and Eric was getting to know little Dirk. To both of their surprise, it also turned out that Cho and Eric were able to come along, and apparently not just for Dirk's sake. It seemed that in the end, they'd be able to be in quite friendly terms.

After her brother's wedding, Cho started spending a lot of time at the Greek House, where Nicholas was working on the rest of his studies. After the previous disaster, they were taking things slow, but of course the rest of the family were already able to see where things were headed.

So even though Cho hadn't really prepared her parents much, neither of them was surprised that after graduation Nicholas moved in with the family. This time, they had a much better feeling about their daughter's intentions.

Of course, since Nicholas was moving away, a new placeholder was needed for the Bookacy family Greek House Greek House, and luckily Nicholas knew just the sim. One of his friends, Robin Andrews, was happy to take up the job.

When Cho and Nicholas decided to take a vacation to Twikkii Island, in the family beach residence, again no one was excactly surprised when they came back married. In fact, the whole vacation was originally Marylena's idea, as she'd noticed how Cho now seemed to know where her heart lay and wanted to give them some alone time. And her plan worked perfectly: when given a little bit time to think, Cho was sure, Nicholas had always been sure, and so she ended up proposing. They got married alone on the beach, with no party, no guests, no fuss and no pressure. Just the two of them, and their happy day.

Everyone took the news well. Even Eric, about whom Cho had been a little worried, happily congratulated the newlyweds, and clearly he was of the opinion that Cho had made a good choice. Little Dirk, too, seemed only happy to have another adult in his important sims. All was well.

Father, of course, ended up in jail. He was charged with the kidnap of Rebecca, the involuntary vampirification of Cyrus, coercing me to do his bidding, and the attempted murders of Marsha and Cho. Although some thought that actually, he should have been charged with the murders of Rebecca and Charlie most of all, he wasn't. As Rebecca, or indeed anyone who'd been present, couldn't remember any verbal or physical coercion from his side in Rebecca's case, and as he couldn't be placed anywhere near the Greek House when Charlie died, there was no proof. Some are of the opinion that it was a failure of the justice system, but personally, I think that it was really because, despite everything else he's done, he's actually innocent. Maybe I have to believe that.

Father's activity is of course monitored, but apparently there isn't much to report. Father is well-behaved, and he doesn't seem to be looking for company, but rather spends his time in solitude. So far he's yet to have a single visitor. Once he mentioned to a guard something about strange dreams, suspected that they might have to do with the force field that keeps magical prisoners from escaping, but otherwise there hasn't been anything whatsoever out of the ordinary.

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If you're interested in what Sal gets up to while in jail, I recommend the interlude chapter Interlude one: Jailbird, and the subsequent apocalyptic spin-off called Villains or Heroes?

Otherwise, I suppose there isn't much left to say. Cho and Eric's son, Dirk, is now a teenager. He' a Family sim and apparently a rather serious sim. He has a tendency to worry too much, but overall he's a great kid. Rumor has it that he's at least strongly considered for heir, if not chosen already.

Dirk is quite popular among the teenagers of Alphabetia, many of whom are his cousins in various degrees. Nicholas has mentioned Dirk's had a bit of girl trouble, but nothing too serious – he just tends to worry about things like that. He's also gotten to visit the family business with Cho and Nicholas, and I hear he enjoyed that a lot.

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Dirk is a Family sim with the personality 7/9/8/1/4 (Aries), and he was named after Dirk Gently in Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. His lifetime want is to graduate three children from college.

Nowadays, Dirk has two younger half-siblings, both of them still children. Cho and Nicholas' firstborn is Dorian. He seems to be a bit more easygoing than his brother, but only time will tell. So far we can only tell that he's a sweet little boy.

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Dorian was named after Dorian Grey in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, and his personality is 6/9/8/3/4 (Aries).

The youngest of the generation D siblings is little Desdemona. She only recently had her child birthday, so she is really quite young. As the baby of the family, she gets a lot of doting.

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Desdemona's personality is 6/5/8/3/3 (Scorpio), and she was named after Desdemona in William Shakespeare's Othello: The Moor of Venice.

Cho and Nicholas are still happy together. Nicholas achieved his lifetime want of earning 100,000 simoleans some time ago, and he's been very enthusiastic about skill badges lately. Eric and Cho are in good terms these days, and Eric visits regularly to see Dirk. He's also happy to take part in the life of the family in general. Cyrus and Chris have a little girl, Dani, who's a first cousin to Cho's children.

Baudolino and Marylena are getting quite old, but they are currently very much enjoying life and their grandchildren. They have retired, and Baudolino has passed the family business on to Cho, as well as the vacation house on Twikkii Island. Cho has recently bought a vacation home also in Three Lakes. Baudolino and Marylena fulfilled a long time dream and visited Takemizu. It was everything they had hoped for, a very relaxing and enjoyable experience.

Unfortunately Chunni, who was already an old bird, died recently. The family was very sorry about it, especially George who was maybe the most attached to her. Otherwise George, too, is doing well. He's still seeing Count Pao as often as he can, and the two of them provide much happiness for each other.

All in all, the recent years have been peaceful and happy for the Bookacy family, and with Father in jail, I believe there are more pleasant times ahead. But one day, Father will walk out, and then... No one knows what is in store for the family then.

This concludes Aadam's story, as recorded by his daughter Barbara in several sessions. Aadam seemed happy and relieved to have finished the story, so that he wouldn't have to spend his days typing. Now he got to do other things, such as practice his violin and spend time with his grandchildren.

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Aadam has two grandchildren. Cory, already a teenager, is the biological son of Barbara and Tara, who was conceived using Aadam's scientific knowledge. But there is a newer addition to the family, too. Barbara and Tara had been hoping for a sibling for Cory, and were considering adoption. But again through Aadam, they found out that there was another way. Apparently working in the garden could result in becoming one with nature, part plant, and that had the benefit of being able to conceive a child easily with no complicated scientific procedures. So now there's little Caia, Barbara's daughter via being a plantsim. Barbara has no permanent plans to remain a plantsim, but it was definitely worth it for having Caia.

Not long after that, the rest of the family received the news that Aadam, the youngest of generation A, had passed away. After a long and eventful life, he was ready to move on, to go peacefully with the Grim Reaper, and to finally be reunited with his Joy.

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Rest in peace, Aadam and Joy.

This is also where our recap chapter ends. I'm sorry it's so very, very long, but I hope you've enjoyed it nevertheless, and are now thoroughly reminded or caught up. Please join us again for another chapter of The Bookacy Family Alphabet Adventures. Until then, happy simming!