SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, henry mills

chapter eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN
BLOODSTONE MANOR

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When Josie made her way downstairs the next morning, she found her parents already seated at the dining room table with someone she did not expect to see. Snow White was sitting next to her mother, all three of them in front of an array of papers Josie didn't recognize. And from the way they quickly ushered them together, they didn't want Josie to see them. This was quite strange and made her even more curious about what was going on as she pulled her robe tighter around her to shield her night clothes from the gaze of someone who wasn't her family.

"Good morning Mother, Father," she greeted her parents. "And to you as well, Snow White. I did not expect us to have company so early, my apologies for my lack of dress."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Snow assured her. "I just stopped by to help your parents with the funeral arrangements."

"Funeral arrangements?" she asked. "For Frank?"

"Yes," Abraham said. "If we can finish getting everything in order today, the funeral will take place tomorrow."

Josie felt a sense of relief. She was glad they would finally be able to put Frank to rest. He had done so much for their family and hadn't deserved what Morgana did to him. With such a gruesome end, he deserved to find peace. She could only hope that, despite his flaws, he had found it.

"Do you need any assistance in planning?" Josie asked as she sat down across from her mother and Snow.

"Oh no, darling," Luella said. "You are having tea with Elsa and your father today, that is all you need worry about."

"As you say, Mother."

"Henry is quite eager about meeting Elsa Bloodstone," Snow told her. "Apparently she's a character in one of his comic books."

"Comic books?" Josie asked, head tilted to the side in confusion.

Snow faltered when she realized they didn't know what a comic book was and would have to explain it to them. She thought on her words for a minute, trying to come up with an accurate description.

"Well, a comic book is kind of like a book, except it's made up of a bunch of pictures instead of just words. Henry's are about all manner of different heroes, quite different from the ones in his storybook," Snow explained.

"I see," Josie said. "Perhaps he can show us these comic books sometime."

"I'm sure he would love that."

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Standing in front of Bloodstone Manor with her father, Nicholai, Henry, Regina and Emma, Josie started to remember being there before. She was young when it happened, she recalled staring up at the large, dark manor through the beautiful wrought iron gate flanked by two stone gargoyles and thinking it looked impossibly large, the biggest home she'd ever seen apart from Castle Dracula and she'd never been this close to it. Now standing there all grown up, while the manor still loomed large and dark above her, it didn't seem so impossible anymore. It was a large and beautiful manor which Josie was almost jealous of, but it fit into her worldview now.

The manor was made of a dark, nearly black stone which reminded Josie once again of Castle Dracula. There were many large windows and the building was decorated with the architectural flares common to the style the rest of Nightmoor was decorated in. It seemed to have been mostly spared the jagged combination treatment the rest of Nightmoor and Storybrooke had been given. Though it seemed the large grounds of the manor had been plopped down in the middle of nowhere, given how they'd had to go a little ways into the woods to get there, most of the road was the cobblestone which Josie was familiar with. Not long after they'd turned down the road which led solely to Bloodstone Manor, the unfamiliar black roads of Storybrooke had made way for the familiar cobblestone of Nightmoor until they reached the gate they were now standing at.