Vera's Story(To Love and To Lie)

Chapter Twenty-One

It was dusk anyway, so by the time they got to the right house, it was well into dark.

Instead of going in himself, Fowler sent Miriam with Vera, saying, "She needs the practice, and I don't want to go because it'll be boring."

It was actually a nice house in a pleasant neighborhood, not like the Brown's house or the other victim's houses, which had been in a much poorer part of town and had been rather rundown. When Miriam knocked, the door was opened within seconds.

"Ah! You're here! Please, come in." The young man said, opening the door wider and ushering them in.

He had Miriam and Vera sit down on the soft couch, "Is there anything you need for this? Would you like something to eat or drink? Tea? Cookies?"

"Uh, no thank you, and I can just remove your contract right now without anything else, so long as you're willing to relinquish it." Vera told him.

"Oh, should I sit?" He asked, looking out of his element and more flustered by the second. "You can't tell what the contract is about, can you?"

"...No," Vera lied. "And yes, you might want to sit down."

He sat immediately, Vera stood and walked over to him, squinting to see where his contracts were. He only had one contract, which Vera was a little surprised about after meeting so many people who had over five contracts on them. She knew it was pretty bad when the unusual was becoming the norm, people didn't usually have *any* Allessian Contracts, much less five.

She reached out to his contract, which was bound tightly around his heart, and took a moment to read what she could of the first few glowing lines.

*"On the day of my daughter Corritha Mayhew's eighteenth birthday, you will marry her and..."*

*This young man is supposed to get married to someone and they made a contract for it? Why? A regular contract should do, why did they need an Allessian contract?* Vera mentally shrugged, and tugged sharply on the contract. She needn't have pulled so hard, the contract came off immediately, smooth as butter. The young man had definitely released this contract, maybe hadn't ever really held it close.

"It's done, you don't have the contract anymore." Vera told the young man, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"Yep," Vera adjusted her black veil, twitching the hat so that it's angle wasn't sideways. She couldn't stand when it got crooked.

Vera and Miriam left as the young man thanked them profusely, closing the door behind themselves and going back to the carriage, where Fowler was sitting with a large stack of paper scribbling things down on each and then putting them away in a file holder.

"How'd it go?" He asked, not looking up from his papers as they got in and closed the door.

"It was fine, everything went smoothly." Vera answered as the carriage got moving again.

"Good, we have two more appointments set up for tonight."

The other appointments went just as smoothly, but Vera was exhausted by the end, and it was really late after all the traveling. To her surprise and dismay tinged with what almost felt like horror, Terrence dropped her off at her apartment.

"Miriam told me where you live now, so I can drop you off here instead of making you walk home from the warehouse," Terrence explained, "goodnight!"

"Goodbye, Allie! See you tomorrow!" Miriam said enthusiastically, and then they drove off, leaving Vera alone to hope that there would be no cause for the mob to use the knowledge of where she lived against her somehow.