Chapter 17 Vivienne
SEVENTEEN
vivienne
The lamp room stank of old metal and fear.
Vivienne’s wrists burned where the zip ties cut into her skin.
Winston had forced her to kneel in the center of the room.
The space was empty now—the FBI had stripped it clean days ago, removing all the evidence, all the artifacts.
Only dust outlines remained where crates had stood for decades, ghost impressions of the Aldrich family’s crimes.
“Brooks is coming.” Winston checked his phone again, pacing between the windows. Rain hammered the glass, turning the world outside into a blur of gray and black. “Good. I want him to watch.”
Blood trickled from Vivienne’s split lip where Winston had struck her when she’d tried to reach for her pendant.
The silver chain lay broken on the floor three feet away, Mathilde’s protective stone glinting in the weak light.
Without it, her connection to the spirits felt muted, like trying to hear through water.
But they were still there. She could sense them pressing against the boundaries of this world, desperate to help but unable to manifest strongly enough. Lily’s presence hovered closest, her spirit crackling with rage at Winston’s violation of the space where she’d died.
Hold on, Lily whispered. He’s almost here.
“Did you know your great-great-grandmother tried to stop my family?” Winston knelt in front of Vivienne, his gun resting casually on his knee. “Mathilde Hawthorne. She put protective wards all through this lighthouse, thinking she could trap us, force us to abandon our operation.”
“She succeeded.” Vivienne’s voice came out steady despite the fear coiling in her stomach. “Your family couldn’t use the lighthouse the way they wanted. That’s why you expanded into the tunnels, why you had to hide.”
Winston’s laugh was bitter. “She delayed us. Nothing more. We adapted. That’s what the Aldrich family does—we adapt, we survive, we thrive. Your family just . . . watches. Listens to ghosts. What good has that ever done?”
“Lily found the evidence. Martha never stopped believing. And now you’re finished.”
“Am I?” Winston stood, moving to the window.
“Gerald is in custody, yes. Jeremy and Tyler too. But I’m still free.
And once I eliminate you and that detective, I’ll have time to disappear.
New identity, new life. The Aldrich operation will go dormant for a generation, then resurface when everyone’s forgotten. ”
He said it so casually, as if their deaths were minor inconveniences rather than murder.
“Brooks won’t come alone.” Vivienne tested the zip ties again, but Winston had secured them tightly. “The FBI is watching this lighthouse.”
“Let them watch. By the time they move in, you’ll both be dead and I’ll be gone through the tunnels.
They’ve already searched the network—they think they found everything.
But there are passages even Gerald doesn’t know about.
Passages my great-great-grandfather dug in 1875 that lead to a cave system two miles up the coast.”
Footsteps echoed from below. Heavy boots on iron stairs.
Winston raised his gun, positioning himself behind Vivienne. The cold metal pressed against her temple.
“One sound and I pull the trigger. Understand?”
Vivienne nodded slightly. Her heart hammered so hard she thought Winston might hear it.
Brooks’s voice carried up through the tower. “Winston! I’m here. Let her go.”
“Come up, Detective. Alone.”
More footsteps. Slower now. Methodical. Brooks climbing toward them.
Vivienne closed her eyes, reaching for her abilities despite the missing pendant. The spirits responded weakly, their voices like distant wind. She needed them stronger. Needed Mathilde.
Mathilde, she thought desperately. Grandmother. Please.
The temperature in the lamp room dropped five degrees. Frost formed on the windows despite the rain. Winston’s breath misted in front of his face.
“What the hell—”
Brooks appeared in the doorway, weapon drawn. His eyes found Vivienne first, cataloging her injuries with a single glance. Then they shifted to Winston, cold and calculating.
“Let her go,” Brooks said. His voice was steady, but Vivienne could see the tension in his shoulders, the white-knuckled grip on his gun. “It’s over, Winston. The FBI has everything. Your family’s in custody. You can’t win this.”
“I can take one more Hawthorne woman with me.” Winston’s finger tightened on the trigger. “That’s worth something.”
The frost on the windows thickened. Vivienne felt Mathilde’s presence growing stronger, drawn by her desperation and Brooks’s fear. Other spirits gathered too—Lily, Karl Kelly, all the victims whose lives the Aldriches had stolen.
“You shoot her, you lose any leverage you have,” Brooks said. His eyes flicked to Vivienne, and in that brief glance she saw everything he wasn’t saying. Trust me. Hold on. I’ve got you.
Something shifted in the air between them.
That connection—the one that had been growing since the day he walked into The Mystic Cup, the pull she’d felt when she first saw him—suddenly snapped into focus, becoming something tangible.
Her grandmother Emmeline’s journal had said he would be her anchor, that the shop had been preparing for his arrival since before either was born.
And now Vivienne understood what that meant.
She could sense the pattern of his thoughts like ripples in water, could feel the sharp edges of his fear for her underneath the calm exterior, could taste the metallic determination flooding his system as he calculated angles and timing.
It wasn’t reading his mind exactly—more like feeling the shape of his intentions, the emotional architecture of his plan.
And somehow, impossibly, she knew he could feel hers too.
The connection ran both ways now, a bridge built from weeks of learning to trust each other’s methods, of him opening himself to things he’d never believed in, of her learning to ground her visions in the practical reality he lived in.
Two very different ways of seeing the world, somehow aligned in this moment.
When I drop, shoot.
Brooks’s eyes widened slightly. He’d heard her. Actually heard her thoughts.
Vivienne gathered every ounce of energy she had left, calling to the spirits one more time. “Winston’s going to kill us both anyway,” she said aloud. “At least let me die on my feet, not on my knees.”
“Nice try.” But Winston’s attention wavered for just a second, distracted by the temperature drop and the growing supernatural pressure in the room.
It was enough.
Vivienne threw herself sideways, away from the gun. Winston’s shot went wide, shattering a window. Brooks fired twice—one shot taking Winston in the shoulder, spinning him around. The second went into the wall as Winston stumbled.
The gun clattered from Winston’s hand. Brooks kicked it aside, already moving to secure him. Footsteps thundered up the stairs—Sullivan and FBI agents pouring into the lamp room.
Vivienne stayed on the floor, her bound hands making it impossible to catch herself. Brooks appeared beside her, cutting through the zip ties with a knife from his ankle holster.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “You’re safe.”
She looked up at him, this skeptic who’d just trusted a thought she’d sent across the space between them. “You heard me. In your mind.”
“I heard you.” His hands were gentle as he helped her sit up, checking her injuries. “Or felt you. I don’t know how to describe it. But I knew exactly what you needed me to do.”
“Right now I need my pendant.” Vivienne’s voice shook despite her best efforts. The adrenaline was fading, leaving her shaky and cold.
Brooks found the broken chain, carefully gathering the silver stone and placing it in her palm. The moment it touched her skin, warmth flooded through her. The spirits’ voices grew clear again.
Well done, Lily whispered. Rest now. You’ve finished what I started.
Agent Porter arrived with more FBI agents, securing Winston and reading him his rights. Paramedics appeared, someone draping a blanket around Vivienne’s shoulders. Brooks stayed beside her, one hand on her back, steady and grounding.
“Ms. Hawthorne, are you injured beyond what we can see?” Porter asked.
“Just bruises and the cut on my lip.” Vivienne touched the tender spot gingerly. “I’ll be fine.”
They helped her down the spiral stairs, Brooks supporting her weight as they descended. Out into the rain, where police lights strobed blue and red against the lighthouse’s white walls.
Brooks stayed close, never quite touching her but there. Always there.
“The Maine credit card,” Vivienne said as they waited for the ambulance. “That was a diversion?”
“He never left Westerly Cove. Someone working for him used the card to draw FBI resources north while he doubled back for you.” Brooks’s jaw tightened. “I should have seen it coming.”
“He’s been planning this his whole life. You’ve been here a few weeks.” Vivienne pulled the blanket tighter. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have protected you better.”
“You saved my life.” She met his eyes. “That connection—that was real, Brooks. You felt what I was thinking. You trusted it enough to act on it.”
“I did.” He looked shaken, like he was still processing what had happened. “I’ve been feeling it for weeks now. Little things. Knowing when you were about to call. Sensing when you were in the tunnels even though I couldn’t see you. I thought I was imagining it.”
“You weren’t imagining it.” Vivienne’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Something’s been building between us from the beginning.
I felt it the moment you walked into my shop—the shop had been preparing for you.
My grandmother Emmeline’s journal said you’d be my anchor, and I didn’t understand what that meant until tonight.
You visited her shop when you were thirteen.
The building remembered you. It’s been waiting for you to come back. ”
Brooks was quiet for a long moment, his hand still resting on her back.
When he spoke, his voice was rough. “I remember that visit. My parents brought me here on vacation after my uncle died. I was angry, confused. Your grandmother . . . Emmeline . . . she gave me a protection charm for my mother. Told me I’d come back someday when I needed to find something I’d lost.”
“What did you lose?”
“I didn’t know then. But now . . .” He paused, his thumb moving in slow circles on her shoulder blade through the blanket.
“In Austin, after Traci died, I lost faith in everything. My instincts, my judgment, my ability to protect people. I came here to escape, but maybe I was really coming back to find what your grandmother saw in me all those years ago.”
Vivienne leaned into his touch. “The Hawthorne women don’t just see the future.
We see the patterns—how people are meant to connect, how threads weave together.
Emmeline knew you’d need me, but she also knew I’d need you.
My mother died because she faced her gift alone, with no one to ground her when the voices became too loud.
You ground me, Brooks. Tonight, when I couldn’t reach my pendant, when Winston had me and I felt my abilities slipping away, I reached for you instead. And you were there.”
“I felt you calling.” He shifted so he could see her face better. “Not just tonight in the lamp room. Earlier, when he first took you. I was at the station and suddenly I couldn’t breathe, like someone was choking me. I knew something was wrong. That’s never happened to me before.”
“It’s the connection. It works both ways.
” Vivienne held his gaze. “I can sense your emotions, feel the shape of your thoughts when they’re strong enough.
And you’re developing the ability to sense mine.
It’s not the full Hawthorne gift, but it’s real.
You felt me drowning in fear, and your mind reached back to find me. ”
“Three months ago, if someone had told me I’d be having this conversation, I would have walked away. But I felt you in my head tonight, Vivienne. Clear as day. ‘When I drop, shoot.’ And I knew exactly what you meant, exactly when to move. That wasn’t training or instinct. That was you.”
“And you trusted it. Trusted me, even though everything you’ve been taught says it’s impossible.
” She reached up with her uninjured hand and touched his jaw.
“That’s what makes you my anchor, Brooks.
Not that you believe in everything I do, but that you trust me enough to act even when you don’t understand. ”
His hand came up to cover hers, pressing her palm against his face. “I’m starting to understand. Not all of it, maybe not most of it. But enough to know that what happened between us tonight was real. That this”—he gestured between them—”whatever this is, it matters.”
“It does.” Her throat tightened. “More than I expected it to.”
The moment stretched between them. Then Sullivan appeared with a thermos of coffee.
“Winston’s demanding a lawyer and medical attention. In that order.” The chief shook his head. “Thinks he can still negotiate his way out of this.”
“Let him try,” Vivienne said. “The evidence speaks for itself.”
As the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance, Brooks climbed in beside her despite their protests.
“I’m riding with her,” he said flatly. “Non-negotiable.”
Porter didn’t argue. She just nodded and stepped back, already on her phone coordinating the aftermath.
Inside the ambulance, Vivienne leaned against Brooks’s shoulder, exhausted beyond words. Her abilities felt raw, like she’d used muscles she didn’t know she had.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For trusting me. For hearing me when I called.”
“Partners,” Brooks said. He took her hand carefully, mindful of the bruised wrists. “Always.”
The ambulance pulled away from the lighthouse, its beacon dark and silent behind them. But Vivienne could feel the difference in the air, in the spiritual energy of the place.
The lighthouse was finally at peace. Lily was at rest. The Aldrich empire was broken.
And somehow, impossibly, she and Brooks had found a way to understand each other that went deeper than words—a connection forged through danger and trust and the desperate need to save each other.
He’d opened himself to her world, and in doing so, had discovered he had some small ability to sense what she sensed.
Not the full gift her family carried, but something.
A bridge between their two ways of knowing.
Whatever came next, they would face it together.
The ambulance lights flashed against the rain, carrying them both toward safety and whatever future awaited two people who’d learned to trust what couldn’t be measured or explained.