The doorbell rang at the crack of dawn.

Ivory bolted up straight in her bed, eyes heavy from sleep. Surely that wasn't the doorbell just now? No one ever rang the doorbell this early.

The doorbell chimed again in response.

"It's like we're having a conversation." She commented dryly.

Throwing back the covers, she pushed herself out of bed. She had just fallen asleep and didn't want to think about anything else, but her mom was already at work, meaning the door would be left unanswered. After everything that's happened lately, she didn't want to leave another surprise.

She swung open the front door and hastily, closed it just as fast. The alleyway that she was trapped in yesterday shone brightly in front of her as if greeting her with a smile. With a twinge of annoyance, she grinded her teeth and she opened the door again.

Seth smiled at her faintly.

Her patience slipping away, she glared at him coldly. "...Are you mad?"

"Only about you." He winked at her to prove his point.

Restraining the urge to roll her eyes, she pulled him by the arm inside the house so that the neighbors wouldn't think she'd truly lost her marbles by talking to herself. "I still find it hard to believe I'm the only one that can see your overly abundant audacity. It's really such a shame."

He wandered around, poking his nose into the living room to have a look. "I'm glad you think so."

She watched him for a long time before she could no longer keep quiet. "What is it? Did you not get a good look the first time you broke into my house?"

He clicked his tongue at her tactless behavior. "I didn't break in." He corrected her. "You let me in this time." He looked back at her in a lazy way, his body still facing the living room. "You're really fun in the mornings, I should do this more often."

So, this was the grand plan that he mentioned the last time they spoke? Resisting the urge to pull her hair out in frustration, she asked him calmly, "Why on earth did you come here this early?"

"Just to see your charming personality."

"Be serious." Ivory folded her arms, not accepting his bullshit.

"Don't you have school?"

"It's a Saturday." This time it was her turn to click her tongue at him. "That ghost brain of yours is showing signs of age."

"Ivory," He said gently, helping himself to a seat on the couch. He laid back in a comfortable position before looking at her. "Words are used on the common tongue for language, not to be sprayed like daggers at my feet."

She breathed deeply, calming herself. "Alright. Point understood."

"Yours too." He replied earnestly. "I'm sorry to intrude this early."

"You're not intruding." She sighed at her own impatience, sinking into the left end of the couch, her head laying back against the armrest. "I've had a... bad night, you could say." She met his gaze warily with one eye open. "I barely got any sleep."

"'A bad night' is one way to describe what happened." He scratched the small hairs on his chin thoughtfully.

"Certainly." She replied back.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Her lips thinned in an attempt at a smile. "I appreciate the offer, but I'm not a little kid."

"That's not why I asked." He snarled back at her gently.

Within a hare's breath, she caught his probing gaze and then looked away. "You carry the same look that you did last night when I told you why I was at the club."

He took the chance to lean towards her slightly. "Oh? What look do I have?"

She stuck her foot to his chest and pushed him away in an instant. "An intolerable one." She decided.

He rubbed his chest where her foot had been. "Hurtful."

"Actually what's bothering me is that my mom's hiding something about my dad's work." Seeing that he was going to listen, she continued. "I've always known, but I think it's related to my situation with the veil so, now more than ever, I must find out."

Especially after meeting that playful thing in the alleyway that tried to get her to stay forever, only forever meant in death.

Lazily, she stretched out her toes a bit. "I'm about to do something stupid again." She told Seth, a plan formulating in her mind.

Seth laughed with his brilliant blue eyes cast upon her.

"Do you want to join me?" She offered.

His laughter faded to worry. "I'm actually afraid of what you might do."

"Be at ease." She reassured him. Getting off the couch, she continued sarcastically this time and glanced behind her where he sat expectantly. "We're not going to jump off another building."

He appeared visibly relieved, replying dramatically to match her energy, "Music to my ears."

He probably thought she was about to do something actually stupid, but in reality, her action would only be stupid on her own part.

Pursing her lips, she paused tentatively in front of the locked door in the corner of the living room. Ivory recalled a time when she was so determined to enter this room that she practiced nearly everyday, learning to use hairpins to force open this lock.

Her mother hid away everything related to Ivory's father in this room.

Seth curiously watched her from his position on the couch. From the side of her vision, she caught his eye narrowing at what she was holding.

Choosing to ignore him, she fiddled with the four hairpins she took from her hair, two extra in case the first couple broke.

Going into this room would be breaking a code of trust she had with her mom. Then again, how was the trust even there if her mom had always kept the key by her side? Ivory realized last night that her mom may never reveal the truth about her father, or if she did, with the way events were unfolding, it might be too late.

"What are you doing?" Seth suddenly spoke from behind her, peering over her shoulder.

Ivory breathed in sharply, coming back to reality.

To her surprise, he caught her back like casting a wall of reassurance. "Trust your instincts." He encouraged her. "I'll be here if you're worried something bad will happen."

Bending down to focus, she forced open the lock with ease and stepped inside the study, Seth following closely behind her. There were wooden bookcases lined against the interior walls filled to the brim with books of all kinds. To the left against the enclosed window was a desk scattered with loose notes, inventions, and other indescribable things on the surface that could only belong to her father. She recognized a few of them from her distant memory as a child, but of course, their purpose was still a mystery.

With the amount of work piled before them, she realized it could take them ages to sift through everything. Her mom would be home long before they finished.

Ivory walked over to the desk and began to flip through the scattered pages. She was surprisingly calm but her eyes read quickly and without delay.

So, the situation was what she expected, her father was really involved with the supernatural. There were several pages with documented detail about werewolves like their height, what they ate, and things like that. As she dug deeper, there was even a drawn picture of an adult werewolf beside their human form. She cursed under her breath. "What was my father into?"

To have such detailed work, she was certain that he didn't just ask for this information. Her hand froze over a werewolf in human form covered in wounds that she had to look away from. She reached for the journal that was tucked away in the corner. The leather cover brushed under her fingertips as she began to flip through the course pages that showed signs of age.

She took a seat in a chair nearby and began to read.

And as she read, the truth behind her father's disappearance became more clear.

Her father didn't just die in an accident.

He was murdered for seeking the truth.

The real question was did he ever find what he was looking for? And if so, then what? The journal discusses his progress researching werewolves, vampires, and ghosts but never brings up what he became closer to discovering. By omitting the specifics, he left a detailed yet obscured documentation of his experiences. Upon skimming to the end, she found a note that she hadn't been expecting.

"Today my daughter was born. Her eyes lit up upon seeing me, but I wonder what she sees to smile so warmly. For the first time in my life, I want to proceed for a new purpose. I cannot change my past mistakes, but I'll try to make a safer future for her."

The journal ends there with the remaining pages left blank and unused.

Perhaps he stopped using this journal to mark a change in his perspectives or maybe he didn't want to be reminded of what he'd done. Whatever the reason, she'd have to look elsewhere to know what occurred after she was born.

Seth was reading over her shoulder, but said nothing even when she finished. He also had been guarding the door.

"Well," She said, rising to her feet. "This was a great read. 10/10 would recommend." She returned the booklet onto the desk of papers and almost sighed in relief that she wasn't holding that sinful thing anymore. "Did you know the more someone tracks in a pile of crap, the worst it smells?"

Her father talked about "past mistakes" and "making a safer future" but what a peculiar choice of words almost like he was involved with escalating their current set of problems. The more someone digs themself into a hole, the harder it is to find the surface. His continuous pursuit of knowledge and his end goals took his own life and endangered his family that he claimed to care about. It is like he kept digging because he was too far to reach the surface and saw no other way to redeem his actions.

His perspective may have changed with her birth, but clearly his goals had not. He still pursued the very thing that got him into that mess, even if his new purpose was to protect her.

Knowing he died so pointlessly was infuriating. 

Swallowing whatever emotions she felt, she decided to shut those doors for now and focus on finding answers about the veil and the rest of her father's secrets. Let them bleed out another day.