The Wicked: A Love Story

Hello, I hope you're all having a great (or at least tolerable) holiday, and I just wanted to stop and say thank you for reading and being part of this community. Thank you for following the adventures of the Strausses, the Dunharrows and the occasional vampire. We all really appreciate you being on this ride. And now, back to the show!

The Journal of Pamela Strauss

This was my first time in the South and my first time seeing Augustus. All of my life had been lived in these cold countries, but for the first time, in that warm country, I felt at home. In his large kitchen with all of his herbs and roots, I learned more than I ever had before. At the feet of Augustus, I learned how to mix the potions for the spells which, despite my trust in him, I still had fears of working.

Even though it was spring it still seemed cold and grey in Ohio, and Germantown looked worn down, not as lovely as I remembered it. All the area was filled with church bells, and people moved around me quickly, some of them stopping to say hello, many whom I had never known.

It was a relief to shut the heavy door on them and enter into the quiet world of 1948 Dimler Street. That night, in the dining room, at the long table after dinner, I told Jimmy to take some of the wolfsbane. Because Steiger had suffered so much from Jimmy’s suffering, I told him to take some as well.

“I feel as if you and Jimmy are linked that way,” I said, and Steiger accepted it.

“But it’s not…” Jimmy began, “It’s not that time.”

“You must take it every day,” I said. “A tablespoon every day.”

“It tastes awful,” Jimmy said.

“It tastes better than being locked in a basement for three nights, you stupid boy,” Friederich boomed. “Now drink.”

Maris and Claire looked at each other. I could tell that to them, this was an inconvenience, the inability to be a good American girls, to be normal. Katherine only pressed her hands together and said, “But it will work, won’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, because what else could I say?

We waited, and for the very first time there was no Change. As long as we kept Jimmy drinking his potion, as long as I had the supply to make it, there was no more transformation, only mildly strange feelings in him, and Steiger no longer suffered for his friend.

But soon, the matters of the Strauss family were absorbed into the matters of the world, for that winter, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and as America entered into a new war with Germany on the other side of it, many of us began to fear, remembering what had happened to this neighborhood twenty years before.

But I had learned much, for back in the South, Augustus had been right. By his potions, Hagano had come to me. I had been afraid, feeling my body old and undesirable, but when he had come to me, he had been just as old as he always was. He said, “For you, for you, Pamela. I am ageless. This is for you. You are ageless to me too, though you do not feel it. I come and I go. I am not here. I am tied to all the Strauss women, even before you were the Stauss.”

“Who was my father’s father? Who was his mother.”

“I do not know, for I did not appear in this world again until the time when my help was needed, and I did not keep company with the Strauss until I saw you.”

“But who are you?”

“I am the father of Leinghelde and Holving.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

I turned on my side, looking at him.

“Leinghelde was the mother of your clan, the first of you. She was the mother of the mother of the Strausses.

“And when did she live?”

“Over a thousand years ago,” Hagano said, touching me gently.

“You are so like her. Before Friederich was your father, it was me. I am the father of you all.”

“Were you always a wolf?” I asked him.

“No,” Hagano said. “How could that be? I am The First.”

“But, not the first ever?”

“No. I have heard and seen others who came from other lines. And other changers. When I was young there were the berserkers, those who changed into the bear both in form and spirit. But I was the first of our line, the beginning of what you are.”

“Then you must tell me,” Pamela insisted. “You must tell me your whole story that I may know my own.”

He looked as if he were thinking. I wondered, maybe if he was having me on, and then his face changed and he said, his voice heavy. “I will tell you, then, my Pamela. I will tell you all.”

”But she doesn’t tell us!” Marabbeth lamented,almost throwing the book across the room.

Jason sat shirtless in the chair on the other side, of the room, his feet on the bed and an ashtray full of cigarette stubs on his lap. He had been avidly reading the first part of the journal Marabeth had ripped apart and she said, “I forgot to tell you something. Something I just learned tonight from my cousin Myron.”

She loved the idea of absolute truth telling, but thought that bringing vampires up at this time of night, after everything else they’d been through was too much. Blood drinkers could wait till the morning.

Jason looked up at her from the book.

“Apparently most of us were killed. Back in Bavaria. We had enemies. Friederich was the only survivor. It seems that Hagano was the one who rescued him. Hagano along with Frau Eva.”

“THE Frau Eva? The witch who taught Pamela? The one who’s like your great-great grandmother or something?”

“Yes,” Marabeth said.

“Well, then that means she must have known Hagano.”

“Yes,” Marabeth said.

“She must have known so much,” Jason said. “If only Pamela had asked.”

“If only Eva had told.”

“Or even her daughter,” Jason said. “But I bet no one in your family knows about that now.”

Marabeth shrugged.

“In the journal Pamela brings up Eva having a daughter, Ada. We’re all descended from Ada’s son. But Ada had a daughter too who would be my… great-great aunt. Maybe off somewhere that branch of the family continued being witches and still have the knowledge Eva had. But we’re out of touch with them.”

“Would that cousin of yours, Peter, know about them?”

“No,” Marabeth shook her head. “We’re a parochial family. A big one, but parochial. Concerned about one thing. Ada’s daughter never married into the Strausses and neither did her children. She was Pamela’s age. Pamela didn’t go to her for help when things happened to Jimmy. That branch of the Kellers just went off and did its thing. In fact, since Eva’s daughter married, they wouldn’t even really be Kellers anymore.”

“Marabeth, there’s really one thing you have left to do.”

“What?” she looked almost bored as she turned to him.

“You can keep reading the book just so long. And then you’ve got to reach out to him. You’ve got to dream again. You’ve got to make contact with Hagano yourself.”