Sub Rosa
Beverly attends her grandmother Felisa Howard's funeral, praising her as a healer, adviser and inspiration.
As the mourners depart, a stranger drops a camelia - one of Nana's favourite flowers - on her coffin before turning to gaze at Beverly.
Beverly retires to what is now her own house on Caldos. There she shows Deanna an ornamentally housed candle, regarded as a family heirloom.
When Deanna leaves, the old housekeeper Ned Quint invites himself in and snuffs out the candle, warning Beverly that it has brought nothing but misery and bad luck to her grandmother and her family for generations.
On the Enterprise, Geordi detects fluctuations in the colony planet's weather control system, leading Data to forecast previously unheard of storms in the middle of their Caldos summer.
Beverly reads from her grandmother's journals that she'd had a constant companion and lover right up to the time of her death. Called Ronin, she had met him just after the death of her own mother. Yet strangely, she had never once mentioned him in her letters to Beverly.
That night, Beverly wakes up from a very intimate dream to the sound of a man's voice.
Beverly recalls the dream to the envious Deanna. "He knew exactly how I liked to be touched. It was the most physical dream I have ever had."
Though Beverly becomes friends with Ned, he declines her offer to move into what he claims is a haunted house after she has left Caldos. He warns her to not light the candle which "is the home of the ghost", further claiming that it is the currently displaced Ronin who is creating the violent storms.
Back on Caldos, Beverly listens to Ned's chilling advice.
Retreating to the barely lit cottage, Beverly is shocked to find it decked out with masses of camelia flowers. Ronin appears in Beverly's terrified mind, telling her he's a ghost, intent on maintaining his tradition of staying with continuous generations of Howard women over the centuries.
The following morning however, talking to Troi after another eventful sleep, Beverly seems very smitten with Ronin's passion for her.
Attempting to regain control of the planet's artificial weather system with Geordi and Data, Ned is killed when a discharge from a power supply unit strikes him. When the doctor examines him, she finds that what really killed him was a charge of anaphasic energy.
Dr Crusher finds residual anaphasic energy in Ned's body.
Fearing that Ronin would have some answers to Ned's strange death, Beverly rushes back to the cottage full of questions. But she is overcome with passion and just listens as Ronin pleads her with kisses, asking her to light the candle so they can be together for always.
Totally seduced, Beverly rushes back to her quarters on the Enterprise and lights the candle. Ronin appears and tells the yearning Beverly that she will feel love as she has never felt it before. Then he dematerialises and merges in with Beverly for the night.
Beverly resigns first thing next morning and returns to Caldos.
"I can't imagine what life was like before I met you. I had no idea I could feel this way."
The busy captain decides to meet the man who has lured away his chief medical officer. Ronin appears physically to Picard and takes a protective stance towards Beverly.
Investigating the weather system malfunctions, Data and Geordi pinpoint Felisa Howard's grave to the captain as a residual source of the same anaphasic energy which is now causing environmental trouble on the Enterprise.
When Picard suggests exhuming the grave, Ronin gets agitated, then under increasingly testing questioning he reverts to his natural ethereal state and attacks Jean-Luc.
Ronin calls to Beverly to help him stop the others examining Felisa's body, but despite her intense attraction, Beverly tends to the badly injured captain.
Ronin, an old flame
I can't just let him die !"
When Geordi and Data open the coffin, the body of Felisa Howard sits up and knocks them to the ground with an energy discharge. When the horrified Beverly screams at the living dead to "leave her alone", its force departs and transforms into Ronin as Felisa's body gruesomely slumps back down.
Coming to her senses, Beverly realises that Ronin is an anaphasic energy life-form, which need an organic host to maintain their survival. That's why he's been using her and her maternal antecedants all that time.
Sensing the game is up, Ronin asks Beverly to return the candle. When she refuses, he blasts Geordi, threatening to kill him.
Turning to her injured friend, Beverly grabs his phaser and vapourises the candle. With nowhere else to go, Ronin can only try to aggressively merge with Beverly, but before he has time to dematerialise, Beverly deals her anaphasic lover a fatal phaser shot.
Back on the Enterprise, the doctor gives the counsellor the full story.
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