When they arrived at the library, it was empty except for the librarian, who appeared more absorbed in her phone than in her responsibilities. She wore cateye glasses similar to Sam’s, but strangely paired them with black lace gloves that clashed with her outfit.
"Pardon me, could you tell me where the Genealogy section is?" Sam inquired.
The librarian, whose name tag read Tanya, guided them to a secluded room at the back of the library. Sam set her bag down, "Alright, let's begin our search and see if there’s any information about mom here. We also need to research the Ravencrest family and find out what happened to them."
"Weren't there lots of families living in that house?" Lilly asked.
"Yes and no," Sam replied, already pulling genealogy volumes from the shelves with practiced efficiency. "The Ravencrest family owned it until, I believe, the 1970s. Then, sometime in the 1980s, it was converted into a museum. Also, don't forget, mom was born in December of 1973." She hoped her memory served her correctly, though doubt gnawed at the edges of her certainty.
For the first hour, Sam lost herself in the familiar rhythm of research. Genealogy pages whispered beneath her restless hands, her movements carrying the steady precision of a practiced scholar. But something felt wrong. Searching for their mother in historical records should have been straightforward—birth certificates, baptismal records, census data. Instead, it was like chasing shadows.
"This is weird," Sam muttered, frowning at a marriage certificate. "Here's Mom marrying my Dad in 1994, maiden name Oliver... but where are her parents?"
Lilly looked up from her own stack of papers. "What do you mean?"
"I mean they don't exist." Sam's voice carried a note of professional bewilderment that made Lilly pay closer attention. "No Oliver family in the genealogy records. No birth certificate for a Jill Oliver. It's like she just... appeared when she turned eighteen."
The absence felt deliberate, methodical. Sam had encountered gaps in historical records before, but this was different. This felt intentional.
"Maybe the records were lost?" Lilly suggested, but her voice lacked conviction.
"Not this many. Not this cleanly." Sam set down the marriage certificate, a chill running through her that had nothing to do with the library's air conditioning. "It's like someone erased her past."
Switching to the Ravencrest family records felt like stepping from shadow into blazing light. Where Jill Oliver's history was absent, the Ravencrest lineage sprawled across centuries of meticulous documentation. Sam traced the family tree with growing fascination—and growing dread.
"The last Ravencrest heir..." Sam's finger stopped on a birth certificate, the paper seeming to burn beneath her touch. "Born December 13th, 1973."
"I thought you said the last of the Ravencrest family died in the 1970's?" Lilly piped up from her end of the table.
"Yeah..." Sam's world tilted slightly off its axis. "This is impossible. I've never heard of this before. No death certificate for this child, no other information..."
The name swam before her eyes, each letter a small earthquake: Gillian Evangeline Ravencrest. December 13th. Two days before their mother's birthday. And Gillian—so close to Jill that it made Sam's hands shake.
"No," she whispered, the word barely audible. "It can't be."
But even as denial formed on her lips, pieces clicked into place with horrible clarity. Their mother's secretiveness about her childhood. Her knowledge of Ravencrest Manor that went beyond casual interest. The way she'd hidden the tome, as if she'd known exactly what it was and why it mattered.
Sam's hands trembled as she fumbled for her phone. Each ring felt like an eternity, her heart hammering against her ribs. When Edward's voice finally crackled through the connection, Sam felt her world narrow to a single, terrible point.
"Sam?" Her father sounded cautious, as if he'd been expecting this call for years.
"Dad." The word felt foreign on her tongue. "Was Mom born a Ravencrest?"
The silence that followed was answer enough. Sam heard her father's intake of breath, could picture him running his fingers through his hair the way he did when cornered by difficult questions.
"Yes," Edward finally replied, the single word dropping like a stone into still water. "Your mother changed her name when she was eighteen. She was... very independent."
Sam pressed her free hand against her forehead, trying to hold her thoughts together. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It wasn't my story to tell." Edward's voice carried the weight of old arguments, old compromises. "Your mother was very private about her past. She didn't like talking about her family."
"Her family." Sam laughed, a sound with no humor in it. "You mean our family. The family we're apparently descended from."
"Sam—"
"Why would she hide that?" The question burst out of her, raw with betrayal and confusion. "Why keep us away from our own history?"
Edward's sigh traveled across the miles between them, heavy with resignation. "You know how your mother was. Always thought she could protect everyone, even from themselves. She wanted to keep you away from what she called the Ravencrest curse."
The word 'curse' hit Sam like a physical blow. Her grip tightened on the phone until her knuckles went white.
"Curse?" she echoed. "What curse?"
"She thought the family was... troubled. Dangerous, somehow. All those stories about Emil and his experiments..." Edward's voice trailed off, as if he'd said too much.
Sam ended the call abruptly, her father's voice still echoing protests as the line went dead. The phone slipped from nerveless fingers, clattering to the library floor with a sound that seemed to echo forever.
She sat there, staring at nothing, as twenty-four years of her life rearranged themselves around this new truth. Every family story took on a different meaning. Every deflected question about their heritage suddenly made sense. Their mother hadn't been protecting them from ancient history—she'd been protecting them from their own blood.
"Sam?" Lilly's voice seemed to come from very far away. "What did he say?"
Sam turned to look at her sister—her sister who was also a Ravencrest, who carried the same blood, the same legacy, the same curse—and felt something fundamental shift inside her chest.
"We're not who we thought we were," Sam said, her voice hollow. "We never were."