Free Loved by Morgan Rice Page A

footsteps echoing on the hard, wooden staircase. The house creaked and groaned as they went, as if protesting its new visitors.
    The second floor of the house had even lower ceilings, barely high enough for Caleb to stand in. It was now almost dark, and there was just enough light to see by. They stood in a beautiful and cozy room, with wide plank wooden floorboards, six over six windowpanes, and tastefully decorated with period furniture. At its center was a brick fireplace with black stain around its edges, clearly worn from years of use.
    Greeting them at the top of the staircase was yet another exhibit, this one devoted to Elizabeth Paine.
    Caitlin read aloud: “Hester Prynn, Hawthorne’s most famous character, the woman at the center of The Scarlet Letter , the woman who was persecuted for refusing to reveal the true identity of her child’s father, was, many scholars say, based on a real life Salem resident: Elizabeth Paine. No scholar has ever been able to identify the lineage of Elizabeth’s child, as she refused to reveal to any of the townsfolk who the father really was. Legend has it that he was a mysterious man, come over on a ship from Europe, and that their romance was a forbidden one.
    “Elizabeth was banished from Salem and forced to live in a small cottage, by herself and with her child, in the woods, on the outskirts of town. The exact location of her cottage has never been found.”
    Caitlin looked to Caleb. She was speechless.
    “A forbidden romance?” she asked. “As in….”
    Caleb nodded. “Yes. It was between a vampire and human. His story is not really about adultery. It is all masked, hidden. It’s an allegory. It’s really about us. Our kind. More specifically: it’s about you. Their child. The half breed.”
    Caitlin felt the world spinning beneath her. The ramifications were overwhelming.
    She also couldn’t help feeling that the story was repeating itself, that, generations later, she was playing out the same pattern. A forbidden romance. Two races. Her and Caleb. Repeating history once again, following in the footsteps of her ancestors. It made her wonder if lifetime after lifetime just repeated itself, endlessly.
    They slowly surveyed the room. It was hard to see in the fading light, and she still didn’t know exactly what she was looking for. But now, she definitely, without a doubt, knew that they were looking in the right place.
    So, apparently, did Caleb. He walked around the room curiously, inspecting everything. They both felt sure that whatever it was they needed would be in this room. Maybe even the sword itself?
    But the room was sparsely furnished, and after she inspected, she didn’t see where anything could be hiding.
    “Here,” Caleb finally said.
    Caitlin hurried over to him. He stood beside an antique hutch.
    He felt the side of it with his hand. “Look at this,” he said.
    He took her hand, and guided it along the side, and she felt it. It had a small, metal indent. In the shape of a cross.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” he answered, “but I do know one thing: it doesn’t belong on this piece of furniture. And I suspect something else: this unusual shape, the curved lines: I would bet anything that is the exact shape of your cross.”
    She looked at him blankly, not comprehending what he was talking about. Then she suddenly realized and reached down. Her necklace.
    “I think it’s a key,” he said.
    She took it off quickly, and together, her hand on his, they inserted it gently into the indent. She was ecstatic to see that it fit perfectly. It entered with a soft click, and as they gently turned it to the right, a narrow, vertical compartment opened.
    Heart pounding, Caitlin reached inside and gently extracted a frail scroll, yellowing, brittle. It was tied with an ancient piece of string, all but crumbling.
    She handed it to Caleb, and the two of them unrolled the scroll together.
    It was a map. Handwritten, hundreds of years