Bored D&D nerd

The world had gone gray again. Not the soft gray of clouds or fog, but the kind that eats color alive— a hollow shade that sinks into everything.

The rain hadn’t stopped since it began. It clung to my skin like a second layer, soaking through my clothes until the cold coated my entire being. The mud sucked faintly at my boots whenever I shifted my weight, though mostly, I didn’t move at all.

There was nothing left to say. Nothing that would come out, even if I tried.

Fairburn was gone. And I was still here.

I stared at the place where she’d been— where Isaac had dragged her body away— until the shape of it vanished behind the curtain of rain. My hands were numb in my lap. My mind, quieter than it had any right to be, all of the noise and static seemed to keep me numb in that moment. 

My eyes still burned, and the remnants of hot tears rolling down my cheeks were the only thing warming me up now. I naturally wandered to that moment over and over again, replaying every single moment prior that I could have done differently, if I had chosen a different room, if I had stopped Isaac from attacking anyone from the start, if I had not gone at all. Maybe a woman wouldn’t have had to die.

The sound of him came before the sight— his slow, deliberate steps through the mud, the faint drag of his heel as Isaac stopped in front of me.

He looked down at me like one might at a child who’d broken something precious. There was a flicker of amusement in his expression, the kind that never quite reached his eyes. But I saw it there.

“You look so small like that,” he said lightly, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. “Poor thing. All that strength, and now look at you.”

When I didn’t answer, he tilted his head, studying me. His gloved hand reached out and brushed against my cheek, and I flinched at the touch. “Ah,” his voice softened, almost fond. “You’re freezing.”

Not that it mattered; I wasn’t someone so easily rid of, unfortunately.

I tried to face him then— tried to meet his gaze. But when I did, the weight of it pressed the air from my chest. Whatever courage I thought I had dissolved beneath the gentleness in his eyes, too deliberate to be real.

He sighed, not in frustration, but in the kind of weary affection that sounded rehearsed. Like he was reminding himself, he had to be gentle; it was humiliating, but most likely necessary. “It’s alright,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to talk.”

He had crouched down properly now, opening his arms as an invitation. It felt only natural to reach out to him, wrapping my arms around his neck. He was icy, yet in a way that could be mistaken for warmth in the frigid rain. 

Then, in one easy motion, he slipped his arm beneath my knees and lifted me off the ground. I startled— not enough to resist, just enough to feel my breath catch.

His grip was secure, one arm beneath me, the other across my shoulders, his hand splayed against the back of my neck. I could feel the unnatural steadiness in him— that perfect, mechanical rhythm under his skin where a heartbeat should have been.

“Let’s find somewhere dry. You’ve done enough for tonight.”

I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. My head fell against his shoulder, and he seemed almost pleased by that. His hand flexed slightly at my side, a subtle, almost clingy pressure. It felt pathetic, being held like a child, unable to speak. But it felt impossible to let my lips open to allow a word to pass through.

As he carried me, the forest pressed in around us— the trees like black pillars, the rain dripping through the leaves. The world was muted to nothing but the sound of his footsteps and the faint hum of his voice. If you could call it that, as every so often the sounds that escaped his throat came out in deep gurgles from the depths of his rotting chest.

“You’ve no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” he said softly, almost to himself. “To take care of you. To repay you for your kindness.”

There was a strange tenderness in his tone that made my skin crawl. He meant it. Every word. Perhaps I would have been charmed by his words if not for the circumstances.

We walked until the trees thinned, and something massive loomed ahead. I didn’t realize what it was at first— the shape too warped, the angles wrong through the rain. But as we drew closer, I saw the outline of the bell tower, the jagged stone, the empty windows that gaped like hollow eyes.

A church.

Old, ruined, devoured by time. Its cross was long gone, the roof sagging in places where vines had pried the stone apart. The air around it felt heavier, the storm quieter, as though even the rain hesitated to fall here.

Isaac stopped a few feet from the doors. His arms tightened slightly around me, and he gave a low chuckle. “How poetic,” he mused. He seemed to want to say something more; knowing him, it was probably mocking. Seems he decided against it.

I could feel myself tense against him. My body knew what my mind couldn’t name, a wrongness in the air, in the stones themselves. It pressed against my chest, thick and suffocating.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the walls were watching— that if I stepped inside, something would see me for what I was.

And with that, he pushed the doors open. The hinges screamed, the sound echoing into the dark like a warning. The scent of damp stone and old incense met us, sharp and bitter. I swallowed hard, but it did nothing to ease the feeling clawing up my throat.

Still in his arms, I let him carry me across the threshold.

Something about being outside the rain makes everything colder. Leaky-roofed church with no signs of anyone being in other than perhaps a few wild animals, cobwebs, and occasionally moss; it was hardly a comfort. All the angels at the windows. Looking down at me as if to ask if I had come to confess to my sins.

As Isaac continued to carry me down the aisle, somehow never breaking his hold on me, I watched as the shadow of the cross cast over the ground. I couldn’t help but flinch as he stepped us through it. 

I felt ridiculous. Almost demonic in a place like this, entirely unwelcome.

I am not a being meant for prayers, as the stories put it; such things were meant to ward me off. Nothing more than a myth. Yet the leftover whispers of the devote clung to the still air in here. I had never felt more demonic than in this very moment.

It smelled of rain-soaked wood and dust, with a faint old tang that made my stomach turn. Broken stained glass filtered pale, jagged strips of light across the altar, painting the floor in distorted shards of faded color. I could feel the weight of the centuries pressing in around me, and every crack in the walls seemed to whisper reminders of judgment, of sin, of history waiting to condemn me.

I was a stain on this place, truly. For all that I’ve done, I completely disemboweled a woman only a few hours prior. And it was like the place knew this wasn’t a sanctuary for someone like me— it was too solemn, too sacred, and too aware of my guilt. 

Isaac moved silently, carrying me like I was something fragile, something precious and fragile enough to snap in the wrong hands. I let my head fall against his chest, trying to still the spinning in my mind. And yet, here I was, perched on the cold stone of the altar, soaked, trembling, and unable to meet the world.

He crouched in front of me, and I felt the faint heat of his breath as he studied me. His fingers were gentle when he lifted one of my hands, running his thumb over the back of it slowly. I felt small, helpless, and exposed, and the gesture made something deep inside me ache.

“You’ve barely said a word since it happened…”

I didn’t respond. My throat was tight. My hands trembled against my knees. My heart felt like it had been ripped out and left to beat somewhere else. I wish I dared to reply, though, to put my thoughts into words, but I could only just look at him as if my eyes could tell him before looking back down.

He didn’t press. He only stayed there, quiet and patient, as if the very act of his presence was enough to draw the truth out of me. I could feel him watching me, every tiny twitch of muscle, every shallow breath. It was unnerving.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said after a moment, his tone deceptively soft. “And you’re right, it’s a lot to carry. But you don’t have to say it if you’re not ready.”

I could only blink at him, my vision still blurry from exhaustion and the rain. He had this way of looking at me that was both possessive and careful. I had forgotten about the way he used to look at me, unnerving yet strangely settling. 

“I…” My voice cracked before I could even begin. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”

I just wanted to get Isaac and Tyler out of that place, and God knows how many people died for that.

He leaned closer, his gloved hand brushing a damp strand of hair from my face. His touch lingered on my cheek, and my stomach twisted at the intimacy. “I know,” he whispered, returning his hand to mine. “That’s why I’m here.”

The silence that followed was heavy. He didn’t rush me. He didn’t fill the gaps with his own words. He simply let me feel the weight of what I hadn’t said, of what I couldn’t.

Finally, the words slipped past my lips in a choked whisper. “She was someone's baby, Isaac. Someone’s daughter, friend, sister— I… I killed her.” My hands shook violently, still red between the folds of my palm and under my nails. But I forced myself just to close my fists, placing them at my thighs. “I ate her. I can’t… I can’t believe I did that.”

His gaze softened, though there was an edge to it that didn’t leave my skin. “And yet, here you are. Alive. Still breathing. Still my focus.” His fingers curled slightly around mine, possessive, as if that mixed with his callous words was supposed to be of any comfort to me.

I stared at him. His calmness, his lack of moral panic, made my blood run cold. He wasn’t shocked. He wasn’t afraid. He was observing, and in that observation, I felt my guilt deepen tenfold.

“You act like it's no big deal…”

“It’s not that it’s not a big deal,” he said, his voice low and measured. “It’s that you survived. That you’re here. That’s what matters to me.”

I shook my head violently, pulling my hands away from his. I had nothing more to say. His words only seemed to make me feel worse. Perhaps that was unfair to him; he was trying, but he really did not understand. And I didn’t have the energy to articulate how I felt in this moment; it wasn’t my job to teach a man empathy anyway.

He leaned in closer, just enough for me to feel the weight of his presence, his hands resting lightly on the altar beside mine. His gaze softened, though there was an edge to it that didn’t leave my skin.

“What I don’t understand,” he said quietly, “is why this is what breaks you.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

“You’ve done darker things before tonight,” he said. “You know that. You’ve simply buried them deeper.”

I felt whatever remaining color drain from my face.

He must have seen it, because his voice gentled even more, like he was soothing a wound he’d made himself. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not accusing you. I’m trying to understand you.”

He brushed a strand of wet hair from my face. His hand lingered on my cheek again, his thumb cold against my skin. I tried to pull away, but he caught my chin lightly, turning my face back toward him. Not forceful, just firm.

“You changed form back there,” he said, tone stronger than it was earlier. Not quite cruel, but firm. Almost domineering, but he seemed to be holding that part back for my sake. “You never were able to do that before. That means you’ve fed.” His eyes met mine, unreadable. “Before tonight, don’t lie to me now.”

Saying nothing more, he just gave me this moment to think. Maybe that was his form of mercy, Isaac had never been good with people, feelings, always so absolute, black and white in how he thought. Silence was an effort for him; he was humoring my remorse, even if he didn’t understand it.

He knew. Of course he did. That was the curse of choosing a genius— one who could peel back the truth with nothing but a glance, one who never stopped once he caught the scent of a secret. His eyes lingered on me, sharp and knowing, and I felt the weight of his understanding settle in the space between us.

Vampires couldn’t shift— couldn’t do anything like what I’d done— without drinking from a living host. It was simple biology, undeniable, and entirely against the law.

He had caught me.

I looked down at the wood beneath me, my fingers curling into the edges as if I could anchor myself against the wave of guilt and self-disgust. I could feel him observing, analyzing, measuring every tremor of my body. His presence was unnerving, almost suffocating, but it was the only thing keeping me tethered to reality.

Finally, the floodgates opened. “After Francoise, after she died. I was all alone, and I was angry…had been for a while. I wanted someone to blame.” My voice faltered. How immature was I? I needed someone to give me an excuse to be enraged, because I couldn’t handle being entirely alone again. “I don’t like thinking about what I did because, in all honesty, I’m disgusted with how much joy it brought me. Hurting someone. And even not counting that man or Fairburn, just how much blood is on my hands for saying and doing nothing despite having the means to do something about it...Well, I'm the furthest thing from what I thought I'd grow up to be, is all.”

I didn’t want to say anything else. Because I know what he’d say to it. He would act like the shame I feel is the fiction society feeds its Outcasts to make them tame. There was partial truth to that. But worst of all, he would find no sin in what I’d done. If anything, he might praise me for my cruelty, which was the opposite of what someone should take away from my mistakes.

Isaac didn’t move, didn’t interrupt. He simply waited. Perhaps he was waiting for me to say more. I wanted to scream at him for it, for his calm, for his detachment, for the way he understood too much. But I couldn’t. My body shook, my lungs burned, my chest felt as if it were splitting open.

The rain outside had dulled into a faint hiss against the broken stained glass, whispering through the cracks of the church. Water trailed down the walls like veins, feeding into the puddles that pooled beneath the warped pews. The air was cold and old— the kind of chill that carried memory. Every breath I took tasted like dust and iron.

I sat on the altar, my legs dangling over the edge, numb and restless all at once. The quiet between us was unbearable. Isaac stood a few paces away, his posture still, his expression unreadable.

I don’t know why I was so surprised that things ended up like this. I had only been getting more extreme as of late, I’ve realized, getting comfortable breaking the law and my own moral code. Maybe it was only a matter of time before I went rotten.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I finally admitted, my voice barely more than a whisper. “How does someone even move forward from this? How do you do it? Just… move on? Is there any way to make up for this? Atone? Or maybe…”

Maybe I was just a lost cause at this point. 

It’s arrogant of me to ask for atonement, to try to find meaning in meaningless death. No, sometimes good people just die, and awful people like me walk off free. Nothing could make up for that.

He said nothing, but I could feel his gaze— the sharp, dissecting kind that once belonged to a man who could solve any riddle but people. My vision blurred before I realized tears were threatening to fall. I shut my eyes quickly for a moment, as if that would hide my weakness from him.

“You ask how to move forward,” he murmured, his voice quiet enough that I had to lean in to hear him. “But you mistake what it means to survive.”

He looked up at me then, and the flicker of moonlight caught the glint of the brass and steel hidden beneath his skin— reminders of his unnatural resurrection. Yet his eyes… his eyes were soft, unlike the detached coldness they held earlier, awash with a kind of wonder that made my heart twist painfully.

“I adapted,” he said. “The body decays, the mind fractures, but progress demands persistence. Such is natural evolution. If I sat around pondering why I was brought back, I would still be locked away, starving in chains, a pet to the boy who brought me back.”

Then came the faint sound of cloth folding against the ground. I watched in slight awe at his moments, surprised at the gesture; he was no longer standing.

Isaac was kneeling before me.

The motion was deliberate, reverent. His coat pooled around him, its edges soaked from the rain. For a man of intellect and ego, to kneel was almost absurd — but there he was, lowering himself as if I were something sacred. His hand came up, ghostly cold, and rested against my knees. I felt his thumb trace slow, steady circles through the damp fabric of my trousers. His touch was not possessive. Not yet. It was reverent.

His fingers trailed upward until he found my hand. I didn’t resist when he took it. The movement was careful, as though I were made of porcelain and one wrong motion might shatter me completely.

“You,” he said, “are the most extraordinary contradiction I have ever encountered. I have studied science's cruelties, its precision, its miracles. But you…none have confounded me the way you do.”

He smiled faintly— pressing a finger to my wrist, right where my pulse trembled.

“You are beauty and catastrophe perfectly entwined,” he went on, quieter now. “A paradox of design. The predator who feels remorse. The saint of a girl who still cares for someone like me. A heart that beats for all the wrong reasons and still insists on being good. Do you have any idea how beautiful that contradiction is to me?”

I felt the air leave my lungs, slow and unsteady. “Don’t romanticize me. I killed someone, Isaac. I tore her apart. You can’t justify that—”

“I’m contextualizing it,” he corrected, smiling faintly. “You talk so much about hopelessness, always so negative, yet you hurt because you still hope. That is what makes you magnificent.”

My frustration wavered, tangled with something else— confusion, grief, the unbearable weight of being seen. The tears I’d been holding back finally slipped free, though I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. His words, dark as they were, unmade the anger I’d been clutching to. 

“Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t make this something beautiful.”

“It already is, you already are.” He said simply.

He rose slightly, shifting closer on his knees until his chest brushed against my legs. His presence filled the space between us, steady and inescapable. I could feel the faint tick of his heart under his coat.

My chest ached. His words shouldn’t have comforted me, but they did. They always do. 

I often thought of myself as pathetic for clinging to the memory of this boy, but he shattered every doubt I had to why that was, hearing his voice again like this. With all his cruelty, his challenges, his hubris, he never stops trying. Maybe that’s why I fell in love with him all those years ago.

He looked up, eyes unreadable. “Condemn yourself, isolate yourself in shame if that means I can keep you to myself,” he said, voice low and certain. “You criticize yourself as if I don’t want to preserve you right here as you are. I could dissect eternity and never find another like you. I adore every flaw, every fracture, because you have unmade me more completely than death ever could.”

Something in me broke open then— not out of anger or sorrow, but out of the quiet, dangerous calm that comes after surrender.

He was looking at me as if I were something divine. Something worth worshipping, even in my ruin. And I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t stand the way his gaze saw everything, the guilt, the shame, the rot, and adored it anyway.

Without thinking, I lifted my free hand. The gesture felt slow, deliberate, as though someone else were moving my body. I brought two fingers to my lips and pressed them there, soft, trembling— a kiss that tasted faintly of salt and sorrow.

He watched me the entire time, unblinking.

And when I reached forward, bringing my hand to him, his breath hitched. The motion was tender, yes, but filled with a kind of boldness that startled even me, the pressure firm enough to make his head tilt slightly back.

His eyes widened slightly, surprise flashing there, soft and brief. He wasn’t used to me initiating anything; he was the one who orchestrated, who guided, who pried me open piece by piece.

But this time, I silenced him.

It wasn’t quite gentle. My fingers lingered against his mouth, feeling the cold, lifeless skin— the faint tension beneath the healing gore of his features. And still, he didn’t pull away. I could see his pupils dilate, the faint ticking in his chest quickened, echoing faintly in the silence of the church.

I don’t know what possessed me. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the grief, or the twisted tenderness that had been growing between us all over again since the moment he clawed his way back from death. But as fucked up as the whole situation was, this boy was my sanctuary from it all.

My voice barely came out. “This is all I can give you for now,” I whispered.

And that was enough to undo him.

His eyelids fluttered shut. His hand came up, wrapping around my wrist as though afraid I’d vanish. Slowly, reverently, he leaned into the touch— his lips parting just enough to let out a quiet exhale against my skin.

The air left my lungs.

He stayed there for a long moment, motionless except for the faint movement of his mouth against my fingertips— the gentlest imitation of a kiss. Not hunger. Not lust. It was simply devotion.

When he finally opened his eyes again, the metallic ticking of his heart stuttered, just once. “You shouldn’t tempt me like that,” he murmured, voice low, unsteady in a way I’d never heard before. “You don’t know what that does to me.”

I never thought of myself as a reckless person. Not necessarily a rule follower, but I did follow wherever life took me because it was easier than swimming against the tide. So I’d like to say this all was a lapse in judgement, an out-of-character moment where I acted purely on emotion.

But no, I’d run the scenario through my head so many times that such a lie fell flat. As I was being walked out after Tyler’s last session, I did my best to get a general layout of Willow Hill. Things hadn’t changed too much from Francoise’s time here, but it was good to note all the nearest exits, as well as where they’d even decided to keep Isaac. Anything I could quickly assess in that moment to help me break the two out of this hellhole.

I waited until night to make any real moves. I shifted first into the skittered weight of a bat— less bulk, less noise— and let the night take me. Flying was awkward still; the years of unuse made my wings clumsy in ways my muscles didn’t anticipate. But flight isn’t finesse so much as focus. I cut low over the perimeter fence, past the cameras’ like nothing. It’s not as if they could catch me.

On the roof, I changed back only long enough to walk to the opening to the buildings air ducks. The vent grates were stubborn squares of metal; I wanted to leave as little evidence I was here as possible. I cupped one of corners with gloved fingers, found the micro-give, and forced one of the corners up large enough for me to squeeze through in bat form.

It was best this way, to crawl through the vents in a smaller more lightweight form. Only trouble was with such a small space I couldn’t make this quick, perhaps a more experienced flier would have been able to make do with the narrow space but I was not one of those talented bunch.

It’s not like there many opportunities for me to be adept with this form, if anything it was a trip to try and deal with being being five times smaller. The world looks so big and scary from this size, especially since I found myself in a mental instution at the dead of night for creatures and freaks alike.

Where was I going to keep the two boys if I managed to pull it off? Was it even a long-term solution to breaking them out? These were things I should have asked myself before I stepped off campus for the weekend, but the nature of breaking the law meant there would be variables outside of our control, and such things would need to be addressed when they came.

Yeah, this was a smart. Being here. I’m actually the dumbest person alive, holy shit.

With only one walk-though with Fairburn escorting me out last time, it was not as if I had the opportunity to map out the entire facility, only a few twisting hallways of the second level, before I had to go back down to the main floor. Which meant getting the maze of vents, fans, and filters through classic trial and error.

Vents smell like everyone who has lived beneath them— bleach and stale coffee, the ghost of cheap disinfectant, and the old animal musk of the place. I wriggled forward, every muscle coiled and ready. From above, I could watch the guards’ patrols, see their shuffle patterns, where they paused check on inmates, how they hunched at the dull jokes they told each other. That was the useful part, gave me a chance to watch where they would walk could finally make out where the outer edges of the building were, allowing me to find my way down a level or two.

I crawled over insulation warmed by the building’s breath, and used the echo of my own footsteps to mask the scrape when I had to force a metal bracket free. My heart kept a steady, irrational tempo— part fear, part adrenaline, part the stupid exhilaration of right now.

The patient blocks were arranged like teeth: small rooms in rows, observation windows, the corridor lights dimmed like theater cues. I counted doorways I saaw as I eased along a vent that ran parallel to the block. Then I found it. Seven. Lucky number.

When I found the grate that led directly above his cell, it felt like a weight was released from my chest. I was only able to get a passing glance at him through the metal slide that was cracked open just enough for me to catch a glimpse of his decaying face. 

He was chained by the neck, tied like a dog to the wall. Forced to stand upright in the corner, a restraint jacket kept his movement limited. Seeing Isaac again was a relief; but I did not let myself celebrate long.

Allowing myself to transform back, the metal groaned at the change of weight, nothing too suspicious thankfully— but the change in size made it so it was now a rather tight squeeze, any movement I made had me fighting to not make any noise as my body hit the walls of the vent. 

At least now I could say I understood why claustrophobia was a thing.

The metal bent out of the way as I ripped it gently, careful not to drop it, only force it open so I could drop down, not so much that it would fall down and make a lot of noise. Then I moved over the opening in a way that allowed me to drop feet first down below.

The moment my boots hit the tile, the sound was muffled by a layer of dust and rot. I stood up from my crouched position and walked toward him, brushing the grime off my clothes as I did. I was actually quite giddy in all honesty, shocked I managed to pull this off and get to him.

Isaac didn’t look up at first. But he did lurch forward at the noise of me dropping down, chain rattling, reaching forward I gave the metal a sharp pullpull— the iron shrieked, and the links snapped like brittle wire. That was easy enough. My pace in moved back away from him slowed without meaning to. For a second, I forgot to move.

He was…different.

Last time, he’d looked like a corpse still halfway in the grave— slack-jawed, patchy hair, his skin rotted so thin I could count every bone in his face. But now… both eyes were back, dark and sharp, studying me from under a mess of curls starting to grow in again. The color hadn’t returned to his skin yet— it was still corpse-pale, bruised with gray and blue— but the shape of him was starting to come back in, the strength in his shoulders and jaw, it was all coming back.

He was standing taller again. Almost like the boy I remembered. Thirty years gone, and somehow that old magnetic pull hadn’t died with him. God, why was I suddenly nervous? Was he always that much taller than me?

That small flicker of surprise in his eyes as he saw me snapped me out of it. I forced a crooked grin and broke the silence before it could get too heavy.

“You’ve been healing up nicely,” I said, moving behind him to undo the buckles on his restraint jacket. My fingers worked fast, though they trembled. “Sorry it took me a while to visit. Couldn’t exactly make this a school night thing.”

He let out a quiet noise— not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. It was enough to make the back of my neck prickle.

Halfway through undoing the last strap, I noticed movement in the corner. Another figure— someone I hadn’t accounted for.

The man sharing Isaac’s cell was bald, pale, and wide-eyed, like someone had carved the concept of “insomnia” into his face. He was watching us with the kind of grin that made my stomach turn. Just strangely stiff but also nodding along as if my presence in the cell was amusing.

“Ah, young love,” he chirped. His voice was high-pitched and too bright, like a balloon about to pop— it was strange mix of something almost comedic but strangely terrifying. “Nothing says romance like breaking your partner in crime out of a mental institution.”

I froze mid-knot. “Oh. I didn’t know he had a…roommate.”

He giggled— an honest-to-God giggle. “I just moved in early today— is this your first asylum breakout? How exciting!” He tapped his feet against the tile, eyes glinting. “You probably didn’t hear my heartbeat with those bat ears of yours. I’ve trained myself to be as quiet as a mouse.”

He leaned forward, conspiratorial. “Best way to stalk people, you know.”

“...That’s impressive,” I said cautiously, still working the last strap loose. “I haven’t met many who can do that.”

I haven’t met anyone who could do that.

“You flatter me.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Creeping’s just a hobby.”

Wow. I’m incredibly uncomfortable. But at least he didn’t seem like the type to snitch— or maybe he was just too entertained to care.

Before I could fully pull off the jacket from Isaac, the door hissed— a soft electronic beep followed by the click of a keycard reader. My body moved before my mind did. I shrank back into my smaller form, wings folding tight, claws catching on Isaac’s shirt as I peeked up over his shoulder.

The door slid open. I held my breath.

A small figure stepped through— black attire, black braids, eyes sharp enough to cut through the dark. Of course it had to be Wednesday Addams. She walked in like she owned the place. I would have rolled my eyes if I wasn’t so confused on why she was here.

The bald man lit up instantly, turning around as she quickly undid the straps of his restraint jacket. He pulled it off of himself before folding up the jacket casually in his arms and placed it down on his bed, offering a pleased smile to the girl, “That was less than ten seconds! New family record!”

Family? I blinked. That explained the matching homicidal energy.

“We don’t have much time,” Wednesday said flatly, looking down at the watch at her wrist. “We have to find Lois.”

Without another word, she turned and left. The bald man followed, humming cheerfully to himself as if this were a casual Sunday stroll and not a breakout from a high-security psychiatric facility.

Who the hell was Lois? Actually, I didn’t care.

I really shouldn’t question fate too much, at least their interruption gave us the chance to get out ourselves, I thought I was going to have to break that metal door to get us out of here and risk causing a scene. This was probably more convenient.

Silence settled again — heavy, strange. Isaac hadn’t moved through any of it. He’d stayed still, pretending his restraints were still in place, observing the entire exchange with that unnervingly calm expression of his. Only when the sound of their footsteps faded did he finally exhale and glance down at me.

I met his gaze from where I clung to his shoulder, my small body tense, wings folded tight. He was horrifying from this size, like he could eat me in one bite if he really wanted to.

Then, slowly he reached up with one cloth-wrapped hand and brushed his fingers across the top of my head.

A gentle scratch. Careful. Tender in a way that didn’t belong in this scenario. My ears flicked back without my permission, normally I probably would have nipped at someone for petting me like I was some sort of pet, but honestly I can see why animals like this shit so much. This feels great.

He tilted his head slightly, the faintest something akin smile tugging around his rotting mouth. Setting his arm down, clearly amused by the situation before he began to peek out at the hallway checking for guards.

And when he saw a few he was quick to hide around a corner. In moment, he was still, and the next, he was gone. His body jerked forward in a blur of motion that made the air shudder. I barely had time to dig my claws into the fabric of his shirt as he lurched out of the room.

He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even look.

The first guard in his path barely had time to scream. Isaac grabbed him by the neck, this mouth unhinged grotesquely, and crunched. Bone and brain gave way with a wet, crushing pop that echoed down the corridor.

Oh okay— so we are going with making a scene. Got it. Fuck.

We hit the ground together, the force of it slamming the air out of my tiny lungs. I scrambled up his shoulder, dazed, my heart thundering so loud I swore it would burst out of my chest.

He was feeding.

Not the restrained, haunted Isaac I’d known— but the other one. The one that had always been buried deep down. A mindless, gnashing monster that tore into the man’s skull like it was fruit. The sound was unbearable— wet, rhythmic, primal.

I wish I could say I was surprised. But this whole thing with cracking skulls open seems to be a new part of his brand. We’ll work on that when we aren’t mid escape-heist I guess.

The alarm blared before I could even think. Red light flooded the hall, the siren’s wail stabbing through my ears like needles.

Guards poured in. Shouting. Gunfire. Chaos. Somehow the power in the whole building blew out and only the red lights from the sirens above provided light for all the guards and patients to run around aimlessly in the dark halls. It was all very overstimulating.

Isaac lifted his head slowly, gore dripping from his chin, eyes black and wild with hunger. Then he moved again— too fast, too brutal. He ripped through them like paper, like a goddamn hurricane made of teeth and muscle. I watched six men go down in the span of like three minutes, their screams swallowed by the constant, shrieking siren.

And then he moved quicker than he ever had before— stalking down the corridor, straight into the gunfire, disappearing around a corner in a blur of movement and crimson. Some droplets even getting on me as I held onto his back for dear life.

I had one thought left through all the static in my head: Tyler. Take advantage of the chaos and grab Tyler.

Adrenaline shoved me off his shoulder. I folded my wings and launched, beating into the chaos, clumsy and panicked in the small dark. My bat-tips sliced rain and smoke; the siren lights smeared into halos. I remembered the floor plans — the vents, the corridors — the map was a faint chalk under the adrenaline. I darted above the mayhem, teeth clenched, trying to orient myself. I had one other monster to free.

Was I fucked up to have found this weirdly threaputic? In the traumatic way exposure therapy could be. I don’t know I’ve never gone to therapy and probably should be medicated for some form of a stress disorder if this somehow was the most terrified and free I’ve felt in years.

Speeches and schoolwork wasn’t as bad as I thought it was now that I saw how awful life could really be if it really tried fucking with me.

Down the side corridor, wards had either emptied or erupted; people were running or being hauled off by medics. Sobs, shouts, the metallic scrape of gurneys— it was all a wrong symphony. 

I dove lower, skimming past a toppled cart, past abandoned clipboards, and then— caught in a sickening, bright way— there was another scene I had not wanted to imagine.

Laurel Gates' body— or what used to be Laurel Gates— lay crumpled against the white wall. Blood pooled around her like spilled ink, her face fucked up from last time. Tyler loomed over her, Hyde-made and monstrous: pale, hunched, limbs too long and ending in dark, wicked claws that still dripped. He had thrust her into the wall, and the force had left her with the final look of somebody who'd been surprised to find her end.

The scene was awful.

It was not as if I was grieving the loss of her, if anything this fate was too good for her, but moreso the horror of what Tyler had done.

The curse that hung over any Hyde who outlived the thing that controlled them: a Hyde that kills its master severs whatever thread kept it anchored to whatever humanity remained. The monster becomes a quick, self-consuming spiral. No master meant no anchor. Insanity steeped and finished the work. 

It meant Tyler had signed his own death certificate. His life, already frayed and short, would flare and snap.

For a second, I could not breathe at all. Numbness boxed me in; my wingbeats faltered. The tiny bat-body felt absurdly useless, like trying to stop a sinkhole with cotton. The sight of Tyler there— unchained in some inner madness, blood on his claws— made my vision go hot at the edges. He looked up, and his bloodshot eyes met mine. There was something animal in it, something horribly aware and not aware at all.

My instinct did something stupid and absolute: I wanted to fix it. I knew better than anyone how stupid that was. I also knew I couldn't let him rot into whatever came next without trying.

I dropped from the air and re-solidified into human form— a rough, breathless wrench of movement that left me dizzy and shaking— landing in the blood-slick puddle that seeped just beyond the metal bars that had this hallway on lockdown. I staggered forward and gripped the bars. 

He bared those too-sharp teeth of his, but I forced my voice into something steady, into the tone people use when giving instructions in a crisis. 

“Tyler. Listen to me,” I said, not understanding how my throat didn't break. “Don't stay here. Go down the left corridor. After the second opening— make a right. That leads to the main hall where you can go either way to find a fire exit, you can get outside and lose yourself in the pines. Avoid the main gates. Avoid the towns or houses. Hide in forest. Do not stop. Do not turn back. Don’t even be seen. Run. I’ll go out and find you later I swear it.”

He cocked his head like a hunting dog that was trying to decide if a thrown stick meant food or death. The Hyde made a sound— a low, hunted rumble— and for an instant the creature seemed to weigh my words. Something flickered in his expression: confusion, recognition, then rage. He snarled, claws scraping iron. Then he turned, limbed and wrong, and ran. He moved like a shadow tearing a seam in the world, and when he passed the last light I had of him, I felt the silence like a window closing.

And then reality slammed back in. Laurel's body at my feet, her eyes glassy, her mouth still open in a hole where breath used to be. My hands— my human hands— were trembling. My palms were clean with gore from tonight, though I had not partook with the horrors Isaac and Tyler caused, it was like I could still feel the tack of it under my nails. I hadn't screamed. I hadn't fainted. I didn’t even cry. I was on autopilot: go, find Isaac, get the hell out of here, do not let the threads unravel.

But the sight of Tyler tearing Laurel in half had cut a line through whatever calm I had been clinging to. For a moment, I hovered at the edge of breakdown: images, thirty years of grief compressed into a single screamless second, the knowledge that I'd just sent Francoise’s baby into a fate I couldn't undo. 

Fear for Tyler didn't override my other fear: Isaac was loose, Isaac was a killing thing in the halls, Isaac could be taken, captured, killed. I had to get back to him before they corralled him— before they dumped sedatives or strangling leather over him and took him somewhere more icy and clinical and permanent.

I ran. Fast, boots on tile, the world a blur of white-painted walls and discarded IV lines. The corridor seemed a hundred times longer on the way back, as if the hospital itself were stretching to swallow me. The alarms shredding the air, the distant screams— blurred into a single, suffocating roar. Willow Hill had turned into a maze of red lights and shadow, bodies and broken doors. I didn’t even know where I was on anymore. The air was hot and metallic, thick with gunpowder and blood. Every corridor looked the same: white walls smeared red, fluorescent bulbs flickering like dying stars.

“Isaac—” I tried to call out, but the word cracked halfway out of my throat. My voice was too young for this place. Too small.

I rounded another corner, nearly tripping over a dropped baton, my pulse loud enough to drown the sirens. Then I saw him— half-crouched in the hallway ahead, his hands and chest painted in someone else’s blood. He looked wrong and perfect all at once. Still breathing, still standing. Relief hit me so hard it almost buckled my knees, but the feeling didn’t last long.

Before he could even turn, I grabbed his wrist and dragged him toward the nearest open door. We stumbled into what looked like an office—b ig, dark, the smell of wet paper and dust lingering in the air. I shoved the door shut and leaned against it, chest heaving.

Lightning flashed outside, throwing the room into brief, violent clarity—file cabinets, books, an overturned chair. Then darkness again. Of course there was a fucking storm right now, as if to match exactly how my night was going.

The only sound was our breathing, ragged and uneven. He was close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him, though it wasn’t quite human warmth.

My lungs burned. The air felt too thick, the space too small. Every heartbeat in the building felt like it was pounding directly into my skull. I tried to steady myself, to think, but everything was blurring together—sirens, thunder, gunfire, Isaac’s breathing, my own.

I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth, trying to hold the panic in. I couldn’t even form words. My chest felt too tight. The world was tilting. I really fucked things up, didn’t I?

Isaac shifted in front of me, lowering his head to meet my eyes, studying me with an expression that didn’t belong to the creature he’d been a few minutes ago. His brows knit, that strange, quiet concern flickering through the monstrous stillness. His hand twitched toward me but stopped short, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch.

“I-I’m fine,” I lied, or tried to. The sound came out jagged, breathless. “We just— we need to get out of here—”

The door creaked.

Isaac’s head snapped toward the sound. I froze.

Dr. Fairburn pushed Stonehearst in front of her, the dazed and groaning as she pushed him safely by her desk. Rain blew in from the window, streaking the light across her face as she rounded the table. Her expression was carved from stone. When she opened the drawer and pulled out a handgun, the metallic click of it chambering echoed like a thunderclap in my skull.

My pulse spiked. I clamped a hand over my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing.

Before I could even think about how we could get out of this, Isaac moved. A shadow cutting through the dark— fast, feral, soundless. He lunged toward them, the air around him snapping with energy.

“Isaac—wait, not her—!” I lurched forward, reaching for him, grabbing at his sleeve—

Fairburn had screamed. Then gunfire tore through the room.

The first shot felt like fire. The second is like drowning. By the third, my brain stopped keeping count.

The world shattered into light and pain. The impact spun me halfway around, my body jerking against the wall. My chest exploded with heat, like my ribs had turned to molten glass. The sound of my own heartbeat was gone— replaced by a ringing so sharp it felt like it was drilling through my skull.

Something wet ran down my cheek, and I couldn’t tell if it was blood or tears. I tried to look—tried to see—but my right eye wouldn’t open, and everything else was a blur of shadows and movement. My knees buckled. My hands came away slick when I tried to press them to my chest. And reaching for my right eye, I could only find a large drenching hole, so deep I could stick my fingers deep into my own skull, feeling my own gray matter.

Oh god, I can’t see. There was only that damned color. Red.

I couldn’t think. Not in any way that made sense. It was like my mind had been pulled out of my skull and dropped into a storm of fire and static, a buzzing so loud I could feel it in my bones. Every inhale was a stab to the lungs, each exhale tasting like burnt iron and smoke. My senses screamed at me, sharp and overwhelming, but I couldn’t make sense of them.

I tried to call Isaac’s name. My throat worked, but the sound didn’t reach me. My ears were deaf to it. The only thing I could hear was this defending, pounding in my own head that felt like someone was bashing my head with a sledgehammer, over and over again.

The only thing that existed was the red, deep and alive, pulsing in the corners of my vision, staining everything.

Red. That color, what a pretty shade of red.

And then there was the hunger. Not normal hunger— not a gnawing or craving— but a fire, a twisting, clawing, unbearable need that consumed every thought. My stomach tied itself in knots, my throat dry and aching. My teeth hurt in anticipation, longing for the metallic, intoxicating taste that taunted me just in front of me.

When my body lurched forward, I think I ran into something, dropping to my knees, pinning it to the ground. My hands moved as though possessed, grasping blindly for what called to me, pulling that thing towards me. I could feel the warmth, the life pulsing in front of me, and I sank into it without thought, without reason. Warmth rolling down my dry throat, enough to sedate but not satisfy. I just ate. It was dizzying, euphoric, terrifying. The red still smeared across my sight, the world collapsing into a haze of smell and sensation and need.

Time didn’t exist. I had no idea how long I had been like that. Eating. The ringing in my ears faded only to reveal my heartbeat, frantic and loud, hammering in my chest. My mind was trapped inside my own reflexes, moving, consuming, acting without thought.

And then…cold. My body shivered violently, shaking from head to toe. Leaves crunched beneath my boots—or maybe they weren’t leaves. Maybe I was outside. But when had I finally stopped being hungry? I leaned against a solid weight, something steady and warm. My arm looped around it, letting it guide me, letting it be my anchor.

My head throbbed with a dull, monstrous ache, like someone had split it open and stitched it back together wrong. The world came back in pieces— colors first, then sounds, then pain. My skin was still finishing knitting itself together, the raw edges sealing, nerves sparking as they reconnected. Every blink dragged like sandpaper against my eyes.

Blinking, my eyes finally began to focus, just barely. There he was—Isaac. His face pale, still marked by the horrors of his confinement, but human again in a way that made my chest tighten. His eyes found mine, sharp and assessing, and for the first time since the chaos. My breath came in ragged pulls, the panic and exhaustion spilling out in shallow gasps.

He didn’t speak, but his presence was enough, a steadying force in the storm of my mind. Even as I came back, wobbly and unsteady, he guided me, supporting me, letting me lean against him as though we were the only two left in the world. The rain outside hit the trees in steady drumming, cold droplets trickling in, and I shivered, still disoriented but slowly aware of the world around me.

I leaned into him, letting myself be led, my senses still raw and trembling, still tasting the fire in my veins. My body was mine again, but my mind still rattled, still unsure. And yet, with him there, with him steady and grounding, I could begin to pull myself back from the edge.

I blinked again, my voice barely finding its way past the dryness of my throat. “H-Huh? Isaac… weren’t we just—ah!” The motion of speaking sent pain knifing through my skull. I clutched at my head, trying to keep it from splitting open all over again. “Weren’t we just at Willow Hill? Where—where are we going? Have you seen Tyler—”

I looked over my shoulder, my eyes searched the rain-heavy horizon. The institution was gone. Just trees, mud, and fog. My confusion twisted into dread as I noticed the drag marks behind Isaac— slight grooves carved into the mud. And then I saw what he was dragging.

It was a person, wearing what should have been an all white jumpsuit. One arm was bent the wrong way.Head lolling with every step, at least I think that was. It’s whole front was completely caved in, something cracked the ribs open, insides carelessly hallowed out like a beast ate at the mess. From chest, to throat, it was all one giant hole of red and pink.

The thunder gave me just enough to make it undiable who face was stuck in that still, horrified expression. Fairburn.

My stomach turned. “Oh my god…” I whispered, stumbling back, my hand slipping from his arm.

Isaac stopped. The corpse fell into the mud with a sick, wet thud. The rain hissed around us, pooling at our feet. He head tilted slowly upward, his face unreadable in the storm’s half-light. I wanted to ask him what happened, but I looked down at myself before I asked such a foolish question. 

I looked down at myself. My hands. My shirt. Everything was soaked red. The blood clung to my skin in tacky layers, thick even under the rain. I wiped at my lips, but I felt as more blood smeared across my jaw. 

My mouth tasted of iron. Oh my god.

I still had bits of tissue and organs all over me. On my chest, hands, face, my hair. I was shaking too much to pick it off. I didn’t even want to scream, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.

Fairburn’s face stared back at me through the rain—blank, slack, and wrong. The water slid over her eyes, but she didn’t blink. The rain was washing her clean, but not fast enough. I couldn’t stop staring.

I felt full.

Not satisfied—just full. Heavy in the gut, thick in the throat. The taste of metal clung to my teeth, sweet and rancid at once. Every breath brought it back again.

I thought, distantly, that I should be sick. That people were supposed to cry, scream, do something when they saw what I was seeing. But I couldn’t move. My stomach twisted, but nothing came up, I didn’t want it to. To taste the blood as it crawled back up from my throat and to my tongue, I couldn’t handle that again. I just stood there, rain pooling at my feet, the cold crawling up my bones.

Isaac didn’t say anything at first. Just reached out— slowly, deliberately— until his gloved hand cupped my face. The rubber was damp and cold against my skin, grounding me just enough to feel the tremor in my jaw. He tilted my head up, making me look at him instead of her.

“Shh,” he murmured, the first word I’d heard from him in thirty years. His voice was rough and low, his vocal cord unused for decades made the sound of his voice gurgle deep in his chest. “It’s alright now.”

The sound of it cracked something in me.

“You’ve been through enough,” he said softly, almost soothing. His thumb traced my cheek, then paused to pick away a clotted strand of something from my temple— slow, meticulous, like he was tending a wound. The motion made my stomach tighten again, but I didn’t stop him.

“There we go…” His tone was gentle, careful. “You really do wear this color so beautifully.”

The rain ran in little rivers down his face, cutting through the grime, glinting off the exposed bone under his jaw where skin had begun to peel. The faint, mechanical tick of his heart filled the silence where mine should have been.

He brushed his fingers along my hairline, tugging loose another bit of congealed meat. The motion was oddly tender—too gentle for what it was. My body didn’t know how to react; I just stood there, cold and trembling, while he worked like someone cleaning up after a meal.

When he finished, he leaned closer until his forehead rested briefly against mine. “You’re safe,” he whispered. “With me. I’ll handle this, just leave it to me…”

His rotting mouth brushed the crown of my head—a faint, deliberate press, not warm but steady. The contact left a trace of blood between us that the rain couldn’t quite wash away.

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The only thing I could feel was the weight of his hand at the back of my neck, keeping me steady, keeping me here.

And for the first time since waking up, a single clear thought passed through my mind:

What have I done?

I sat with my notebook open, pen hovering uselessly above a page half-filled with equations that no longer made sense to me. The numbers blurred, smearing together into a dark, shapeless tangle. Around me, the class went on as normal— chattering, glass clinking, the faint scratch of pencils against paper.

And yet, it all sounded so far away.

It was strange— how easy it could be to fall apart in plain sight. My hand trembled slightly when I reached for a beaker. My eyes lingered too long on the pale curve of a preserved heart in a jar, or how I twisted the red-and-black bracelet at my wrist until it bit into my skin, cutting off circulation. As if pain could distract me from spiraling thoughts. I was thankful no one cared enough about me to notice anything was wrong.

The police had no questions for me, which meant Pugsley didn’t mention my involvement in caring for Isaac. That cadet leader was pronounced missing, though a few of his cadets insisted they saw something eat him that night, though there was little the officers could do with no body being found.

They checked Pugsley's tent, which was bare of anything truly incriminating, and considering the testimonies from other Nevermore students about how discriminatory the cadets were, their claims of watching their leader get murdered in a random outcast's tent fell flat.

Everything was set into place just fine, so why? Why couldn’t I breathe?  

This was still unbearable. I spent thirty years away from Isaac, yet somehow knowing he was alive, locked away, felt almost more maddening. The idea that he was still around yet out of reach it made me feel angry all over again.

“Miss (L/N).”

The sound cut through me— sharp, distorted, bubbling slightly through the liquid inside a glass jar. My head snapped up. I hadn’t even noticed him roll closer. Professor Orloff’s face floated in the jar atop his mechanical frame, the faint light of the room refracting through the glass, painting his features in strange, but calming distortion.

“Ah, Professor—” I blinked hard, trying to recalibrate. The classroom was empty. When had that happened? The clock on the far wall ticked mockingly— ten minutes past the dismissal. I’d sat through it like a ghost.

“I—sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to—” I stood too quickly, my chair scraping across the stone floor. My movements felt jerky, automatic. “I’ll get things back in order for you—”

Orloff didn’t say anything at first; he seemed to be searching my face for something. “Your mind seems to be… elsewhere, these past few days,” he said. His voice, always calm, vibrated faintly through the liquid, giving it that strange echo that made every sentence feel slightly detached, like it came from underwater. “Why is that?”

My mouth opened. Closed. I didn’t have a real answer, not one I could say aloud. “I guess…” I forced out a weak laugh, brittle at the edges. “Boy troubles. Maybe.”

“Boy troubles.” The professor repeated it as though tasting the phrase for the first time. It was certainly the first time he ever heard something so girlish from me. His eyes studied me in silence. There was no ridicule there, no coldness. Just quiet, clinical observation, softened despite his usual strict approach to handling students.

“I am… glad,” he said finally, “to hear you are coming out of your shell again. I was afraid you might never do so again.”

Something in me stuttered. My hands froze over the stack of worksheets I was clumsily trying to straighten. I couldn’t look at him. Coming out of my shell— was that what he thought this was? I guess it wasn’t too far off from how I had been behaving since Isaac’s return, but now I felt like I had been pushed back to square one.

“Your work this past week,” he continued. “Incomplete. Rushed. Uncharacteristic of you.”

The words were gentle, but they cut deep anyway. My throat tightened. “I—yeah. I’ve just been… distracted.”

He tilted his head slightly, the light refracting again through the greenish fluid that kept him alive— or whatever version of alive this was. “Whoever this boy is,” he said, “I hope he is worth it. You are an intelligent and responsible young girl.”

The way he said young girl didn’t sting like it usually would. Only Professor Orloff could say something like that to a vampire over a century old and make it sound…kind; it didn’t feel condescending from him. 

I guess I never truly understood that truth about who I was, that no matter how many years had passed, eternal youth had a way of keeping me from feeling any wiser. At the end of the day, I was still truly just a child, yet I gave myself little time to be. 

“I suggest,” he went on, “you take this coming weekend to collect yourself. I am aware you have… much on your plate.” The pause lingered like he knew more than he should. “I will extend your deadlines until next week so you may have time to recover. I would hate for your grades, or your potential, to suffer because you’ve remembered what it is to live a little.”

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. He didn’t mean it like that— but the words lodged in me anyway. Remembered what it is to live. Isaac was what first came to mind.

“That’s… incredibly generous of you,” I said softly. “Thank you, sir. I think that’s just what I need. Time to think.”

“Understanding is often the first step to recovery,” Orloff said. He smiled up at me. There was a reason this man had become my favorite professor. Despite his reputation, he was far kinder than most gave him credit for. His mechanical frame whirred softly as he rolled toward the door. “Be sure to lock up, dear. Last time this room was left open, some students thought it amusing to steal cadaver parts.”

He said it so casually, as though we were discussing misplaced homework.

And then he was gone, humming faintly to himself, the sound of wheels fading down the hall until only the hum of the lab lights remained.

I stood there for a long moment, staring at the empty seat where his mechanical shell had been. The beakers, the bones, the faint chemical chill in the air. I should’ve felt comforted by the order of it all. Instead, I felt the edges of my mind start to fray again— the fragile scaffolding that kept me upright shaking in the quiet.

I twisted the bracelet tighter around my wrist until it hurt, then exhaled and let go, forcing myself to move. Time to think, he said. 

God help me— how was one weekend supposed to be enough time to figure this out? If I could not figure shit out in the first hundred years of my life, what was three days supposed to do? Tomorrow was Friday, I had early release, and I might go insane if I were left alone in my room with these thoughts.

I heard them before I saw them— two sets of heartbeats echoing against the tile floor. One steady, one a touch uneven, light. I didn’t even have to turn around to know. The air had that specific stillness to it, heavy, deliberate. I knew why that was before I saw her face.

When I looked up, the familiar braided silhouette stood framed in the classroom doorway, eyes like black ice.

“You helped my brother house a zombie and hid the evidence,” Wednesday said, skipping any pretense of a greeting. “Why?”

My pencil paused mid-tap. I sighed. “You know,” I said, swinging my bag over my shoulder, “any normal person would start with thank you for keeping their brother from being expelled.”

“Pugsley is sentimental and impressionable,” she replied. “Keeping him from straying into idiocy is my duty as his sister and keeper.” Her stare didn’t waver— that dead, glassy kind of gaze that made most people fidget. “He told me everything he failed to tell the police. Including your involvement with his dead pet, only you would have known to be rid of all of that evidence, I doubt Eugene would have the gall to stomach such a heist.”

The nerve of this girl. I was already in the negatives with how much more I could take today, but I kept my tone even. “You’re welcome for saving your brother’s ass.” But my eyes drifted over her shoulder, “You brought backup?”

For a split second, Wednesday looked mildly puzzled — which was a miracle in itself. Then her eyes flicked to the side, and the air shimmered faintly before solidifying into the shape of a younger girl.

“Anges,” Wednesday said, as though announcing a recurring migraine.

The girl appeared at her shoulder, pale and red-haired, braids done in the same grim style as her idol’s. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen, her posture straight but fidgeting, like she was trying to imitate poise.

“You have fans now?” I asked dryly, arching a brow.

“Unfortunately,” Wednesday replied, monotone as ever.

“For your information,” the kid piped up, “I’m here to help Wednesday with any and all assignments, including low-priority ones. Like keeping her brother in check.”

Low-priority? My jaw flexed. I forced a smirk and continued organizing textbooks back into the middle of the desks. “That’s sweet. Guess you two share the same talent for pissing people off.”

Anges’s smile was condensing as she continued, “I heard you talking to Professor Orloff. Something about Nevermore’s ‘star student’ slipping behind in her grades.” Her tone was meant to mimic Wednesday’s, but it came out rather mousy, trying too hard. “Distracted by… ‘boy troubles,’ was it?”

My hand froze halfway to the next desk. For half a second, everything went quiet in my head.

Wednesday caught the shift, her lips twitching upward just enough to pass as a smirk. “Perhaps if you put the same effort into your studies as you do hiding corpses, your transcript wouldn’t be circling the drain.”

There it was. The jab was meant to make me bleed.

I took a breath through my nose. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

“You know…” My voice was too calm. “It’s funny. You both are very young, and you don’t seem to know what happens when you run your mouth at the wrong person.”

Wednesday’s chin lifted, defiant, but I saw her eyes narrow just slightly— assessing.

Anges blinked. “We’re just asking questions, no need to get your fangs in a fix—”

“No,” I cut in, my voice sharp enough to make her flinch. My hands shook— not from fear, but from the effort of holding it all in. “You think I don’t see what you’re doing?” I stepped forward. “You think because I’m distracted, that I won’t say anything when someone’s making a dig at me?”

Anges looked away for a moment then back at her idol. Wednesday didn’t move, but her gaze flicked downward — the tiniest twitch of her fingers betraying tension.

I laughed once, but it came out wrong — cracked, too loud, half a choke. “Let me tell you both something, something your school and parents clearly failed to teach you.”

I took another step, close enough now that Anges’s breath hitched. “There is an art of minding your own fucking business, of picking and choosing your own battles before you sign yourself up for shit you can’t handle. I don’t have to explain shit to two brats, so whatever conclusion you come to about why I was helping Pugsley doesn’t fucking matter. Who cares if there was some evil and selfish ulterior motive from me? It’s over, I’ll fuck right off and go back to my old life, you girls should do the same before someone gets hurt.”

I hadn’t even realized just how loud I was being. I wasn’t yelling, but I hadn’t had a reason to project my voice like that in years, to get to this tone. I could feel the heat in my face, the throb in my chest.

For a moment, I could hear how unsteady my breathing had become. Wednesday’s mask of indifference had fractured just slightly — her posture tightening, her pupils dilating. Anges was as white as paper.

I was scaring these girls. The thought made me straighten up, forcing myself to take a deep breath. I didn’t even bother to act like I didn’t just snap at the two of them. “We’re done here,” I said simply.

As I moved past them, I could feel both their gazes on my back — Wednesday’s sharp with analysis, Anges slightly trembling. Did I overdo it? I was reminded of the girl's age when she refused to meet me like that.

“And before you send your vanisher to spy on me, Addams, teach her how to hold her breath. I could hear her heartbeat from the hallway. So maybe get out of the habit of snooping around my business.”

The silence that followed wasn’t victory. It was too heavy, too hollow. I wasn’t the type to take pride in snapping at a few young girls. But I also couldn’t bring myself to feel bad enough to apologize, that was for someone who was a better person than me. 

I had a bigger test of patience coming tonight anyway.

—-

The walk down to the lower levels of Willow Hill had the air feeling heavy, and the deeper we went, the colder it seemed to get. It was as though the walls themselves were holding their breath. Dr. Fairburn’s boots hit in measured rhythm beside me, the sound echoing down the sterile corridor. I matched her pace, but my mind wasn’t here.

“Are you sure this is worth it?” My voice came out low, brittle. “This isn’t—”

Fairburn cut me off gently. “We’ve tried everything else. Tyler’s resistant to conventional therapy. If seeing Laurel Gates forces an emotional reaction, even one negative, we’ll at least understand how deep her hold still is.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t trust myself not to just fold and decide last second that I couldn’t stomach this.

Every step closer to that cell made my teeth ache with something feral. The idea of Laurel being near him again— even separated by glass, even chained— made my vision tighten at the edges.

And then I saw her.

Marilyn Thronhill— no, Laurel Gates stood wrists cuffed, wearing an institutional white uniform that somehow still managed to look like it belonged to her. Her hair had been cut short, no longer cascading in that neat auburn wave she used to hide behind. Nor her glasses, she looked very different, but she still had that same smug, serpentine smile.

Her eyes lit up when she saw me. Recognition. Delight.

“Oh,” she said sweetly, her voice dripping like honey left too long in the sun. “Miss (L/N). What a pleasant surprise. Don’t tell me you’ve been admitted too?”

I froze, jaw locked so tight it hurt. I didn’t answer. I just stood there, staring at her.

Fairburn offered a polite, professional nod. “You two are familiar?”

Laurel’s smile widened, stretching until it was almost grotesque. “Of course. She was one of my finest students once back at Nevermore, my scorpion grass girl.” Her gaze flicked over me with nauseating fondness. “So clever, so quiet, so misunderstood. You know, she taught me a great deal— even about my own class. She once pointed out that, if you extract the right compounds from the nightshade flower, you can keep delirium without the fatal repercusions.”

Her eyes gleamed.

“That little tip was quite helpful when I was brewing the perfect drug when grooming Tyler,” she added casually, like she was talking about a recipe.

I felt my breath leave my body. Just gone. Something inside me turned over — not violently, but slowly, deliberately, like a knife twisting in its own time. She used my own intelligence against that boy?

Still, I said nothing. If I had, then Fairburn might have called for guards to escort me off the property.

Laurel tilted her head, watching me like a scientist studying a reaction. “Oh come now, that can’t be the best glare you can manage.” Her voice was sing-song, too light for the room. “I heard vampires can paralyze their prey with a look. Why don’t you give it a try? I’d love to see if the rumors are true.”

Fairburn’s brow furrowed. “That’s enough,” she said sharply.

But Laurel didn’t stop. She leaned forward slightly in her chair, the chains clinking just enough to remind everyone that she was supposed to be powerless. “I expected something clever, or at least cutting from you. Tell me, is your silence for my benefit, or his?”

My fingers twitched.

I didn’t know if it was the mention of Tyler or the way she said “his” like she still owned him, but I could feel heat rushing up the back of my neck. I wanted to lunge at her. To make her stop speaking in that soft, knowing way, like everything she’d done to him was still something she could be proud of.

Fairburn’s hand brushed against my arm — a wordless warning. I forced myself to breathe, slow and deliberate, because one wrong move here and I’d be the one in chains.

Laurel noticed, of course. She always noticed. Her grin spread wider, satisfaction blooming in her face like rot. “Ah,” she breathed, “there it is. I wondered if my words could pierce a proud creature like you.”

My pulse thundered in my ears.

After all the damage she had done, she had killed so many, burned our school down, but all of that paled in my mind after what she had done to Tyler. Maybe my priorities were out of place, but that was what enraged me the most. She got to him, and I wasn’t there to protect him like I should have been.

And she had the audacity to smile at me. I hated that she still had this power — that even chained, with her freedom stripped, Laurel Gates could infect a room just by breathing.

The guard behind her shoved her shoulder roughly, muttering something under his breath. Laurel only laughed, breathy and pleased, as if she’d won a game only she knew the rules to.

Fairburn shot me a wary glance before signaling for the guard to move her forward. I stayed back, jaw tight, nails digging half-moon crescents into my palms. I could feel the blood seeping into my palm as I broke my skin, until I felt my own bone under my fingernails.

The lock buzzed, and the door gave way with a hiss. Fairburn’s hand tightened on Laurel’s shoulder as he guided her inside, making sure she couldn’t bolt. I followed, the air thick with disinfectant and the faint, sour tang of iron.

“Tyler.” Laurel’s voice came out breathy, trembling, as though the mere sight of him hurt her. It was a performance. Even now, she couldn’t help but make it one.

She turned to the guard, her wrists raised like a child pleading with a parent. Please, her expression said. I only crossed my arms, jaw set. Fairburn gave a reluctant nod, and the cuffs came off with a metallic click.

I told myself to look at Tyler. I owed him that much. He was standing in the shadows, still and silent, but something about him had changed. He looked more tragic than monstrous. I could still see the echo of the creature in the shape of his scars, the way his eyes flickered with something feral, restrained only by the chains that bound him to the wall.

Laurel took a tentative step forward, voice softening into a grotesque parody of tenderness. “It’s okay. Mama’s here. Look what they’ve done to you.”

The sound of his chains dragging across the floor made my stomach twist. His hands—still human for the moment—lifted toward her, trembling under the weight of the iron. They’d moved him farther from the bars since the last incident. Apparently, not far enough.

“Oh, I know, baby.” She reached through the bars, fingertips brushing air. “I missed you, too.”

Tyler’s voice broke on the edge of something raw. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment…”

His body convulsed as the change took hold— bones cracking, skin stretching thin and pale like wax. The sound was wet, unnatural. His arm elongated, tendons pulling tight, fingers splitting into claws. He lunged forward with a guttural roar that didn’t sound human at all.

The Hyde’s claws slipped between the bars and closed around Laurel’s throat.

For a moment, I could hear her heart pounding louder than a drum in my ear, almost drowning out the rattle of chains and her strangled gasps. His grip tightened, lifting her off her feet as her nails scraped at his wrist. 

“Don’t hit the shock collar,” Fairburn barked behind me. “It’ll kill her.”

I doubt anyone would mourn it.

Laurel’s feet kicked, her voice ragged between gasps. “Easy… easy, sweetie. I know you’re upset. Just put Mommy down, okay? I promise, I’ll get you out of here—”

Her voice broke on the last word. The Hyde snarled, a low, shuddering sound that made the walls vibrate, before hurling her backward. She hit the concrete with a sickening crack and slid down, coughing, eyes wild with both pain and satisfaction.

He didn’t move again. He just stood there, claws gripping the bars, his chest heaving, the collar around his neck blinking faintly red. His stare locked onto her with a kind of pure, wordless hatred that no creature should ever be capable of.

And she— she laughed. Even through her own pain, she smiled at him like he was hers again, like she’d won something.

The guard hauled her upright with a grunt, the chains clinking like a deathwatch. He didn’t bother to steady her or check the blood; he yanked her toward the door with the same rough efficiency he’d used on a dozen other inmates. Fairburn’s hand found my shoulder, gentle as ever, and guided me out like I might snap if left to my own devices. The door sighed shut behind us with the dull finality of a coffin lid.

Laurel collapsed to her knees in the center of the room. The guard didn’t hesitate. He huffed, shook his head, and left her there— her breathing was ragged, uneven, theatrical like a woman who always performed pain better than she felt it. As if anyone here would feel bad for her. 

“Now I don’t know what business you had being here…” She croaked out, throat raw, forcing the syllables into something resembling civility. A smile pulled crooked across her face; it was a practiced thing meant to unsettle. “But I was happy to see my favorite and most promising pupil again.”

She lifted a chained hand, the links clinking like a bell, the motion theatrical. “(Y/N), be a dear and help me up…”

Her tone was syrupy; the smile she offered was the same predatory smile she’d always worn—slick, practiced. She was mocking me. I could have walked away. I could have let the guards drag her back and have done with it. All the sensible things demanded I turn my heel and breathe, to let professionals handle the monster.

Instead, I walked forward.

My steps were slow because I wanted her to see me, to feel small as I stood across from her now. White-hot anger was a physical thing, a heat coiling in my ribs until every rational thought felt far away and useless. 

The world narrowed down to her and the sound of my own breathing.

The movement was almost mechanical; my fingers closed over her hand, and the world narrowed to the pressure in my palms. I didn’t think about it— crunching the bones in my grip, hauling her forward. Her head snapped like a rag pulling taut, with no time to scream before I drove my knee straight into her face.

A hard, hollow crack punched the air and seemed to hang there, magnified by the tile and linoleum. She made a sound that could have been a scream if it wasn’t shredded into a wet, surprised choke before cutting off into a violent cough. Her hands flew up instinctively, claws at her own mouth; they came away slick, warm, staining her fingers. Blood glushing past her fingers, the splat of some teeth falling into the puddle. She crumpled, knees folding, and for a moment she was smaller than I’d expected — just a broken, shuddering thing on the ground. 

“I had a really bad day today…” 

My words and tone were calm. Something familiar and dangerous settled under my ribs: a cold, clinical satisfaction that had nothing to do with joy. It was the same feeling I got when I looked at what had become of Augustus Stonehearst; there was always some satisfaction I seemed to get when I watched parasites like them suffer.

“And I’ve had just about enough of people, whose lifetimes are a fraction of my own, getting away with saying stupid shit to my face.” My voice was low, flat, and I kept my eyes fixed on hers, tilting my head down at her. “You mortals act like there aren’t bigger fish in the sea; you are all so stupid and weak. Does any of your intelligence and wit truly matter? If you are so fragile that someone like me could kill you with a single step.”

I put my boot down over her face, pressing just enough to make the point. Her breath hitched into a gurgle, holding back her own crying as her eyes were covered by the dark sole of my shoe. The hallway seemed to turn slow, like a reel with the sound turned down; Fairburn and the guard stood frozen, neither one making a move to stop me.

“The only reason I’ll let you live is for Tyler’s sake,” I said, and the words had the flat cruelty of iron. “But make no mistake. If there’s ever a next time with the two of us meeting again, I won’t be as nice as I was today. I’ve lived for many decades, so don’t think I’m above spending a few of them behind bars.”

I wiped the blood off my boot on her shirt like she was a rug I simply tread over, and it made my hands stop trembling for a beat. I turned, meeting Fairburn’s eyes. The doctor’s pupils were small pinpricks; she had that look of someone cataloguing an unexpected variable. The guard shifted his weight, uncomfortable and unwilling to intervene.

Fairburn came forward at last, measured, clinical, the professional hand replacing the humane one. “I’ll send her back to Northern State Correctional as soon as possible,” she said, the bureaucratic calm sounding absurd beside what I’d just done. “I’ll keep things off the record…any injuries she had gotten from today were simply from another unruly inmate.”

“And I’m sorry for any additional harm this session might have caused…” she added, like an offering. She wanted— no, she needed me to calm down.

The silence was loaded, only interrupted by a few choked sobs from Laurel and her own ragged heartbeat. It was irritating; I wished she would stop entirely, but I suppose this was as quiet as she was capable of being in this moment.

“Just keep her away from him.” My reply came out brittle and final. “That boy has been through enough; this was the least I could do for him after my failure as his guardian today.”

The guard hauled Laurel to her feet at Fairburn’s nudge— more to move her than to help her up— and dragged her away, wrists clinking, her sobs swallowed by the corridor. The raw adrenaline that had been my fuel for a razor-sharp minute drained into a cold, hungry feeling. My hands shook. My breath was a thing I had to remember to take.

I had crossed some line. I knew it. I could feel the seam where something in me unclenched and rewired. For thirty years, I’d learned to be the polite, distant thing: the dutiful student, the tough and careful friend, the ghost of classrooms. It had been years since I let myself truly snap like that, to the point I’d deliberately hurt someone.

I straightened my shoulders, the mask falling back into place with practiced ease. Fairburn watched me with a look that asked a dozen questions she wouldn’t voice. I let her have that silence. I could pretend that I was horrified, that my hands shook with reluctance, but I didn’t care this time around. In truth, what I saw in that room between Laurel and Tyler had broken whatever was left of my patience.

I breathed out slowly, steadily, counting the seconds, but the scent of blood hitting my nose had me thinking clearly for the first time in days. The logical part of my brain could whisper ethics and consequences, but my mind was made up the moment I stepped out of that room.

I was getting Tyler and Isaac the fuck out of this hellhole.

The campfire was obnoxiously bright — crackling, spitting little embers like it was laughing at me for being stuck here. Kids crowded around it, their faces glowing orange and gold, roasting marshmallows with the kind of cheer that only comes from people who don’t hate everything about the outdoors. I sat on a log that was far too close to the fire, knees drawn up, my hands uselessly on my knees. The smell of smoke clung to my clothes, my hair, my patience.

I would’ve rather been anywhere else, preferably in the tent with Isaac. At least he didn’t talk while I was trying to recharge mentally, mainly because he couldn’t.

I could still picture him — slumped, slack-jawed, one eye fogged like cracked glass but somehow more alive than half the people sitting around this fire pretending they were having fun. He’d probably hate being here, too, and then we’d both run off to get away from

But who did I have the misfortune of bumping into? Morticia Addams. She was the one holding me hostage here.

She was perched elegantly on a large, dark, ornate chair next to me, legs crossed, the picture of gothic serenity against the chaotic orange light. Her black gown absorbed the glow, her lipstick unbothered by the heat.

“(Y/N), how have your studies been?” she asked, voice lilting, casual — as if this was a normal evening and not my personal purgatory. 

I might actually get violent. Someone save me, I hate small talk.

“Fine,” I said flatly, not bothering to look up from the fire. Just taking one of the sticks another student offered to me and placing a marshmallow on it to distract myself. “You’ve heard Dort. I’m a hallmark for Nevermore.”

Morticia laughed softly, that silken kind of laugh that sounded like she’d practiced it in the mirror. “Yes, I have. But I wanted to hear it from you, dear. I was asking how you’re doing.”

Oh, God. This was one of those conversations. Worse than small talk.

I poked my marshmallow into the fire until it caught flame, then stared at it, pretending it needed my full attention. “You know me,” I muttered, watching the sugar blacken. “Living the dream. Surrounded by trees and bugs and—” I glanced at a student trying to play guitar. “—whatever that’s supposed to be.”

Morticia smiled faintly, as if I’d told a charming joke instead of voiced a cry for help. “You always had such a dry wit. It’s… refreshing. Pugsley could use more friends who make him think.”

There it was. The real reason she’d cornered me. So we could talk about how great of a person I was for hanging out with her loser son, like that was going to work as some sort of olive branch.

I just huffed and blew out the burnt marshmallow on my stick before stabbing it into the ground, not even attempting to eat the scorched thing, just staring at the charred thing like it was the most interesting thing in this camp.

“I appreciate you being there for him,” she continued, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “He’s been much happier lately. I know he can be... unusual company for most.”

“He’s not so bad,” I said. “He’s a good kid, though he has a weird affinity with explosives.”

That actually got a laugh from her. Quiet, but real.

The campfire popped loudly, sending a shower of sparks spiraling into the night. Someone laughed too close behind us, and I flinched, realizing only then that my hands were shaking slightly—maybe from the cold, or maybe because I still knew this conversation was nowhere near over and I had no plausible way to run off.

“I know our family has... a complicated history with you,” she said after a pause, her voice soft but steady. “And I’m truly grateful you’ve been kind to Pugsley despite that. I also wished to tell you... I am sorry. About Isaac.”

I froze. She didn’t know he was back, right? No, Pugsley wouldn’t have said anything to his parents.

Even then, was now really the time and place for this? Sure, no one was listening—most of the students were either burning marshmallows or chatting amongst themselves—but still, it felt wrong. Too exposed. The kind of conversation that should happen in private, behind closed doors, not with the smell of smoke and sugar in the air.

“I’ve apologized in the past for everything that happened,” she went on, her eyes lowering to the dirt. “But…how does one apologize for something like that? I only meant to sabotage, not—”

“It’s fine.” The words slipped out before I could stop them, too sharp, too practiced. She’d apologized before. Over and over, in different words, different tones. It didn’t change anything.

But Morticia’s gaze stayed on me, patient and unflinching. It made me feel smaller somehow—like a kid pretending to be an adult. Maybe that’s what I was.

“There’s blame to share,” I said finally, my voice quieter. “I played a part in it, too.”

That caught her attention. Her brow furrowed slightly, the flames reflecting in her dark eyes. But I couldn’t hold her gaze for long; guilt forced my eyes back to the flames.

“I was the one who suggested we ask Gomez to power the machine,” I admitted, my throat tightening around the words. I had never said that out loud before. But something about the campfire made me feel more honest. And that was dangerous. “So technically, it’s my fault everything happened anyway.”

The moment I said it, something inside me shifted. A truth I’d avoided. It didn’t make me feel better. Just... heavier.

Gomez lost his spark because of me. Because I was too selfish, too proud to admit Isaac was wrong—or that I was. Who would want to admit they’d been angry at all the wrong people? That it was easier to hate Morticia than face the fact that I’d failed? I was immature, more than I wished I was.

“Now don’t say that, love,” Morticia said gently, and there was no judgment in her tone—only warmth, and something that sounded dangerously like pity. “Isaac… he was a genius, yes. But he was conniving. He made his choices, knowing what they’d cost. I could forgive that, but he hurt people I cared about with that ambition of his… and that includes you.”

I didn’t respond right away. My chest felt tight.

For the first time in years, I really looked at her. Not the murderer, not the Addams matriarch, but that girl I used to be friends with. Someone who’d lost and grieved and blamed herself a thousand times over. Her poise wasn’t arrogance—it was armor. Just like mine.

“My visions…” she began again, her voice quieter now. “They only show me the good. When I saw you two, I only saw sparks of love. I didn’t think betrayal would be part of your story. I’ve spent years wondering if I gave you false hope.”

I felt something twist in my chest—pity, maybe, or the closest I could come to forgiveness.

“You didn’t,” I said, after a long silence. “You just saw what was real for a while. Before everything went wrong. It’s not your fault, what happened.”

Morticia smiled faintly, sad but knowing. “You’re very wise for a creature who doesn’t truly age.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, staring into the fire. “It’s the trauma.”

That got the ghost of a laugh out of her, and I found myself smiling despite everything.

For a few long minutes, neither of us spoke. The fire crackled. The wind rustled through the trees. Someone across the circle started singing out of tune, and I wanted to throw my marshmallow stick at them.

“You know,” Morticia said finally, tilting her head at me in a knowing manner only a mother could, “it’s all right to let go of the anger. It doesn’t dishonor him to move forward.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell her that I had moved forward, somewhat—that Isaac wasn’t just a memory anymore. That he was out there, breathing—or whatever you’d call what he did—and waiting for me. That I had my second chance, even if no one else would understand it. Not even I did really.

Instead, I just nodded, pushing myself up from the log. “This got… heavy,” I said awkwardly, brushing off my pants. “I think I hit my emotional quota for the night.”

Morticia rose too, her expression gentle. “Of course. I didn’t mean to burden you.”

“You didn’t,” I said, even though she kind of had. But in a way that both made me uncomfortable and a touch lighter. “It was… nice. Talking about it, I mean.”

That earned me another of her small smiles—the kind that felt almost maternal. “You remind me of Wednesday, sometimes. But softer. Don’t lose that softness (Y/N), the world often tries to snuff such kindness from people.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I said, turning away before she could see my face. “I’ll see you around, Tish.”

Her old nickname fell past my lips, unintentional, but natural. I walked off into the dark, away from the fire and the chatter and the warmth that suddenly felt too close. I felt like I needed time away, where I didn’t have to reassess my life while in a crowd of teenagers. 

The woods swallowed the sound of laughter and fire crackle behind me. The further I walked from the main part of the camp, the easier it was to breathe—though “easy” was generous. Every step felt like moving through smoke. The air was heavy, smelling of pine and charred sugar, and every ember of conversation I left behind only reminded me how little I belonged there.

Maybe that’s why I found myself thinking of Isaac. Always Isaac. Even now. 

Maybe I could have called it a night, but I got used to nights with him. So retiring to a shared tent with the unnamed girls from my hall felt even more uncomfortable than it should.

Morticia’s words still rattled in my skull, soft and motherly and unbearably kind. I hated that tone—the one that made me feel like a child who’d broken something precious.

It’s alright to let go of the anger.

Easy for her to say. She had a husband, a family, a legacy. I had nothing, only some money and good grades. I wished I could say I could have the things she would have one day, once I moved away from Jerichio, but no. There was no way to live that normal life. I was in charge of Hyde, a kid whom I watched be born into this world and who I’d probably have to watch die, too. I am incredibly unstable, depressed, and avoidant to the point I was probably considered a misanthrope. And the only person with whom I have a remotely genuine relationship is half-dead.

Damn, that really was pathetic, huh? The best part of my life is Isaac, Isaac. That asshole. Yet until now, I hadn’t been able to say I had been happy until I found him again on that road.

I always knew it was his fault that he died. He was reckless, arrogant, brilliant. The kind of person who believed he could defy the laws of nature and win. But that didn’t stop me from blaming myself for everything. I needed to blame someone else to survive it— Morticia, the school, fate, anyone but him. Because the truth— that he made his choice that night— was too heavy to hold.

Caring about someone made you stupid. I’d always been aware of that. But awareness didn’t mean immunity.

I had done—and would do—horrible, unthinkable things for the people I loved. And I knew it. The only difference between me and the naive was that I knew I was lying to myself, and I did it over and over again anyway.

I don’t know what made me pause, what little sliver of instinct pulled my gaze upward. 

The sky stretched wide above the trees, a deep, infinite black velvet sprinkled with stars that glittered like shards of glass. The moon hung low and pale, casting silver edges across the swaying branches. For a moment, everything felt impossibly still—peaceful, almost sacred. The kind of quiet that made your chest ache with the sheer weight of noticing it.

I let my shoulders loosen, breathed it in—the crisp air scented faintly with pine, the distant hum of the forest, the occasional rustle of unseen creatures. It was beautiful. Fragile. For just a heartbeat, I could have stayed there forever.

Then—boom.

The darkness cracked. Fireworks tore jagged, blinding lines across the night sky, exploding in colors so vivid they hurt my eyes. The camp erupted around me, startled cheers and laughter ringing through the air, sharp and intrusive. That moment hit me, a slow, sinking realization that left me staring at the fractured stars, frozen between awe and a cold, startled panic.

“Isaac…” I said, mortified at the bright lights in the sky.

I ran. Every burst of light in the sky felt like some sort of countdown to something awful. I almost tripped; I wasn’t watching my step as I forced myself to the tent faster. Air fighting to stay in my lungs as I moved faster than I ever had before, one or two boys running past me screaming.

The tent flap tore under my hand as I almost fell in, the smell hit me first—metal and copper and something gone very, very wrong. 

The cadet leader sprawled like a puppet with his strings cut, his skull a ragged crater that glistened wet in the torchlight. His face was frozen in a hundred small, stupid little tragedies—an expression that would haunt me later when the rational part of me tried to sleep.

For a half-breath, I tasted vomit and bile. I had seen blood before. Seen hundreds of corpses of people I knew before, but never in this state. Something about seeing this man alive and well just hours earlier made my stomach churn. Knowing how much blood was in a person versus seeing it was terrifying. This was gruesome. And entirely preventable.

Isaac was nearby, hunched and terrible and grotesquely himself. The blood that painted his mouth was still wet; he scrubbed at his lips with a scrap of fabric as if he could erase what he had just done. He didn’t look triumphant. He didn’t look ashamed. He looked like an animal that had found the only prey in days. He blinked at me—one cloudy, dull eye—and for an instant, there was something like recognition there. Something thin and glittering that might have been an apology or hunger or the last reflected shard of the boy he’d been.

He blinked at me—one cloudy eye tracking the command—and obeyed like a trained machine, although the fabric he used smeared rather than brightened. Instinct had me walk over and take the scrap; my fingers brushed his, and the world shuddered in a way that made my teeth ache. I could have stepped back. I didn’t. Wiping away at the blood on his face, neck, and chest, before looking back down at the ground.

There wasn’t a lot of time before Pugsley and whoever else would come over to check on Isaac. And those boys who ran away earlier, they were most likely going to tell others about what happened here.

I worked without thought— throwing down the napkin atop the man's face, then I grabbed the mat laid out under the cadet, palms finding the folds. Rolling a body is almost ritual: tuck the limbs, fold the head, wrap tight so no more blood leaks out. 

The coffin—my coffin, the ridiculous, precious relic I’d hauled on the bus—sat opened in the corner like a bad joke. I shoved the wrapped body inside, shoved the lid down, and nearly slammed it with a force meant to convince anyone passing by that it had been shut for days. My throat tightened when I heard the dull thud. It sounded final in a way that made my breath stop.

“Get out of here,” I said to Isaac, voice raw with something I couldn’t name. “Into the trees. Don’t be seen—”

He reached for me. His gloved fingers cupped my cheek, awkward and careful, a hideous simulacrum of tenderness. The touch was sticky and smelled like rust and old coffee. My body locked for a beat— shock, horror, something like ache— then slid into the motion the way a tide pulls a stone. I leaned into him, absurdly, because the world made no other sense. His thumb dragged along my jawline in the slow, ignorant way of a thing trying to understand its own edges. It steadied me. It always did.

“I’ll come for you after, okay? Just try to stay out of any more trouble.” I assured him, as he let out a soft gurgle of recognition, a slight nod of his decaying head.

He moved with the graceless determination, pushing past the entrance of the tent. I watched him go, the shadow of his figure cast onto the walls of the tent, until branches swallowed him. Then I turned back to the coffin, and the weight of what I’d done hit me like cold water.

Lifting the thing was stupid. It should have been light for a creature like me, but no, it was—far heavier than it should be. Perhaps it was thanks to the deep sense of guilt weighing down in my chest. I gripped the thing, unable to see properly in front of me as the size of the casket obscured the ground from me. The world narrowed to the body resting in my forearms and the scent of blood just under my nose. 

I couldn’t even think, panic, carrying this thing in my arms, trying to keep it steady in my arms. Dragging it would mean leaving a trail behind. I focused on trying not to trip or bump into anything, just mindlessly marching forward as quickly as I could.

This was not how I thought I’d spend my first truly peaceful night in decades. But for the sake of whatever fucked up future I had, this body had to go.

Time disintegrated. The forest closed up, a wall of trunks and dark that hummed with insects and the distant thrum of night birds. My lungs burned; my hands cramped around the coffin’s iron.

The waterfall was a smear of silver before I realized I was close. It was the place Isaac and I had found earlier—this same private scrape of the world where water ate rock and made a steady, honest noise. Moonlight threaded through the canopy and sheeted across the pool, making it look like polished obsidian.

I peered in for a moment; it looked deep enough.

I set the coffin on the lip of the bank and opened the lid again. The body slumped inside, and I shoved rocks in—big, jagged things with edges that would act as ballast, keep whatever was inside from bobbing up like some obscene cork. My hands moved quickly, dumping the stones, sweating, thinking of all the ways this could go wrong, and somehow letting the panic become precision.

The chains that were supposed to be around Isaac were still inside, I pulled them out from underneath the man. I wrapped them heavily around the coffin and fed their ends into my palm, fingers burning where metal bit the skin. The cold metal at last would hold the lid completely shut.

I gave the chain a final, hard twist and shoved the coffin forward. It lurched, gave, and then slid with an ungainly gravity down the slick rock. Water closed over its edge with a long, sucking sound. The chain sang as it vanished into the pool, and the night swallowed the thump of the coffin settling deeper and deeper until nothing but a ripple remained.

I stood there and watched the ring of disturbance shrink into the ordinary, watching until the last oil-dark smear smoothed out. My chest heaved in a slow, animal rhythm. The rational part of me tried to catalogue evidence—how long before anyone noticed? How long before the police came?— but those were sterile thoughts. The rest of me was unstitched, raw and furious, and stunned.

This was supposed to make sense, wasn’t it? Practical. Logical. Even with Isaac loose, with the evidence gone, anyone poking around would probably chalk it up to chaos, think he was just a mindless corpse unable to plan beyond gnawing on anything that moved. As for me…well, I could skate by as Pugsley’s friend who didn’t know any better when helping him with his “pet”. Expulsion loomed only in the most theoretical sense. That was supposed to be the rational part of me talking.

But rationality was thin and brittle in the aftermath. Every muscle in my body felt hollowed out, drained of sensation, as though the world had dulled itself to a single, slow-moving frame. My limbs were puppets. My heart was a trapped bird hammering against ribs that barely felt. 

What have I done? I didn’t have the luxury much time to think about it.

I walked back to camp, through the chaos, sirens screaming and people shouting around me, and tried to melt into the crowd. I slithered, careful, weaving through faces that didn’t matter, as if I had always been part of this tableau. My own actions folded neatly into the larger, horrifying mess as I tried to pretend my reason for panic was the same as all of theirs.

And then I saw him.

Pugsley, frozen in place with his parents flanking him, the boy’s shoulders tight, eyes wide. Distress radiated off him like heat. 

I pushed past the caution tape to get to him. He looked at me, a silent plea in the tilt of his head, his words trembling as he broke through my daze. “They’re taking him… Slurp… he attacked my parents and—” His voice cracked. “And they think he might have hurt someone else.”

I barely registered the words. The scene beyond him, the flashing lights and frantic cadets, was a blur. Four of them sat slumped on logs, muttering incoherently to the officers, rehashing what they’d seen—what Isaac had done. And there, on a stretcher, strapped down with leather belts, his mouth muzzled, his one eye wild with something between terror and recognition, was Isaac. They were hauling him away, dragging him from me again.

My chest seized. I wanted to sprint. To shove through Pugsley, through the officers, through anything that came between me and him. I wanted to claw at the straps, rip the muzzle, and run away into the woods. My hands twitched, my fingers curling into claws of desperation, but my body refused. My mind reeled and panicked, but the moment Pugsley shifted, stepping toward the stretcher, I snapped to the only survival move I had left.

I acted.

He turned toward me, eyes glimmering with panic and hope, and before he could fully step out of reach of his parents, I wrapped my arms around him. A hug—tight, careful, and utterly convincing. His face pressed against my shoulder, and he exhaled, shuddering into me. My head rested on top of his, my lips brushing the crown of his hair, my hands holding him like he mattered more than the chaos unraveling around us.

Morticia and Gomez only seemed to give us looks of pity, each placing a hand on either of our backs as if that was meant to be comforting. I looked at them, pretending to appreciate it. I couldn't find it in me to feel the real thing.

Inside, I was screaming. Inside, I was running after Isaac, my pulse a violent drum in my ears. Inside, I was furious at the world, at fate, at the officers who didn’t understand, at myself for letting him be taken from me twice. But Pugsley didn’t know any of that, and I couldn’t let him. His hands tightened around my back, and I squeezed back, just enough to keep the performance perfect. 

He thought I was anchoring him. I was anchoring myself. Comforting him was just a benefit to this approach.

Watching him get locked in the armored vehicle, the heavy doors shutting him away, it felt like a stake right through my heart. He was gone. Again. And yet, in some horrified, twisted way, I could feel him in the brush, in the hum of the sirens, in the dark whisper of the forest around us. My fingers flexed against Pugsley’s larger frame, holding, steadying, pretending.

No one could blame me. No one could see the truth of what actually happened. And yet my truth was pure, raw, and entirely selfish: they were taking him. My heart raced. My mind spun. My hands were trembling. I had survived blood, chaos, horror… but this—the loss, the helplessness—this was its own kind of violence.

I stayed wrapped around Pugsley, breathing for both of us, while the sirens and the night swirled and Isaac disappeared into the distance, out of reach once more.

The moment my boots hit the dirt, I slapped on my sunglasses like a shield against the daylight. The air smelled like pine needles and disappointment. Fixing the strap of my backpack, I swatted a bug that buzzed close to my face.

I really did not enjoy the great outdoors…

Behind me, Pugsley trailed close, chattering nonstop about camp activities, explosives, and some new kind of squirrel he wanted to try roasting. I’d sat next to him on the bus out of pity—he was sitting alone—and that was my first mistake. Ten minutes in, the kid had more words than I had patience. Halfway through the trip, I plugged in my headphones, letting music drown him out while nodding my head occasionally at what he was saying.

Stepping aside, I squinted up at the chaos on top of the bus. Some random werewolf boy was perched there, using his lycanthropic strength to start tossing everyone’s luggage down like some deranged bellhop. I crossed my arms and waited for my turn.

Then I saw him reach for my coffin.

“Wait!” I snapped, my voice sharp enough to cut through the chatter.

The boy froze mid-motion and blinked down at me. I pointed up. “That’s—uh—really old. Sentimental. Please be careful with it…”

He hesitated but didn’t drop it, which was good. The coffin was heavy and awkwardly sized, and it was weird to try and balance something so massive and level it out in a way that wouldn’t jostle Isaac too much. He already had to spend the trip tied to the roof of a bus; I didn’t want to make any sort of motion sickness he most likely had gotten any worse.

“I got it!” Pugsley called, darting past me with that dumb, determined grin. The kid reached up and helped grab it. Being as tall as he was, he helped gently lower the top from standing up straight to an easier-to-carry, horizontal position.

Good timing, because the coffin started shaking.

“Thanks— I didn’t want to shake him,” I said, grabbing the other end, holding it steady as the thing rattled violently. Pugsley was walking backward, smacking the lid every few seconds like that would calm him down.

I sighed through my teeth. Bringing Isaac along had been a terrible idea—but locking him in my dorm had felt worse. I couldn’t get the image out of my head of him somehow getting out of my room and eating some poor unsuspecting student or staff member. So yeah. Dort’s stupid demand for a speech left me with two bad choices; I chose the one I had most control over.

“Despite my attempts to exsanguinate, you’re not completely bloodless.”

Wednesday’s voice came out of nowhere. I nearly dropped my end of the coffin.

Pugsley flinched so hard the lid thunked. He forced a weak smile. “Sis, uh… hey. What’s up?”

Wednesday’s expression didn’t move. “What’s with the vampire coffin?”

“It’s mine,” I said flatly before he could open his mouth again. “If I’m going to be forced out of sleeping on a mattress, I sure as all hell am not sleeping in a bag.”

Her eyes narrowed. Of course, that’s when Isaac decided to let out a low groan from inside. Pugsley panicked and gave the coffin a swift kick, which somehow made it worse. I wanted to pinch the bridge of my nose, already done with this conversation.

Before she could question further, a car horn blared—a ridiculous, theatrical tune that could only belong to one man. I glanced toward the road and groaned under my breath.

“Oh, great. The cavalry.”

Gomez stepped out of the car wearing riding boots and a suit similar to his usual get-up, but tailored to be more for the outdoors. His smile made me sick. “Hello, my pernicious prodigy!” he greeted his daughter, utterly ignoring his son. I side-eyed Pugsley, who gave me a small, defeated shrug.

“Don’t you find the smell of fresh air positively nauseating?” Gomez continued cheerfully.

Wednesday crossed her arms. “To what do we owe this ghastly apparition?”

“The call went out for parent chaperones!” he said, adjusting his gloves with flair. “And I’ve spent my fair share of time under nature’s canopy.”

“The concrete jungle doesn’t count,” she deadpanned.

He laughed like she’d just told a joke instead of a personal insult.

And then Morticia appeared.

Lurch helped her out of the car like she was disembarking a hearse at her own funeral. Her outfit was… impeccable, as always—black suit, small hat, microscopic umbrella that shaded absolutely nothing. She and Wednesday locked eyes like they were vipers dueling, silent and perfectly unpleasant.

Did they fight or something? Then it dawned on me— I didn’t care.

“What's she doing here?” Wednesday’s tone sharpened, and for a second, I thought she was talking about me. Would’ve made sense. But anything that keeps me from getting involved, I’m down for.

Morticia smiled faintly, all teeth and poise. “I thought we'd make it a family affair.”

“Her idea of ‘communing with nature’ is deadheading roses in her greenhouse,” Wednesday muttered.

The family tension was so thick it was almost embarrassing. Did they really have to do this here? Where literally anyone could see? I shifted my grip on the coffin, calculating escape routes.

“Well, I thought we could make this a family affair—” Gomez, clearly aware of the attention but obvious on what to actually do to resolve it, clapped his hands together. “You and your mother can talk things out while Pugsley and I can engage in some father-son bonding!”

“Uh, no thanks, Dad,” Pugsley said quickly, glancing my way. “I think I’ll stick with hanging out (Y/N).”

Fantastic. Yes. Drag me back into this.

But Gomez just beamed, looking between us like he’d just witnessed a miracle. “Ah! Making friends—my boy, I’m proud of you! And (Y/N), you’re turning a dead leaf, eh? Keep it up, morrita!”

I forced a smile so tight it could’ve cracked glass. “Yeah, sure. Thanks. But uh—Pugsley said he’d help me set up the tent, so…” I jerked my head toward the forest. “We’re gonna bounce.”

“Yeah, and Lurch! Could you help us with this?” Pugsley asked.

Lurch groaned, but immediately took Isaac off our hands with ease. Given how large a man he was, I can’t say I was too surprised at how effortless he made it. Isaac seemed rather restless inside, though, though I guess Lurch wouldn’t have survived this long as this family’s butler if he asked questions.

Before either parent could say another word, I grabbed the coffin and marched off, Pugsley jogging beside me to keep up.

Still, as we trudged through the forested path toward the campsite, the earthy scent of damp pine and moss filled the air. The campsite had a massive watchtower, a nearby cliff with a pretty impressive waterfall, and some Nevermore staff must have come in early and set up some banners. Our school’s signature purple and black colors hang with the stringed lights, and our emblem is plastered everywhere amongst all the outdoor activities.

It was rather gaudy-looking mixed with all the browns of the original site. It made me want to roll my eyes despite the pit in my stomach that looking at everything gave me.

Pugsley, of course, didn’t care. He prattled on about rope knots, marshmallow roasting techniques, and the ideal angle for roasting a stick over a fire. He even demonstrated a complex knot with a piece of twine, his fingers fumbling but determined. Somehow, despite the chaos in my head about Principal Dort and the impending speech, I didn’t mind him. Not him, anyway. He had this unassuming innocence—even when talking about potentially combustible campfire experiments—that made the world a little more bearable.

I hadn’t even noticed how little I was paid attention to until he asked me a question that pulled me from my thoughts.

“You really don’t like my parents, do you?” Pugsley asked suddenly.

“Huh?” I muttered, blinking at him.

“You always look like you want them to just like…burst up into flames whenever you see them. It’s better than the first time we met, but still…I thought my sister had an intense death glare.”

“Oh…do I?”

“Yeah, but don’t even worry about it,” he said, shrugging with a small grin. Clearly, he didn’t feel bothered to ask. I liked this kid; he really has grown on me. “I know you’ve got enough on your mind with Principal Dork—I mean, Dort. Since you have to give that speech.”

Ugh. Don’t remind me. I stopped mid-step and let my gaze wander across the main part of the camp. Dort was there, smiling too widely, gesturing with his hands, talking to a group of wide-eyed students like he was auditioning for a motivational infomercial. My stomach twisted.

“Hey,” Pugsley said, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “you’ll do great! You’re really cool. Anything you say is guaranteed to be cool, too!” He added with a grin that somehow was able to blend how innocently mischievous the boy was, “But if you end up bombing it, I could always just blow up one of the buses with my rockets.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, ridiculous as the statement was; I got kind of used to his way of speaking, “Ha…thanks, knowing me, I might need that.” My eyes narrowed slightly as I registered what he’d just said. “Did you say rockets?”

“Yeah! I brought a bunch with me to set up at the tent, so in case Slurp gets out, we’ll instantly know!” His eyes sparkled with glee, as if detonating explosives in a campsite were the most normal thing in the world.

I squinted at him, lowering my sunglasses enough to glare. “You’re aware this is a forest, right? With trees. And leaves. And all the things that burn?”

“Yeah! Here’s hoping we cause a forest fire!” Pugsley said with cheerful abandon.

I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. My vision went slack. I could already feel the speech anxiety gnawing at my skull, compounded now by the threat of spontaneous combustion courtesy of my small, morally flexible companion.

Lurch, silent as ever, led the way, lumbering forward with the slow inevitability of a grave monument. Pugsley glanced back at me over his shoulder, wide-eyed with optimism. “Looks like he found a good spot. I’ll see you later, (Y/N). Good luck!”

What the fuck. Now have to worry about this stupid speech and possibly an arson charge for being an accomplice to a fireworks smuggler.

—-

I’m actually going to shit myself.

That was my first coherent thought as Principal Dort climbed onto a tree stump like some prophet of embarrassment, his clipboard tucked under one arm and a shiny purple T-shirt in hand. The fabric flapped dramatically in the breeze, reading “Camp Outcast!” in tacky block letters.

“For the next two days,” he announced, puffing out his chest as though we were about to witness a revolution, “Camp Jericho is now known as… Camp Outcast!”

The cheer that followed was hesitant at best. A few overly-enthusiastic werewolves and sirens whooped. The rest of us just stood there, blinking in silent suffering, weighed down by the scent of pine, bug spray, and collective despair.

I was off to the side, clinging to my journal like it was a flotation device on a sinking ship. Because let’s be honest, this was a sinking ship. 

The pages inside were a disaster zone — five bullet points that didn’t make sense, two doodles, one coffee stain, and a final note in my own handwriting that just said “wing it!” circled three times in increasing panic.

I had tried. I really had. I’d stayed up the night before, staring at a blank page, trying to write something motivational about unity and community and “embracing our inner outcast.” But every sentence sounded like I was auditioning to be a guidance counselor. I’d crossed everything out, rewritten it, and crossed it out again until I was left with… this.

Nothing. Just me, a half-dead pen, and a stomach doing gymnastics like it was trying to make the Olympics.

“This is a new annual tradition at Nevermore,” Dort continued, his voice gratingly chipper. “A wilderness retreat that promotes community building, team spirit, and most importantly… Outcast pride!”

A few straggling cheers followed. Somewhere, a cricket chirped in protest.

This had to be the lamest possible setting for a speech — surrounded by trees, sweat, and hormonal teenagers who couldn’t care less about anything being said. My palms were slick, and I could already imagine myself tripping over a root, dropping my notes, and vomiting into the nearest campfire while everyone filmed it.

I’m cooked. I’m actually cooked. 

“And now,” Dort said, the death knell in his voice cheerful and oblivious, “I’d like to introduce Nevermore’s top-performing student as well as your oldest member of the student body — (Y/N) (L/N)!”

Oh, fantastic. My death sentence.

My throat went dry. I started to take one step forward—then froze.

A sharp WHHHHHT! split the air.

The sound was so loud it made me flinch.

Out of the woods came a stocky man in a khaki uniform, his boots pounding the dirt like gunfire. Behind him, at least twenty boys in matching military-style outfits jogged in formation. What the fuck—

“I am Ron Kruger, Phoenix Cadet Master!” the man barked, snapping his heels together like this was a parade ground instead of a high school camping trip. His voice was pure drill sergeant— gravelly, too loud, and carrying an ego large enough to require its own tent.

The Nevermore students stared. Dort blinked, mid-speech, still frozen on his stump.

As they surrounded the stump, one of them stepped directly in front of me — tall, square-shouldered, effectively blocking my path.

Normally, I’d have been offended by the proximity. But in that moment, I could have kissed this stranger's shoes for saving me from social suicide. Even though, admittedly, there wasn’t much to be saved. Still, I wasn’t looking to go into the negatives. 

“I reserved this campground six months ago for my annual Camp CLAW,” Kruger barked, his voice commanding instant silence. “Cadets—what does CLAW stand for?”

“Camping! Learning! Adventure! Wilderness!” they all screamed in unison, the sound echoing across the woods.

Okay. I should have backed up before that. My ears were ringing, and my soul momentarily left my body.

Dort looked frazzled, though his growing irritation was growing more obvious. “Well, uh, there must be some mistake—”

“We have a signed contract,” Kruger cut in. “Which means you need to pack your tents and vacate the woods immediately.”

As the two argued, no one moved. Students exchanged confused glances. The professors who came along started murmuring. Dort and Kruger squared off in the clearing, each trying to out-bluster the other.

And that’s when it hit me.

No one was looking at me. No one was waiting for my speech. No one cared.

Oh my God.

I can run.

Without another thought, I turned on my heel and bolted— weaving through the crowd, dodging a few cadets and startled classmates, my heart racing with giddy disbelief. The world had never seen someone flee so fast.

Thank you, random white man. I won’t forget this act of divine interference.

The deeper I ran into the campgrounds, the cooler the air felt. The sound of voices faded behind me, replaced by the rustle of leaves and the hum of insects.

Then I saw it— a stripped-down tent surrounded by a suspicious amount of fireworks.

Pugsley’s.

Perfect.

I ducked inside the tent without hesitation, yanking the flap closed behind me like I’d just sealed off the rest of civilization. Finally taking a breath of relief that sounded a kind to a laugh, I was free.

The dim light filtering through the canvas walls gave everything a warm tint. My coffin sat in the middle, a familiar black shape among the chaos of unpacked bags. The lid was cracked open just enough for a pale, half-decayed hand to rest lazily over the edge.

Isaac was awake.

He didn’t try to move when I came in, just tilted his head toward me, that single dull blue eye glinting faintly. The other socket was empty and sunken, shadowed like something that used to look back at the world but decided it wasn’t worth it anymore.

“Guess who just got out of doing her speech?” I announced, still catching my breath.

Isaac lifted his head toward me, slow and deliberate, his one eye blinking once. It was the most validating reaction I’d had all day.

“Apparently,” I continued, throwing my journal onto the floor, not even caring about it anymore— I didn’t even want to look at the damned thing, “the campsite got double-booked with some group of boot camp cosplayers. So while the adults were too busy playing territorial pissing contest, I just—” I mimed a quick sprint with two fingers, “booked it out of there.”

Isaac didn’t blink this time. His expression didn’t change either — it rarely did — but somehow, I could tell he was unimpressed. “I know,” I muttered, sighing. “Very brave of me. Ten points to Griffindor.”

He tilted his head now, confused. I just stared at him for a moment, trying to imagine what he was possibly thinking, or just not getting.

“Oh shit, you don’t know what Harry Potter is, huh?”

Isaac shook his head.

“Ah…well, I’m not sure if it’s your thing, but we can have a movie marathon night when we get back to school— it’s a good series.”

That got a clearer sound from him — a noise low in his throat, like a growl softened into amusement. His mouth tugged up slightly on one side, though that might’ve been because the other side couldn’t.

“Anyway,” I muttered, walking over to the coffin, “you’ve been cooped up long enough.” I found the key ring lying atop a bag beside it and crouched down to start unlocking his chains. “Everyone’s distracted, so this is our best shot to stretch your legs. You could use some practice walking that doesn’t end with you hitting my wall.”

The locks clicked open one by one, each sound louder than it should’ve been. Isaac moved slowly as I worked. Not because he was weak, but because he was letting me. Always careful, always deliberate.

When I undid the last chain, he rose from the coffin in one fluid, quiet motion. Despite the state of him — the torn jacket, the faint smell of earth and rotting flesh — there was still something elegant in how he moved. Monstrous, but measured. Like he was remembering what it was to be human and deciding to play along.

He loomed over me for a moment, his single eye flicking down at my face. For a split second, I swore I saw amusement there — and something else, something sharper.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I said flatly, standing. “You have one fuckin eye and you're still doing the judgmental stares.”

Isaac’s mouth twitched again. If he could talk, I was sure he’d have some smart, cutting remark— the kind that would both insult me and make me laugh despite myself.

He moved to the flap and lifted it with one hand— careful, almost courteous— and peered outside. His gaze fell immediately on the faint tripwire Pugsley had strung across the entrance. Without much thought, Isaac stepped cleanly over it, his coat brushing the line just enough to make it rattle faintly.

I sighed. “So much for that containment protocol.”

Following him out, I let the flap fall shut behind us. The forest swallowed us instantly. Shadows and light weave through the tall pines, and the distant murmur of the camp is now just background noise. The path we found was narrow and uneven, overgrown. Ferns brushed against my legs as we started walking.

The air smelled like wet moss and bark. The sun slanted in through the canopy, turning the dust motes golden. It would’ve been peaceful if I hadn’t still been internally screaming about how close I’d come to humiliating myself back there. I was relieved, but a little tired mentally.

The woods felt quieter the deeper we went— like even the insects didn’t want to intrude. Twigs cracked under my boots as I followed behind Isaac, who moved with that slow, deliberate gait of his. The faint crunch of his shoes against the dirt path was steady, almost rhythmic. I’d forgotten what that sounded like—him walking beside me, it had been years...

It was strange how easy it was to forget what he was. If you didn’t look too long at the rotting skin under his collar or the way his right hand hung awkwardly where the muscle had stiffened, maybe I just got used to him being like this. Even with him slowly healing.

The air was cool and damp, filtered through the canopy above. The sun came in thin streaks, cutting through the trees like slivers of gold. For once, I wasn’t thinking about speeches, or school, or the increasingly cursed list of problems waiting for me back at camp.

I was just… walking.

“Not exactly how I pictured our little getaway,” I muttered, stepping over a fallen log. “Ten out of ten Yelp review so far, though. Great ambiance. Sucks they took our phones so we can’t take pictures…”

Isaac grunted softly— his version of a laugh, I think. It came out more like a low, guttural rumble that vibrated through his chest. Somehow, that sound had started to feel familiar. Comforting, even.

We walked a while longer, weaving between tall pines until the faint sound of water reached us. It started as a soft trickle, then a steady rush. I picked up my pace, pushing through a curtain of ferns— and there it was.

A waterfall. Small, but hidden and beautiful. Like an oasis of sorts. The water spilled from a rocky ledge into a shallow pool surrounded by moss and smooth stones. Mist clung to the air, glittering in the sunlight that broke through the trees.

I blinked at it for a long moment, honestly forgetting to breathe. Isaac stepped up beside me, tilting his head toward the water. His one eye seemed to catch the light for a moment, reflecting the soft shimmer like a gem set in ruin.

I stepped closer to the pool, testing the rocks with my boots. They were slick with moss, but wide enough to walk on if I kept my balance. The sound of rushing water filled the space between us— loud, steady, peaceful.

“I always forget how loud waterfalls are,” I said over the noise. “You’d think it’d be all soothing and tranquil, but no, it’s like standing next to an airplane engine…it’s still kind of nice though.”

He followed a few feet behind, slow and careful, always watching where I placed my feet. His attention wasn’t subtle; it never was, but somehow it didn’t bother me. It was just… him. Him watching, like he always used to.

As I tried to step onto a narrower rock near the edge, my foot slipped slightly on the wet surface. I swore under my breath, arms flailing for a second before a cold, solid hand caught mine.

Isaac’s grip was firm, anchoring me. His thumb brushed over the back of my hand— just once, like he was checking I was real. If I were okay. He didn’t let go even when I was steady again, his grip surprisingly strong for someone whose muscles were still remembering how to work.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I said, though my heart was thudding way too fast for that to be true. “Don’t look so smug about it.”

He tilted his head, eye narrowing in mock offense.

“Okay, you can be smug,” I said, giving his hand a little squeeze. “You earned it.”

We moved closer to the waterfall, so much so that the mist had begun to cling to our skin and hair, the sensation almost made me feel ticklish. It was nice, cool, especially since the first was somewhat humid.

Isaac made a low, rumbling sound again, softer this time, almost like a purr. I didn’t even notice how close he’d gotten until his shadow fell over me again, his chest grazing my back as I looked up at him before facing back at the water.

“Not bad, huh?” I said, moving to sit down on one of the larger stones. “Way better than Camp Jericho’s giant dirt patch and mosquito rave.”

He crouched beside me, movement deliberate and unhurried. His one hand reached for the water, fingers dipping into the stream. The current bent around them like it didn’t dare resist.

For a while, neither of us said anything. Not that he could, anyway. But it didn’t feel like silence. The sound of the falls filled in the gaps—white noise over all the things I didn’t have to explain.

I leaned back on my hands, letting the spray hit my face. “You know,” I said after a while, “this might actually count as relaxing. Which is disturbing in itself.”

Isaac turned toward me, that half-expression he did, almost a smile, but not quite, thanks to a good chunk of his cheeks still missing. I caught myself smiling back before I could stop it. I did that a lot more these days.

He reached out again, brushing his cold fingers lightly against the edge of my sleeve. It was such a small, subtle gesture, but it made the back of my neck warm. Like he was saying, stay close without words.

So I did.

We sat like that for a long while, just existing. I talked— about nothing and everything. How bad the cafeteria food was. How Principal Dort’s fake smile made my skin crawl. How I hated pretending like everything at Nevermore was fine when it wasn’t.

Isaac didn’t respond, but his attention never drifted. When he did move, it was to tilt his head slightly toward me, or to trace the damp rock with his thumb like he was trying to remember what it felt like. Not that he could feel much through the gloves.

Eventually, I stood, brushing off my jeans. “We should probably head back. We’ve probably been out here for at least half an hour, and I’d rather not test my luck with any students starting to disperse around the area.”

Isaac rose beside me, towering as always. He didn’t make a sound of protest—just gave me a look that lingered a little too long, like he was disappointed but resigned.

“C’mon,” I said, nodding toward the path. “We can visit your scenic waterfall paradise another time. Maybe when you’re less decomposed.”

He made a sound that could’ve been a scoff.

I laughed softly and started back up the trail. “Yeah, yeah. You’re perfect as you are, don’t get sentimental on me.”

We followed the winding path back through the trees, sunlight dimming as the forest thickened again. I was still rambling about something—probably Pugsley and his fireworks or Dort’s latest “outcast pride” speech—when the trees thinned out just enough to reveal something ahead.

A cabin.

It was old, wooden, leaning slightly to one side like it had been forgotten by time. The windows were covered in grime, and ivy crawled up the sides.

I slowed down immediately. “Huh…I didn’t know people tried living out here?”

Or maybe it was some sort of vacation home…huh.

Isaac huffed quietly, but he followed when I turned back toward camp.

As we walked, the forest seemed to close behind us again, the path narrower now, the light softer. The sound of the waterfall faded into the distance, leaving only the rustle of leaves and our footsteps.

It was quiet. Peaceful. Almost normal.

And for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel like I was waiting for something to go wrong.

I felt like hell.

The kind that lingers— quiet, sticky, impossible to shake off. It wasn’t guilt exactly. Guilt implies I did something wrong on purpose. No, this was something else— a slow, gnawing dread that maybe I’d made the wrong choice for the right reasons.

Was letting Tyler see Laurel Gates again really worth it? Probably not.

But then again, what was?

He said he wanted out of Willow Hill, that he’d do anything. And Dr. Fairburn had insisted it could help — that exposure might weaken whatever invisible tether still bound him to that monster. “Confrontation can undo conditioning,” she told me over the phone when I called to ask follow-up questions. I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to.

But even now, the idea of Laurel’s voice reaching him again made me sick. The sound of it could crawl under your skin if you weren’t careful. She’d hollowed the boy out once. What if she still had the key to do it again?

My fingers drifted across the piano keys, searching for something to hold onto. A melody, a memory, anything. The sound came out thin at first— just single notes, the kind of absentminded tune you play when thinking too hard. The wood beneath my hands was cold. My reflection in the polished surface looked… tired.

I leaned on one arm, propping my chin against my fist, and kept playing. Not quite music. Not quite noise either. Just thought, turned the sound.

Tyler didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of it. The poor kid had already been a weapon once— abused, groomed even, then left spending the remainder of his childhood in a cage. With his condition, there was never going to be a normal life waiting for him. But maybe—just maybe—he could still have a life.

I didn’t want to let him down. I’m not much, but I’m all that boy has left. And that was a terrifying thought.

Before I could process it, a cluster of ivory keys depressed on their own— low notes thudding like a heartbeat out of sync with mine.

My brow furrowed. I sat up.

A familiar shadow scrambled into view— a pale stitched hand perched on the edge of the keyboard like a spider with perfect manners.

“Oh,” I exhaled, the tension slipping out of me all at once. “It’s you again.”

Thing tilted toward me, his fingers drumming a curious rhythm, as if asking what the hell I was doing alone in the dark.

I sighed, sitting back on the bench. “Nothing. Just… overthinking, I guess.”

He signed quickly: You look upset.

“I look tired,” I corrected softly, though the ghost of a smile tugged at my mouth. “Big difference.”

He didn’t seem to buy it. He crawled higher, balancing himself in a way to avoid making a sound atop the keys, the tips of his fingers making soft taps against the wood. Then he signed again — You sounded nice.

That earned a real laugh from me, thin but genuine. “Did I now? I haven’t played in years, I didn’t know I still had it in me.”

Thing gave what could only be described as a nod, then shuffled himself to the keyboard, waiting. I glanced at him — the way he lingered, poised. Expectant.

“You play?”

He gave his version of a nod. How would a little thing like him know how to play? Who the hell would take the time to teach a bodiless creature to play a piano? 

Gomez. Probably Gomez.

“All right,” I murmured, cracking my knuckles. “Fine. But you’d better keep up.”

This time, I let the melody bloom — something lighter, something with movement. Thing hovered near the lower keys, listening closely. When I repeated the refrain, he joined in, pressing the bass notes in steady time with my right hand.

It was ridiculous — a duet between a vampire and a severed hand — but somehow it worked. The sound built into something playful, almost bright.

The duet grew naturally — as if he had been waiting for this moment all along.

Thing’s fingers drummed out the rhythm first, steady and percussive. I followed, threading melody through the beats he laid down. It was rough at first, my own hesitations tripping against his certainty, until something clicked.

Our playing became conversation — back and forth, call and response. My right hand dancing, his striking the lower chords like a heartbeat.

I could almost hear words in the rhythm. His playful taps, my cautious answering notes.

It was absurd — and yet, the longer we played, the less I thought about it. 

Thing started improvising flourishes — running up the keys, balancing on the black ones, then sliding down in perfect time. He’d pause, let me answer, then echo me a beat later like an echo in a cavern. It shouldn’t have worked. But somehow, it did.

“Try-hard,” I muttered, trying not to smile.

He flipped me off mid-run without missing a note.

That actually made me laugh — an unguarded, honest laugh that startled even me. My fingers faltered for a second, but Thing picked up my melody seamlessly, covering for me as if he’d known the slip was coming.

“Now you’re just showing off and saving my ass,” I said. “That’s cheating.”

He signed, quick and smug: That’s teamwork.

We played like that for what felt like an eternity, though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Each repetition of the melody grew bolder, brighter. At some point, I realized I was grinning. Not politely, not sarcastically — just grinning.

Then, with all the dramatics of a Broadway exit, he began to crawl across the keys — his fingers producing an ascending series of notes as he scuttled toward me. The sound rose in pitch, a glissando born not of technique but pure mischief; he even did a little twirl for me, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

Thing didn’t care. He climbed onto my wrist and continued his little journey, crawling up my sleeve and across my shoulder. I felt each careful tap of his fingertips through the thin fabric of my blouse, the faint chill of his skin raising goosebumps down my arm. He nudged a strand of my hair out of the way as he crossed behind my neck, then descended my other arm until he reached my hand again — triumphant, as if conquering some vast human mountain range.

I caught him there, cupping him in both hands, careful not to squeeze. He rested in my palms, flexing his fingers contentedly like a cat kneading a soft blanket.

“I didn’t know you played,” I murmured, watching him waggle his index finger proudly. “You seemed quite enthusiastic to show off your skills.”

Thing gave a small, exaggerated shrug — if a hand could look smug, he managed it.

I smiled, shaking my head as I noticed how… well, polished he looked. His skin seemed smoother, stitches tighter and cleaner, nails neatly trimmed and buffed to a faint sheen. For someone made of spare parts, he looked downright dapper.

“You freshen up nice,” I teased.

That made him flustered — he gave a shy little swipe of his wrist and then spun in my palms as if to show off his look. I laughed quietly.

“Oh? Showing off now? Was there any special occasion for it?”

Thing hesitated before signing quickly. Something about Morticia and Gomez. A spa day. Then — birthday.

My brows furrowed. “Your… birthday?”

He confirmed with a proud little wiggle of his fingers.

That stopped me. A hand with a birthday. It was absurd. And yet, somehow, I believed him. Of course, the Addams’s would celebrate that kind of thing. But then my smile faded a little as he went on, his gestures becoming slower, more downcast. Apparently, everyone had forgotten this year — the Addams family included. They’d remembered last-minute, thrown together some presents, but Thing still felt like an afterthought. Like they saw him as a pet or servant, not as… well, him.

I stared at him for a moment, at the way his fingers curled in on themselves. There was something heartbreakingly human about that gesture.

It hit me in a place I didn’t expect. I’d been so sharp with him in the past, brushing him off whenever he tried to reach out. Maybe I hadn’t realized that he could feel all of it — the loneliness, the invisibility.

“I see,” I said quietly, my voice softer than I meant it to be. “So I must have missed the party then?”

Thing gave a sad little twitch of his thumb, then he signed: there wasn’t one to miss.

For once, I didn’t have a sarcastic comment locked and loaded. My chest ached with something unfamiliar — guilt, maybe. Or pity. Both emotions I wasn’t particularly fond of.

“Well,” I said, drawing in a breath, “I’m sorry too. If I’d known, I would’ve gotten you something. Or spent the day with you.”

Then, ridiculously, I brought him closer, my palms cradling him like a fragile creature, and pressed a gentle kiss to his cold, stitched knuckles. “Happy belated birthday, Thing.”

He froze. Completely. His fingers went rigid, then slowly curled as though he was trying to remember how to function. The faint warmth radiating from his skin startled me — I hadn’t expected that. Maybe embarrassment? Fluster? Whatever it was, his skin felt warmer, damper, almost clammy in my palms.

His index finger twitched, tracing a hesitant line against my thumb, a wordless thank you.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” 

This man had the worst fucking timing. I didn’t even notice the sound of him coming from the hallway until he burst through the doors.

Principal Dort’s voice rang out, rich and oily, carrying a grin far too wide for any human to bear. “Always working hard and practicing something, I see!”

Thing stiffened immediately, curling slightly, a small warning tap against my palm. I barely held back a sigh. “Hello, Principal Dort,” I said, my tone neutral, letting my eyes flick to Thing as I subtly positioned him on my shoulder. His tiny fingers dug lightly into the fabric of my coat, a silent anchor.

“Oh, come now! Don’t be so formal! I like to keep things lively.” Dort’s eyes sparkled with that maddening mix of charm and scheming. “Speaking of which, I have something marvelous to discuss!” He leaned forward, hands spread as though I had no choice but to listen. “I’m sure you’ve heard about our trip to Camp Jericho—starting a new Nevermore tradition! ‘Camp Outcast!’ I can tell it's going to be a hit with the kiddos.”

Thing gave my shoulder a tiny, apprehensive tap. I understood. He sensed my unease, the way Dort’s energy always made me bristle. I’m sure he felt it too, the forced cheerfulness; it was revolting. I could hardly hide my irritation.

“I also happened to notice how you had failed to sign up for the event.”

“I wasn’t interested.” I wasn’t entirely lying. 

In all honesty, going out there in the wilderness, far away from civilization, sounded quite nice. Running from the hustle and bustle, expectations of daily life. I could probably use something like that, an escape from it all.

But not when doing so meant I had to share that secluded space with hundreds of other obnoxious teenagers. Not when I had a zombie back in my dorm, I had to keep from escaping, I promised Pugsley I’d babysit when he was out after all.

“And,” Dort continued, voice syrupy sweet, “as our most exemplary student, oldest member of the student body, and top-performing scholar…” He paused, letting the words sink in, “I’m counting on you to give an opening speech.”

I froze. Thing’s fingers twitched against my shoulder, almost imperceptibly, and I knew he could feel my pulse quicken.

He did not just fucking ask me that—no, tell me I had to fucking do that.

“I beg your pardon?” I said, flat, letting the incredulity hang in the air like smoke.

“Think about it, it’s the perfect way to kickstart the new is, presenting with someone who knows their stuff— I am still winning over students here, so having a familiar face might help rouse the crowds,” Dort replied, spreading his arms theatrically. “You are the walking crossroad of Nevermore’s past and present! Your presence here is inspiring—not to mention the glowing recommendation for medical school it will earn you. Surely, you wouldn’t want to undermine your future?”

My jaw clenched at that. The man had no tact whatsoever, dangling the one thing I didn’t need to be reminded about—my vampire status and the constant skepticism about my aspirations. No one was exactly jumping out of their seats to let a bloodsucker onto their medical staff. This time, I didn’t choose silence; honestly, words escaped me at his audacity. 

I only told Professor Orloff about that dream of mine…

And what the fuck was this guy's angle anyway? He seems to want to milk the idea that I was some star student so badly; was he that desperate to make Nevermore stand out? Why? I couldn’t think of an answer, not that I cared much for one; I’d rather he just drop fucking dead and leave me the fuck alone.

“I see that expression,” Dort said, leaning slightly closer, his grin unwavering. “Is that the thrill of command?”

I allowed my gaze to drift down to the piano keys, letting Thing settle more firmly on my shoulder. He tapped gently against my collarbone, a small reassurance. I could feel his tiny hand shift with the subtle rhythm of my breathing.

“I’m… not really comfortable with public speaking,” I said finally, trying to keep my voice calm. I didn’t buy it; something was clearly wrong here. Not that I was in much of a position to find out what. “Speeches, rallies, pep talks…they aren’t exactly my speed. I doubt I have any real wisdom to gift to others...”

“Nonsense!” Dort boomed, unfazed. “You simply cannot let opportunity slip through your fingers. Think of the doors it will open, Miss (L/N).”

I exhaled slowly, letting my eyes flick to Thing. I was pissed, to be frank. He twitched, as though saying, I don’t like this either.

“I’m not an inspirational speaker,” I muttered, letting a sarcastic edge creep in, though unspoken. Just don’t fucking crash out, if not for Thing grounding me in this moment—I honestly to God don’t know what I’d do. It was stone-cold rage settling in my chest.  The kind that settles under your ribs, but it doesn’t make you yell; if anything, it pushes you so far out of your body you wonder how you haven’t started screaming. “I don’t inspire. I’m probably the second worst option as is.”

Did he learn nothing from the Pyre incident?

“Ah, but you could!” Dort clapped his hands together so sharply that Thing flinched. “And the recommendation! Think of medical school, Miss (L/N)! Surely, a vampire with leadership experience and a spotless record would stand out! They’d have no choice but to accept you regardless of their reservations!”

Thing patting my shoulder as if to whisper: You don’t have to if you don’t want to. No, I didn't have to; this stupid motherfucker wasn’t giving me much of a choice. I stared at Dort, letting the simmering frustration curl in my chest, but I refused to let it bubble to the surface. My voice remained even, but the words came out sharp, deliberate.

“I’ll… consider it,” I said, carefully noncommittal. My mouth shut quickly after, letting Dort stew in the pause. A tactical silence. Thing’s little fingers pressed against my collarbone, a reminder that even in the absurdity of this request, I wasn’t entirely alone. To be honest, without him here, I fear I might have lost my shit on this guy.

“Ah! Consider it? Excellent!” Dort’s grin stretched impossibly wide, entirely ignoring my hesitation. “I knew you’d see the potential. And imagine— students hanging on every word, and my recommendation in your pocket. What a brilliant combination!”

I let my head fall into my hands briefly as he spun theatrically and exited, humming something annoyingly cheerful as the door clicked shut behind him.

I exhaled audibly. Thing patted my shoulder again, a tiny, rhythmic motion that did little to diminish my anger. “Yes, yes,” I whispered back, letting my fingers brush his cold knuckles in a soft, affectionate mimic of the earlier kiss. “I know… I’ll figure it out. Somehow.”

—

Oh god, I’m actually going to kill someone— this was the final fucking straw.

The thought ripped through my skull like a spark in dry brush, and before I knew it, I’d stormed into my room hard enough to rattle the hinges. The door slammed, the lock clicked, and the sound echoed like a gunshot in the silence that followed.

My bag hit the floor. So did the remains of my self-control.

Isaac was sitting up in bed when I entered— or, well, slouched might’ve been more accurate. His movements were slow, uneven, and animalistic. He tilted his head toward me, that faint creak of strained joints accompanying the gesture. His clouded eye glinted faintly under the low light, reflecting me like I was some curious specimen under glass.

I didn’t even greet him. I just marched toward the bed, grabbed a pillow, and buried my face in it.

Then screamed.

The sound was raw and guttural, tearing out of me until my throat burned and my lungs went hollow. I screamed until I had no breath left, until the frustration was a physical ache in my chest.

When I finally surfaced for air, hair clinging to my face, I let the words spill out without filter. “Goddamn it—goddamn that good-for-nothing petty bitch!”

I threw the pillow down and started smacking it against the mattress with both hands, over and over, the dull thump a poor substitute for breaking someone’s nose or smashing a skull in. Depends on the time of day. It felt childish— because it was. I knew it. But this was the only place I could let that part of me breathe.

Isaac tilted his head, watching me with that strange, eerie stillness of his. His jaw went slack for a second, the faintest gurgling sound escaping his throat— the half-formed attempt at a question. I’d learned to understand the rhythm of his sounds; he was trying to ask a question.

“Principal Dort,” I spat the name like poison, pacing now. “He’s making me do a speech at Camp Jericho — or as he’s calling it, ‘Camp Outcast.’” I made air quotes with my fingers and rolled my eyes so hard I thought they’d get stuck. “So stupid. Like fuck!”

Isaac’s cloudy gaze followed me as I began pacing across the room. His head tilted with each step, like a predator tracking motion, fascinated. When I stopped mid-rant, he made a small noise again — a drawn-out, wet exhale that sounded vaguely amused.

“Don’t give me that look,” I snapped, jabbing a finger toward him. “Not all of us are used to presenting in front of crowds like you, Night! Especially this ‘we’re all special snowflakes’ speech bullshit—”

Isaac followed me with his good eye, his head moving slowly and stiff on his neck, one vertebra at a time, like gears catching. His chains clinked faintly with each subtle shift of his body — I’d loosened them weeks ago, but he still dragged them around like heavy jewelry. He reached out suddenly and shut the laptop I’d left open for him, the click of plastic startlingly loud.

My anger drained in a slow exhale. I dropped to the floor beside my bed, ignoring the way the wooden boards bit into my knees. My back hit the wall, and I slid down until I was eventually flat on the floor, arms limp, the pillow still gripped in one hand like a weapon.

Above me, I heard the faint rattle of chains. Isaac shifted, metal scraping faintly against the bed frame as he leaned over to peer down at me. His face— or what was left of it—was curious. What skin remained clung pale and tight over bone, his expression flickering between vague confusion and quiet calculation.

“No,” I muttered, not even looking at him. “I don’t want to come up there.”

He made a low, guttural sound that might’ve been annoyance.

“It’s not about being comfortable,” I sighed, dragging a hand down my face. “It’s about thinking.”

Another growl, quieter this time. He gestured loosely — his hand, pale and split with old scars, waved toward me in a motion that roughly translated to get over here.

I shook my head. “Just come down here, then. I don’t feel like moving.”

Isaac made a noise — a short, irritated growl — and shifted, his chains clinking as he slid off the mattress. His movements were jerky, too strong in one moment, sluggish in the next, like a marionette guided by half-remembered muscle memory. He crouched beside me, the sound of his joints popping faintly as he lowered himself, leaning his back against the side of the bed.

He didn’t touch me. He just sat there. Watching.

Silence filled the room.

I stared up at the ceiling. My mind was a spiral of static. My anger unraveling into a low, hollow ache, I was still ticked off, but I forced myself to at least attempt to calm myself down before I actually crashed out this time.

“I don’t even know what I’d say,” I murmured, curling my knees up to my chest. “There’s nothing about me that screams inspirational or optimistic. Though…” I sighed, leaning back against the bed beside him, “I guess anything’s better than our last speech. But I’m not exactly a beacon of optimism and ambition…I only do things because I have to, not because I have a drive to.”

My anger started to fade into something more deflated. I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, forcing a breath through my teeth. “And you wanna know what else he fucking did? He pulled the med school card. Said it’d ‘look good on my application,’ and that a recommendation from him might help— like they might take a vampire heart surgeon seriously with his help. Like fuck off with that shit.”

He didn’t attempt to say anything, but I could tell by the low sound that came from his chest that he was at the very least listening to me.

When I lowered my hands, I just looked at Isaac. His head tilted just slightly, studying me the way someone might study fire — something dangerous, tragic, doomed to consume itself.

“I mean, I couldn’t even inspire Tyler— one person. How am I supposed to talk to an entire camp full of teenagers? They’d eat me alive.” I snorted, rubbing a hand over my face. “Not that I care what anyone thinks of me. I just don’t want to do it. Especially not when that asshat basically strong-armed me into it.”

That earned me a rumble of a sound from Isaac — maybe a laugh, maybe a snarl. Hard to tell.

I turned my head, resting my temple against the edge of the bedframe, watching him from the corner of my eye. His chest rose and fell in uneven rhythm, like he was remembering how to breathe just for me.

He’d been a cynic in life — detached, sarcastic — but now there was something else there, something colder. Curiosity tinged with hunger. He liked watching me lose control, I could tell. It fascinated him, the way fury flickered through me like lightning through storm clouds. I wonder what he was thinking, like he’d even tell me if he could.

The silence stretched again. My pulse slowed. I could almost hear the faint click of his jaw tightening, the wet grind of his muscles as he turned to face me more fully.

I sighed again and whispered, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

His mouth twitched. Then, softly, he made a sound that could only be described as a laugh — hoarse and broken, but unmistakably amused.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I bet you are. Asshole.”

I am in charge of Hyde, I’m housing a reanimated corpse, and I basically raised Francoise while still being in school. And even now, I’m still holding all this shit together while still focusing on graduating and running far away from this awful town. Realistically, this stupid speech really wasn’t that big of a deal compared to everything I’ve dealt with. Yet for some reason, this cherry on top was what was actually about to make me lose my shit.

The curse of being stuck in the body of a teenager, where biology was against the idea of my reacting rationally to a situation that was not that deep. There were worse traumas in this world, bigger things for me to worry about. 

I hadn’t been able to feed Isaac anything other than animal brains these past few days. Nevermore wasn’t stocked with an endless supply of cadavers, and Jericho’s morgue wasn’t close enough to make a casual theft easy. The idea of sneaking into a small-town mortuary, stuffing someone’s loved one’s organs into my bag, and walking the few miles back to school under the cover of night—

Well.

It was too fucked up.

And the worst part was that I had considered it. More than once.

My mind was slipping into places it shouldn’t. The kind of thoughts that used to horrify me now just… sat there, dull and heavy, waiting for justification. I could almost hear myself reasoning it out: It’s not like they’re using it anymore.

That kind of logic didn’t scare me as much as it used to.

And now with this stupid “Camp Outcast”, I had even more to worry about. I couldn’t just leave Isaac alone for a weekend. He was… mostly lucid these days, sure. But the thought of coming back to find a missing student and a blood trail leading to my room was not appealing.

Maybe the morgue trip was the ethical option after all.

I found myself on the floor beside him again, knees drawn to my chest, my side brushing his cold one. His head tilted, the motion birdlike, and I swore he almost smiled — or the closest thing a half-decayed mouth could manage.

“You know…” I started, picking at the frayed edge of my sleeve. “I wish you were really here. You seem more lucid these days, but it’s no fun just talking to myself…at this point, I’m fishing for a snarky comment from you.”

He didn’t respond—at least not with words. His single cloudy eye drifted toward me, following the slow turn of my face, studying me in silence. The chains at his neck gave a faint metallic sigh as he shifted slightly closer, just enough that his knee brushed mine.

Something about that small, grounding contact made my chest tighten.

God, how far had I fallen?

I was sitting on the floor talking to a rotting corpse like he was my rock. And the worst part? He absolutely was.

There was something deeply wrong with me, and I could feel it—like a hairline fracture running through my skull that no one else could see. I was stressed, sleep-deprived, mentally chewing through myself just to stay functional. My thoughts were jagged. Paranoid. Angry.

Maybe I was going insane.

I sighed and glanced up at him. He’d turned his head toward me again, the pale stretch of his neck creaking faintly with the movement. His ruined mouth hung slightly open, a faint wet rasp pulling from his throat that might’ve been the ghost of a chuckle.

He was always like that—cold, but present. Possessive even now, like my every twitch or breath belonged to his observation. That was the kind of person he had been when he was alive, too. Sharp. Cruel in small ways. I don’t know why I was used to it, why I didn’t care to think about it too hard; maybe I excused it because it was him.

It was uncanny—the way his silence soothed me. The way just knowing he was watching me was enough to keep my temper from spiraling into something destructive. It was like some long-dead part of him still controlled me, even from that rotting shell.

He tilted his head again, his single working eye narrowing slightly. It was the kind of look he used to give me when I was overthinking something. Like he was amused by the mess in my head.

I used to pride myself on my detachment— how unaffected I was, like I had cracked the code on how to feel as little as possible. But lately, it was all slipping. My mind was slipping. Everything felt so loud and fast, like I was trapped in a body too small for my own thoughts.

I’d started thinking things I shouldn’t. Dark things. Petty, impulsive things that didn’t feel like me. But the scariest part was… they did feel like me now. Like I’d finally stopped hiding them.

And I didn’t know how to stop it.

I really had changed. Perhaps not in every way, but in ways that left the shift undeniable.

“You’re such a pain,” I muttered, more affection in the words than I’d admit aloud.

No response—only a faint huff of air through the ruined part of his throat.

I turned to glance at him— my eyes following his arms, his right one especially. I still hadn’t told him about Thing. There was still so much we hadn’t discussed yet, bringing up his disembodied hand living a life of its own felt impossible to explain. Maybe I was afraid to.

For a while, we just sat there like that. He, a morbid statue beside me; me, breathing through the chaos in my head until it dulled into something manageable.

Strangely, I just found myself leaning against him—my side brushing the coarse fabric of his coat, my temple resting against his shoulder. He didn’t flinch. He never did. The faint scent of earth and formaldehyde clung to him, but underneath it was something familiar—something that reminded me of rain on old stone, of rooms that never saw sunlight but still felt safe.

Perhaps I should’ve been more cautious. Disgusted. There was every reason to be. But I wasn’t. I never could be with him. My body seemed to know him before my mind caught up—like some buried instinct that didn’t care what was wrong or right anymore.

“Can you… play the piano, by any chance?”

The question left my mouth softer than I intended, barely above a whisper. It floated between us, fragile and absurd, like a wish spoken at a funeral.

His single eye shifted toward me, the movement almost too slow, too deliberate. I could see something flicker in that remaining iris—something caught between memory and confusion, like he was trying to reach for a sound that used to mean something to him. For a moment, he was still. Then, with mechanical precision, he gave a small, deliberate nod.

I blinked up at him, warmth rising in my chest. “Really?”

The smallest twitch pulled at the corner of his mouth—not quite a smile, but not nothing either. A fragment of humanity pieced together out of dead nerves.

Thing’s earlier glissando flashed in my mind—the ridiculous, endearing little hand dancing across the piano keys. The memory made my lips curve. So that’s where he got it from.

“I’d love to hear you play one day,” I murmured, voice barely holding itself steady. “When you’re healed up.”

He didn’t answer, but something about his gaze softened—not with affection exactly, something I couldn’t name. His eye followed me even when I wasn’t moving, as though to remind me he saw me, that I wasn’t slipping away without him knowing. Somehow, that was enough to make the noise in my head quiet for a while.

I let my head sink fully against his shoulder, the cold of his skin bleeding through the thin fabric of his shirt. My fingers twitched against his sleeve, half afraid he’d crumble, half needing the reassurance that he wouldn’t.

I knew how wrong it was—how grotesque this moment would look if anyone else saw it. Two broken things clinging to each other out of instinct, out of need. But I couldn’t bring myself to care. Not when the world had already turned so far off its axis that this, somehow, felt like the only thing holding me together.

Maybe I already lost it. My thoughts had started to sound like someone else’s voice lately—someone darker, colder, a whisper that told me this was fine, that falling apart could be soft too.

Maybe for once, I should try and worry about it another day.

Now, I could sit here and try to explain how we got into this situation, but frankly, the context doesn’t make it any less strange.

Pugsley’s brows were furrowed, his hand over his mouth as he contemplated his next move. He’d occasionally reach out to nudge a chess piece, then pull it back like he was embarrassed by indecision. His hair still stuck up in a way no comb could tame. He was earnest, gloriously unaware of the human social manual’s finer points, and earnestness was contagious in the way a scratchy sweater was — mildly irritating but somehow comforting.

Meanwhile, across from him, Isaac was slumped like a sack of rotting potatoes, a low wheeze rattling out of him every few seconds. Drool dripped steadily from his mouth, splattering onto the towel under his chair with obscene little plops. His eye wasn’t exactly focused on the board, but now and then it flicked—too sharp to be a fluke.

Eventually, Pugsley finally moved his rook, and after Isaac did this weird, almost blink, he then took his left hand and tapped his knight piece and gestured for me to move it for him. He wasn’t very mobile, so we created this silent system where I moved chosen pieces for him whichever way he gestured for me to.

Reaching over to move his knight exactly where he wanted it. His piece snapped up Pugsley’s rook, which joined the growing graveyard of Pugsley’s army on Isaac’s side of the board.

“Dang it!” Pugsley slapped his knee; he lost one of his last useful pieces.

“You are very bad at this game,” I said flatly, not bothering to look up.

Eugene, sitting off to the side, made a strangled noise. He’d been watching in horrified silence for at least ten minutes, and the poor boy looked like his soul was leaving his body. “This is actually so painful to watch.”

“What do you mean?” Pugsley asked, spinning toward him, scandalized.

“Bro, you’re losing. And your opponent doesn’t even have a brain.”

Pugsley puffed up. “Oh, well, if it’s so bad, why don’t you take yourself right out through the d-o-r-e.”

“The what?”

“The door—”

That did it. I slapped a hand over my mouth before I actually laughed in the kid’s face. Isaac, as if to punctuate the absurdity, let out a gurgling sigh so guttural it sounded like it clawed its way up from the depths of his soul.

Choking back laughter, I leaned an elbow on the table and deadpanned, “Loving whatever’s wrong with you.”

“Thank you!” Pugsley chirped, completely missing the point. Eugene dragged both hands down his face in defeat.

The alarm on my phone cut through the weird little bubble we'd built in my room — a flat, ordinary sound that somehow felt obscene in the middle of this circus. 

Donavan’s funeral was today. I didn’t want to take the trip back to Jericho, but it was necessary; I will honor his life simply because, for a time, he shared it with Francoise.

I shoved my phone into my pocket and disappeared into the closet. I pawed through a dozen black things like I was trying to pick a mood rather than an outfit. Nothing fancy because subtlety was doing the heavy lifting here: respectability without sentiment. 

I finally settled on a black dress, practical and perfect, one that accounted for the town’s gloomy weather without being too warm. The only problem was the fact that the zipper in the back was impossible to get up without dislocating an arm.

“Can one of you zip me up? I need to be back in Jericho in twenty,” I called without looking at anyone, because asking nicely had never helped me in the past, and I wasn’t planning to start now.

Pugsley and Eugene exchanged the panicked, “who-does-what” glance that boys born to the Addams household and a vaguely normal roommate do when required to perform a social task. Pugsley’s head tilted like a question mark; Eugene’s cheeks flushed.

I internally groaned. I should’ve just told Pugsley to do it. He would have just zipped the dress and left it at that.l. Instead, he gave Eugene the opportunity, as if he were doing his roommate a favor. Considering the Swarmer’s little crush, it probably was.

Eugene blinked and shuffled forward, face turning three shades red. “Uh—okay. Yeah. I can—” his voice snagged on the last word like it had a thorn.

That was when Isaac reacted.

He lunged — not a full, deliberate movement; more like the twitch of a predator remembering its claws. Chains rattled hard enough to scramble the silence. I had barely stepped between Eugene and the bed when Isaac threw his weight forward to the edge, jaw working in a wet, animal sound.

“Bad Slurp! No biting,” Pugsley scolded, as if leash-training a puppy. He sparked the way he always did, a harmless little shock meant to startle. Isaac recoiled with a sound like a clifffall.

I sighed, reached forward, and tightened the chain with one hand without breaking my motion, holding Isaac back from biting the boy. The metal was cool and angry under my fingers. Isaac’s face turned toward Eugene — not the boy’s face so much as the sound of another body being near me — and there was a look in his remaining eye that isn’t human behavior so much as territorial ownership. It pulled the room taut.

I wasn’t stupid; I knew why he reacted like that. There’s a line between protector and predator; Isaac had currently teetered on it. He had liked me when he’d been all boy and brilliance and disaster. At least I liked to believe he did. Maybe that’s why he reacted this way, even when he wasn’t in his right mind; the thought was certainly amusing.

Eugene squeaked and stepped back. The gesture broke the tension—Isaac’s body sagged just enough for me to nod my head back to signal for Eugene to continue. 

He moved with the nervous clumsiness of someone used to fumbling around boyish feelings; he was trying to be useful and failing upward. I watched Isaac’s head pivot, had seen the way that eye tracked every micro-movement. There was a small, resentful pull — a tightening in the ruined jaw — and then, when Eugene’s hand brushed the small of my back while he zipped the dress, something similar to a snarl vibrated the chain, which just made me narrow my eyes at Isaac.

I should have been alarmed. Instead, I let a dry, flat smile creep across my face—reflex, a shield. I had to be the competent one in rooms full of weirdness after all. “Thanks,” I said to Eugene in the tone adults use when a kid completes the most basic task. “You survived. You may now live a full life.”

He backed away, breath visible in the same small exhale that said, Thank God. He’d done the thing. He’d been brave. He grinned at me in that endearingly mortified way, the look people do when they are trying to be polite and not to freak out. I probably made that face a lot.

“You look nice,” Pugsley declared with the unfiltered sincerity that was the only thing helping calm my growing headache. What did I do to deserve being stuck with these three? “Where are you headed, anyway?”

“Funeral,” I said, gathering my clutch and smoothing the front of the dress with a practiced, impatient swipe.

“Lucky,” Pugsley replied, pouting a bit.

“I’ll remember to rsvp you as my plus one at the next one.”

Isaac made a sound that was half a growl, half a complaint, and I translated it: jealous, irritable, territorially offended. The boy still remembered how to be petty even in death. It made me roll my eyes, but smile to myself.

Putting my hands on my hips, I took a deep breath, then turned back toward the boys. “I don’t care if you want to hang here for a bit,” I told them, the words precise enough to cut through any lingering naive bravado. “Just don’t get seen. Don’t feed him anymore. I already fed him this morning—even if he whines, don’t give him anything, and I had to clean up his vomit last night when he ate that.” I jabbed a thumb at the bowl where Pugsley had ceremoniously set down his offering of mystery meat.

Isaac rumbled low, the chains trembling with the weight of his displeasure.

“Lose the attitude,” I narrowed my eyes, the line landing with practiced scolding. It was my version of a parental warning—sterner than affectionate, more control than concern. “Be good, not big.”

Then, because routine is the world’s best patch, I clicked the laptop open, hunting for background noise that could keep the boys occupied. “Fine, I put on something for you, you are so fucking spoiled,” I said aloud, turning the screen toward Isaac, who immediately huffed at it without looking at the screen. “It’s not Grey’s Anatomy this time—I put on Dexter. Stop whining.”

Eugene’s eyes flicked from the glow of the screen to Isaac’s ruined face and then to me. There was something like curiosity in him now, something that tried to reconcile the monster in my room with the girl he’d seen at the library. He watched like he was witnessing an accident and a miracle at once. Pugsley, on the other hand, just sat on the bed himself and watched the probably gory scene with great interest.

Isaac, for his part, sank back on the towel, letting the light from the laptop wash odd shadows across his features. He adjusted slightly as the show’s serial rhythms played out—too slow, too deliberate—then settled. For a creature that had eaten a man in the rain no more than a day ago, he had a surprising appetite for television. 

The wonders of technological advances he had missed out on in his death. He liked it when I put on darker shows and got mad when I put on dramas or, God forbid, a romance. He even just slammed my computer shut to tell me to turn it off.

I took a steadying breath. Leather jacket, keys, umbrella. “Do not touch anything while I’m gone,” I said, voice clipped and short, a command more than a request. “Slurp—” I jabbed a finger at Isaac— “if the short one with glasses goes anywhere near my dresser—eat him.”

The words were an absurd joke, the kind you make to slice the edge off fear. Isaac’s lip twitched, as if considering the literalness of it. I didn’t stick around to see if he’d take me seriously; I was half-kidding anyway. Half. I looped my arm through my bag, snapped my coat, and walked out the door. All the while, hearing the boys chatter around Isaac, something about the larvae Isaac seemed to be housing.

—-

 A dark, wooded coffin sat beneath a crooked oak, white flowers arranged neatly like they’d been bribed to bloom. A photo of Donavan leaned against the bouquet, the frame crooked from the breeze. I’d brought a lily—Francoise’s favorite—because someone had to bring something tasteful to this circus. I laid it down on the coffin without a word. The soil smelled like wet iron.

Only two others had bothered to show: Sheriff Santiago and Dr. Fairburn. Santiago was shifting from foot to foot, her badge dulled by the rain; Fairburn was her opposite—still, collected, umbrella perfectly angled, hands folded like a vulture disguised as a social worker. They murmured something between themselves, the kind of small talk meant to fill dead space before someone official shows up and tells us to pray.

I stepped up beside Fairburn. Silence felt like the only proper thing to wear here, so I kept it on for a while. When I finally spoke, it was business first, voice low and even under my umbrella.

“Did you get my paperwork?”

Fairburn turned slightly, her eyes sharp but soft at the edges. She was always looking, cataloguing, even when she smiled. “Yes. In all honesty, I was surprised you were able to complete it all and review it in just a few days.” A faint lift of a brow. “I trust you still rested in between?”

“Yeah. I’m nocturnal by nature, so staying up wasn’t a problem.” Partially true. The paperwork had been easy enough with my mind cleared. The exhaustion, not so much. Nights had become longer, heavier, full of chain-rattling and groans from the thing in my room I refused to call a monster.

Santiago’s voice cut in like gravel scraping pavement. “You’ll be responsible for the Hyde for now. Hope you’re not biting off more than you can chew.”

Why does everyone keep saying that? I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Instead, I tilted my head just enough to look like I’d considered her warning, then let the smallest shrug answer for me. “I have to. Dr. Fairburn and I already agreed—better under my wing than locked up like some rabid dog with a shock collar. The court wouldn’t recover him. They’d break him.”

The Sheriff stared at me for a beat, then gave a small nod. Respect or resignation—it was hard to tell with her.

“Smart girl,” Fairburn murmured. Not a compliment, not exactly. More like a footnote to her observations.

The officiant finally arrived, umbrella dripping, eyes darting around the small group like he was disappointed at the turnout. We fell silent as he began the prayer. I bowed my head, though my eyes stayed open, fixed on the coffin. The words rolled over me, scripture like a tide lapping at ankles.

Vampires were once painted as demons; you grow up with stories like that, and you end up with a complicated relationship to faith. Donavan hadn’t been a saint. I didn’t know where a man like him went after death, or if there was a heaven. If there was such a place, I hoped he’d make it there; Francoise would be excited to see him.

“May the road rise to meet you…” The officiant intoned. My grip tightened on my umbrella’s handle. “Amen…”

As the officiant stepped aside, I didn’t need to look up to know the tone of the air had changed. A figure stood there, and the temperature of the world seemed to drop a degree.

Wednesday Addams.

If funerals were uniforms, she was their general. Black on black, collar sharp as a blade, her stare sharper. She blended into the scenery so completely that it was like the graveyard had coughed her up.

“Three mourners,” she said flatly, eyes flicking across us but lingering on me a beat longer than the others. “That’s three more than Galpin ever deserved.”

The sheriff’s jaw ticked, her voice clipped. “The department had to send an official. He was a former sheriff. Lost the coin toss with Ryken.”

Ouch. I can’t say I ever liked Donavan, but it was rather depressing how little even his own colleagues seemed to care about his absence. Was I the only one who remotely felt for the guy? I was probably one of the last on the list of people who cared about him; that’s genuinely sad I was the closest to being considered mourning here right now.

“And I’m here representing Tyler,” Fairburn continued, stepping closer. “Who rather grimly asked me to make sure his father was really dead. What’s your excuse?”

“I’m mixing business with pleasure. Funerals are a hobby.” Wednesday’s cold eyes cut back to me as she added, “And killers have a habit of showing up to their victims’ interments.”

Ah. There it was. Suspect. My inner scowl didn’t show on my face. Let her think what she wanted. The less she knew, the better. Hence why I would rather keep my mouth shut for as long as I could.

“Dr. Fairburn tells me you visited Tyler at Willow Hill,” Santiago interjected, her voice dry. “He won’t give you clues. He’ll send you down rabbit holes.”

“It wasn’t years of police work that exposed Tyler as a Hyde,” Wednesday said, eyes flicking back to the Sheriff. “It was me.”

Arrogant, but true. This town’s police department was a joke, more an obstacle rather than a source of protection or justice.

The two of them sparred in words, but my focus stayed on Wednesday. Her presence was like static—every instinct in me said keep still, observe, don’t give her anything to work with. God knows what she’d do if I even gave her so much as an inch. Fairburn’s eyes slid from Wednesday to me and back again. She noticed. But she didn’t comment. Not yet.

“Then I shouldn’t have to warn you to stay out of the crosshairs of another unhinged Outcast,” Santiago continued. “Whoever killed Galpin and Bradbury means business.”

The name landed like a pebble dropped into a still pond. An unsolved case, then. Outcast killer. My brain filed it away, but my mouth stayed shut. I wasn’t about to start swapping theories with Wednesday Addams at a funeral. Ignorance was bliss; the less I knew, the better.

“Don’t tempt fate, Ms. Addams,” the Sheriff said as a farewell.

“Did Galpin ever visit Tyler?” Wednesday’s attention snapped to Dr. Fairburn.

“You don’t really expect me to tell you that,” Fairburn said smoothly, her tone clipped. HIPAA, confidentiality.

“Once.” The single word from Fairburn made my head jerk slightly, an involuntary flicker of surprise. Fairburn didn’t flinch at my reaction. “Within seconds, Tyler transformed. Almost ripped through those titanium bars. It took five minutes with a shock collar before he returned to his human form. Never seen anything like it. Pure, undiluted rage.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek and stayed still. My look at Fairburn must’ve been sharp because Wednesday’s gaze darted to me like a hawk.

“This killer, I think they’re an Avian,” Wednesday said after a beat.

“The ability to control birds.” Fairburn’s reply was cool. “Intriguing theory. Rest assured, we have no Avian patients at Willow Hill.”

“I appreciate your candor,” Wednesday said. A thank-you from the monotone girl. Rare.

“Like you said,” Fairburn replied lightly, “the only reason Tyler is safely locked away is because of you. I think that’s worth a little off-the-record quid pro quo.”

“That’s more than Galpin ever gave me,” Wednesday muttered.

Wednesday’s presence was calculated—sharp, silent—but it didn’t faze me. I didn’t flinch, didn’t blink first. Best to keep my cards close; the stakes weren’t small, and she would notice weakness the second it flickered.

She stood a few feet away, the wind tugging at a few stray braids, her posture perfectly straight, her expression unreadable. But her eyes… those black, calculating eyes never stopped moving, like she was scanning for the cracks in my armor.

“You didn’t answer my earlier question,” she said, smooth as oil, edged with menace. “Why are you here?”

I tilted my head, deliberately slow, weighing my words. “At a funeral? Paying respects. It’s the polite thing to do.”

“Polite is not a word I would use to describe you.”

I let a single eyebrow lift, resting one hand on my hip. “Oh? Then what word would you use?”

“Unhelpful,” she said, slow and deliberate. “How did you know Galpin?”

I shrugged, the motion casual, almost bored. “I didn’t. Not personally, anyway. Socially adjacent, maybe. A passing acquaintance in the grand tragedy of life.”

Her lips twitched—not a smile, just her tell that her interest was piqued, probably by my phrasing— it made her expression sharper, more jagged. “You are evasive. I respect a skill like that. But I still need a clear answer.” Her dark eyes held mine. Just for a second, but it was enough. The air thickened, heavy with unspoken assessments, the kind that made Fairburn smile faintly without saying a word. “You’re just as unhelpful as you were last year.”

Ah, right. Last year. When this pigtailed little death enthusiast waltzed into my life demanding to know if I’d ever heard of Hydes attending Nevermore—because, as the school’s token vampire, apparently I doubled as an encyclopedia of monsters.

I told her to fuck off. In hindsight, maybe I was too soft on her.

Still, her pestering helped me connect the dots of who was really terrorizing the woods back then. I hadn’t cared about saving Jericho or Nevermore. Let it burn, for all I cared. But I remembered thinking, if she had just stayed out of it, maybe Tyler wouldn’t be rotting in Willow Hill right now.

“Then why do you keep coming to me for answers,” I said, voice slow and controlled, “if you expect none?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Then at least tell me this—where were you on the night Galpin was killed?”

I laughed. Just a soft chuckle, teasing, infuriatingly casual. “Oh my god. You’re accusing me now? Haven’t you learned from last year not to accuse your classmates of murder?”

Her eyes narrowed—not in anger, exactly, but in that calculating, predator-sharp way she always did. She knew what I was talking about, Xavier Thrope; maybe she really hadn’t learned her lesson on keeping investigations as a personal hobby instead of dragging others into her nonsense. The mention of last year's slip-up seemed to irritate her. Even with a face that was about as expressive as an iron mask, I could see the cracks in her armor.

Feeding information to someone as arrogant and unpredictable as her would be unhelpful. She tended to attract trouble, and once given a lead, she pursues it even at others' peril. I wasn’t going to give a lick of information that might compromise what I had now.

She took a step closer, framing it like she was going to pass by me, which only made me tilt my head. Perhaps this was her touchless version of a shoulder check. “Be careful with what you bury, and who you protect. Graves remember, even if you want to forget.” 

She let that hang in the air, a whisper of threat, her coat sweeping behind her like a shadow passing through the mist as she passed by me. 

Fairburn didn’t speak, but her eyes lingered, weighing every nuance of what had passed between us. Seems she knew better than to interrupt a game of verbal chess until the match ended in a stalemate. Which was still a win in my book.

“You handled that well,” Fairburn said lightly, folding her umbrella. “Though I can’t tell if you were defending yourself or simply refusing to play along with that girl.”

I turned my head toward her, lips quirking. “Is there a difference?”

“For most people, yes.” Her tone was careful — the kind used when therapists wanted you to walk yourself into a confession. “But you…the way you dodge questions, you always smirk or roll your eyes instead of answer— it’s not indifference, it’s defense. You hide behind wit because it’s safer than honesty.”

I laughed under my breath, more a scoff than a sound of amusement. “Is this a session? If so, I hope you aren’t charging.”

“You do realize,” she said, ignoring the jab, “that I’m not trying to analyze you, I’m trying to understand you. You are my patient's new guardian after all, I am only making sure you are stable. You seem to exist in reaction — always braced, always one foot on the break. As a doctor, it makes me wonder what caused such a reaction.”

“Watching over Tyler should be your priority; it’s mine too. So please focus your expertise on him.” Partially true again. I had two Night family members to worry about these days, so prioritization was scattered all over the place. I also did not want to be psychoanalyzed by a shrink.

Mental health resources were good for the living; unfortunately, I fell in that in-between, so I hardly think I count as someone who needed that kind of help. Or maybe I was too old-fashioned and stubborn to admit anything was going wrong. Probably the latter.

Fairburn studied me for a long moment — unreadable, though I could sense curiosity beneath her professionalism. “You don’t make it easy for anyone to help you.”

“I never asked anyone to.”

A pause. Then she exhaled, pulling her coat tighter. Deciding to drop the topic, as she should have, because she had no right to try and analyze someone who wasn’t her patient. Especially after she so freely gave away information on Tyler, despite not having my consent. “Right. Well… I did have something I wanted your input on.”

I raised an eyebrow. I doubted it was just that. “Input? Or permission?”

Her lips thinned — caught. “Perhaps both. I know Tyler has already consented to any means necessary to accelerate his recovery, but my next approach is… unorthodox. Enough that I think it would be unethical not to ask your opinion first.”

Well, that sounded ominous and anxiety-inducing. I turned fully toward her. “What are you planning?”

“I’d like to bring in Laurel Gates. From the other facility. I believe her presence might—”

I cut her off with a sharp, humorless laugh. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“Laurel Gates,” I repeated, tasting the name like ash. I read the files, I knew who she was, what she had done. I’d kill the woman myself if I could. “The woman who groomed him into becoming what he is. You think seeing her will help him heal?”

“She was his handler, yes,” Fairburn said evenly, though I could see the faint flicker of unease in her eyes. “But also a key to understanding his regression patterns. Trauma, especially of that magnitude, needs confrontation, not avoidance.”

I wanted to argue. My nails bit into the handle of my umbrella as I stared at her, then down at the damp soil between our shoes.

Tyler had already been broken once by her. I’d seen what that kind of control looked like — the hollow stare, the way he flinched at things no one else noticed. And yet… part of me understood Fairburn’s logic. This monster was made through repetition. I knew firsthand from Francoise that time apart from a master could weaken the bond between them and the Hyde; perhaps it would be beneficial to see what’s left of that hold.

Tyler did say to do anything to get him out of that place. But I still felt heavy letting him face his abuser like that; my voice came out softer than I intended. “Will you be there with him and take her away if she starts to try and manipulate him?”

I would like to be there during the visit if I could…if not for the fact he’d probably be even more defensive with me there.

“Of course. Reaffirming the doubt he has of her in his mind could be the push he needs to start fixing himself,” Fairburn replied.

I looked back toward the graveyard entrance where Wednesday had vanished minutes ago — where her last cutting words still echoed like a dare in my head. Maybe it was time someone played god again.

After a long silence, I finally said, “Do it.”

Fairburn’s eyes searched mine. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. Just…let me know when you do, I’ll be there to check on him myself.” I said, though strangely, the idea scared me. Seeing him again. But after Francoise, I didn’t trust him solely in the hands of the doctors of Willow Hill; I needed him alive.“If you’re going to light the match, I’m not leaving him alone in the flames.”

Fairburn studied me for a long moment, most likely wondering if it was a good idea for me to be there after last time. But she said nothing, then gave a slow nod. “Understood.”

She didn’t say it, but I could see it in her eyes—she’d been measuring me too.

I turned my umbrella slightly, catching her reflection in the wet marble of a headstone. My expression is unreadable. My mind is already moving three steps ahead. Laurel Gates. Tyler. Wednesday sniffing around. It was a perfect storm brewing. And I was in the center of it. 

This was only going to get worse, wasn’t it? I really needed to stop making so many reckless moves these days…

Oh God. What the hell was I doing?

Well, that was a stupid question. I knew exactly what I was doing—I was elbow-deep in a cadaver’s skull, prying out a brain like it was some grotesque prize from a carnival booth. The real question was why. And unfortunately, the answer to that was in my bedroom, waiting for me, probably dropping maggots all over my floor or gnawing at my legs of my desk again.

The drill whined as it met bone, the sound sharp enough to make my teeth ache. Dust flecked the air, tiny particles catching the fluorescent light. Clinical, precise. I’d done this before—maybe not under these exact circumstances, but close enough that my body moved without asking my permission. Efficiency first. Doubts later.

I eased the skull open like lifting the lid off an old jewelry box, except what was inside was heavier, slimier, infinitely more depressing. Slipping my gloved hands beneath the mass, I severed the stem in one clean cut. Practical. Surgical. God, what a disgusting little dance I’d learned to waltz without ever meaning to.

Into the jar it went. Plop. I already had one waiting, but better safe than sorry—I wasn’t exactly going to waltz back in here twice with Orloff and his hawk eyes drifting around.

I replaced the skull cap, pulled the sheet over the face. A polite lie for anyone who peeked in later: nothing unusual here, just your standard corpse, move along. I washed my hands, the water running pink, then clear, then back to just burning my skin raw. Tools cleaned, trays wiped, surfaces spotless. If anyone noticed something missing, they’d blame sloppy inventory before imagining a student moonlighting as an organ thief.

The guilt tried to crawl up the back of my throat, but I shoved it down with the same casual shrug I always used: these people donated their bodies to science, didn’t they? What’s more scientific than feeding a man who shouldn’t even exist if we consider all the laws that we currently know about science? At least this way their brains were doing some good, instead of being poked at by a bunch of teens who couldn’t even spell “cerebellum.”

They were all stupid. I would know, I grade their work.

Jar polished. Label smoothed. Bag tucked snug against my side. Efficient. Clean. If I didn’t think too hard, it almost looked like I knew what I was doing.

Then I heard it—the squeak of wheels moving closer. Professor Orloff. Shit.

I slid against the wall, heart hammering, and watched him roll in. He scanned the room. His eyes skimmed the chalkboard, the neat bullet points, the disinfected trays. Hummed in approval. Nothing amiss.

I held still, barely breathing, until he turned to his desk and started looking over the papers I left for him to review. And then I slipped past the door as quickly as possible, clutching my bag tightly to my side.

My pulse only started to slow once I was halfway down the hall, bag clutched so close it may as well have been part of me. That was close. Too close. But it wasn’t like I had a choice. Better this than letting Isaac prowl around like some kind of…well. Whatever he was now.

I’d swung by the cafeteria for an empty plate, which now made me feel like I was on the most deranged errand of my life. Dinner for the dead. Playing room service for my undead tenant.

Unlocking my dorm door, I slipped inside and turned the lock behind me. The door clicked shut with a loud thud. My shoulders were only able to sag for a moment before I felt my lungs lock up.

Jesus. The smell. It was like death herself paid me a visit. Or maybe something worse, something that had no name. My eyes watered before I could even see him.

Of course, it smelled like this. There was a corpse in here.

I scanned the room, hand still braced on the knob. Isaac stood there chained to the bedframe, a hulking, half-slumped silhouette in the dim light. The heavy, ornate post was the only thing in here solid enough to anchor him to. I hated the chains—they made my chest ache—but the part of him that wasn’t Isaac anymore didn’t leave me much of a choice. He ripped through that hummer’s shed before, I didn’t need him getting out and hurting anyone while I was out.

He turned his head at the sound of me coming in, that awful gurgling growl bubbling up from somewhere deep in his ruined throat. His one clouded eye caught the light. My heart stuttered. He was still in there. I needed him to be.

“Holy—shit.” I gagged, pressing my sleeve to my nose, stumbling toward the window.

I shoved it open, the night air rushing in like a mercy. My next stop was the desk where the poor, overworked air freshener sat like a soldier awaiting its death. I grabbed it and unleashed hell, spraying the room with manic devotion. Clouds of artificial “Japanese Cherry Blossom” battled the sour rot, losing terribly but at least softening the edges.

I practically clogged the air around Isaac, just for good measure. He gave this low, irritated grunt, and for a moment I almost laughed—like I’d just offended his cologne choice.

“Sorry,” I muttered, giving him one last misty cloud before setting the can down. My eyes stung. “But you smell really bad.”

He made a low noise–not quite a growl, not quite annoyance—might have been the closest thing to a protest he could manage. I kept spraying anyway, then dropped the empty can onto my desk with a clatter. 

It should have been funny. But the stench really was no joke.

Shock had numbed me yesterday, but now, watching him in the steady lamplight, the reality had weight. His skin was gray, sloughing in patches; his body sagged in chains that looked too heavy for him, even though I knew he could snap them if he wanted. I had a corpse standing in my room. His eyes—no, not even his eyes, but the idea of them—flicked toward me without much recognition.

After taking a deep breath, I moved my stuff to his side of the bed, the towel I’d laid out last night crumpled beneath the weight of my bag. One of the first things he’d done when I brought him here was try to go to the bed, and I had to sprint across the room and shove something down to try to protect my sheets. 

“Sit,” I said softly. “I brought you something.”

From my bag, I pulled the plate and the jar. My hands shook a little as I pried the lid off. Using it as a makeshift spatula, I nudged a brain onto the plate. It hit with a wet slap, juices spattering across the towel.

I stepped back, heart in my throat.

He moved immediately, dropping onto his knees at the bedside. His entire frame leaned forward, hunger dragging him closer until his face hovered above the plate. His jaw unhinged—literally unhinged—and the sound alone made my skin crawl. He descended on it with a guttural groan, tearing into the gray matter with an animal ferocity, chewing wetly, swallowing in greedy gulps.

It was obscene. A horror scene played out inches from where I slept.

And my heart broke all the same.

I lowered myself to sit on the bed, scooting back just enough to watch without being spattered. My knees brushed the towel, still damp from earlier cleanings. I should’ve been repulsed, but all I could feel was grief. Grief for the boy who used to laugh until his face hurt. For the one who’d once shared secret projects with me under Iago Tower like we were fugitives. Now here he was, devouring gray matter with a jaw that barely remembered how to be human.

He was still Isaac. 

When he finished, smearing what was left across his chin, I moved the plate away, and I reached for the bucket of water I’d drawn this morning. The rag floated, clean and waiting. I dipped it, wrung it out, and leaned toward him.

“C’mere,” I whispered.

I unhooked the chain from the bedside. The metal clinked as it slid free, and for one tense breath, I wondered if I’d just been the dumbest girl alive. But he didn’t move to attack. He only sagged, boneless, as if the weight had been too much for him.

“Let’s get you up.”

It took effort to coax him onto the bed, his body clumsy and stiff, but I managed, easing him onto the towel. He let me guide him like a puppet, sitting slouched with his hands limp in his lap.

I pressed the rag to his face. He didn’t flinch. I wiped slowly, carefully, tracing the angles of his cheekbones beneath the grime. The rag came away brownish-black, streaked with something thicker. My chest tightened.

“You made a mess,” I murmured, voice breaking with humor I didn’t feel. “Guess I’ll always be cleaning up after you, huh?”

I wiped his mouth clean, then down his neck, tugging gently at the collar of his coat. The smell made my eyes water, but it wasn’t disgust anymore—it was sorrow, deep and unmovable. I found bugs hiding in folds of fabric and hair. Tiny invaders, wriggling. I plucked them free, dropping them into the bucket with a grim finality, listening as they drowned.

I unbuttoned his coat a little, fingers brushing the exposed clockwork heart embedded in his chest. I hadn’t known it sat so bare beneath the fabric — rusted yellow metal, intricate gears choked with dirt, still ticking with a faint, strange rhythm. My throat tightened. It was beautiful in a strange way.

“Are you…hurting?”  I asked, working delicately on cleaning what I could of his heart.

He twitched at the sound, head lifting like a dog catching a scent. But he didn’t look at me. Just made a wet, broken noise and shifted his weight. His body didn’t know what to do with stillness anymore.

I set the rag aside, tossed it into the bucket, now cloudy with filth. Then I just sat there, close enough that my knee touched his. Watching his chest rise and fall in its halting rhythm. Watching the boy I knew flicker through the ruin of him like a ghost.

His one good eye was fixed on the far wall, glazed but not vacant. Not mindless, exactly—just…elsewhere. I followed the line of his gaze, and my stomach tightened.

“Oh.”

The painting.

Propped up on the dresser like a relic, brushstrokes softened by time and dust. My own face stared back at me with that almost-smile, a younger girl painted with more grace than she ever carried in life. I remembered how careful he’d been with that canvas, how long he labored over shading my jawline as though the smallest imperfection might ruin everything.

“That.”

I laughed softly, but it cracked in the middle. “Do you remember making it?”

A low groan rumbled from his throat. His head twitched toward me, then back toward the portrait, as if caught in some old gravity.

“That’s me,” I said, quieter now. It felt ridiculous, like talking to my own reflection. “I know. Doesn’t really match anymore, does it? I’m taller. Different hair. Different face. Changed on the outside, at least.”

I swallowed hard, searching his blank expression for a flicker of…anything. “But inside? I like to  think nothing much has changed.”

He shifted faintly, the chain clinking against the bedpost. I wanted to believe that sound meant something.

My eyes slipped to the desk, to the heap of papers spread across it. Legal documents, Tylers, mostly finished. It only needed a few final signatures. Life and responsibility piled up like clutter I never asked for.

I rose, gathered the papers, pen slipping between my fingers. Crossing back to the bed felt heavier than it should. I laid the stack down, close enough that his eye tracked the motion.

He made a low, questioning growl. Or maybe it was just noise. But I wanted to believe it meant, What’s that?

“These?” I tapped the papers with the pen. “Just…my whole miserable life, apparently.”

I tried for a smirk, but it faltered.

“Well, you missed a lot.” My throat closed, words catching before I forced them out. “I did what I could when you were gone. Francoise…” I stopped, teeth pressing into my lip. No, keep going. Say it. “Francoise needed someone after the accident, so I stepped in. Made sure she ate. Helped her through school. Took her to campus visits. Went to her wedding.”

The words trembled now.

“She had a baby, Isaac. She had a baby boy.”

His breathing slowed, chest rising and falling with a strange rhythm, as though the sound of her name had pierced some fog. His eye flicked to me, then down to the papers.

“She’s gone.” My voice broke on the word. “Francoise. A few years ago now. And her husband just the other day. The boy, Tyler—he’s all alone.”

The papers blurred. I looked up to keep any tears from falling out. Don’t be pathetic now.

“I can’t let him be alone. He’s all I have left of her.”

The silence pressed in, unbearable. My chest shook with the weight of it. I let out a bitter laugh. I refused to cry. “Listen to me. Talking to myself. I must sound crazy, huh?”

He twitched. Just a flicker, but enough for the chain to scrape against the bed frame. His fingers curled, then relaxed again.

I leaned forward, desperate now. “Do you remember her, Isaac? Your sister?”

A groan left his throat, lower this time. Not a growl. Something rougher, strained, like a rusted hinge forced into motion.

I pushed on, my words unraveling. “I tried, Isaac. I swear I tried. When you left—when you died—I picked up everything you dropped. I carried it all. I thought I was strong enough, but I wasn’t. She’s gone, and I couldn’t save her, and now her son is all that’s left, and he needs me—”

My voice fractured completely. The papers slipped from my lap, scattering like brittle leaves on the floor.

And then—he moved.

His hand found mine, clumsy but deliberate, and I froze. A dead man’s touch shouldn’t feel like salvation, but it did. For the first time in decades, it wasn’t just empty air answering me back.

“Isaac,” I breathed, my voice breaking into a sound that was neither laugh nor sob. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I did everything at once — half-hysterical chuckle, half-laughing like a fool as I grabbed his face between my palms. His skin was cold, clammy, wrong, but I didn’t care. My thumbs swept over the hollow of his cheeks, forcing him to look at me.

And then, slowly, like he had to wade through tar just to do it, his one hand lifted and pressed against mine. Weak. Crooked. But there.

My breath hitched, sharp. “Oh my god… Isaac?”

I laughed, but it came out jagged, half a sob. The laugh of someone realizing the ground under her feet isn’t quicksand after all. “You hear me, don’t you? You do. I knew it. I fucking knew it. You actually understand me.”

If he could’ve rolled his eyes the way he used to, I know he would’ve. Instead, he made a low, guttural noise that carried just the faintest edge of a scoff.

It was pathetic. Barely a sound. But I laughed like he’d just delivered the punchline of the century; I could hear it. Of course, I hear you, in that same tone he always used to imply whoever heard it was stupid. My shoulders were shaking as I kept one hand locked to his face. “There it is! Oh my god, that was a scoff! You’re still in there, you arrogant asshole, I knew it.”

He blinked at me — slow, sluggish, but not empty. And I couldn’t stop laughing, couldn’t stop smiling so wide my face ached.

Because for one impossible moment, it was like we were back then: me needling him, him reacting just enough to let me know he heard me. Not the corpse, not the monster, but him.

And I cradled his face tighter, pressing my forehead to his like I could hold the flicker in place by sheer will. My grin was ridiculous, giddy, unguarded, and I didn’t care if he would’ve died of embarrassment to see me like this.

He scoffed again, softer this time, and I laughed harder.

It was grotesque, it was absurd, it was impossible. And it was the happiest I’d been in years.

For a breath, the room was only us—his one hand still curled in my sleeve, his ruined face leaned into my touch like he might almost remember what it meant. I wanted to keep him here, locked in that fragile beat of almost-normal. But the quiet pressed too hard, too fragile, like glass ready to shatter.

Every creak in the hall seemed louder. The hum of the pipes above was suddenly intrusive, menacing. My smile faltered. My grip on him shifted—not pulling away, but bracing, like I might need to shield him from something I couldn’t name. He blinked once, slow, his eye still locked on me, and for a heartbeat, it felt like he knew I was waiting for the break.

And then—

The knock came sharp, and Isaac stiffened. Chains rattled as he twisted toward the sound, a growl swelling in his chest. For a second, his eye met mine, sharp, too sharp, before he bared his teeth and snapped at the door like an animal.

I tightened the chain, heart hammering. “Behave,” Ridiculous — like commanding a thunderstorm. He tilted his head at me, jaw twitching, but he didn’t lunge.

I grabbed the chain and looped it back to the bedpost with practiced speed, hands steady despite the sting in my palms. The heavier part of the frame groaned under the weight but held. My fingers worked automatically, my brain on autopilot, lock him down first, just in case.

Another knock. Louder. And then—

“Is this the right room?” Pugsley’s voice, muffled through the wood.

Of course. Great fucking timing, guys.

“Yeah, Capri told me it was here—” Eugene’s eager chirp cut through, followed by a hurried whisper, “Be cool, man, we’re going into a girl’s room and she’s a total babe, you can’t mess this up for me.”

I closed my eyes. Counted to three. Opened the door with the flattest expression I could manage.

Eugene was practically glued to the threshold, palms sliding over his shirt in a pathetic attempt to dry them. Pugsley loomed behind him, cradling a dog bowl like it was an heirloom. “Slurp” was printed across the front in gaudy block letters.

“(Y/N)!” Eugene blurted, too bright, too nervous.

“Hey, kid,” I said dryly, leaning against the frame.

Pugsley raised the bowl like a toast. “We brought food for Slurp.”

I stared at him. Blinked once. Twice. “How thoughtful. I’m sure he’ll love that.”

Pugsley just grinned, completely unfazed. Eugene chuckled weakly, like maybe laughing would make me like him. Spoiler: it wouldn’t.

“We tried sending messages, but you weren’t answering your phone,” Pugsley added.

Yeah. Eugene had given me his number the other day. I’d almost thrown it away, but I used it once to tell them I found Isaac in the forest. Plain and simple. Pugsley seemingly stole the phone first to thank me, but Eugene proceeded to blow up my phone after with texts trying to start some sort of small talk until I just turned mine off.

I stepped aside without a word. The boys shuffled in, Pugsley first, Eugene practically tripping over himself behind him. I shut the door, locking it with a click.

Isaac was already standing, chains rattling taut, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a wet, animal snarl. He looked feral, every bit the nightmare they assumed he was. But I caught it—just for a blink—the way his eye flicked between them, then slid to me. He was choosing to look like this. Playing dumb.

“You let him on the bed?” Eugene asked, scandalized, pointing like I’d committed a crime.

I arched an eyebrow. “Yeah. He earned it. Sat, stayed, didn’t pee on the carpet. Real gold star material.”

“That’s—unsanitary.”

“Then don’t sit down.”

Isaac growled again, louder this time, throwing his weight against the chain like a rabid dog. It was convincing. Too convincing. Except the corner of his skin twitched when Eugene stumbled back, like he found the act funny.

Asshole.

“Slurp!” Pugsley crouched down, beaming. “Look what I got you—your favorite!” He slid the bowl forward like he was presenting an offering to a god.

Even Isaac seemed offended. He looked back at me as though to say Are you seeing this? I stared him down, arching a brow. He groaned, a sound almost like a sulky teenager, before gracelessly faceplanting into the bowl.

I stayed back at first for the boys’ benefit, arms crossed, posture casual. But I felt myself inching closer anyway, like a compass needle swinging north.

Pugsley, though, was staring at Isaac like a scientist at a breakthrough. “He’s different,” he said suddenly, voice bright with revelation. “He looks better.”

That got my attention. “Define better.”

Pugsley furrowed his brows, taking the time to look over Isaac while he was occupied eating. Isaac was honestly tall, taller than even Pugsley, so his craning over to eat gave the boy to peer into the opened part of his skull. 

“His brain. It’s growing back.”

My head whipped toward him. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah—look.” Pugsley leaned closer. “Right there. I swear it wasn’t there before.”

I hesitated, then crouched down too. And there it was. Subtle, but undeniable. A small, pulsing knot of new tissue at the bottom of the hollow space where his brain had once been.

I felt my chest tighten. “You’re telling me it wasn’t there before?”

“Positive. When I found him, he was basically a meat puppet. Worms where the brain should’ve been.” Pugsley sounded delighted. “Now? He’s regenerating.”

Eugene blanched, nearly choking on his own disbelief. “That’s—that’s not healing, that’s… that’s not even possible.”

“No,” I said quietly, straightening, forcing steel into my tone. “It’s progress.”

They didn’t notice how Isaac’s growl dropped into a low hum once their eyes weren’t on him. Didn’t notice how his gaze was able to follow them, tracking every word, every move. He was awake in there. Awake, aware enough to play the fool because it kept him unassuming.

His eye locked with mine over the rim of the empty bowl. A flicker of consciousness. A silent question. And I almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

The boys babbled on, speculating, arguing, congratulating themselves. They were useful after all, more than I originally gave them credit for. But their words faded, dull noise against the drum of my own pulse. 

Because if the more he ate, the more he came back—

Then I guess I have no choice but to feed him.

“So this is where you were keeping him? In this beekeeper’s shed?”

The words slipped out more judgmental than I intended, but honestly, the place deserved it. The shed was sturdy enough, sure, but it reeked faintly of smoke and honey, and sunlight jabbed in through every crooked gap in the boards. Dust swirled lazily in the beams of light, highlighting every flaw. In the corner, an area had been cleared, the walls scarred with claw marks. A splintered plank jutted out like a warning.

I swallowed, forcing myself to stand straighter. The sight was a reminder: Isaac wasn’t the same anymore. I didn’t expect him to be; it had been decades, I wasn’t expecting…whatever he was now, to be clean.

“For the record, I didn’t want to keep him here,” Eugene blurted, holding his hands up like I was accusing him of war crimes. “I just… had no way to move him without the possibility of, you know, a bite risk.”

So he bites. Or at least tries to. Wonderful.

“I was keeping him tied up here—but I guess one chain wasn’t enough to hold him down…” Pugsley added. He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning in thought, as if disappointed in himself for underestimating his ‘pet.’

The visual hit me hard: chains straining, an undead body tugging until metal snapped. Isaac—or whatever he was now—breaking free. I bit the inside of my cheek, bracing myself. I needed to be ready to see him like that. I knew I wasn’t.

“Poor Slurp…” Pugsley murmured. His shoulders slumped, face twisting with genuine worry. “He’s probably so scared, lost, and alone out there.”

Eugene gaped at him like he’d grown another head. “Yeah, right. That thing doesn’t feel anything.”

“Not true!” Pugsley shot back, animated, eyes wide. “You could see it in his eyes. He’s a gentle soul.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was spiraling into a debate on zombie emotional intelligence. “Okay, so this isn’t getting us anywhere,” I cut in, sharper than I meant.  I have been up for almost forty-eight hours, and my patience was already paper-thin. “We need to check the surrounding forest area first.”

It was the only logical place. Still, the thought of him loose in that endless green sea made my pulse kick up a notch. At least the forest stretched behind the school instead of toward town. If he wandered too far into civilization… I didn’t let myself finish the thought.

“Yeah—” Pugsley perked up, rummaging through his oversized pockets. He pulled out a crumpled ziplock bag containing what looked like the cafeteria’s leftovers scraped from hell itself. Gray, chalky meat that I suspected had once been part of something unfortunate. “I brought his favorite. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to lure him out.”

I stared. Eugene stared. The smell hit me next, and I gagged.

“Don’t mind him,” Eugene muttered, half-apologetic. “He’s always like this.” He edged a step closer to me, his sneakers crunching on the dusty floor. “But don’t worry, I’ll keep us on the right track.”

I resisted the urge to laugh in his face. Barely. No need to be rude to a kid and traumatize him from ever shooting his shot with a girl again.

Instead, I stepped out first, swatting at bees that buzzed lazily around the shed like they owned it. The sunlight outside stabbed at my eyes, but I welcomed the distraction, grounding myself in motion. A faint trail was pressed into the ground, as if someone had been dragging their feet. My breath caught, my focus tightening like a wire.

Without a word, I followed the path, not even glancing to see if the boys trailed after me. I couldn’t afford to stop moving. If I did, the restless energy clawing in my chest would consume me.

The forest swallowed us as soon as we stepped off the path. The earth was soft under my boots, littered with dead leaves, and every so often, I caught the faint drag of a footprint, just barely visible if you squinted.

That’s what I kept my eyes on. Forward. Don’t stop moving. Don’t let them see how badly your chest is tightening.

Behind me, Pugsley and Eugene were already veering off track.

“Okay, so, hear me out,” Pugsley said, loud enough to scare off every bird within a mile. “What if Slurp’s just…like…making friends out here? You know, with squirrels and stuff. That or he’s eating them. Maybe he’s starting a new life.”

Eugene made a face. “He’s not Bambi, dude. He’s a zombie.”

Pugsley waved him off, but seemed offended when Eugene called ‘Slurp’ a zombie. “What did I tell you about harmful labels? You don’t know him like I do…I can fix him, and I have.”

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “We’re not here to debate whether your undead pet is making forest friends or if we can fix a literal corpse. We’re here to track him before he eats somebody. Let's just focus on getting him back home safe.”

Pugsley brightened, like I’d confirmed his fantasy. “See? She gets it.”

Eugene groaned. “No, she doesn’t—”

“Yes, I do,” I cut in dryly, brushing a branch out of my way. “I completely understand how important it is to reunite Slurp with his chipmunk family before curfew, so let’s get back to it.”

That earned me a snort from Pugsley and a long-suffering eye-roll from Eugene. At least it shut them up for ten seconds.

We trudged deeper. The trees crowded closer, and the dim light made every shadow stretch long and lean. My jaw was tight, my fingers twitching with the urge to sprint ahead and leave them behind. Isaac could be out here. Every wasted second was another step he took further away.

“Y’know,” Pugsley said suddenly, dragging his feet through the leaves, “Slurp really liked my meat offerings. Didn’t even try to bite me after the second night.”

“Congratulations,” I muttered. “You’ve officially bonded with your zombie.”

“He’s just jealous,” Pugsley stage-whispered, jabbing a thumb at Eugene.

“I am not jealous!” Eugene snapped, his voice cracking in that way only boys his age could manage. “I just don’t think feeding mystery meat to a corpse makes you Dr. Doolittle.”

My head was pounding. “Boys—”

“Besides,” Eugene added quickly, puffing his chest a little as he walked faster to catch up to me, “I’ll be the one keeping us on track anyway. You can’t just throw meat in the woods and hope for the best. Someone here’s gotta think logically.”

I arched a brow at him but didn’t answer. Think logically? I didn’t know he could do that. The faint trail under my boots was the only thing I trusted right now.

Eugene fell into step beside me, awkwardly folding his hands behind his back. He was quiet for a beat too long, clearly working up the nerve for something. Then—

“So…how old are you, (Y/N)?”

I didn’t look at him. “Like, seventeen. I think.”

It was the same answer I always gave these days. Safe. Evasive. Good enough.

“Really?” He hesitated, then smirked like he’d just pulled the pin from a grenade. “How long have you been seventeen?”

I stopped. Just stopped. Turned my head and stared at him, deadpan, until he squirmed.

There was a beat of silence. Then another.

Eugene’s face went scarlet. “Bad joke. I just—nevermind.”

Pugsley blinked between us, confused. Clearly not getting the joke, “Wait, what’s funny about being seventeen?”

I dragged a hand down my face, exhaling. “This is going to be a very long day.”

—-

The woods looked different in the fading light—less like a forest and more like a labyrinth. Branches clawed at the sky as though trying to catch the last scraps of daylight, and every step was a crunch of withered leaves and mud. We’d been walking for hours, my boots soaked through, my hair damp and sticking to my collar.

Today had been hell. How hard could it be to find one zombie? One. Undead. Boy. I was starting to think this was some cruel joke—that Pugsley and Eugene had lied to me for a laugh, or that I’d let my own desperation spin into a wild goose chase. Every loop of the trail felt like a carousel, the same trees, the same smell of dirt and pine, going in circles until my head throbbed.

The boys hadn’t made it any easier. Eugene had given up before sundown, mumbling something about homework and bee duties before bolting. Honestly, if he hadn’t, I might have lost it at him. Now it was just Pugsley and me trudging back toward Nevermore, a slow, wet march of failure.

The rain had started as a drizzle and turned into a steady curtain. I’d grabbed my umbrella from my room earlier, but Pugsley refused to get under it, choosing instead to walk in the cold, water dripping off his nose

“You’re going to get sick,” I muttered, pushing a branch aside.

“That’s the plan,” he said cheerfully. “Maybe I’ll catch something cool. Like pneumonia.”

I stopped walking for a beat, blinking. He’s an Addams, I don’t know why that caught me so off guard. “Right, nothing says a good time like hacking up a lung.”

He just grinned at me through the rain. “You get it!”

I shook my head and kept moving. No, no, I didn’t. This kid is crazy.

We were quiet for a while, only the sound of rain and our squelching shoes filling the space between us. The closer we got to the gates of Nevermore, the heavier my mood became, irritation scraping at my throat like a splinter.

Regret was what dragged me out here. Regret, and maybe desperation. Searching for an old flame had me slogging through mud, branches whipping my face, while the drizzle thickened into a downpour. At first, I told myself it was worth it—if Isaac was out here, I’d find him. But now? Now I was beginning to regret coming out here in the first place, and especially trusting a crazy kid who swore he’d raised a corpse like it was a puppy. Deep down, I knew the truth. I wanted to be deluded. I wanted to believe Isaac could be back, even if it meant chasing a thirteen-year-old’s nonsense through the woods.

“Were you pulling my leg about the whole zombie thing?” My voice came sharper than I intended, clipped through gritted teeth.

Pugsley’s head snapped up, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. “No! No, I wouldn’t joke about that.”

I eyed him sidelong, rain pattering against my umbrella. “I see. Well.”

“Well?” he echoed nervously, like he was waiting for a verdict.

“Well, if you were pranking me, congratulations. You’ve successfully wasted my whole day. Which was already shit, by the way.” My tone was deadpan, but my jaw ached from clenching it shut the rest of the time.

He ducked his head, shoulders slumping as though I’d knocked the air out of him. “I’m not pranking you.”

We walked a few more yards in silence, the squelch of our boots and the hiss of rain the only sound. Finally, I forced myself to ask, softer this time: “Then why? Why did you bring him back?”

Pugsley kicked at a loose rock, sending it skittering into the mud. His voice was small, almost swallowed by the storm. “I told you already, I didn’t plan it. Not really. I was messing around at the Skull Tree during the Pyre, just—y’know—doing my thing. Then I tripped, jolted the ground, and suddenly… There he was.” He tried to shrug it off like it was nothing, but his voice cracked in the middle, betraying him.

“I-I don’t have any friends,” he admitted, and it wasn’t loud or dramatic. Just plain. Bare. “My dad said once I got to Nevermore, I’d find my people, that these were my people. But…” He dragged his sleeve across his wet face, not looking at me. “But I’m even lonelier here than I was at home. Eugene only talks to me because he has to. Ajax does because he’s our dorm guide. Even my own sister doesn’t want to hang out with me.”

Something tightened in my chest, and I hated it. Hated that I felt for him, hated that he’d made me see him as anything but the irritating, kooky Addams boy. Gomez and Morticia’s son. The same blood as the ones I’d rather never speak to again. But looking at their boy now—sodden, awkward, admitting he was friendless—it was harder to keep distance.

My brows furrowed. “So when you brought the boy back, you thought what? That you’d finally have a best friend? That he’d be perfect just because he couldn’t leave?”

He nodded, chewing on his lip. “Yeah. I figured… he couldn’t get tired of me.”

The woods fell quiet around us, save for the rain and the steady drip from my umbrella. He was ridiculous, optimistic in a way that grated on my nerves—but there was something in his voice that pressed on old scars I didn’t want touched.

“You’re a weird kid,” I muttered, blunt but not cruel.

He managed a crooked grin through the rain. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

By then, Nevermore’s gates loomed ahead, black iron dripping with water, the archway casting its long shadow across the mud. We passed under it, the sound of rain muffled slightly by the stone walls.

I stopped, turning to face him. He looked smaller than before, hunched in his soaked coat, staring at me like he was waiting for me to tell him what came next. And maybe I didn’t like the Addams family, maybe I didn’t like him, but leaving him with nothing—no reassurance, no plan—sat wrong with me.

“Listen.” I rested the umbrella against my shoulder, the cold iron a slight shock as it grazed my neck. “It’s getting late. You should go back to your dorm now and clean up. Stay dry. Get some rest.”

His eyes widened. “What about—”

“I’ll handle it,” I cut in. “I’ll keep looking for your pet tonight. Alone.”

He blinked at me, the words catching him off guard. “Really?”

“Really.” My tone was flat, but I meant it. “I don’t know how yet. But I’ll figure something out.”

He nodded slowly, some of the tightness in his shoulders melting away. For the first time in hours, maybe days, he gave me that dopey, hopeful smile—the same one he’d flashed when I first agreed to help him in the woods.

It should’ve annoyed me. Instead, it just made me feel heavier.

Because even as I promised Pugsley, I wasn’t exactly doing it for him. Selfish of me, yeah, but this way we both got something we wanted. He thought I was looking for his pet. I knew I was really looking for mine. Besides, I always saw better at night.

After I made sure he walked back inside, I trudged forward, retracing our steps, veering off onto a path none of us had checked yet. The forest pressed in close, dripping and heavy, the kind of damp that clung to your bones. My umbrella wobbled in the crook of my arm, wedged against my chest, while I cupped my hands to my mouth and breathed hot air over my fingers. It did nothing. The rain only got worse—like the sky had decided to punish me personally for being stupid enough to hope again.

I couldn’t even say how long it had been since I left Pugsley behind. An hour or so, probably. Long enough for my clothes to be soaked through, for my shoes to give a weird squeak with every step. Long enough for drowsiness to slip its claws in and start dragging my thoughts sideways.

It should’ve annoyed me. Instead, it just made me feel heavier.

Because even as I promised Pugsley, I wasn’t exactly doing it for him. It was selfish, sure, but this way we both got something we wanted. He thought I was looking for his pet. I had lost something too. I had been waiting longer; it would be faster if I did it alone. And besides—night was always kinder to me than daylight ever could be.

God. What the hell was I doing?

I told myself I’d given this up years ago. I told myself I had buried him, buried it, with the dirt that covered his body. But now, here I was—dragging myself through a storm for the barest chance that he might be out here. 

Pathetic. That’s what I was. Pathetic and deluded, chasing shadows of a boy who was never coming back.

And yet, if there was even a sliver of a chance…

The thought cut sharper than any blade. Because I hated him for dying.

His death wasn’t fate’s cruelty. It wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault. It was his. His choices. His arrogance. The way he had to push further, fly higher, touch the edge of brilliance even if it burned him alive. He was Icarus, too enamored with his own wings to see the sea rushing up to meet him.

And he fell.

He left me with ashes, and I was the one choking on them still.

I resented him for it. For being selfish. For being reckless. For never letting me save him when he needed saving most. He could’ve had more time—with me, with Francoise, with all of us. But no. Isaac was always chasing some horizon, some impossible sun. And when it consumed him, it consumed me, too.

So why was I here, stumbling onto the slick road that led back to Nevermore, the rain plastering my hair to my skin, my clothes heavy with water? Why was I wasting my night following muddy footprints of a story that should’ve ended decades ago?

Because grief is cruel.

Because no matter how many times I curse his name, no matter how often I remind myself that his death was his own fault, some part of me still needed to see him again.

The rain blurred the world into a smear of silver and black. My shoes splashed through puddles as I trudged forward, shoulders stiff, stomach tight. That’s when I saw it—a car stalled in the middle of the road, its headlights cutting pale cones through the downpour. The hazard lights blinked like a warning, orange against the night.

I slowed. There was never traffic this far out. Never.

Then came the sound.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It cut straight through me, sharp and impossible, threading into my veins like a drug. 

My umbrella slipped from my hand and hit the pavement, the rain immediately plastering my hair to my skull. I dropped my umbrella, the sound drowning out the rain, my own heartbeat, even my breath. My legs carried me forward before my mind caught up, chasing that impossible rhythm that had haunted me.

I rounded the car, and the world split open.

A figure crouched in the headlights, bent over a crumpled body. I froze, but the wet, tearing sounds didn’t. Flesh rendered. Bones cracked. Blood smeared down the asphalt in fat red rivers that rainwater couldn’t wash away fast enough.

The corpse beneath him was slack, face frozen mid-scream.

But above it all, faint and steady, I heard it. That heart. That clockwork pulse.

“Isaac?”

The name slipped out, unbidden, trembling.

The thing’s head snapped up, vertebrae grinding as he turned to me, until his ruined face met the light. Skin sloughed in strips, green-grey with rot. His hair, in chunks, matted and filthy, clung to his caved-in skull. One eye was gone entirely, leaving a hollow socket that gaped like a wound; the other was clouded white, a dead marble catching the headlights. His lips peeled back to reveal teeth still slick with blood. A chain swung broken from his neck, catching the light as he staggered to his feet.

For a breath, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Then he slowly lurched toward me.

It wasn’t human, the way he moved—too sudden, too jerking, his weight shifting wrong, like his limbs didn’t belong to him. He let out a guttural noise, half-roar, half-gurgle, his jaw snapping open as he closed the distance.

I should have run. Every instinct screamed it.

Instead, I stood still. Waiting.

He stopped inches away, his ruined breath rolled over me, fetid and sour, mixed with the metallic scent of blood. For a terrifying moment, his teeth snapped shut—so close the air stirred against my face.

But I didn’t flinch.

Reckless. Suicidal. But I couldn’t stop myself. My palm met his cheek, slick and cold, the flesh unnaturally soft beneath my fingers. Blood smeared across my hand as I wiped at his mouth, red and black mixing with the rain. His body jolted, almost recoiling, and for a split second, his teeth snapped shut inches from my face.

I didn’t flinch. Couldn’t.

“It’s you,” I whispered, my voice breaking against the storm. “God, it’s really you.”

The words dissolved into the rain, but my chest felt split open, raw. He didn’t recognize me—not really. His one clouded eye rolled, searching, like some broken mechanism trying to remember how to work. But even so, even without truly knowing, he swayed into my hand.

I had always known, deep down, that this was where his road would lead. That his hunger for knowledge, for danger, for more—would eat him alive one day. But knowing hadn’t prepared me for the reality of it. It hadn’t prepared me for the feeling of his cold, sodden face, or for the way he trembled like a faulty machine when I touched him.

I stepped closer, pressing my forehead against his chest, my arms circling him. He smelled of earth and death, and still I clung tighter. “I hate you,” I whispered, my tears lost in the downpour. “For leaving like that. For burning out before your time. For…for turning into this.”

My voice cracked, but I didn’t let go. Couldn’t.

Time had dulled a lot of things in me—names, dates, even the way sunlight used to feel on my skin. But it hadn’t dulled this. It hadn’t dulled the completed feeling of being with him again.

It should have been terror I felt. It would have been, if I were anyone else. If I had any sense left. But instead, standing there with the rain running down my face and his ruined body sagging into my arms, it wasn’t fear. It was just heartbreak.

This—this—was the boy who once spoke like fire and thought in clockwork patterns. The boy who never knew when to stop, who always went too far. The boy I had warned, begged, threatened, and prayed for. And now he was here, and his brilliance was a faint flicker behind a milky eye and rotting flesh.

“You ruined everything. You ruined me. I can't believe how much you made me miss you."

And still, in my arms, it was as if he were the most precious thing in the world. Because to me, he was.

Instead, he loomed above me, swaying, a monster with the power to crush me in an instant. No answer. Just the storm, and the faint, steady click of his heart beneath my ear. Was it beating faster?

If there were a heaven, they would know how I tried to stop this. How I had prayed—yes, prayed, me—for a moment like this. Not this exact moment, not this horror, but any moment where he would stand before me again and not be just a memory.

It was pathetic, clinging to him like this, drenched in blood and rain. Dangerous. Delusional. He wasn’t mine anymore. He wasn’t anyone’s. He was barely even himself. But logic had failed me; I just couldn’t help it. 

When I opened my eyes again, I saw the man behind Isaac. Or what was left of him. His forehead was split open like a dropped melon; I didn’t have to look inside to know the brain was gone. Only pieces were left, scattered in the rainwater at our feet.

My stomach lurched. He’d actually killed him. Fuck.

I forced myself to swallow. The taste of bile burned the back of my throat, but I couldn’t let it show. Isaac stood there, swaying like some half-dead metronome, blood and rain streaming down his jaw, and all I could think was: move.

The guy on the ground was beyond help. The car sat idling, its headlights cutting white beams through the storm. No sirens. No one yet. But soon. Someone might see.

The rain was heavy enough to blur everything. If I were careful, it would wash away the worst of it—prints, trails, even my scent. But only if I moved now.

I glanced at Isaac. His one milky eye was fixed on me, the other socket a fleshy pit. He looked like something dredged from a nightmare. Still, I stepped past him, my hands trembling, and forced myself toward the driver’s side door.

Through the window, I could make out how the man’s phone was still on the dashboard, glowing. A voicemail recording blinked at me from the screen. My heart stuttered. Someone was going to hear this. 

I reached for the door handle, then stopped, fingers tightening in the pleats of my skirt. Like some sort of makeshift glove, as I opened the door. My pulse was loud in my ears. What was I doing? What the hell was I doing?

Then I snatched the phone anyway. I pulled it free. Stared at it for one long second—at the blinking red light, at the ticking timer—and squeezed. Glass spiderwebbed under my grip, screen cracking, a high-pitched whine cutting through the rain before it died. The recording died with it.

I couldn’t let this get out.

I shoved the shattered pieces into my pocket, stepped back from the car, and nearly collided with him.

Isaac loomed, chain dangling from his neck, its broken links clinking against my face. Blood still dripped from his jaw, spattering my cheek. He towered over me like a shadow come to life, everything in him coiled and wrong. He just watched me. For one heartbeat, I thought he’d strike—his hands twitching, head jerking like a predator scenting prey.

But he didn’t.

My palm rose almost on its own, pressing against his chest. The cloth of his undershirt—or what was left of it—was soaked, cold, and slick beneath my fingers. His body felt like stone under my hand, and yet… it was still his heart under here.

I pushed gently, coaxing him back, not daring to make it a command. “We have to get out of here now,” I murmured. My voice was soft, almost coaxing. “This reunion can wait. Someone will see. You have to come with me.”

I bent down and picked up my umbrella from the wet asphalt, shaking water from its canopy. Then I took his hand—his cold, filthy, gloved hand—into mine. His fingers were stiff, like a doll’s, but he let me. Rain sheeted over us as I raised the umbrella above our heads, a ridiculous, fragile barrier against the storm.

We started walking. Or rather, I guided him, step by step, his weight leaning against me. He smelled like grave earth and blood. His breath came in low, rattling sounds, a creature’s noise instead of a man’s. My pulse thudded anyway.

Something in me cracked open. My heart, maybe. My anger, certainly. It all drained out in the rain. All the bitterness I had clung to for decades washed off, if only for this moment.

I didn’t let myself look at the corpse behind us, didn’t let myself think about the brain on the road or the phone crushed in my hand. I just tightened my fingers around his and kept moving, every step an act of denial and devotion.

Whatever he was now—monster, murderer, something in-between—I still found myself cradling him against me as though he was fragile. Precious. My thumb rubbed a slow circle over his knuckles, even as the rain washed the blood from our hands.

The storm would clean the scene behind us. I would handle the rest. As I always did.

It was late—closer to three in the morning—when the news found me. Donovan Galpin. Dead. Found with his eyes plucked clean from their sockets.

I should’ve heard it from the station, some sort of official notice. But no—Dr. Fairburn called, her voice clipped, clinical, and yet there was something heavier to her tone. Sympathy. I don’t even know what was worse: the horror of how he died, or the fact that even in the end, our old Shieff Galpin managed to be reduced to a case file.

By dawn, I had the beginnings of a migraine, and by midmorning, I was dragging myself across campus in a frenzy of photocopiers and locked printers, filling out documents Dr. Fairburn had promised would grant me an emergency visit to Willow. A whole day of pacing through classes like a ghost in my own skin, staring at clocks, tapping my leg against the wooden stool bars until I nearly drove myself insane.

The second the bell struck noon, I bolted. Papers shoved into my back, students shoved out of my way, the whole world a until the air outside slapped against my face. 

Of course, I didn’t have a car. Never needed one—never planned to leave. It was one of those ridiculous details you only regret when the universe decides to laugh at you and throw an oddly specific roadblock in your path. I would have gotten by bat if it weren’t for the fact that the forecast called for rain sometime today, flying with legal documents during a storm sounded like a nightmare. So Nevermore set me up with a ride.

Professor Capri.

She was waiting by the gates, arms crossed, fiery hair glinting under the too-bright sun. An odd choice for a chaperone–music professor, free-spirited, prone to talking poetically about feelings and vibrations. Good-natured, sure. But intense in a way that made my nerves prickle. Still, better a seasoned werewolf on staff than none at all. And any new redheaded hire was better than our old one, which didn’t take much, but here we are.

“Do you have everything?” she asked as soon as I approached. Her gaze flicked over me, sharp and searching, as though she expected me to pass out right there on the pavement.

I tightened my grip on my bag. “Got it.” My voice came out too clipped. Too certain.

I brushed past the sunlight like it was a personal affront, raising my arm to shield my eyes. Umbrellas are too dramatic these days—sunglasses and sunscreen work just fine, it was gloomy out today anyhow, nothing to be too worried about.

Her car was an older model, something out of the ‘50s, polished white that wasn’t at all dulled by time, dignified, probably had a lot of work done on it to be in this condition. Normally, I’d have admired it. Today, I collapsed into the passenger seat and pressed my hands over my face.

Capri slid behind the wheel, her movements efficient but calm, like she was giving me time to breathe. Then she spoke: “Seatbelt?”

I sighed, but complied, the click of the buckle loud in the silence. Pointless, I thought, but it was easier to just humor her.

She started the engine, but her eyes lingered on me a moment longer. “Honey,” she said softly, “you’re awfully quiet. How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” I replied instantly, cringing at the way it sounded. Too fast. Too flat.

Her brows twitched. “You know, you don’t have to do this if it’s too much. You are a responsible, good student, with your whole life ahead of you. Nobody would think less of you for—”

What life ahead of me?

“Professor.” I cut her off, staring at the dashboard. “I just…didn’t sleep too well because someone I knew was brutally murdered last night. That’s all. I’m fine, just tired.” I don’t have a choice.

Capri seemed unconvinced, but she only nodded and let it drop. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the hum of the engine and the dull rhythm of my thigh bouncing against the seat.

The drive felt endless and too slow, each mile stretching me thinner.

And then there it was.

Willow Hill.

I handed Capri the documents without comment, letting her play liaison at the checkpoint. My stomach was too knotted up to deal with guards and clipboards, knowing what was ahead.

Time had done nothing to soften its edges. It was so painfully obvious this was an asylum, call it an institution if that makes you feel better about the horrors these walls have seen, its history was a mask it never took off. The gates groaned open after the guard reviewed my documents, iron jaws parting to reveal a hulking carcass of stone and shadow. The air around it always seemed a little colder, a little heavier.

Most people would probably flinch at the sight of this place. I never did, not these days anyhow. This place didn’t frighten me—it was just…consistent, consistently bleak, consistently unsettling. Familiar in its refusal to truly improve itself where it counted.

Once the gates clanged shut behind us, Capri parked in a gravel patch beside the looming structure. I muttered a quick thanks and shoved my door open, eager to just get this over with, but her voice stopped me.

“I’ll wait for you out here,” she said, her tone gentler now, like she was testing the air between us. “But…think about what I said. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

I forced a thin smile. “Thanks for looking out for me. Really.” My eyes slid past her shoulder, up toward the dark front doors yawning open like a mouth. “But I’ve got it under control.”

I always do. 

I didn’t wait for her reply. I brushed past, crossing the threshold into Willow Hill’s waiting maw.

I didn’t have much time to think. Or maybe I had too much.

I don’t remember the walk inside. The office they stuck me in smelled like lemon polish and wilted flowers, the kind you see dumped into a vase at the last minute to trick visitors into thinking this place isn’t dying from the inside out. A woman—I couldn’t even remember her name, only that her smile was too wide and voice too cheerful—droned on about signatures, liability, and visitation policies.

My eyes weren’t on her. They were on the stack of paper she kept shuffling, each page whispering more responsibility in that papery hiss. The weight of it pressed against my ribs, making my chest feel too tight. My ears were ringing. I pressed my thumb against the familiar braided bracelet on my wrist, twisting it until the circulation in my hand cut short. I only ever did that when I was close to breaking.

Then— “Miss (L/N).”

The voice snapped me out of my spiral. Dr. Fairburn.

I blinked and only then realized I hadn’t heard a single word for the last five minutes. My eyes fixed on her—Fairburn, crisp in a white jumpsuit, posture immaculate. She looked me over; she didn’t look worried, just in that way all psychologists do, inquisitive.

I forced myself up too quickly, the chair's legs screeching against the floor. My arms crossed over my chest, a weak attempt to cage in the trembling. “Yes,” I croaked, though I hadn’t been asked a question.

Her gaze softened slightly, though her tone didn’t shift much. “I’ll be direct with you.” She walked over and showed me a thick folder, deliberate and steady. “As I said over the phone about Mr. Galpin’s passing, Tyler’s care and guardianship falls to you. As his godmother, you are the next of kin legally recognized.”

I stared at the folder. My name typed neatly across the top. Letters crisp, merciless. My head filled with white noise.

“You’re still very young yourself,” she continued. “Chronologically, yes—but in other ways…no. Normally, I wouldn’t request this of someone like you, but you’ve proven stable here, dependable. Tyler could use that.” Stable. Dependable. As though that was all I was. A machine they could plug responsibility into until it shorted out. She, of course, didn’t mean it like that, but for a psychologist, she laid it on thick.

I swallowed hard but didn’t answer. 

Fairburn didn’t pause. She flipped the folder open, revealing endless forms. Signatures. Questions about fitness, finance, medical decision-making, and educational responsibility, since they apparently did that here. Words like guardian ad litem, emergency care proxy, primary custodian leapt out at me in black ink, each one another stone on my back.

“You’ll have to fill these out as soon as possible. I’ll need to review your answers before we can finalize any big changes. For now, Tyler’s care plan continues as it has been—but as his legal guardian, every adjustment to his medications, every treatment decision, will require your approval moving forward. Or at the very least, you have to be informed about these things.”

Her voice was calm, rehearsed, like she’d said this a hundred times. Maybe she had. It didn’t make it any less brutal.

I could only nod. The motion felt mechanical, like my body wasn’t even mine.

She went on, outlining his current regimen—therapy sessions, sedatives, containment precautions, a daily structure meant to keep him from “episodes.” I barely absorbed the words. They washed over me in sterile waves, crashing against a mind too numb to process them.

It wasn’t fear. Not exactly. It was something heavier, duller. Like someone had pressed a brick flat over my chest and kept it there until all I could do was breathe and pretend it wasn’t suffocating me.

At last, she stopped. Her expression turned to one of sympathy. “I know it’s a lot to take in…but you are the only person who actually wants to take care of a boy like Tyler…wants what’s best for him. Hence why, as the lead in his care team, I know you are his best option.” Her eyes studied me carefully. “So I need to know how you’d like to proceed. Unless this is too much for you?”

You’re asking me now? I had to hold myself back from getting snippy with the psychologist, and forced myself to answer, my voice coming out steadier than I felt, “No, no…it’s fine, I just, I’d like to talk to him first. Before I make any decisions, it’s his life after all, not mine.”

For the first time, she had offered me a softer smile. A small nod. “Alright, let's go see him then.”

She gathered the folder back into her arms and gestured for me to follow.

We left the office, the smiling assistant finally silenced, and entered the bowels of the institution. The air changed immediately—colder, heavier, carrying that faint, metallic sting that never left asylums, no matter how much bleach they pumped through the walls.

Fairburn led with brisk certainty, her boots heavy against the floor as the corridors narrowed, dimmed, grew more unforgiving. We passed iron doors, locked stairwells, and the faint echo of voices that weren’t really words. My footsteps trailed behind hers, hollow and too loud, like I was intruding in a place that had been waiting years to swallow me whole.

Down, deeper into the foundation of the building, until the sterile hospital veneer had peeled away a touch, and some of the bones of the asylum remained— the stairs down looked like a nightmare, the room just before stepping into the area where I could watch him from his cage, cold and bare, clinical in a way.

I told myself, as I always did, to put on a brave face. Only the immature cracked under pressure, and I had to be the adult here, no matter how absurd that sounded in my own head. Inside, I felt like my skin was too tight, like every nerve was running white-hot, but outside—flat voice, dry humor, no cracks.

The final door sealed behind me with a beep. I half-expected Tyler to be pacing like a caged animal, but he wasn’t. He was sitting on the floor, hunched forward, sweat-dark hair stuck to his forehead. The blanket I’d brought him a week ago lay draped over the slab of a bed, already pilled from rough treatment. He looked like a storm had passed over him and left him hollow.

“You look like hell,” he said, barely even glancing back up at me.

“I just got back.” I laughed a bit, hadn’t seen the boy in days, and that’s what he says to me? “You should see yourself. You look like dogshit.”

He gave a short, strangled laugh but kept his eyes fixed on the floor between his knees. His elbows dug into them hard enough that his knuckles went pale.

“You’re the second visitor today. The doctors must think I’m about to snap if they’re getting this desperate.”

My brows pinched. “Second visitor?”

“Wednesday,” he said, still not looking at me. “Came snooping for answers as if I could tell her anything from in here.”

Addams. Of course. I glanced up at the ceiling camera, at the little red light that blinked like a pulse. Who had decided that was a good idea? Letting them talk was like leaving a match by a gas line. I knew of their history, from some gossip, but everyone knew the girl was the reason he was locked in here anyway.

“I see.” I smoothed the edge out of my voice. “So… you’ve heard the news.”

“That my father’s dead?” His head snapped up at that, eyes dark and feral for a second before the light dulled again. He just went back to picking at his chains, mindlessly trying to pass the time. “Yeah. I heard. I don’t care. The bastard deserved to rot.”

He didn’t pace the way he used to when he got worked up. He just slumped forward, staring at nothing. It was almost worse. I knew that look, where grief hadn’t set in, just anger.

I crouched by the bars, resting my arms on my knees. This wasn’t my skill set. I was used to keeping my head down, not reaching out. But his heartbeat was a thrumming, uneven thing even I could hear; I had to say something.

“You had it rough with the guy,” I said quietly. “I don’t blame you for not crying about it. Everyone’s going to expect you to, but… anger’s normal. You have every right to be mad.” I swallowed. “Still…I’m sorry it happened this way. You deserved more time. Time to yell, to fight with him, to let loose a bit on the old man. You got cheated of that closure.”

He didn’t answer right away. He picked at the chains around his wrists instead, twisting the metal until it clicked. The boy didn’t say anything, but he did tilt his head up by a fraction at my words.

After a long pause, he said, skeptically, “Why are you really here?”

I hesitated, then looked down at the little braided bracelet on my wrist—the one I always fiddled with when I was lost. “Well…” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “With your old man gone, you’re legally my problem now.”

That made him look at me. Really look at me. His eyes were too dark for his face, like someone had poured something dangerous into a boy’s skull. I knew who that person was. Sick bitch, groomed the kid into being her little murderous muppet.

“I won’t try to treat you like a child, I know firsthand how irritating that can be,” I said, forcing my voice steadier. “I’m also not going to go forward with approving any treatments or anything without asking you first. So—what do you think I should do?”

He blinked, slowly. “You should get me out of here.”

I let out air through my nose. It sounded almost like a laugh. “Yeah. I thought you’d say that.”

At least he wasn’t asking me to break him out by force this time around. Progress.

I shifted, my thumb rubbed circles into the bracelet cords. “Okay. Then we’ll get you out. But you’ve got to give me and the doctors something to work with. Humor us a bit. I can’t convince them to let you free until they think you’re docile enough to be let out of this cage.”

For the first time, his mouth twitched. Not quite a snarl, but something uglier, restless under the skin. “I don’t need a new master.”

I let out a sigh, so we are back on defense. I looked down for a moment to collect myself— before looking him back in the eye, trying to keep my voice steady. “I don’t want to be; I just want what’s best for you.”

Something flickered in his eyes. Not triumph this time, not power—something volatile, a spark that caught before I could react. His posture shifted, muscles coiling tight under the restraints. “Then get me out,” he growled. His voice was low but serrated, cutting at the edges. “You hear me? I don’t care how. Just get me out!”

The last words weren’t spoken—they were hurled. The sound of them crashed against the walls like glass breaking.

I froze, still kneeling on the cold floor. Every instinct screamed at me to get up, to run, but my body wouldn’t move. No, just hold it together, handle it. I opened my mouth, wanting to say it wasn’t that simple, that he’d burn every bridge if he kept snapping like this, but the words sat heavy in my chest, unmoving.

“Tyler—” I managed, my voice catching. “Listen—”

“NO!” He slammed forward on his knees, chains screeching against the iron bolts anchoring them to the floor. His face twisted, veins standing out against his skin as something inside him clawed to get out. “You think you can get inside my head?!” he roared. “You think you can control me?! Pretend you are going to give me a choice in all of this?!”

The snarl that tore from his throat was almost inhuman, guttural and deep, echoing off the stone. His hands convulsed, nails scraping, and for a heartbeat, his eyes flashed something bestial—Hyde eyes, alien and furious.

“Get out!” he screamed. “GET OUT BEFORE I FUCKING KILL—”

A high-pitched whine cut through the air, sharp and electric. The shock collar around his neck blinked red once, twice—then discharged.

Tyler arched violently, the scream choking off into a ragged howl. Sparks danced along the metal studs against his skin as the current burned through him. His chains rattled so hard they sang against the floor. For a second, I thought he’d break them.

I still didn’t move. I just sat there on the cold concrete, heart hammering, feeling impossibly small. Smaller than I’d ever felt in my life.

He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t cornered. He was something else entirely—something monstrous and trapped, thrashing inside a cage that could barely hold him.

Guards swarmed in, boots pounding the floor. One yanked me by the arm, hauling me backward so quickly my knees scraped against the concrete. I didn’t even fight them; my eyes stayed locked on Tyler’s twisting form inside the cage.

“Miss, you need to step back—now!” someone barked near my ear, but it was distant, muffled.

I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. I just watched in horror as the shock collar pulsed again, cutting through his growls until they faded to ragged, human breaths.

Only then did the guards drag me fully out of the room, my shoes skidding against the floor. Even from the hallway, I could hear the sound of his chains rattling, like an animal slamming itself against a trap.

And still, even as the door slammed shut between us, my hands trembled against the fabric of my pants, as if the electric current had leapt the air and found me too.

—

I had been sitting there for hours, though I couldn’t have said how many. Time had started losing its shape. Afternoon, evening—it didn’t matter. The clock ticked somewhere far above me, but the sound only blended with the scratching of my pen and the rustling of paper.

Paperwork. Endless paperwork.

The desk was buried in it: intake forms, medical reports, guardianship documents, legal waivers stamped in ink that smelled sharp and permanent. Each one demanded my name at the bottom, as though a single scrawl of pen could bind me into something I wasn’t sure I wanted to be. I’d sign one page only for three more to take its place, like some bureaucratic hydra.

I tried to focus. Tried to read. But the words slipped and tangled. Medication compliance. Behavioral instability. Liability. Guardian of record. Every time I reached that phrase, my stomach twisted. It was always in bold, like the page wanted to mock me.

Guardian. Me. Of a Hyde.

I was going to be in charge of that thing.

My leg wouldn’t stop bouncing under the desk, the nerves buzzing restlessly, like my body thought if it kept moving, maybe I could outrun this. My fingers kept reaching for the bracelet on my wrist, rubbing the braid back and forth, again and again, until the skin was pink. A bad tell. I only did that when I was losing my grip.

I leaned back in the chair and pinched the bridge of my nose. The lamp cast everything in a dull yellow haze, and for a second the whole room swayed, papers swimming like the surface of water. I pressed my palms flat against the desk to steady myself.

Just sign the forms, I told myself. Push through. Do the responsible thing. It was a mantra, something to drown out the pounding in my head. If I could just finish this stack, maybe I’d feel more in control. Maybe I’d feel like I knew what I was doing.

But the truth was, I didn’t.

I told myself it was for him. Francoise’s boy. My godson. Her baby. But maybe the truth was uglier. Maybe I was just trying to save something of her because she was gone. Or maybe I was trying to prove I wasn’t what I’ve always been—cold, useless, good at disappearing when things get hard.

I could still see it, the hate in his eyes. The way his voice went from human to a low, deep gargling tone that no voice should have the ability to drop down to. The way he thrashed ain’t the chains, he couldn’t kill me, worse, that thing would have probably ripped me to shreds and wait till I was done cracking bones back into place just to do it again.

Every line I read only made it worse. Every page reminded me what this meant: Tyler wasn’t Francoise’s. He wasn’t a baby bundled up in a blanket anymore; that was someone else's responsibility. He was mine now. Mine to handle. Mine to fail. Just like I did to his mother.

I wanted to get up, leave, run—just walk until my feet blistered and my lungs burned—but I stayed nailed to the chair. Held it together earlier, in front of Capri, in front of Dr. Fairburn. Smiled, nodded, pretended to be solid. Now there was no one left to see me cracking.

My fingers drifted to the braided bracelet on my wrist. She used to tell me I was “the tough one” of the two of us. Always looked at me with those expectant eyes, as if I had the answers. She didn’t have her brother anymore; maybe she held onto me like I was the only thing left of him, like I so quickly ran to Tyler.

A bitter sound escaped my throat. Tough. Right.

The papers swam in front of me. Part of me pictured walking into Willow Hill tonight, breaking Tyler out, handing him cash, and telling him to run until his feet gave out. Let him vanish. Let him die free, a monster, if that’s what he wanted. It almost sounded merciful. And yet—even imagining it, I couldn’t let go. Was it selfishness? Cowardice? Some twisted kind of loyalty?

My chest constricted. My vision started to pulse.

“Why am I doing this?” The whisper tore out of me before I could stop it. “Why the hell am I doing this?”

The thought looped and looped, growing louder in my skull. I’m not his mother. I’m not his savior. I’m nothing. Just a fraud with a stack of paperwork she didn’t understand, trying to play at being someone who could fix things. I wasn’t that kind of person; that person was—

I pressed my palms into my eyes. My breath hitched. The walls felt closer, the air thick, heavy, and sour.

It had all been over a long time ago—Francoise, Isaac, everything. I should’ve walked away then. I should’ve stayed gone. Instead, I’m sitting here pretending I can hold together what’s left. Pretending I’m not just as lost as the boy rotting in that cell.

I could still hear him screaming.

The sadness went sharp. Anger rose under it like heat from a vent. My hands dropped to the desk, fingers curling until my nails dug into the wood. I didn’t choose this. Or maybe I did. Maybe every bad decision had led straight to this moment. Maybe I wanted to punish myself by staying in this awful town.

My heart thudded faster, shallow breaths dragging through my teeth. I yanked at my coat, suddenly too hot, too tight. The papers blurred. I couldn’t even remember which ones I’d signed. My chest ached with the effort of breathing.

God, I can’t do this.

But even then, I started gathering the forms, stacking them, smoothing them, forcing my hands to work. I was trembling so badly the pages rattled. If anyone saw me like this, I think I’d finally shatter.

I stood on unsteady legs, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth until my breathing slowed to something manageable. My head pounded. My throat was raw.

“Get it together,” I whispered to no one. I placed a hand to my chest as if I could somehow pace myself to breathe more slowly. “Handle it. Just handle it.”

I shoved the papers into my bag, kept my eyes on the floor, and walked out of the library before anyone could catch me clawing for air. Every step echoed too loudly, but I didn’t stop. I just kept moving, as if I stopped, the whole façade would crumble, and I’d never get back up.

This was ridiculous. Here I was breaking down, perhaps I forgot my own mantra of not even thinking about it. It wasn’t the end of the world. I don’t know why my hands were shaking so much. I had to pull myself together; a life depended on me now, I couldn’t just stay stuck in the past, at least act like I have it together. 

How was someone like me supposed to be in charge of someone else? I didn’t even know how to handle taking care of myself; I’d fail him. 

I pressed my back to the cool stone wall and slid down until I was sitting on the floor, knees bent, arms draped across them. My coat had already been shed; it lay crumpled beside me like a deflated second skin. My pulse still hadn’t slowed. It beat a dull, frantic rhythm in my throat.

I’d thought stepping out into the corridor would calm me down, but it hadn’t. The walls at Nevermore had a way of pressing in on you even when you were alone. Especially when you were alone. I’d gotten good at holding myself together around other people, but here—in the empty hall with the smell of wax and old stone—I’d nearly come apart. My hands trembled in my lap. My breath still snagged and caught in my chest.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a plan. The paperwork, the court documents, the legal loopholes—none of it had helped me make sense of Tyler, or myself. I’d been telling myself I was strong enough to handle this. That I was the “stable one,” the dependable one, the tough one. The only one who could keep things from getting worse. Anything was better than leaving his fate up to the courts, who would no doubt vote to never let him out again.

But the truth had been creeping in all evening, and just now it had nearly swallowed me whole: I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t stable. I didn’t even know what “handling this” meant.

And then—voices.

They came down the corridor like an echo of something far away at first. Male voices, quick and urgent, the shuffle of shoes. My first instinct was to wipe at my face, drag my fingers under my eyes, and hold my breath until the tightness in my chest looked like nothing. I stood up, ready to rush off if needed, pressed myself into the shadowed part of the hall, hoping whoever it was would pass without noticing me.

“We have a problem—Pugsley!” a boy whisper-shouted, the hiss of panic carrying down the stone hall.

“What?” another more familiar voice answered, unsettled.

I stilled. Not because I wanted to eavesdrop, but because my body simply froze. Anything was better than the noise inside my own head.

“Your…pet zombie. Slurp? He’s escaped!”

My breath caught in my throat. Excuse me?

The words were so absurd, so left-field, that they knocked my darker thoughts clear out of orbit. I straightened a little without thinking. A zombie? Here? Well, I guess this wasn’t our first zombie; we did have that undead pilgrim last year, weird how it’s seemingly happened again.

I turned the corner and stopped dead. Two boys stood a few yards away. One was taller—Pugsley Addams, unmistakable. The other was smaller, with thick glasses slipping down his nose, familiar, but in a way I couldn’t yet place. They looked as though they’d just been caught sneaking out of detention. Both of them stared at me with the wide, guilty eyes of kids who knew they were in trouble.

I arched a brow, voice flat. “Did you just say ‘zombie’?”

For a heartbeat, they didn’t answer. The smaller one darted a glance at Pugsley, then back to me, fingers twisting nervously behind his back. “Uh—no! No, we didn’t. Zombies? Those don’t exist, right, Pugsley?”

Pugsley’s eyes darted like a cornered animal. “Can you keep a secret?” he blurted. “Just please don’t tell my parents.”

The smaller boy—Eugene, it clicked now, one of Nevermore’s ‘saviors’—groaned. “Dude, you folded under like zero pressure—”

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve kept walking. Whatever mess they were in, it wasn’t mine. But their ridiculous exchange had yanked me out of the tailspin I’d been in seconds ago, and now I found myself…curious. Maybe even grateful.

I crossed my arms, still playing aloof. “I literally don’t talk to your parents about anything. Not about to start now. So, sure. Secret’s safe.”

Eugene’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Pugsley took a deep breath like a diver about to go under. “I accidentally brought that dead kid back to life from the Skull Tree legend on the night of the Pyre,” he blurted out, words tumbling over each other. “We were keeping him locked up in Eugene’s shed for a week, but I think he broke out. Now he’s lost and scared and hungry—”

I stopped breathing. Skull Tree?

My voice came out sharper than I meant. “As in…the boy with the clockwork heart legend?”

They both stared at me. Eugene shot Pugsley a murderous look for spilling so much. But then they nodded.

My heart thundered. A chance. It couldn’t be. But it could.

“And this kid is…really alive?” I asked carefully, my tone a thread stretched tight.

Eugene puffed up his chest like a kid trying to sound responsible. Who was he trying to impress? “Yeah. But he also could be dangerous. We need to find him before someone gets hurt.”

I hardly heard him. The words “dangerous” and “hurt” washed right over me. My mind had already gone somewhere else.

Isaac.

It was ridiculous. Impossible. Yet the idea flared in me like a match struck in a dark room. I could practically feel myself reaching for it, clutching at it, because if it was true…if there was even a chance it was true, then maybe I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought. Maybe fate finally threw me a bone.

I forced myself to sound skeptical, even bored, crossing my arms and trying to stop myself from giving my restlessness away. “Right. So you’re telling me you’ve got a rogue zombie wandering around Nevermore, and you’re just…chatting about it in the hallway?”

Eugene blinked at me, deer-in-headlights. “We’re not—chatting! We’re strategizing.”

I let out a dry laugh, slow and mirthless. “Sure you are. Strategizing. Well, you’re terrible at it. Where’d you last see him?”

They hesitated, glancing at each other like two kids caught sneaking candy. Pugsley shifted his weight from one foot to the other, a weird, timid look washing over his dopey eyes. “Why do you want to help? I thought you didn’t like me.”

I gave him a patient little tilt of my head, “Of course I don’t hate you, I hardly even know you. Plus, if your parents find out about this, you’re done. And if someone else finds your ‘pet zombie’ first…” I gave a tiny shrug. “You’re even more done. Lucky for you, I’m very good at making problems disappear.”

If there was even the slightest chance that the boy they’d found was Isaac, then nothing, not these boys, not the school, not the rules or the risk of humiliation, was going to keep me from seeing him for myself.

Eugene’s hands fidgeted with his glasses, nerves practically leaking out of him. “We shouldn’t—”

I cut him off with a small, sly smile I hadn’t felt on my face in a long time. It almost startled me. “I mean, if you want, you can keep stumbling around on your own and hope nobody notices. Up to you. I won’t lose sleep over it.”

Pugsley’s eyes widened. “Wait—so you’ll actually help us?”

“Of course, what are friends for?” Friends? Why was I lying? It slipped out so easily that I had no chance of stopping it; perhaps I was getting desperate. “It would be so much safer if I were part of this little search party. Three sets of eyes, three sets of ears. Divide and conquer. It’s just being practical.”

Eugene tugged on Pugsley’s sleeve. “She’s right. It makes sense. Plus—” His voice dropped, awkward and hopeful. “It’s… kinda nice having, you know, someone like her around.”

I pretended not to notice the way his ears went red. Instead, I leaned back on my heels, playing at indifference even as my insides screamed with urgency. Isaac. The name rattled in my skull like a loose screw. If they really had brought him back…

“But hey,” I said, rolling my shoulders as if to seem casual, “if you’d rather stumble around on your own and risk zombie-boy making a snack out of a random student, be my guest. I’ll just sit back and wait for the screaming.”

I let them whisper between themselves, their voices fading to a dull buzz against the roar in my ears. The sharp grin tugging at the corner of my mouth wasn’t really a smile at all; it was a reflex, a mask I’d learned to wear. My fingers curled in on themselves, nails biting into my palms as I tried to keep my hands from shaking with the urge to bolt.

This couldn’t be real. It was ridiculous—impossible. People didn’t just come back. Not from that. Not after so long. And yet… the words Pugsley had said clanged through my skull like a bell: Skull Tree. Dead boy. Clockwork heart.

I could feel myself swaying on my feet, caught somewhere between disbelief and something far worse—hope. A small, reckless, burning hope that made my chest ache and my stomach churn. I should have laughed in their faces, walked away, let the fantasy crumble before it could take root. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Because what if they weren’t lying? What if it really was him?

The hallway seemed to tilt for a heartbeat, the walls pressing in and stretching away at the same time. Common sense whispered at the edges of my mind—this is insane, it’s not him, don’t do this to yourself again—but it was a weak, watery thing compared to the tidal pull dragging me forward.

I watched the boys bicker and mutter, their silhouettes swimming in my vision. They had no idea what they’d handed me, no idea why my voice had gone soft and low, why I was leaning in like a conspirator instead of an upperclassman scolding them.

Finally, Pugsley huffed through his nose, shoulders dropping in defeat. “Fine.”

I straightened, smoothing down the tremor in my hands, masking it as a casual gesture. “Alright,” I said lightly, my voice steady even as my pulse thundered. “Let’s go find your lost…pet.”

Nevermore was still Nevermore. Even with part of the wing gone, charred last year, the campus wore its ruin like a prop. Gargoyles still mourned from their perches; yet, things were expertly arranged so that students could still avoid the wing, as if last year's incident were merely a dream. Students flowed through the stone corridors in familiar clicks: the werewolves in their pack, the sirens in their school of fellow fishes, freshman eyes bright, stupid, and for a moment, deliciously alive. The rest of us wandered like characters who had decided their parts were no longer interesting.

Skipping? What was the point? Soon, I’d be over and done with it all. If anything, I busied myself with the never-ending schoolwork that came my way. The library has nothing of value to me anymore; every book has already passed through my hands at some point. Any new ones were quickly finished in a night or two.

The day had begun the way most of mine did: with Professor Orloff by his desk, muttering about “curriculum consistency” while I copied notes into neat little grids on the blackboard. Rows of chalky equations and diagrams lined up like prisoners of war, awaiting their fate. He had me redrafting the syllabus for the incoming students— as if ninth-years wouldn’t ignore half of it by October anyway. I sometimes wondered if Orloff actually needed me or if he just liked having someone around to sigh and complain to.

Not that I minded. It kept me busy. That was the trick, after all: staying occupied. If I weren’t copying pages, alphabetizing vials in the lab cupboards, or correcting spelling errors in students’ research papers, I might’ve had to actually think. And thinking had a way of dragging me down places I preferred not to visit.

“You have too much free time,” he said suddenly, peering at me over his tube. He always said it like it was a diagnosis, as though free time were a disease.

“Lucky for you, I spend it volunteering in your class,” I replied dryly, erasing a crooked line on the board.

He gave me a look that landed somewhere between amusement and pity. “It’s the first day of your last year here. Don’t waste it in a classroom. Go outside. Breathe fresh air. Spend it with your peers. Make some friends.”

“As opposed to the thrilling company of periodic tables and mildew?” I asked.

He shook his head, smiling. “Exactly so.”

I sighed, brushing the chalk dust from my fingers. “If I burn in the sun out there, I’ll be writing my obituary in your name.”

But I packed away the chalk all the same, leaving him to his beloved syllabus. The corridors outside were already buzzing with life — laughter, chatter, footsteps echoing off stone. It was like stepping into a fishbowl, everyone darting in familiar schools while I lingered near the glass.

So I did as I always did: I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t try. Instead, I pushed my way through the noise and found myself in the courtyard, where the air was warm and sharp with the smell of sun-baked stone.

The gargoyle near the front gate was waiting, ever patient, its wing a lump of cold relief against my back as I leaned into it. Perfect vantage point, perfect distance. Not too far from the crowd, but not in it either. Orloff had told me to make friends, but the truth was, watching them swarm and scatter was company enough.

But my peace never lasted long.

“(Y/N)...”

Of course. Just when I thought I might survive one day at Nevermore without being haunted by the ghosts still walking around. I sucked a breath through my teeth and plastered on the kind of smile that could pass as polite if you squinted hard enough.

“Morticia.” 

She swept over to me like she owned the damn courtyard. Regal as ever, not a hair out of place, Gomez following a step behind— all toothy grin and slightly manic energy, like an overfed wolfhound on a leash. Age had done nothing to dull either of them. If anything, it had made Morticia more immaculate and Gomez more unbearable. God help me, I sometimes thought he should’ve been the one to die that night, but I always shot down the thought before I could entertain it long.

“It is so good to see you,” she said, voice as smooth as wine. Tense, but given our history, that was to be expected; she approached me as if I were going to bite her for getting too close. “How have you been?”

I forced my mouth into a half-smile. Fuck me, why did they have to be here? I was already exhausted. “I’m fine, so don’t trouble yourself worrying about me.”

Inside, the words tasted like ash. Don’t trouble yourself. They’d never stopped “troubling” themselves—letters, calls, invitations—all of which I’d tossed aside over the years. And yet they stood her, smiling like we were still friends, like nothing ever broke between us.

Silence lingered, thick as tar.

Then Gomez, Morticia’s knight in dark armor, swooped in. Voice too loud, too warm. “Have you met our boy, Pugsley?”

I arched a brow as they nudged forward a tall, slightly chubby boy. Dark hair, wide smile, eyes shining with morbid eagerness. He looked like every Addams gene had collided and produced a doe-eyed creature I wanted nothing to do with.

“Can’t say I have,” I said coolly.

“You’re a vampire, right?” Pugsley asked, his grin too wide, too curious. Before I could answer, he barreled on, “So does that mean you drink blood in the dorms? Like…do they give you some, or do you kill your classmates and hide what’s left of the bodies later?”

The words hung there, tacky and graceless.

My smile froze. Really? That was the opening line? I’d dealt with centuries of whispers, of pointed questions dressed up as jokes. But something about him asking—Gomez’s proud chest puffed up behind him, Morticia’s expectant eyes on me— it struck a nerve I didn’t even know I had.

Slowly, I turned my full body to face Pugsley, meeting his eager stare with one of my own. “A bit of friendly advice,” I said, voice flat, cool as glass. “If you ever ask me something like that again, I’ll bury your body where your parents hide theirs. And I know you Addams are into crazy shit like that, but I’d make sure even you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

His face fell, lips parting, confusion flickering into something smaller. Almost hurt. Good. Let him sit with that. I might regret that later, but I was too tired to care at the moment.

Morticia swept in like perfume, trying to mask rot. “(Y/N), dear,” she said softly, “he’s still learning how to ask things delicately. He didn’t mean offense.”

I waved her off with a flick of my hand, just crossing my arms as I swung my legs back onto the railing to face away from them. “Relax, Tish. I’ve had worse. Just thought your kid might have more sense than to lead with bad jokes.”

Gomez barked a laugh, too quick, too nervous. “He takes after me! Curious about everything, sometimes without filter.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I muttered, leaning back onto the stone behind me, already withdrawing. I didn’t want to talk to them anymore. I didn’t want to play their game, pretend we were all old friends reunited under Nevermore’s gothic roof.

It wasn’t their fault what happened that night— logically, I knew that, yet a part of me always felt bitter every time I saw them. I was angry, even now, and that anger somehow always formed into guilt every time I felt spite build up in my chest. I didn't feel good whenever I saw them. I didn't want to wish them any ill will; I just wished they could live happily ever after as far away from me as possible.

The air between us was heavy with years of things unsaid, and I wasn’t about to start unpacking them now—not in front of their wide-eyed boy.

“Am I interrupting something?”

The voice dripped oil before I even turned. Principal Dort, in his usual costume of slicked-back hair and a grin that stretched too wide, ambled towards us like a con artist sniffing out a tourist.

Morticia inclined her head with her usual elegance. Gomez, of course, lit up like someone had just announced free cigars. Clearly, they were both pleased that one more person was added to the equation before one of us could make another snappy comment.

“Principal Dort, new headmaster here at Nevermore. No need to introduce yourself, Gomez and Morticia Addams.” Dort declared, as if narrating a stage play. “Nevermore’s most illustrious alumni. What an honor to have you gracing our grounds again.” He seized Gomez’s hand with both of his, squeezing for far too long, before Morticia offered him the briefest, most delicate handshake imaginable.

“And,” Dort went on, turning toward me, “I see you’re all already acquainted?”

“Indeed,” Morticia answered before I could open my mouth. Her voice was velvet, practiced. “(Y/N) and I go back quite far. We shared many…memorable adventures together.”

Adventures? Is that what we were going to call it?

Pugsley shifted uncomfortably beside his parents. For the record, so was I. He really was an odd one, even for his family, rather subdued in his demeanor, which contrasted what I’ve seen from his sister. He seemed rather sensitive. Now I feel guilty for being snappy to him...

Dort clasped his hands together, delighted. “A testament to what kind of kids Nevermore produces. Don’t let her modesty fool you.” He pivoted, eyes landing on me like I was a prize exhibit. “Did you know,” he addressed the Addamses now, theatrically lowering his voice, “That your friend here is in line to graduate as valedictorian? High marks, clean record, countless hours assisting the faculty—she’s set a remarkable standard. The longest-standing student in Nevermore history.”

My brows furrowed. He was talking as if my age were a quirky little footnote rather than a slow grinding eternity. I felt the urge to bite back some more, but apparently, I had a record to keep clean. Arguing with the headmaster wasn’t going to do me any favors.

Morticia’s lips curved up faintly, that unreadable softness in her gaze. “How wonderful. I had no idea you were working so diligently.”

Gomez let out a booming laugh. “Ah, of course she is! Always quick to get work done in our class, always the one with her nose stuck in the books. Valedictorian—it suits her!”

I let out a scoff, leaning back some more as I looked up to the sky. Contemplating if I should just rub off all this sunscreen and throw myself into the daylight now. “Yes, what a dream. Half a century in school and what do I have to show for it? A shiny gold star for punctuality and unpaid overtime grading freshman essays. Try not to be jealous.”

Dort chuckled, pretending my tone was modest. “What other school can boast of such loyalty, such longevity? Generations of students have looked up to her. Truly, Nevermore is fortunate. She’s a testament to Nevermore’s enduring spirit — and the kind of excellence we cultivate here.”

There it is, I thought. There’s the brochure pitch. My achievements weren’t mine; they were selling points. Marketing bullet points for a school desperate to pretend it mattered. Students didn’t know me. The only people who knew me were the desperate individuals who needed to pass a challenging test or whose parents forced them to spend time after school. The only benefit that came from it all was a private room.

“I’m just a glorified unpaid intern, forgive me if I don’t break out the champagne, Dort.” What a joke. Who fucking cares about some stupid award? I certainly don’t.

Morticia, ever the diplomat, tried again. “Still, it’s no small fear, (Y/N). You should take pride in this.”

Pride? Perhaps I was being too negative, but her presence irritated me like no other. If pride was the only thing she had left to offer me, she could keep it.

Morticia’s expression softened, perhaps in sympathy — or pity — and Gomez clapped me on the shoulder with that relentless optimism of his. “Regardless of how you see it, we’re proud of you. It’s no small feat.”

Proud. That word again. Everyone always wanted to be proud of me, as if that filled the vacuum I felt. I nodded once, just enough to be polite, and looked away. The truth was, I didn’t care about accolades. I didn’t care about being a star student. It wasn’t ambition that kept me here — it was inertia. 

“So!” Dort clapped his hands together, too loudly, too eagerly. “Speaking of Nevermore’s continued excellence — Mrs. Addams, I’ve been meaning to ask. We are in desperate need of someone to chair our annual fundraising gala. A task that requires taste, poise, and social brilliance — all qualities you possess in abundance.”

Morticia blinked, clearly taken aback. “Oh… that’s a rather significant undertaking.”

“It is,” Dort said, leaning in as if they were already conspiring. “And your involvement would mean so much to the alumni network. It would signal to our donors that Nevermore’s brightest still care deeply about its future.”

Gomez’s grin widened. “It sounds perfect for you, cara mia.”

Morticia’s lips curved faintly, a trace of pride there — but something else, too. Reluctance. “I’d need some time to consider, of course. It’s a commitment, and I wouldn’t want to agree lightly.”

“I completely understand,” Dort said, though his smile suggested he already considered the deal sealed. “But I can’t think of anyone more suited to the role.”

I stopped listening after that. The words blurred into a meaningless hum, my thoughts elsewhere. Chairwoman. Fundraising. Staying. All signs pointed to the same thing — that Morticia Addams might once again plant roots here. That the ghosts I’d been trying to outrun would make themselves at home.

I slipped my hands into my coat pockets and pushed off the stone railing, interrupting whatever Dort was saying with the sound of my footsteps.

“Leaving so soon?” Gomez asked, a flicker of concern in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said lightly, offering a nonchalant shrug. “Suddenly remembered I have somewhere far more interesting to be. Like literally anywhere else.”

Morticia opened her mouth as if to say something — maybe a gentle plea, maybe a reproach — but I didn’t give her the chance. I turned, cutting through the crowd of students and staff, the murmur of their conversation fading behind me.

If they stayed, I wasn’t sure what that meant for me. But I knew I couldn’t stand there and smile about it.

—-

I didn’t even want to go to this stupid pyre event. Dort had cornered me after class and “suggested” I attend with that tone of voice administrators get when they’re about to make your life miserable if you don’t listen. I had a long day, and I was afraid he was going to add the cherry on top to my fuck you sundae by saying I’d have some sort of role. 

Thank God, Dort hadn’t tried to rope me into giving a speech—he’d have had to drag me to the stage kicking and screaming. Wednesday Addams was the student of honor this year, which was the only reason I hadn’t bolted yet.

The DaVincis had done their usual meticulous work on the pyre: a massive bird of wood and lacquer, its wings outstretched in triumph. Students milled around it, laughing and shouting as if they were at some warped county fair instead of a ritual bonfire. I hadn’t seen one of these in a decade, though it hardly mattered; the show never changed, only the faces did.

I busied myself with the safest option of what to do—a churro from one of the food carts—and was retreating towards the outer edge of the crowd. The cinnamon sugar stuck to my fingers. I’d been halfway through my snack, already plotting my escape route, when I felt something tap against my boot.

A small, polite tap. Like a knock on a door.

I froze. Looked down.

And there he was.

Thing.

A severed hand, still somehow living a busier social life than I did. Even the name—Thing—made my stomach knot. He lay flat on the ground like a dropped glove, stitched fingers twitching faintly. Then, with the practiced grace of a creature who’d done this many times before, he scuttled forward and began to climb me.

I almost screamed. My free hand clutched the churro like it was a crucifix.

Stitches pulled taut as he scaled my coat, fingers gripping fabric as delicately as a spider climbing silk. By the time he reached my shoulder, my skin had crawled all the way to my hairline. He perched there and raised two fingers in a bashful little wave.

I stared at him. “It’s you again,” I said finally, because what else does one say to the reanimated severed hand of an ex-situationship?

I’d known about him from the start—Morticia and Gomez had been so pleased about their new companion—but knowing and seeing were two different things. Looking at him brought me back to the day Isaac’s body was dragged off, back when Morticia swore she’d keep Thing away from me. And yet here he was, crawling up my coat like some demented souvenir.

The hand flipped onto its palm and gave me a bashful wave, shy as a schoolboy at his first dance. Which was ridiculous, given he was literally a severed hand. He tapped my collarbone twice, almost apologetically.

I forced a breath through my nose. My brain screamed don’t touch me, don’t touch me, while my mouth managed a strained half-smile. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You Addams family folk often appear at the…strangest of times.”

Thing did a little hop onto my shoulder and settled there like some grotesque parrot. His fingers smoothed the fabric of my coat collar, almost fussily.

“Personal space isn’t really your thing, is it?” I muttered. He tapped twice on my collarbone in reply, smug.

“Charming,” I deadpanned.

For a moment, we just sat like that: me pretending not to feel my entire body crawl, him practically glowing with smug attachment. Students passed by and stared. Someone even snickered. Yes, laugh it up. The ancient vampire with a severed hand for a date. To be fair, the scenario did make me feel kind of crazy, like I was talking to myself.

I cleared my throat. Time to be civil. You were rude enough for one day. “So… how was your summer?”

Thing’s fingers began to dance in his peculiar, off-brand sign language, nails scraping the hem of my sleeve as he gestured. The translation, if I had to guess, sounded like a child describing a nightmare to a very tired parent. Something about a case he’d “helped solve,” a serial killer who scalped people and dressed dolls like the victims. His fingers flicked with glee at the “plot twists,” as if this were all perfectly normal summer fun.

I blinked slowly, churro halfway to my mouth. “Right. Because that’s a perfectly normal way to spend a vacation.”

He signed faster, insisting he was very brave, that it didn’t bother him, that it was all terribly heroic.

“Mm…Well.” I took a bite of my churro. “Glad someone had a productive summer. I mostly reorganized my bookshelves.”

That earned me an affectionate touch on the cheek. My stomach twisted. He didn’t even mean it badly, but—God. If there was ever a definition of wrong, it was this. I felt insane, sick to my stomach.

Trying to distract myself, I dangled the last of my churro between two fingers. The fried dough was still warm, its ridges dusted thick with cinnamon and sugar. “Here,” I said, more to keep him busy than anything. “Want some?”

Thing froze, every tendon taut. Then—like a starving dog offered a treat—he tapped his wrist excitedly, bouncing on my shoulder.

“Don’t drool on me,” I muttered, though of course he couldn’t.

He lunged for the pastry with startling force, seizing it in his little death grip. Sugar immediately cascaded between his stitches as he clenched and unclenched like a grinder. Then, like the wave of a magician's hand, the churro dissolved into nothing—like it had been swallowed by some invisible furnace inside him.

I blinked, half-horrified, half-fascinated. “…Huh. So that’s how you eat?”

Thing puffed up with pride, flexing his fingers in a victorious little flourish.

“You’ve got a little something—” I should have left it at that. But no, noticing a smear of sugar caught in the seam of his thumb. Against every shred of survival instinct, I brushed it away with my own. The texture of him made my stomach twist: cold and rubbery in some places, rough and papery in others, like touching leather left too long in the rain. The stitches caught against my skin.

Instantly, my chest tightened. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about whose hand this was.

But I couldn’t stop it. Memory surged: Isaac’s fingers brushing my hair back, Isaac’s palm cradling my cheek, Isaac’s hand laced with mine, the night everything fell apart. And here it was now, detached, puppeted, still reaching for me.

He went still. Utterly still. Then, slowly, his index finger curled inward like he wanted to curl it around mine. His body gave a tiny, bashful sway, the kind you might see in someone who couldn’t figure out what to do with their hands—except this was just the hand.

I wanted to scream. Instead, I forced out a joke: “…Did I make you nervous?” My voice sounded casual, but my pulse was hammering in my throat.

He snapped into a frantic wave of signs—No, no, not nervous, you’re imagining things, I’m perfectly fine!—but the awkward sway, the little tap-tap spiral his finger started drawing on my shoulder? That gave him away.

I swallowed bile. His fingers were light but insistent, brushing my collar, gripping a little too close to my throat. Every pat sent electric shocks of wrongness through me. It wasn’t just unpleasant—it was invasive, like being touched by the ghost of someone I didn’t want haunting me.

“…God, you’re clingy.” My laugh was thin, brittle.

His knuckles pressed against my jaw in what I think was supposed to be affectionate. My entire body flinched. I wanted him off, wanted to shake him away, but the pathetic truth was—I couldn’t bring myself to. Because somewhere, twisted under all the stitching, it wasn’t Isaac. And yet it was easier to let him hang on than admit how much I hated that I wished it to be him.

“You know,” I blurted, before I could even really think about what I was saying, “we don’t have to stay here. We could ditch. Hit the kitchens. Hide in the library stacks. Anywhere but this flaming bird rave.”

For a second, I thought he’d agree. His fingers stilled, tightening on my collar. He faced the pyre, like there was something in there I wasn't seeing, before turning back to me. Hope, stupid and cruel, bloomed in my chest.

Then he spelled out reluctant no.

Of course.

I bit the inside of my cheek. “Figures. Big flaming bird too hard to pass up, huh?”

He tapped me again, apologetic, almost tender. If only I knew what I was about to miss.

“Don’t worry about it,” I muttered, more bitter than I meant to. “I’m not much of a party date anyway.”

I pried him off finger by finger, every tug like tearing Velcro against a wound. His grip lingered on my wrist until the very last moment, like he didn’t want to let me go. I hated how real it felt, how warm his phantom weight stayed on my skin.

Carefully—so carefully I hated myself for it—I plucked him from my shoulder and set him down gently on the floor. His little fingers clung to my wrist until the last possible second, reluctant to let go.

“Stay out of trouble,” I said, trying for a wry smile.

He saluted with all the gallantry of a knight pledging his service, jaunty and absurd. Endearing.

I turned away quickly, shoving my hands into my pockets before I could do something equally ridiculous, like wave back. The crowd swallowed me. It felt like people were laughing at me, but I could hardly hear it over the ringing of my own ears as I forced myself forward.

The rational part of me whispered that it was idiotic—that abomination didn’t remember anything, just the twitching leftovers of a person, stripped of everything human. But the phantom pressure on my wrist still lingered. And worse, I caught myself wishing whatever was left of him held on just a little longer. He didn’t remember me, yet he always wanted to follow me around like a lost puppy.

I shut my eyes, telling myself not to think anything more about it. About today. It was better to just forget. There was no point wasn't time on the past; force yourself to look ahead.

This was why I’d told Morticia not to bring him around me. Not because I was heartless. Because every time I saw him, I had to relive Isaac—piece by severed piece.

And just like that, he didn’t burn; he rotted.

Buried under that skull tree, because it was the only way to keep Augustus Stonehearst from throwing us all under the bus. Damn that heartless man— he let Isaac, his prized protégé, dissolve into nothing more than an urban legend.

His funeral was the first and last time I saw his father. Same sharp nose, same dark curls, same hollow look in his eyes—but heavier, older, weathered. He didn’t cry once during the service. Though I didn’t bother being upset about that, as I did not either.

The years slipped by me without my noticing. Or maybe I just stopped counting. Dates, professors, names blurred until they all felt like chalk washed down a gutter. I went through the motions, occupied myself with this or that, mostly with her.

I had lost track of how many times I held Francoise while she sobbed, breath hitching against my shoulder, nights where she clutched my hand so tight it bruised. Even in her dreams, she refused to let go.

But she did slip, little by little. And as always, I could do nothing to stop it.

It was tissued back then, today it was lace. I adjusted her veil, smoothing it down with hands that felt borrowed, ghostlike. Standing behind her, where we should have been framed in the mirror, only she sat there. Pretty as a picture, and me, as if I was nothing more than air behind her that gently blew everything into place.

I took my first real look at her, and it struck me like it always did—only harder today. The softness in her cheeks was long gone, carved away by years I hadn’t felt passing. The girl I once knew had slipped quietly into a woman, lines forming around her eyes and at the corners of her smile, small traces of laughter and grief etched into her face. Time had been working on her all this while; I had tried my best not to notice until now. Seeing all those years I’d let blur together were suddenly staring back at me in her reflection just felt…

“You have changed so much, Francoise,” I said, arms circling her shoulders, resting my chin against her crown. My voice was flat, but I tried to press warmth into it. “All grown up now. You look perfect.”

She laughed, though it didn’t sound like it used to. “And you’ve changed too. I never thought I’d see the day you grew taller.”

“Have I now?” I glanced down at myself, and I still looked so small. “That hardly feels like an achievement.”

She didn’t say anything at first, her gaze drifting off to the side, her eyes falling to a specific frame off to the side. Seated gently on a table nearby. Isaac’s face stared back at us, unchanged, untouchable.

“Are you sure you’re okay with carrying that while you hand me off…?” She asked, voice wavering.

“Of course,” I said too quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

It’s not as if I were a sentimental person.

Her hands fidgeted in her lap. “It just feels wrong somehow. You, in that dress, holding him instead of—” Her words broke into a sob. “I just wish he were here. I can’t stop thinking about it, about how unfair it is. Augustus making us cover it up, stealing Isaac’s ideas, erasing him like he was nothing—”

It was not as if I hadn’t noticed that development. Stonehearst had been taking credit for his old students' lesser-known projects, his old research, working off of what was already created and seemingly inventing wonders with a team and more modern technology, while Isaac had made such things from scraps. It was enraging to think about, so I simply didn’t. Not now anyhow.

Francoise’s shoulders shook. I reached for her, pressing my arms around her, smoothing her hair like I had a thousand times before. How quickly she could turn from a grown woman to the young girl I had taken care of for years. “Hey,” I said softly, “not today. This is your day, Francoise. He’d want you smiling, not unraveling. I’ll handle Stoneheart. Let me handle all of it. You just have to walk down that aisle.”

And leave all of this behind you, leave me here as fate often does.

She sniffled, but her sobs kept catching, “I just…it feels like I’m betraying him by being happy.”

“You’re not.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. As hopeful as my words were coming out, I found myself feeling as if I were lying straight through my teeth as I knelt down and took her shaking hands in mine, looking up at her. “You are honoring him by living. By finding joy, he would have wanted that. Francoise, look at you—you’ve come so far, grown into someone he’d be so proud of. And I’m proud of you, too. More than words could ever say. Don’t let grief steal this day from you.”

She breathed unevenly, clinging to my touch. Slowly, tremors eased. Her reflection in the mirror blurred as tears slipped down her cheeks. Meanwhile, I wiped at her tears quickly before they could ruin her beautiful makeup. Today wasn’t for tears.

I smiled up at her, or at least, I mimicked the shape of one with my lips. Inside, all I could think of was how wrong it felt—that time had carved her into someone new, while I stood still, untouched, as if time kept me frozen in that God awful tower. She was changing, moving forward, and I was only watching her disappear into the distance. I told myself it was a good thing. That moving on was a strength. That letting go was healing. But the words tasted like ash. 

Francoise turned her head, eyes shining with fresh tears, but her voice gentled. She had that look that people only get with experience, a kind of wisdom I hadn’t recognized she had gained. She was my best friend as I was hers, as good as I was at hiding, only she had the vision to see into me. “You always try to be strong for me. Too strong. But you don’t have to be. Not today.” She pressed her forehead against mine. “Give yourself a moment, too. Today is a day meant to be sentimental, so indulge me, will you? Go a bit easier on yourself, even if it is for one night.”

I didn’t know how to feel when hearing her words. So I had done what I had done for all these years, and simply went through the motions. I squeezed her hand, nodding like it had meant something to me, like I’d take her advice later. But my chest was already heavy with the truth I kept swallowing. 

Walking down the aisle, I clutched that framed photograph to my chest, its weight heavy. Every step felt like I was moving through a dream that wasn’t mine. I could hardly feel the ground beneath my feet, and I could hardly feel the air in my lungs. My body moved, but I felt like I was taking up the backseat in my own mind.

This hideous red dress clung to me; even in its simplicity, it felt gaudy and suffocating, as though mocking me with every fold of its fabric. The crowd blurred at the edges, faces smeared into nothing, yet I could feel their eyes. Morticia and Gomez, among them, are silent, watchful. Of course they were. She had invited them—why? A sign of good faith? They were part of the chain of events that led him to that grave. Their presence gnawed at me, a raw wound that time wouldn’t close. But what good was this anger? What good was blame? To point a finger at them, at anyone, I told myself it wouldn’t change the fact that he was gone. Just forget about it.

Still…having someone to blame would’ve been easier. Easier than sitting here now, sitting at that funeral with an empty casket, in this endless loop of if-onlys. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe if I had never suggested Gomez help at all, none of this would have happened, and it would be him sitting here instead of me.

I didn’t even know why I came, why Francoise even wanted me here; it was not as if I was really here. I didn’t speak to anyone, did not give a speech, and none of these pictures she would look back to would have me in them. Was there really a point in sticking around at all anymore? 

Time slipped strangely after seeing old friends again. I couldn’t tell if minutes passed or hours. One moment I was watching Francoise’s vows—her lips moving, her voice catching, though I could barely hear it past the ringing in my ears—and then suddenly the music started, and it was the first dance. Everything felt staged, placed like props before me, hollow and unreal.

I sat stiff, my hands still locked around the frame, as thought letting go of it would erase what little tether I had left. Isaac was gone, nothing but a body rotting beneath the dirt now. This picture—this was all that remained, just ink on paper. It wasn’t him, never would be.

The bouquet in Francoise’s hands, bright and fragile, mocked me most of all. A handful of blossoms, destined to wither in days, yet we clung to them, pretending they symbolized something eternal. We all dressed in what was to decay in lace and ribbons, told ourselves it meant love, meant forever. But, of course, it didn’t. It couldn’t.

Life itself was nothing but the cruelest joke. Meaningless, fleeting, a carousel of worthless sentiments that I was eternally stuck on to experience over and over again. We walked in circles, desperate to pretend our kindness mattered, when in truth, there was nothing. Just the inevitable rot. 

I don’t remember leaving the venue. One moment, I was a body in the wedding crowd—plastic smiles, polite claps—the next, I was staggering across the lawn, the reception music a distant thread tugging me along. Lantern light pooled on the grass; the air smelled of spilled wine and crushed flowers. I still had the photograph in my hands, the glass cloud against my chest. His face looked absurdly small, held like this—an inch of printed shadow and ink that could not possibly hope to contain him.

I’m not a sentimental person.

And yet there I was, close enough to the speakers that the violins reached me in long, aching sighs, and I began to move.

It started as the faintest sway–one foot, then the other—like testing a seam. Then, stupidly, I let sentiment take the lead. In my head, his hand was at my waist, that ridiculous, arrogant confidence in the way he would guide me, like he owned the floor because he was someone who could draw nothing into being. He would have teased me about dancing alone like this—call it theatrical, call me dramatic. But then he would have laughed and spun me anyway, and the laugh ignited a light that only he ever could.

I let myself be ridiculous. I held that frame to my chest and moved with the music, slow and careful at first, then with more abandon. The red fabric clung to me—the dress I had tried in that boutique—brushed against moonlit grass, a color that felt like a dare. I pressed my temple into the outer frame as if the weight of that photograph could close the distance that had opened between us. I listened for the tick—of his clockwork heart, that steady little punctuation I’d come to learn—and absurdly, I imagined it beating beneath the paper. For a breath, the sound steadied something inside me.

He had twirled me in my mind’s play; from that impossible vantage, the world had seemed less sharp, as if the edges dulled as he held me. The truth was that life doesn’t have a set meaning in it. For a moment, I had grasped onto something real, something that once filled me with hope. That left me raw and in pieces, but I had it for that moment; one reckless boy had found a way to sweep me off my feet. And the view from where he lifted me was beautiful, and I feel selfish for being angry at the world. For tricking me into thinking for a moment that whatever that was could have been mine.

When the song stuttered to the end—one last tremulous chord—the illusion broke. My legs folded beneath me before I could think, and I landed on the damp grass, the hem of my dress soaking up in the dew and dirt. The picture slipped from my fingers and hit the soil with a soft, obscene thud. I pressed my hands to my mouth. The sound that came next was not quiet grief but raw, a sound I have never let myself make ever since that night: a shriek that started in my ribs and tore at my throat until it burned.

I had promised Francoise I’d let myself feel, and like any promise to her, I honored it. The sobs came in rolling waves, loud and ugly—silenced by my hands to hide away from the reception. My shoulders heaved. My chest felt as if someone had hammered it thin and left it exposed. Tears blurred everything; mascara streaked black down my cheeks and mixed with the salt and dirt. I clutched the photograph and pressed it against my face, as if paper and glass could somehow stop the leak of everything that had been dammed up inside me for years.

Incandescent and doomed, loving an Icarus meant watching him burn out at dawn. I should have known this was how it was to be.

I still hadn’t the slightest clue of how long it had been, minutes blurred into a smear of cold air and the distant murmur of the party. I hiccuped into silence, the aftershocks small and ridiculous. My sobs turned to shaky breaths, breaths that I wanted to be silenced so badly I bit my own tongue to keep them in. I sat there until the rawness in my eyes turned into an ache and my shoulders no longer convulsed with every intake.

When I could move, I wiped the tracks on my face, blotting away the evidence until my skin felt too exposed for touch. I flipped the photograph face down so I no longer had to look at him, taking the frame in my arms once more and forcing myself upright. Standing up felt foreign in this moment. I smoothed out the dress as if I could iron out the grief and did what I could to pull myself together.

Francoise would be waiting. She would think I’d been gone for only a moment. She would smile that small, fragile smile that crumples my resolve in the best and worst of ways, and she would need me to be strong, not the puddle I’d just been. The thought steadied me more than anything left in this world could. For her, I would put the face on. For her, I would sew myself back together. I would hold it together, regardless of whatever time we had left. 

Everything has felt blurry. As I marched through the years, there was no point in fighting, as it dragged you forward. Looking up, suddenly you realize you’ve been carried a decade away from the last place you bothered to think about it. 

One moment, it was Francoise in white, a bouquet thrown over her head, carried by music and champagne. And then, somehow, without my noticing the passing of years, she was gone. Buried in that same earth that claimed Isaac, the same earth that swallows all eventually.

What lingers of her now is not her laughter, but her baby.

I remember the first day, the hospital room thick with antiseptic and sweat, when she pressed him into my arms. So small, so impossibly breakable, the weight of him was less than any stone I had ever carried, and yet he felt heavier than the world. Francoise had looked at me then with tired, luminous eyes and said, You’re his godmother. If anything happens…

And something did.

Now, there was no fragile child swaddled in blankets. No softness, no gentle hope. Only chains. Iron biting into his wrists as he shifts in the restraints, the dull light of Willow Hill making his skin look sallow. His eyes—Francoise’s eyes, but sharpened, twisted into something dark—following me like a predator testing the cage.

It was impossible to reconcile the memory of that delicate boy in my arms with the teenager crouched in the corner now. Tyler is dangerous, the doctor had said. Manipulative. Unpredictable. A Hyde. His presence hums with caged violence that unsettles even the guards behind iron doors. It made me wonder what keeps the roof above our heads from splintering apart.

This place…these halls…they are cursed. The same halls where Francoise took her last breath now hold her baby in chains. History repeats itself, crueler this time, and I find myself whispering silently to her ghost: What would you think of me now? Would you be furious that I let it come to this? That I didn’t protect him? That I didn’t protect you?

“Tyler…” My voice scraped against my throat, gentler than I had allowed myself to be. Softness never came naturally to me, not even after all those years of practice with Francoise. “It’s me again.”

Predictably, he didn’t answer. He rarely did. That silence of his was louder than words—deliberate, suffocating, as if he wanted me to feel small for even daring to speak. Perhaps I should have been frightened. Anyone else would have been.

Francoise had once called me here to help her through her own Hyde spirals—those awful nights of postpartum madness when she’d claw at her own skin, eyes empty but burning, begging me to hold her steady while doctors strapped her down. That had been horror enough. But Tyler…Tyler had already spilled blood. Real blood. There was no denying that.

“It’s cold in here,” I tried again, pulled at the silence like it was a stubborn thread. My eyes slid to his arms, the gooseflesh, the way his wrists trembled faintly against the chains. “And I don’t know why they won’t bother clothing you properly…” Though I did know, of course. They didn’t want to make him comfortable, not when comfort meant strength. He’d probably tried too many times to force the Hyde out, to rip his way out of this place.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a folded blanket, worn soft with age, though I’d washed it carefully just this morning. It smelled faintly of lavender detergent, and underneath, still, the ghost of something floral and old. “But,” I said, crouching to the little metal slot meant for his food trays, “I brought something. Found it at the back of my closet. Your mothers. She used to bring it over during sleepovers. I guess I forgot to return it…”

For a moment, nothing. He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. Just sat there, heavy shadows casting over into something feral. Then, slow as if he wanted to stretch the moment thin and unbearable, he rose. The chains rattled behind him, a low drag of iron against stone, before he crouched by the blanket. 

He tilted his head, studying it. His fingers brushed across the fabric as though teasing its reality. Then he lifted it, pressing it briefly to his face.

That look that crossed him wasn’t softness—it was too sharp for that—but something almost vulnerable crept in for a heartbeat. And then it was gone. 

I glanced, unwillingly, at the shock collar clamped around his throat. Brutal thing. His arms were slick with sweat, thin scars scrawling like tally marks on his chest and face. I wondered if they ever even tried to treat him, or if he was simply the institution’s caged animal now.

“I don’t remember much from her,” he said. “My dad never wanted to talk about her. He’d change the subject, slam a door. Said her world wasn’t for me.” His lip curled. “He hasn’t even visited me once.”

“Your father,” I said, letting the words drag, “is an ass. Always has been—he thought the only way to keep you normal was to keep everything away from you. And from me.”

“So you tried?” His eyes flicked up, sharp, too calculating for his years.

“Of course I tried. I brought toys, letters, and showed up at the door. He probably threw most of it away, stood at the doorway once, and told me if I came back again, he’d file a restraining order.” I gave a mirthless little shrug. “I called bullshit, he never let me in through, though.”

Tyler laughed, but it was hollow. He held the blanket at his side, jaw tense. “Figures.”

Ah, so daddy issues? Donvan was a piece of shit, in my opinion, anyhow, I never liked him, but Francoise was too head over heels to ever notice that. I didn’t think it mattered; if she was happy, then whatever—once again, I proved to be a fool.

There was a silence after that, thick and sticky. I let it sit until he finally said, too casually, “You could help me out of here, you know. You’re old, seem clever…and stronger than you look. They wouldn’t expect it from you. You could cut the power, find the keys. Get me out.”

I stared at him, blinking once, slowly. “Oh, of course. Let me just pick the locks, throw you over my shoulder, and march us right out of the front gate. I’m sure the armed guards won’t mind at all. We’ll get milkshakes once we are out, too, shall we?”

His jaw tightened. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.” I learned forward, lowering my voice. “Tyler, I wish I could hand you a better life. I wish there was something beyond these walls for you right now that didn’t end in blood. But the truth? Letting you out would just mean a trail of bodies until they brought you back in—if they didn’t try to kill you first.”

He leaned closer too, chains clinking as he gripped the bars between us. His smile was wrong—too sharp, too much like a knife. “So you’ll just sit there, pretend you care, bring me a blanket, and wall away while I rot?”

I arched a brow, feigning nonchalance, though my stomach knotted. “Well, when you put it like that, you sound almost ungrateful.”

Looking up, I tilted my chin just slightly toward the corner of the room, letting Tyler follow my gaze. A camera sat there, its tiny red light pulsing like a heartbeat. Beside it, a speaker—one of many—where the staff could speak and listen through, waiting for him to slip. One wrong word, one twitch too sharp, and they’d shock him, drug him, break him all over.

I hated this place. I hated that Donovan had chosen this solution, locking Tyler inside these walls, chaining him like a dog. But I couldn’t argue the practicality—Willow Hill was one of the only outcast institutions in the country with even a whisper of experience handling Hydes. And yet, the air here always tasted like faulture

“Look, Tyler,” I said, my voice lighter than I felt, trying to sound almost conversational, as if we weren’t standing in a concrete tomb. “After this year, I’ll have taken every class Nevermore has to offer. I’ll be gone—new job, new place, far from here. You’ll be a legal adult once the courts say you don’t need all of this anymore.” I gestured toward the collar, the chains, the suffocating weight of the room. “If you don’t want your father in the picture—and I wouldn’t blame you—I’ll let you stay with me. A place to stay. Food. Someone in your corner.”

I couldn’t say the truth: that breaking him out wasn’t even an option. I’d be hunted to the ends of the earth for even showing I was genuinely entertaining it; it wasn’t as if I had anything to lose anymore. But I couldn’t risk letting him loose when he still bent his ear, willingly or not, to a murderous master. Tyler would destroy himself. I couldn’t risk letting Francoise’s baby out into a world that still had it out for him.

He didn’t respond, not right away. His expression was unreadable, his sharp features betraying nothing but a glimmer of thought. But I could see it—the faintest flicker of consideration. That was enough. Enough to plant the seed. Perhaps it was futile, perhaps his bloodline really did curse him to a tragic end…I hope this time I can do one thing right, and at least do right by him. 

A guard appeared at the door, keys jangling as though punctuating the end of our visit. Beside him stood Dr. Fairburn, the ever-polite shepherd of these halls, ready to guide me out.

I gave Tyler a lazy wave, masking the weight of everything with a crooked half-smile. “I’ll see you next time, kid. Maybe by then you’ll have cooked up a proper escape plan.”

As the heavy door closed behind me, my smile fell like a mask dropping. The corridors stretched on ahead, endless rows of cells echoing with screams, sobs, and animalistic growls. The stench of disinfectant fought to disguise the rot of despair, and it never worked. Willow Hill could paint over the walls as often as it liked, but nothing could mask the inhumanity festering inside.

And then, as if summoned by my thoughts, came a sight that I hadn’t expected—hadn’t wanted.

A nurse wheeled out an old man. His body sagged against the seat, a wasted husk of skin and bones. Hollow cheeks, parchment skin stretched too thin, eyes fogged and distant like windows into a house long abandoned. Augustus Stonehearst.

My stomach turned at the sight of him, but not out of pity. No, it was something far darker, sharper. A curl of pride wormed its way through my chest. Once, this man had been brilliant. Once, he had been untouchable—my professor, a normie that fooled everyone into whispering about him in awe. And now? Now he was drooling into his lap, a shell of himself, in the very institution he used to run. 

He once prided himself on knowing things other people couldn’t see. He collected brilliance the way some people collected coins. He hoarded minds and called it teaching. Letting that mind rust in a place like this felt less like mercy and more like justice. For a man who wanted to measure the world, to dissect it down to its last honest nerve, the cruelest reward is to be left with nothing but your own unbearable knowledge as company.

“You know Gus?” Dr. Fairburn asked idly, oblivious to the way my gaze lingered on him like a dagger.

“Gus?” I echoed, letting out a soft laugh. “What a cute nickname. He and I go way back. He used to be my professor.” I let my smile sharpen, fangs flashing. “Of course, I know him.”

As I passed by, his cloudly eyes flickered, just faintly, with recognition. His body twitched and jerked away; he began to scream. Wailing like a little bitch, so much so that a few nurses rushed over to hold him down. And in that instant, I knew he remembered me.

Good, I thought. Good to know some things were still under control.

You could call it vengeance if you’d like, but I call it accountability. He begged for a mind half as bright as Isaacs's; he got what he deserved. His mind was broken, yes, but he remembers enough to have rotted with it for the last few cruel years. There is dark poetry in that torture I know too well, the curse of knowing yet never dying.

I walked on, leaving him back to he was left to decay in here. It was a satisfaction that always surprised me with its feeling every time I saw the fear in his eyes. I told Francoise I would handle him, so I had.

And with that reassurance, I return to the march of time.

I hadn’t wanted to come. At least, that’s what I had told myself. Francoise and Morticia had insisted—practically marched me here after class—while I trudged along behind them, arms crossed, muttering things like “it’s just a school dance” and “I don’t need a new dress.”

I didn’t tell them anything, only that I would be attending. I thought I was convincing.

Morticia, of course, never broke stride; her serene smile was her silent way to say she saw straight through me. Francoise only hummed cheerfully at my side, her knowing grin far too smug for someone who hadn’t even spoken yet.

By the time the bell above the shop door chimed, I had perfected my poker face. Or so I thought.

The boutique’s warmth swallowed me whole the moment we stepped in. Chandeliers dripped in a soft gold light across rows of silks and satins, shadows shifting against the velvet curtains, fabrics whispering as they brushed together on their racks. The air smelled faintly of lavender and sut, the kind of cozy but luxurious atmosphere that made it impossible not to feel…enchanted. 

Because the truth was, standing among all these gowns, it hit me: I was going to the Rave’N. With Isaac. And for all my stubbornness, the thought made something in me fizz like champagne. He asked me. The memory of his voice still echoed in my mind, made me giddy, how smooth and certain he sounded: Go with me. Wear red.

And just like that, my carefully cultivated indifference cracked. My lips twitched before I could stop them, the corner of a smile betraying me.

Francoise caught it instantly, her eyes lighting up like she’d just won a bet. “Aha! There it is,” she announced, pointing to me like a victorious lawyer presenting evidence. “I knew you were excited!”

“I’m not,” I said too quickly, tugging my coat tighter around me as if that could smother the warmth building in my chest.

Morticia gilded past us, her fingers trailing over a rack of gowns, her midnight hair falling around the tilt of her head like a curtain. “You’re glowing. It’s charming.”

“I am not,” I muttered, ducking behind a rack of dark lace like it was a shield. “This lighting just must be…flattering.”

Francoise popped out from behind another display, arms full of sequined horrors that could probably blind onlookers if they caught the moonlight wrong. Since when did she get there? 

“Don’t even bother denying it,” she sang, her grin wide enough to make my ears burn. “You were literally humming when I caught you after class. You never hum. You’re practically floating. Isaac insisted I’d bring you out tonight; he wouldn’t tell me more, but the fact he mentioned dress shopping mixed with you being giddy…it’s all very suspect. ”

“He did—? I mean—I’m just tired,” I tried, deadpan. “Sleep deprivation does strange things to people.”

Morticia’s red lips curled into the faintest smirks. “Strange indeed. Like working up the nerve to say yes to the boy who’s been painting you for weeks?”

I froze. “...Excuse me?”

Her expression didn’t change. If anything, it softened, the kind of smile that felt both comforting and unnerving. “I’m glad he finally gave you the gift. And that Gomez and I were able to get him to ask you. I was beginning to wonder how long he’d stall, for all his expertise, he is bad with affairs of the heart.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded. “You knew?”

“A dove always knows when romance is in the air,” she said simply, her voice lilting like a melody. “Though it was sweet to watch the two of you stumble around each other as if no one else could see the truth.”

“Truth?” I sputtered. “There is not— it’s not—”

“Future sister-in-law,” Francoise gasped, her hands flying to her mouth with exaggerated drama. “Oh my God, you were really going to keep this from me? From me?”

“It just happened!” I protested, though my ears felt hot enough to combust.. “And it’s not what you think—”

“It’s exactly what I think.” Francoise dumped the sequined pile onto the nearest chaise and bounced up to me, clutching my arm and shaking me rather violently for a girl her size. “You’re going to the Rave’N with my brother. My brother. And he made you a painting to ask you? Do you know how many lifetimes I’ve been waiting for this moment? I always knew you would end up in my family—”

“You’re delusional,” I said, but it came out weak, more of a pout than a proper retort. 

I had no idea why I was denying it so much. I was fighting not to bounce off the walls, but the whole situation left me feeling shy if I was honest. This was new territory for me. I was not used to this classic high-school romance stuff, let alone sharing my business with girls, relative to my technical age group. For so long a shadow in my own life, watching things pass me by. Now here I was, letting Francoise and Morticia tug me towards rows of silk and velvet like a reluctant doll.

Morticia’s laugh was soft, almost like a sigh toward the end, and she plucked a black gown from the rack. “Delusion, intuition— it hardly matters when the outcome is the same.” She’d held the dress out to me with a graceful flick of her wrist. “Try this one. Isaac will forget how to breathe. Oh, and this one as well.”

Francoise gasped, as though the universe had just presented her with a divine prophecy, throwing a different dress at me for catch, “Yes, yes, this one too! Oh, these are all just perfect.”

“Will you two stop—” I tried, but another hanger was shoved into my hands.

Francoise leaned close, whispering like she couldn’t contain herself. “Why don’t you just admit it already? He asked you, didn’t he?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, clutching the fabric tighter. “...He told me to wear something red.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Both girls froze for a beat, then squealed in a perfect, terrifying harmony. Francoise clutched her chest dramatically. “I knew it! My future sister-in-law, keeping secrets from me—shame on you!”

Morticia only hummed, but her head tilted in that strange way of hers, like she was listening  to something beyond us. She set the dress she was holding aside, stepping lightly down the aisle. Her long fingers trailed over silks, velvets, and chiffons, pausing every so often, until finally she stilled. Her expression shifted, distant, like she’d caught a whisper in the air.

“Morticia?” Francoise asked, brows rising.

“Shh…” Morticia’s eyes fluttered closed for just a moment. Then she turned sharply, gliding toward the back of the shop. She reached into a hidden rack, parting gowns like curtains until her hand landed on something deep, scarlet, and sleek. She drew it out, holding it carefully by the hanger as if it might shatter.

When she turned back, her dark gaze pinned me with the weight of inevitability. “This one,” she said simply. “It carries…a signature. An importance. It belongs to you.”

The dress itself was breathtaking, but it was cut with such precision that it seemed sculpted. Satin pooled in rich folds, smooth as spilled wine, the neckline was elegant without being garish, the silhouette clean and sharp.

I swallowed, throat tight, unable to look away. Would I even be able to do a dress like this justice?

Francoise shoved me gently toward the dressing room, eyes glittering. “Go. Try it on. Now.”

Morticia’s smile curved, secret and knowing. “Let’s see if fate agrees.”

With both of them staring me down, resistance was useless. I grumbled under my breath as I disappeared behind the curtain. The fabric slid on like second skin— sleek, smooth, and heavier than it looked. Brushing out the dress, I couldn’t help but be in awe and how perfectly it seemed to have fit me. It was waiting for me.

Always trust a psychic to tell you what to wear.

I stepped out before I could lose my nerve. Francoise clapped both of her hands over her mouth and squealed. Moritcia only smiled, but the weight of her gaze was heavier than applause. 

“Red really is your color—you look…” Francoise fanned herself dramatically. “...like you’re going to kill him. In the best way.”

“She won’t need to,” Morticia murmured. “I know the look of a whipped man. He’s already undone.”

I flushed so hard I had to look away, pretending to adjust the folds. 

Maybe, for once, I wouldn’t mind being seen.

The three of us lingered there, laughter spilling easily, their excitement wrapping around me until my nerves loosened. Morticia’s calm certainty, Francoise’s uncontainable joy—it was contagious. For the first time, I let myself admit it. I wanted this. The dance. The dress. Isaac. All of it.

—-

The shop had long emptied of its noisy bustle. Francoise had eventually declared she had “Urgent matters of her own” —though the dramatic wink she tossed over her shoulder as she left told me perhaps it had less to do with errands. I loved that she had come out from her shell, but at the same time, I didn’t know what to do with this girl.

But that left just Morticia and me, walking back slowly through the winding corridors of Ophelia Hall. Red dress boxed and tucked beneath my arm like a secret I could hardly believe belonged to me.

Morticia’s side dormitory was draped in velvet shadows, while her roommate's side was classy but admittedly rather blinding to look at, with how bright it was. But perhaps the most gorgeous part of the room was the soft glow illuminating the great rose window that crowned the room. Moriticia led me wordlessly up through one of the panes that could be pushed aside like a door, her movements always deliberate as he black outfit swept behind her like a shadow come to life.

We slipped outside onto the balcony, and the night air kissed my face with a cool, almost metallic bite. Below us sprawled the forest, black and endless, and above, the stars strained to pierce the heavy shroud of clouds. Behind us, the rose window glowed faintly, bleeding its jeweled light across the stone floor. It separated us—Moritica on the bright side of its shadowed pattern, myself on the darker half—like some sort of unspoken barrier, a presage neither of us called aloud.

I set the box aside and leaned against the stone railing, feeling suddenly smaller than I wanted to admit. “Could I ask a kind of strange question?”

She glanced over for a mere moment before nodding and looking back into the darkness below. “Of course, I live for them.”

“Morticia, I—” I started, voice thin, “what if I don’t know what to do?”

Her dark eyes shifted towards me once more, patient, the corners of her lips lifting as though she’d expected the question all along.

“I mean…” My throat tightened. “I’ve never had this. Any of this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act, what it should feel like. I know it’s just a school romance, and I shouldn’t be reading too much into it. I don’t even know where this whole thing is supposed to go, I mean, I–” I let a brittle laugh that clung to the night air. Taking a moment before I spoke again. “What if I…keep going and he…doesn’t?”

Saying the quiet part out loud was always hard. It’s the first romance I had in my life, and I didn’t know how to bear it. Falling in love was scary, but I wasn’t so stupid as to say I wasn’t ensnared. All things end; that was enviable, so many firsts for me. I am happy, but I could not help but question how long that would last.

The silence after was almost unbearable. The moonlight stretched across the floor like fractured glass, highlighting every sharp edge of my fear.

Morticia turned her head, her profile cutting against the glow of the rose window. Her voice came quietly but resonantly, each word unfurling with gravity. “You fear the future because, for once, you see the possibility of someone else in it. That is the nature of attachment. But love, my dear, does not promise permanence. It never has. It promises intensity.”

I swallowed, blinking against the sting in my eyes. “That all sounds…terrifying.”

Her lips curved, faintly amused, faintly sad. “Yes. And rewarding. To be loved is to risk devastation. To love is to risk being undone. But to refuse it altogether?” She tilted her head, her gaze pinning me like a specimen under glass. “That is the greater tragedy.”

I shifted my weight, arms folding across myself as if I could hide behind my own skin. “I’m not afraid of being hurt. Not really, that part is inevitable, I suppose. I’m afraid of it being a waste. Of waking one day and realizing it was nothing more than a spark—that it meant more to me than it did him. That I’ll remember every heartbeat, and it all means nothing in the end.”

Morticia let the words linger. Then she drifted closer, her presence like smoke—soft enveloping, inevitable. “If he forgets, then he was never worthy. But…” Her hand brushed lightly across mine, cool and steady. “From what I see, he is not the sort who’d just forget. He clings. He devours. He would etch you into his bones if you’d let him.”

A reluctant, shaky smile tugged at my lips. “You make it sound like a curse.”

Her dark eyes glittered. “It is. A beautiful one. The kind you’ll crave even as it burns you.”

I looked down, my voice small. “And if it ends anyway?”

“Then you will have lived,” Morticia said simply. “Loved. Tasted what most go their entire lives without daring. That is worth the risk, is it not?”

Bullshit. I wanted to say. I wanted to argue. To fold myself back into my doubts and let them shield me. But the way she said it—like it as a face, like it was inevitable—it left me speechless.

I let her words linger, rolling them in my mind like stones in a tide pool. Somehow, they cut and smoothed all at once. But curiosity got the better of me, as it often did when Morticia spoke of him.

“You make it sound so effortless,” I murmured, glancing sideways at her. “You and Gomez, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people so…certain. Don’t you ever worry about the future? About…if, God forbid, time pulls you apart?”

At that, Morticia’s lips curved into something softer than her usual composure allowed. She tilted her head toward the moonlight, as if basking in memory. “There is no apart from Gomez. He is…my everything. My mirror, my flame, my fiercest admirer and advocate. I’ve never once had to ask for his devotion; it is simply there, constant as night is day. If the ground were to crumble beneath us, I know he would still find a way to reach me.”

There was little room for doubt; maybe that’s what proved to her it was real.

Her voice warmed, smoky with affection. “That is what I love most about him—his immediacy. Gomez never hesitates. When someone needs him, he is already moving, as though fate tugs the strings of his heart and he obeys without question. He helps even without being asked, and he looks out for everyone. That’s someone to look for in a partner, to start something serious, a family with.”

I smiled faintly despite myself. I could never say before someone's joy could bring about my own, but to hear her devotion. Even as he wasn’t here, that proved to me it was real, too. “That sounds…unreal.”

“Oh, it is very real,” she replied with a quiet laugh. “Even tonight, he left me only an hour ago when word reached him. Something about Isaac needing his help tonight with one of his projects, I believe.”

I blinked, the smile dying on my lips. “...What did you say?”

She hummed, entirely unbothered, brushing a strand of raven hair from her face. “Yes, he said Isaac requested his assistance in Iago Tower. You know how Gomez is—ever the helpful soul, especially with his closest friend.”

My chest tightened sharply, my breath catching before I even realized I’d stopped breathing. Isaac hadn’t mentioned anyone coming over. Not Gomez, not anyone. He told me he was still working to fix the machine's power system. He told me nothing.

I turned instinctively toward the gothic skyline, my eyes climbing up the stone outline of Iago Tower. And then I saw it— sparks dancing across the clockface, white-blue streaks of electricity cracking against the night. Not subtle. Not harmless.

Something was wrong.

“...No.” The word tore from my throat, thin and strained. My heart pounded so loud it drowned out the rest of the courtyard, every instinct in me screaming.

Without another thought, I pushed away from the balcony, nearly stumbling as my legs carried me forward. “Something's wrong—I have to go!”

“Wait—!” Morticia’s voice followed after me, calm but edged with surprise.

I didn’t wait. My shoes struck stone, too loud, too fast, as I tore through the halls and out into the open grounds, my eyes never leaving the crackling silhouette of the tower above. Panic clawed at my ribs. Isaac was up there. And if he hadn’t told someone would be there, then that could mean—

Morticia’s shoes clicked behind me, steady and unhurried compared to the frantic slap of my own steps. “Darling, slow down. What’s happened?”

I barely heard her. My mind was racing too fast, snapping pieces into place like jagged glass slamming into a twisted mosaic. Isaac hadn’t told me. He hadn’t told me when Gomez would help him. He hadn’t told me anything at all. And if he’d hidden it…if he’d been so quick to insist I go out tonight…

The truth lodged itself like a splinter in my throat. He knew whatever he was doing, I’d try to stop it.

I shook my head violently, hair whipping my face, as if I could fling the thought away. But the crackle of lightning crowning Iago Tower was undeniable, spreading across the night sky in bursts of blue-white arcs.

“I don’t—” my voice cracked, breaking with the air rushing out of me, “—I don’t know exactly. But if Isaac didn’t tell me…then something's wrong. If he’s hiding it. He—”

My throat locked again. Morticia, for once, said nothing. She only followed, her pale face settling into a look of pure panic. 

By the time we managed to make our way up the twisting stairs and burst through the warped doors of the tower, the air inside was thick with smoke and the scent of scorched metal. The tang of ozone burned my nose, stinging sharply.

Gomez was bound to a grotesque chair up on the upper level— its shape sickeningly close to an electric chair, restraints biting into his wrists and ankles. His body was shaking violently, his face grimacing every time arcs of power rippled through the machine; he looked both painfully aware of all that was around him yet also completely out of it. His body jerked against the bindings with each surge,  but the leather and steel held fast.

Across from him, Francoise lay down on the laboratory’s operating table, her body rigid as bolts of energy crawled over her skin. She was screaming through clenched teeth, the sound raw and ragged, as the machine poured its fury into her. Sparks raced up and down her frail body. The Hyde gene— Isaac had said he wanted to kill it. But not like this. Not like this.

“No…no, no, no—” My chest tightened so violently I thought it would cave. My eyes whipped around, desperate. “Isaac?!”

But there was no sign of him. The only answer was the groan of the machine. He wasn’t here—not in any spot I could see. He was probably buried in its guts, controlling it from the shadows.

“Help me get him out!”

Morticia had moved faster than me, darting for him, her movements sharp, sure—but the instant her fingers brushed one of the buckles, a violent shock crackled up her arm. She hissed, recoiling, smoke curling faintly from her sleeve.

“It’s too much,” she snapped, shaking out her hand. “I can’t tell it—”

I paused for a moment, stopping her before she could try again.

Before she could stop me, I threw my arms towards it, hands clawing at the leather straps. Electricity surged instantly through my arms, biting deep, searing across every nerve. My body convulsed, pain bloomed like molten fire, but I forced my hands to move. Immortal or not, it still hurt. It was unbearable. My skin blistered, my muscles screamed as if they’d fall right off the bone, but I didn’t let go.”

Hold still—dammit—hold still!” I gritted, fighting the metal locks on the bindings as Gomez’s weight thrashed beneath the jolts.

“S-Stop—” Gomez rasped weakly, his eyes glassy. “You’ll kill yourself.”

“Shut it!” I snapped, my voice cracking into desperation. “I don’t die that easily—”

Leather strained beneath my grip, my fingers slipping on the slick of my own blood as the currents tore through me. One strap undone—then another. I cried out, half in pain and the other in victory. Grabbing the boy's arm, I pulled him completely off the sparking seat.

And then—

A sound split the tower. A scream—Isaac’s voice, ragged and sharp, echoing deeper within the machine. I froze. Morticia. She wasn’t beside me anymore. She must’ve found him.

“Morticia—?!”

Before I could see, before I could turn, the world exploded.

Lights swallowed everything—blinding, searing. A detonation tore through the tower, hurling bodies and metal alike. I slammed into the steel floor, air wrenched from my lungs as the machine howled and died. The smell of burning wires and charred flesh filled the lab.

My ears rang. A shrill, endless wail, as though the world itself had ruptured. My vision doubled, blurred, fractured into useless pieces. I couldn’t feel my legs at all–only the numb throb of something ruined. Every sound reached me through a veil of water and smoke, muffled, unreal.

And then— nothing but the fight to stay awake, consciousness slipping like sand through my bloodied fingers.

Tick…tick…tick.

I heard it. The sound that had always soothed me, no matter the storm—Isaac’s heart, steady, stubborn, artificial. Only now it grew fainter, sputtering like a dying ember.

My body begged me to stop, to collapse. My legs were basically gone, charred to the bone, scorched meat fused with fabric. The smell of myself burning clung to the air, nauseating, but still I dragged forward. Nails tearing, skin shredding, I crawled across shards of glass and twisted metal, pushing past pain that no longer had a name.

Through the haze, I caught a glint of silver light. That damned ring he always wore—his vanity, his crest. My hand shot out, trembling, desperate, and I seized it, squeezing tight. I’m here. I’ve got you.

But when I pulled, there was nothing attached. Just his hand. Severed, clean through.

No scream came. My lungs filled with blood when I tried, choking me silent. I gagged, coughing up thick clots, and forced myself to move forward anyway, leaving streaks of myself on the floor.

And then—I found him.

His body was twisted wrong, sprawled amongst wires and sparks. His chest barely rose, shallow, fluttering. His face pale, drenched in crimson. He didn’t even stir when I collapsed against him, pressing my ear to his chest. I begged for the beat of his heart, straining myself to hear it through the chaos, but there was almost nothing. A ghost of a rhythm.

Tears blurred what little sight I had left, spilling hot down my ruined face. I wanted to scream at him, to grab him by the collar and shake him back into himself. To hurl words like knives— You bastard, how could you hide this? How could you do this to me? How dare you try and leave me like this?

But when I held him, all of it dissolved. His fragility gutted me. Isaac, who burned me so violently, was just flesh and bone. Flesh that tore. Bones that snapped.

He was covered in red. It painted me too, soaking into my skin, my hair, against my face. The only warmth left in him was the blood spilling out onto me, seeping between us.

I opened my mouth, but the words curdled before they formed. What was there to say? Nothing could change it. Nothing could pull him back.

And then—his remaining hand twitched. Fingers smeared in blood, trembling as they reached for me. Somehow, impossibly, he pushed a strand of hair from my face. His touch left a streak of red against my cheek, tender and grotesque.

“You…” His voice was shredded, cracked, but still his. “...really do look so pretty in red.”

The sound of him, broken and fading, split me open.

I gasped, blood and air mixing in my lungs, and when I finally forced words past my throat, they dissolved into the night. Because then I heard it—the click of his clockwork heart faltering. Stopping.

Everything inside me shattered. I didn’t even realize I was screaming until my own voice tore through the smoke, raw and guttural. It ripped out of me like my body was trying to force my soul from me; it felt like it could shake the walls, shake the stars. A sound so full of grief, so inhuman, I couldn’t recongize it as myself. 

I clutched him tighter anyway, even as the lift was already drained out of him in my arms; I couldn’t let go. Not of him. Not of the Icarus I’d fallen in love with—the boy who had always burned too bright, who now lay burned out before my eyes.