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Adelaide briefly toyed with the idea of keeping the token Gwendolynn had given her— and the additional magical hold that came with it. But she didn’t want to fight Gwendolynn, not really, so she reached into her purse and held out the small bundle of dark hair.

“Of course. As a token of goodwill, or something.”

Nothing in Gwendolynn’s countenance spoke to any glimmer of appreciation or gratitude.

Then again, that would require that Gwendolynn was capable of showing anything.

“You don’t have to worry about Moony,” Adelaide called out as Gwendolynn turned away again. “I’d never do anything to hurt him.”

“I’m not worried about you wanting to hurt him.” Gwendolynn shot a glare at her over her shoulder. “I’m worried you won’t be able to stop yourself if he gets in your way.”

“He won’t.”

Moony was on her side. Moony had chosen her over Gwendolynn. Moony was helping her. She wouldn’t need to hurt him because he wouldn’t get in her way.

She couldn’t say the same for Gwendolynn.

With a huff, the other woman left. 

Adelaide took a moment to scoop up all her boxes, balancing them precariously on top of one another, and slammed the door on her way out. Eager to avoid the tea shop on the ground floor, she took the back staircase and made her way out to the curb, where Moony was idling in front of his car. He straightened as she approached with a grimace.

“I guess I’ll be needing a new place to crash.”

“You can stay with me as long as you need, Adelaide,” Moony assured her with that smile so much softer than any kindness Adelaide had been shown in years.

Fuck, she was glad he had sided with her.

He moved to open the back door of the car, and Adelaide set her boxes down on the ground to make it easier to move them into the seat, but before she put them away, she gave Moony a sidelong glance, recalling how tired and sad he had sounded pleading with Gwendolynn to take care of herself and be more forthcoming. She remembered what he had said when she came back downstairs: “I can’t do this anymore.”

“How are you doing, after all that?” she murmured.

He shrugged helplessly. “I… I’m still worried about Gwen, but I don’t think there’s much more we can do for her.”

“Y’know, it’s funny,” Adelaide said hollowly. “Given how sanctimonious she is, she’d make a great preacher’s kid.”

Or, indeed, a great preacher, but that was not a thought that Adelaide cared to draw to its natural conclusion. It hurt enough to have implied it during her conversation with Gwendolynn, to have told her I know this kind of care and worry, and it is not founded in understanding or respect or dignity. It is possessive, and it’s a killing thing and to have had it fall on deaf ears.

“I…” Moony grimaced. “Gwen’s a good person. I know a lot of hurtful things were said back there, but beneath it all, somewhere deep down, she’s a good kid, I know it.”

Maybe Adelaide deserved Gwendolynn’s goodness like she deserved her father’s.

“All my friends left me,” she whispered, throat tight and eyes burning and hands balled into fists inside of Nat’s flannel jacket. “I watched them all graduate and leave for college and never come back because who the hell would come back to this waste of a fuckin town?” 

Her voice crackled like so many fires she had lit across Harborview, groaning and splitting like the support beams of the Dellouise Manor or the Yard and Sale greenhouse or the Madison’s farmhouse, the whimpers of something that could no longer hold its own weight.

“When I first met you and Gwendolynn, when we started hunting monsters and hanging out together, I thought…” She muffled a sob. “I thought that was all over… I just want it all to be over.” Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, the kind of thing she should’ve been able to repress with a mere swallow, but she hadn’t yet recovered her defenses since their conversation last night about her dad trapping her there. Every part of her was raw, a bleeding, picked-over wound exposed to saltwater and gnawing deeper. “I want to stop this,” the magic, the pain, the hurting others, the being hurt in return, all that latent monstrosity that Gwendolynn had condemned her for, she didn’t want to be like this, the kind of person who could not hold their power in check, “but I can’t… I can’t stop until I get out of here…”

“You will,” Moony replied with a conviction fit for a congregant of the First Church of Her Will. “We’ll get you out of here, I promise. Now, you need help with those boxes?”

Sniffling, Adelaide rubbed furiously at her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded.

“Yeah, thanks…”

Moony took care of putting everything in the backseat, and Adelaide shuffled around to the passenger seat. A minute later, he climbed in as well, but rather than turning the car on, he fidgeted with his keys for a moment before looking at Adelaide.

“Just… promise me something, yeah?”

Adelaide stared into the eyes of the one person in the whole wide world who knew what she had gone through over the last six years, the one person who had seen just how bad she was and still thought she deserved kindness.

“Anything.”

Moony frowned back, face drawn tight with worry— the real thing, not  Gwendolynn looking at her like a ticking bomb, not her father looking at her like a broken doll.

“If someone tries to kill you… you kill them first.”

Adelaide’s mind flashed to the sleek barrel of a jet black, military-grade sniper rifle and a cold brown eye pressed to the scope.